econlife - How Maps Tell Us More Than Directions by Elaine Schwartz

The Orlando area near Disney World can be seen in two different ways. It just depends if Disney made the map or Google. Emphasizing all that is Disney, their map excludes a nearby state highway as well as a residential area that has non-Disney resort properties. Google provides a less commercial image.

The Orlando Disney World area:

Where are we going? To the message from a map.

What Maps Tell Us

Google

While a Google map might not be selling us something, it does reflect a bias. Compared to Apple, a Google map highlights more roadways and transit. Apple, meanwhile targets users who want to know about shops and landmarks:

Columbus

Here in the U.S., we were rather fortunate that the 15th century Martellus Map got it wrong. Using it as a reference, Christopher Columbus would have concluded that the trip to Asia was shorter if you went westward. Consequently, he wound up in what became the Bahamas.

Using the maps under the Martellus, you can compare the size of the journey to Japan, depending on the direction you select:

The London Underground

Fast forwarding to contemporary British commuters, the problem was a distorted Tube map. Because people thought that Notting Hill Gate was south of Paddington, they used that route to get to Bond Street rather than a shorter link from Baker Street:

Our Bottom Line: Externalities

Maps create externalities. Defined as the impact on an uninvolved third party, an externality can be positive or negative. Vaccines create positive externalities when people unrelated to the recipient remain healthy. Quite different, a negative externality can spread harmful consequences as when a factory pollutes.

With maps, we can have an explorer bring both positive and negative externalities to a vast proportion of the world that Europeans had not occupied. British commuters can waste time and Disney might not help all visitors with a map that focuses on itself.

My sources and more: Today’s post is based on “The Economics of Maps” from The Journal of Economic Perspectives. Slightly concerned, I did not check what they said about each map. However, we can be entirely sure that maps are always biased because they selectively choose facts. And, those biases create externalities.

Ideal for the classroom, econlife.com reflects Elaine Schwartz’s work as a teacher and a writer. As a teacher at the Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, she’s been an Endowed Chair in Economics and chaired the history department. She’s developed curricula, was a featured teacher in the Annenberg/CPB video project “The Economics Classroom,” and has written several books including Econ 101 ½ (Avon Books/Harper Collins). You can get econlife on a daily basis! Head to econlife.

econlife - China’s Recycling Reversal by Elaine Schwartz

People living near Portland, Oregon were recently told to hold on to many of their plastics. 

The local recycler was no longer accepting them.

Where are we going? To a massive shift in waste.

The World’s Waste

China has told the WTO (World Trade Organization) that it will no longer take 24 kinds of waste. The decision was a whopper. As the prime destination for the world’s recyclables, China gets a lot of our waste.

China had two reasons:

1. The waste was too dirty. After all, our Amazon boxes are okay but not all of the plastic and foam inside. And beyond that, we discard our clothes hangers, shoes and garden hoses. Most then go to sorting machines that inadequately separate the filthy and hazardous materials from everything else. China used to get it all. Now they are saying “No.”
2.  They are more affluent. China can afford to purchase the new materials they need to make carpets and pipes and all they send us. They can import new plastics.

This is what China’s imported solid waste looked like in 2013:

As polyethylenes imported from the U.S., the images will soon be very different.

Our Bottom Line: Externalities

China recycled 56% of the world’s plastics. It received 20 million tons of US scrap metal in one year. It got hundreds of thousand of tons of waste paper.

No more.

Last year, it told the WTO that, “By the end of 2017, China will forbid the import of 4 classes, 24 kinds of solid wastes, including plastics waste from living sources, vanadium slag, unsorted waste paper and waste textile materials.”

The result will surely be a ripple of externalities. Hong Kong’s elderly waste paper collectors will lose their income. Portland and other municipalities will lose the income they received from selling recyclables. On the other hand, makers of virgin polyethylene (like DowDuPont) will have a new market. In the EU, Australia, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and the U.S., countless businesses will rethink the flow of waste.

Quartz said that when China sneezes, the world…you know.

My sources and more: Always interesting, Quartz reminded me that it was time to return to China’s recycling role. The Quartz article had multiple superb links. It took me to documents that ranged from a WTO notice to an Oregon metro article. I also read what is happening to communities in California and this Bloomberg analysis.

Ideal for the classroom, econlife.com reflects Elaine Schwartz's work as a teacher and a writer. As a teacher at the Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, she’s been an Endowed Chair in Economics and chaired the history department. She’s developed curricula, was a featured teacher in the Annenberg/CPB video project “The Economics Classroom,” and has written several books including Econ 101 ½ (Avon Books/Harper Collins). You can get econlife on a daily basis! Head to econlife.

econlife - Is Your Self-Driving Car Ethical Enough? by Elaine Schwartz

Assume for a moment that you are driving a car and suddenly see some debris in the road. If you veer to the side into a crowd of pedestrians, you can avoid injuring yourself.

Harm yourself or someone else? As the debris approaches, the decision is yours to make.

Where are we going? To self-driving cars that make decisions for us. 

AV Ethical Contradictions

In a survey on the most moral way to program AVs (autonomous vehicles), the results were somewhat inconsistent. When asked if in an emergency situation, the car should kill its occupant or 10 pedestrians, most respondents selected the passenger.

Similarly, many consistently selected minimizing casualties whenever the choice was the passengers or avoiding others outside the car.

All changed though when survey respondents were personally impacted. Then they would not buy a car that was programmed to sacrifice their safety or their family’s well-being.

As a result, autonomous vehicle designers will have philosophical decisions that have an economic impact. How they reconcile our aversion to self-harm with the need for “the greater good” will impact sales.

Out Bottom Line: Externalities

For AVs, ethical programming is far from abstract. Creating positive and negative externalities, the decisions that AV programmers make will affect pedestrians and passenger, regulators, insurance companies…the list is endless.

For now though, when you see one of Google’s self-driving cars, you can wonder whether it is ethical.

My sources…For a specific look at A.V. ethical dilemmas, these articles from the NY Times and  Science are ideal. Then, for the broader picture, Quartz takes us to robotic 

morality.

Ideal for the classroom, econlife.com reflects Elaine Schwartz's work as a teacher and a writer. As a teacher at the Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, she’s been an Endowed Chair in Economics and chaired the history department. She’s developed curricula, was a featured teacher in the Annenberg/CPB video project “The Economics Classroom,” and has written several books including Econ 101 ½ (Avon Books/Harper Collins). You can get econlife on a daily basis! Head to econlife.