Every few years I go through brief periods of something like this, where I completely forget how exactly I resolved the problem the last time.

“But five years ago something very strange began to happen to me. At first I began having moments of bewilderment, when my life would come to a halt, as if I did not know how to live or what to do; I would lose my presence of mind and fall into a state of depression. But this passed, and I continued to live as before. Then the moments of bewilderment recurred more frequently, and they always took the same form. Whenever my life came to a halt, the questions would arise: Why? And what next?

At first I thought these were pointless and irrelevant questions. I thought that the answers to them were well known and that if I should ever want to resolve them, it would not be too hard for me; it was just that I could not be bothered with it now, but if I should take it upon myself, then I would find the answers. But the questions began to come up more and more frequently, and their demands to be answered became more and more urgent . . .

The questions seemed to be such foolish, simple, childish questions. But as soon as I laid my hands on them and tried to resolve them, I was immediately convinced, first of all, that they were not childish and foolish questions but the most vital and profound questions in life, and, secondly, that no matter how much I pondered them there was no way I could resolve them. Before I could be occupied with my Samara estate, with the education of my son, or with the writing of books, I had to know why I was doing these things. As long as I do not know the reason why, I cannot do anything. In the middle of my concern with the household, which at the time kept me quite busy, a questions would suddenly come into my head: “Very well, you will have 16,200 acres in the Samara province, as well as 300 horses; what then?” And I was completely taken aback and did not know what else to think. As soon as I started to think about the education of my children, I would ask myself, “Why?” Or I would reflect on how the people might attain prosperity, and I would suddenly ask myself, “What concern is it of mine?” Or in the middle of thinking about the fame that my works were bringing me I would say to myself, “Very well, you will be more famous than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, more famous than all the writers in the world - so what?
And I could find absolutely no reply.

My life came to a stop. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep; indeed, I could not help but breathe, eat, drink, and sleep. But there was no life in me because I had no desires whose satisfaction I would have found reasonable. If I wanted something, I knew beforehand that it did not matter whether or not I got it.
If a fairy had come and offered to fulfill my every wish, I would not have known what to wish for. If in moments of intoxication I should have not desires but the habits of old desires, in moments of sobriety I knew that it was all a delusion, that I really desired nothing. I did not even want to discover truth anymore because I had guessed what it was. The truth was that life is meaningless . . .

The only thing that amazed me was how I had failed to realize this in the very beginning. All this had been common knowledge for so long. If not today, then tomorrow sickness and death will come (indeed, they were already approaching) to everyone, to me, and nothing will remain except the stench and the worms. My deeds, whatever they may be, will be forgotten sooner or later, and I myself will be no more. Why, then, do anything? How can anyone fail to see this and live? That’s what is amazing! It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us; once we are sober we cannot help seeing that it is all a delusion, a stupid delusion! Nor is there anything funny or witty about it; it is only cruel and stupid.
- excerpt from Confession

It seemed like there were a few ways for this to go: it could become a collection of cool things that wouldn’t fit in my Facebook status, it could become random personal thoughts, it could be random academicky thoughts, or all of the above. It’s just a collection of things I would want to “throw away.”

“Irgendwo auf der Welt gibt’s ein kleines bisschen Glück, und ich träum davon in jedem Augenblick.
Irgendwo auf der Welt gibt’s ein bisschen Seligkeit
und ich träum davon schon lange, lange Zeit.
Wenn ich wüßt, wo das ist, ging ich in die Welt hinein,
denn ich möcht’ einmal recht so von Herzen glücklich sein.
Irgendwo auf der Welt fängt mein Weg zum Himmel an, irgendwo, irgendwie, irgendwann.” - Comödie Harmonisten

“This is going to be one of the biggest launches that cheese and dairy has ever had,” Philadelphia brand manager Adam Butler told Ad Age.

…And probably one of the most mismanaged. I just saw a promotional video, and I can’t imagine who the customer base for this product is supposed to be. I can’t imagine that one of Kraft’s “biggest launches” is intended to be an inferior good — one that people buy more of as income decreases.

There are so many problems with this product’s being launched in this decade (as opposed to, say the 1950s-60s, when it probably would have done much better). It is being advertised as a somewhat lower calorie, mysteriously flavored dairy product that is supposed to be some sort of substitute in cream-based casserole-type things, which are supposed to make the lives of busy moms easier. (1) Cream bases aren’t trendy right now — vinaigrettes are. (2) Casseroles aren’t so trendy either — they recall blowzy hausfrauen. (3) Moms aren’t interested in feeding their families mysteriously processed dairy items whose true nature or origin no one knows, and not that many people find that notion appetizing.

Clearly the marketing team had no one trained in psychology or common sense, or they wouldn’t have called this product a “cooking creme.” (1) “Cooking” almost always describes a product of inferior quality that no one would be willing to eat straight up — cooking oil is something that one probably doesn’t want in their salad, and cooking wine is in fact not fit to cook with, let alone to drink. (2) Philadelphia is known for cream cheese — so what is this mysterious creme product? It’s not crème fraîche, which is a product that can be eaten simply on fruit or salad or toast, whereas “cooking creme” one would be wary of doing anything with but cooking (and even that idea makes me queasy.)

I expect this campaign to crash and burn miserably. If it doesn’t, I will have overestimated our general intelligence — after all, Kraft does have a significant enough following of other “processed cheese product” consumers. Then again, Cheez Whiz and similar products have probably only survived until now because of their prevalence since the initial 1950s launch, when people were generally huge fans of highly processed “high tech” instant “food”.

I think selling econ textbooks to your peers at the beginning of a semester is a uniquely interesting pricing opportunity, because we can more or less assume rationality/expected utility preferences, probably to a greater degree than with most naïve sales. Here were the options:
1. I could price it equivalent to the cost of a used book at Labyrinth (the university affiliated bookstore). This is usually significantly higher than the price on Amazon, and a lot of people “borrow” books from Labyrinth only to order from Amazon and return the original book. It’s unclear what the demand for a nonreturnable book at this price is — certainly given the option, people prefer a returnable book. On the other hand, Labyrinth is probably out of used books for this class by now.
2. I could make it a second price auction. The problem with this is that it would take time to conduct the auction, and I want to get rid of the book as quickly as possible (my discount rate is high) largely because the students are impatient and might just buy the book off Amazon or at Labyrinth so that they can actually use it, rather than waiting for my auction to end. The worst I can do is the Amazon price minus a hefty commission, if I don’t sell it to a student. Also, the uncertainty of winning makes the book worth less to the bidders. But if there was a lot of demand, I probably could do this. I’d have to send out an email that said, “Anyone interested? Price negotiable.” And then inform them that they would be negotiating amongst themselves. With a large enough group of bidders, collusion is probably not sustainable. Suppose the book were $50 on Amazon and there were 10 interested students — you would have to pay everyone (50 - collusion price)/9 dollars to not deviate, such that the collusion price = (50 - your payment). This is because each person still needs the book, and the collusion payment is just the discount off the next best priced book available. Also, this is not a functional bidding ring because I’m only auctioning off one item. So it is possible I would get an offer better than the lowest price on Amazon, since someone who wants the book off Amazon will pay that price + whatever they are willing to pay to get it immediately rather than in 5-7 days. But with too few offers, this also may not happen.
3. Price it equal to the lowest price on Amazon. I still have the edge because again, I can get the book to the recipient immediately rather than in 5-7 days. I can be fairly certain that there is demand at this price (and probably even slightly higher prices). Of course, if there is only 1 seriously interested person, he would know that my valuation of the book is really equal to the Amazon price minus commission, so he could have offered a lower price (ie refused to buy unless the price was x). But I think we all know that it’s very unlikely at this point that there’s only one interested buyer. (This is the one I went with — I had more than one offer, which is how I know I didn’t price the book optimally.)
4. Dutch auction: I think in this case that this would have been the most lucrative of the agendas; I could start at a high price (Amazon price + whatever I think people are willing to pay for the convenience, which honestly is probably ~$4 because that’s approximately the additional cost of expedited shipping) and sequentially decrease the price by my discount rate every 6 hours or so until there’s a taker. The problem with this is that it’s still work for me, and it’s annoying to the 50+ students I have to email every time I lower the price. I’d rather not send more mass emails than I need to.
[EDIT: Okay, so I have reason to believe a second-price auction would generate truthful bids, which are likely above Amazon price. But, on the other hand, the prereq for the course was Macroecon 100 and honestly, this was not a very sophisticated syllabus. So I have my doubts.]

I often have the misfortune to sit in class next to smelly people. One year it was someone who wore the same sweaty sweatshirt for months on end. This time, it was someone who shared a passion for cheese and garlic with the Ancient Egyptians (who, for their garlic consumption, were known as the Stinking Ones by their neighbors.)

Clearly, I would pay some amount of money x for this person to stop being smelly immediately, so that I can get through the rest of the class without having to hold my breath every so often. So, the smelly person is exerting a negative externality on his neighbors. He probably has some positive payoff s for not having to care about being smelly (or, for the other person, not having to do laundry), and is probably unaware that people are keeping him at arms or longer distance.

But there is also a social cost to me to go and tell this person that he is smelly. Given that we observe smelly people continuing to be smelly, I’m guessing that other people who are offended are also not saying anything, because the social cost c of telling the person that they smell is probably greater than their x_i payoff of not having to tolerate smelliness. So, unlike the model of reporting crimes, we can assume that there isn’t one individual who gets a net non-negative payoff from informing the person.

Communally, the neighbors might be able to pay one person up to

with i not i’, for i’ to tell the smelly person that they are smelly. But, (1) there is a cost to signalling that you think the person is smelly in hopes of finding a likeminded neighbor, and (2) they would not communally want to give more than c_i’ to the person who is elected to be the messenger. So, the person elected to be messenger (weakly) is going to be the one who feels that it is least costly to inform someone of their smelliness, ie the one with the thickest skin. Then, everyone else should commit to paying no more than c_i’/(n-1), so that any one person who doesn’t pay up causes the plan to not work out and the person to remain smelly.

I think the more interesting problem is, how does one go about finding the group of neighbors who think this person is smelly? Jeff suggested posting on an anonymous forum like PrincetonFML, which might generate A solution that causes the person to stop being smelly, but not the best solution (ie on observing that a sufficient number of people have agreed to do something about the smelly person, it is a best strategy to not signal that you, too think he is smelly.)