A Parable
Posted by
tgirsch
Scenario #1: Last month, I got a letter from the cable company, announcing that my rates were going up by $5 a month. I’m not at all happy about this, but I’m not going to cancel my cable because I can’t get satellite where I live, or because I’m just too lazy to switch, or whatever other reason you can think of for not canceling cable, so I’m just going to have to suck up and deal with the new pricing.
Scenario #2: I never even read the notice announcing the rate change, and only found out when this month’s bill came and was $5 higher.
Starting from either scenario, pick up here:
Seeing that I’m upset, my wife asks, “What’s wrong, honey?” And I respond, “I’ve just reached an agreement with the cable company that we will pay $5 more per month.”
Now, you might think that this is a mind bogglingly stupid way for me to describe what just happened. But apparently, lots of self-described “free market” types disagree. That’s not only a perfectly fair way to describe what happened, apparently, but just how people talk. So we should find nothing the least bit awkward, inaccurate, or unusual about my hypothetical response to my wife.
