Published Letter To The Editors of the Wall Street Journal

Recently, I had my letter to the editors of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) dated 1/10 published in the 1/30 print edition of the WSJ.  For those of you who do not have a subscription to the WSJ, which is required for the above hyperlink to work, I post my letter below.

I did not know that my letter was published until I read my name in print.  It should go without saying, but I was ecstatic.

Hopefully, this will not be my only letter published as there are many that preceded this one and others that have followed. I will seek to post to this blog some of the more insightful letters in the coming weeks/months.

My letter as sent 1/10:

Mr. Zywicki and Mr Mane have forgotten the KISS principle, keep it simple, stupid. In trying to demonstrate their intellect in their jointly written opinion piece, they miss the mark. 

This case should be determined by the Contract Clause of the Constitution. If the contract that states the merchant cannot apply surcharges is dropped due to a class action settlement (i.e. that contract language is nullified) then I would think that NY State cannot use an "interesting intellectual parlor game" to support the ban (even though the State might not realize that it is using that argument). 

As such, it is highly possible the Supreme Court may rule in favor of the litigants even without buying into Expressions Hair's ‘behavioral economics’ argument. 

Mr Zywicki and Mr Manne should be arguing for a free market economy that enables the customer to do what is best for them, chose to pay the charge, pay in cash or go to another establishment that does not impose the charge.

As you will see below, my letter as published by the WSJ 1/30 was somewhat sanitized:

Regarding Todd J. Zywicki and Geoffrey A. Manne’s “The Constitution Says Nothing About Behavioral Economics” (op-ed, Jan. 10): The case of New York’s ban on credit-card surcharges should be determined by the Contract Clause of the Constitution. If the contract that states the merchant cannot apply surcharges is dropped due to a class-action settlement (i.e., that contract language is nullified), then I would think that New York state cannot use an “interesting intellectual parlor game” to support the ban (even though the state might not realize that it is using that argument).

As such, it is highly possible the Supreme Court may rule in favor of the litigants even without buying into Expressions Hair Design’s “behavioral economics” argument.

Messrs. Zywicki and Manne should be arguing for a free, market economy that enables the customer to do what is best for him or her: Choose to pay the charge, pay in cash or go to another establishment that does not impose the charge.

I Put My Money Where My Mouth Is

I recently put my money where my mouth is by taking an eight-week code immersion course taught by the folks at Tech Talent South. I can now write software code to create web applications, albeit very rudimentary applications. 

I took the course to improve my career given that over a year ago I lost my position as an equity analyst due to a RIF (reduction in force) at the firm for which I worked at that time.  The cutback was disheartening given that I went to management two years prior offering to help discover new means leveraging technology to increase overall revenue, which fell on deaf ears. The one commonality of those that were let go from this RIF was that all sought change to help improve operations, which we got, but not what we sought.  Oh well.

More importantly, I highly encourage you to learn new skills that leverage technology or you may soon find yourself unemployed like I did.

Separately, should we not offer software-coding classes to our children in school as early as kindergarten similar to other language classes we may encourage?