Skip to main content

Women who stare at parking spots


Listening to the playground antics of the US government around the debt ceiling is very painful.  I still expect there will be a "last minute deal," but I also hope that the pathetic posturing that is bringing the US to the brink causes people to rethink the process.

On NPR this morning there were two interesting comments on the underlying psychology that is aiding and abetting the current process.

  1. Short term considerations overwhelmingly override long term ones.  The example was that if I ask you to give up an ice-cream cone next year, it is easy to say "yes".  If I swing by right now with the desert tray, you will have a hard time saying "no".  The debate around the debt ceiling is really about long-term concerns....but the (somewhat artificial) deadline of August 2nd is making it into a negotiation about the short term.
  2. Men are hyper-competitive without women present to moderate things.  Maybe not too surprising, but it leads to men acting in non-intuitive ways; I missed the exact reference on NPR, but there was an example of two cities in Eastern Europe which were quite similar except that one has a very high ratio of women on city counsel, and one has a high ratio of men.  The one with the women at the helm runs like a finely tuned machine, whereas the other is full of posturing, last-minute (and bad) decisions, higher debt, etc.
So, the lesson is pretty clear.
  1. Change the incentives for law makers from long-term abstract (the debt) to short-term concrete.  Either stop paying them, or even more severe, take away their preferred parking spots.  Of the two, the psychologist was sure that the parking spot would have the most impact.  Most law makers would have savings, so removing their pay is still a mid-to-long term play.  Losing your parking spot - tomorrow - is an immediate incentive.
  2. Get more women involved.  It is hard to imagine changing the ratio of law makers quickly, but it is easy to imagine moving the negotiating arena to a venue where more women are present.  Force every law maker to bring a female counerpart, for example.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Timed math tests

You have 3.2 seconds to figure out the problem below. Alan knows 90% of the concepts behind the math test, and can do those 90% very quickly.  He always gets 90% on timed math tests. Bob knows 100% of the concepts, but is a slow worker.  In the timed math test, he gets 75%, but, if given an extra 10 minutes, would get 100%. Alan graduates with an A; Bob with a C. You are building a bridge. Who would you hire? Seems like everyone from Gates to Zuckerberg has problems with how education is carried out today.  I wish I had some of their clout and could help to change the system.

Decentralization, Democracy, and Well-Being

Those of us raised in Democratic societies take it for granted that those societies provide better well-being (for common individuals) than other forms of governance. At the heart of democracy is personal freedom and autonomy, backed by the rule of law. We also take for granted the interplay of decentralized versus centralized authority. Decentralization can mean many things, but here we refer to it in terms of power, authority, and decision making. The more authority individuals have, the more decentralized the power system in which they are operating.  Almost by definition the more democratic a system, the more decentralized it is, with the caveat that some agreed upon axioms exist, such as the rule of law and its enforcement. Of course, authority can be too decentralized leading to "every man for themselves", so we put limits on decentralization through that same rule of law. With the advent of decentralizing technologies , which make possible more decentraliz...