People’s behavior shows that they place immense value on convenience. Think about how much you dread calling technical support. Doing your taxes. Filling out medical forms. Yet politicians almost never name “convenience” as an important value. It just doesn’t sound good to say, “Sorry, we could save your life, but that would be awfully inconvenient for the rest of society.” No politician has ever ended a speech with a resounding, “Give me convenience or give me death!”
As a result, politics largely ignores convenience. To repeat one of my favorite slogans: In daily life, actions speak louder than words. But in politics, words speak louder than actions.
The most blatant example in recent politics: school closures. Given how little students actually learn in school, its only clear-cut benefit is daycare. Yet during Covid, many schools across the country were closed for over a year. Extraordinarily inconvenient for parents, especially moms. Yet virtually no one publicly stated the ugly-yet-obvious fact that great convenience for tens of millions of parents vastly outweighs a few extra Covid deaths.
By now, of course, lots of people are arguing for keeping schools open. Yet even today, almost no one argues in the name of massive convenience. Instead, they present arguments that are emotionally strong but intellectually weak. Take a look at Naomi Riley’s piece in the City Journal. Why shouldn’t we close the schools for Omicron? Because there is largely anecdotal evidence that doing so increases child abuse. The only relevant numbers she offers:
And now the results are in. According to “Impact of ‘Stay-at-Home’ Orders on Non-Accidental Trauma: A Multi-Institutional Study,” presented last fall at the virtual American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference, the number of children experiencing severe abuse tripled during lockdowns. The report looked at data from nine pediatric trauma centers from March 2020 to September 2020 and compared it with data from the same span in the three years prior. Among children aged five and older, the number of abuse victims reached 103, up from an average of 36 before the pandemic. These may seem like small numbers, but they represent only the most extreme cases that led to hospital visits.
Why talk about 67 extra cases of severe child abuse, which perhaps have other causes, instead of undeniable inconvenience for tens of millions of parents? Because even a single case of child abuse curdles the blood. And is therefore vastly more persuasive.
David Leonhardt marshals a longer list of arguments against school closures: learning loss, mental health problems, suicide, gun violence, behavior problems. The learning loss evidence is reasonable strong, but it is easy to believe that students will eventually catch-up once they return to school. The rest of his case, however, is anecdotal. And strikingly, Leonhardt never mentions parental inconvenience.
The effect of school closures on convenience is both massive and bulletproof. I’m almost sure that Riley and Leonhardt would strongly agree in person. Yet they also instinctively know that the best argument against school closures will persuade next to no one. In politics, even people with reasonable conclusions have to make unreasonable arguments if they want to win.
Which speaks very poorly of politics. Very poorly indeed.
READER COMMENTS
Steve
Jan 18 2022 at 12:45pm
I was glad to see Biden issue his executive order instructing government agencies to try to improve convenience:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/12/13/executive-order-on-transforming-federal-customer-experience-and-service-delivery-to-rebuild-trust-in-government/
Monte
Jan 18 2022 at 2:03pm
Although I disagree with Prof. Caplan’s comment about how little students actually learn in school (K-12 ,anyway), his argument about convenience is as right as a trivet. In politics, lying costs you nothing, but honesty may cost you everything.
Michael
Jan 21 2022 at 1:44am
I don’t find the convenience argument convincing. School makes life more convenient for parents at the expense of their children. It makes life much worse for the children. Is that a win or a loss for societal convenience?
Monte
Jan 26 2022 at 3:14pm
Hello Michael.
I’m not sure what you mean by public schools making life worse for children. It seems to me that, whatever its shortcomings, there is the net benefit of a basic education and development of social skills. I don’t think that I’m alone when I say that I sincerely enjoyed attending public schools. Looking back, I learned a lot, made many new friends, and have wonderful memories.
What was your experience?
Pajser
Jan 18 2022 at 2:39pm
My intuition is that politicians are right – one human life is worth more than a billion cases of inconvenience. And the fact that people often choose convenience does not imply it has great value. The relation between choice and value is not that simple.
Lliam Munro
Jan 18 2022 at 3:46pm
So you would no doubt be in favour of Redding all speed limits to no more than 30 kph. Deeply inconvenient, but thousands of lives saved.
Lliam Munro
Jan 18 2022 at 3:47pm
*reducing
Ghatanathoah
Jan 18 2022 at 3:53pm
The main reason that death is bad because it gives us less time to achieve goals in our lives, and to do the things in our lives that bring us joy. Do you know what else does that? Inconvenience, that’s what. Making life more convenient and preventing death are not two values that need to be balanced against each other. They are two different ways of achieving the same goal: giving more people time to live their lives.
If we prioritized human life a billion times more than convenience, human lives would become so filled with tedium that they would no longer be worth living. Imagine a world where no one ever got to do anything they enjoyed because they were standing in line or on the phone with tech support 24/7. A world where no one could find love, connect with friends, have children, enjoy art, be creative, and so on, because their life is filled with tedious inconveniences.
Ryan M
Jan 18 2022 at 4:44pm
The thinking is not incorrect because it undervalues life, as measured against something arbitrary like “inconvenience.” Clearly, virtually any individual would choose life over convenience – if you had to be a few minutes late to work in order to rescue a person, of course you would choose to accept the inconvenience and save the life. Most people aren’t monsters.
The thinking is incorrect insomuch as it vainly believes that there exists some sort of identifiable tradeoff between “life” and “convenience,” and that one can simply be exchanged for the other. That is simply never the case. It cannot be the role of governments to “prioritize” life at all costs, because governments are simply not equipped to make the sorts of judgement calls that would actually result in an increase in life. So the value judgement is irrelevant.
The reason why governments should limit their focus to things like “inconvenience,” is because that is literally the only sort of thing that government intervention has any hope of not making worse rather than better (even that is a stretch). The idea that individuals will be too selfish or too stupid to consider externalities with respect to their actions, and therefore need to be forced by government to behave in a manner that is best for themselves (and others), is further example of that same vanity.
Jon Murphy
Jan 19 2022 at 7:37am
This is an interesting comment I wish you expanded on. Prima facie, it’s incorrect. The fact that people choose convenience over some risk to life (even when that risk is fairly high such as driving an automobile) does indeed imply that people value the Marginal unit of convenience over the Marginal unit of life.
Matthias
Jan 20 2022 at 6:35am
I suspect you are using different definitions of value or worth.
Jon Murphy
Jan 20 2022 at 6:43am
Perhaps. That’s why I wish he elaborated. All we can do at this point is speculate on what he meant.
Ryan M
Jan 18 2022 at 4:29pm
What I find most discouraging about the public “debate” (insomuch as there has actually been one), is that it has always been taken for granted that closing schools will actually save even “a few extra covid deaths.” No such thing has been established.
I may have a slightly different take from you on the overall discussion, though. We should absolutely be talking about convenience – we should also be taking a serious look at what public education actually brings to the table. Considering the incredible power that the public education system (i.e. teachers’ unions) wield, to shut down schools for entire years, to force masking and other insane “safety” protocols; what exactly do these systems bring to the table in exchange for the massive costs that they impose?
Speaking anecdotally, I’m seeing more people making their voices heard simply by pulling their kids out of public schools and placing them in private schools or homeschooling. My own kids have thus far spent the entire year at a private school; they are doing in-person learning without masks or any sort of “distancing” or any other covid nonsense … they have not shut down (the rest of the schools in our town are on a 10 day “distance learning” break supposedly due to omicron numbers) and the kids and teachers are all perfectly fine. We have had colds make their rounds, and I’ve kept my kids home a few days with fevers, but this year has been exactly like 2018 and the years prior. Showing, of course, that there is nothing unique about covid to justify any of what we’re doing – there is proof (not just our school, but many others, even entire states) that if you ignore covid, for some reason, it allows itself to be ignored… which should prompt intelligent people to wonder why that is the case? And it should prompt us, as a nation, to seriously question whether our public education system, as structured, is doing anything for us at all.
Floccina
Jan 18 2022 at 5:34pm
I’ve been waiting for this post from the author of “The Case Against Education“.
There used to be people in education community who argued that boys should not start school until they reach 8 years old, that they would catch up fast, but I no longer see that argument, maybe the data came in the other way but considering the result from studies of head start I doubt that.
I did find this: Too much, too young: Should schooling start at age 7?
robc
Jan 19 2022 at 11:42am
On the other hand:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2021/12/28/new-research-highlights-the-long-term-benefits-of-a-montessori-education/amp/
Montessori typically starts at age 3 (although younger programs exist too).
You have the head start research which basically shows no long term effects, then you have the Montessori research showing effects for life. I think they are often measuring different things, I wonder what the results would be using the same metrics?
But I believe both, that Head Start doesn’t really work and that Montessori does, at least somewhat. But I could be wrong.
My daughter is in her 3rd year of Montessori now, Kindergarten level. We are going to do at least 3 more years, do the grades 1-3 level, and then decide whether to do 4-6 or to switch schools then.
jjap
Jan 18 2022 at 6:34pm
Schooling is the not the best example of people ignoring convenience because to talk convenience (even if you wanted to), you’d have admit that school is in large part daycare, and therefore in large part an utter failure and disastrous child-abusing mistake we’ve collectively ruined ourselves with for a hundred years. Obviously, no one wants to go there publicly, and 99% of the population won’t budge open their firmly-shut eyes for a peek.
There was a recent zoom-mishap where teachers who thought they weren’t being broadcasted said the parents are upset “because they want their baby sitters back”. Entirely true, but teachers were fired and everyone cried out in moral posturing anyway.
Nick Ronalds
Jan 19 2022 at 2:26pm
What would be the formal economic term for this “inconvenience”? Opportunity cost is a big part of it, since there are things you can’t do if you’re forced to attend to your kids. But Opp Cost doesn’t capture the added stress and frustration, mental health issues for both parents and children, delayed learning or even permanent learning deficits, and perhaps others. Perhaps it’s just “non-monetary” costs.
Monte
Jan 20 2022 at 2:22am
From an economic standpoint, it seems to me that an inconvenience would fall under the heading of an unintended consequence (ie. an unexpected drawback).
If there’s a more appropriate term, maybe one of our esteemed economists can enlighten us.
Matthias
Jan 20 2022 at 6:36am
Not sure you need to invent an new word? People are willing to pay for convenience all the time.
Monte
Jan 20 2022 at 11:34am
You’re right. No sense in over-analyzing. Convenience is simply a commodity of time, and time is money.
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