The Perspective Gained From 35,000 Feet In Air

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Updated 19 hours ago

Flying in a jetliner high above the ground gives you a unique perspective. This is simultaneously more and less informative than is the perspective you get when on the ground.

The perspective offered from the jetliner is more informative because it allows you to see patterns of human activity that are not visible at ground level. For example, looking down from 35,000 feet you see the patterns formed by roads. You notice that the patterns aren't random. Wide highways connect large cities and towns. Branching off of these major thoroughfares are smaller roads, each linking neighborhoods, shopping districts, factories and transportation depots to the large highways.

Most of what you see from up high appears to be orderly and well-functioning. Yet when you're on the ground, driving along these roads, you can't see the larger patterns that are easily detected from above. From the ground, you don't detect the precise and complete path of the road you're on or its location relative to most nearby roads. On the ground, you don't see the patterns and order that you detect when flying.

If you're an engineering type, when flying you might find fault with the patterns that you see below. Some roads twist and turn for what appear to be no good reason. Wouldn't traffic flow better if those roads were straight? Some towns seem to have more than their share of roads connecting them to major highways, while others "� apparently of the same size "� seem to have less than their share. Some roads are crammed with crawling traffic while other, parallel roads have very little traffic. Wouldn't it be better to shift some traffic from congested roads to uncongested ones?

It's when you try to engineer what you see from up so high that your perspective becomes less informative than that which you get when you're on the ground. From the sky you don't detect the hills and valleys that make it best for some roads to twist and turn rather than to be perfectly straight. From the sky you cannot see that some towns concentrate their production in heavy industry while others specialize in supplying services "� thus causing the industrial towns to require more roads for delivery vehicles than are required by the service towns.

From up high you don't see the fact that the more heavily trafficked roads lead to more popular destinations than do the less heavily trafficked roads.

Human activity on the ground looks different from different physical perspectives. Human activity also looks different from different theoretical perspectives.

One of the great benefits of my discipline "� economics "� is that it supplies "lenses"? that allow us to detect important patterns of activity that cannot be seen from "the ground."? For example, it's easy for someone on the ground to see that trade destroys some jobs, but it's more difficult to see that trade also creates jobs and promotes growth. Economics offers a perspective that makes job creation and growth visible.

But even the finest economists can't see, from their high perspective, the many details that cause entrepreneurs and consumers to choose as they do. Therefore, economists should be humble when recommending policies that override the particular decisions of private actors.

Donald J. Boudreaux is a professor of economics and Getchell Chair at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. His column appears twice monthly.

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