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Comment by Sporktacular | Hacker News Reader

"They’d look silly if they were to admit [shameless people] had found a better way of doing things."

This isn't true. When someone cuts in line no one thinks 'oh, they found a better way - wish I thought of that'.

And better for who? It's not better for anyone, including the cheater, when society ultimately becomes less functional. And it is cheating, just applied against social convention. As more and more people employ shamelessness the returns will diminish. If one football player cheats they score some points for a while and make a name. When all players cheat the game is over and fans stop watching.

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It depends crucially on the game you want to play instead.

The problem with this article is the example. When the article says:

> It’s important to note that people were dismissive of Paris because validating her playbook would mean admitting that they were playing an inferior game.

It has failed to establish conviction that Paris was playing a superior game.

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Suppose however you are working on a design team for the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, Missouri. You've found yourself taking longer than expected on verifying the structural properties of the walkway.The game your boss wants to play is "get this project done on-time and under-budget". The game you want to play is "do respectable reliable engineering work."

You could feel ashamed about your work being behind and over-budget and take actions to wrap up the project. Or you could decide that your game is superior and act shamelessly to get more time/budget. Shamelessness as a strategy relies on well-founded conviction that you are playing a superior game.

Life, the game of games. Which is the best game to play?

That's an interesting way to look at it. I took it to mean ignoring the shame imposed for choosing a selfish path that makes things worse for everyone else.

In your sense, sure, since shame is not serving a greater purpose.

> "This isn't true. When someone cuts in line no one thinks 'oh, they found a better way - wish I thought of that'."

Somebody does; "inspirational speaker" Simon Sinek has a talk[1] segment where he's praising himself for how great he is because, after a charity run event when there were free bagels for the participants, he pushed through the queue and took two bagels and nobody stopped him.

And he is trying to teach queuejumping to the audience as some kind of "think outside the box" concept.

[1] https://youtu.be/K-E_KFDWMog?t=12

Well, I guess there's one in every crowd.

But still, it's not like everyone in the line failed to consider queue jumping. It's an obvious strategy, they just forgo it for everyone's benefit. Hence the outrage.

Economics actually teaches that the most efficient queuing system involves people joining at the front, because that way they endure the wait in proportion with their internal system of preferences. Societal sense of propriety literally leads to an inefficient outcome across the board because for cultural reasons we pretty universally join a queue at the back.

Because a queue is about fairness, not efficiency, we join at the back.

Exactly. Probably why we shouldn't turn to economists for ethics advice.

But then if you are in a queue already the most efficient response is to leave and rejoin at the front. Quite soon you don't have a queue, you have a brawl.

Perhaps I'm missing something.

No, that's still not allowed. And, of course, perfect rational agents would never cheat.

So you can never leave a queue? Queuing would then be discouraged, wouldn't it? Making the move to buy something would often ensure you can't buy it but can also not buy anything else because someone else will cut in front of you and if you're out of luck, you'll be stuck in the queue forever, abandoning it is not allowed. Enjoy starving for greater efficiencies.

I'm not well versed in queuing theory, but I would assume that's rather the point. The existence of an unboundedly growing queue implies an inability to keep up with demand, so someone has to lose. The most shameless queue jumpers get served earlier because they have the highest priority. Anyone stuck in the queue didn't have a high enough priority in the first place.

From a utilitarian standpoint it makes sense :shrug:

With normal queuing, you get served eventually and can calculate the time it will take to get what you need. I fail to see how removing both of those parts makes it more efficient, and intuitively it seems that it would mostly lead everyone to avoid queuing unless absolutely necessary or to only try to buy things that surely nobody else wants. Mean wait time down, only the least desired products get bought, and even those only when starvation is the alternative.

It works when joining the queue has a high enough transaction cost. For example, a website or phone support line cutting off a pending connection, forcing the requester to notice and then reconnect, or give up and leave (which makes service faster for others waiting)

I don't get it either. My understanding is that with a queue, we are trading our time to get what we want. Is he saying instead of trading time, we should fork out cash to jump the queue?

Here is a TWO hour long documentary on Youtube that talked all the machinations/tweaks Disneyland made to queueing. TLDR, you have to stay at a Disney Hotel to really jump the queue, buy some crazy app, and make reservations months in advance. It is really stupid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yjZpBq1XBE

I never mentioned money, where on earth did you get that from??

I’m saying the most efficient queue is a stack. End of story.

Is this one of those purely theoretical economics thing or Does this assume there is a different queuing stage from a moving stage? Otherwise it seems like there are too many physical mechanics at play, like should I be able to join the line as soon as I see the line for the roller coaster start moving. How are ties broken if everyone tried to join the line at the same time.

Queueing at the front would imply that there's a possibility of never being served. Queueing at the back never has that being the case.

It seems to me that the math about the queueing isn't properly weighing that scenario.

Huh? Who prefers to stay longer in line?

With enough queue jumpers the line collapses into a crowd shouting for service - a crowd that is bigger than the line. Meaning the average service rate has fallen - that is, a less efficient system.

you only need to look at the effect this is having on politics to see that it can drag us towards a miserable equilibrium where cheating happens because it gives an advantage even though the outcome is worse for everyone.

Well, it's a prisoner's dilemma, innit? Shamelessness (cheating) is always the ideal immediate option, even though it would be better if everyone cooperated. And given the high-stakes, winner-takes-all elements of life under late capitalism, no one can afford to not take the immediate win, even though it will make things worse in the long run, even for them.

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