Adam Smith Institute

The New York Times has reported that vacation time is good for your health. While this is not a very shocking or interesting revelation, it is certainly a useful piece of information that businesses and individuals could consider when creating employment contracts. More information can only help people make good decisions and properly weigh trade-offs. The problem, however, is that the researchers behind the study do not stop simply at spreading their information; they have fallen into the all-too familiar pattern of identifying something that has one good effect, and concluding that the appropriate action is to legislatively mandate that thing for everyone, regardless of the trade-offs. Most of Europe has already fallen into this trap, but America so far has held out.

Long vacations are a delightful thing, and may well be good for the health, but those aren’t the only concerns that either individuals or businesses must consider. After all, working in an office at all is probably less healthy than a life spent relaxing and exercising on the beach. The authors acknowledge that mandating increased vacation days would increase labour costs, but suggest that this would be counter-balanced by increased productivity and better employee retention. If this is really true, concerned organizations should be able to focus on simply spreading that information. This is precisely the sort of question that a market is suited to determine, for surely if these benefits really do make up for the increased costs, companies will begin offering longer vacation times. If businesses remain reluctant and people are unwilling to voluntarily make the trade-off between money and vacation time, perhaps European governments, too, should pay attention. 

People weigh the relative benefits of different packages of pay and hours and vacation days, and make their own decisions; for some, the extra pay may be well worth giving up the mild benefits of extra vacation time. If anything, perhaps proponents of longer vacations should be encouraging employers to offer more negotiable contracts, or encourage individuals to negotiate longer vacations in exchange for lower salaries, in line with how they value such things. Allowing a bunch of legislators to make that decision for Americans would be a step in the wrong direction.

John Baden runs an influential environmental-economic think-tank in Montana. In his syndicated column for the US papers this week he strays off that brief onto what is for him a more personal issue. The so-called 'Title IX' law passed in 1972 bans discrimination on the basis of sex in colleges that receive federal funds. It was designed to end the discrimination against women that was rife in employment and selection policies at the time. But it can also be taken to demand equal treatment – and numbers– in college sports.

Baden welcomes the six-fold increase in female college sports participation since the legislation. But he cites three problems. First, a number of men's teams have simply been disbanded in order that colleges can claim they are achieving parity. Second, there has been a huge rise in litigation over the work conditions and salaries of female coaches and administrators. These are hardly happy outcomes.

But Baden is perhaps most concerned with the fact that, because more women are encouraged to participate at more demanding levels so that colleges hit their quotas, serious injuries among female athletes have increased. Baden's own daughter needed knee reconstruction as a result of this – and such injuries, he says, can be a lifetime burden.

Baden supports equal sports opportunities for women. But he acknowledges that it comes at a price we would be irresponsible to ignore.

I feel a regulation coming on. The Times last week carried a headline on the China earthquake: "Human cost of cut-price concrete is revealed in the rubble." I didn't have to read the story: you know what it means. Shoddy materials contributed to the death toll as substandard buildings collapsed.

Normally following such disasters, the Chinese government rounds up 'cowboy builders' and various 'racketeering' architects, town planning officials and the like. They're shot, and the families are sent a bill for the bullet. (Though the cost of sending the bill and collecting the cash must far exceed the few yuan-worth of lead.) It's designed to encourage the others – though the others are probably just as innocent.

People use cheap building materials because – well, they're cheap. It's a waste of resources – time, money, energy, materials – to use stuff that's costlier than you need. Save money and you can use the change on something that you really want a lot more. Sure, at the back of your mind, if you live in an earthquake zone, is the fact that every few hundred years your particular town might get hit by a tremor and some people will be killed. But that's a risk you have to calculate. Save money now and that saving can be put to good use and grow your economy, making you rich enough to deal rather better with natural disasters.

I make the same calculation every time I fly or drive somewhere. These activities are risky: there is a finite chance I'll be killed in a crash. And make no mistake, being killed is a pretty big deal as far as I'm concerned. I still do it, because the potential benefits to me far outweigh that small risk.

This time, China might spare us the shootings. They're beginning to realise that it's better to have the sympathy of the world than its disgust. But The Times headline makes me dread that they will introduce all sorts of new building standards. Why's that bad? Because it will make houses, apartments, shops and offices that much less affordable. Less will be built, and people will continue to live in insanitary squalor (at the risk to their health and indeed lives, of course) and economic growth will be that much slower. The rational calculations of individuals will be outlawed by the political necessity of the authorities.