Idea Name

Context / Source

The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish #141 Kunal Shah: Core Human Motivations

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Key Idea

Tourist spots select for scams and short term thinking

So that’s an interesting thing about environment design

And how it creates a certain kind of environment

peaker 1: behavior that may be you sort Speaker 0: of, I’ll tell you a funny thing. All the scam e businesses are usually found around tourist places. Speaker 1: Dude, yeah. Remember the kids and I went to this place in Vienna and we got the cake, the famous Vienna cake and the cake was like €3 and then the kids ordered water And the water was €18. And we had this amazing conversation around like how is it possible that they can charge €18 for water and still have a thriving business. It’s Speaker 0: very, it’s very simple. All the places that are built around tourist places are designed to optimize for short term because there is no repeat customer behavior. Speaker 1: Exactly.

See also

The Problem of Middlemen