Let’s take a trip back to the world of basic economics. Even if you neglected to take any economics courses in college (what’s wrong with you?), I am willing to bet that you had some basics established in high school. If not, do not fret, because this post will still tackle a pretty common phenomenon you’ve experienced even without thinking about it: trade-offs.

Even before economics class starts dealing with things like supply and demand, or even the value of money and price, a few basic principles are established, from which the axioms of economic theories are derived. Human wants are infinitely large though our resources are scarce, people make rational decisions, people respond to incentives, etc. One of these foundational principals is the idea that people face trade-offs, otherwise called opportunity costs. Because scarcity exists, and because there’s no such thing as a free lunch, you generally can’t get something for nothing (human charity notwithstanding) and face trade-offs for what you want to get. In ancient societies, this was often displayed directly with the barter system. I have a cow and want some chickens, you have some chickens and want a cow, let’s trade. The introduction of a currency that holds an agreed upon value makes it easier to make trades when a perfect barter doesn’t exist (i.e. I want your chickens but you don’t want my cow, so I can instead pay you in shiny shells/rare metal coins/pieces of green paper/Bitcoin, etc. for an equal value).

Making these trades, either giving or receiving money in exchange for an item or a service, is something most of us encounter every day. What we don’t typically consider, at least consciously, is the trade-off. Because we can’t get everything we want, and we can’t get something for nothing, we must give up one thing in order to get another. The *opportunity cost* is more than just the money we give up for our Starbucks drink (I write sipping away at a $5.25 Starbucks drink); it also includes the next most valuable thing we would have used that money towards. It could include the value of not spending that money or putting that money towards a different expense, usually something more expensive that you would buy later on, i.e. buying a candy bar right now or buying ice cream later tonight, as my economics professor once explained for time preferences. Most people I know would prefer “both” if the option was possible, but in instances when you can only get one OR the other, you ultimately weigh the opportunity costs to make your choice. On a tight budget, I can either eat out at a restaurant for lunch or for dinner, but perhaps not both. I can spend money on a nice new TV for my apartment or buy new dress clothes for my professional work wardrobe. When you can get either A OR B but not both, your preferences and values will determine which one you choose.

As the title of this blog post implies, we are going to examine this phenomenon in the world of politics. The most obvious answer comes from the economic realm, where there exists a trade-off between different government expenditures. In a simplistic view where the tax rate is set in stone, the government at the local, state, and federal level has a limited amount of funding to spend on things like infrastructure, public employee salaries, and public goods and services. Spending more money on paving roads and building sidewalks might mean less money spent on public employees, so you would have fewer staff and even longer wait times at the post office or the BMV. At the federal level, spending more on the military might take money away from social welfare, or vice versa.

Stepping a bit closer to reality means we can introduce a flexible tax policy, where the government can increase or decrease the amount of taxes it collects, thereby changing the amount of money it can spend on different projects. Concerns about the Laffer Curve aside, this still introduces a new trade-off: spending more money on Project A either means taking funds away from Project B OR increasing taxes on the populace. Most people in America historically don’t like an increase in taxes, and in a representative democracy, politicians are wary of implementing tax increases that may result in an electoral defeat in the future, courtesy of an angry constituency. Most voters make this decision at the ballot box, in a simplified form: One candidate promises to increase funding to certain government programs of your desire, at the cost of raising taxes on the rich middle class; the other side promises “no new taxes” or even a tax cut, but often at the expense of limiting or even reducing funding to certain government programs, like welfare or infrastructure. The most ideal option would be “low taxes and well-funded government programs” because most people enjoy public services AND keeping their own money, but that is essentially impossible. So, we must decide whether we value higher taxes and robust government programs (with associated levels of government waste) OR keeping more money after taxes and less funding for the government.

These trade-offs are faced by politicians with regard to their own personal values and preferences, but also with the preferences of the voters that keep them in office to effect policy. Like alluded to earlier, politicians must decide, when voting for legislation, whether the positives of the policy outweigh any risks for their own electoral prospects. If a politician votes for a law that they think is good, but their constituents hate, it could come back in the form of losing their next election, where they would no longer be able to vote for other good legislation. Conversely, a politician may dislike aspects of a bill and believe it does more harm than good, but if their constituents believe it’s a good bill, they may decide to vote for it out of the interests of not angering their base. For some mild legislation, perhaps the risks are mitigated, but there is always a trade-off to be assumed. Note that the risks of losing the election are not an economic trade-off but a trade-off nonetheless, between a politician valuing good policy and valuing pleasing the electorate to stay in office.

In fact, trade-offs exist in non-economic scenarios all the time, especially in politics. A trade-off between two conflicting values can show where a politician, or a voter, leans when two otherwise desirable outcomes conflict with one another. For example, most people, when asked, value public safety to a general extent. And, especially in America, most people value freedom to a general extent, though definitions can qualify that sentiment. Typically, most people want a “free” AND a “safe” society, but there are many instances where safety and freedom conflict with one another. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the establishment of the TSA, you now have to take off your shoes, walk through a metal detector, throw away perfectly good bottles of water, and risk being groped by a federal employee in the name of “safety.” Many people complain, and some extremely libertarian-minded people call for abolishing the TSA as it “infringes on liberty.” These people value their freedom to not go through extensive, intrusive security measures more than whatever safety these measures provide (and there is much reason to be skeptical at how safe these measures keep us), while the people who support the TSA value their perceived safety more than the freedom to avoid these protocols.

A more current event, as of this writing, showcasing this dynamic is the issue of COVID-19 restrictions, such as capacity limits and masking requirements. Those who value freedom or believe the risks associated with COVID-19 are low believe that masking and capacity requirements are unnecessary government overreach, and that the effects of economic collapse and massive unemployment are more devastating than the number of people who are hospitalized and/or die from this disease. On the other side, some people are double-masking and encouraging even more and longer restrictions, believing that mitigating the spread of this disease is worth some temporary economic downturn and personal sacrifice. I have my own thoughts on this trade-off, but that’s not important for my purposes here. What’s important is to acknowledge that these differences exist, and that more often than not it’s not a difference in intelligence or facts, but of people’s values and preferences that cause this disagreement. Showing people that the rates of infection and death for COVID-19 are greater than “just some flu” won’t necessarily persuade someone who values freedom more that the restrictions are necessary. And showing people that hospitalization rates have drastically decreased over the past few months won’t persuade people that think even moderate risk to the virus calls for extended restrictions that the pandemic is “mostly over.” We can fight about the data and the statistics all we want, but ultimately our preferences and values will determine how we interpret the risks involved and what we are willing to trade-off to achieve our desired goal. Freedom naturally comes with associated risks, and safety measures naturally restrict some freedoms that we are allowed. It’s not an “all or nothing” dilemma we face, but rather which side of the coin we err on.

Freedom vs. safety is one of the biggest trade-offs we face in society, and it shows up in multiple different debates not mentioned here (gun control measures, military and police funding, OSHA and FDA regulations, traffic laws, etc.). But it’s not the only example of values trade-offs in politics. Another big one, that is less of a hot button issue, is the trade-off between efficiency vs. robustness when it comes to things like infrastructure, both for goods and for people. We currently live in a globalized economy, where things are often made outside of the USA and then imported, stored in a warehouse, and shipped across the country at your discretion. When everything is working well, this system is much more efficient than having hundreds of thousands of individual shops producing and selling items, plus it often requires less work on the consumer end (goodbye window shopping, hello Amazon Prime 2-day shipping). However, in the event of a global pandemic or a really big boat blocking an important canal, these global supply chains get disrupted, as many production factories shut down and transportation of goods becomes paused. This can result in increasing prices, longer delays in deliveries, and shortages ranging from computer chips to Starbucks syrup flavors. A more robust supply chain, made up of multiple smaller production sources with multiple delivery methods and closer-to-end-customer production and sales is certainly less efficient on a large scale, but also more adept to handling disruptions without a cascading domino effect. We can choose to trade-off a robust economy for fast delivery and global supply chains, or we can trade-off some efficiency for higher prices and more resiliency in the face of a large catastrophe.

Alternatively, when talking of humans driving cars from their homes to work/retail/recreation, highways are highly efficient of moving a lot of people from point A to point B really fast. This allows people to live farther away from other aspects of their livelihoods without having to sacrifice much time efficiency in their travel, as long as they own a $30,000 2-ton hunk of metal on wheels. The development and widespread consumption of automobiles, particularly in post-WWII America, helped accelerate the phenomenon of people living further and further outside of cities where they were employed, helping sustain the development of suburbs and urban sprawl. Then the National Highway system comes along, and it’s no longer shocking to find people living in a different county than an urban metropolis and commuting in at 70+ MPH along the interstate for a quick 20-minute commute…if everything goes to plan. See, driving at high speeds exponentially increases the likelihood of injury or death in the event of an accident, even with safety features of modern cars. Secondly, in the event of even a non-fatal accident, traffic can become backed up to the point of slowed or stalled traffic jams for hundreds of commuters, often with very few alternate routes because everything was designed around the main multi-lane highway. Contrast that with a gridded street layout, like the ones you find in a city center or residential neighborhood. The design increases the number of intersections and proximity to housing and pedestrians, which usually means a slower, longer commute over the same distance of a massive interstate highway (hence why many people used to live much closer to city centers in previous eras). This is considered less efficient than the highway system, but what would be the trade-offs? For starters, slower speeds mean reduced accidents and more cautious drivers (as braking distances are much shorter at slower speeds), and accidents that do occur are much less deadly as a result. Secondly, a single traffic accident won’t disrupt the single high-speed route for hundreds of drivers, because a grid layout provides a robust network of alternate routes to take if one road is blocked off. Having a single, straight pipeline of high-speed cars is efficient until it becomes bottle-necked, while a robust grid of streets is slower but provides several alternate routes from A to B and reduces fatal accidents. One isn’t necessarily better than the other depending on your value preferences, but they each provide trade-offs: something we all give up in order to receive another thing. If you prefer high-speed efficiency and living far from the city center at the expense of a higher risk of traffic jams and fatal accidents, or if you prefer living closer and driving in a grid, at the expense of frequent stops and a slower, longer commute over an equivalent distance, you’ve decided what you prefer and what your opportunity cost is.

There are many examples of conflicts between values that we would otherwise desire to have both: diversity vs. unity, individuality vs. communality, clean environments vs. productive development of land, the benefits of technological innovation vs. their negative consequences, promoting change vs. preserving tradition, and even more. It’s important to recognize that these trade-offs exist, and that many people will disagree on which they value more outside the context of “just show me the facts.” There’s no data to show which outcomes are more or less desirable on these issues, only which outcomes will be affected by leaning more to one side or the other. Increasing restrictions on airplane travel is not “better” than not doing so, unless you believe that security is worth the trade-off of freedom in this issue (a values-based question). Preserving green spaces is not “better” than developing factories on land unless you’ve determined that a clean environment is worth the trade-off of productive land use, which someone can disagree with in disregard of all environment impact studies. And while providing for the poor and allowing for individual economic prosperity are both desirable outcomes, which one you value more will influence your decision on the opportunity cost of raising taxes to increase welfare. The most intellectually honest way of discussing these issues is to 1) admit that trade-offs exist in your proposed solution (because there will always be something you give up) and then 2) argue why your proposal is more beneficial than the sacrifice of the trade-offs. Just like any good salesman, show us why what we end up receiving will be better than what we have to give up.