May 2022 - A Central Banker's Miscellany

Spending wisely at supermarkets

Or how not to fall prey to hidden persuaders and fill your trolleys at supermarkets

Diogenes, the cynic Greek philosopher who lived in a barrel, was having bread and lentils for supper when Aristippus, the hedonistic philosopher, saw him. A student of Socrates, Aristippus charted a different course, living comfortably as a courtier to King Dionysius singing his praises. He asked Diogenes to submit to the king to avoid having to survive on bread and lentils. Diogenes replied that only if Aristippus had learnt to live on bread and lentils, he would not have had to be subservient to the king. Continue reading “Spending wisely at supermarkets”

Vance Packard and The Hidden Persuaders

The continuing relevance of Vance Packard and his warnings against unbridled consumerism

Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders has lessons for assessing supermarkets — Photo by Hanson Lu on Unsplash

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To Tip or Not to Tip

The practice of tipping and its motivations, and how it might be promoting a culture of bribery and corruption

Around 1990, a colleague shared a real story of a bank branch manager in remote rural Punjab. A borrower wanted to give the manager a gift. It was expensive. New to the job, he resisted. But, the borrower rationalised that he was only sharing in the happiness of having become rich thanks to the loans the bank sanctioned his firm. The incident points to the progressively fine divide between gifts, donations, kickbacks, bribes, extortion, and so on. Tipping is a related, though socially accepted and frowned upon, practice of sharing a monetary equivalent of perceived excess of value over and above what you paid for. Continue reading “To Tip or Not to Tip”