The Dollar Dilemma

The house in which I live is a cess pool for observing and testing hypothesizes about human behavior. Many conclusions have been made on many subjects including group dynamics, free rider problem, problem of the commons, broken hearts, depression, group think, “keeping up with the jones,” the 20-something’s reported “laziness,” alcoholism, drug use, drug abuse, nehilism, hyper-inflated egos, hyper-deflated egos and more things like growing up, maturing and relationships. 

The most recent one silly compared to some of these topics, but it does make you think.

For 2, maybe even 3, weeks someone had left a 1 dollar bill in the kitchen. The kitchen, like most homes, is the most popular room in our house. Everyone enters the room multiple times a day and its not very large so you can’t really hide anything there. This dollar was blatantly displayed. No one grabbed it. Obviously, no one claimed it as their own. However, it was just sitting there for a long time.

However, if there is an ounce of booze in the kitchen, give it 1-2 days and at least some of it will be drank. Most recently, one of the roommates bought a fairly nice bottle of whiskey and kept it in the freezer. He drank some of it, maybe 15% of it. He looks back 3 days later and there is only 15% left. 

The dollar was obviously no one’s after the first couple of days if it laid around. It was left there. Maybe this speaks to the notion “the dollar can’t buy anything these days!” However, I think it goes beyond that. We have a McDonald’s close to our house, so its essentially a free McDouble. 

Probably $15 dollars worth of Whiskey was drank. Obviously that bottle had belonged to a very specific roommate. So, it was directly stealing from someone. And a lot was drank. I’d like to see the man who drank this much by their self. No one will admit to doing the deed, either.

Is the notion of needs now (whiskey in this case) is more appealing than needs of future use (represented by the dollar)? Could the notion of the commons be nuanced than the tradition fuck everyone when they aren’t looking? Is stealing and the value of each others personal property eliminated in such close quarters? Now with that thought, no one would ever steal anything from each other. Even food is strictly off limits. It’s an interesting idea.

(P.S. I’m sure some of you think that it was my bottle of Whiskey and I’m frustrated. Hence, the blog post. I had nothing to do with the bottle of Whiskey on either side of this mystery.)

UPDATE: Mystery Whiskey drinker was discovered. He was to drunk to remember drinking it. Makes sense, really.