Trade-offs

In Christopher Marlowe’s play, “Doctor Faustus,” the latter makes a critical trade-off. Successful but very unhappy, Faust desires great wisdom and riches. Lucifer---in the form of Mephistopheles---offers Faust what he wants in exchange for his soul at a later date. Faust agrees, valuing what he can get now over what will happen many years hence. Presumably aware of his ultimate fate, at least we can say that Faust made an informed, if ill-advised, choice.

Important or minor, life is choices, and every choice means a trade-off of one thing (or more) for something else. We make trade-offs constantly, some consciously and some not, some beneficial and some not. Even at the most positive level, whether to go to Mexico or Hawaii on vacation, the situation involves giving up one thing for something else, at least at that moment. Naturally, trade-offs occur in less desirable settings, as when a person with little income must pay the rent or fix the car, but cannot do both.

Many choices are made with conscious awareness and intention. But others are not. Some are made with little thought to what we are really doing and the consequences, bad ones being ignored or denied. Think of parents who fail to instill limits in a child because they have an unconscious need to be seen by the child as a friend, or because they unthinkingly imagine that limits will stunt the child’s emotional growth. Positive outcomes are unlikely for either parents or child. The parents are not looking at their actions and motives with a true critical eye. Thinking they are doing a good thing, they are really trading their needs to feel good or their concept of emotional growth for the true well-being of the child, whose healthy growth requires limits.

At the personal level, cooperation and competition are two important personal and societal elements that can also be inversely related. For a real test of balance, can a person be competitive and cooperative in the same situation? Imagine spouses having a spirited conversation about a conflict they have. Is the posture to be cooperation or competition? Yes, both. First, each partner has right to a view, and to putting that forward. Those views often conflict, and airing of that difference is a partial key to successful resolution. Competition can be factor as each partner seeks the maximum appreciation for a view or position. Second, cooperation can simultaneously exist if the partners do not let the natural and often beneficial competitiveness take precedence over each partner’s wellbeing. Both aims can be achieved by thoughtful and sensitive people in control of their behavior. Creating safety and trust is a pre-requisite to positive outcomes for both.

Trade-offs are also part of both our mental and emotional universes. For example, occasionally we can hold two contradictory thoughts in our minds at one time. But acting effectively often requires that one be at least partially and temporarily dominant, or we will be paralyzed or act inappropriately. A balanced thinker will see that paradox is often at work. She understands that generally both aspects of the issue have merit, and that one should almost never overwhelm the other. Even if she has a strong allegiance to one position, that does not overcome her ability to weigh them fairly. Not needing to be right or to win, which could push her into emotional imbalance, she has open and fearless conversations with those who differ. Fear and its handmaiden anger push people far off balance into self-righteousness and the need to prevail at all costs. The more fear, the more absolute the stance, and the more anger, the harsher the implementation. True both for societies and for individuals, and sadly evident when the social fabric is dissolving or when the emotional bonds are fragmenting. Absolutism is the result, generally anathema to personal interactions as well as to social systems.

Like individuals, a society cannot be healthy if it fails to understand and make appropriate trade-offs. Politics is the process of reaching outcomes through tradeoffs. Consider those inherent in the relationship between freedom and equality, two very important societal values. The challenge is that these two values are generally inversely related---as one goes up, the other goes down. If the proponents of one value attempt to push outcomes that supporters of the other value see as radical, push-back will occur. This will either be resolved healthily through the political process of trade-offs, or the society will experience polarizing fragmentation, with increased hardening of position on both sides. If one side succeeds in imposing its value beyond a certain point, much worse than hardening of positions occurs. Consider a society with unrestrained freedom, or one with complete equality. Nightmares both, without mentioning the possible violent push back.

Finding a functional balance between two important societal values generally does not mean a literal balance. At times, one side will need to be more heavily weighted. If terrorism is rampant, aspects of privacy will have to take second place to societal safety via crime detection and prevention. But such changes in weightings should usually be temporary, responding to current conditions. If terrorism decreases, less emphasis is placed on crime detection and prevention, and more on privacy. A danger for any society occurs when proponents of a particular policy assume that what worked for a while should work forever in the same form and to the same degree. This would be the case if significant encroachment into privacy becomes permanent, or even expands, when the need for it is clearly less.

Trade-offs are a necessary part of the human condition, impossible to avoid. For individuals and groups, as well as societies, a major goal is to maintain a reasonably healthy state by carefully managing a variety of trade-offs. We cannot have our cake and eat it, too. We must accept that we are unlikely to ever get everything we want, or that a person or society will achieve a perfect state. Working astutely and honestly with trade-offs means we move with the river’s flow, not against it.

“There are no solutions to human problems, only trade-offs.”

Thomas Sowell