Monetary Penalty

CMC’s South Quad is bordered by Sixth Street, and walking down it is the first step toward getting to Claremont Village. There’s a corner with a crosswalk where Sixth intersects with Mills, but that’s about half a block out of the way, so typically I’ll just jaywalk. Once, after sizing up the speed of oncoming cars, I stepped out to cross and noticed that the closest one was accelerating and swerving toward me. So, I stepped back to the curb.

It turned out that the car’s driver was Dan. Once it was clear I was out of the way, he decelerated and veered back toward the middle of his lane. I smirked at him as he passed. He looked toward me and waved.

As this was happening, an old woman who was walking on the other side of Sixth Street stopped to watch the scene unfold. I like to think that she muttered something about whipper-snappers and shenanigans, but that’s just wishful thinking. What makes her important to the story is that when I did eventually get to the other side of the street, she was mad at me.

I didn’t think this was fair, given that I wasn’t the one who initiated Dan’s swerve, nor had I really participated except to react to it. Nonetheless, she was mad that I was amused.

A better person would have simply acknowledged her point and moved on, but I, as I always do, felt the need to equivocate. “I know Dan,” I explained, “He’s harmless.” After all, it’s not like he was just going around scaring random street-crossers.

She didn’t buy it. She chose these words: “All I know is, one day there will be a monetary penalty for that sort of behavior.”

It is worth noting that we do not need to wait for such a Utopian day; reckless driving is a ticketable offense in our very own time. Still, what’s more interesting about her response is what she could have said instead. Particularly, she could have gone with “one day he’ll end up hurting someone.”

One reason to prefer the response she didn’t choose is that it better expresses the reason she was upset. When she first saw Dan’s car speed up and swerve, I doubt she grew concerned that he’d get pulled over, imagining him writing a check and cringing. Rather, I’m sure she thought she might be seeing a violent accident, a car out of control and a helpless bystander. These are the gut, human reactions that make us stop, watch, and condemn, not concern about other people paying fines.

The other day I had lunch with my friend David, who majored in philosophy and minored in economics at Clark University. He explained that he had intended to do a full double major, but backed off of the economics in light of a particular frustration. It was one that I share: that often theories that are controversial in philosophy and politics are presented as economic fact. For example, people will say that economics indicates that it is better for the government to adopt a certain policy, simply assuming that the single goal of government is to promote aggregate economic growth. This may be true (I don’t think it is), but the overriding point is that it is a philosophical claim, not an economic one, and thus one that economics cannot evaluate. Nonetheless, without background in political philosophy, people often miss that part of the debate.

That brings me to the second thing that’s funny about the old woman’s response to Dan’s driving. It implies that a “monetary penalty” is the worst thing that can happen to a person. Clearly the comment was meant to be forceful, so why not mention the scariest consequence you can? She might have mentioned the potential danger to Dan himself, but went with the ticket reference instead. The economic results were closer to the front of her mind than the human ones. That’s, I think, what David was worried about.