I was starving.
All around me, options abounded to quell my hunger. Just about any cuisine I would possibly desire — all available within my hotel complex.
I started perusing menus and checking wait times. But I quickly realized there was a significant problem.
For I was in Las Vegas — the land of $50 steaks and $25 burgers. And those options wouldn’t fit within the contours of my Per Diem.
For those uninitiated with business travel, the Per Diem is a daily flat rate for meals. It’s set by the United States government but paid out by companies to their employees.
The Per Diem is meant to level the playing field. It aims to set a benchmark for how much companies should expect to reimburse.
Normally, the Per Diem is a relatively fair proxy for meal costs. Maybe not a one-to-one match. But at least in the ballpark.
Yet, this was not the case in Las Vegas.
And so, I was left to determine the value of my starvation. Was it worth paying a bunch of my own money for the privilege of my nourishment? Or should I go without, in hopes of being made whole financially?
I chose the second option.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
This advice is practically gospel. For it’s the truth.
I experienced this truth firsthand during my misadventures in the desert. Unsatiated hunger has a strange way of driving home hard lessons.
But the no free lunch principle goes much deeper than my own foibles. It strikes at the heart of the Per Diem system itself.
Yes, it’s hard to find anyone who’s truly a fan of the Per Diem as it exists today. Many feel that it should be increased, or that companies should cover expenses on top of the set limits.
Such sentiments are understandable. Who wouldn’t want to avoid the mental gymnastics I went through in Las Vegas?
But this desire for a kinder Per Diem system misinterprets its purpose.
After all, the Per Diem is not a government handout. And even if it were, we would pay into that handout in the form of hefty taxes.
By contrast, the Per Diem is motivational tool. It’s something that incentivizes us to take our work on the road — and incur related costs — by recouping some of that spending.
The Per Diem isn’t designed to help us live high on the hog. It’s meant to help us work with what we’ve got.
But in doing so, it opens a whole other can of worms.
Many Texans know the legend of Judge Roy Bean.
The 19th century saloon keeper also served as the Justice of the Peace in Val Verde County. He branded himself as The Only Law West of the Pecos [River], often adjudicating from his saloon.
Val Verde County was part of the Texas frontier back then. And the law in that part of the world was open to some degree of interpretation. Judge Roy Bean espoused his flavor of it, and his work became Wild West legend.
Judge Roy Bean is long gone. And so is the world he lived in.
Indeed, modern-day Texas is governed by a series of uniform laws. Legislative codes that look the same in Mentone (population 22) as they do in Houston (population 2.3 million).
And perhaps the most notorious of these laws are the state’s liquor regulations.
For those uninitiated, Texans can only buy packaged hard liquor — such as bourbon or rum — from liquor stores. Those liquor stores must remain closed on Sundays. And on all other days, they cannot open earlier than 10 AM or close after 9 PM.
Liquor stores could keep even shorter hours, of course. But in all my years traversing the Lone Star State, I’ve yet to find one that wasn’t open from 10 to 9, Monday to Saturday.
There are some valid reasons for this conformity.
You see, operating a liquor store is challenging in Texas. Many counties are dry, banning packaged alcohol outright. Even in wet counties, some cities will ban liquor sales, but allow stores to sell beer and wine.
After navigating this labyrinth just to open their doors, liquor store proprietors generally yearn to keep them open as much as possible. And if they don’t, they’re wary of competitors. Competitors who could take a bite from their customer share if they opened late or closed early.
In essence, Texas’ liquor sales laws have put proprietors in a bind. They don’t directly mandate a 10 AM to 9 PM schedule, six days a week. But they make it nearly impossible to operate any other way.
This principle can be found in countless other corners of our society.
Sales tax rates tend to stay in a basic range from town to town and state to state. Banks generally refuse to guarantee anything above the $250,000 limit covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission. And of course, companies tend to stay within the guidelines of the Per Diem.
By setting an artificial floor in our capitalistic system, the U.S. government has also lowered the ceiling. Any chance at variety is crushed, leaving us all with immobile, undesirable options.
It’s a phenomenon I call The Safety Net Vice.
The Safety Net Vice might seem like a force of nature. But we’re not powerless against it.
How can this be? Well, let’s consider the factors.
On one side, there is legislative action of some kind. Tax codes, deposit guarantees, and Per Diem guidelines are all influenced by government entities.
We have few means to influence this factor. While we do vote our representatives into office, we have little impact on what they will do once they’re in place.
Indeed, it’s the other side of the equation that is key. The demands of the free market impact our behavior, all too often giving that legislation its vice grip.
This is the area where we can drive change. By tweaking the ways we spend our money, we can flip economic patterns on their heads. The status quo will no longer be tenable, and institutions will have an impetus to offer guarantees above safety net levels.
The road to this outcome is sure to be long and arduous. But the longer we delay the journey, the more treacherous it gets.
So, let’s break free of the Safety Net Vice. Let’s stop starving ourselves in the desert. And let’s seek out a path that works better for everyone.
The time is now.