Tim Worstall explains why gift-giving at Christmas is so economically inefficient:
Christmas gifts under the tree.
Photo by Kelvin Kay via Wikimedia Commons.
The point being made is dual, that individuals have agency and that utility is entirely personal.
To unravel that jargon.
Individuals, peeps, are able to make choices. We delight in making choices in fact, “agency” is the opposite of “anomie”, that feeling that society determines what we may or can do that so depresses the human spirits. We get to choose to get up at 6 am or 8. Have coffee or tea when we do. Go buy the latest platters from the newly popular beat combo, pay the ‘leccie bill or have the coffee out at an emporium.
Having choices, making them, makes people happier.
Secondly, utility. The result of those choices, which of them will maximise happiness, is different for each and every individual. Sure, we can aggregate some of them – food is usually pretty high up everyones’ list, that first litre of water a day tops most. But the higher up Maslow’s Pyramid we go the more tastes – and thus happiness devoured – differ.
So, we make humans happier by their having the choice to do what they want, not what others think they should want or have.
Thus, give people cash at Christmas not socks.
Balancing that is the obvious point that the care and attention with which a present is considered is part of that consumption of happiness. The boyfriend who actually listens to the type of clothing desired and goes gets it provides that joy that a bloke has, for once, been listening. Or the book that would never have been individually considered but was chosen because it might – and does.
Sure.
But the point isn’t about Christmas at all. That’s a way of wrapping the point so it can be left underneath the tree of knowledge.
