- I am delighted to be able to point you to the writings of my friend Herrmann Banks. For years, Herrmann has been sharing brilliant and original insights in private conversations and emails, and for years I’ve been telling him he needs to share them more widely. Now he’s up and running. Enjoy!
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Many American highways have “HOV” lanes, reserved for cars with multiple occupants. Sometimes a driver with no passengers will cheat and use those lanes. This is of course a blessing to all the rule-abiding drivers in the regular lanes, which have just gotten a little less crowded. So why do those drivers tend to respond by giving dirty looks to the cheaters who just made their lives better?
I expect this is related to the phenomenon of apartment-hunters getting angry at landlords who won’t rent to them, even though those landlords are making their search easier by renting to someone and thereby reducing the competition for other apartments.
But in the case of the landlords, the psychology seems to be something like “Yes, you’ve helped me by renting to others but you could have helped me even more by renting to me!”. (Though this overlooks the fact that anybody could have made your life easier by becoming a landlord and renting to you, so maybe you should be equally angry at pretty much everybody.) Whereas with the HOV lanes, it seems like the cheaters have already done everything they could possibly do for you (unless you think they could do more by getting off the highway completely, making a little more room in the HOV lane, and thereby encouraging someone else to cheat).
People are odd.
- The next time somebody encourages you to “buy local” so you can “keep the money in the community”, try asking how they feel about the federal income tax, which is designed to facilitate the largest geographic redistribution of income ever conceived.
Hat tips to my friends Gerry Sohan for point 2) and John Barry for point 3).
The stares are because when they put themselves in the shoes of the people driving in the HOV lane. Thinking about how the next time they drive in the HOV lane, they will be annoyed by the same type of people.
I imagine that those who advocate “buy local” believe that transporting produce generates pollution that is not priced, whereas wiring money across large distances generates no such externalities.
The cheaters who take HOV lanes may be damaging non-cheating motorists through equilibrium effects. If HOV lanes are empty, authorities will take note and reduce the “price” (e.g., relax regulations) for taking these lanes, and some of the non-cheaters will be better off by upgrading to these lanes. If cheaters fill up HOV lanes, then no such price adjustment will likely occur.
Here is an analogy. Suppose CVS prices my favourite shampoo at $1,000 per bottle and observes only the total revenue at the store. Then, I would prefer others not to steal the shampoo, so that CVS lowers its price and maybe I would be able to afford it. If others steal the expensive shampoo, then its price will remain forever high and I will be stuck with the cheaper option that I do not like at any price.
Thanks for the reference to Herrmann Banks. It is quite good stuff. He talks of a case that reminds me of your HOV example. Clinics would offer Covid vaccines to the then currently unqualified rather than destroy them. That would anger those qualified who were looking for the vaccine (even though it could not have been held for them) and others then unqualified. But, of course, having one less future competitor for the vaccine makes it easier (or no less difficult) for all to get the vaccine in the future.
I must admit I fell into to the “HOV trap” once while entering Europe. All border agents could process European and non-European entries, but some were designated for Europeans (with much shorter lines) and some for non-Europeans. Occasionally, they would let a small group in front of me in the non-European queue enter the European queue (possibly with tight connections). It only made my processing occur sooner, but I still resented them. In my defense, I can’t sleep on planes.
On #3, you expect to run into stiff opposition from all the fans of the Federal Income Tax? I never really enjoyed it all that much.
HOV lanes appeal to (1) those who can take advantage, and (2) those who believe encouraging carpooling is a social good.
If cheaters fill the HOV lanes, then the lanes are no longer providing an incentive to carpoolers. The cheaters are thus erasing a social good. That is the reason for the dirty looks.\
^What Roger said. Motorists who would be willing to carpool now have less incentive to, thus filling up the roads with more cars in the long run.
I think the resentment toward HOV lane cheaters is because eventually they often have to merge back into traffic, and now they’re ahead of everyone but they’ve made everyone else slightly later. This is the case for the HOV lane on westbound 520 from Bellevue to Seattle — almost everyone in the HOV lane has to merge back in when the HOV lane disappears as the cars all head across the bridge.
On the other hand, if you exit the freeway directly from the HOV lane (and assume that the streets that you’re exiting *onto*, have so little traffic that your getting their early will not delay anyone else), then your cheating doesn’t harm anyone.
Except, in the latter case, it seems like your cheating doesn’t benefit most other people either. Because if you leave the regular lanes to get in the carpool lane and proceed to your exit, all the cars behind you move up by one car. However, if you’d waited until your exit and then exited, all cars behind you would move up by the same amount at that point instead. They don’t get to their destination earlier.
It seems like if you do cheat, the only people who you are helping, ironically, are the people in the cars behind you who are going to the same exit (or an earlier exit) *and* who refuse to cheat. *They* will get to their destination sooner.
(However, this ignores the points by Romans and Roger about the incentive that HOV lanes provide.)
There is another reason why violating the HOV lane rules is different from the landlord example: it’s rude. The landlord picking someone else is not rude. They have to pick someone. If they didn’t pick you, the most you can say about them is accuse them of poor taste.
In contrast, improper use of the HOV lane is rude. Whether you support it or not, the fact is the lane has been set aside for a particular use. Violating this disturbs me in the same way it disturbs me if I see someone skipping in line at the grocery store, even if they are not jumping in front of me. In fact, I would be disturbed even if they jumped out of the line in front of me, though in an immediate sense, I’m clearly better off.
The reason is that courtesy is a concept that makes us better off. That becomes plainly obvious if you ever live, or even visit, a place without it.
Answer to #2: ENVY
the cheater eases congestion in the regular lane by some small amd trivial amount (call this benefit b), but the cheater himself obtains an enormous benefit (b times 100) from cheating and this discrepancy is what motivates the dirty stares
HOV lanes, I think this comes down to the same reason people vote, although it is irrational. There is a conception that some things are a “civic duty”, which as long as everyone thinks the same, everyone benefits.
If no one but irrational people vote, then we are left with a bad situation. We cling to the cooperative ideal, that we “ought” for some reason do what benefits society, even at some cost to ourselves.
I think this is built in from our evolutionary history. Societies where most people were uncooperative died out.
Those that contravene this “civic duty” model are the cheaters, who will certainly take over unless steps are taken to prevent it. Mathematical models prove that altruism cannot prevail, because the cheaters will always prosper to the cost of the co-operators. Those that drive in the HOV lane will out-compete those that obey the rules. However, mathematical models also show that *if* cooperation can be maintained, then cooperative groups would out compete non-cooperative groups. Ultimate success is promoted by cooperation, but there is no “natural” mechanism based on individual success to prevent any particular group being taken over by the cheaters.
Thus, a collective distain for cheaters is one way to promote ultimate success. We hate the HOV cheater because somehow, it has been bred into us. If genetic evolution is based on the selfish gene, then this must have been bred into us culturally, rather than genetically. The selfish gene cannot develop these mechanisms. Just as pure rationality cannot. The cheaters always take over.
We see this play out with Covid restrictions. “Cooperative” societies can control the spread, whereas “individualistic” societies cannot. If everyone is focused on personal rather than societal gains, ultimately you will have a population of cheaters. These individuals will out compete the cooperative members of their society, but the whole society will not out compete other, more cooperative societies.
#3 is not really attributable to me, I got It from
mike Rizzo, just rephrased/reposted it.
I love the conversation about #2. Fair point on the carpool disincentive, although I wonder if there is a net loss or a net gain for society as a whole. I disagree with the comment on rudeness – unless you feel that breaking rules or laws in general is rude, to include driving faster than the speed limit, for instance, or smoking pot (in states where it’s now legal – although even then it still is technically illegal federally.) But I personally don’t understand how that is rude. When I see somebody driving single in the HOV lane and I’m not, I merely feel that they appear to have lower risk aversion than I do at that time. That they are being rude never comes to mind.
Presumably the HOV lane is travelling faster than the other lanes (else why bother cheating to use it). So when do I see a cheater? It’s not when I cruise past them, it’s when they, who were behind me, cruise past me. So in what sense have they made my journey easier? If they hadn’t cheated, they would still be behind me.
But it’s not really about me, anyway. We, well most of us anyway, have a general disdain for the sort of person who thinks the rules don’t apply to them. After all, if they don’t follow the rules, Whois to say what they might do?
Gerry Sohan, #12:
“I personally don’t understand how that is rude”
Perhaps it’s a matter of perspective. I don’t think the comparison with speeders hold up. What I notice with people going at different speeds is they pay different amount of attention, with slow drivers in general paying less attention. It’s possible to go at a faster speed and pay more attention, thus keeping the same risk profile. If you *did* increase risk to other drivers in order to get to your destination faster than the 85% limit, then I would consider that rude as well.
When using the HOV lane in a car with one person, you are making the lane worse for the legitimate users of it in order to derive a personal benefit. I don’t see how that could not be considered discourteous.
If Steve is correct that the benefit to the drivers in the regular lane is the same as the cost to the drivers in the HOV lane, then I would agree it’s not rude. I don’t really buy that. Say you have 3 lanes of heavy traffic and 1 HOV lane with light traffic. Removing 1 car from the populated lanes and adding it to the less populated lane increases the load proportionally in that lane by more than was removed from the populated lanes.
#14 #13. What causes traffic to slow down? Sometimes it is just random “waves” that travel along the traffic where the road is near to capacity. Other times it is a restriction in the flow, going from 3 lanes to two perhaps, or a junction. If the latter, then someone driving past you will delay you at the restriction, adding to your journey time. If the former, I guess reducing the amount of traffic in the congested lanes would allow you to go faster and reduce your journey time. My feeling is that the restriction would be the most common, so “cheaters” in general will delay you.
“Smart roads” where the speed limit is adjusted to the volume of traffic does help quite a lot with the “random wave” problem.
catching up…belated thanks for the link to the Banks blog, excellent fun stuff…the latest post on labels is great, only thing I found objectionable was “socialism…rewards effort”