Category: Television

Curb Your Enthusiasm — Anonymous Donations

Larry David makes a large donation to the National Resources Defense Council, a non-profit environmental advocacy group, but Larry is quickly upstaged by an anonymous donation that he finds out is made by Ted Danson. Larry felt like he was doing a great thing by donating to the fund, but felt it was a truly altruistic donation. He believes the anonymous donation by Ted Danson is a better deal because anonymous donors get more recognition for appearing to not care about the recognition, even though they go around telling people they were the anonymous donor.

Thanks to Nautilus and Moblab for the clip suggestions:

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Brooklyn 99 — Wine Drink as a Gift

 

The squad is invited over to the Captain’s house for a birthday party,  and they all have the same idea when it comes to wine. While Jake wants to try to impress the captain with the finest bottle of wine, he’s a little out of the price range and settles for an $8 bottle of wine. Come to find out, the entire squad buys the same bottle of “wine drink” and Kevin isn’t too fond of their selection.

While it isn’t clear that there is much of a difference between cheap and expensive wine, “wine drink” probably doesn’t send the best signal of quality.

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Brooklyn 99 — Risk Aversion in Air Travel

 

Boyle is going on a singles cruise and isn’t sure when to arrive at the airport. He approaches Gina with the idea of getting to the airport 5 hours early for a domestic flight (which is already too much!), but she tries to convince him he actually needs to be there 8 hours. Some people prefer to arrive at the airport extra early because they are scared they will miss their flight, but most people don’t need to arrive more than 2 hours. Later in the episode, we learn that Boyle missed his flight because of an assignment, but that he actually bought a backup flight just in case he missed it. This is perhaps an extreme version of risk aversion.

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The Chi — Price > Marginal Cost

Coogie Johnson rides up to the corner store to get a grape pop and beef jerky. Habib, the store owner, tells him it’s $1.00 for the soda and $1.75 for the jerky. Coogie then tries to talk Habib down to letting him pay $0.25 for soda and pay full price for the jerky to which his son nodded in approval. Even though the retail price for the soda and the jerky are $1.00 and $1.75, respectively. Coogie knows that the soda is priced well above the marginal cost and attempts to negotiate the price down closer to the marginal cost. Habib argues that it’s not fair to charge him a different price than other customers, but the son recognizes that some profit is better than no profit and agrees to sell it to Coogie at a lower price.

Thanks to Kyle Davis for the reference.

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South Park — White People Flipping Houses

 

Randy Marsh is a local contractor who flips homes in the area. His TV show, white people flipping homes, has come under bad wrap when local Confederates have decided to use his television show to protest the Amazon Echo stealing jobs in the town. Marsh takes the men to court for damages because viewers negatively associate the local Confederates with the show. He’s asked why he doesn’t change the name of his show, but he lists off a variety of other show titles that were already taken. In a monopolistically competitive market, product differentiation is essential to creating demand. Items must be substitutable, but sellers also must try to convince buyers that their product is somehow unique from the competition.

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South Park — Alexa is Stealing Our Jobs (NSFW)

 

In the episode, everybody in South Park is buying that Amazon Alexa as a voice assistant to make their lives easier, however there is a negative externality to buying the Alexa. The local low-skilled workers in their town believe that these new machines are stealing their jobs, a classic South Park catchphrase, and they start to protest. Randy Marsh, a tv show personality comes up with a solution to fix this by having the locals replace the personal assistants, but not all of the locals are happy about this.

Thanks to John Miller for the clip suggestion!

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Rick and Morty — Bartering for Bread

 

The clip shows a good example of the double coincidence of wants and how a barter system is difficult to maintain. The seller of bread needs somebody to take care of his kids and the guy who can take care of his kids wants extra bread. They need what the other has and have what the other wants. The trouble is determining how much work is appropriate to get a loaf of bread and then managing the system to make sure everyone gets paid.

Thanks to Mathew Abraham for the suggestion

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The Goldbergs — The Ugly Jacket

 

Beverly decides that she wants to pursue her dream of being an entrepreneur and sell her own stylish jackets on QVC. She eagerly whips together several jackets and repeatedly tries to contact QVC, but she is never able to reach them. Beverly’s husband agrees to sell the jackets to the customers at his local furniture store, but he finds that this task is harder than he imagined it would be.

After selling a couch, Murray offers the customer a special half-off price on the jacket. The customer refuses, so Murray continues to lower the price until he gets to the point of offering to give the couch away if he takes the jacket, but, the costumer still refuses this offer. Will Murray is willing and able to sell the jacket, he can’t find suitable buyers who are willing to enter the market. Despite Say’s Law that supply will create demand, he is unable to find customers at even a zero price.

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Girlboss — Jacket Arbitrage

 

 

Sophia browses for clothes in a vintage clothing store and finds a jacket she wants to purchase. She bargains for a lower price for the jacket before leaving the store. Later, Sophia decides to sell the jacket on eBay and takes a few photos to try and make the jacket appear more fashionable. While she was able to buy the jacket for only $9, Sophia eventually sells the jacket on eBay for over $600 (the clip stops at $185).   As the show progresses, Sophia continues to sell clothes and starts an online business called Nasty Gal, which is actually still in operation today. This clip is a prime example of arbitrage, where a person can purchase an item at a low price in one area (Sophia at the thrift store) and sell it for a higher price in a different market (Sophia on eBay). In a perfectly competitive market, the price differential should narrow, but because eBay has a much larger customer base, Sophia is able to buy items from the local thrift store and resell them later at a higher price.

Thanks to Elena Montenegro for the clip suggestion!

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Boss Baby — Gains from Trade

 

Tim doesn’t like green beans, but his baby brother sure loves them. Whenever the parents leave the kitchen, the boys realize there’s an opportunity for trade. The Boss Baby knows he needs a favor in exchange for eating his brother’s beans because he isn’t just giving away his services for free.

Thanks to Catherine Madrid for the reference!

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