A Case of Happy Inefficiency: Accidental 911 Calls | The American Spectator

Emergency dispatchers save countless lives. But today, I’m worried about the lives of the dispatchers themselves. According to official figures I’ve been able to track down, between 30 percent and 50 percent of cell phone calls to 911 aren’t made by people in life-threatening situations — they’re made by clumsy people. Instead of hearing, “Hello, I’ve just been run over,” dispatchers hear “jingle jingle jingle” (the sound of keys and coins). In the United States, it’s estimated that 84 million 911 calls each year are just accidental button presses. In the United Kingdom, there must be a prankster on every block, because nearly 100,000 calls are deliberate jokes.

Years ago, back when we still used landlines, I knew an idiot who thought it was hilarious to call any company or organization 20 times in a row asking for “Michael.” Later, he’d call the same number again and say, “Hi, this is Michael. Have I gotten any calls today?” And he’d laugh himself silly.

Cell phones have freed us from jokes that aren’t funny. Caller ID has freed us from robotic salespeople (now real robots) who call during your nap to ask if you want life insurance; to which I’ve sometimes replied, “If you wake me up from my nap again, the life insurance will be better for you” (stroking my Colt M1911 as if it were a kitten). Columnists like me tend to pretend we’re in a good mood, but when we’ve slept little, we can turn into monsters. And we always sleep little. I’d explain why, but my hepatologist is reading this now, and I don’t feel like hearing his tantrums again.

Another interesting fact: of all real 911 calls, only a small percentage require direct intervention. Most people who think they’re having a heart attack have simply forgotten to take their daily anti-anxiety medication, and many who call and hesitate aren’t having a stroke — unless you count “whiskey on the rocks” as a stroke. I have a friend who, during one of his last drunken binges at a house party, called 911 to request ice packs because he’d run out. The operator found the joke funny. My friend insisted that, strictly speaking, it was a damn emergency. He was right about that.

Politicians still haven’t tried to fix this inefficiency of stupid 911 calls. I suppose if left-leaning lawyers tried, they’d invent a tax on cell phone manufacturers to cover the cost of accidental calls. First, they’d make phones more expensive, then force manufacturers to require a security PIN to place emergency calls. The result? About the same number of accidental or prank calls — but with pricier, potentially harder-to-use phones, and a lot of deaths from people who truly need help but can’t get past the PIN.

Although none of this has happened yet (and for heaven’s sake, I’m not trying to give the politicians new tax ideas), I like this story because the abstract thinking of the left always keeps them from dealing with reality. Look at environmental policies, especially in Europe: if it weren’t for the Republicans, Democrats would have happily imported them to the U.S. They try to solve every problem with a mix of taxes and complex bureaucracy. And because they’re always a bit demagogic, they put the costs on the manufacturer, naively thinking the manufacturer can’t pass them on to the consumer.

This inefficiency is a good example. Conservatives understand that plenty of things don’t work and don’t have easy fixes, so they simply live with them — perhaps because they know public services involve human beings, and humans aren’t perfect. The left seems to see taxpayers instead of people, believing taxpayers can always adjust to government designs. But in reality, that’s not the case. Progressives believe progress means fixing what’s wrong at any cost. Conservatives believe progress (if it’s needed) is often about leaving things as they are when government intervention would make them worse.

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