Stupid spending: Everyone does it?

[Cross-posted from Beyond Red & Blue]

Elizabeth Kolbert writes in The New Yorker about all the ways we don't behave as rational consumers. According to "behavioral economists" (as opposed to the old-fashioned economists who believe that human beings are just calculators with arms and legs), we're constantly doing making dumb choices like paying an outrageous amont for a car just because it comes with "free" oil changes for a few years. Kolbert admits that she's padded Amazon.com orders with stuff she doesn't need in order to qualify for free shipping. I've done that, and I've also got a box full of subway fare cards from various cities because I always take the "buy five rides, get one free" kind of deal even when I know I won't be in the city long enough to use my free ride.

The public policy angle in Kolbert's piece comes with she discusses Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein's Nudge: Improving Decisions About Wealth, Health, and Happiness. As Kolbert explains:

[People are] effort-averse. They hate having to go to the benefits office, pick up a bunch of forms, fill them out, and bring them all the way back. As a consequence, many eligible employees fail to enroll in their companies' retirement plans, or delay doing so for years. (This is the case, research has shown, even at companies where no employee contribution is required.)

Thaler and Sunstein suggest that companies enroll employees in retirement plans without their consent but give them the option of filling a lot of paperwork to get out. This point makes me think about the debate between Democratic presidential candidates over universal health insurance. Barack Obama seems to operating on the assumption that if insurance premiums are low enough, everyone will get health coverage because it will be irrational not to do so. And Hillary Clinton's idea to require all individuals to get health coverage seems to rest on the assumption that it would be irrational not to get insurance if there's a penalty (a tax fine, or the garnishing of wages) for failing to do so. But maybe the best approach would be to automatically enroll all uninsured people into a health insurance plan and then say, "If you don't like it, there's a long, complicated procedure for withdrawing from the program." In other words, there would be a de facto mandate, but without the need to come up with a mechanism to enforce it.

What is public TV good for?

The New York Times's Charles McGrath asks whether public TV is worth saving:

The average PBS show on prime time now scores about a 1.4 Nielsen rating, or roughly what the wrestling show “Friday Night Smackdown” gets....

Scanning the PBS lineup, in fact, it’s hard to detect much of a bias toward anything at all, except possibly mustiness. Except for “Antiques Roadshow,” all the prime-time stalwarts — “The NewsHour,” “Nova,” “Nature,” “Masterpiece” — are into their third or fourth decade, and they look it.

If those comments distress you, go to the reader comments, where you'll find plenty of hyperventilating ("In the wasteland of television there are but two channels I want or need: PBS for the quality and depth of shows that exist nowhere else, and NESN to be able to watch the Red Sox."), and it's entirely possible that one or two of the respondents are under 80 years old.

OK, if you don't have cable, you might enjoy being force-fed middlebrow programming by PBS. And even if you have 300 channels, I'm not aware that any of them caters to people with terrible taste in music the way PBS does. Otherwise, its bright spots are so few that it's easier just to forget it exists.

Breaking news: Suzanne Pleshette is still dead!

Dear Boston.com and Boston Globe:

Yes, I know that Suzanne Pleshette is dead. Please stop using her photo as an enticement to "Take a look back at the notable deaths of this young year" every time I look at anything on your website. (Scroll to the bottom of the home page or look in the right column of just about every Globe story. I'll be happy if this is no longer the case by the time you read this.) I'll wait until the end of the year (and the roll call of the dead at the Oscar awards) to contemplate my mortality. I don't need to perform this ritual every morning beginning on Valentine's Day. Thank you.

London fog

Thanks to Hub Blog for pointing me to this story about dumb Britons who think that Winston Churchill was a fictitious character but that Sherlock Holmes was a real person. It's fun to read about stupidity in other lands, though I am suspicious of the poll that the story is based on. I mean, if someone with a clipboard stopped me in Downtown Crossing and quizzed me, I think it would be great fun to say that the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" was reportage but that Gandhi was a work of science fiction. If I were especially playful, I'd even claim that Lyndon LaRouche actually exists.

Revival of independent bookstores?

Will the Internet kill off chain bookstores and leave the independent sellers to flourish? Matthew Yglesias mulls the possibility.

...what the brick and mortar store has to offer is, increasingly, not practical advantage but a bookstore experience. And though I think the chains actually do deliver a decent experience, they don't really match the better independents and I'm not sure they ever can since part of the experience of a well-liked independent bookstore...

A nice thought, but I'm not sure that an independent bookstore is enough of an anchor for an urban shopping district. The seemingly most successful independent booksellers in the Boston area -- the Brookline Booksmith in Coolidge Corner and the Harvard Bookstore in Harvard Square -- are both near larger bookstores (a Barnes and Noble and the university-run Harvard Coop) and movie theaters. Could they attract enough customers if the Internet claims other businesses around them?

There Will Be Deadwood

Maybe three or four times a year I'll go out to a movie. This weekend There Will Be Blood made the coveted short list of films I'll see even if it means associating with other people. Imagine my joy when the central character in the movie, an oil-drilling entrepreneur played by Daniel Day-Lewis, has a long speech about how he hates every other person on in the world! He drinks their milkshakes, in case you haven't heard. Not only was it a great movie, there were similarities with one of my three or four favorite TV series, Deadwood. The second and third seasons of that show also feature a character (mining magnate George Hearst) who has a long speech about his own misanthropy, and how he views other people as pests to be swatted away while he "listens to the earth." If you like one, you should like the other. That is, unless your favorite part of Deadwood is the assortment of stong, distinctive female characters. Not much of that in There Will Be Blood.

Wintertime fun in Montreal for those who hate snow

Today there's a scavenger hunt in the Underground City. Alas, the list of items is not available to nonparticipants. I assume that it includes insanely specific descriptions of napkins and straws from the hundreds of subterranean fast-food places, but maybe you also get points for finding abandoned hats, gloves, and half-eaten bowls of poutine. There probably isn't a prize for finding a forgotten man (un homme oublie), but there's sure to be a few of those hanging out down there. Is anyone up for organizing a scavenger hunt in Boston's tiny version of an enclosed city (i.e., Copley Place and the Prudential Mall)? I'd love to see people encouraged to steal those damn TV monitors who sole purpose seems to be plugging bad shows on CBS.

Do one-way streets kill cities?

In a Louisville Courier-Journal op-ed, Matt Hanka and John Gilderbloom say that one-way streets are bad for pedestrians (because cars go faster on them), bad for businesses (fewer potential customers go by), and bad for homeowners (because they lower property values). They also say that one-ways can cause more crime:

One-way streets also create greater opportunities for crime in urban areas. Having one-way traffic reduces overall use, allowing for negative vacuums to be created. One-way streets are the gun, drug and sex distribution centers for a city.

Why? You need a two- or three-lane one-way street where you can pause to negotiate the deal and get out of there quickly. You can't do that on a two-way street because it slows down traffic. That's why the one-way two/three-lane street works best for pimps, drive-by shootings and drug dealers. If you break the law, it's better to drive 50 mph on a one-way with no obstacles.

I now live on a one-way street, and I don't feel unsafe (maybe because it's not a throughway), but the lack of activity at night is a bit spooky. And the two things I remember from several trips to downtown Lynn were that the place was practically deserted and that almost every street seemed to be one-way. Then again, one-way streets don't seem to put a damper on life in New York City.

Book-CD-DVD-tchotchke-store bans browsing

Yesterday at lunch hour I discovered that the downtown Borders store had put all their television DVDs in locked glass cabinets. That means that if I want to peruse the box for the first season of That Girl, I need to share my shame with the nearest employee who has a key. And I can't grab Are You Being Served? and immediately sandwich it between The Sopranos and The Wire in case someone spots me as I scurry to the checkout. Score one for Amazon.com.

Election Day in Malden Center

I voted this morning, despite the rain, and the only person in front of me was an older woman who didn't understand what the even older poll worker was asking her. ("A dress?" "Yes, address!" "I don't understand. My dress?") I got my ballot, voted for president, and ignored the other stuff on the ballot. As I recall, I was supposed to choose "no more than 35" party committee members and there were only about 12 names on the ballot. Then I fed the ballot into the electronic scanner and worried that my vote won't be counted because I colored outside of the lines of the oval next to my candidate's name. It was all very stressful, and I'm glad I don't have to do it again in the fall, thanks to the Electoral Collage making all votes cast in Massachusetts meaningless.

Patriots lose. HA-ha!

Sorry to get all Nelson Muntz about the Patriots losing the Super Bowl, but I can't take another victory parade trapping me inside my office building. The first time they won, I had a doctor's appointment scheduled on the morning of their parade, and when I went back to the office, I made the mistake of exiting Park Street station through a turnstile that wouldn't let me back in. Too late, I saw that Tremont Street was a solid, if rather doughy, mass of Patriots fans. I had to squeeze my way through the crowd and take refuge in the nearest building (it was cold that that February!), which was the St. Paul Episcopal Church. The church let people in the front door but wouldn't let anyone all the way through the building to escape out the back door (bastards!). So I spent about an hour and a half hiding in there while the Pats fans went nuts. I felt as if I were hiding from a sudden political revolution, hoping that whichever side won didn't have a problem with the church I had joined that day out of pure cowardice. So I hope the Pats lose again next year! It's OK if the Red Sox win the World Series again, though.

"Lost" vs. the presidential debate

I watched both last night. The Clinton/Obama showdown tried the patience of the most dedicated policy wonk -- at least in the first half hour, which was all about the minor differences between the two candidates' health insurance plans. So it was a treat to move to Lost afterward, and I was never so happy to be shelling out the extra 12 bucks a month for a DVR. How did I sit through all those commercials back in 2007? As I flew past the chaff with my thumb on the fast-forward button, I noticed that ABC was relentlessly pushing a new show that was premiering after Lost. Remember when a TV network could force a show into becoming a hit by scheduling it after another hit? Yeah, I don't miss that either. No doubt half the people watching Lost live immediately logged on their computers afterward to check the message boards anyway. Good luck, dumb-looking new ABC show! Anyway, Lost is all about the flash-forwards now, which reassures me that the producers actually have some thoughts on how they're going to end this thing in 2010. They're also making it impossible to kill off certain characters before then, which makes me wonder if ABC is assigning bodyguards, chauffeurs, and food tasters to certain cast members.