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Take your pick

Gary Lester

In a recent column, I mentioned the “one cuts the other chooses” concept. It’s a way to be sure a tasty item is shared fairly. One person cuts the cookie, piece of cake, or pie slice and the other person gets to pick which piece they want. So, the cutter makes every effort to make the cut as close to 50% as possible lest the chooser get a bigger piece.

I was thinking about this and since it seems to be a perfect solution in one situation, I wondered if there might be other applications. Here are some I came up with.

Here’s a simple one. A couple wants a night out, but they can never decide where to go for dinner. I remember one time when we were first married when we put the names of all the restaurants in town on slips of paper in a hat. There were 15 or 20. We were going to pull a name and go there. What we pulled was the least favorite restaurant of all. We decided it was silly to go there, since neither of us wanted to go there, so we threw the name back into the hat, mixed them up again, and guess what; we pulled the same name on the second try! So, we tossed that slip away and on the third try, got a decent option. But using the newly proposed format, one person could pick the genre; “I feel like a burger.” Or: “Let’s do Italian.” Then the other person picks the specific place to go. Pretty good solution, don’t you think?

Ever been chosen last on the playground? You know the deal, the captains take turns choosing people for their team. Actually, the last person isn’t really chosen at all. The next-to-last person is chosen and the last person slinks over to the other side. So I propose that one captain gets to pick her/his team all at once. Then the other captain gets to pick the activity that they do! So, if Captain A picks all the best athletes, Captain B could pick Trivial Pursuit as the activity. If Captain C picks all the best actors, Captain D could pick dodge ball. Think of what the teams might look like. Captains would have to choose a mixture of big and smart and artistic and strong in order to maximize the possibility of having a winning team. Might people learn to appreciate each other more? Might they have more appreciation and tolerance of people different from themselves?

But here’s one I REALLY think we should try. Suppose one political party gets to pick the tax structure. The parties would take turns doing this part. They can cut or raise taxes any way they want. They can eliminate taxes; add new ones; institute a flat tax; favor low, middle, or high income people; stick it to property owners; stick it to businesses…. They have complete say over the tax code. Got it so far? And guess what happens next! The other political party gets to decide how to spend the money!

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