Life Sucks When You're Short

Today I am blessing you all with the first true application of Beckonomics. Enjoy!

Over the weekend, my parents were in town on vacation. Part of their vacation was bringing the three of us to see a Def Leppard and Bryan Adams concert at a minor league baseball stadium in Rochester. Admission to the concert was general in nature. That is, once through the doors everyone had their choice of either sitting in the stands around the field or standing near the stage on the outfield grass. We can consider the concert a public good, following the entrance of fans to the show. For those non-economists out there, a public good is a good that is nonexcludable and nonrival. The concert was nonexcludable because once through the doors, it is impossible to prevent anyone from consuming the music being played once it has been made available by the band. The music played during the concert is also nonrival in the sense that one person’s consumption of the music does not reduce the quantity of music that is available for someone else.

Because the concert was general admission, the stadium can be viewed as a quasi-public good because although the stadium is relatively nonexcludable, it cannot be defined as nonrival. The rivalries arise because one’s position in the stands or near the stage clearly takes away the amount of space available for others in the same general area. Because the stadium was large relative to the crowd, in general the level of rivalry was not extraordinary. The rivalry mostly came into play down around the stage, as you shall later see.

Before going to the concert, we drove down around the Finger Lakes, visited a winery, and did some wine tasting. After that, we headed to Rochester, grabbed some sandwiches from the Dinosaur Barbeque, and did a little tailgating before going to the show. After heading over to the stadium, we found some good seats in the stands directly facing the stage for the Def Leppard part of the show. The band was good, but I really didn’t know words to a lot of their songs, which for me makes a concert more fun. They waited until the last song to play “Pour Some Sugar on Me” and by that time we were heading toward supposedly better seats in the right field area.

Well, as Bryan Adams was getting started we decided to move up toward the stage and stand for his part of the show. Since this was the third time I had been to a Bryan Adams concert and because I know most of his music, I was pretty excited to finally get up close to the stage and sing and dance to the show with everyone else in attendance. So, we make our way up sort of close to the stage and are enjoying the first song of the night when this really tall guy around my age and his tall girlfriend decide that they want to be closer to the stage as well. Also at the same time, these two tough-looking biker dudes wanted a better look at Bryan Adams. Magically, these four people decide that they want to fill a slight gap right in front of my father, who happens to be shorter than them all, but especially the younger guy. I don’t even know what happened next, but suddenly this scene explodes before my eyes. My dad, who had been drinking earlier, sort of pushes the tough-looking biker dudes aside and makes some comment. They turn around and look like they are going to go after him, so me being the tough one, tries to jump in the middle of everyone and restrain them. But this is certainly not the end of the scene, as my dad thought is would be cool to push the tall, younger guy from behind and thank him for getting in his way. Now, this wasn’t a friendly push by any means and well people our age, or I suppose any sane person, has no reason to deal with shit like that. So, the guy does what any rational being would do in the same situation, defend his position and turn against my dad. Well, this time I really got in the middle of it. I was holding my dad back with one arm and trying to cool off the other guy. Things calmed down, and I cannot believe that my father had the gusto to continue standing in the same area. I was pretty pissed (so was my mom) and vowed not to talk to, dance with, or look at him for the remainder of the show (and if possible the night) which went on for about two hours.

So, the moral of this story, is not to not go stand near the stage if you are vertically challenged, but is that people really are out there trying to maximize their utility, which in this case was being as close to the stage as possible. In order to maximize their own utility, these rational beings are unconcerned about the welfare of their fellow rational beings. This extreme self interest may lead to conflict in certain situations, including that of a congestible public good, as it did in the area near the stage. Another example of this is road rage. We can say with high confidence that most occurrence of road rage happen on busy multilane highways and are often related to drivers looking out for their own good at the expense of others. These drivers, seeking to minimize their time to get from Point A to Point B tend to carelessly cut off drivers in adjacent lanes, who get pissed. So, based on the two previous examples, we can formulate the general assumption that when public goods are congestible, there may be a higher likelihood of conflict occurring. The next thing to ask then is how can we control the incidents of conflict in congestible public goods?

For now, that question will remain unanswered as my time to write is over. I am looking forward to another interesting week ahead, and will keep my eyes open for any cool things to explain in Beckonomics terms.