Ep40 -- Elf Delusions

 Around LA these days. You're seeing more and more of those Waymo, driverless taxis.  They're undeniably cool, although I won't be at all surprised if a few years from now we look back and wonder how we could be so naive as to unleash a technology like this upon ourselves, not least of all because it further pushes buses and trains out of the transportation picture, and since it's owned by Google parent company Alphabet, will no doubt unleash some truly unholy privacy abuses that we can't even conceive of today. 

All that being said, there is one way in which driverless cars will definitely improve our transportation experience.  By eliminating what's known as phantom traffic jams.  Any experienced driver has been stuck in a situation where traffic suddenly grinds to a crawl. You slog through it for 5, 10, 15 minutes, and then it just opens up again. No accident, no construction, nothing.  Well in 2017, MIT researchers found that those kinds of traffic jams were primarily caused by tailgating. It happens because tailgaters don't have enough time to just slow down appropriately given the slowing of the car in front of them. They have to slam on the brakes and oftentimes come to a complete stop, as does the car behind them and the car behind them.  But if the cars can stay a reasonable distance apart, they can adjust their speed much less dramatically and keep the flow of traffic moving.  And that's how driverless cars, which will automatically maintain an optimal distance from the cars around them, can have a big, positive impact on traffic. And that'll be great.  Whether or not it's enough of an improvement to make up for the potential negative consequences remains to be seen. 

That balancing of pros and cons has been on my mind lately, since next week my Amazon Prime membership will expire for the first time since Prime was introduced almost 20 years ago.  For me, the benefits of saving a few bucks and the convenience of fast delivery are no longer worth the decimating effects that Amazon has on small businesses and entire communities across the country, basically sucking up all that value that used to exist locally and distributing it to Amazon's investors.  And while the truth is that my individual choice won't make any difference, there's a story that I tell myself of how I live in the world. And that story involves using Amazon as infrequently as possible. 

So this week, I want to share with you a wonderful essay that I read recently about the way one writer has chosen to live in her world, believe it or not, by imagining that magical elves are making special yogurt just for her.  And how we can all, again, believe it or not, benefit from doing the same thing. 
Stay tuned. 

I'm Craig Boreth, and this is The Great Ungaslighting, a podcast about how we all get conned into accepting a human culture that's out of sync with our human nature and how we can begin to fight back and put the kind back into humankind. 
But first, a word about a sponsor. 

This week's episode of The Great Ungaslighting is not brought to you by Planet Fitness along with any of the other innumerable companies that make it nearly impossible to cancel your subscription to their product or service.  Planet Fitness just happens to be the poster child for this kind of infuriating corporate abuse. So much so that there was an episode of Friends, all about how impossible it can be to cancel your gym membership. 

Of course, it's patently obvious why companies would make it so difficult to quit their subscription services. It's because they make more money that way.  Who among us hasn't noticed a charge on their credit card bill and realized it's for some streaming service or other subscription that you signed up for months or years ago, probably for some free or dirt cheap introductory period, and then forgot to cancel? I have.

It's difficult to study this kind of thing and figure out just how much money consumers are inadvertently spending. But a 2023 paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research looked at what happens when you cancel the credit card you were using to pay for those subscriptions. We all know that experience. You cancel a card and only afterward are you reminded of just how many subscriptions you were using that card to pay for.  And then when you get those messages that your monthly subscription charge, didn't go through you have to consciously decide if you want to continue paying for it or not.  And researchers found that inadvertent subscription payments increased seller revenues by somewhere between 14 and 200%. 

But all that is hopefully about to change. The FTC under Lina Khan recently approved the "Click to Cancel" rule, which requires that it must be as easy to cancel a subscription as it was to sign up.  I wasn't able to find any polling on this decision, but I'd have to imagine that most consumers would be pretty happy about it.

And of course, corporate interests would be firmly opposed. And this is reflected in the FTC vote, with the three liberal members supporting the rule and two conservative members opposing it.  And I gotta say the arguments against the rule seem a bit contrived. They're basically using the same argument against this regulation that they use against all regulations, that it will stifle innovation and competition and raise prices for consumers.  One argument against the rule claimed that gyms like Planet Fitness, now that they're no longer getting all that money from people who don't use the gyms inadvertently still paying dues, they'll have to raise dues for the members that do actually use the gym.  And while that's no doubt true, I'm not sure that "we should keep prices low by continuing to rip people off" is such a great argument for maintaining the status quo. 

And this gets at one of my pet peeves about the anti-regulation folks. Look, I get it, nobody likes costly or time-consuming regulations. But the vast majority of regulations were born out of a need to mitigate bad behavior and protect the general public. Now over time, some may have become inefficient and need tweaking. But demanding that the regulation be eliminated altogether is childish and leads to adolescent ideas like "for every new regulation we need to eliminate one."  So 10 years from now, when some big business lobbyist convinces his bought-and-paid-for politician to eliminate the "Click to Cancel" rule because it's no longer needed, you can remind them, and yourself, that regulations are like vaccines. Just because there's no polio around doesn't mean you no longer need the polio vaccine. It's because of the vaccine that there's no polio around, or at least there didn't used to be polio around, but now low vaccine rates have given it a fighting chance at a comeback. 

Or maybe the actions the FTC is taking these days against consumer abuse and corporate monopolization might actually begin to claw back some of the power the public has ceded to private enterprise over the past 50 years. And maybe, buying politicians will become a quaint relic of some past misguided era of predatory capitalism.  Hey, we can dream, right? 

And we're back.

So I read this wonderful essay last week by Jenny Slate, who you may know as the co-creator and voice of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.  If you haven't seen the movie of the same name, turn off this podcast and go watch it. And don't tie yourself in knots trying to watch it for free. Pay the damn $3.99 or whatever, because the experience of watching that movie is worth way more than that, and it lets the world know that you actually value things worth experiencing. 

Slate's essay is in the form of a graduation speech. But true to her form, it's not a typical graduation speech, although it is as potently wisdom-imparting as any graduation speech can be.  Her speech is about how we can make our own experiences to be, as she says, "thoughtful about what you want to be feeling, and to invent roads to get there."  I've talked a lot on this podcast about how all experiences of reality are subjective, and even last week talked a little bit about how we can gain some sense of control over our experience of time.  For Jenny Slate, she takes control over her experience of reality through yogurt. That's right, yogurt.  Here's how she experiences something as seemingly mundane as eating yogurt: 

"When I have yogurt. I like to pretend it is a custard prepared for me by a small enclave of elves. Like a ceremonial custard made for an honored guest who is visiting from afar. I think about the elves choosing the fruits with which to flavor the custard and about how the cream for it is poured from a lovely pitcher by the mini hands of an elf. I think of the expert stirring done by an older elf with a wooden spoon that that elf got from an even older elf in the family.  I see it all from above the spoon making the circle in the thickening cream and sugar. I like thinking about the elves describing this dish in their cultural books, calling it a very special custard served cold. I say to myself that they have a name for it, like 'Wanderer Pudding.'"

 And she says the result of playing these kinds of games within your head is that "it can change the truth of how you are in your world."  Note that she says in your world, not in the world. 

Because all you really have is your world. So why not make it as enchanting a place as you possibly can. It reminds me of something Frank Zappa once said about his improvisational guitar solos. He said, "You have a piece of time and you get to decorate it." I think that's how we should think of our own personal realities. We get to decorate them, so why not believe as Slate beckons you to, that "you are an honored guest, spooning out a ceremonial custard, and experiencing the kindnesses of enchanted beings who hope that you are always comfortable."  The end result of these little mind games, according to Slate is empowerment and satisfaction.  

And you may think, yeah, but she's then just living in a fairytale world with no connection to reality. And that would be a risk if this type of behavior took over your life. But it's unlikely that it would.  What's more likely is that you would take those brief and fleeting senses of empowerment and satisfaction and let them impact your interactions with the realities of other real people in the outside world.  The less dependent you are upon outside forces to provide those experiences, the more generous and caring you can be toward the outside world. And the more resistant you'll be to the gaslighters of the world.  Man, if there's anything that would be kryptonite to a gaslighting Superman, or garlic to gaslighting vampires, it would be empowerment and satisfaction.  

My friend, Mike Gerber, who publishes the brilliant humor magazine The American Bystander, and is also a student of history,  often talks about how he believes that Americans have embraced a certain immaturity over the past 50 years, seeking out strong authority figures who can make us feel safe and certain in a dangerous and bafflingly complex world.  The end result of that is, of course, a dangerous flirtation with authoritarianism.  

I'm not suggesting that if we all just meditate on the fanciful origins of our morning yogurt that we'll have one grand kumbaya moment and all of society's ills will fall away.  But I'd hope for all of you. The same thing. Jenny Slate hopes for her fictional audience of college graduates. That you will "find one moment in the next 70 or so years to pretend that you are on the receiving end of ceremonial pudding."  And that definitely wouldn't hurt.  

That's it for this week. If you liked this episode, please share it with a few friends who you think would also enjoy it. And until next time, be kind to yourself, cut each other some slack, don't tailgate, but do use your damn turn signal.