The street I currently live on is lined with small, shabby little shops (though 'shops' might be too grand a term - perhaps 'stall' would be better) of the little-bit-of-everything variety, selling eggs and vegetables as well as offering internet and printing services, not to mention selling rum, bread, and anything else that happens to be around.
One shop in particular is festooned with tiny plastic packets of shampoo, good for a single use. I pointed this out to my roommate and he said "That's how it is here. I buy whole bottles of shampoo and people think I'm crazy."
Later, I went to a pharmacy to refill my aspirin.
"A bottle of aspirin, please."
The pharmacist looked at me. "We don't have bottles. We have boxes."
"How many pills are in one box?"
"A thousand".
"Uhh...." Apparently the thing to do is order pills individually. I ended up getting 20; only 1.65 pesos apiece.
Obviously this makes some economic sense. A family living on five dollars a day isn't going to drop seven dollars on a bottle of oil, even if that would be more efficient in the long run.
One of the hidden costs of poverty.
1 comment:
Yes, economists assume people will do the most efficient thing (in this case, buy in quantity), but sometimes they can't.
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