Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The market for lost money

As I walked form my eight o’clock class this morning I found what I though was 10 dollars it turned out to be thirty dollars. I was hesitant to pick it up I always feel like somebody is going to jump out and say “I got you”, well that luckily didn’t happen. I turned the money into the office of the building I found it in and in a week it may be mine. That money would have kept my Washington’s company in my wallet.

I have been on the other side and most often then not you don’t end up with whatever you lost. I figured I didn’t plan on finding/making 30 dollars Monday nor did I do anything to earn that money. To me the money wasn’t free as somebody lost it, it wasn’t until later that I thought, what would other people have done? Would they have kept the money and figured it was there lucky day or turned the money in. Now I would like to think most would have turned the money in but I have a feeling that isn’t the case I once found a Frisbee golf disc and it read “if found call this number or rot in hell” I did call the number as I didn’t particularly want to rot in hell.

Just like the situation I found myself in, markets are made of people that go about there everyday life in the way they see fit. Nobody told me to pick that money up or turn it in, I just did what I felt like I doing. And this may be why markets are so hard to predict with all its variables, I think that the engineering way of thinking suites me best.

3 comments:

  1. The engineering way of thinking is very easy to to take to (especially for engineering students :) ), but it cannot be your only window to reality. You HAVE to be able to understand the economic way of thinking in order to fully understand the way our reality is shaped.

    I am an engineering student so obviously the engineering way of thinking makes sense to me and is attractive because of its logical process, but unfortunately it doesn't complete describe our world. Understanding the economic way of thinking helps us to make better choices in life and (if enough people understood it) would help us make better choices politically. And the only reason I mention politics is because it always affects economics. Unfortunate, but true.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I disagree. You say that "Understanding the economic way of thinking helps us to make better choices in life." It's been my experience that the more I know about economics the 'more worser' my choices are! (I know my spelling has suffered too.)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Reminds me of an old econ joke...

    Two economists are walking down the street. One sees a dollar lying on the sidewalk, and says so.

    "Obviously not," says the other. "If there were, someone would have picked it up by now."

    ReplyDelete