“Now, it wasn’t that I enjoyed the misfortune of others and their walk… I should simply be happy when the heavens happened to swing my way and give me a winning spot”
I was sitting at Starbucks to do some work (as one from my generation invariably does), when I looked out the window to my car parked right outside. This brought up a feeling of satisfaction and even delight, as I had somehow managed to snag the best spot in the lot, securing the corner nestled right next to the door of the Starbucks. I noticed everyone else continuing to vie for spaces, ending up with subpar placements, and having to walk a dastardly 50 feet rather than the optimal 10 in order to get their daily coffee fix.
Of course, I watched all of this from the comfort of my seat, coffee in hand, with the knowledge that whenever I had spent a sufficient amount of time (and hopefully achieved a sufficient amount of productivity), I would have a wonderfully short walk to my vehicle.
Now, it wasn’t that I enjoyed the misfortune of others and their walk. But I have been in their proverbial shoes plenty of times, and there seemed nothing wrong with the “you win some, you lose some” mentality. By that thinking, I should simply be happy when the heavens happened to swing my way and give me a winning spot.
But it was at this moment that I started thinking about what benefit I really gained from the parking spot. On the surface, it appears that I gain the same benefit as everyone else – a shorter walk. It is possible that certain individuals receive a slightly different benefit from this same perk (perhaps depending on their physical condition, or how much they’re in a hurry). But nevertheless, this would seem to be a somewhat uniform benefit, and as such, my self-satisfaction seems fair and justified.
However, as I thought about this a little deeper, I realized that I had managed to mislead myself. The benefit of the parking spot is only realized in the walking phase – I can’t say that I benefit from my car being parked closer while I sit and do my work. And there’s a lot of work… I’m spending a number of hours sitting, during which there is potential benefit being wasted.
What I have done is captured a scarce resource, and failed to make optimal use of it.
Imagine that instead of me taking that parking spot, it would have been used only by a series of patrons running in to pick up their coffee (which takes approximately 2 minutes). Over the course of the same 2 hours I spent working (during which my parking spot saved me 80 feet of walking), the same parking spot could have saved the aggregate community nearly a mile.
We end up with a situation in which everyone can benefit from a certain resource (and may even benefit similarly), but because of the way in which the resource is used, certain individuals or behaviors will do a far better job maximizing the resource for the community as a whole.
This is a socially inefficient outcome, but one which is widespread. As an individual, I benefit from the spot. Moreover, I can justify to myself that I will benefit from the spot just as much as anyone else, and therefore there seems absolutely no reason I should give up my good fortune only to produce identical good fortune for somebody else. I’m not trying to be selfish – merely realistic in projecting people’s thought processes and priorities. But, as rational as this thinking may be on the individual level, its flaw is in its failure to recognize that these resources are a public good, with different costs imposed on the good from person to person. If we measure cost in time (more specifically the amount of time that a public good is removed from the market where it can be used by others), then I impose a greater cost on the public good than others.
Now, to be fair, public goods are meant to be used – they exist because they can and do provide benefit to everybody. And as someone who believes in the power of incentives, it feels somewhat hypocritical to sit here and argue that we should go against our own interest. But sometimes the best way we can do right by everybody in a meaningful way is to do a little bit wrong by ourselves. And if everybody recognizes and internalizes this value, then we can escape the trap in which everybody works to grow their own slice, and end up shrinking the pie for everyone (themselves included) instead.
There are certainly situations where prioritizing the collective good over individual benefit is a hard sell. In arenas like military strategy, Social Security policy, or business regulation, the tradeoffs can be complex and the stakes high. But in our day-to-day lives, we face countless opportunities to make small sacrifices for the greater good. And while each instance may seem trivial in isolation, the impact of these choices can add up. And so, personally, I think that the next time I bring my laptop to Starbucks, I’ll bite the bullet and choose to get a few extra steps in.
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