Kids these days…

 

As I discussed in a recent post, sometimes our adult children do things we’re not proud of.  It’s even more painful when you catch them in the act yourself.  So you can imagine my distress when I saw my beautiful little girl in a compromising position (see picture).  Ok, she’s 21 years old, and is normally a virtuous person of sound judgement.  And we all have the occasional lapse.  But you can imagine how upsetting it was for me to see her lifting the top layer of chocolates, which was still half full, so she could steal a chocolate from the bottom layer.

Me:  “What are you doing?!?”

Her:  “What?”

Me:  “You can’t take chocolates from the bottom layer!  Not until we finish the top layer!”

Her:  “Why not?”

Me:  “It’s just wrong.”

Her:  “It’s wrong to take chocolates from a box of chocolates?”

Me:  “There are right ways to do that, and there are wrong ways to do that.”

She rolled her eyes, and continued her distressing behavior.  Right in front of me.  I’ve been upset ever since.

If anyone would like to chime in below, and help me explain to her why this is so wrong, I’d appreciate it.  She won’t listen to me.  She says I’m being ridiculous.  If you can imagine.

It’s not easy being a father, sometimes.

I’d console myself with a piece of chocolate, but the only ones left on the top layer are yucky.

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  1. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    It’s like some of you have never been in polite society before.

    • #91
  2. DaveSchmidt Coolidge
    DaveSchmidt
    @DaveSchmidt

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    From an economics perspective, it is probably utility maximizing to not restrict choice of chocolate to the top layer.

    Typically, people have different preferences in chocolate. It is possible that everyone in your home has the same preferences, Doc, but unlikely. When your daughter chose a chocolate from the bottom layer, she not only benefitted herself (by selecting one from the bottom that she preferred), but she possibly conferred a benefit on others (by leaving one on the top that another probably likes better).

    This is the kind of slippery-slope argument that will lead to the downfall of Western Civilization.

    Finally someone who understands the gravity of the situation.

    If the preferred variety is on the lower level but the upper level is still not fully consumed, do consumers (a) have to literally swallow lesser choices to make the better choice available (grossly inefficient); (b) await consumption of the lesser items thus allowing others to hold hostage their preferred choice (market distortion) or: (c) surreptitiously toss the remaining less desirable upper tier items in the trash (Inefficient with criminal implications). From a Law & Economics standpoint, the enforcement of the one-tier-at-a-time policy creates perverse incentives, inefficiencies and threatens the entire social fabric.

    OB, your analysis exposes a presumption of a highly unlikely demand distribution regarding confectionary preferences. IF it were true that demand was distributed approximately equally — if, for example, demand for milk-chocolate jelly filled candies was equal to the demand for, say, the premium single-origin ganache — THEN you and Jerry would both be making valid points.

    But this is obviously not the case. The desirability of confections is not uniformly distributed, but rather approximates the normal distribution so prevalent in considerations of human preference.

    Jerry, with his ersatz utilitarian argument, and you with your perhaps more noble yet equally misguided moral hazard analysis, are promoting perspectives at odds to human gustatory nature, a recipe (no pun intended) almost certain to both compound the current crisis and, ultimately, plunge society into spiraling disarray.

    I’d like to see if Joe Biden could read Henry’s comment off of a Teleprompter.  Lots of “big words” in it.  It may even prompt Joe to create a few new stories from his past. 

    • #92
  3. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Arahant (View Comment):

    It’s like some of you have never been in polite society before.

    Not for very long.

    What? That’s formal armor. The tabard was at the cleaners.

    • #93
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