There was much harrumphing last year when I noted that I think allowing people to pay extra to jump the lines at amusement parks is problematic.* As I wrote at the time,
It used to be that the line was the great equalizer. Rich or poor, no one was better than the line. Line-jumpers were reviled, the lowest of the low. You stood in line at the airport and waited for everyone to work their way through security. You stood in line for hours to get on a two-minute roller coaster. You stood in line to get a burger at Shake Shack. It wasn’t exactly communal—I think we can all agree that interacting with strangers is terrible—but it was equalizing.
Allowing the wealthy to pay for the privilege to jump the line shatters that semblance of equality. I’m convinced that the average person doesn’t particularly care about economic inequality per se. They don’t pine after the wealthy’s homes or their yachts or their caviar. But that’s because they rarely see the difference in lifestyle: ignorance is bliss. When you’re forced to confront the difference in a visceral, taboo-shattering way, resentment spikes.
To repeat something I've said on numerous occasions: I don't think that income inequality itself is a problem because people either don't care ("Someone wins, someone loses, that's life!") or they simply don't see its manifestation (how many multi-million-dollar Manhattan penthouses have you set foot in?). But when you rub someone's nose in it you're bound to generate some resentment. And in a democracy resentment leads to stupid laws being passed.
I bring this up because Nick Denton made a similar point in a slightly different way in a long and fascinating interview with Playboy.** Talking about Uber's surge pricing—in which prices go up when demand goes up—Denton praises the inevitability of the practice even as he notes the psychological resistance it promotes. Here's Denton:
Markets are more efficient mechanisms for the distribution of services. The only thing that happens if you don't have surge pricing in a city like New York is that the limos and the cars dry up at certain times. Then nobody gets anything. And maybe that's the point. Maybe the point is that human beings are not so much concerned with their well-being as with their relative position. If they can't have access to this thing that's in short supply, then they don't want anybody else to either.
Emphasis mine. I think this is one-hundred-percent correct. And it goes back to the larger point I've been making. Americans are generally tolerant of vast differences in income because they are, frankly, ignorant of it. This is a good thing! Someone else having more money than you doesn't negatively impact your life in any real way. But it's a very precariously balanced good thing, because human psychology is tricky. If you tip that balance the wrong way, you're going to wind up with a lot of angry voters demanding a lot of stupid taxation policies.
And that's not good for anyone.
*I hate that word—not as much as I hate, say, "microaggressions"—but it's a usefully descriptive one in this situation.
**Is that attribution correct? Should I say "Playboy's Kinja Site"? I'm one of the olds, I don't know how this works. I'm also honestly curious, please answer on Twitter if you make it this far.
Featured image from tschörda.