Stopped at a gas station recently. The printer at the gas pump was out of paper so I had to go inside for a receipt. Customer A, a gentleman with two 24-packs of beer, allowed me in line ahead of him, which was quite thoughtful of him. So when Customer B, a lady carrying a few rather large bottles of booze and a single roll of toilet paper, approached the line, I was inclined to pass the favor along and let her in ahead of me.

Customer B put the bottles and the roll on the counter. She asked for the price on each item. I didn’t quite catch the price of her adult beverages, but the roll of toilet paper rang up at $1.39. She said that $1.39 was kind of expensive.

The clerk said, “Yeah, but when you need it you need it.”

She said, “I don’t need it that badly.” She set the roll off to the side, presumably to be returned to the shelf.

She proceeded to ask how much a “number twenty-nine” cost. The clerk said five bucks each. She asked for two.

I didn’t know what exactly a “twenty-nine” was until the clerk reached over to a counter display full of various lottery tickets and selected two from slot #29.

In light of my last post, I shudder to think about what Customer B valued. Maybe she was sharper than I thought, because the saint of a clerk dropped the price of the toilet paper to a buck even.

During a chat last week with a Fellow Student of Economics, the discussion quite naturally turned to rational behavior. Disclaimer: it’s been a while since I’ve gone over the technical lingo, so I’m not sure that we were discussing rationality as properly used in economic jargon.

So we were talking about rational behavior, and more specifically whether a particular person, to whom he might or might not be married, was capable of behaving rationally. He found that he could not rationally explain her behavior. He then mentioned that relatively recent research and experiments revealed that many people do not, in fact, act as rationally as older models of economic behavior would suggest! (It was funny; I guess you had to be there. And have an econ degree.)

Anyhow, as I said earlier, I’m only a teensy bit familiar with the literature he was referring to. Nonetheless, I told him the following:

Since I started studying econ, I have assumed that everybody always behaves rationally. Everybody always seeks to maximize their net benefit (profit, if you want to think in dollars). In economics-ese, everybody acts until the marginal benefit of further action equals the marginal cost of further action.

Everybody always behaves rationally. So if people seem irrational, it’s not because they’re actually irrational. It’s because you don’t know what they value.

Now, that’s not to say that they’ve accurately measured their benefits, or costs, or time preferences, or interest rates, or whatever. And that’s not to say that their decisions are what most people would consider wise. But everybody always takes what they think are profit-maximizing (or loss-minimizing) actions.

People make so much more sense when you realize that they are rational, even if they place different values on things– goods, services, feelings, yelling loud, getting the last word in– than you do.

Fellow Student of Economics said that made perfect sense. We both acknowledged that it wouldn’t help him win any arguments anytime soon.

The Bears-at-Arizona game in 2006 was something that will be forever etched in the old noggin. It was a Monday night game; the Bears’ first in some time. They’d been insanely awesome so far that season, with the highest-scoring offense and the best defense in the league. Dad came over to my and my brother’s apartment to watch the game on the big TV.

The Bears collapsed in the first half. Rex Grossman had four turnovers before halftime, and the defense was helpless against such poor field position. It was humiliating. Arizona 20, Chicago 0 at halftime. Dad went home and went to bed.

And then the defense and special teams went nuts. The Bears and Cardinals traded field goals, and then the Bears scored three touchdowns on returns. I repeat: the Bears came back and won without a single offensive touchdown. Bears 24-23. My brother and I flipped out, ran all over the apartment, probably pissed off the downstairs neighbors but that’s too bad, called Dad and woke him up to give him the good news. It was perfect. Dennis Green’s meltdown was the cherry on top.

Actually, no, the meltdown was the whipped cream on top. The cherry on top was the fact that that was his last season coaching in the NFL.

Anyhow, last night’s win over the Niners reminded me of that game against Arizona. They got off to a miserable start: penalty on the opening kickoff, blocked punt, surrendered a touchdown on a play that should’ve been blown dead for delay of game, stupid penalties that kept Niner drives alive, an interception called back on review. All in the first quarter. Mercifully, the Niners led only 17-0 at the two-minute warning.

And then the Bears turned it around in San Francisco’s stupid new stadium in a way they haven’t done since that night long ago in Arizona’s stupid new stadium. From that point on, it was a completely, entirely different game. The defense finally looked normal (i.e., “good”), got four turnovers, and got four sacks. On Kaepernick, of all people. And the much-vaunted offense turned it on at long last, despite injuries to Marshall and Jeffrey. Bears 28-20.

They’re in first place in the NFC North. Granted, so is everyone else in the division, but work with me. The offense can be as good as it was last year. The defense doesn’t have to be 1985-good or 2006-good, they just have to be better than last year, say a touchdown per game better. God and Ditka willing, last night was the start of something special.

In light of recent events, I hope police departments, state troopers, and other armed law enforcement agency adopt two resolutions:

1. To purchase and use vest cameras and dashcams.

2. To permit unfettered civilian recording of police activity.

Neither would solve every problem, but wouldn’t video recordings shed a whole lot more light on these otherwise controversial incidents that make national news? Wouldn’t they reduce reliance on faulty human memory? And wouldn’t they lead to greater confidence that if the police are misbehaving, they’ll be punished accordingly? Wouldn’t this help restore build up greater trust in the cops?

Expensive? Sure. But at this stage a PD’s dollar seems better spent on building public trust than on surplus military hardware.

…

I was about to edit #2 above, to address those scenarios in which a cameraman is physically interfering with legitimate police activity. But then I had a bigger concern: my use of the word “permit,” which implies that recording the police should be something other than a right or civil liberty. It’s not a privilege. It’s not something we need permission to do. It’s a right.

Roxie was, for all intents and purposes, a rescue. Her first owner was probably abusive. The first few years after Mom got her, Roxie would cower at anyone’s approach, and wince at the slightest touch. She was pathos-turned-canine, and didn’t seem to know much about being a dog.

Happily, Mike the Dog took it upon himself to train Roxie. Mike would sit or run or play, and Roxie would watch and then follow his lead. She became more active, and she stopped ducking away from the human hands that tried to pet her, and she would approach people more willingly, and she became a happy dog.

Watching it all happen was uplifting. Would that more humans could turn their lives and spirits around in such a way.