Software companies have a great business model: spend a lot making something once, but each sale costs almost nothing. Google took a bunch of effort to create but takes much less now. Movies are like this too. Businesses with low marginal costs and high sales are very profitable.
That structure applies to decisions too.
Rather than make a decision each time, we can design decisions. Atomic Habits, James Clear’s best-selling book explains this (and embodies it, books are low marginal cost too!). Decisions with low marginal costs and accumulated effects are very beneficial.
Google’s advertising is golden because many people use the service many times. But payoffs also come from one person facing the same design many times or from many people facing the same design once. Framing tradeoffs is one design decision:
Tradeoffs work because they shift the important information. This ad is great because it forces us to think about what we don’t get and is important relative to the first. Part of the reason we want a new phone is to take and share awesome pictures.
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Imagine we go back to March of 2020, Morgan Housel told Derek Thompson. The Federal Reserve Chairman, the White House, and the Treasury Head go on television with this warning: We are about to enter the second Great Depression, it is that bad, if not worse. We can prevent that. However, in 2022 there is going to be 10% inflation as a consequence of avoiding thirty percent unemployment.
That would have worked.
We know there are tradeoffs, we just don’t try to think of them. But highlighting the exchange shifts how we think, and maybe how we act.
The Waiter's Pad 