What is the worst things that could happen if you'd give someone a lift?
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Why am I saying and writing this? Because I would like to help raise awareness of National Liftshare Day in the UK, which happens to be on June 9.
Not that I – personally – ever have to make that choice as giving someone a lift on a bicycle is not an easy option, aside from the fact that it is, theoretically, against the law. I am someone, on the other hand, who would not mind being able to get a lift of someone at times, on a longer distance, for instance.
On your own in a car you can listen to the music you want, get on the road without having to wait for someone, be silent without feeling awkward, sing as loud as you like – so the opportunity cost to you of giving a lift is exactly that you cannot do these things – or, at least, not without some embarrassment.
Those “costs” would, however, seem to be rather flimsy penalties suffered in return for giving a lift.
And looking at it from other side of the fence - i.e. the cost of not giving someone a lift - we have one more – or several if it is a multi-person lift – car n the road, greater carbon emissions, more traffic... maybe even the loss of some profit in the form of a greater-than-the-actual-cost contribution towards the fuel!
Giving the lift, it seems, has by far the lower opportunity cost.
Much more recently than any economics lessons at school I have learned another economic term - something called "positive externalities". Positive externalities happen when a transaction takes place and other profitable or good things occur as a result. An example could be that a bee keeper keeps bees to produce honey - the positive externalities are that bees through their activity of gathering nectar to make the honey pollinate all the flowers and crops in the surrounding area. The beekeeper's reason (reason is the important bit to distinguish) is to profit from the honey, as a result, it seems, everyone around him gets a favor too. Applied to whether one does or doesn't give someone else a lift - there are many externalities that feel pretty positive to me.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that your reason for giving someone a lift is in pursuit of a contribution towards your fuel costs. One of the positive by-products is that I will keep another car off the road. This in turn will reduce carbon emissions and reduce traffic. This in turn will have a slightly less negative effect on the environment and hopefully the stress levels of some of my fellow drivers. All of which sound pretty positive to me. I think we can safely assume two things - one, that the cost of not giving someone a lift produces the opposite effects - i.e. negative externalities - and two, the concept of positive externalities has risen to third place (at least for now) in my personal chart of favorite economic theories.
Which brings me neatly on to another favorite economic theory - that we live in a state of "imperfect information". Since we do not know everything all of the time there is a kind of drag placed on the efficiency of all exchange – and that drag means that the plight of all people trying to do "business" is simply to "add value" which is nearly always done by simply improving or directing the flow of information. So how does that relate to lift-sharing? Well, if we all knew who wanted to go where all of the time! it would be very easy to match up who should be giving lifts to whom. But we don't know - and very often we don't even know what our closest neighbors are doing and when the opportunities to double up on a trip might be possible. It would be fair to conclude that all we have to do then to create lift share opportunities is improve our flow of information and act on the back of it.
Between now and the 9th of June, if you are interested in taking part in National Liftshare Day, find out whom you could offer a useful lift to and then actually do it.
What is the worst that could happen?
As I said before, I am a cyclist and do not drive a motorcar and most of the journeys that I make are by bike or, when it is too far, by public transport such as bus, metro or train. I would love to – at times – be able to get to places may be for less that what the railroad services may want to charge me and could do with a lift in a car by someone going that way. OK, getting back would be nice too. So, hence, I think Liftshare is a great idea.
© 2009
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Give us a lift!
