Maximize the gap
On "venerated mediocrity", utility maximization, and why it's a good thing for American kids to live with unstructured time and activities
Lost in the very strange debate over whether mainstream American culture has "venerated mediocrity" is a vital distinction about America's extreme devotion to laissez-faire as an ethos.
■ The worst advice commonly given to new graduates is "Do what you love and the money will follow". That's a recipe for a very high rate of disappointment -- not to mention, also one for turning a lot of very good hobbies and recreational interests into drudgery. But a very close second in the bad-advice race is "Do whatever will make you the most money". This advice, often doled out both directly and indirectly by well-meaning parents and other influential adults, proposes a perilously imbalanced lifestyle.
■ The right advice goes like this: "Do whatever maximizes the gap between how you're rewarded and what you have to give up to get it." Maximizing that difference is what economists would call utility maximization.
■ Every occupational choice comes with some form of reward: Usually it starts with money, but the basket of rewards also includes things like social status, personal pride, joy in the work itself, potential for growth, leisure time, job security, and more.
■ Likewise, every occupational choice comes with trade-offs: How long it takes to obtain education and training, the stress of the job search, foregone opportunities to try other careers, and all of the ordinary stresses and drawbacks that come from devoting some 40 hours a week to performing a task in exchange for a paycheck.
■ If the only thing that gets measured is the size of the salary, then it's like looking only at a company's revenue figures and ignoring the expenses. Doing so would be daffy, yet many people pressure young people into doing just that -- not just in America, but around the world.
■ America's secret superpower is the sense of freedom to experiment, to try lots of things (especially in youth), and above all, to fail early and often without that failure derailing an entire future. The more introductory courses and extracurricular activities a young person tries, the better: Some won't click at all, but a few might.
■ And it's especially when those low-stakes encounters pay off that Americans benefit most from our culture -- like Bill Gates discovering computers in a club atmosphere while in junior high. The growing backlash against all-absorbing youth sports (and the crowding-out effect those leagues have been having on other free-ranging childhood endeavors) is a sign many parents understand implicitly that an over-structured adolescence is overrated.
■ It may seem contrary to logic, but it's precisely the way America avoids high-pressure circumstances for young people that liberates them to find the things that maximize the gap, rather than just chasing what pays the most. Does that sometimes lead to laziness and sloth? Sure. But it also leads to an efficient allocation of skills and resources, chosen by the people who will live those lives and careers, rather than by their parents (or, worse, their government).
