Economics of Queue

choi

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(1) Anand Giridharadas, Getting in (and Out of) Line. New York Times, Aug. 8, 2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/world/asia/07iht-currents.html?scp=1&sq=queue&st=cse

Note:
(a) feline (adj): "resembling a cat: as SLY, TREACHEROUS"
(b) scrum (n; short for scrummage, alteration of scrimmage): "2a British : MADHOUSE 2b : a usually tightly packed or disorderly crowd : THRONG"
(c) Hobbesian (adj): "of or relating to the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes" (1588-1679)

* state of nature
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature
(a term in political philosophy used in social contract theories to describe the hypothetical condition of humanity before the state's foundation; section 1.1 Hobbes' philosophy: In this state any person has a natural right to the liberty to do anything he wills to preserve his own life, and life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short")

(d) James L. Watson,
John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society; Curator of Chinese Ethnology in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
Harvard, FAS Dept of Anthropology
https://www.directory.harvard.edu/phonebook/submitSearch.do

* FAS stands for Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
(e) The article cites

Melissa Kite, Immigrants to be taught how to queue; The art of queuing is to be made part of the citizenship test for immigrants, under plans unveiled by a senior minister today. Telegraph, Feb. 13, 2010.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/7230274/Immigrants-to-be-taught-how-to-queue.html


(2) Michael Barbaro, A Long Line for a Shorter Wait at the Supermarket. New York Times, June 23, 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/23/business/23checkout.html
("For its first stores here, Whole Foods, the gourmet supermarket, directs customers to form serpentine single lines that feed into a passel of cash registers. * * * And since Whole Foods charges premium prices for its organic fare, it can afford to staff dozens of registers, making the line move even faster. * * *

"The science of keeping lines moving, known as queue management, is a big deal to big business.

"In most of the United States, the wait in a grocery store checkout line is negligible — under a minute, Mr. Underhill [a retail consultant] has found.

"Whole Foods executives spent months drawing up designs for a new line system in New York [City] that would be unlike anything in their suburban stores, where shoppers form one line in front of each register. That traditional system [which Whole Foods use in suburban stores], they determined, would take up too much space and could not handle the crowds they expected here. The single-line, bank-style system was quickly chosen for its statistical efficiency. Then, Whole Foods paired the system with possibly the largest number of registers in the city, more than 30 per store, and it hired an army of cashiers to staff them throughout the day (including 'floaters' * * * Perhaps the most important role players in the Whole Foods system are the 'line managers'

Note: passel (n): "a large number or amount"

All definitions ae from www.m-w.com.

(3) My comment:
(a) Chinese always say matter-of-factly that there are simply too many people in China. They are resigned and believe there is nothing that can done about it.

This is not the case. Chinese need not reinvent wheels. Scientists, including economists, have studied lines and supplied solutions. See

queueing theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queueing_theory

(b) Taiwanese used to clump around bus doors, and wait hours in the concourse for a hospital appointment. I do not know if the latter still exists. But if one goes to You Tube and watched videotapes of Taipei Metro, you will see few passengers waiting (even in rush hours and Eve of Lunar New Year), who form lines in designated areas where subway cars are supposed to open doors (the same place every time). Trains must be coming frequently, so passengers feel no need to crowd around doors.

Judging from the You Tube tapes, somehow the traffic in major cities of Taiwan are sparse and orderly, contrary to my memory. I do not know how Taiwan has accomplished this. I speculated it might due to a million Taiwanese (out of 23 million) living in the mainland. However, before 1984 (when I left), population in Taiwan was less than 22 million but the traffic was REALLY bad.

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