Notes for Judah: Toilet Seat Economics

Turns out you *can* teach an old dog new tricks.

I'm the Glenn Beck of the toilet seat debate. When it comes to putting the seat down or leaving it up, I'm as hard-line, right-wing as they come. After all, it should seem apparent to any thinking individual that each person should configure the toilet seat according to their own needs. If I were the next person to use the toilet after a woman, I would have to put the seat up, does it make any sense that I should also put it back down? If no one used it before my next visit then I've picked it up, put it down, picked it back up and put it back down again!

I was 30 years old before someone was able to even put the tiniest chink in the armor of my conviction.

I heard an interview with an economist on NPR several weeks ago. He had written a book about using economic principles to solve everyday conundrums and while most of them ended up in the funny, clever and satirical categories, there were a few gems that were quite profound. It was his opinion of the toilet seat controversy that finally set me straight. He said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that there were, from an economists perspective, two basic ways of answering this question: an efficiency answer, and a big-picture answer. Of course, leaving the configuration of the toilet up to the individual currently using it would yield maximum efficiency but sometimes, in economics, the most efficient answer is not the best answer.

A less efficient solution is a better solution if it proves to be relatively low cost but produces a high rate of return. In his opinion, putting the toilet seat down is exactly this type of solution. It is a very, very cheap method of showing love and consideration for the women you care about and, since it is high on almost every woman's list of pet-peeves, that small amount of consideration will yield an incredible return in terms of emotional connection and appreciation.

In short, I'm now a heavily invested stock-holder in the Toilet Seat Positioning Company of America.
(though I still forget sometimes)