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An Optimizing Rational Decision

Just before a boy enters the barbershop, the barber tells his customer, "This is the dumbest kid in the world.Watch." The barber puts a dollar in one open palm and 50 cents in the other and asks the kid, "Which do you want?" The boy takes the 50-cent coin and leaves.
"See?" says the barber, laughing. Later, the customer passes the boy, who is standing outside a candy store. "Why'd you take the 50-cents and not the dollar?" he asks.
"Because," says the boy, "the day I take the dollar, the game's over."!
- CONNIE BEHENSKY, Laugh, Reader's Digest. Feb. 2009.

In Economics, there is no great importance assigned to a perfect decision. Rather to that decision which can maximize one's profit, especially in the long run. I will be mentioning this 'trade-off' by the kid in my microeconomics class and see how many students label this trade-off, rationally, most appropriate one, if not best.

3 did criticisms:

humanobserver said...

A really impressive post.

Kadri Luik said...

It's one of the things that separates human intelligence from others, we can see how less can be more. =)

Awais Aftab said...

Lolz. Intelligent kid :) You have a good sense of economics. Have you read Freakonomics?

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