WEBVTT NOTE 21. What Lawnmowers Can Teach Us 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 What Lawn Mowers Can Teach Us 2 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:13.000 The greatest single life enhancing step you can take in early summer is to change your lawn mower blade. 3 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:19.000 It's a thing that gets ever duller with youth and you adjust and adjust to the diminished cutting ability with each mow 4 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:25.000 until the point that you think it is normal, that it takes all your strength to shove the thing across the yard 5 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:31.520 Let's start and leave a trail of clippings and unevenly cut grass in your wake. 6 00:00:31.520 --> 00:00:35.640 You can do something about this, and it doesn't involve sharpening with a whetstone. 7 00:00:35.640 --> 00:00:39.080 A new blade costs ten bucks or so. 8 00:00:39.080 --> 00:00:45.120 In a few minutes, you will find yourself gliding across the lawn, as if on rollerblades. 9 00:00:45.120 --> 00:00:49.380 Maybe you think that your mower is an old off-brand and it's not likely that the hardware 10 00:00:49.380 --> 00:00:50.880 store will have it. 11 00:00:50.880 --> 00:00:51.880 Not. 12 00:00:51.880 --> 00:00:57.160 There is one right there on the shelf that fits perfectly as you will see. 13 00:00:57.160 --> 00:01:01.160 The length will be right, the holes for the screws will be in the right place, and it 14 00:01:01.160 --> 00:01:07.980 will have the right groove things that make it settle in there like it was meant to be. 15 00:01:07.980 --> 00:01:13.520 The existence of replacement parts of this sort is nothing to take for granted. 16 00:01:13.520 --> 00:01:17.640 Note that the replacement part is probably not made by the same company that made your 17 00:01:17.640 --> 00:01:22.740 and Mower, which might be very old, or even by a defunct company. 18 00:01:22.740 --> 00:01:26.700 An amazing market standardization has taken place. 19 00:01:26.700 --> 00:01:28.740 And how? 20 00:01:28.740 --> 00:01:35.540 To me, it is not intuitively obvious why this sort of standardization would happen. 21 00:01:35.540 --> 00:01:40.780 Imagine that you are the king, and in charge of economic planning. 22 00:01:40.780 --> 00:01:44.960 It occurs to you that people need new lawnmower blades, lest summers in your kingdom be a 23 00:01:44.960 --> 00:01:48.960 A Relentless Source of Frustration for all the people. 24 00:01:48.960 --> 00:01:51.960 Perhaps the first thought is that we need some sort of regulation that will impose a 25 00:01:51.960 --> 00:01:56.680 sort of uniformity so that new blades will fit old mowers and that blades will be compatible 26 00:01:56.680 --> 00:01:59.580 across brand names. 27 00:01:59.580 --> 00:02:04.160 In any case, this is how someone who has no faith in the market might think. 28 00:02:04.160 --> 00:02:06.820 But look at the market in fact. 29 00:02:06.820 --> 00:02:11.500 The best possible standardization has occurred in a way that provides the highest benefit 30 00:02:11.500 --> 00:02:14.760 to the broadest swath of consumers. 31 00:02:14.760 --> 00:02:20.660 And it happens without a single edict or vote, and without any commission meetings or bureaucratic 32 00:02:20.660 --> 00:02:22.540 investigations. 33 00:02:22.540 --> 00:02:28.320 It turns out to be in everyone's interest, and so it is done. 34 00:02:28.320 --> 00:02:32.880 The problem of replacement parts is a huge part of the engineering process for any good 35 00:02:32.880 --> 00:02:34.720 you buy. 36 00:02:34.720 --> 00:02:39.580 This is because capitalist production considers the long-term value of a good and how it will 37 00:02:39.580 --> 00:02:42.480 will be used in real life. 38 00:02:42.480 --> 00:02:45.840 This is not the norm under socialism. 39 00:02:45.840 --> 00:02:50.800 In the experience of the Soviet Union, fantastic amounts of machines of all sorts stood idle 40 00:02:50.800 --> 00:02:55.960 year after year because the users couldn't find replacement parts, which weren't typically 41 00:02:55.960 --> 00:03:02.000 part of the central plan, or if they were, they were the parts you didn't need. 42 00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:05.960 When anything broke, it stayed that way, or was replaced with an entirely new machine 43 00:03:05.960 --> 00:03:09.780 that broke in the same way, and so on. 44 00:03:09.780 --> 00:03:14.080 This problem tended to play havoc with the production data. 45 00:03:14.080 --> 00:03:19.280 It means nothing for 50,000 farm tractors to be produced in a factory for each of three 46 00:03:19.280 --> 00:03:25.560 straight years if one-third of them are useless at any given time. 47 00:03:25.560 --> 00:03:29.520 That's not to say that all capitalist production encourages fixing things rather than replacing 48 00:03:29.520 --> 00:03:31.000 them. 49 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:39.340 When I was younger, it was common to fix everything – clocks, irons, radios, stereos, televisions. 50 00:03:39.340 --> 00:03:43.100 I vaguely remembered tubes. 51 00:03:43.100 --> 00:03:48.720 Now of course you have guarantees that guarantee replacement, and if the guarantee is out, 52 00:03:48.720 --> 00:03:52.180 you just toss it in the trash. 53 00:03:52.180 --> 00:03:58.300 My mother had the iron she received at her wedding shower for 20 years. 54 00:03:58.300 --> 00:04:05.580 Now we think nothing of tossing them out and getting a new one for six bucks at Walmart. 55 00:04:05.580 --> 00:04:11.240 So whether something should be replaced or fixed isn't something you can know a priori. 56 00:04:11.240 --> 00:04:15.580 This is an economics question that is entirely dependent on economic conditions that are 57 00:04:15.580 --> 00:04:21.180 known only in the real-world experience of the market economy. 58 00:04:21.180 --> 00:04:25.180 We might, for example, someday advance to the point that farm equipment should be tossed 59 00:04:25.180 --> 00:04:29.980 First out rather than fixed, just as with microwaves, stereos, iPods and so many other 60 00:04:29.980 --> 00:04:31.540 small machines. 61 00:04:31.540 --> 00:04:38.260 Again, no central plan can determine, in advance, what is the most economically advantageous 62 00:04:38.260 --> 00:04:42.260 practice, apart from real market experience. 63 00:04:42.260 --> 00:04:46.980 It turns out, for example, that there was more wrong with my lawnmower this year than 64 00:04:46.980 --> 00:04:49.340 just the blade. 65 00:04:49.340 --> 00:04:53.900 One minute it ran fine, and then, when I tried to restart, it would run for three or four 66 00:04:53.900 --> 00:04:58.780 4 seconds and then sort of sputter out like it was out of gas. 67 00:04:58.780 --> 00:05:03.540 Now I knew all about air filters, oil blades, but how the fuel gets to the engine involved 68 00:05:03.540 --> 00:05:07.860 a part of this machine that I just hadn't had any experience with. 69 00:05:07.860 --> 00:05:11.700 I took it to the repair guy at the small engine shop who said he would be happy to work on 70 00:05:11.700 --> 00:05:15.180 it but it wouldn't be ready for two weeks. 71 00:05:15.180 --> 00:05:19.100 This of course is ridiculous. 72 00:05:19.100 --> 00:05:24.100 I asked him if he could fix it right now, since it will probably only take 10 minutes. 73 00:05:24.100 --> 00:05:28.780 He said no, that would not be fair to other customers. 74 00:05:28.780 --> 00:05:33.740 I pointed out that fairness had nothing to do with it, since his existing customers have 75 00:05:33.740 --> 00:05:39.460 already contracted to wait up to two weeks, whereas I would like to have mine fixed now. 76 00:05:39.460 --> 00:05:46.060 Still, even in the face of this impenetrable logic, he refused. 77 00:05:46.060 --> 00:05:47.780 The next step was perfectly obvious. 78 00:05:47.780 --> 00:05:52.140 I had to go to a convenience store at the outskirts of town and wait for a customer 79 00:05:52.140 --> 00:05:56.140 who had the look of someone who knew about lawn mowers and ask him. 80 00:05:56.140 --> 00:06:00.460 Finally, the obvious candidate appeared and I marched up to him and told him what my mower 81 00:06:00.460 --> 00:06:03.180 was doing, replicating the sound. 82 00:06:03.180 --> 00:06:07.820 He knew immediately that it was the carburetor and explained how to clean it. 83 00:06:07.820 --> 00:06:12.540 Back home, I did what he said and the mower started right up again, and it gave me great 84 00:06:12.540 --> 00:06:17.740 satisfaction to know that the fool who was babbling on about fairness was denied my business. 85 00:06:17.740 --> 00:06:23.740 Now, part of the reason it was urgent that I get this fixed right away had to do with 86 00:06:23.740 --> 00:06:28.820 an unlikely charitable act on my part, which brings me to another life lesson given to 87 00:06:28.820 --> 00:06:31.520 us by the lawn experience. 88 00:06:31.520 --> 00:06:36.260 One day, about a month ago, my neighbor's lawn was looking pretty shabby, but she was 89 00:06:36.260 --> 00:06:38.180 out of town. 90 00:06:38.180 --> 00:06:43.980 I waited as long as I could and finally decided to undertake the good deed of mowing it. 91 00:06:43.980 --> 00:06:45.460 I did one better. 92 00:06:45.460 --> 00:06:50.460 I edged it, weed and feeded it, and weed-whacked it. 93 00:06:50.460 --> 00:06:56.220 Glorious results, and when the neighbor returned, she praised me to the skies. 94 00:06:56.220 --> 00:07:03.260 Now the wise reader is right now laughing at my incredible stupidity. 95 00:07:03.260 --> 00:07:08.020 Apparently the whole world knows a rule in life that had entirely escaped me. 96 00:07:08.020 --> 00:07:14.700 Never mow your neighbor's lawn lest you be stuck with the unpaid job for 20 years. 97 00:07:14.700 --> 00:07:20.180 It's like giving a stray cat milk. It only seems like the right thing to do, but you 98 00:07:20.180 --> 00:07:26.140 end up having to do it at regular intervals. Since my unfortunate act of charity, I found 99 00:07:26.140 --> 00:07:30.340 several people who have stumbled into this precise situation in which they ended up mowing 100 00:07:30.340 --> 00:07:36.740 several people's lawns on the weekend and resenting the heck out of it. So, as I mowed 101 00:07:36.740 --> 00:07:42.900 and mowed, I began to think about opportunity costs. I wonder what I could be doing right 102 00:07:42.900 --> 00:08:06.140 This really got me thinking about paid charity in general. 103 00:08:06.140 --> 00:08:11.260 What are the ethical issues associated with, for example, paying someone to stand in your 104 00:08:11.260 --> 00:08:15.820 Your Place at the Soup Kitchen Perhaps you could pay many people to do all 105 00:08:15.820 --> 00:08:20.580 your volunteer work for you, provided it is not too specialized, and that the opportunity 106 00:08:20.580 --> 00:08:26.100 costs associated with your doing it exceed what you would have to shell out to volunteer 107 00:08:26.100 --> 00:08:28.300 by proxy. 108 00:08:28.300 --> 00:08:32.820 Isn't this what we are really doing when we donate to charity? 109 00:08:32.820 --> 00:08:36.720 You might say, hey, you're giving up the spiritual benefit that comes from doing the 110 00:08:36.720 --> 00:08:53.800 It is at least conceptually possible that doing good deeds should also be subject to 111 00:08:53.800 --> 00:08:57.500 the logic of the division of labor like everything else. 112 00:08:57.500 --> 00:09:02.280 You might say, that is crass, but this much we learn from a weekend's experience with 113 00:09:02.280 --> 00:09:03.600 the lawn mower. 114 00:09:03.600 --> 00:09:09.000 The market may not give us a perfect world, but market-based thinking can get us closer 115 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:16.640 to the best possible world on which no amount of central planning could possibly ever improve.