There is no larger North American metro area colder than Minneapolis- St. Paul that is larger than Minneapolis- St. Paul. We are on the size-cold frontier. But the same might be said for Edmonton, Alberta and Barrow, Alaska, as well as Mexico City.

On the brawn-brain frontier, Stanford ranks highly, no university with smarter students has a better football team. Cal-Tech might say the same. As might Ohio State in 2015.

Combining different things into a single metric is inherently arbitrary. Economics likes to monetize everything, so instead of noise, we have monetized noise externality, which is directly comparable with monetized time, monetized crash death, and monetized air pollution.

In the end this is sometimes useful, especially at the margins. We have to decide how to spend limited money to reduce pollution vs. increase safety vs. reduce travel time. But this is also problematic, especially when dealing with wholes.

People don’t think that way. And people don’t think that way because nature doesn’t reduce to a single metric. No amount of nitrogen in the air could offset too little oxygen (while 100% oxygen would kill you, so something needs to dilute it). We are advised to have a balanced diet. Some things are inherently un-substitutable, and therein lies a conundrum for comparing alternatives.

To oppose something, you just say you value X and Y, (transportation and the environment), but some aspect of the environment is irreplaceably special, so you can’t have your transportation project. And it is special, and strictly speaking it is not perfectly replaceable. Facts are on your side. Unfortunately the idea of “utility” is strictly theoretical, and not something people actually possess in their society of mind.

Arguments about projects and policies are usually over unstated values not facts. And if the arguments were good faith, people would clearly state their values, agree on the facts, and then some democratic process would resolve the values and achieve compromise, side payments, and so on. People would go home, a decision would be reached, and we could move on with the next thing.

Instead the arguers corrupt truth and self-select facts to achieve rhetorical aims, without consideration of the longer term consequences of devaluing what objectivity actually does exist in the world (it sometimes goes by the name of ‘science’) and destroying trust in the democratic process in general.

We individually assume that we want to achieve the best trade-off for ourselves (the most house in the best climate) subject to budget constraints. Certainly economists assume that.  I can have a smaller house in California or a larger one in Minnesota. California has (or at least had) a better climate than Minnesota.

Society “wants” the same thing, except society doesn’t “want” anything. The simple illustration demonstrates convergence to a single preference is not guaranteed.

• Alice Likes Blue over Green over Red
• Bob Likes Green over Red over Blue
• Chuck likes Red over Blue over Green

From which logic tells us:

• Two people like Blue over Green
• Two people like Green over Red
• Two people like Red over Blue.

So Blue is preferred to Green is preferred to Red is preferred to Blue. Ergo, society does not have  well-defined preferences. I will argue people are individually just as irrational, since our minds are themselves just a bunch  of individually networked neurons. Sometimes I like Blue, sometimes green, and it may be entirely unpredictable by an observer. Some people are sufficiently self-aware to identify their own contradictions (Walt Whitman for instance said: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”) Most people are oblivious to this fact, others in mere denial if not self-denial.

And if people don’t know what they want individually, how can society? We devolve into deferring to the most confident sounding, the brashest, the blow-hardiest, the strongest, the wealthiest, to avoid being eaten by the lion.

“Strong opinions, weakly held” is a strategy to address this. Yet if someone changes their opinion, they are criticized as a flip-flopper, and are assumed to be easier to roll in the future. Keynes had the best response: “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” Institutions in particular fall prey to the infallibility doctrine, that if they admit one of their decisions was wrong, any of them might be.

We try to operate at the frontier in production space in economics, anything else is an inferior solution.  Why be not as smart and not as strong (good at American Football) as another university? And if we are not on the frontier (football skills vs. IQ) we thought we wanted to be on, redefine terms of the argument (maybe we educate more students or are more equitable, maybe our city is Windier than any larger city instead of Colder). But we need to be flexible in our thinking and pliable in out goals to have the nimbleness to identify our competitive advantage.

In short, our values are arbitrary, we believe them so as to make ourselves superior in some dimension or set of dimensions, so we can feel good about ourselves and have high status in some clique (which presumably has evolutionary payoff). We convince ourselves that one particular value trade-off is what we actually care about, and internalize this belief so we can better convince others. My final quote is Upton Sinclair ““It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.””

dis·pir·it·ed  (dĭ-spĭr′ĭ-tĭd) adj. — Affected or marked by low spirits; dejected.

I recently flew Spirit to save money for my project and the University of Minnesota, and as an experiment with an airline I had not previously flown.

The most important thing to note about Spirit is that it is much less expensive than Delta.

The next most important thing to note is that the planes are the same.

The third thing to note is the chairs are like folding metal chairs, with a minimal amount of padding, bolted to the floor (I exaggerate, not much).

The fourth thing to note is the pricing structure “nickels and dimes” you. They charge for carry-ons beyond the size of a personal item (purse, laptop bag, small backpack). (In exchange, you do get to Board earlier in Zone 1, so there is more space and you are not competing with smaller personal items.) They charge for drinks in addition to snacks on-board. They charge to print out a boarding pass at the gate agent rather than at home. They charge more for a bag if you didn’t prepay. All of these things are good for us collectively, they encourage travelers to think about their behaviors and reduce costs in the system. They may bite you if you are not careful.

The flight from MSP to DTW was on-time. We landed in a  thunderstorm in Detroit, so the airport kept ground crews from going out to greet the plane and guide it into the gate, leaving us on the plane for nearly 30 minutes extra. I can’t wait for automated airplane ground traffic control.

The return flight was delayed four and a half hours, supposedly due to crew scheduling (so they said over the PA system). (Sorry New Orleans and New York passengers whose flights were actually cancelled, the latter supposedly due to weather).

First it was delayed from 3:07 to 4:49, then to 6:44, then to 7:24 then to 7:32 then to 7:55 then to 7:57. Our gate was moved from D11 to D14 to D11, but I assume this was just part of the Spirit physical fitness program, just like when the Apple Watch reminds you to stand every hour.

We did eventually make a flight approach to MSP, but a few hundred feet off the ground, the pilot suddenly aborted the landing and veered upwards. After a few minutes a flight attendant informed us that Ground Control mandated that to avoid something on the ground. I guess it’s better than a collision. The question is if what they told us was true, or instead the pilot did something stupid, like approach the taxiway instead of the runway. We circled round and did land on the same runway about 10 minutes later, so whatever it was went away. This happens to the large carriers from time to time. Delta nearly killed me at LaGuardia one flight, aborting two landings in a row due to heavy wind.

The downside of a small airline with a small fleet and a small network is that it is more vulnerable if things happen which disrupt service (weather, mechanical issues, labor issues). There is less slack in the system and less redundancy. We were not informed the cause of the delay in writing. The day of the flight they were the second most delayed airline in the world according to FlightAware, with 32% of their flights delayed (and 13% cancelled) – ranked 8th in the world. Detroit at the time was only 8%, Minneapolis was at 7%.

As one of the cancelled passengers shouted “Spirit Sucks”. Another said “you get what you paid for”. Running an airline is hard. Running a profitable airline is even harder. (Just wait for the next downturn, they may look high and mighty now, but every downtown in the past has wiped out accumulated profits from the intervening expansion.) Spirit appears to be profitable.

They gave me a $7.00 meal voucher for the delay, so I bought most of a tuna sandwich (airport prices). They also credit me $50 towards my next Spirit flight. Sadly I don’t think there will be one.

Have you ever flown in a commercial airplane and noticed that first class seats are wider than peasant class, and there are fewer of them in a row? Of course you have. Have you noticed they are always in the front of the plane? This too is obvious, even if you never thought about it. Why are they in the front of the plane? Not so the occupants will die sooner in the case of nose-dive.

In airplanes, the front of the plane is narrower than the middle of the place because of aerodynamics.

I posit these are not unrelated. With less width at the front, airlines would have to either make the seats narrower or have fewer of them per row. But since seats are discrete, and there is a minimum width (even if it doesn’t feel like it), they go with fewer seats. But the plane isn’t so much narrower that you lose exactly one or two seat. Instead you lose part of a seat and can make the other seats wider. And if you make the seats wider, you can charge more. Hence first class is in front of the plane.

First class was one of many logics copied by airlines from the railroads. On trains, my impression (though I am not sure this is a universal rule) is first class is usually on the front or back end of the train (since trains are more easily reversible than planes), though aerodynamics has less to do with it than a reduction in the number of passengers walking through the cabin. On ships, the first class equivalent or staterooms will tend to be above the waterline, so that passengers have a better view, and prices will tend to rise with elevation, and probably towards the front and back.

Today I feel Comcastic, I cancelled my Comcast service, a few days after CenturyLink Fiber Optic was installed in my house at half the monthly rate for 40 Mbps (vs. Comcast Boost which is about 50 Mbps – a difference usually without a distinction, since you share the Comcast network with your neighbors, while you have a line from your house to the office on Fiber). You may recall my experiences of Comcast trying to bill me for a modem I owned. You may recall your own experiences with that hidebound organization.

Well, the lesson for monopolists in contestable markets,  once customers actually have choice, then they flee. Previous choices, DSL, just didn’t cut it, giving Comcast a monopoly on high-speed internet in my local area. There were other substitutes, like 4g wireless, but that is still limited.  Now Fiber does cut it so to speak.

By leaving Comcast, I do lose the Basic Basic Tier of Cable (over the air, religious channels, shopping channels, CNN, and Music Choice). This loss is undoubtedly tragic. To be honest, my children are completely unaware of the existence of over-the-air television and shocked by interrupting commercials. They only know Netflix, YouTube, and our home library.

Comcast even managed to worsen the television-watching experience. They cut that back from High-Def to Standard-Def months ago, degrading our service by introducing new boxes.  I only took TV because Internet + TV was cheaper than Internet alone.

When I called them, they tried to offer me better rates. They really should just do that for all their customers all the time, that might actually create loyalty. I shouldn’t have to negotiate like a used car or a mattress (yes you can negotiate mattresses).

I have AppleTV (v2), and with it Netflix and some of the free services that are available on the AppleTV box. Sadly many of the services require pre-authorization from your cable company, so those are dead to me – and have been given my previous Basic-Basic Cable. Others annoy simply by requiring online registering (I am looking at you Crackle) – a useless nuisance which Apple should fix with a central registry. Others are subscription-based, which is in principle fine, in practice clunky. Also sadly, Netflix search is broken on the older Apple TVs. I assume the newest version has this fixed, but why should they support old boxes? It’s not like I’m a paying customer or anything (oh, I am?).

CenturyLink does not offer its TV service in my area yet. I may test that if it ever comes available. The other downside is that my house is wired for Coax, not internet, so it may be a pain to put in the appropriate internet cabling for CenturyLink’s TV – which isn’t wireless.

The other nuisance is that the Fiber Optic  Box comes into my house, and is connected directly to their WiFi, but since this is on the East Side (near the Telephone Pole), the WiFi is very weak on the West Side of the house. A WiFi booster helps, but this is suboptimal.

Simply having the burden of Comcast oppressing me is a relief and joy. May Century Link have better customer service than Comcast, and may USI come to my neighborhood too.