Queueing theory and Atlanta traffic

Now, I cannot vouch for the details of this article, which claims that Jerks help traffic move faster and keep jams from happening - hard to believe, eh?

Well imagine that at the busy grocery store, people stood twenty feet away from the end of the checkout counter and waited for the person in front of them to leave before they started putting their food on the checkout counter. The cashier would be standing their with nothing to do during the time between customers, and we can all see that the waiting time for all the other shoppers would go up, right?

Now next time you're stuck in traffic and notice an empty piece of road in front of you. Many car lengths of bare pavement. Think about the fact that in order to process traffic, each segment of road is like a cashier waiting to "check you out" as you pass by. Cashiers with nothing to do means that there will be a longer wait for you, further back in line.

Now there is a "safe" distance between cars, so I am not advocating tailgating (we all know how badly traffic is affected by rear-end collisions). But excessive amounts of "idle road" means that everyone behind that road space is going to wait longer. So do your part to keep the road filled in.

But try not to seem like too much of a jerk when you're doing it.

Markets and medicine

There isn't a magic solution, but I do think that markets would help in bringing down medical costs. If I have insurance and can go to a doctor for free (no co-pay insurance from my company) or stop by the Minute Clinic and see someone who can give me the same care (or send me to the doctor if they are not sure) but I have to pay $20, I know I'll choose the doctor. Even though I know the social costs are much, much higher, and that by going to the doctor, I'm making it harder for the Minute Clinic to stay in business and reduce health care costs.

But the idea that someone can decide all this stuff for me, so I don't have to think about it, or worry that I made a mistake and chose the wrong thing, is pretty appealing to many (me?). So I understand the appeal of centralizing the process, either with an insurance company bureaucracy or the intervention of some government. But I also know that centralization can never work very well (information economics) and will stifle innovation (a hard to determine but real cost).

Here's a reasonable article arguing for the market solution. But I think there is a way to explain this even more simply and convincingly. I hope someone tries.

The world changes too fast

Here's a post from Wired magazine that is similar to the annual professor lists of the historical events that we share, but that happened before our students were born. These are some of the technologies that no longer exist (but that we thought were cool). I actually remember 24" data packs that held (wait for it) 5MB of data. Must have weighed 10-15 pounds each. I also remember when you needed to not only know the email address of your recipient, but also the internet nodes along the way to that person. So email addresses got long and complicated.