Honor Systems

[Dale Dough]

Re: Borodog:

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I have some other thoughts I think are interesting about con men, the inefficiency of private cheating, and (obviously) institutionalizing cheating (the state).

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Please do share!

[miajag]

It was common practice at the little cafeteria/snack bar in my law school to just tell the cashier you'd pay the next day if you didn't have any cash on you at lunch time. Once when I did this the guy told me that he had been paid within two days every single time in six years of working there.

[bearwiredpair]

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and that higher income people were less honest than lower wage earners.

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This is because they probably went to one of them there schools that hand the honor system.

[ipp147]

There is a restaurant in London that has no prices for its food/drink.

You simply leave what you feel is an acceptable amount for the meal that you had.

[BigPoppa]

I thought about the Freakonomics bagel guy when I started this thread. The guy runs an entire business around people paying on the Honor System with no enforcement mechanism at all (and it works).

I'm sure that schools with an Honor Code still have cheating, but I'm equally sure that they have less cheating than elsewhere. People tend to act the way you expect them to act. If you treat students like the can't be trusted, they're likely to not be trustworthy. If you treat them like they are, they likely will be.

I liked the earlier mention of all the homes left empty every day. We never even locked the door when I was a kid. Neither did anyone else. We trusted our neighbors not to rip us off and they trusted us. It worked, but it could easily have been a disaster if humans weren't predisposed towards cooperation. Imagine if we had to worry about our next door neighbors looting our homes every time we went out?

[mikech]

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I thought about the Freakonomics bagel guy when I started this thread. The guy runs an entire business around people paying on the Honor System with no enforcement mechanism at all (and it works).

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that's a pretty liberal definition of a system that "works." 11% non-payment is a very significant chunk of cheaters.

[BigPoppa]

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I thought about the Freakonomics bagel guy when I started this thread. The guy runs an entire business around people paying on the Honor System with no enforcement mechanism at all (and it works).

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that's a pretty liberal definition of a system that "works." 11% non-payment is a very significant chunk of cheaters.

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Not with no enforcement mechanism on a low value item.
I'd have guessed that the payment rate would be under 50%.
It 'works" in the sense that his business turns a profit based solely off of Honor System payments.

The only thing I can compare it to is restaurant tipping in the US. People stiff waiters every day, and some people never leave a tip. But the system works as long as the vast majority don't cheat Not sure about other states, but waiters in TN make $2.13/hr+ tips. So with no tips there would be no waiters and the system would have to be reconfigured to include a service charge in every check. Since enough people pay voluntarily, that isn't necessary.

An Honor System involving more money per transaction or something like cheating in a competitve school would have a different definition of success.

[tolbiny]

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I thought about the Freakonomics bagel guy when I started this thread. The guy runs an entire business around people paying on the Honor System with no enforcement mechanism at all (and it works).

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that's a pretty liberal definition of a system that "works." 11% non-payment is a very significant chunk of cheaters.

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Not when you consider his business plan. First he doesn't have to pay overhead for a cashier standing over the bagels every day, second he gets to place his product in the best areas possible. A quick calculation shows that 91.3% of the bagels and 93.8% of the donuts get eaten. My summer jobs in high school included a bagel shop and a bread bakery, and those places would kill to sell those percentages. The bread bakery routinely gave dozens of loaves away after they had spent a day int he store at full price, and another 1-2 days at a steep discount, with lots of bread going home with employees as well.

[D.H.]

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I liked the earlier mention of all the homes left empty every day. We never even locked the door when I was a kid. Neither did anyone else. We trusted our neighbors not to rip us off and they trusted us. It worked, but it could easily have been a disaster if humans weren't predisposed towards cooperation. Imagine if we had to worry about our next door neighbors looting our homes every time we went out?

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What kind of place/area was this? I would be more afraid of non-neighbours coming by.

[SmokeyRidesAgain]

I will take anything that is not nailed down.