I've recently started listening to a fun podcast from journalist Stephen Dubner (he of Freakonomics fame) called Question of the Day, in which he and his colleagues explore various topics in breezy, 15-minute shows. Yesterday's episode was a great one, titled "What is the Value of Free?"
They discussed the ultimate truism that nothing is truly free. For example, you might think a free music download didn't cost you anything, so it must be great. However, you still had to "pay" by way of the time it took to find the song and copy it to your computer/phone, and through the effort it took to actually listen to the song. You could have spent your time and energy in other ways; therefore, the cost of the free download is actually what you could have done instead. They also described how our perceptions of purchases change depending on how much (or how little) an item costs. This leads to an interesting question: do we have the right to complain about quality if a free product is no good? What if that downloaded song sucks? Do we have the right to be mad?
With lots of clever examples to stretch your brain, take a listen and I promise you will not only become a better economic thinker in 15 minutes, but a smarter person overall.
They discussed the ultimate truism that nothing is truly free. For example, you might think a free music download didn't cost you anything, so it must be great. However, you still had to "pay" by way of the time it took to find the song and copy it to your computer/phone, and through the effort it took to actually listen to the song. You could have spent your time and energy in other ways; therefore, the cost of the free download is actually what you could have done instead. They also described how our perceptions of purchases change depending on how much (or how little) an item costs. This leads to an interesting question: do we have the right to complain about quality if a free product is no good? What if that downloaded song sucks? Do we have the right to be mad?
With lots of clever examples to stretch your brain, take a listen and I promise you will not only become a better economic thinker in 15 minutes, but a smarter person overall.