Free stuff makes us irrational
I should have quit when I saw they thought two examples of fistfights years apart were any evidence for their case, but I persisted.<p>Science around rational choices often tends to be premised by bizarre theories about what is obviously rational. People take free stuff because it often costs them nothing if it turns out to be a mistake. I can throw a free piece of chocolate in the trash if I don&#x27;t like it. Throwing a 13¢ piece of chocolate away is like throwing away 13¢. This fake effect would disappear if you were given the choice between a free thing with no resale value and a cheap thing with high resale value, because the cheap thing now becomes profitable to throw away (or in this case sell.)<p>Also, the specifics about chocolate: I&#x27;ve never had a Lindt chocolate, I&#x27;ve had a Hershey&#x27;s Kiss (they outsell Lindt in the US by multiple orders of magnitude.) I have no idea whether they&#x27;re more expensive because they&#x27;re better, or even because they&#x27;re more expensive to manufacture or the chocolate is of higher quality grade - they could be more expensive because of the packaging. The fancy thing is often worse (&quot;for a more refined palate&quot;) than the cheap thing. The Lindt is a risk that the Hershey&#x27;s is not.<p>I&#x27;m going to skip free shipping, because, again, out of context it&#x27;s difficult to evaluate the current value of products one hasn&#x27;t bought recently. It&#x27;s far easier to evaluate shipping costs. Also, shipping costs swamp other considerations when buying small, inexpensive things, which are most people&#x27;s purchases. Also, this is a dumb survey ranking public concerns, and as always being used as a proxy for importance. [edit: just looked closer at the list of concerns they ranked free shipping above. They&#x27;re all objectively worth less than free shipping to someone not in a hurry.]<p>The last (and the goal of the article) is the goofy attempt to transfer this badly argued effect to the consumption of online news. I read tons of online news that is awful, and is written by people who are bad, financed by other people who are bad. I wish I could take money away from them. I might be reading it to see what bad people are thinking, or I might even be reading it because I was suckered in by a deceptive or vague headline. While I want to know what bad people are thinking, I don&#x27;t want to pay them for the privilege. Linkbait headlines steal my time and energy, and I not only don&#x27;t want to pay them, I wish I could fine them.