(I)
On a Sunday afternoon in October 2012, I was ready to drive my rental car up to a remote central Pennsylvania town from Arlington, Virginia, where I had been living for a little over a year. Just like any other Sunday afternoon of the previous four months I went to the same nearby Avis car rental with which my employer at the time had a group discount deal. I waited in line for about five minutes to check in, and was greeted by the next available agent with the usual, poorly simulated hospitality — a deadly “Hello” with minimal eye contact. I handed over my driver’s license and Avis Wizard Card, a membership card that supposedly would help me better manage my rental car reservation by linking my saved rental car preferences to a Wizard Number. I stood there and waited, as usual, for the lady behind the counter to pull up my reservation, an economy-size vehicle.
The automatic sliding door kept opening and closing as people walked in and out of the rental office. The parking garage was right outside of the office. The fall breeze in Virginia is more brutal than it sounds. As the door opened I felt the wind attacking my back and my ears, mixed with sounds of footsteps, engine starting, and car door shutting, sounds I had grown so accustomed to that they were simply numbing silence to me. The only sound missing seemed to be human voices, which I had also gotten used to, until the agent lady suddenly said something out of the ordinary:
“Would you like to upgrade your car size to an intermediate for only $7.99 a day? It’s part of our annual October promo program.”
“Hm… no that’s ok.”
“Are you sure? With $7.99 you take almost half off the regular price.”
“Yeah that’s fine.”
“A lot of people are taking advantage of this promotion for only this month.”
“It’s fine… it doesn’t matter. I don’t really care.”
…
(II)
Why did I not care to upgrade my rental car? Why did making these trivial choices bother me?
As I drove up to Pennsylvania that evening, I couldn’t stop thinking about the abnormally insistent lady at the car rental. I did a thought experiment:
If you don’t care what car you drive, you don’t go to a car rental and specifically pick one out; you simply accept whatever car is given to you. Because in general, if one doesn’t care about a certain subject, there is no process of choosing involved.
However, is not caring an innate idea planted in your brain from the beginning? That is, do you just initially not care or choose? There seems to exist a paradox of choosing, because you have to make the first decision or choice of not caring in order to execute that decision. Therefore, you actually choose not to choose, which should be based on the fact that you have chosen to make certain choices before, but realize, at a later point in time, that these choices do not make a difference to you.
For example, five years ago, you had to choose between purchasing car A and car B, and you decided to go with car A. For whatever reason, two years ago, you decided to switch to car B, a better looking, more expense, and more glamorous vehicle. However, after choosing car B and driving it for a while, you came to the conclusion that it didn’t really make a difference to you, in terms of anything — happiness, status, whatever. After another year, you decided that you did not care which car you drove anymore, a conscious decision of not choosing based on your past experience of choosing.
…
(III)
Being presented by a potential upgrade at the car rental, how am I supposed to make a choice anyway?
During my first semester in college, I missed the Principles of Microeconomics lecture led by famous Economics professor of the University of Virginia, Professor Elzinga. I chose a 20-person class taught by a graduate student from Russia, because I simply didn’t know anything better about the difference between big lectures and small classes, or the fact that one was supposed to weigh the pros and cons between them. It was my first few months studying and living in the United States, a chaotic semester filled with confusion, anxiety, and tears.
The graduate student’s thick Russian accent didn’t help with understanding microeconomics, considering the fact that English itself was foreign to me (it still is). I wasn’t out of the woods until my junior year as I attended higher-level Economics courses taught by more experienced professors. I was enlightened the moment I was able to fully comprehend the essence of microeconomics, along with the range of philosophical ideas hidden behind this highly-simplified microeconomics model: an economic entity makes choices to maximize utility, based on three basic factors — one’s fundamental preferences, limited resources, and relevant information. Economics is a social science that studies how an economic entity makes choices.
…
