teamboat was founded in 2002. the exact date is not known, but the formation of teamboat took place during a warmup
session before rugby training began. it all began when roland played a game of random team on battle.net
before training. relating the experience of the game to daniel, roland talked about him having a
horrible partner who referred to the unit "steam tanks" as "steamboats". daniel then had a brainwave, and
the two of them decided to create accounts called teamboat1 and teamboat2: the name thought up due to daniel's fascination with food and warcraft.
guanghao joined shortly after the formation of teamboat, due to the need for intelligence to balance out the
gluttony in daniel and good looks in roland. together, the trio have accomplished feats such as making
seoul garden move out of j8. armed with their passion for food and good recommendations from guanghao,
teamboat strives to test (and at the same time, destroy) all buffets in singapore.
currently, the strength of teamboat stands at 3: daniel, guanghao and roland. there is, at the
moment, only 1 associate member: clement.
layout and coding done somewhat by roland
best viewed in 1024x768
even though i use 1280x1024 =p
Monday, October 16, 2006
economics in RJC explained!
the central problem of economics is that there are scarce resources, yet people have unlimited wants. today i was enlightened when i entered the library's chairs and cushions section.. i saw a real life example of this central problem.
now, since space in the library is scarce, and that users of the library have unlimited wants for space in the library (be it to move about, to sleep, to study or to make out), we see a situation clearly highlighted by economics in the picture below.
from the picture, it is evident that david (who is a big boy) needs a big seat to ensure that he gains full satisfaction from sitting down. however, due to the problem of scarcity, supply of big spaces is limited and hence he needs to sit on a small chair. furthermore, he is doing math and there is just not enough space -- forcing him to use a small table and putting his file and calculator somewhere else.
now, is this situation productively efficient? from the society's point of view, all the people in rjc are not mugging as much as they can with the lowest cost incurred, which makes this situation productively inefficient. in david's point of view, he is mugging at a point where there are high costs incurred -- mismanagement of inventory (his calculator, TYS etc.), hassles, unsteady chair, back pains -- which also makes him productively inefficient. furthermore, this situation is not allocatively efficient as big chairs should go to people with big butts. (just kidding david!!!)
however, it seems that david is fully enjoying his consumption of this service provided by the RJC library as seen from his huge grin in the picture. this can be explained due to the existence of market imperfections, such as positive externalities from the girls behind him or even the positive externality from the phototaker. all of these add up such that david's marginal total benefit (marginal benefit + marginal external benefit) allows him to enjoy more consumer surplus, making him smile widely whereas in a perfectly competitive market, he would not have a smile because PMB = PMC (P=MC theory).
