life hereafter

random musings from a wannabe economist

As anyone who has ever flown in, once seen, or thought about an airplane, I feel as though it is my patriotic duty to add my inflation adjusted $0.02 into the mix.

In-case you have been hiding under a rock for the past week, Spirit Airlines announced that they will charge up to $45 for passengers bringing carry-on bags onto it’s jets this summer. The announcement has been met with much controversy and has even sparked a new Bill in congress entitled the BAG Act (whose cutesy title makes me gag a little so I won’t repeat it here.)

The great Senator from New York (no, the other one… yes, Schumer… near-sighted protector of consumers everywhere… ok, no? yeah, the CARD Act was short-sighted wasn’t it… ok, that’s a whole other debate, let’s move on…) has received commitment from five domestic airlines that they will not follow suit and also charge for carry-on bags. Unfortunately, the Senator may be on the wrong side of this issue. Closer inspection shows that the argument isn’t so simple.

This is a problem that airlines brought on themselves. Ever since they began charging for checked bags individual consumers decided to outsmart them and bring ever larger bags into the cabin itself. A cabin which was never designed to hold the quantity of cargo it now contains. This causes multiple headaches, it slows down the check-in process, slows down security, slows down boarding and slows down disembarkment. It now takes a solid half hour to board an A-390 as little old women struggle to lift 45-lb suitcases above their heads and into the over-head bins.

Spirit decided to apply a tried-and-true (and effective) economic principle using a (dis)incentive to force people to make a conscious choice about what they are doing. Do I REALLY need my bag with me in the cabin, slowing everyone down, or can it go below?

Of course no one wants to pay any added fees for anything, but perhaps we should all take a good look at what Spirit was trying to accomplish. Maybe folks bringing 40-lb bags into the cabin should pay the fee for the added convenience (for themselves) and inconvenience (for everyone else.)  Then we can all return to sanity and vacationers can check their over-sized and overstuffed bags. While we are at it, airlines should also enforce the rule that your first carry-on goes under your seat. No more putting your coat and purse in the overhead so that your little feets can stretch comfortably. (I’m looking at you.)

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The authors main premise is that we as humans are fundamentally flawed in our abilities to make rational decisions due to various factors in our upbringing and values systems.

Take for example the story about Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? In America individuals generally admire the wealthy, and as a result when a contestant on the show uses the Ask the Audience life-line the audience gives the correct answer more than 90% of the time. Russians are suspicious of the wealthy as they believe that they have gotten rich at the expense of the many. This was based on the experiences just after the fall of communism in the early 90’s. Subsequently, very, very rarely does the audience in the Russian version of the show ever give the correct answer. In-fact is seems like the audience purposefully gives the wrong answer, just to screw with the contestants. Different value systems, different responses.

Each chapter goes through a different factor that sways us from rational decision making, culminating in an ending that recommends.

The book is very light and airy, not delving too deeply into any one topic, and not really providing too much statistical information from the various studies reviewed by the authors. For this reason I think the book was a great primer on the topic of irrational behavior. Those seeking a greater understanding of why the human mind makes decisions the way it does, would be better served by finding a more technical book on the topic.

Those who enjoy books by Malcolm Gladwell and the Freakonomics-esque will definitely enjoy Sway.

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So I just spent the past ten hours diagnosing a problem with my mac mini’s ability to connect to my wireless network.

Earlier today, out of nowhere (or so I thought) my mac was no longer able to connect to my home wireless network. I received the dreaded “Unable to Connect” no matter what I tried. It could see the network, just wouldn’t connect. Same thing with other nearby networks.

I scoured the Apple forums, rebooted countless times, edited XML files buried in the guts of the system all to no avail. I could not possibly think of what I had changed on my system to cause this nightmare. And then it hit me. Earlier in the day I moved my external hard drive from next to the computer to on-top of the computer. You know, where Apple put’s it’s Airport wireless cards. Yeah. I move the drive back to where it originally was and everything is fine again.

Lesson learned, sometimes physical change has an impact too…