Rational Choice: Taking Over the World

And I'm not rooting against it...

I interviewed two forestry technicians at the local INAB (/Instituto
National de Bosques/--National Forest Institute) office in San Jerónimo
today--really nice guys. Soft spoken, and very knowledgeable. They
were also dressed and acted like they spend a lot of time doing hard
work outdoors, which I find encouraging. Stained jeans, faded shirts,
and work boots with worn soles.

Although they were trained in silvicuture, they were rational choicers
in disguise, explaining to me in detail how a series of forestry
incentive programs created by the Guatemalan national government had
made it economically desirable for campesinos to engage in forest
management and sustainable forestry.

They showed an understanding of the fact that peasants in rural areas
face strong incentives to heavily discount the future (their hungry
children, among other things, present an incentive to do something to
make money today rather than tomorrow). And they were aware that, even
when faced with government incentives for re-forestation activities,
there are still barriers to peasants' participation (like the fact that
they often lack title to their land, so they're not eligible to receive
subsidized seed and fertilizer).

This was a refreshing change from some of the interviews I had in
Uspantán, where individuals told me that peasants only failed to engage
in sustainable forestry practices because they were "uneducated" and
"ignorant." I'm the first one to recognize that education may play a
role in promoting good practices in forestry (and any other policy
area), but these individuals were unwilling to recognize that peasants
might have rational reasons for doing the unsustainable things they
do--reasons like feeding their families.

In fact, I would argue that the average peasant spends more time
carefully weighing the costs and benefits of his actions than your
average middle-class gringo, and therefore, is probably more "rational,"
in the economic sense, than me. For one thing, the utility associated
with a given unit of money is a hell of a lot higher when you make so
little--Q.5 (about seven cents) is worse than nothing for me, as I can't
buy anything with it, and it weighs down my pocket. For the peasant,
though, that's pretty close to buying the ingredients for a meal (not
one that I'd want to eat, but still...) and maybe enough for more than
one person. For another thing, because they typically make so little
money, their time is relatively more valuable than what they do own, so
they'll probably spend much more time thinking about how to spend their
money. That extra Q.5 I wasted today so that I wouldn't have to walk
down a half a block to another store where I knew the soda I bought
would be cheaper would be dearly prized by someone who makes less than a
dollar a day.