People Face Tradeoffs

Economics. Now there’s a word I do not like. Sure, for my major I have to get fairly acquainted with micro economics, but the overall concept of economics has never really been my thing. I’m more of a social person than a numbers person-not that I’m saying people can’t be both; I’m just not one of those people. Currently I am in Micro Economics, and just simply trying to keep up. The very first thing I learned on the first day, however, has completely made sense to me. And because of that, has stuck in my head and is often what I think of regularly. Now, what is that concept that has been with me? It’s the first principle of economics: People Face Tradeoffs. Now what the heck does that mean? Ha, funny you should say that, it’s exactly what I thought when I had heard it my first time, it means that people often have to choose between two things and decide which on is what they want, making the “tradeoff” to not get the other thing.

Now there are tons of things that this is involved in, and unfortunately for my brain, I come upon tradeoffs every single day-as I’m sure most of you do as well- such as today, I yet again went swimming, now I chose to go swimming instead of doing laundry. I made the trade to have fun at Blue Harbor, instead of washing my clothes. This sadly means that I now have to do laundry tonight because I am such a professional procrastinator. Now, in this category there are so many different categories it’s crazy! I’m just going to get to the point that I also keep thinking about lately instead of bore you with all the miniscule little details I have to memorize.

The other concept that has been stuck in my head is that as my professor would say “there is no free lunch.” Funny concept, I know, but it’s actually one hundred percent true! This concept, in as basic terms as I can get, means that everything you get for “free” someone else has to eventually pay for. Such as free lunches at clubs on campus, those lunches actually come out of the clubs funding and are used as a recruitment tool. Another example are Scholarships, ya’ know, those things that are awarded to people because of their outstanding abilities in school. Well those are given to people so that they can pay for school for free, but are actually being paid off by someone else.

I find this fact interesting; the reason being is because well I get a lot of free things. Being a college student I often take things for free just because they’re free, I never really thought of someone else having to buy them in the long run, and that is what makes me curious as to why people give things out? I mean, I will never complain about getting things for free, but as a business why would you give things out for free? Is it really that much of a recruitment thing or interest buzzer that you find it necessary to do it? I love the idea, but that’s from the consumer level, I would think at a business level you would want to sell things cheaper than giving them out for free. That’s my opinion at least, if you think it’s a good idea for businesses to do it, feel free to tell me. ‘Cause from my prospective, it seems like a poor strategy, buy one get one half off is way more enticing in my opinion.