Like water, below the equator, the law of supply and demand runs the other way…

Sometimes, business decisions here don’t make a lot of sense. There are lots of examples I hear from people who work in big business, the kind that involves capital and investment and hiring decisions, but I’m a journalist. I like microcosms. So the thing I think about is being on the street and being offered a copy of the New Times, the only English daily paper here. I decline and ask, always in vain, if there’s any paper in French (I need the practice). A head shakes, and fingers fly quickly through the stack of newsprint to pull out…another New Times. But this does not intersect my personal demand curve, which I thought I’d made so clear…

Another example someone pointed out to me: The cab guy you use regularly starts to hike up the price on you, like you won’t notice, and you think, “Hmm…in the States, at this point, you’d be offering me a discount.”

But then, of course, it actually makes a great deal of sense. If you call that cab guy so often, clearly you need him. And if you need him, he’s in, minimally, a good bargaining position. And he knows, as you know, that it’s both easier and nicer to be able to rely on the same guy than to keep 15 cabbies’ numbers in your phone. Even in the States, we pay for such convenience. So the indifference curve isn’t quite as clear as you thought.

All of these lame econ jokes are by way of telling you a funny story. A week or so ago, the Great Dane came home with a kerosene lantern he picked up in case we lose power at night but he wants to sit on the porch. I didn’t know we needed this–though neither, it turned out, did he. He was in town, and he needed some cigarettes. So: “I walked into this shop and said, ‘Do you have any cigarettes?’ And they said, ‘No, we have lamps. Do you want a lamp?'”

“And I said… ‘Yes! I’ll take a lamp.'”

Just as the toilets still flush when the water swirls the wrong way, commerce continues, clockwise…