When goals conflict

Over the course of a semester, I really have only one overarching message to teach my law students: consistency is deeply overrated. Legal rules are in place to satisfy multiple goals: for instance, accuracy of verdicts; efficiency of government (or business) operations; fairness to citizens; civil order, etc.

Students HATE the idea that there is no single overarching principle that explains all of the legal rules. They want, for instance, all of it to be explained by efficiency, such that any rule that isn't efficient is a "bad rule" and should be revised. Eventually, though, they begin to see that if you maximize one goal, you necessarily sacrifice other things you care about. You can have a marvelously efficient legal regime that, for instance, lets the poor starve and incarcerates people who are likely to commit crimes in the future and tells business owners exactly what they should produce. But nobody wants that, no matter how nice it would be for all the trains to run on time.

We have already talked a little bit about this: what happens when being frugal interferes with time constraints? This is why UncleSam will pay a few cents more per gallon of gasoline, and I will hire someone else to clean my shower twice a month. But we cheated a little when we described those behaviors, pretending that we were acting consistent with our goals: we srurmised, "Well, time is money; I can profitably (in the literal sense) spend my efforts elsewhere by paying more in this case."

That, of course, is a bit of a stretch. Sure, I can, at least in theory, earn $100/hour during the two hours I pay someone else $30/hour to clean my home. But I don't. I pay housekeepers simply because a) I value my leisure more than $60 or b) I am lazy (take your pick).

This problem of trading off goals, moreover, occurs in other instances where I can't even use the "time is money" excuse. I began to think of this when UncleSam wrote that if you buy a bunch of stuff at Costco and let it spoil, you aren't saving any money. But what if I buy a 3-pack of cucumbers for $3 that I know I can only eat 2 of before it spoils, but if I bought two single cucumbers, it would cost $4? Or how about a gallon of chickpeas for $2.00, where eight 16 oz. cans of chickpeas would cost, even on sharp sale, $8? Even if half of the gallon goes bad, I've still saved a considerable amount by "overbuying."

In these examples, I've maximized my goal of frugality. But at the same time I've undermined my goal of producing less waste. I suppose I could compost. But there are plenty of other instances of this, too. What if buying a new (used!) pair of boots would cost $10, but resoling the ones I already have would cost $20? What if buying organic broccoli costs over twice as much as conventional? I have to make a choice about which goals wins: being cheap or being green.

And there's no single answer, either for the entire year, or even for an entire day. As Ralph Waldo Emerson (I think) famously put it, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." It's all about trade-offs. What are some of yours?