Kansas City News Blog

​There's a parallel between the health care debate and the Royals, and it has nothing to do with boos and hisses.

James Surowiecki, who writes about business and finance at The New Yorker, posits that resistance to the Democrats' ideas for reforming health care has a psychological component. The skittishness, Surowiecki explains, is partly a reflection of biases that make people resistance to change.

"Most of us, for instance, are prey to the so-called 'endowment effect': the mere fact that you own something leads you to overvalue it," Surowiecki writes.

A simple demonstration of this was an experiment in which some students in a class were given coffee mugs emblazoned with their school's logo and asked how much they would demand to sell them, while others in the class were asked how much they would pay to buy them. Instead of valuing the mugs similarly, the new owners of the mugs demanded more than twice as much as the buyers were willing to pay.

The endowment effect, the thinking follows, causes us to want to hold on to the current system of health delivery even as we say we want change. 

Royals G.M. Dayton Moore also seems captive to the endowment effect.

The endowment effect works two ways with Moore: He acquires players he's familiar with from his time working in the Atlanta Braves' front office. He's also been reluctant to trade many Royals.

Moore's critics say he overvalues current and former properties of the Braves. Former Brave Tony Pena Jr., for instance, appeared in 287 games as a Royal, even though he hit as well as as guy holding a spatula. Pena's now in the minor leagues, trying to refashion himself as a pitcher.

Similarly, Moore has tended to prize the talent on the Royals' 40-man roster. He held on to Mark Teahen after the 2006 season, when the third baseman's trade value was at its peak and a replacement, Alex Gordon, waited in the wings. Moore has also kept David DeJesus and Brian Bannister, two players who seem unlikely to be around when the Royals are ready to compete; at the trading deadline, they might have fetched decent prospects from contenders in win-now mode.

So the Royals may lose 100 games this year. But at least Moore has a coffee mug he thinks is special.