What is Geekonomics?

That’s how almost every introductory Economics textbook that I have read began. Pretty sad, I agree. And when that’s followed by all that “allocating resources optimally” stuff, it really makes you wonder what possessed people like me to take it up in the first place.

There is much that is geeky about me these days. My glasses get thicker each year. I got retainers for my teeth at the rather too advanced age of 21. I stopped bothering with my hair a couple of years ago when I realised nobody noticed the difference when I forgot to do them one day. And I usually dress in loose kurtas and jeans - the trademark attire of social activists and the unemployed. 

Another reason why everyone (including me) should wonder why I took up Economics is I hate Maths, and Economics is really just Mathematics in disguise. My brain switches off, winds up for the day and leaves for some healthy meandering every time I see a page full of numbers and/or Greek alphabets. I suppose they don’t like using English alphabets because they are too easy to pronounce.

But the choice, it was made, and Economics I chose. So I’m doing exactly what economic models claim to do all the time, albeit in a wildly inaccurate and admirably haphazard fashion – stripping away unnecessary details and layers of complexity so that I can look at what I want to see. I present to you Geekonomics. 

I was travelling by the metro again. It's what I do. My association with the metro is a long and eventful one. The ladies' compartment is one of the best things about the metro. During my undergraduate days, the metro was still something of an elitist form of transport; it was new and shiny with the occasional “metro sahi hai” chants from first-time users. Today it's as bad as a blueline bus. In the ladies' compartment you have the privilege of only having to claw your way in without punching or kicking. 

But since there are no "gents" in the compartment, the ladies are very "adjusting". A bench designed for 7 people always has at least 8 people sitting on it, and often 9 or 10. To begin with, let’s assume the utility from getting a seat on the metro, no matter how little the space, is very high because it’s like winning a game of musical chairs; so high that it’s greater than the aggregate disutility to those already seated from having to accommodate an extra person. Let’s also assume that each person's marginal utility from getting a seat is directly proportional to the distance they have to travel, and that the utility from standing is zero. After the eleventh person, the marginal utility from being seated should turn negative, or you could say that seating is maximised with a constraint of 11 per bench. This is not an arbitrary number – it is the empirically observed maximum with daily observations made over a year. The utilitarian school of thought will tell you that Indians are the best utility maximisers ever. 

The Rawlsians aren't going to be so happy about it, though. They think the worst off should get a seat, i.e. those travelling the longest distances should have a chance to sit. Then to optimise under this school of thought, everyone should get up once they've had a seat for more than half their journey and seats will be shared on a rolling basis. It is possible that total utility is higher this way since there is likely to be less disutility from seat sharing. Also, if we adopt this method, senior citizens, heavily pregnant women and women with annoying children should definitely be offered seats by their younger, career-oriented peers. This doesn't happen on the Delhi metro. No, really. Indians would completely fail this test. 

So I suppose somewhere in our heads we're utilitarians. We can't stand to see an inch of empty space on the bench. We have to fill it up with our asses. Pareto optimisation? All public utilities in India are used many times over their capacity. Under-utilisation is an alien concept here. It's only meant for balding white men with thick glasses and a morning shadow: what a geekonomist would look like if I were a white male.