4 Comments

I learned this long ago: you pay rent on everything you own -- in terms of the buying in the first place, awareness, storage, maintenance, and the eventual disposal or selling—or the keeping.

Expand full comment
author

Great point. If people factored in all of these additions at the point of sale I’m sure they would skip a lot of impulse purchase. But of course there are a lot of things in place to distract the shopper from such clear eyed and rational calculation.

If people actually were the rational agents that economic theory supposes them to be then the economy as it stands would barely function, ironically enough.

Expand full comment

Reminds me of those damned wheelie bags! It really takes a lot of intentionality and awareness to stay out of those personal and society neural networks.

Expand full comment
author

Haha, I’m glad someone else feels that way. ‘Neural networks’ is a good way of putting it. I guess I’ve been thinking about unspoken group behaviours quite a lot recently. Seems like a fruitful area to look at.

Thanks for the great comment Nicole.

Expand full comment