The only thing we can do without limit is desire more. No matter how productive we become, we can never accomplish and enjoy as much as we would like. Because of scarcity we all face the dismal reality that there are limits to what we can do. The Freeman.Įconomics has been called the dismal science because it studies the most fundamental of all problems, scarcity.

Don Boudreaux explains what economists mean when they talk about unintended consequences. Choosing this desert (usually) means missing out on that one…. Marrying this person means not marrying that one. Choosing this college means you can’t go to that one. Thinking about foregone opportunities, the choices we didn’t make, can lead to regret. We don’t want to hear about the hidden or non-obvious costs. Sometimes people are very happy holding on to the naive view that something is free. To get the most out of life, to think like an economist, you have to be know what you’re giving up in order to get something else…. Getting the Most Out of Life: The Concept of Opportunity Cost, by Russ Roberts on Econlib If your next-best alternative to seeing the movie is reading the book, then the opportunity cost of seeing the movie is the money spent plus the pleasure you forgo by not reading the book…. If, for example, you spend time and money going to a movie, you cannot spend that time at home reading a book, and you can’t spend the money on something else.

When economists refer to the “opportunity cost” of a resource, they mean the value of the next-highest-valued alternative use of that resource. Opportunity Cost, from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics Friends or newscasters often say “It cost me $150 to buy the iPhone I wanted.” For example, “cost” may refer to many possible ways of evaluating the costs of buying something or using a service. The word “cost” is commonly used in daily speech or in the news. When economists use the word “cost,” we usually mean opportunity cost. Opportunity cost refers to what you have to give up to buy what you want in terms of other goods or services.

How much does word cost