Optimization and Non-Optimization of Socialization

Occasionally, perhaps even most of the time, individual action leads to the most optimal and efficient outcome. At other times, the free market fails and socialization must repair the failure. For instance, the natural course of business leads to monopoly, a market failure. Government repairs the failure by breaking up firms that have grown too large.

Now, I could go on to talk about medical insurance, state-owned firms, drug policy and other situations where government’s role is in dispute, but I will save that for another day. I would like to focus on non-governmental forms of socialization and on topics that actually seriously affect people I know- namely getting married and getting drunk.

The neo-classical economist would say that individual choice is most likely to bring the most utility to an individual. For instance, you and I could go to Chili’s and I could order for you. What I pick may make you pretty happy (say the Chicken Caesar Pita), but there is a better chance that you would pick something you would like more. (If the Chicken Caesar Pita was your choice, you can ask me to pick out other things for you later. I’m open to the idea that my choices for you are perfect.)

Now, let us extend this drinking. When one goes to a bar, people often buy drinks in rounds. This is done for a number of reasons. Beer is cheaper in pitchers and money can be saved on the tip by buying things at once. Most people, though, do it for the comradery; “I’ll get this round, you get the next!” Ahh, such love. Unfortunately, not everyone wants to drink the same amount. We should all know better than anyone else how much alcohol makes us happy (save maybe alcoholics). Socialization, though, forces us to drink the same amount and at the same speed as our friends. The lagging individual is chastised for drinking too slow and the leader is left holding an empty glass. The round system also tends to make the number of rounds equal to the number of attendees. Four people often means four rounds. Drinking games are an even more extreme version of making people drink an amount they do not want to.

So, if this socialized drinking situation is not optimal, why do we do it? Well, besides the joy of watching friends make fools of themselves and date rape, the answer is the same as why we wear sport coats and pants in the summer time. Social pressure. We want to fit in. We do not want to be the one person not in the round or the drinking game.

If you happen to be in your late twenties or early thirties, you may have observed another trend that may cause just as many headaches and vomiting as binge drinking- the marrying of one’s peers. Seemingly all at once, everyone I know is getting married. The reason? Again, clearly, social pressure. After X number of years together in a relationship and once one reaches a certain age, society expects marriage. A couple should know when marriage is best for them, but instead parents and the tacit social pressure of everyone’s friends force them into the act earlier than they probably want.

And for what end is marriage? Basically, marriage is an exercise in self-command. Like putting cookies in a tin on the top shelf, one attempts to make changing one’s mind more difficult. You spend the money, you invite your friends, you merge your finances and some even have kids so it will be too much of a hassle and too embarrassing to break up. Fearing that one might change one’s mind in the future, one attempts to eliminate their choices now.

Now, eliminating one’s own choices may be fine and good. After all, they are one’s own choices to eliminate (go ahead and crush that pack of cigarettes!). Sadly, marriage is an elimination of choices that people are pressured into by parents, society, one’s mate and the inability to come up with anything else to do with one’s life. And unlike the social pressures of alcohol where a night being ruined, the effects of marriage can affect a lifetime (or a few years depending on the length of it).