The Man Who Would Kill Your Holidays

STEVE HANKE IS AGITATED. AN INFLUENTIAL ECONOMIST given to sonorous talks on troubled currencies, he sits in a book-jammed office, jabbing his finger at an offending email printout.

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It’s from a factotum at Johns Hopkins University, where Hanke is a professor of Applied Economics. The email informs the faculty that, due to the ever-shifting date of Labor Day, fall classes will begin on a Thursday (but on a Monday schedule) and skip a Friday. “Every year,” says Hanke, “I have to completely revise my schedule.” Such jiggering is a waste of his time. Multiply his frustration by an entire school, add the time suck at thousands of other places making similar changes—sports leagues, government agencies, your company—and you get chaos! Trillions of wasted work hours! “Imagine the meetings!” says Hanke, hoisting his eyebrows like a blazer-wearing radical.