Ways to Decide Who Gets What
Price, lottery, first-come, sharing equally, contests: learn the many ways people decide who gets scarce goods, and the trade-offs of each.
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What this means
There are twelve cookies and twenty-four students. Scarcity is here. Now somebody has to answer a question: who gets a cookie?
The way you answer that question is called an allocation method. There are lots of them, and you have used most of them already.
By price: whoever pays gets the cookie. By command: the teacher decides who gets one. By majority rule: the class votes. By contest: whoever wins the spelling bee gets one. By first-come, first-served: whoever lines up fastest. By sharing equally: cut each cookie in half so all twenty-four get some. By lottery: names in a hat. By personal characteristics: the youngest students get them. And by force: whoever grabs the hardest.
Here is the thing to notice. Every method works. Every method gets the cookies handed out. But every method also has a problem, and no method makes everyone happy. That is not because people are bad at picking methods. It is because there were never enough cookies in the first place.
Why it matters
Grown-ups argue about allocation methods constantly, even when they do not use that phrase. Who gets into a popular school? Who gets the parking spot? Who gets a seat on the bus? Every one of those is a fight over which method to use.
Knowing the list gives you real power in a group. When your class or your team is stuck fighting over something, you can say, "Let's pick a method first, before we start handing things out." That works far better than arguing case by case.
Real-world example
Watch how a doctor's office allocates the doctor's time. Normally it is first-come, first-served by appointment. But in an emergency room, it switches to personal characteristics, specifically how sick you are. Someone with chest pain goes ahead of someone with a sprained wrist, even if the wrist got there first. The same scarce thing, the doctor's time, gets allocated two different ways depending on what matters most.
Try it
- Your class is going to allocate four different things: a plate of cookies, time on the best playground equipment at recess, class jobs, and a prize for a game.
- For each one, list at least three methods that COULD be used. Use the list from this lesson.
- Make a chart with three columns: Method, Advantage, Disadvantage. Fill it in for every method you listed.
- Push yourself on the disadvantages. "Sharing equally" sounds perfect until you realize each person only gets half a cookie, and some people did not want one at all. "First-come" sounds fair until you notice it rewards running in the hallway.
- As a class, vote on the best method for each of the four things. Notice whether you picked the same method every time. You probably did not.
- Discuss the biggest question: why did the best method change depending on what was being allocated? What made class jobs different from cookies?
- Optional: actually use your chosen method for one real thing this week and see how it goes.
Teacher note
The payoff is step 6. Students almost always choose different methods for different goods, and articulating why is the real learning: what we value changes with the situation. Class offices tend to draw majority rule, cookies draw sharing equally or lottery, and playground time draws first-come or taking turns. Force is worth naming honestly rather than skipping, because students recognize it from real life, and discussing why it is rejected teaches a lot about fairness. Watch for the belief that sharing equally is always the fair answer; press on cases where it fails, like allocating one bicycle among six people. A student has it when they can state a genuine disadvantage of the method they personally prefer.
Check yourself
A teacher puts everyone's name in a hat and draws three names to use the new tablets. Which allocation method is this?
What is a real DISADVANTAGE of 'first-come, first-served'?
Which statement about allocation methods is TRUE?
When there is not enough to go around, people must pick a method for deciding who gets what, and every method has both advantages and disadvantages.