| 0:37 | Intro. [Recording date: September 17, 2025.] Russ Roberts: Today is September 17th, 2025, and my guest is Political Scientist Anthony Gill of the University of Washington. This is Tony's third appearance on the program. He was last here in November of 2017, talking about tipping. Our topic for today is shampoo, something I really have no interest in. But, actually, we're going to talk about something much deeper and profound, and I am pretty sure you, the listeners, will find it as interesting as I did when I read an essay of Tony's in the Library of Economics and Liberty, which hosts EconTalk; and we will put that essay up online. Tony, welcome back to EconTalk. Anthony Gill: Thanks. Glad to be here. And, I love shampoo. I used it this morning. Russ Roberts: Who knew? |
| 1:23 | Russ Roberts: So, you open your essay with a very simple question, and it seems to have a very simple answer, and you suggest that simple answer is wrong. The question is: Who or what enforces property rights--in America, say? And, what's the simple answer? Anthony Gill: Well, the answer is obvious: It's the government, because the government writes these rules; these rules are put into books. The books are put into the deep recesses of libraries, and everybody can go see the rules of these property rights. That's obvious. When I ask that of my students, they automatically turn to the answer: The government defines property rights. Russ Roberts: Well, and they have police, courts. Anthony Gill: Yeah, yeah. Russ Roberts: They enforce the property rights. It seems true. Anthony Gill: Yeah, it seems very obvious. I actually have an exercise: I have my students--I strand them on a deserted island, a very typical trope within economics--have them build a society. And, I say, 'Who is going to determine who gets to use what?' And, their answer is, 'Well, it's the government.' And, I have to ask them, 'Well, who is the government, and how do we decide on how the government is? How do we decide how to decide?' And, then, I also pause and ask them, I go, 'Well, it's obvious that the government defines property rights. So, when was the last time that you read the rules? You went to the Federal Register here in the United States, or to our regulatory codes in the state of Washington? When was the last time you read those and knew those?' Nobody, nobody reads these things. Russ Roberts: Never. Anthony Gill: No. So, that's the wrong answer. Well, it's not--I shouldn't say entirely the wrong answer. The government does define property rights, and it will take time to monitor, enforce them in certain circumstances. But, for the most part, it's not the right answer. Russ Roberts: And, in a huge portion of circumstances--and we talk about this a lot on this program--there are what we might call unwritten rules, norms, and other things that determine who can do what with what. And somehow, that brings us to shampoo. Which, by the way, I also used today. And, my children mock me: I shampoo twice. So I do rinse and repeat. They think I'm a victim of the shampoo industry, but I like the way it feels after two shampoos. So, what does this have to do with shampoo? Anthony Gill: Yeah. Well, first of all, you should lather, rinse, and repeat because that's what the rule says there on the bottle, right? You don't want to be violating any kind of rules here. So, well, this is a little puzzle that has flummoxed me for a long time, and we can maybe talk a little bit later about why this puzzle started to eat at me and why it became an issue. But, I know many people go to hotels all around the world, and if you've been traveling for several decades, you'll know that a lot of hotels provide you with these small, personal-use shampoo bottles. Conditioners; sometimes in the fancy restaurants, they have mouthwash. I love those things. I absolutely love them. I love them so much that I actually have a whole bin--and this is just one bin--of these little shampoo bottles. And, for those of you listening, I just held up a rather heavy bin of these little, tiny shampoo bottles. Absolutely fascinated by them. However, it was a few years ago--maybe five, six, seven years ago--especially when I traveled out in California, that I noticed that hotels were not doing this anymore. They put dispensers on the wall. So, it was a large bottle; sometimes it was directly connected to the wall, sometimes they just put it on the ledge, they had a large bottle there. And, this irritated me because I love collecting these little bottles and taking them home. I use them on a regular basis. I don't think I'll ever have to buy shampoo for the rest of my life. And it started--I had this kind of question here. And, I was recently at the Stephenson Institute at Wabash University. I had stayed at the Liberty Fund a few nights before, and they had a hotel, or they put me in a hotel that had a dispenser on the wall. But, when I went to Stephenson Institute, they had little bottles. And so, I'm sitting there in the hotel room thinking about this, and I said, 'Well, wait a minute. If I'm allowed to take these little shampoo bottles home,'--and, everybody knows that. I ask people, 'Can I take these little shampoo bottles home?' They go, 'Of course you can.' Everybody knows you can. |
| 5:53 | Russ Roberts: I just want to put in a footnote. You take them home sometimes, Tony, I'm going to guess, even when you haven't opened them. So, if you opened one and you shampooed once or twice and now it's a third empty, you would feel really okay with taking it home because they're not going to leave it for another customer; so you take it home. But, the next step--which, you know, you may be a felon, this is a dangerous conversation--the next step is to say, 'Well, I brought my own.' As it turned out. And so, it's there implicitly--and that word is very important 'implicitly'--it's included in the price of the hotel. It's free. In fact, more than it's free, I paid for it, it's not free. It's built into the price, with a bunch of other amenities in the room. The towels I get to use, the sheets I get to use, and so on. And so, it's totally okay to take a full, unopened little, tiny bottle of shampoo because it's included as a gift to me as the customer. In fact, many hotels say, instead, for the other range of things particularly: 'If you forgot fill-in-the-blank, we have some available for you.' So, toothpaste, other things, dental floss. Who knows? A toothbrush. You could buy one from them; they might give it to you as a way of showing you, making the customer experience more pleasant. But, your point here is that you haven't opened it. It's sitting there in the little basket, and you, as you're putting away your toiletries and packing up to leave, of course you put that in your bag because it's considered part of my--it's mine. Anthony Gill: Yeah. And, I go through many rationalizations on this, too. It's like food, like crackers at a restaurant. It's that once they put them on the table, they're contaminated, and they have to throw them out anyway, so I might as well take it home and use it. I don't know if that's true or not, but it certainly is a good rationalization. And I maybe should not admit this, but it's even more addictive for me that at conferences, I will seek out the bald people and ask them, 'Hey, you're not using your shampoo. Would you mind bringing them down for me?' So, somebody would think that's horrible. Russ Roberts: It's pretty horrible. Anthony Gill: And, that's the reaction I got. I raised this question to--we were at a small conference at Wabash, and the next question that I raised to them I think horrified them. The first thing is that we can take these little shampoo bottles home, right? They said, 'Oh, of course, everybody knows that, everybody knows that.' I go, 'Well, can I take the large dispenser bottles home with me?' And, they were horrified. They said, 'Well, of course you can't. No.' You know, there might be one reason: The bigger bottles are 16 ounces, and you can't get through TSA [Transportation Security Administration]. I said, 'Well, I'll check my bag. I'll just put it underneath the thing so I can take that bottle home.' But, they were horrified. They said, 'No, no, no, you can't do that.' I go, 'Why not? Why can't you do that?' Because, what's the difference between--this is what, three ounces or so--and the 12-ounce bottle? It's just shampoo, right? Russ Roberts: The better example you give in your essay is: Can't I just bring an empty one and fill it from the dispenser, since I didn't use my share? Anthony Gill: That is correct. Russ Roberts: I'm entitled to three ounces, and I might not have used it all, so I can fill my empty bottle that I brought from home. I assume that would horrify them, too. Russ Roberts: Yeah. Anthony Gill: And, I do that. Because, I am so addicted to these little shampoo bottles. I love containers--any kind of containers, right? So I admit I have a problem there. I will bring empty bottles, and if I know it's going to be a certain hotel brand that did go to the dispensers, and I will fill it up. Especially if I like the shampoo: there are some hotels that I really like the shampoo. Other ones, not so much. And people are shocked by this. They're like, 'Oh, my gosh, how can you do this?' Well, I consider this--since these hotels started introducing these small bottles some 50 years ago or so--I consider it a right that whenever I pay the price of a hotel room, I should get at least three ounces of shampoo and conditioner. So, they were horrified. Who would do that? Now, that horror--the horror, I guess, would be bemused horror. I wasn't ostracized, but it was this bemused horror. But, it's going to become important a little bit later, in terms of enforcement of property rights. But, yeah, that's a good question. What's wrong with me taking three ounces of shampoo from the dispenser and putting it into the small bottle? Russ Roberts: Or two or three small bottles. Anthony Gill: Well, I'm going to stop and plead the Fifth Amendment right there. Russ Roberts: Okay. It reminds me of--I think it's the first Marx Brothers movie--The Cocoanuts, which is pretty good. It hasn't reached the level of their later masterpieces. But, in The Cocoanuts, I think Harpo and Chico check into the hotel, and they're bringing their suitcases, and they run into somebody, and the suitcases spill open. And, the porter says, 'These suitcases are empty!' And, Harpo or Chico says--well, it would be Chico. Chico says, 'Well, they won't be when we leave.' Because, in those days, there was a thing about towels. You could kind of, sort of, not literally take a towel. It wasn't really okay: it was stealing. But, the enforcement mechanism isn't perfect. And, I would think--I've never stolen a towel in my life; I'm going on record here. But, I wonder, would they really enforce it? A bathrobe, yes. They make it very clear that if you want a bathrobe that they've hung up, that you can buy it; they give you a price, so it's clear that it's not included. But, it's a fascinating question of--that property right is sort of enforced by something else. And, most of us--maybe not you, Tony, I'm learning more about you by the minute--most of us would say, 'It's wrong to put the towel in my suitcase, even though I can.' And, maybe people would say, 'It's wrong to put the dispenser of shampoo in my suitcase, even though I maybe can.' I'm not sure if they'd call you and say, 'Hey, we noticed that was missing.' But, they're certainly not going to call you for excess shampoo use because you filled up an extra three-ouncer out of their wall dispenser. Anthony Gill: Right. And, it's not only that. I probed people more on this. Because, it started to get a conversation going. This was an early morning breakfast; people were still a little bit sleepy, and I started perking up people. When I asked, 'Can I take the 12-ounce dispenser bottle?' there was a rather esteemed political economist there who said, 'No, you can't. It's illegal.' And, I said, 'Well, show me the law.' Russ Roberts: Yeah, where's that? Anthony Gill: Show me the law that says, 'Thou shalt not take the 12-ounce bottle of shampoo.' And again, it's interesting to note that, because the fact that this person said it's against the law immediately told me, 'Ah. This person defaults to the government setting property rights.' And I entirely acknowledge: yes, stealing is wrong. In fact, you go to the Ten Commandments, 'Thou shalt not steal.' Okay, now there's codes in our government rule books that said this is a robbery, this is a burglary, this is a felony offense, this is a misdemeanor, etc., etc. But, I don't think there's one specifically related to 16-ounce bottles of shampoo. And again, what's the difference between three ounces and 16 ounces? Where does that line draw? If it was a five-ounce bottle, is it okay? If it's 10 ounces? Where does this line get drawn? And, I think that was really kind of the interesting question that got a lot of people to start thinking about: Yeah, how do we define what's stealing, and therefore, how do we define what's property rights? Is it really the government that does that? |
| 14:13 | Russ Roberts: And we're going to get to the answer in just a second. I just want to add one more example, which I think about a lot, and I think it applies to a lot of different things. So, all retail establishments--and hotels would be an example of a particular kind of retail establishment--they all have to deal with shoplifting, which is a fancy word for stealing. It means stealing that's not from another person's personal property, but from a corporation's or an institution's property. And, we all understand that the prices we pay include a premium for shoplifting. Shoplifting is priced into the prices in every store we're in. There's some amount that is tolerated because it's too expensive to monitor it perfectly. And so a store, to stay in business, has built into its pricing the understanding that some things will walk away. And I assume, in the old days, when people were poor and towels were more scarce and more expensive, people did steal towels from hotels more often, and the price of a room had to include implicitly a possibility that you would steal the towel. Or worse is the example that you give in the essay: a mattress. Now, as you point out, it's hard to steal a mattress in a quiet fashion. But, this leads many economics students to what I think is an immoral conclusion--and I don't know if you're going to agree with this, Tony. They will say, 'Well, since I'm paying for the shoplifting in the price, I'm entitled to take some things for myself without paying for them because I'm already paying for them when I buy stuff.' So, similarly, the argument could be, 'Since some towels get stolen, and therefore, the price is higher for the hotel room, I'm entitled to take a towel with me now and then because I'm paying for it.' What's your thoughts on that? Anthony Gill: Yeah, that becomes a slippery slope for me. Russ Roberts: Isn't it? Anthony Gill: I love that rationalization for being able to take 16-ounce bottles of shampoo home. And even a mattress. The mattress example that I give in the article was forwarded by the person who says, 'Well, there's a law against stealing the hotel stuff: you can't take a mattress.' And, my initial response stuff was, 'Of course I'm not going to steal the mattress. It doesn't fit into my carry-on.' Russ Roberts: Yeah. Anthony Gill: Right? So, it's not practical for me to do that. And the person at the front desk is going to notice when you're carrying a very large mattress or a television set out the front door of the hotel. So, what you just said is, 'Oh, I'm entitled to do that.' So, 'Everybody else is doing it. It's built into the price, so why don't I just do that?' I actually don't go that far. So, you are learning more about me, and so far you may have been a little bit horrified--bemusedly horrified--that I take bottles and fill them up with shampoo. But I am not such a felon that I go all the way to taking mattresses, or even the full 16-ounce bottles of shampoo. So, rest assured that I don't do that. There's something there that's stopping me. Right? And, this is really, I think, interesting. It connects to a lot of things that you're interested in, too, mainly Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Where I know I'm in the hotel room, I could take a bunch of stuff, nobody's going to find out. But, I don't do it anyway; there's something there stopping me. Right? There's a self-monitoring aspect to all of this. And I want to give one more example in the hotel room that just really horrified individuals, because it's actually quite important here. Russ Roberts: Yeah. Anthony Gill: We were talking about shampoos; the conversation turned to mattresses. But, I said, 'Well, what about toilet paper?' Russ Roberts: Great example. Anthony Gill: You're halfway through a roll of toilet paper. And, why can't I take that home? That fits into my carry-on suitcase. And, again, everybody was shocked. Like, 'Who would ever think of doing that? That is the most horrifying thing.' And, I reminded them that during the pandemic in 2020, early on, toilet paper was at a premium. So, if you were traveling out somewhere, why not take an additional half a roll? It's basically the same cost as a small bottle. But, there was just an abject horror that anybody would ever think of doing that. So I don't do that. I'm not going to take--yeah. |
| 19:01 | Russ Roberts: I just want to add that when people say you're allowed to shoplift--or, there's a gray area which I didn't mention, which is grapes. In Italy--I was just in Italy--they don't let you touch the fruit. You can't pick up a nectarine and give it a little squeeze to see how fresh or ripe it is. You can't touch the grapes. You can't 'squeeze the Charmin,' if I may use a bad example. Here in Israel, you can touch it all you want, and you're expected--you're kind of allowed--to taste the grapes. Of course. You can't take a peach and take a bite out of it and say, 'This seems like good, it is going to be ripe.' But, one grape, it's understood that that's okay. And, that leads to a question, which is related to our ounces of shampoo. Well, if one is okay--a second would be probably okay, too, just to make sure. But 12 would be too many. And probably four would be too many. And the question then is, why? And, how is it that we have an aversion to the sixth grape, or the toilet paper roll, or the towel, when, as you say, there's no legislative piece of document that's keeping us from doing this? Something else is doing that. And the last thing I want to add is: this is Kant's categorical imperative. If everybody ate 12 grapes because you can--because they don't monitor it--grapes would be very expensive. Because, the premium they'd have to charge for the people tasting and sampling and enjoying them would have to be priced into the fruit. And, we don't want to live in that world. We don't want to live in a world where we have to pay an extra premium and then feel I am entitled to my share. So, what certain moral codes do, at least ideally, is to self-monitor us and make us realize that that is not a world that would be a good world. And the other way I think about it is, if you ask the owner of the store, 'Can I have a grape?' he'll say, 'Oh, yeah.' In Israel, Not in Italy. In Italy, he'll give you a horrible look if you get near the grape with your hands. But, if you ask the guy in Israel, 'Can I have a grape?' or in most American stores, they'll say, 'Sure.' Can I have a cluster? No. So, there is a gray line that's not drawn, but it's clear that the grapes aren't really free to sample. They're free to taste one; that's the implicit deal that's on the table. And, the question you raise, I think, in your piece--which is beautiful--is, where does that come from? Where does that come from? Anthony Gill: I want to point out something that you just did when you were talking about the categorical imperative. You acted very much like a good economist. You thought, 'Well, if everybody takes a number of grapes, then the price of grapes gets too high, and we don't want a high price of grapes.' So, you did the whole cost-benefit calculation there, and that was wonderful. That's the great economic answer that I have my students think about when we think about collective action problems and free riding, and the tragedy of the commons. But, is that really the thought process that you go through? Why am I not taking all these grapes, or a handful of grapes? I think the answer comes down to: Because my mother told me not to do that when I was three years old, or five years old, and it was reinforced there. So, it was something that--not that there's a calculation that we go through-- Russ Roberts: Fair enough-- Anthony Gill: Maybe somebody did that calculation, but it's just you were drilled from Day One, 'Don't take a handful of grapes. Don't steal. Thou shalt not steal.' And, it comes in a lot of different forms, right? You kind of learn. It's: Well, you don't take three or four grapes, but you also don't take somebody else's toy when they're playing with it, or something like that. And, those things are what help to monitor us, but it also creates a certain [milieux? inaudible 00:23:15] that says, 'In our society, it is not proper to do these things, and if you want to be seen as a propitious person--somebody who is concerned about propriety--then you should not be taking these things.' And that starts to act as this internal brake upon us. It helps us to self-monitor, with the assistance of civil society reminding us constantly, ever since we were children, that this is how a proper person behaves. Russ Roberts: Yeah. I should have explained a little bit. The categorical imperative of Kant is, if you're deciding whether to do something, you should ask: 'Well, what if everyone acted this way?' And, if you don't like the answer to that, you would realize that it's not a good thing to do. And, I agree with you--I don't think people say, 'Oh, when I invoke the categorical imperative.' What they actually do is, they have certain norms that come from parenting, school, church--you name it--where they're told what is right and wrong. And those norms come from somewhere. That's what's fascinating. And they differ by society--Italy and Israel--and fruit being an example, right? In some societies, it's okay to take more than one grape, and in some, you're not allowed to take any. I hope I'm not being unfair to Italy. I was in, I think, at least two Italian cities this summer where both times I was told not to touch the fruit and was glared at. But, those norms--those norms--there are two issues: Where do they come from, and what enforces them? They are two separate questions. Anthony Gill: And, if you want me to answer that question, I'm going to shrug my shoulders and say, 'I'm not really so sure about that.' As for where they come from? Boy, those questions get really murky. Our last episode that we recorded together many years ago on tipping, the question comes up, 'Well, who started tipping?' And, as far as we can know, it was sometime in the 16th century in Britain, but it's really murky. These are things that just kind of emerge. So, we talk about how prices affect economic allocation, and you get this emergent order that Hayek always talks about. But, these things happen, too, not only with prices and the allocation of resources, but with rules. So, rules somehow emerge from there as well, and Hayek has written some really great stuff on this in Law, Legislation, and Liberty about the evolution of norms. And, we could talk about the evolution of norms, but where they come from, oh, boy, that's really hard to know because they just kind of evolve. How do they work--? |
| 26:14 | Russ Roberts: But, I would suggest they evolve in trial and error and all kinds of complex ways. But, they stick because they work. Russ Roberts: And, there's more than one norm that can work. And, I think the most important thing is that there is a norm in many situations. There's an expectation of what is appropriate behavior. If it's six ounces of shampoo, that's okay. If it's three ounces, that's okay. And if it's zero, that's okay. But, once you know the norm--so, if hotels don't provide shampoo--which is, I'm sure, the way it was in the 16th century in England, while we're on the subject. You walked into an inn in the Cotswolds, and you didn't ask for the shampoo, you brought it. There wasn't anybody in the world, but if you wanted to use a product, you brought it with you. And, because we got wealthier as a society and the world got wealthier, hotels could relatively inexpensively make sure that you didn't have to worry about it. And that's why it persisted. That's why that norm came to be for those precious decades, Tony, in the 1970s, and 1980s, and 1990s, when you got the little bottles. That was the norm. You went to the hotel; you didn't bring your own shampoo because you knew the hotel would have it for you. So, that was convenient and that was nice. But, if people start taking them like you, eventually they went to the wall dispenser because they realized that not everybody really needs it each time, and some people don't use the whole bottle, and they're only there for one--etc., etc. So, they found it less expensive to give you the wall dispenser, which is really for the customer. This is the most crazy part of these kinds of norms that emerge, because it was really expensive. If everybody filled their empty bottles--brought them with them, and emptied the wall dispenser--they'd stop doing it because I wouldn't want to stay at the hotel anymore, because the price would have to be so high to cover the cost of the wall dispenser being emptied, and the towels being used, and the TV being tucked under your arm when you left. So, in a dishonest society, where norms are ignored or the norms are awful, certain things don't get provided. I might not even get a hotel room because people would pull up the rug and take the mattress. It sounds like a ludicrous comedy, but that's really a possibility. There are many things in a society without trust, where norms are unobserved--not observed by the people--you can't have certain products. Anthony Gill: And that's a really important observation here that goes to the larger picture of what I was trying to get at--is that: If we just rely upon the government to define property rights, to monitor them, and to enforce them, we have a problem because the government can't do that all the time. There are so many different opportunities where we go unmonitored, and we could get away with everything. So we need a strong civic society--a strong sense of trust and honesty within society--to make the economy work. It's very, very important in those kinds of things. Again, to go back to your question: Where does this come from, and how does it evolve? It's a very interesting and mysterious question. To think about the issue of shampoo--and you got me thinking now that I'm a norm entrepreneur by telling people to take small bottles and fill them in a dispenser. Now I feel like I'm undermining Western civilization somehow. Russ Roberts: Yeah, you are. Yeah. Anthony Gill: If nobody can get a hotel room anymore because the price went up because Gill convinced everybody to swipe the shampoo, I'm going to feel a little bit horrible about that. I don't think that will happen. But, when it comes to the evolution of these things, I always ask students--and I think this is a good exercise for students to do--to think about the origin of that norm. First of all, where did these small bottles initially come from? And, I said, 'I'm going to be on EconTalk; I'd better do some background research on this in case Russ asks me when did this shampoo bottle thing start to occur.' As far as we can tell, it was about 1970, in London, the Four Season Hotel started providing these. Why did they do that? Who knows? Somebody thought, 'Hey, this would be a really nice convenience for people. They don't have to bring a big bottle in their suitcase, which spills open.' So, some entrepreneur had that idea. And then other people must have noticed it, so it started to build upon itself. But then, the question becomes, who decided that you could take these bottles away? Because everyone knows--and I was told everyone knows--that you can take the small bottles home. Well, who was the first one who did that? And, how did that get communicated? Well, that becomes really an interesting question of how this happens. And again, it's just little, tiny, 'Oh, yeah, I brought this wonderful bottle of shampoo home, it smells really great,' and somebody else said, 'Oh, I could do that.' The word just gets around. And then pretty soon, everybody knows. And, that's kind of neat. That's how a lot of our rules about property rights evolve. And it happens in every aspect of your life; we're just talking about shampoo here. I will ask my students sometimes, 'Who owns the sidewalks outside the University of Washington?' And, the answer is really easy: 'Well, it's the government. The government owns it.' Or somebody will be a little bit more sophisticated and say, 'Well, the government is we the people, so it's public property and domain.' Oh, that's true, but you make claims on the sidewalk every so often. So, you're walking down with a group of friends, three or four people, and somebody's coming by in the opposite direction in a wheelchair. Now, who, quote-unquote, "owns" the sidewalk for that moment in time? Typically, what will happen in, I think, a well-functioning society--or at least one that I believe is well-functioning--is that we'll move over to the side to let the person in the wheelchair pass. There's a norm about property use there. So, it's a public domain property; it's unspecified how it could actually be used, and we need to get outside of our mentality that there's just one thing and it has one use, and that's the property right of it. Different types of assets, or pieces of property, or things have different uses, and how we define those things is going to be determined a lot by the social norms in terms of this. And, it's kind of interesting to think about this, too. I used to do an experiment in my political economy class, especially when I had smaller classes. If I had a group of 20 students, I'd be in a classroom that maybe had 30 seats. And, on the first day of class, I would get in early, and I would put warning labels on some of the chairs, and then some security tape. Usually around 15 chairs. So, now, I created artificial scarcity. There are 20 students, and there are now 15 chairs. So, who is going to get these chairs is an interesting question. And, usually--I'm really sneaky on this--I would contact one student ahead of time and say, 'I need you to help role-play something for me. I would like you to come into class late, and I'm going to give you a pair of crutches, and I want you to come in.' So, 20 students will be in, 15 chairs are there. The 15 chairs will usually fill up by a very common property rule called first come, first served. The four students that come in after, late, sit on the floor/ And now comes in the person on crutches. And, I just sit there wondering, 'Okay, what's going to happen? Is somebody going to stand up and give the seat to the person who looks like they have a sprained ankle? Or not?' I'm implicitly trying to look at what is the property rule that's going on here. Do students who attend the University of Washington have a certain norm that says, 'We will defer to the person who is injured, rather than our own selfish interest here?' And, the results were interesting. Most of the time, nobody got up and offered their seat to the person. Russ Roberts: Really? Wow. Well, in Israel-- Anthony Gill: They don't. Russ Roberts: In Israel, they would have. I got here on bus today, and I'm fighting a cold, and I get on the bus, and there's no empty seats. And, a 16-year-old girl stands up and gives me her seat. Normally, I would just say, 'Thank you, I'm fine.' But, I don't feel so great, so I took the seat. She obviously saw I was significantly older than her. And, that happens here all the time; that's the norm. Old people--I've got gray hair, so I'm old--we get seats, and pregnant women get seats, and children give up their seats, let alone adults, for people who, quote, "need them more than others." Whatever that means; but I think we know what it means. |
| 35:27 | Russ Roberts: The other point I want to bring in relates to the conversation I had with Mike Munger on this wonderful idea of obedience to the unenforceable. So, these are unenforceable rules. They're not going to frisk you when you leave the hotel; they're not going to search your bag. They could, they really could. It sounds ludicrous, but of course, they frisk us and search us at the airport to make sure we're not bringing in certain things onto the plane. They can certainly do the same thing at the hotel to make sure we're not taking things out of the hotel. So, it's unenforced. And yet, most people don't fill up an empty bottle of a significant size, or steal the wall dispenser. And the reason that's important, I think, is easy to miss. One is, is it avoids the constant litigiousness of having to decide, and weigh, and figure out whether it's a violation or not. But the beauty of the unenforced norms is that there's some play in them. So, that in your particular circumstance, you might be needing that seat. So, it's first come, first served, absolutely. And yet, if you're old, on crutches, maybe pregnant, you might find that people give up their seat, and they feel they do not have the property right to that seat. Maybe not in your classes, but in general, people will be flexible. And otherwise, you have to have a whole code book: Well, you have to be of certain age, of certain infirmity. Crutches are okay, but not if it's a cast. If it's just a sprained ankle-- So instead of having to list all the categories of possibility, it takes care of itself. The example we used here many times is when you sell your house, you have to have it--when you leave it, it has to be clean. You leave a house in America--I don't know if this is a rule everywhere--but in America the norm is, and there's some phrase probably in the contract, literally, about in decent condition or good cleanliness, but it's a vague word. There's no such thing. Is it perfectly clean? Is mopped, swept, polished, burnished? And, the answer is that level of cleanliness emerges from our expectations. And, if I violate it horribly--if I leave trash in the house--then I'm going to get in trouble. But, otherwise, it's kind of left up to the good will of the people on both sides of the contract. And, that, when you have a society that people live up to their expectations, because they're not enforced, you have a wonderful world because you don't have to devote resources to monitoring and enforcement. And, more importantly, you don't have to study a book to figure out what are the expectations because you breathe those in in the air, as you're suggesting. And, that really is Hayek's insane idea--which I don't really fully understand--is that what judges should do is enforce expectations. When they have a court case, whether someone violated the law or not, it's not: You go look at the past; you look at the legislation. You try to understand what was reasonable--what would people expect in that situation--and if they didn't live up to it, they're guilty, and if they did, they're innocent. Period. Which is a wild, crazy idea. Anthony Gill: The word that you used in there that I really love is flexibility. It's flexibility in interpreting what the norm is and in punishing the violations of the norm there. And, this is why I love civil society and social norms as a way of doing this because, again, if we had to legislate and to litigate every single rule, wow, does that take up a lot of time, and people start fighting over these definitions. And, by the way, social scientists love very clear definitions, but at the end of the day we know that definitions have a lot of gray fuzziness around them. Russ Roberts: Yeah. Anthony Gill: And, that is going to lead to more conflict. So, what's beautiful about the property rights that revolve around social norms is that they're flexible in their interpretation and enforcement. And, for me, that also leads to this other term that I like to talk about a lot: graciousness. It's that somebody may violate a norm at some point in time, like, 'Oh, my gosh, that's the most horrible thing,' but if you learn about their context or the situation, you're, like, 'Oh, okay. Well, we understand that; we don't need to enforce it.' There isn't a bright-line enforcement here. So, go back to tipping. If you're at a restaurant or at your local bar and everybody's used to tipping 20% or something, and somebody comes in and they order a beer, but they don't really tip--they just maybe drop a quarter on the bar stand or something--you're, like, 'Oh, my gosh, that person is really horrible; they received good service.' But, if you know, 'Oh, yeah, that's Bill, and Bill was just laid off at the local airplane factory; that's really kind of sad,' you'll give a lot more benefit, more grace, for this person. Which all economies need to do because when we create contracts and relate to one another in our transactions, there's going to be errors. And, we need, as a society--in order for those contracts to constantly be renewed, and to be practiced in other venues--we need to accept the fact that sometimes mistakes happen, and you need to be gracious about that. So, yeah, there are rules. You try not to cheat a customer, but sometimes something goes wrong. Okay, I'm sorry about that. We'll make it up next time. Those are the kind of things that I think really help to foster a prosperous economy. |
| 41:13 | Russ Roberts: And, there's a role for trust here we haven't talked about. Norms work especially well and fail if trust is not--they work well when there's trust, and they don't work very well when there isn't trust. So, if I walk into your class, or, better yet, I'll get on the bus, and I'm dragging my leg like I'm limping because I want to get a seat, and I take advantage of this norm here in Israel that says if you're in distress, you will get a seat: I'm a cheater. I'm a free rider. And, we all understand that happens. People are imperfect; civil society doesn't work perfectly. In a minute, we'll come to Adam Smith, because you alluded to him earlier; we need to go into more detail. But, if everybody does that, then the norm just is destroyed. The norm that says help a person, even though it's first come, first served--if a person's in distress, give them your chair--and everybody fakes it--puts a basketball under their shirt. I remember picking up a hitchhiker when I was young and naive. She was extremely pregnant, and she was frantic. And, I thought, 'Oh, my God, this woman's about to give birth.' So, I let her into my car expecting to be directed to the hospital, and she instead directed me to her neighborhood where she needed some drugs. And, that was a disappointment. I think she lit a cigarette immediately upon getting into the car. So, that was a person who cheated on the norm; and if everybody does that, the norm can't survive. So, there's a certain base level of honesty. And, coming back to Kant and parents telling us what the right thing to do is: If you don't have any of that, it's very hard to sustain these kinds of norms. These norms are flexible because it's presumed that people who take advantage of them are honest. If everybody who was speeding with their wife in the car, who was pregnant, said, 'Oh, she's in delivery, she's in labor,' and told a terrible story that was a lie, everybody would have to get a ticket, whether they were giving birth or not. And that's a disaster. So, it's a very interesting question--it's a separate question--of how that trust gets established. I feel like, actually, we're losing a lot of that in the West these days, and we're going to pay a terrible price for it, which is very sad. Anthony Gill: I think there's a crowd-out effect, too, when we defer to that answer of who enforces these rules, and we all say the government. Well, we become very lazy then. We don't have to follow the norm because we know the government is going to be there to solve it. Well, the government isn't always there, but if we start cheating along the margins every so often, these norms start to break down. I've seen this same kind of thing in airlines. When you board a plane, people who need help to get on the plane, I'm happy to do that. If somebody's really struggling in a wheelchair, and they need a little extra help, that's fine. But, I've noticed over the past five, six, seven years that once that announcement is made--the people who can board first--there's a flood of people that look perfectly fine getting on the plane. Russ Roberts: Yeah. Anthony Gill: Okay, maybe some disabilities are unseen, and things like this, but my suspicion is that with less and less overhead baggage space, there's a desire to get on first to get your bag up there. Russ Roberts: Yeah. No, it's a real problem. And, that's a great example because that is not priced. The amount of space for your carry-on is not priced, and it's first come, first served. And usually, most people get their bags in, but not everybody. Anthony Gill: Yeah. Yeah. So, that becomes, I think, a huge issue here. I've also seen, going back to our tipping conversation many years ago, the norm of tipping--which I love--has really eroded because now-- Russ Roberts: Terribly, yeah-- Anthony Gill: everybody is asking for a tip. And, they're asking for tips in places that are not appropriate. The self-serve frozen yogurt place has a tip jar up there? No, absolutely not. If somebody just gets me a cup of drip coffee instead of a fancy latte, I don't tip. But, there's this scowl, like, 'Well, why shouldn't you tip?' I go, 'Because it doesn't solve the principal-agent problem.' So, it becomes a big issue there, too. I think that's something that we need to keep an eye on. It's difficult for social scientists to measure this or even to want to study it, but thinking about levels of honesty and trust in society are really indicators of where the society is going in terms of prosperity and productivity, and whether or not the-- Russ Roberts: In certain cities in America, it felt like--I don't know if this is true or not--but it felt like stealing a car was not really a big deal. If somebody broke into your car and stole something from it, or took the car itself, and you go to the police, and they just, like, shrug and look at you like, 'What, are you crazy? That happens. There are so many of them; we can't track everyone down.' Something's gone terribly wrong when that's the case, compared to the alternative, where you could leave your car unlocked. Those days, of course, are over. But, there's just a whole range of things in our everyday life that we don't think about that are monitored and enforced by an enormous range of personal choices we make, as well as how we react. So, the person who doesn't leave the tip, who drops a quarter at the bar--if we all know he lost his job this week, we're all going to judge him one way. If we don't think that's the case, we're going to judge him a different way and try to alter his behavior. |
| 47:17 | Russ Roberts: And, that brings us to Adam Smith. What's this have to do with Adam Smith? Anthony Gill: So, one of the--and I thank you for doing this. I go back to your episodes with Dan Klein, and going through The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which is a difficult book to get through-- Russ Roberts: Yes, it is-- Anthony Gill: and there's a lot going on in there. And, I'm still wrestling with it. But, one of your favorite phrases--and I think there's a drinking game with this now, so, listeners get ready--is that Adam Smith tells us that humans love to be 'loved, and to be lovely.' And, I wrestled with that for a while when I first started hearing you discuss this and the phrase. I said, 'Okay, I kind of get the idea of loved.' And, being a good rational-choice political economist in the past, I understood what it meant to be loved. You put somebody high up in the preference profile--so, you know, thinking that way. But, the issue of 'to be lovely' is really kind of interesting. And, I didn't really wrap my head around it, but this whole instance of talking to people, of taking shampoo or toilet paper from hotels, really brought this back home to me. And, to be lovely is to be cognizant of the social rules around you, and wanting to conform to that in a way that people in the future want to interact with you. You want to be seen as somebody who fits in and is doing the right thing; and Smith uses the word 'propriety' quite a bit, and also I think that connects here very well. So, to go back to my instance when I talked about, 'Well, is it okay to take a half roll of toilet paper home from the hotel?' And, you could just see everybody in the room gasp, like, 'Who would ever do that? Who would ever absolutely do that?' Now, that was probably not the right question for me to ask because now, every time I'm at a conference and I'm leaving the conference hotel and wheeling my bag there, all my friends are going to be looking at me, looking at that suitcase, going, 'Does he have toilet paper in there? What an oddball. I don't know if I can trust him to work on a paper with me,' and things like this. I might no longer be lovely. And so, what happens more--you're not just that in the hotel lobby where people are looking at you, and you're wondering, 'What are people thinking about me being lovely?'. That actually occurs in the hotel room when there's nobody around. The doors are closed, and I'm sitting there looking at the half roll of toilet paper, saying, 'Boy, I could really use that at home. But, what if somebody saw me take that?' Well, nobody's going to see me take that. But I know that somebody's looking there. And again, this is very impartial spectator here. If you're religious, maybe there's that supreme impartial spectator, God, looking down on you, saying, 'I know what you're doing there.' So, that will put the brakes on me. I won't take the toilet paper home because I do want to be lovely. And, I'm finally just kind of thinking through that, really internalized--got an intuitive sense for what that means and how strong of an impact that is on human behavior. It's stronger than putting more and more police into a city. And, again, going back to it's okay to steal cars now or go shoplifting and things--we've experienced quite a bit of that in Seattle recently. Well, the result of that is that you get the National Guard coming into your town. I don't want that. That's really bad. And so, we need to kind of cultivate that desire to be lovely--that, conforming to the social norms that are set for us--and that being propitious, wanting to be a person who engages in propriety and is prudent in all their behaviors. |
| 51:04 | Russ Roberts: Well, I think Adam Smith would say, even though no one is watching, at least one person is who isn't divine. And, that's you, the person themselves. And, we judge ourselves. For me, the impartial spectator, the idea of it is--I think Smith was suggesting this is both a positive and a normative theory. Positive meaning this is how people actually behave, and normative meaning, well, this is what they should do. You should act as if you are being observed by someone who is not your friend, who is not going to give you the benefit of the doubt, who is not going to say, 'Well, he's had a hard day,' and that excuse is doing the wrong thing. No. Smith says an impartial person would just say, 'Well, that was wrong what you did. You shouldn't have taken the toilet paper.' And I think, obviously, religion can play a role. But Smith believed, rightly or wrongly--and this is the positive part of the theory--does this really work? Do people actually behave this way? And I think it's worth taking seriously, certainly. I think about--I can see it here on my shelf--the book by Roy Baumeister called Evil. It's called Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty. And, it's a very dark book. I've never finished it. It's very depressing. I don't think that's the only reason I didn't finish it, but I'm just saying, I haven't read the whole thing. But, the book opens with a number of gruesome murders. And, the murderers don't say, 'Yeah, I did it, the person deserved it.' Excuse me. 'Yes, I did it, period.' They always have an excuse. Even murderers want to be lovely. They want to see themselves as being justified. One of the most extraordinary pieces of audio I've ever heard is from This American Life. They have an episode--I think it's called 'Act Five'--it's about the performance of Hamlet in a maximum security prison; the prisoners put on Hamlet. I may have gotten some of those details wrong, but [?] we'll check it out. The point is, is that performing that play--many of these people are murderers--Hamlet is about murder--they are forced to confront the idea that maybe they did the wrong thing. And they have lived for a long time with a belief that what they did was justified: Of course, they had to kill that person for a reason. Of course, that person had it coming to them. Or, they provoked me. It's very hard for human beings to be absolutely evil and say, 'Yeah, I did it. So, what?' Deep down, they're ashamed. This is an extraordinary thing. And, of course, we all do terrible things: selfish things, petty things, cruel things, unwittingly or without enough sensitivity. We're all flawed. But, what Smith is saying is that we don't want to be flawed. Yes, we will lie to ourselves. We'll try to justify our selfishness. But, deep down, we want to be lovely. We want to earn the respect of the people around us. And, it's an amazing thing. And, I think it has a lot to do with what you're talking about here in this essay and our conversation, which is, in most societies, much of what enforces property rights is our willingness to do the right thing. Anthony Gill: Yeah. I love that division between the normative and positive aspects of what Smith is talking about in Theory of Moral Sentiments. The normative one is easy to understand. It's your parents told you you want to be well respected and well liked, so you get that all the time. The positive aspect of it--and I agree with you, I think Smith is building a positive theory of why we behave the way we do--it's harder to really kind of reason through that. Because, again, it's not easily measurable for economists and sociologists to do this. But, it's still--when I thought about it more and internalized it with the silly issues with the shampoo and toilet paper--how strongly that works upon my own behavior. I'm not taking the toilet paper home even though I could, and nobody would know it. Because I would know it. So, what is causing that? The civil society, the norms, and the desire to be lovely is really working strongly on me. And, you just mentioned the book Evil, and how depressing that is. This kind of stuff--and I like to play around with this with students--is actually rather uplifting, taking silly examples of where we always are doing the right thing. Social scientists are always thinking about tragedies, and crises, and how you make the world better. I think it's sometimes useful for us to stop and say, 'You know, actually, things are working pretty well in a lot of places.' You know, Smith's desire for us to be loved and lovely is actually kind of working in a lot of places. People do give up their seats on the bus, people do--and eventually, one of my classes, somebody did get up and give the seat to somebody with the crutches. And, I'm, like, 'Okay, that's really kind of cool.' We're doing the right thing a lot more than we think we are. And I wish a lot more social scientists would pay attention to the really good things that come about this. We need to read Smith's Theory of Mortal Sentiments and not necessarily rue that the world is collapsing around is, but rather turn it around and say, 'Wow, things are looking really good. What are we doing that's great here that makes living in this world a wonderful place?' |
| 56:55 | Russ Roberts: And that brings us to our final topic, which is: What caused you to write about shampoo? What provoked this essay? Anthony Gill: Yeah. Okay. So, this is a little thing that I'm trying to do here at the end of my career, is to get people interested in curiosity. And, over the years, something has bothered me in academia, that we're not really teaching people how to be curious, or what I like to say how to be wonderful: how to be wonderful scholars. And by that, I mean filled with wonder. Our undergraduate students, they come to university, and they want answers. So, they file into our class, and they say, 'I'm taking a class in political economy. Professor Gill, put up all the answers on the board. I will memorize those answers. I'll give them back to you on the exam. You'll give me a badge. I'll walk away with a sheepskin in four years. And I'm just a smart person.' And, that's horrible. Because they're not asking questions. I can give you answers. Answers are 'blue,' and '47.6.' Those are great answers. But: What's the question? The question is really preeminent in any kind of understanding. And, I'm seeing the same thing in graduate students, and even in faculty members now, in scholars. It bothers me that somebody will come to me with a dissertation, and I go, 'What's your dissertation about?' And, the first thing that comes out of their mouth--and this is literally happened--he says, 'Well, I have this data set that I'm going to analyze.' Russ Roberts: Yeah. Anthony Gill: Oh. H-oh. And, they've learned analytical techniques. We give them methods classes where we're teaching them all rigorous methods and robustness checks, and all these different things. And, they're wonderful at doing that. But why are they doing it? What's the question, what's the puzzle here? So, about a decade ago, in my graduate classes I started doing an exercise called Life's Little Mysteries. And, the rules on this are: we're political science, so we're concerned about social justice, and war, and very important topics. But, the rule is that every week, you have to put a question onto our discussion board that is about some mystery in your everyday life. It can't be profound; it has to be just something simple that maybe annoys you and you never really thought about, or you see some kind of difference. We get students from the East Coast, and people jaywalk all the time in New York City, but nobody jaywalks in Seattle. And, people kind of notice this, but they never really think about it. I want students to stop and do that. And, the reason I started doing this with graduate students was because you need to be curious. You need to have not only a question for your dissertation, but you need to develop a lifetime of curiosity, of finding questions everywhere. And, it's interesting because we don't teach that in methods classes, or rarely do we teach that. We just assume it's natural. 'Oh, you're a scholar, so you must be curious.' But, curiosity needs to be cultivated and developed, and I tell students, 'Listen, if you can't do this in the little things in your life that are just within arm's reach or within your eyesight, you're not going to be able to do it really effectively for the big things. You'll be good at analyzing things, and I'm sure you'll get nice publications with the proper coefficients and statistical significance and all that. That's wonderful, that helps you.' But, to have a fulfilled life, you really got to be wondering about the world. And, I took this now to my undergraduates, and I'm now teaching a small one-credit course called How to Be Wonderful. And, students have to, every week, come up with a question about what's interesting in your daily life. Nothing profound--has to be really simple. And, I also challenged them to put their phone down because they're very connected to the world. They're just like, 'Ah, I'm very worldly,' but they can't see exactly what's around them because everybody is walking with their phone across campus, looking at that. And, when I did this with my undergraduates, a number of them came back and said, 'Yeah, this is the first time I walked across the quad and didn't have my phone out, and I noticed the cherry trees are in certain areas of the quad, and there are bumps in certain areas of the sidewalk here. Why is that happening?' I was like, 'Yes, yes, yes. You need to do that more.' And, I've had them come back and say, 'Yeah, I've stopped walking around with my cellphone, and I caught this bug.' It takes a while to do. We had to do 10 weeks of this before people started to really get what we're doing here. But, once they caught the bug, they start asking questions. And, my graduate students, I'm always begrudging them, 'This is really stupid, Professor Gill.' But, by the end of the eighth or ninth week they're, like, 'This is really cool,' and many of them continue doing it. And, it becomes great talk for bar fodder and all this stuff. And, I tell myself, 'I have to play along, too. If I'm going to give my students this, I'm going to do this.' And, this is where this puzzle came around. I had a weekly assignment for myself to come up with this, and I said, 'Hey, I was in two hotels here. One had the shampoo dispenser, the other one had the bottles. Why can't I take the bigger dispenser bottles?' Again, people would say, 'You're not a serious scholar: this is not profound or anything.' What happened at the Stephenson Institute at Wabash was that when I posed that question at breakfast, the next panel that we had, the whole discussion around property rights revolved around that issue of shampoo. So, even though it seems to be a trivial example, it then scaled up to questions about mining rights in the Old West, and how we allocate resources on freeways, and all these kinds of things. So, the little things in life--if you can't understand and be curious about the little things in life--the bigger things in life are going to pass you by, too. If there's anything I could tell scholars out there, or just anybody else, is: be a wonderful person. Look around, be curious, be puzzled. Find ways to be puzzled, and find ways to wonder about the world so that you, too, can be wonderful. [More to come, 1:03:02] Russ Roberts: Well, that was beautiful. |
| 1:03:05 | Russ Roberts: There's a question we didn't ask--you mention it in passing in the article--which is: If you ask the hotel why they replaced the little bottles with the big bottle, they would say, 'Oh, we care about the environment. It's less packaging, we're saving on plastic.' But, my guess is--and I'm sorry to bring this back to you, personally--there may have been so many people taking the little bottles they figured, 'You know, if we put the bigger bottles on the wall, we're going to save some money.' And, of course, through competition, if it works beautifully--it doesn't always, but if it works beautifully--they'll pass some of those, if not all, of the savings on to the customers. But, there's an empirical question now of what is the shampoo budget of a chain like Hilton? Which I suspect pays a lot of attention to that. You were saying it's a trivial thing; it's not a trivial thing. It's a huge amount of money. They were buying a lot of those little bottles; and now, they are saving some money on the dispenser in that it's a larger bottle, it's less packaging, but my guess is there's less shampoo taken by the customer as a result, and that's the much bigger effect. But, that's an empirical question; one would have to find that out. But, I want to also ask-- Anthony Gill: If I could jump in there? Russ Roberts: Yeah, go ahead. Anthony Gill: And that--it beckons[?] me to a challenge for any enterprising graduate student or young scholar out there: that paper needs to be written. Russ Roberts: Yeah. Anthony Gill: Because I would challenge your explanation a little bit. Maybe at the margin, shampoo theft or the small bottles, really all that, it might be. Russ Roberts: I don't know. It's an empirical question I'd love--someone listening to this right now who is in the hotel business, I'd like to hear from you if you have some insight into this. But, the other thing I was going to say is, there's an expression that 'travel broadens the mind.' Alain de Botton--I think we talked about him in the episode with him--he points out that, 'Travel is great. The only problem is you bring yourself with you.' You think you're escaping yourself, but unfortunately, you're only escaping your physical surroundings. Your emotional, mental, spiritual surroundings come along for the ride, and it's sometimes hard to find travel to be as ennobling as it is sometimes said to be. But what is true is, when you travel, you confront different customs and norms. The fruit example is a perfect one that I just mentioned. A recent episode--it hasn't aired yet, Tony, so you haven't heard it--but I interviewed Joe McReynolds about Tokyo. A lot of people attribute Tokyo's uniqueness to the fact that it's in Japan. It's the Japanese-ness of Tokyo that makes it Tokyo--meaning there are cultural things. And, that may be true. We got into a great conversation about how it is that there are so many restaurants with only 10 seats. That's going to be a less profitable experience for the owner, which maybe, in America or other countries, might not be viable compared to their alternatives. There are a thousand questions to ask about a 10-seat restaurant, or the prevalence of 10-seat restaurants, that we didn't get to fully explore. But, when you travel, if you pick up your head from the phone just for a minute, you will see that the world is not the same in every place. Which asks, if you're a curious person, it causes you to ask why. And, there are two aspects to it. One is to notice--that's a huge thing. The second is to then think about why it might be the case that it's different here than it is there. So, it's a wonderful--for me, curiosity is--reading is the way I usually indulge my curiosity. You read new ideas, and new claims, and new concepts, new perspectives. But, travel is another way that you expand your vision. Anthony Gill: I agree. I love that podcast that you referred to about travel, because it was not just seeing different things, but it's traveling off the beaten path. You don't have to always see the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, or something. You just go 10 miles down the road to a local café and just sit and watch people--what they do, how they behave. The world is filled with so many wonderful things that we should all sit and wonder about it because that leads to a more fulfilling life--a more fulfilling scholarly life, and just one in general. Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Anthony Gill. Tony, thanks for being part of EconTalk. Anthony Gill: My pleasure. |
Why is it okay to take the little shampoo bottles in hotels home with you but not the towels? And what stops people from taking the towels? Listen as political scientist Anthony Gill discusses the enforcement of property rights with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. Backing up their observations with insights from Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, and our everyday lives, they argue that the unenforced norms surrounding trust, propriety, and moral sentiments play a central role in building a flourishing society.
READER COMMENTS
Eric Vanhove
Nov 10 2025 at 8:49am
The audio seems to be https://www.econtalk.org/michael-heller-and-james-salzman-on-mine/ from 2021.
Eric Vanhove
Nov 10 2025 at 1:31pm
Well, I guess my comment will be the link to Mine! One of my all time favorite EconTalk episodes. This one is pretty good, too.
Anthony Gill
Nov 10 2025 at 3:22pm
Yes, that was a good one! I also draw some inspiration from Prof. Bart Wilson’s book The Property Species and his other work on humanomics and meaningful economics.
Michael Heller and James Salzman on Mine! – Econlib
And I am glad you enjoyed the conversation. My students love to talk about this and gets them into really thinking the way property rights work. Also, good fodder for the holiday dinner table with relatives!
Lauren (Econlib Editor)
Nov 10 2025 at 1:38pm
There was a temporary glitch this morning with downloading the current audio from this website. It’s fixed now. If you experienced a problem with downloading or listening directly from this webpage, just refresh the page in your browser,and try again. We apologize for the inconvenience.
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Econlib Ed.
neil21
Nov 10 2025 at 4:29pm
Probably my bias, but it was hard not to hear the whole episode as commentary on the current norm-shattering (and lawless) US President and administration.
Tom Murin
Nov 24 2025 at 9:20am
There’s a distinction between “lawless” and “enforcing the laws you don’t like.”
neil21
Nov 10 2025 at 4:31pm
Also made me think of Thatcher’s “no such thing as society”. Without certain (societal? or I guess ‘market’ is the correct scope) norms, you don’t get certain products in those markets.
Ben Service
Nov 11 2025 at 4:11am
Such a lovely engaging and thought provoking conversation. I am one who always tests things by mentally taking things to the extreme end to test if an idea works or not and it has rubbed off on my son so we will have to listen to this one together now and discuss more. Everything usually breaks down at the extreme it is the point that it breaks down and why that is interesting.
On noticing things I live in a small town about 100 kilometres from a bigger city in Australia which I go to to work sometimes and I notice that the women in the richer parts of the bigger city on average seem more attractive than those in my small town and the poorer parts of the city and I am constantly wondering why. Maybe the men are more attractive too but I don’t really notice, they’d have to be Ryan Gosling level to take a second glance I guess.
I’m a bit nervous about putting this comment here with my real name but I do find it an interesting phenomenon.
Anthony Gill
Nov 11 2025 at 8:48pm
Ben,
Your observation is perfectly fine. We need to be honest in our perceived views of the world in order to better understand the world. I encourage my students to do this all the time with my “life’s little mysteries” exercise.
I might hypothesize that women (and probably men) in wealthier areas have resources to devote to better nutrition and health care products like body lotion that have a long-term effect on what we consider beauty. That’s why I like the shampoo from the fancy hotels like the Ritz Carlton … it will help me look younger and more radiant! 😉
Alex
Nov 11 2025 at 8:06am
One of the things that came to my mind when they were talking about social trust and norms making society run better was that it becomes more difficult to have norms when the scale of the population increases. It also becomes harder with increased heterogeneity as different cultures have different norms and have to find a way to interact.
I think of the US, where I live, and how social trust is very low. I don’t think heterogeneity and population sizes are the cause or at least primary causes, because social trust is low in areas that aren’t necessarily diverse or populous and that there are larger, more diverse areas with more social trust than the US.
I wonder how much of that is American culture itself and individuality, how rapidly society has changed since the 1950’s, or something else entirely. I’m sure a lot has been written on this, but I’m curious what others think.
andrew weintraub
Nov 11 2025 at 5:18pm
In 1979 we had gasoline price controls combined with an OPEC oil embargo which led to long lines at the gas station. I was about three cars from the gas pump when a car pulled up to the front of the line and the driver jumped out yelling that his wife in the passenger seat was in labor and he had to get gas so he could make it to the hospital. While he was yelling, I looked into the passenger side of the car to see his wife, who looked like she was under sever duress. No one in line questioned the person in front who immediately moved his car and handed gas nozzle to the guy, who quickly filled up his tank, got into the car, and took off. But he had to stop before he entered the road because there was traffic. While he stopped, a hand came out of the passenger side window. It was holding a pillow and waving it at the line. I.e. she was not in labor. They were just taking advantage of the good will of the guy in the front of the line. When traffic allowed, the car took off down the road with a full tank of gas, without waiting in line.
Anthony Gill
Nov 11 2025 at 8:43pm
I like this example. And I may know someone who was taught how to siphon gas in the early 1970s (when I remember the gas lines more than the late ’70s).
It might be that government-induced crises make us worse people as it shifts around the “natural equilibrium” that would result when the price mechanism is used to allocate resources. Smith argues that trucking, bartering, and exchange makes us better people, a point that is made more explicit by Deidre McCloskey and a few others. It wasn’t explicit in Smith, but I think when we combine the “trucking, bartering, and exchange” with his Theory of Moral Sentiments, this does reveal itself.
In many ways, this might tell us that government interference for political gain really erodes the crucial social norms and values that have helped keep society together for decades and centuries. This, of course, could come and go over time, but methinks that the large size of government with all the goodies it can reward has turned us into malevolent rent-seekers. I don’t think we would be seeing the ill manners we see today if the government distributional largesse was much smaller.
Jaime Roberto
Nov 11 2025 at 10:37pm
This episode contained themes for about 5 episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, made and unmade.
Maybe the Keynes Hayek rap gang should get back together for Curb Your Economics.
Anthony Gill
Nov 12 2025 at 11:54am
I agree!
Mimai
Nov 11 2025 at 11:17pm
Really enjoyed this conversation. Lots of fun insights, and the closing reflections on wonderful really resonated with me.
At several points, the discussion seemed to blur the line between laws (formal, state-enforced rules) and norms (informal, socially enforced expectations).
The example about hotel shampoo bottles made this especially clear. The “show me where there’s a law against taking the dispenser” moment struck me as rhetorically off base.
It’s true, of course, that laws can’t enumerate every possible transgression. But that’s a rather banal point, not a revelation.
Using it as a springboard to argue for the importance of norms felt like setting up an easy target. Most people already understand that formal law can’t (and shouldn’t) govern every small act.
To me, a more interesting question is how law and norms interact, not which one “really” keeps civilization going.
That said, I thought the core message—that trust, self-restraint, and moral norms are indispensable complements to formal institutions—came through nicely. Thanks for a stimulating listen.
Glen Lyons
Nov 12 2025 at 11:25am
I think a key part of the history of the small bottles was missed. They were the same size as free samples that were often given out by the producers. Seeing a free sample size of shampoo in a hotel room looked like a free item to take home.
Dennis Waters
Nov 12 2025 at 2:15pm
The Nobel laureate molecular biologist Sydney Brenner would have enjoyed this. He wrote of what he called “don’t-care conditions” in biology. Just as it would be incredibly tedious and expensive, as Russ said, to enumerate in detail every possible instance of every norm, so it is in biology. Said Brenner, “if you want to do things specifically in biology you have to pay for it in sequence information. But if it doesn’t matter, why bother to pay for it?” Nature abhors unnecessary specification.
Doug Iliff, MD
Nov 12 2025 at 9:02pm
“And, over the years, something has bothered me in academia, that we’re not really teaching people how to be curious, or what I like to say how to be wonderful: how to be wonderful scholars. And by that, I mean filled with wonder.”
The world is so full of a number of things, I think we should all be as happy as kings— R.L.Stevenson, A Child’s Garden of Verses.
“We give them methods classes where we’re teaching them all rigorous methods and robustness checks, and all these different things. And, they’re wonderful at doing that. But why are they doing it? What’s the question, what’s the puzzle here?”
In my faculty fellowship, I was taught that good research was just organized curiosity. Sounds about right.
John Alsdorf
Nov 13 2025 at 12:30pm
A fascinating conversation. With others, I resonated with the desire to be “wonderful” and the importance of cultivating curiosity.
Here’s a curiosity question on hotel shampoo dispensers: WHY are the labels on so many of them virtually unintelligible? The color barely contrasts with the bottle; the text is small (needing reading glasses but I don’t wear them in the shower!!).
On a more serious note, I bounce back and forth between being amused and being annoyed by the futility of municipal regulations in our small beach-town community, regulations that explicitly and categorically forbid such things as riding E-bikes (or E-scooters) on pedestrian bridges or boardwalks–regulations that are utterly ignored by the vast majority of users of those forms of transportation. Those of us who have the temerity to say something to the violators are fortunate if all we receive in return is a raised middle finger. What’s disturbing is how often the people involved look, on the surface, to be fine upstanding citizens!
Dr G
Nov 14 2025 at 11:13am
I think the big point missing here is how cheap all this stuff is.
Why doesn’t everyone grab extra hotel shampoo? It’s annoying and unless you have some oddly specific preference (like Anthony apparently does), how valuable is a 3-oz bottle of shampoo? Sure, if you travel a lot for work you could stock your entire supply of shampoo, bath soap, body lotion, and even toilet paper from hotel rooms. You might save—what?—a couple hundred bucks a year? But then you’re living your life around it.
You’d be stuck planning your luggage around TP arbitrage (“I need more toilet paper, but I can’t bring the big suitcase because the bag check fee wipes out the savings… maybe if I wear my winter coat over my blazer onto the plane I’ll have space on the way back… and I better not forget to bring the empty shampoo bottle to refill from the pump…”). It’s just not an economically valuable use of anyone’s time, unless you put a pretty low value on your own time and effort.
Another example – restaurant salt packets. They’re just there to take, no one is watching. So why don’t people fill their pockets and never buy salt again? Maybe part of it is a loose sense of property rights. But mostly it’s because a container of Morton’s costs $1.50 and lasts six months. I’m happy to “waste” the three dollars a year for the convenience. If I’m really cost-sensitive, the generic is 75 cents.
I think the general principle probably is that if something is sufficiently cheap that the value of “stealing” is roughly equal to or less than the trouble it takes to “steal” for most people with the opportunity to steal, you don’t need to worry about it much.
I wonder if the reaction Anthony gets is less driven by a taboo against stealing, and more driven by a taboo against bizarre compulsive behavior. No judgment from me though, my wife actually does “steal” salt packets, though I admit, I was concerned for her sanity the first time I saw her.
Anthony Gill
Nov 16 2025 at 2:22pm
I will admit to a certain level of compulsive satisfaction in having several bins of hotel shampoo. And I grew up being taught “Midwest frugal” such that saving “a hundred bucks a year” is worth it.
Here are a few other examples of this:
Filling a water cup with soda at a fast food restaurant self-serve dispenser. I’ve talked with some folks who work in fast food (both the teenage workers and older managers) about how closely they enforce the “water cups are only for water” and the answer is that they don’t.
Skipping line (i.e., cutting in front of someone) at the free sample stands at CostCo. Here you have a very basic universal property rights rule in operation — first come, first serve (which people as distinguished as Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith) has written about. But if someone cuts in line, it may cost you a few seconds delay in getting your section of pizza bagel, so what’s the big deal. But people do get upset about these “low cost” things and it may appear as if the people who are enforcing the “no line skipping” social norm seem way too uptight.
DanM
Nov 16 2025 at 10:56am
The discussion of questions and wonder reminded me of walking with my father in Manhattan 50 years ago. We were passing an apartment building with a dryer vent from its laundry room blowing onto the street. Below it on the sidewalk was a single sock. My father shouted with delight: “So that’s where they go!”
Chris McDonald
Nov 16 2025 at 1:18pm
The Adam Smith quote about ‘to be lovely’ reminded me of the Torah or Old Testament scene at the two mountains where the blessing and the curse speech is delivered. Being lovely is living in the blessing. You act in such a way that blesses not only yourself, but your fellows and the shopkeeper and the stranger. When you take the towels, you are living the curse, and you make prices rise for everyone and reduce the hospitality available. I learned this from Church before I found Adam Smith. But it is interesting the way economics are laid out in that Old Testament scene.
Anthony Gill
Nov 16 2025 at 2:24pm
The ancients knew a lot about economics before the economists finally discovered it!
Kirk
Nov 17 2025 at 9:36am
Enjoyed the episode, but one of the problems is not discussing the cost of replacing the items to the proprietor. The big dispenser is typically much more expensive than the shampoo in it, and is intended to be reused to save money. However, the little bottles are typically thrown out and never reused. A key element that doesn’t seem to be thoroughly explored is what happens to the item if you don’t take it (is it provided to another guest or discarded).
At the same time, there are so many other places that this happens that aren’t discussed which involve totally different costs and there is nothing to discard. One of my favorite is: Why can you use a wheelchair-ready bathroom stall but not a wheelchair-ready parking space? The former has no enforcement at all, while the latter is actively enforced which is interesting given the typically immediacy of “need” to use one versus the other. Does it change the calculus if someone in a wheelchair is waiting in line but you are in front of them? Another great one. It is usually accepted that a lone mom with a very young infant can use an “expecting mothers” parking space (which themselves typically have no laws around). Can a couple or a lone father with the exact same child use it?
Hunter Hustus
Nov 18 2025 at 5:21am
I really enjoyed this episode. In January, my wife and I bought a small B&B on Gotland in the Baltic Sea. We had no experience in this business arena. It’s small enough that we don’t have to think about people taking things – yes we do have the larger bottles of high-end soap and shampoo.
Last week we stayed at a hotel just outside Stockholm (Sweden is a high-trust society). The hotel is associated with a vineyard in Italy, thus their branding is centered on their fine wines. The room had a half-size and full-size bottle of red wine in an attractive wooden box. Usually, hotel room wine has a screw top. That of course not the case here. I immediately noticed a very nice corkscrew conspicuously leaning against the box holding the wine. The first thing I did was reference the price list, which of course included the corkscrew ($17) as well as the robes. I took pictures hoping I could upload them to the comments.
I know I’ll think about this episode, norms, and law whenever I stay at a hotel again. I’ll also likely attach a corkscrew by cable to lunch baskets we rent to guests:)
JL
Nov 18 2025 at 10:37am
I enjoyed this provocative episode. I’m sorry that I’m a little late commenting, but there was one relatively minor point that really struck me: The “property rights” framing of whether to give up one’s seat to someone with crutches (or a pregnant woman or an elderly person)–that “they feel they do not have the property right to that seat”–is bizarre and incorrect, I think. Even if a student or passenger had an absolutely secure and clear “property right” to sit in a particular seat, it is still likely that some students or passengers would transfer their “right” to a person who seemed to need the seat more. Another example: People on parade floats during Carnival (Mardi Gras) in New Orleans will toss various items into the crowd. Sometimes people will catch an item and clearly be “entitled” to keep the item if they wish but will transfer that right to a nearby child. It’s not that they think they don’t have the necessary “property right;” it’s that it’s nice to give something to children, especially when they might appreciate it more.
Stuart
Nov 19 2025 at 12:52pm
I more or less do the same as Prof Gill regarding hotel amenities with a few small exceptions.
At timeshares I take the toilet paper. At hotels I’ve taken a roll a couple times where I expected some need before my trip ended.
When there is a kitchen with a small bottle of dish soap, I take that. Like TP, I take paper towels at timeshares and at hotels I do this when I expect a need before the trip ends.
I also have a large supply of little shampoo bottles. I have filled a small empty a couple times.
The reason for my comment is that I hate finding the big shampoo bottle is empty. Once I needed it immediately and called the front desk. They made me come get it so in partial compensation for my troubles, I kept the large bottle.
Tom Murin
Nov 24 2025 at 9:29am
I really enjoyed the episode. I’m surprised that Prof. Gill or Russ didn’t bring up Richard Feynman when it comes to being curious –
“There is a big difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something”
Otherwise, I believe that returning shopping carts is another social norm that should be explored.
cwc
Nov 25 2025 at 7:12am
encountered this in the novel I am reading:
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (2025)
Novel by Kiran Desai
Alfred
Nov 26 2025 at 6:50am
I’m wondering if you all considered that maybe the hotels have a partnership with whoever provides their shampoo, etc products and actually receives a discount on purchasing these supplies from them because it’s a form of captive advertising. And so I actuality they want you to take the shampoo etc because then when you’re not traveling your more likely to buy that brand to use in your home. Most people are probably not frequent travelers and so also probably have fond associations with a trip and this bathing products. That doesn’t necessarily explain why they switched to wall mounted shampoo vs bottles, but there is probably a cost and ESG angle,, and maybe they also discovered that guests will still have an affinity for the products and increased purchase even if they can’t take it home. Maybe the fact that they can’t take it makes it seem even more exclusive and desirable.
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