Friday, May 30, 2008

Aerosmith and Time Preferences

I came across the following quote attributed to Aerosmith's Steven Tyler - a nice round up of low future orientation

"The things that come to those who wait may be the things left by those that got there first."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like mass non-cooperative prsent-orientation --- a bit like the Tragedy of the Commons!

Anonymous said...

On the subject of The Tragedy of the Commons, the Adrian College (Michigan) Policy Institute will
host "The Tragedy of the Commons" 40th Anniversary
Retrospective Symposium on Friday, Nov. 21, 2008.
This is an interdisciplinary symposium drawing
panelists from Political Science, Biology,
Environmental Policy, and Mathematics, to discuss
Hardin's seminal article, and the status of commons
problems 40 years later.
Panelists will include political scientist Elinor Ostrom
(Indiana University), mathematician J. Marty Anderies
(Arizona State University), political scientist Harlan
Wilson (Oberlin College) and biologist (and friend of
Hardin) Carl Bajmea (Grand Valley State University).
Other panelists are being recruited.
Attendance is limited to 40 registrants. Registration
will be $45, and includes lunch, dinner, and one night's
lodging. The Symposium website is
http://www.adrian.edu/academics/policy_institute/com
mons.php. We hope to have registration beginning on
July 15.

Kevin Denny said...

So could Tyler be right? He is not really talking about time preference but about taking up a fixed resource:opportunities which others may exploit. Lets say you have zero time preference but you are risk averse and your marginal utility is stochastic.Would you not tend to bring forward consumption since if you delay your MU might be lower in the future?

Liam Delaney said...

yes - he addresses that in later albums