Individual Choice Leads to Positive Change, from Recycling to Sound Money
Positive change happens from the bottom up, when individuals are empowered to make good decisions. In 2013, Americans recycled 34.3 percent of all solid waste, more than triple the rate in 1980 (9.6 percent) and more than double that of 1990 (16.0 percent). Though that rate has flattened in recent years and lags behind some other rich countries, it still constitutes a significant behavioral change in American society, and it is the result of giving individuals a choice. Those seeking other types of societal change, including change in our monetary system, can learn from this pattern.
Some of this change has happened due to government intervention, and some of those interventions, for instance requiring manufacturers to use certain recycled materials, could be considered heavy-handed. But other government action has been geared more toward increasing the scope of individual choice, such as that concerning building the infrastructure required for recycling to take place, rather than reducing it. And Antigua Report Deputy Editor Karen Munoz recently showed that government action isn’t necessary to foster recycling. A smartphone app being launched in Chile matches poorer individuals who until now informally collected and recycled garbage with individuals and firms who need waste to be collected.
Policy and innovation that focuses on enhancing individual choice also slowly changes views and opinions. The process of choosing to recycle gives people the opportunity to think more about their overall impact on the environment, potentially changing other decisions such as what products to use.
Environmentalists have had less success seeking top-down and coercive regulation, such as curtailing carbon emissions to the degree they advocate. Here they run into the problem of lack of political will. Even if 40 percent of Americans strongly support a carbon tax, it isn’t enough to enact the tax. But technology and policy allowing those 40 percent or more to individually choose to lessen their environmental impact results in a big change.
Those who support the United States’ returning to a gold standard face a similar problem. Not enough people understand or support the issue to generate the political will for such a sweeping change, at least at the present time. But the opportunity for positive steps remains. The state-level movement to accept gold as legal tender is exactly the type of choice-enhancing legislation that could lead to slow and steady change. Advocates of change more generally also need to be fighting tooth and nail to treat cryptocurrencies as money rather than assets for tax purposes. These types of initiatives broaden individual choice and open the door to positive change that, while incremental, can add up greatly over time.
Max Gulker
Max Gulker is a former Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. He is currently a Senior Fellow with the Reason Foundation. At AIER his research focused on two main areas: policy and technology. On the policy side, Gulker looked at how issues like poverty and access to education can be addressed with voluntary, decentralized approaches that don’t interfere with free markets. On technology, Gulker was interested in emerging fields like blockchain and cryptocurrencies, competitive issues raised by tech giants such as Facebook and Google, and the sharing economy.
Gulker frequently appears at conferences, on podcasts, and on television. Gulker holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University and a BA in economics from the University of Michigan. Prior to AIER, Max spent time in the private sector, consulting with large technology and financial firms on antitrust and other litigation. Follow @maxg_econ.
