Riddle Me This

And now, for a special Thursday post!

One of my favorite classes in graduate school was the Property Rights course. The professor was engaging and had a habit of asking questions that in answering them, caused us to learn. So, here I am going to rip off a question from him to see what creative answers I can get from you.

Say I allow you to borrow a tennis racket from me. I value the tennis racket at $20. During the tennis match, you get so angry that you smash the tennis racket to pieces. In this hypothetical situation, I too have a temper, and regularly smash tennis rackets. Also, we are good friends, and I'd happily give you $20 if you needed it any time. Given all this information, why am I angry when you smash up the racket?

Think about it for a minute, and then see my professor's answer after the jump. Also, leave a response in the comment as if you were answering the professor.

After several minutes of brainstorming, using fancy theories and referring to journal articles, my professor just chuckled and gave us a simple explanation: I'm angry when you smash the racket, because I have no way of knowing if you valued the smashing as much I would have valued the smashing. In other words, property solves the knowledge problem. I may have paid $20 for the racket, but got $1,000 in joy from smashing it. When you smash it, I don't know if you come close to my $1,000 in joy.

Comments

[Jonny B]

Property rights solve the knowledge problem? Or do they just exacerbate it?
I was gonna go with; I have the decision rights to smash my stuff and you have no decision rights to smash my stuff.
In this situation I would have to have a credit card on file before I lent my stuff to my so-called friend.
Here is an attempted example:
Moving last week I was blessed to have the help of some of my real friends, James Franko being one. As my long time friend Jason is picking up the first box of the day, he says to me, "My usual disclaimer here, is that I take no responsibility for anything I break."
I said, "Fair enough. But I take no responsibility for the lifetime of ridicule if breakage occurs."
We laughed and everything made it to the new home safely.
Perhaps it's this kind of disclosure up front that solves the knowledge problem?

[Aaron]

Property rights are really just a bundle of smaller rights. When you lend me the racket, you're tacitly giving me the right to use the racket. When I break it and you get angry, you're indicating that you didn't intend to give me the right to destroy the property.

If property solves the knowledge problem, it's only ex post facto, not a priori.

Paul Maud'dib said he who can destroy a thing, can control it.

[Aaron]

Er, I meant ex post. It's Friday.

[David McGinnis]

I like your professor's answer the best. I can totally identify with that. In fact, that is often why I part with things even though I still value them. I would rather see someone who values their use (whatever type of use that may be) more than I do, have the item. Being a parent really shifts this value proposition compared to pre-parent.

for example, if I buy a bundle of fireworks, I feel like the joy of actually LIGHTING the firework(s) outweighs the viewing it, so even if it is at the expense of vantage, I like to weild the fire source.

Should my next child be a male, I have a feeling that I will thoroughly enjoy watching his natural born pyro-tendencies in action. When he's old enough of course. and yet still finance the explosives. My daughter, however, would cause me to worry more than I would have previously, so I shall weild man's red flower until I have someone to carry on the family name.