Utility of people

As the holiday season approaches, families re-congregate the world over. Sons and daughters away at college often return home to be with their families. Children that have their own families may or may not return home to be with their parents, but they are with their families nonetheless. Often, there are people we want to be with, but are unable to be with. This person may be a good friend, a parent, a grandparent, a son, a daughter, a brother, a sister, an uncle, an aunt, a great-grandparent, etcetera. Clearly, this means that spending time with this person gives you some amount of utility greater than the amount of utility you gain by not being with them. Of course there are ways to to gain some of this utility without physically spending time with them (phone calls, video conferences for the more web-savvy, or maybe even just a letter), so the question then becomes, how does one optimize his or her's utility during the holiday season. The answer, obviously, is to analyze how much utility you gain from each person that you can spend time with.

This, however, presents some problems because trade-offs aren't always as straightforward as they may seem... take for instance the quandary of spending time with friends or family. I think most people would agree that family precedes friends in terms of utility, but what if you can spend the holidays with a group of friends that is large enough so that the total utility derived by being with the group outweighs that of being with your family? If your friends and your family live in a close proximity, it may be possible for you to spend the day with your family and the night with your friends. Win-win. But what if your friends live all over the world? Well, in this case you probably won't be able to spend the holidays with a group of any real size... so family would probably outweigh. Let's say, though, that a group of friends are trying to decide whether they should go home for the holidays or spend them together. In addition to the people themselves, you have to take into consideration traditions, customs, meals, drinks, etcetera.

The choice is hard. My suggestion is to be with your family (as many members as possible from as many generations as possible), and be sure to call your friends and other relatives because they miss you just as much as you miss them.

Happy holidays to you all, and I hope that you will choose to maximize your utility... I know I will.