Hey readers,
Welcome again after a week's gap. Judging by the topics I picked this week, it seems that the vacation got me thinking about one thing: human behaviour.
Economists assume we are all rational. Psychologists prove that we are not. We make decisions based on both practicality but also emotions. We care about prices, but also fairness. We chase rewards, only to sometimes become trapped by them. And sometimes, our trivial actions turn into trends that reveal something deeper about an economy.
Can you sell your hair? Your kidney? What about your data? Vote? Where do we draw the line on what can be commercialised - and who gets to draw that line?
There are no clean answers. This week, I explored how society's moral compass shifts with time, culture and context. And it's rarely consistent. We all want to live in a corruption-free country, yet many of us would pay a bribe to avoid a traffic challan. We want farmers to earn more, but are we ready to pay a little extra for a kilo of rice?
The moral dilemmas don't stop with consumers. Businesses and governments face them too, except they can't shrug them off as easily because their decisions affect everyone. A water tanker charging more during a drought may feel exploitative, but cap the price, and the tanker may never show up. Governments tax tobacco while allowing its sale, and subsidise some sectors while taxing others. There's a constant battle to balance public health, jobs, revenue, business connections and even some corruption. Economics doesn't always defeat morality. Nor does morality always defeat economics. Most of the time, they negotiate. Read more: Morality, Economics Have Complicated Relationship - Part 1 & Part 2.
Have you ever spent fifteen minutes scrolling through Zomato or Swiggy, only to close the app without ordering anything? South Korea has taken that feeling to another level. A viral website lets people order food, track the delivery rider, and enjoy the dopamine rush - except the food never arrives.
This trend could be highlighting South Korea's biggest economic contradictions. The AI and semiconductor boom has made some segments richer, but a large part of the country has not yet seen that prosperity. That's why South Korea's New Fake Food Delivery Apps Say Something About Its Inequality.
Confession time. My wife and I probably saved over Rs 1 lakh on travel last year using credit card rewards. So yes, I've become a bit obsessed with them. But that also made me wonder: what is all this doing to me psychologically? Research shows reward programmes trigger dopamine long before the reward arrives, making us spend more than we intended - often on things that don't even earn rewards.
Banks know this. Generous rewards work best when consumers are still naïve. But as markets mature, banks cut benefits, tighten milestones, and make premium cards harder to access. India's credit card market is now entering that phase, which explains the recent wave of devaluations. Read more: Credit Card Rewards Are Addictive; Banks Know It.
Economics is often presented as a study of money. But as we know now, it is not. A lot of it is how we behave, respond to incentives and also about social norms. Our moral beliefs shift with context. Our spending responds to cleverly designed incentives. Our happiness sometimes comes from pretending to order food rather than eating it.
That's the week.
If you made it this far, I'd love to hear from you.
Which of these stories stayed with you? What stories can you share around these topics?
And more importantly, what should I dig into next?
An everyday object, a policy, a price that suddenly changed, a trend that's growing around... send it my way. Just hit reply. I read everything.
See you next Saturday.
Cheers, Swapnil
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