The other night in our micro class, the professor rendered the line “I’d trade all of my tomorrows for one single yesterday” in mathematical notation - that is, expressed as a consumer preference, where the sum total of all days numbered little t + 1 (today + 1) up until the death of the speaker (big T) would not be preferable to any element from the data set t – 1 (because the line doesn’t specify a yesterday, it suggests that any yesterday would fit the criteria.)
The professor averred that this line made sense in the context of Janis Joplin’s life, particularly considering that number of tomorrows would probably be severely limited by her extracurriculars. But as I kept whispering, under my breath, the line was written by Kris Kristofferson, who maybe didn’t necessarily expect to have a whole lot more tomorrows than Janis – but who nonetheless did.
This changes the value proposition significantly. The consumer is now trading a much greater number of tomorrows for one single yesterday. I believe this would put the consumer at one of the extreme ends of the indifference chart, where a large number of goods must be given up one axis in order to realize a very small gain on the other axis.
As with race dialogue, remember: when applying microeconomics to popular songs, the speaker matters.
2 comments:
Bem, mas voce estah assumindo que a quantidade de dias futuro equivale a um "large number of goods", e obviamente, se voce nao value altamente dias vividos após, say, 30 anos de vida, nao importa se voce viverá 35 ou 75. Pode até virar uma questao de Inferior Good, onde se voce avalia muito mal uma vida 'de velho', voce, if given a choice (or if you can afford it), vai preferir nao passar dos 30 por exemplo.
Assumindo que alguem avalia positivamente viver mais tempo, voce entra no conceito mais interessante de risk management e avaliaçao de um futuro incerto. Temos, para poder decidir alguma coisa, estimar a chance de viver 10, 20, 30, 70 anos a mais, e calcular o present value de One Yesterday contra Sigma de t até t+x (quantos dias mais voce vai viver).
No final, voce vai ter uma resposta muito diferente dependendo do perfil das pessoas... um dos fatores sendo quanto risk averse ou prone voce é.
Either way, interesting idea to apply mathematical notation to. Abraco
Claro, essa conversa depende muito do perfil do consumidor. No nosso caso, o perfil da Janis Joplin, segundo o professor, era de que ela já era uma pessoa para quem o número de amanhãs seria bastante limitado.
In English: Babo points out that consumer preference matters, because the speaker may consider tomorrows beyond the age of 35, 40, what have you, an inferior product with diminishing returns. If the present value of the item "one tomorrow" will change, again, we're looking at a totally different system.
Soon: how does a band reuniting impact the value of their back catalog?
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