A lose-lose proposition

It is normal for a collective agreement to have win-lose propositions. Some clauses clearly favour management at the expense of employees, and some perks for workers clearly hurt a company's bottom line.

But collective agreements should not have lose-lose propositions. If management and workers can both do better by eliminating a provision in a collective bargaining agreement, there's no logical reason for the clause to be there in the first place.

Pogs, surgeries and consent

I've been trading since I was a kid. Whether it was hockey cards, recess snacks, Magic cards, Pokémon cards or pogs, we were always trading something.

There was a tacit understanding that the buyer-beware policy applied when making a trade. But it was also understood that it was bad practice to take advantage of an ignorant trader. No one liked situations where a kid went home to boast to their older brother about a trade, only to hear he'd been duped. It inevitably led to a big argument the next day: "I didn't realize the card I gave you was so good. No fair — I want it back."

Should a kid who unknowingly trades away a valuable pog be able to undo the trade? This was one of the tougher ethical questions we dealt with on the playground. You shouldn't make a trade if you're not sure about it. But on the other hand, if you didn't understand the trade you were making, how can you consent to it?

Hairdressing is also way too socialist

I thought Vancouver's taxi industry is way too socialist. But I found another example that might top it.

In the Outaouais region (the Quebec portion of Greater Ottawa), central planners have been controlling hair cuts: who you can get them from, the minimum price hairdressers can charge, and what hours they can work. According to an article in Le Droit, it's a depression-era practice that was repealed decades ago everywhere else in Quebec, but for some reason still exists in the Outaouais area.

Black Friday doesn't make sense

Black Friday, which occurs today, is an annual event where U.S. retailers have big sales to kick off the Christmas shopping season. But it doesn't make any sense to me from an economics perspective.

The question bugging me (which I don't have an answer to, but perhaps a reader does) is why, if the deals are so good on Black Friday, do stores not offer them on other days? Presumably, retail sales must be dismal leading up to Black Friday — why buy something the preceding Thursday when you know you can get a much better deal the next day? Stores, realizing this fact, should presumably offer their Black Friday bargains before Black Friday in order to get customers into their store. Yet this doesn't seem to happen.

Paying students for good grades

This article in the National Post last week caught my attention. It examines whether it makes sense to pay elementary and high school students for attendance and/or academic performance.

This is a fascinating issue and potentially a very good idea. From an economic theory perspective, this looks like a brilliant concept — people respond to incentives, so dangling a carrot in front of students should motivate them to learn more. Moreover, it's likely very affordable; for kids, money generally goes further than for adults. Paying a potential $50 bonus for good performance over a school year could be a significant incentive for most kids, but wouldn't cost a school board that much. For a class of 30 students, it's a potential liability of $1,500, which is roughly equivalent to a 2.5% wage increase for teachers (and that's assuming every student earns a bonus, which seems unlikely).

Our taxi industry is way too socialist

In Canada, we generally have free markets. But when it comes to taxis, the industry seems to as centrally planned as Soviet Russia, and I don't understand why.

In my hometown of Vancouver, city councillor Geoff Meggs blogged about the shortage of taxis in the downtown core on weekends. It's tough for drunken revellers to find a cab home, apparently. And some taxi drivers are unwilling to take people home to the suburbs. It's definitely a problem, but Meggs' musings about possible solutions are misguided.