Tampons Are Just Like Bicycles, Right?

Both crotch adjacent at least, kids should have access etc?

A reader writes in (Mr. Lowe, J) with a suggestion that if I just change the word bicycle here to tampon - or, rather, dredge up an old piece about tampons and word search for that automated change to bicycle - then I’ve an easy article. And that’s true, in a sense - although some of the jokes of the past might not make all that much sense. Crotch adjacent they may both be but that doesn’t mean that all snideness will automatically translate.

But one of those joys of economics is that lessons are indeed lessons. Base and underlying ideas do translate across because that’s what a base and underlying idea means - that it’s transferrable from one example to another.

So:

AN SNP manifesto pledge to give free bikes to every child who can’t afford one is set to fail as new figures show just three per cent have received one.

Data obtained by the Sunday Mail shows the 2021 promise has cost about £700 per bike, with £5.3million spent so far.

That’s, umm expensive. It also means that yes, not just because of the crotch adjacency, tampons and bicycles are the same thing. When we drill down into the essentials of what’s going on then yes, the same economic model provides us with the information we desire.

They’re idiots.

Well, OK, politicians and all that, but yes, they’re idiots.

So, what the Scots government decided to do was note that kiddies like bicycles. OK. Also that some were too poor to be able to have bicycles. OK. Then they decided to do something about that. OK. It’s the what which goes wrong. They decided to physically provide, from the centre, those poor Scottish kiddies with a bicycle. That’s mad.

Now, I, as that neoliberal bastard that I am, would probably have sent every household in the country in receipt of child benefit a small bike repair kit. Couple of spanners sort of thing. Which, from long ago memory, is about all you do need to work on one. Perhaps one of those round things to tighten and straighten spokes as well?

Plus the address of the local dump. Which is where all too many bicycles do end up. Crapped out bikes, spanners, job’s a good ‘un.

We are not ruled by neoliberal bastards - whatever anyone thinks, we are not - so we know the scheme’s going to be more expensive than that.

So, OK, but they still go wrong. As I said earlier:

Which, of course, is why it is such rampant idiocy for government to try to distribute the things themselves. We already have great big barns in every city and town in the country packed with all the variations of these products. They’re called shops. All kids need is the coin of the realm to browse said barns and purchase the variant they desire.

Now, I have changed just the one word in that for it to make sense here. For the earlier piece was about those free tampon handouts to beat period poverty.

Agreed, I didn’t think period poverty was even a thing, still don’t.

Let's stipulate that these products are highly desirable, both in the general and specific sense. No one is arguing that women should return to the less effective methods of the past. However, it's still a really dumb idea to try to make them free at the point of use because it's always a really dumb idea to make things free at the point of use.

Our first problem with the idea of free supplies is free supplies of what? I've seen enough of the ads on daytime TV (it's a culturally exotic life as a freelance writer, let me tell you) to know that there are a number of different solutions to this little problem. Different women prefer different of those solutions and we're most certainly not going to start insisting that there's one state subsidised and free one and everyone else just has to pay, are we? But without the price system we don't actually know which solution is the best. For we need to observe who is willing to pay for what in order to work out what it is that people prefer.

That’s one of the problems with centralised and free at the point of use provision. Of what?

Guess we could have the state tampon in all its singular form but I doubt we’ll make that many women happy by it. Equally, bikes differ so why would the one state model make sense? And if we’re going to insist that each Scottish kiddie gets the type, size and gearing they desire then why not just send them to the damn shops already full of the things?

But the suggestion for a solution, that government hand out free product, is still the wrong one. Instead, if poverty is the problem then solve the poverty with money. That is, if there is going to be subsidy then subsidise poor people, don't subsidise products.

And that’s the base and underlying lesson here. The similarity - beyond the crotch adjacency, a joke I’ve already stretched too far - is that we don’t give people things because we don’t think they can afford them. We give people money so they can afford them. Mostly because it’s more efficient to do it that way. The folks get something closer to what they want, it costs taxpayers less to provide it, more gain for less pain.

You want poor people to be richer then give them some money. Then fuck off.

Which is why politics never does zero in on the correct policy response and instead sets up ever more never-ending schemes to deliver product, services, not the money that can be used to buy them from the already extant supply systems. For which politician would ever believe that problem solving - so that politicians can, may, even should, fuck off - is the correct political solution?

This bicycles scheme is just piss poor and it is piss poor for political reasons as it all was over tampons. Or is that just me hammering that crotch adjacency again?

(Fnarr, Fnaar)