Underrated ways to change the world, vol. II

Underrated Ways to Change the World is one of my most-read posts of all time, I think because people see the state of the world and they’re like, “Oh no, someone should do something about this!” and then they’re like “But what should I do about this?” Every problem seems so impossibly large and complicated, where do you even start? You start by realizing that nobody can clean up this mess single-handedly, which is fine, because we’ve got roughly 16 billion other hands at the ready. All any of us have to do is find some neglected corner and start scrubbing. That’s why I take note whenever I spot someone who seems uncommonly clever at making things better, or whenever I trip over a problem that doesn’t seem to have anyone fixing it. I present them to you here in the hopes that they’ll inspire you as they’ve inspired me. According to this terrific profile, Donald Shoup “has a strong claim on being the scholar who will have had the greatest impact on your day-to-day life”. Shoup did not study cancer, nuclear physics, or AI. No, Shoup studied parking. He spent his whole career documenting the fact that “free” parking ultimately backfires, and it’s better to charge for parking instead and use the revenues to make neighborhoods nicer: plant trees, spruce up the parks, keep the sidewalks clean.1 Shoup’s ideas have been adopted all over the world, with heartening results. When you price parking appropriately, traffic goes down, fewer people get tickets, and you know there’s going to be a space waiting for you when you arrive. Many so-called “thought leaders” strive for such an impact and never come close. What made Shoup so effective? Three things, says his student M. Nolan Gray: He picked an unsexy topic where low-hanging fruit was just waiting to be picked. He made his ideas palatable to all sorts of politics, explaining to conservatives, libertarians, progressives, and socialists how pay-for-parking regimes fit into each of their ideologies.2 He maintained strict message discipline. When asked about the Israel-Palestine protests on campus, he reportedly responded, “I’m just wondering where they all parked”. So the next time you find a convenient parking spot, thank Shoup, and the next time you want to apply your wits to improving the world, be Shoup. Jane Jacobs, the great urban theorist, once wrote that the health of a neighborhood depends on its “public characters”.3 For instance, two public characters in Jacobs’ neighborhood are Mr. and Mrs. Jaffe, who own a convenience store. On one winter morning, Jacobs observes the Jaffes provide the following services to the neighborhood, all free of charge: supervised the small children crossing at the corner on the way to [school] lent an umbrella to one customer and a dollar to another took custody of a watch to give the repair man across the street when he opened later gave out information on the range of rents in the neighborhood to an apartment seeker listened to a tale of domestic difficulty and offered reassurance told some rowdies they could not come in unless they behaved and then defined (and got) good behavior provided an incidental forum for half a dozen conversations among customers who dropped in for oddments set aside certain newly arrived papers and magazines for regular customers who would depend on getting them advised a mother who came for a birthday present not to get the ship-model kit because another child going to the same birthday party was giving that Some people think they can’t contribute to the world because they have no unique skills. How can you help if you don’t know kung fu or brain surgery? But as Jacobs writes, “A public character need have no special talents or wisdom to fulfill his function—although he often does. He just needs to be present [...] his main qualification is that he is public, that he talks to lots of different people.” Sometimes all we need is a warm body that is willing to be extra warm. I once did a high school science fair experiment where I put Mentos in different carbonated beverages and measured the height of the resulting geysers. The scientific value of this project was, let’s say, limited, but I did learn something interesting: despite how it looks to the naked eye, bubbles don’t come from nowhere. They only form at nucleation sites—little pits and scratches where molecules can gather until they reach critical mass. The same thing is true of human relationships. People are constantly crashing against each other in the great sea of humanity, but only under special conditions do they form the molecular bonds of friendship. As far as I can tell, these social nucleation sites only appear in the presence of what I would call unreasonable attentiveness. For instance, my freshman year hallmates were uncommonly close because our resident advisor was uncommonly intense. Most other groups shuffle halfheartedly through the orientation day scavenger hunt; Kevin instructed us to show up in gym shorts and running shoes, and barked at us back and forth across campus as we attempted to locate the engineering library and the art museum. When we narrowly missed first place, he hounded the deans until they let us share in the coveted grand prize, a trip to Six Flags. We bonded after that, not just because we had all gotten our brains rattled at the same frequency on the Superman rollercoaster, but because we could all share a knowing look with each other like, “This guy, right?” Kevin’s unreasonable attentiveness made our hallway A Thing. He created a furrow in the fabric of social space-time where a gaggle of 18-year-olds could glom together. Being in the presence of unreasonable attentiveness isn’t always pleasant, but then, nucleation sites are technically imperfections. Bubbles don’t form in a perfectly smooth glass, and human groups don’t form in perfectly smooth experiences. Unreasonable attentiveness creates the slight unevenness that helps people realize they need something to hold onto—namely, each other. Peter Askew didn’t intend to become an onion merchant. He just happened to be a compulsive buyer of domain names, and when he noticed that VidaliaOnions.com was up for sale, he snagged it. He then discovered that some people love Vidalia onions. Like, really love them: During a phone order one season – 2018 I believe – a customer shared this story where he smuggled some Vidalias onto his vacation cruise ship, and during each meal, would instruct the server to ‘take this onion to the back, chop it up, and add it onto my salad.’ But these allium aficionados didn’t have a good way to get in-season onions because Vidalias can only be grown in Georgia, and it’s a pain for small farms to maintain a direct-to-consumer shipping business on the side. Enter Askew, who now makes a living by pleasing the Vidalia-heads: Last season, while I called a gentleman back regarding a phone order, his wife answered. While I introduced myself, she interrupted me mid-sentence and hollered in exaltation to her husband: “THE VIDALIA MAN! THE VIDALIA MAN! PICK UP THE PHONE!” People have polarized views of business these days. Some people think we should feed grandma to the economy so it can grow bigger, while other people think we should gun down CEOs in the street. VidaliaOnions.com is, I think, a nice middle ground: you find a thing people want, you give it to them, you pocket some profit. So if you want an honest day’s work, maybe figure out what else people want chopped up and put on their cruise ship salads. I know a handful of people who have needed immigration lawyers, and they all say the same thing: there are no good immigration lawyers. I think this is because the most prosocially-minded lawyers become public defenders or work at nonprofits representing cash-strapped clients, while the most capable and amoral lawyers go to white-shoe firms where they can make beaucoup bucks representing celebrity murderers and Halliburton. This leaves a doughnut hole for people who aren’t indig…