Weight Watcher’s Freestyle™ weight loss program is based on servings of any and all foods being assigned Points™ according to their nutritional content. Many foods, such as eggs, fish, and most fruits, and vegetables are assigned zero points. The most fattening foods have a higher points value than those that are not, or less fattening. Dieters paying to become Weight Watchers members and following the program are assigned a daily ‘budget’ of points, average probably around 30 points per day, as well as a weekly bank of 40 points for extras or special occasions.  In the strictest sense, this system bares a resemblance to the individual consumer in mainstream, neoclassical economics, who with a limited budget (in terms of the theory, no budget, no matter how rich, is unlimited) must use the funds of that budget to maximize the usefulness of their purchases (utility) down to the very last penny spent. This consumer, or any under a buying and selling market system, is considered a “rational maximizer” and pretty much cannot be otherwise if she is thinking only about his or her utility; remember, the theory is based on a view of human behavior as individualistic and selfish. Dieters in Weight Watchers have only their own eating habits to monitor, although much of the success of the plan can depend on the support of members in weekly meetings and online forums. Consumers under capitalism also depend on their being others to buy and sell them goods, pay or be paid wages, work with, etc., (abstracting out all non-market institutions for the moment). In other posts, I have tried to get the idea across that because of the fact of society, social forces, and that any individual person is an interdependent whole of both individual and society, it makes not only rational sense but is also highly ethical that we be concerned for the welfare of others–we are are brothers and sisters keepers, and it makes sense if one is a marketeer . . . but I am getting off the subject.

Now the Weight Watchers member will do much the same thing as the rational maximizing consumer, instead maximizing their nutritional value, satisfaction, and tastes given their limited budget of daily points. Points are an analogue to money. Although it must be said that microeconomic theory is describing the way a consumer behaves naturally when making daily economic decisions (or even those of longer periods) and is often unconsciously deciding how they will spend their money, what to buy that would give them the best value for their needs. The system is imprecise in that satisfaction or utility to consumers will vary and attempts to define a unit of utility–utils–has largely been abandoned in microeconomics, at least when I studied it. What ‘utility’ means from individual to individual varies. So mainstream microeconomic theory does make some sense in real world, describing at least some aspects of human economic decision making, but many other factors of life (such as fads) are simply abstracted out.

As it works out both Weight Watchers members (hereafter, members) will inevitably lose weight (at varying rates) if they adhere to the plan and consumers will maximize their satisfaction, as well as not go into debt, if they behave as a consumer would in microeconomic theory. The reason is the budget constraint. Consumers often overspend. Without the plan, constraints for a total amount of food in a day for a typical person are either non-existent or imprecise. Following some kind of numerically defined nutritional budget does not come natural to anyone. Sure, most may have a sort of subconscious budget in that they know when they are overeating, are hungry, are gaining or losing weight, or just knowing they might have missed a meal and snack, but until Weight Watchers’ point system came to the fore, no one assigned individual values to foods according to calories, fat, carbohydrates, fiber, and sugar. Simply guessing and ‘being careful of what one eats’ usually does not lead to weight loss.

Some big differences between the neoclassical consumer and the Weight Watchers member are, for one, the weight loss program is in only one sphere, although one of the most important and frustrating ones, of an individual’s activity. A consumer’s choices involve any involving money and most consumption goods have a price. Prices often fluctuate according to supply and demand but points are more or less set in stone–their supply is theoretically limitless, not based on scarcity, nor do points change based on how popular a particular food is. So it seems that the dieter’s system is not dynamic; a consumer’s purchases, however, will indeed change according to prices. Price of gasoline increasing? Less driving is likely and therefore money is freed up for other purchases. Points on the other hand will indeed lead a dieter to make economical choices of foods with fewer or no points–which usually tend to be healthier–but points values do not fluctuate. Points values are determined by a formula according to calories, fat, sugar, etc. The formula assigns them these values.

Income to the consumer and Daily Points Allowance to the member are different. For one thing, the allowance is meted out day to day, very short term, while consumption under limited income is carried out or planned in longer terms: a week, biweekly, yearly, etc. Weight Watchers is day to day.

The fact that Weight Watcher’s program works when adhered to faithfully is proof of the rationality of the consumer theory in a very limited context. It is also proof that the logic of economizing under a budget works in a system that has more differences than similarities to a consumer under a market-based economy. An intriguing similarity, however, is that participants in both are profoundly affected by those around them: consumers by Veblen’s “emulation” for example and members by social stigmas and romantic desires.

The biggest difference of all is effect due to the size of a budget: for a consumer, having a rich budget means almost unlimited fun and satisfaction (we’ll forget for a moment that the wealthy can be unhappy, etc.) while a larger budget means uncontrolled weight gain for the member. You see, for the member continued success means a smaller, not a larger budget at least until all the required weight is lost and then some points are added to maintain the desired weight. But a successful dieter cannot ever be rewarded with increased budget simply because the body has healthy limits. Income, on the other hand, has no such limits. Utility and satisfaction, can simply grow and grow and in fact those experiencing them have the resources to improve their health and not necessarily wreck it, as anyone eating without constraint would. Then we must get into the real world of social interaction, influences, effects, and socioeconomic and political power that comes with high income–and class–and wealth. Here we have no such parallel in the dieting world. Successful dieters that do not gain weight back some how (we might imagine) would gain social power and influence as a class. It is true weight loss helps with social esteem and confidence for many but this by itself translates to almost no power over others in society.

So in the end the Weight Watchers program has more in common with a socialism (an efficient planned and satisfactory economy) still dealing with scarcity and having to make economic choices, as any established in this epoch would. The socialist blueprint of Oskar Lange comes to mind, in which he posited rational maximizing consumers and producers (who are really the same persons) and in which “shadow prices” are determined by planners, similar to the way Weight Watchers formulators assign a points value to a given food.

A socialist consumer, with favorable imagination let’s grant our socialist citizen/consumer an average individual an income comparable to, say, $60,000 in our time and that incomes do not vary widely from this amount, in fact let’s put a cap at $200,000 per year income, and no individual income less than $30,000, would indeed have an income constrained in a similar way to our dieters whose points income is with certain limits, as already established. I think this proves the suitability for  and what is more or less real in microeconomic consumption theory within a society without unlimited income possibilities and with income limits—it will still work just as it does in the Weight Watcher’s situation. Socialist consumers in our dream society will indeed have to maximize given a budget constraint, but true to the ideal, they will not ever have to contend with the best rational maximizers (excluding advantages such as inheritance) having power over them and directing so much of their lives.

Again, this might be a good time to reiterate that it was complexity and not lack of incentives that brought down humankind’s first attempts to build large-scale (e.g., national) socialist socioeconomic systems. One typically hears bullshit objections to socialism such as ‘socialism won’t work because of human nature’ or ‘it kills incentives’, the latter as if human beings are like manic rats in a maze living only to get a suck at a sugar nozzle . . .

Most amateur critics of communism limit their criticism to the incentive problem:  why should people work hard, if they are provided basic needs without working?  This is a true critique, as far as it goes, but they err in thinking that the socialists and communists somehow overlooked it.  In fact, they were well aware of the incentive problem [bold added]. They expected to overcome it in one of several ways.  Some thought it could be eliminated by social pressure, as in Edward Bellamy’s famous 19th century Socialist utopian tract, Looking Backwards.  It seems naive, and in a lot of ways it was, but on the other hand, if social pressure doesn’t work, why isn’t everyone in Scandinavia on the dole? (from The Economist online: “The Power of Prices”).

What is not mentioned is that in the U.S.S.R. wages did differ according to incentivize and to attract scarce labor everyone was not ‘paid the same thing’ as many of my own countrymen and women believe. Although causes of the fall of the centrally-planned economies are many, I believe the main problem was one of information, namely something that provides information as to what, how, and for whom to produce, that can do a better job than usually unjust and shitty job the prices system does. Markets and prices supposedly do a great job of this social inequality around the world shows that it does a terrible job and something better is needed.

So in the end what works about micro theory does not have to work within the context of laissez-faire or other unlimited and equally unworkable capitalisms. Or, what is good, the way to economize under capitalism could be put to better use. It is only one relatively small example but Weight Watchers has used it with a great deal of success for decades now. While of course I am not saying that “Weight Watchers will lead the way” I am saying it is one small, but intriguing indicator that what can work in capitalism isn’t necessarily capitalist. Perhaps such mechanisms, using ‘shadow prices’ for example could be put to use under a democratically planned and maintained economy in the future.