{"id":1672,"date":"2024-06-14T15:35:40","date_gmt":"2024-06-14T19:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indirections.com\/?p=1672"},"modified":"2024-06-21T13:59:58","modified_gmt":"2024-06-21T17:59:58","slug":"the-price-elasticity-of-your-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indirections.com\/?p=1672","title":{"rendered":"The Price Elasticity of Your Word"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/span> 5<\/span> Minute Read<\/span><\/span>\n

Cost no object; what would you take in exchange for your integrity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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“Perform without fail what you resolve.” Benjamin Franklin
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The first play I wrote that anyone bothered to attend was about a down-and-out high schooler whose false sense of popularity he had wrongly derived from the bullying he suffered at the hands of the A-List. After a fragile to-be-or-not reckoning near the end of his senior year, “sold to nobody for nothing” at what was supposed to be an innocent prom fund-raiser, the boy dropped out of life altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written about a neighborhood kid who stopped taking his insulin long enough to halt his heart, the story, presented to the entire school, took aim at those same A-Listers whose indifference, cruelty, and fake remorse led the boy\u2014his name was Ben\u2014to a place his mother later told me people might care more about him. As Arthur Miller had done in my then favorite Death of Salesman<\/em>, my play was not about Willie Loman’s Uncle (also named Ben), a visionary character who had “gone off to Alaska,” but the next suicide on the train that was high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“No matter what you do,” my theatre teacher Ray Jones cautioned when first reading the script, “you must not typecast the show. Whoever plays your ‘Willie Loman’ character must be the epitome of the A-List. Typecast him, and you’ll have another Oberamagau on your hands.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Once each decade in an out-of-the-way Bavarian village, townspeople re-enact a Passion Play in fulfillment of an ancient covenant their ancestors made on deliverance from the Plague.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You know the villager who plays Judas in that show often takes his life afterward,” Mr. Jones once told us.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duly cautioned, I not only drew my pre-suicide from among the popular but most of my main characters as well. Days before the premiere, as we rehearsed the play’s climax for the first time, I realized I had gone too far in selecting my headliners. All but a happy few of my friends walked off the set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“I had no idea when I signed up that this show was about suicide, complained the first to bolt. “All my friends expect me to be up here in a comedy like we always do. But here I am driving some poor sod to his death and not a laugh in the script? Not happening, man.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

One by one, my all-star cast reneged on their signed contract, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves with less than a week until showtime. (An object lesson for another day: one young cast member who stayed true to her word remains, fifty years on, the love of my life.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In economics, the price of elasticity of demand, on top of its subtle alliteration, is one of the coolest concepts I learned in business school. Consider the following scenario:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You’re running a lemonade stand on a hot June day in Holly Springs, North Carolina. the oldest of you is ten. It might have been earlier this week. As your inventory dwindles, you toy with the idea of doubling your price but worry your customers might balk or grumble at your capitalistic profiteering (nay, ‘price gouging’) on account of the weather. But it’s still hot, and they’re still thirsty. What’s a few more quarters for my grandkids, re-enacting the Lemonade Stand case under the tutelage of their entrepreneurial mom? The price spikes, but the money keeps on coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Price elasticity of demand: <\/strong>Measuring the economic impact of a change in price on the subsequent demand for your product or service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n