Now it's potatoes
For what it’s worth.
As I explained yesterday, Frederick explains to Sandra that the price of the stamps is all to do with rarity value. But she’s not impressed by the logic of a market place in which people pay a price based on what they might accept as a reasonable offer. Thus, she prefers sets of stamps, but isn’t paying for them what she thinks their value is. Nor is she paying the value other people place on them.
This would seem to make the value of the stamp different from what people think it’s worth. Frederick sees her point and wonders whether the worth of something is based on what we think others think it’s worth.
Sandra thinks that this potentially makes the price of things random so that people could charge just about anything they like such as potatoes for £5 a kilo instead of 50p a kilo. Frederick agrees that it might work if all the potatoes sellers agreed.
Could he be right?
I don’t think he is right. After all, if all the potato sellers start charging £5 a kilo, people will switch to sweet potatoes or something else. You could try marketing potatoes as a luxury item, thus appealing to the vanity of conspicuous consumers (which would work quite well in China). As the book notes, some items have a fairly stable price, while others fluctuate according to the vagaries of the market. Frederick’s stamps are a good example of the latter.
This would seem to make the value of the stamp different from what people think it’s worth. Frederick sees her point and wonders whether the worth of something is based on what we think others think it’s worth.
Sandra thinks that this potentially makes the price of things random so that people could charge just about anything they like such as potatoes for £5 a kilo instead of 50p a kilo. Frederick agrees that it might work if all the potatoes sellers agreed.
Could he be right?
I don’t think he is right. After all, if all the potato sellers start charging £5 a kilo, people will switch to sweet potatoes or something else. You could try marketing potatoes as a luxury item, thus appealing to the vanity of conspicuous consumers (which would work quite well in China). As the book notes, some items have a fairly stable price, while others fluctuate according to the vagaries of the market. Frederick’s stamps are a good example of the latter.
I’ll skip Problems 35 to 40 because they’re about our perception of images and involve a lot of pictures. Instead, we’ll start looking at some problems about time.
Comments