I just ran 3.1 miles in 97.5º heat. Shortly after leaving my house, I came upon three teenagers walking in the same direction down the street. As I passed, one of them said, "I can beat you in a footrace." I waved for him to come along, adding, "I have three miles to go." Undaunted, he sprinted ahead. After about 100 yards, he stopped, turned around, and walked back. I could see a smile on his face. "Come on," I said as I approached, "I have three miles yet to go." As I went past, he said,"You got me that time."
The three young men were wearing long shorts (oxymoron alert!) with their underwear showing. The young man who "raced" me had to hold his pants up with one hand as he sprinted. This got me to thinking. I begin with the assumption that nobody would willingly wear such clownish apparel, nonfunctional as it is. People wear it out of peer pressure. Everybody prefers a world in which nobody wears clownish apparel but nobody is willing unilaterally to deviate from the norm. It struck me that this was a prisoner's dilemma of the sort Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) set out to solve. A prisoner's dilemma is a situation in which there is a divergence between what is collectively rational and what is individually rational. Rational, self-interested individuals, in other words, will end up in a situation that each of them finds inferior.
Hobbes's solution was for individuals in the state of nature to agree among themselves to create a sovereign, who would thereafter punish disobedience to the sovereign's decrees. In effect, individuals traded liberty for security. What today's young people need is a sovereign, someone who will forbid the wearing of clownish apparel on pain of punishment. We already have a sovereign, so perhaps we need a law that prohibits the wearing of clownish apparel. No long shorts; no visible underwear; belts or suspenders required. I think young people will happily obey such a law, for they will then have a self-interested reason not to wear what even they must know is clownish apparel.
What do you think?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 