Law & Society Blog

I must confess that I am always looking forward to Randy Cohen’s comments on moral problems. Not because I always agree or disagree with him, but because his problems are well chosen. Same with the one below (hat tip to Geoff Manne over at Truth on the Market).

I am a 13-year-old boy. My school has a monthly pizza sale. Parents buy pies from a pizzeria and sell them to us for $1 a slice. I bought a whole pie at the pizzeria and offered slices for $2 to kids at the end of the long line. A school counselor stopped me. She said that I was unethical and was “taking advantage of people.” I thought I was providing a service to people based on the principle that “time is money.” Who is right? Ben Gammage, San Diego

Here is Randy’s answer.

Time may be money, but how much, really, for an eighth grader, who is not paid to attend school? And do we really want all our interactions based on the variable-pricing airline-seat model? Were pizza a necessity of life (as many teenagers regard it) and in short supply, you would have been been guilty of profiteering, as your counselor charged. But there was plenty of pizza, so you didn’t exploit anyone. And pizza does remain a luxury, so nobody was compelled to buy your pricier slices. (Were they? I assume there was no gunplay.) Thus your actions were not unethical, but they were poor social policy - if that’s not too fancy a way to describe undermining a pizza party. Your counselor’s concern was valid, if poorly expressed. The dollar-a-slice deal made possible a schoolwide pizza party, affordable fun for everyone. Judging by the long line, it’s something people enjoy. You turned it into a two-tiered system - kids with money don’t wait; kids without money do - shifting it from a we’re-all-in-it-together event to something less communitarian (if more profitable).

As Geoff’s comment implies, there are errors in Randy’s economic reasoning in virtually every sentence. For example, why should it matter whether the kids are “paid to attend school?” The necessities/luxuries distinction is untenable, etc. But that’s beside the point, because one should not be misled into arguing Randy’s question on economic grounds. Just because we are talking about a pizza sale, where goods appear to change hands in exchange for cash, it doesn’t follow that the normative issue should be discussed in terms of economics. Rather, I would argue that the kid broke the rules of a game. A school pizza sale is not an attempt of using markets to feed school children. It’s a social event, a social game, where kids get something that they don’t ordinarily get in school (or so I assume) for a token price of $1. That’s not a free market interaction. I think that Randy tries to make this point when he says that the kid’s $2 express service undermines the event, which is exactly right. You undermine a camping trip if you pull up next to the campfire in an RV and offer beds for $5/night. The (temporary, minimal) displacement is part of the experience, and the rules are made to protect that experience. Similarly, you undermine bake sales, potlucks, and pizza sales if you turn them from a game with egalitarian rules into a marketplace.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d be the first to pay $2 if I was standing in a long line for a slice on the street. There is nothing wrong per se with offering a paid service to help me save time. The breaking of the rules is what makes the kid’s conduct objectionable, which is a very weak form of moral condemnation.

Technorati Tags: morals, ethics, game, Randy Cohen

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