Don Boudreaux, an inspired George Mason University Econ professor, takes issue in a recent blog with a radio reporter. The commentator confuses the alleged ill-effects of marijuana with the perils of the consumer-supplier transaction. That’s like saying venison can kill you because in your pursuit of the deer you might accidentally blow your head off. Or an astigmatic fellow hunter might do it for you. Products are one thing - transactions, another. Dr. Boudreaux understands this - the media does not.
It reminded me of a transaction at my post office. (Intellectual confusion always reminds me of a transaction at my post office.) Even though I own several communication devices; telephones, computers, and a loud authoritative voice, I’m a heavy consumer of U. S. Postal Service products and services. If the USPS was an organization interested in profit or wooing of customers, they would bow low when I entered their federal premises. And they would address me as “Mr. Roberts” instead of “bud”. And when I stepped up to the counter to buy my weekly roll of 100 stamps, they’d gratefully serve me a couple of cookies alongside a hot cup of that expensive Central American coffee. But that’s not their mind set. In fact, if they weren’t nice people, they’d ask me to wait until they finished the novel in their lap. But basically they are nice people entrapped in a convoluted, incentiveless system. So, hiding their irritation, they put down Gone With The Wind and fill my huge stamp order - but, of course, without the volume discount I deserve. Non-profits don’t believe in customer incentives.
Once, half drugged from licking and sealing my daily stack of outgoing mail, I asked to see the supervisor. I had an inspirational idea to share - an idea to expedite the mailing of packages. I suggested they mount a scale on that big public counter. Customers could weigh their packages and then via the stamp machine, purchase the requisite postage. Voila! No line. (Maybe there was a monetary award for this kind of system improvement! I could buy more stamps, better stationary, send stuff 1st Class.)
The Super metaphorically doused me with cold water. Lousy idea, she said, as she laid down her copy of The Brothers Karamazov. The public was NOT TRAINED in weighing operations. They’d get it wrong. Packages would be flowing two directions in the postal system; from senders to recipients - from recipients back to senders. No good. I went home discouraged and wrote three long letters just so I’d feel better.
I am not making this up. (Except for the reading material. They were really doing crossword puzzles.) But in all honesty, let me add that two years later such a system was in operation.
