[TR] nice price or crack pipe

[glemon at neb.rr.com]

Sorry to digress, but all the talk about "what is your time worth" triggered 30 plus year dormant brain cells and the "rational economic man" memory, then I Google it and saw the quote, not only about doing what made economic sense, but also about seeking comfort, etc. It just made me chuckle when contrasting it to working on and driving an old Triumph for fun.

Of course when Mill came up with his theory the working class generally started doing hard manual labor at a young age and   continued on the same track til death, so "seeking comfort and luxory" in that life might make more sense than it does today when even the moderately affluent have the means, time, and energy to go out to the garage and get greasy.

Greg Lemon 

---- Michael Porter <mdporter at dfn.com> wrote: 
> 
> >
> > Perhaps a more accurate description of our group would be "we choose 
> > to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard".
> >
> >
> 
> I sincerely hope there's not a hobby group dedicated to restoring Apollo 
> capsules, because the flame war would be of epic proportions.  :)
> 
> That said, the "rational actor" economic model has been driven into the 
> ground by now--not much basis for it in real life.  I recall a fairly 
> recent interview with the lately departed John Nash, who developed a lot 
> of theory used by everyone from economists to RAND war planners in which 
> he said, when confronted with some evidence that his game theory didn't 
> reflect the real world, "Some of it might not have been realistic.  
> Admittedly, I was insane at the time I thought of it."
> 
> But, as regards this hobby, it is chock full of what economists call 
> "intangibles" and "externalities." The prime intangible, of course, is 
> the personal satisfaction of doing something perhaps beyond one's skill 
> level or in doing something "for fun" and not for economic gain, and the 
> prime "externality" associated with that is the expenditure in unpaid 
> time to achieve that personal satisfaction. It can't fit the economists' 
> models, because the economists throw out those variables as either 
> having a value of 0 or because they're impossible to measure.
> 
> It's not the only reason why economics is derisively referred to as "the 
> dismal science," but, it's one of them.
> 
> 
> Cheers.
> 
> -- 
> 
> 
> Michael Porter
> Roswell, NM
> 
> 
> Never let anyone drive you crazy when you know it's within walking distance....
> 
>