A few days ago, I had to renew my ‘six month pass’ which allows me to cross over into South Africa without having to queue to get my passport stamped. In the queue waiting with other people for the six month pass, I noticed what seemed to me to be a pretty ridiculous system in place. It went something like this:
- Queue to get a form to complete
- Take form away and fill out
- Re-queue (in same line) to get six month pass.
After all that, I even noticed the border guard screw up and throw away some forms! Also quite interesting was that some people required a form and others didn’t. This time I did not – the first time, I did. In any case, it seemed that it really wasn’t that important either way and may have just depended on the whim of the border guard.
The queuers (mostly but not all Sotho) naturally formed a brilliant and, I thought, fair way to deal with this crazy system. You queue at the back when you first join, and get the form when you reach the front.
But, once you have completed the form, you are allowed to ‘merge in turn’ at the front of the queue, with one person in the main queue going to the window followed by someone who had just completed the form.
This seemed to happen naturally, and one person even explained it to an older lady who followed the previously unspoken rule without hesitation. I was highly impressed – and as an adherent to the queuing-obsessed British culture, I feel qualified to judge other peoples’ queuing skills J
Going academic... (you can stop reading here J)
... I remember skimming an article on queuing in developing countries maybe a year ago – I think it was set in Morocco* (I’ve tried to re-find the paper on the internet, but have not managed to find it). It was trying to show that the lack of ‘fair’ queuing (fair as in everyone waits their turn and it’s first come first serve) is, in fact, socially optimal.
The idea is that people who need any given service most fight harder for it than those who need it less. For example, a soon as a train ticket booth opens, the people who get the tickets are the ones who fight hardest. They put in the most effort because they have the most need for the train tickets. The lack of ordered queuing is therefore socially optimal.
(As an economist, I would have to wonder why there was excess demand, and would probably recommend increasing ticket prices, but maybe there are reasons not to do this. Maybe a Government does not want to exclude poor people from train travel, for example.)
It is a very interesting theory and allows for the person who most needs the service most to get it, but without the socially costly need for long waits, and still allowing poorer people a chance to access a service. That is, rather than proving need for a service by camping out over-night or during work-time a la Wimbledon, everyone can all turn up on time and fight it out. As a whole, the population has more work time (increasing production and therefore wealth) and more leisure time (making everyone happierJ).
I must confess that I have one rather severe problem with the theory though. It seems to me that in order for it to work, ‘initial endowments’ (that old chestnut) of height, weight, age, strength, fighting-for-a-place-in-the-queue-skill would have to be distributed equally. If some people had a natural advantage, they might beat someone else despite less need.
It seems that, if this is an alternative to putting up prices, the system is simply favouring strong, (probably young, probably males) over other people. I am not sure why this might be better than favouring (probably older, probably male) richer people. And it comes with the added social disadvantages of (i) giving a incentive to cultivate strength and argumentative/fighting skills with potential social repercussions (ii) wasting people’s time who think they have a chance to get a (e.g. ticket) but they don’t get one, with economic costs.
*I’m not sure if I would classify Morocco as a developing country or not.
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