Constrained Bliss Point

I spent four years of my life in Troy, NY, attending RPI. I would not recommend living there. RPI is a fine school, and while I have some serious issues with its leadership, my experience there was positive. That said, I have written about my feelings for Troy, and they are not positive. (I should clarify that when I referred to the “community” in my previous post, I really mean the city and area taken as a whole; some people are pretty fabulous, but downtown Troy is not.)

I did not expect to be thinking about Troy today. I was a bit shocked to learn that President Obama made a speech at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy. Initially I was incredulous — my first thought was “Troy? Why Troy?”. Later it made more sense: he had to visit Governor Paterson to give him a talking-to.

President Obama says that the United States needs Troy. I am inclined to disagree, but otherwise willing to hear him out. Now, some caveats: I freely admit I am being too hard on Troy. It is not a terrible place, just below average in some important dimensions. What does it in, in my opinion, is the opportunity cost of spending time in Troy. There are so many better places to be. It is no accident I got out the hell out of dodge as soon as I had my degrees in hand.

I have a very particular method of consuming music, which I feel a strong urge to pontificate about.

I outgrew illegal music downloads some time in high school. This had little to do with a fear of legal repercussions. In fact, I began to implicitly value my time more, so that the opportunity cost of manually downloading every song I wanted and then organizing my music collection became prohibitive. Not to mention how difficult it is to build a playlist worth listening to.

Luckily at this time I started earning discretionary income, and through the magic of the internets I could purchase used albums on Amazon. Ripping albums is straightforward, my music collection organizes itself, and each new CD yields a band-vetted play list. I listen to albums all the way through now. If it’s difficult for me to get through each song in order, that’s something wrong with the album (or more specifically, I don’t like the album). More than a hodgepodge of songs, each album has a feel to it, a theme that it plays out through each sequential track, leading you on a musical journey. Here I postulate: one can more accurately judge a band by the quality of its albums than by the quality of its songs. Producing an album is hard work, and much effort goes into ensuring a certain flow, a certain style. A good album is a conceptual whole.

There are other benefits to an album-centric view of music. Like not missing out on b-sides or less “popular” songs — which are actually just those songs the main stream hasn’t picked up on. Example: off of Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill, which song is most often played on the radio? Probably the worst on the album, “Ironic”. Both “Forgiven” and “Not the Doctor” are at least twice as good, and you probably aren’t familiar with them. (That’s right, I’m being pretentious about Alanis Morisette music.)

Another example: greatest hits albums suck. Originally I theorized that I could be more money-efficient by purchasing greatest hits albums, just getting the best songs and leaving all the unworthy ones behind. But that is entirely the wrong model. While some songs are better than others, the concept of some set of songs being “best” and using that criterion as basis for a playlist is folly. Greatest hits albums are exactly a hodgepodge of songs. They are like the Frankenstein monster, discombobulated parts stuck together, seemingly alive but distinctly lacking a soul.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go listen to Jagged Little Pill. Again.

Opportunity cost is what you give up to get something. This is explicit in some cases. Say you buy a bag of oranges at the grocery store: the opportunity cost is what you pay for them. You can’t use that money to buy something else now.

I think the biggest opportunity cost is time. Or at least, when I try to think of examples to illustrate opportunity cost, they all have to do with how you spend your time. When you spend your time doing any one thing, you are implicitly choosing not to do anything else. When you hang out with a friend you can’t be doing homework or cleaning your room  (or maybe you can, but with a loss in efficiency). When you choose to sleep, you can’t be reading or eating or partying.

Opportunity costs loom large even if we restrict our domain to tasks that need to be accomplished. When I choose to work on my econometrics homework, it means I can’t be working on my chemistry homework. If I’m reading an ecological economics paper, I can’t be reviewing the behavioral economics literature.

I think this is a large source of procrastination. Obviously it is easy to procrastinate if you choose to party instead of doing homework. But I have found it easy to procrastinate even when  I set aside a block of time for homework only. I think this is because, when something is not due the next day, I cannot choose which assignment deserves all of my attention. The other assignments nag at my psyche leading to inattentiveness and inefficiency.

Solving the opportunity cost problem is a necessary condition for increased productivity.