Friday, February 28, 2014

If Only We Had Something Valuable We Could Sell.....

An email from a reader.

Seattle's push for a $15 minimum wage isn't the only economic illiteracy we have here on the left coast. Here's an additional slice of annual economic illiteracy from our local zoo

1. The zoo needs money (they're always asking for donations at the gate). 

2. The zoo has something very valuable, where the demand is much higher than the supply. So what does a Seattle zoo do (ha!) with this valuable resource? Do they auction it to the highest bidder(s), perhaps with a dutch auction, thereby maximizing some much needed revenue? No, of course not, this is Seattle! 

Since this special fertilizer is limited, [they are going to sell it, right?  no...]  you have to enter a lottery for the chance to purchase... Sigh. Face palm. Double face palm.

4 comments:

Zachary Bartsch said...

So.....

I know that wordpress allows the option of links such that readers can click and "Like" or "tweet" a blog post. This is one that I definitely would have shared. But I'm not gonna go into other applications and copy & paste links. That's a lotta work. By not including these share options, you're passing up a bunch of free publicity. And making my life harder (Harder to consume this priceless good, that is).

Anonymous said...

Think how unjust it would be if the party with the highest willingness and ability to pay were to end up with this crap.

Joe Blizzard said...

I believe the comment above is onto something about the mindset that brings this sort of thing about. It's a natural and reasonable condition that our willingness to pay for things we want is limited by our ability to do so. Some people think this is unfair, and an awful lot of people in government think it's irrelevant.

Roger Sweeny said...

They certainly would make more money from the crap if they auctioned it off. But they would also lose money from people who don't donate, or donate less, because they no longer get a warm and fuzzy feeling when they think about the zoo.

In a very real sense, cheap crap may be a loss leader.