John Hood: Buy Christmas Gifts Without Regrets
RALEIGH — Now that the Christmas shopping season has begun in earnest, we are about to witness the ritualistic burning of a straw man. Call it one of many pagan-inspired traditions of the season.
Just watch: some sly journalist or humorless scold will assert that the exchange of Christmas gifts is a lose-lose for our economy. The first version I saw of this argument was, I believe, in a New Republic column several years after I left the magazine.
In brief, the claim is that gift-giving is a waste of economic resources. Because the giver cannot crawl inside the mind of the receiver, the giver’s selection of a present can’t possibly be as satisfying as the present the receiver would purchase for himself with the same money.
If I spend $30 on a book for you, and you spend $30 on a digital download for me, we may each end up with goods that please us very little. I may have bought you a new history of the War of the Pacific, to which you may respond: “But I didn’t know the Chilean Army fought in World War II.” And you may have bought me the complete Mariah Carey film collection, to which I may respond: “What led you to believe I was a masochist?”
We’re both worse off, the argument goes. Far better would be for us to exchange gift cards, or just straight cash. Indeed, some versions of the argument suggest that even this would be inefficient, given that we are exchanging the same dollar value. Why not just forget the whole thing? The exchange does, after all, involve some transaction costs (cards, wrapping paper, getting together, etc.)
This is a good example of people knowing just enough about economics to get them into the woods but far from enough to lead them out again.
A key error in this analysis lies in the definition of a good. It is not correct to say that the good in question is simply a book or download. It is a gift. It consists not only of the tangible item but also of the time invested by the giver in picking it out, and the sentiment or message conveyed in the selection. The giver is demonstrating affection or consideration, something that can have real value to the receiver.
We all know this is true from everyday experience. Think of some of the gifts you’ve received. Don’t they mean more to you than simply the retail price, because of who gave it and how, when, and where it was given? Indeed, while a simplistic valuation of the good might start at the retail price and then go down due to depreciation, we often find that older items go up in value as we grow to appreciate more the circumstances in which we came to possess them.
Besides, individuals acting within the market process already figured out a way to address the problem of the truly awful or unsuitable gift. It’s called a return.
Millions of Americans take back gifts to stores and purchase something else, a practice that fuels major retailer discounting in after-Christmas sales. Most people don’t see this as a big waste of time. In order to receive the benefits of gift exchange, they accept the risk of the occasional return — and often walk away with something else they didn’t expect to buy but come to value.
That brings up another way gift-giving adds economic value: the pleasant surprise. You see, another basic flaw in the reasoning here is that we all know precisely what we want at all times. No serious defense of the market process is predicated on this unrealistic proposition. In reality, we sometimes come to appreciate that which we wouldn’t think to buy for ourselves, either because of sentimental value or just because it turns out our gift-giver knew something we didn’t.
Which is not, by the way, an invitation for anyone to inflict Mariah Carey on me.
John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His latest books, Mountain Folk and Forest Folk, combine epic fantasy with early American history (FolkloreCycle.com).
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