All Intensive Purposes

Tim Harford, whom I don't know but who is evidently full of holiday cheer, has done some economic analysis and would do away with Christmas cards:

Christmas cards are given and received in a parody of a market - one that involves interpersonal exchange but no prices. That matters because it means our cards are sent out into an informational void. Is it appropriate to send a card to one’s teacher? To one’s boss? To close colleagues? Distant ones? We can look at the cards we receive and try to extrapolate, but this only goes so far. A student does not know what cards a teacher receives because she is not a teacher; but she knows she doesn’t want to be the only student who didn’t bother.

We receive too little feedback and it arrives too late. In a conversation with a friend we quickly and continuously read each other’s moods - but was last year’s card from your former neighbours a genuine attempt to keep in touch, or a dutiful reciprocation of your card from the year before? (Always assuming you have your list from two years ago to check.) Or did it simply reflect the fact that they had sent you cards for years and were concerned that breaking off the correspondence would send an unwelcome message, even though the correspondence itself sends no message at all? One thing is certain: they will not send you a clarifying cover note.

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This Christmas, as we go through the routine of regretting the predominance of markets in our lives, we might remind ourselves that while markets may not be perfect, they sometimes beat the alternatives.

Maybe someone got a lump of coal in last year's stocking?

This December, the Saga Of The Burnt Motherboard may prevent me from sending cards. Rest assured that any such failure on my part will have little or nothing to do with the views expressed above.