Positional Scarcity and the Virus

First, let’s take business travel. Getting on the plane means you’re serious about something. Everybody’s busy; the fact that I’m choosing your one hour in person rather than an entire day of otherwise productive work is a signal: “I’m taking this seriously.”

In fact, you can probably make the case that in the long run, the coronavirus pandemic might help sustain the current paradigm of higher education, rather than destroy it. All it takes is one year of seriously threatening to take away everything that makes college great for us to be reminded why it’s so hard to opt out. Yes, some schools will go un... See more

I doubt it. I believe the contra case is actually stronger. Our year of disruption may very well reinforce, not disrupt, the core reasons for why we do these things.

If we don’t, then we’re just gonna go right back to flying as a way to signal we’re serious about something. And undergraduate degrees will still do the same job of charging for a good spot in line. It’s basic human nature to pursue positional scarcity, and to do whatever it takes to compete for it. The virus won’t change that.

There’s a case to make here, which I see being spitballed around on the Internet a lot, that the old way of doing things is over. Our year of remote-only will dispel the familiar rituals and expose our expensive addictions to these things. And after this is over, we’ll have a harder time with casually approving $4000 of flights, hotels, and lost ti... See more

This presents a question: once this is all done, will we go back? In normal times, the status quo here is very expensive: we pay a huge premium for business travel versus a phone call, or for university tuition versus learning online. You can’t help but wonder: if we’re forced for an entire year to forego the in-person benefits of these practices, ... See more