Two Parables of a Twenty Dollar Bill
There are two important stories about a twenty dollar bill worth telling. The first is best told by Bardach:
Two friends are walking down the street when one stops to pick something up. “What about that—a twenty-dollar bill!” he says. “Couldn’t be,” says the economist. “If it were, somebody would have picked it up already.”
Source: Eugene Bardach, A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis: The Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving, 2nd ed. (Washington: CQ Press, 2005), p. 53.
This is a common story in the economic world and it simply means that if there is an advantage to be had, someone already has it. But it is only half the story.
When I was an undergraduate, about ten of us were walking from the dinning hall to the dorm, I at the back of the group. I saw on the ground ahead of us a twenty-dollar bill. I watched as each of my friends stepped over it and picked it up when my turn came. Then I said, “Hey, everybody! Mr. Jackson does not like being stepped on!”
The lesson is sometimes there are twenty-dollar bills on the ground. It just happens nobody has noticed them yet.
