I am reading the current issue of MIT Sloan Management Review on my flight, there’s an interesting piece “A Manager’s Guide to Human Irrationalities” by MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely. Dan is one the world’s foremost behavioral economist. He wrote about pricing new products and consumer product choice behavior. Among his research findings is when selling a new product, companies should always compare it with something that consumers know even the innovative product is so novel and offers different performance and features.
He talked about an experiment he had at MIT Media Lab a few years ago seeing how people feels the need to say something slightly different from what someone else said. They called the software “Anti-Groupware”, I like that name. The idea was to investigate why, when you take a group of good people and put them in a room, they generally make bad decisions as a group. They wanted to come up with a technology to prevent this. A very cool idea indeed.
While we are on the subject of economics, traditional economics holds that humans (as rational beings) make choices to maximize their own welfare (not the best side of us). I always think that it is dangerous to think that all human behavior can be explained by economics. Life would be simple and predictable if that’s the case. As an economist by training, I like taking economic principles and test them in places where markets have little roles. How about economic and religion?
Let take one of the basic laws of economics: There’s no free lunch. I always tell my teenage sons that there is no free lunch in this world, everything they have to work hard for, unfortunately they always come up with ideas to show me there are (all those gigabits that they download for free).
Back to economic and religion. Let’s look at Judaism; the basic laws of economics should also apply to Torah because Torah directs Jewish behavior. ("Torah" refers to the 5 Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. But the word "torah" also refers to the entire Jewish bible or Old Testament).
Where’s the Torah at on “no free lunch”? The Torah tells Jews that they are in a covenantal relationship with God. A covenant is basically a contract and all Jews are bound to God by a contract requiring to do some Mitzvoth. It is not simply some random good deed but an act commanded by God. The Torah tells them that God redeemed them from slavery to do as commanded. It is a duty.
Law schools teach students that a contract consists of a promise given -- in exchange for a promise received -- and that each such promise must be supported by “consideration” given by each party to the other. But, what is “consideration”? Consideration is simply some form of payment whether it is one dollar. Each party to the contract must pay for the benefit promised by the other. Simply, there is no “free lunch.”
And the contract between God and the Jews is the same, God promises that they will be rewarded if they do as commanded. Traditionally, Jews are obliged to study the Mitzvoth and to “Do” them. “Doing” is the payment for the beneficence God has bestowed upon them. They should talk about the Mitzvoth in order to “do” them because “There’s No Free Lunch!”. “Doing” is the payment for the beneficence God has bestowed upon Jews.
Let’s switch over to Buddhism. A big part of that is the concept of 'No Self'. This concept is very foreign to western culture in many ways. You may have heard about the five Skandhas? The Buddha taught people that an individual is a combination of five aggregates of existence, also called the Five Skandhas or the five heaps. These are: Form, Sensation, Perception, Mental Formations, and Consciousness. So the “Self” is “No-Self”. What's most important is to understand about the skandhas is that they are empty. They are not qualities that an individual possesses, because there is no self-possessing them. This doctrine of “No Self” is called anatta.
Very basically, the Buddha taught that "you" are not an integral, autonomous entity. The individual self, or what we might call the ego, is more correctly thought of as a by-product of the skandhas. If only we can see through the delusion of the small, individual self, we experience that which is not subject to birth and death. And you need to give up many of many human desires to get to that stage. “There’s No Free Lunch!”, “No Self” is the payment for the beneficence the Buddha has bestowed upon believers.
I can find more examples from Islam, Hinduism and Christianity. My conclusion today, there is really no free lunch. The airline is the latest to adapt this concept, you have to pay for your lunch and they are not included with your ticket.
