the tindog coffeehouse

Economics, at its heart, is the study of how people make choices when dealing with scarce resources, and no where is that more evident than at Chuck E. Cheese’s.

We promised Megan that we would take her to the pizza playground when she learned to ride her bike.  She picked it up quickly on Monday night, so last night we held up our end of the deal.

We divided the tokens equally between her and Erin and let them pick which games they wanted to play.  But we tried to explain that if you play the games which pay out in tickets, you’ll be able to be able to buy stuff at the counter later.  They eventually came around and they ended up with a total of about 100 tickets.

With each girl having 50 tickets to spend, the choices of course were very limited.  Megan chose a rubber snake (20 tickets), a plastic frog (10 tickets), and a flower-shaped yo-yo (20 tickets).  Erin chose a pack of candy (40 tickets) and a barrette (10 tickets).

At the end, even though each girl was able to choose their own prizes, neither was completely happy.  Erin was mad because Megan got three things and she only got two, and Megan was unhappy that Erin got candy and she didn’t.

And those, my friends, are what we call opportunity costs.