Lead:

With a little common sense, you will know that milk cartons are square, while most soft drinks, such as Coke and Sprite, are round utensils. Why is this so? There are principles of economics in this. These soft drinks are placed on open shelves, which are inexpensive and have no operating costs. But milk needs to be packed in a freezer, which is much more expensive to operate.

Do you notice the problem when you drink a drink: almost all soft drink bottles, whether glass or aluminum, are cylindrical? But the milk cartons seem to be square. Square containers make more economical use of shelf space than cylindrical containers. So why do soft drink producers stick to cylindrical containers?

Naturalist economist Robert Frank asks the question in his best-selling book The Economics of Milk and Cola. One of the reasons for this difference, according to Frank, may be that soft drinks are mostly drunk directly from the container, so the cylindrical container is more adept at offsetting the additional storage costs. This is not the case with milk, which is not the case for most people.

If the container for milk is cylindrical, we need a larger refrigerator. Even if most people drink milk directly in a box, the principle of cost-effectiveness suggests that it is unlikely to be sold in cylindrical containers. Square containers, no matter what's in them, do save shelf space, but the space saved in the milk column is obviously more cost-effective than in the soft drinks column. Most soft drinks in supermarkets are placed on open shelves, which are inexpensive and have no operating costs. Milk, on the other hand, needs to be stored in a freezer, which is expensive and has high operating costs. As a result, storage space in the freezer is at a premium, increasing the profitability of using a square container for milk.

It has also been pointed out that soft drinks such as cola and other liquid products, such as oil and vinegar, are generally bottled, and this kind of packaging is generally considered to be more scientific, material-efficient, easy to manufacture and not easy to damage, so it has been used. It is packed in a round bottle, the internal pressure is relatively large, and it is not easy to deform. If you wrap Coke in a square or other shaped container, it can easily deform, which is one of the reasons why Coke is packaged in round bottles.

Not only is the design of beverage bottles knowledgeable, in fact, in our lives, there is a lot of economic wisdom. In his book, Frank proposed the concept of "naturalist economics", which advocates that we use the concepts of economics to understand certain phenomena in daily life. This way of thinking is based on the simple common sense of economics, trying to understand the essence of things through basic reasoning. And the conclusion of our thinking and inference is not about right or wrong, but about discovering the rationality of things, increasing understanding and prediction. Use this way of thinking regularly, and you'll find a lot of very interesting questions.

In life, if you look closely, there are many phenomena that can be explained by the cost-benefit principle.

For example, why do 24-hour convenience stores need to be locked? Many convenience stores are open all day of the year. If they never close the door, why bother to lock it? Of course, there will always be emergencies of one kind or another that will force convenience stores to close temporarily. For example, the owner of a convenience store was forced to close due to illness. Obviously, if the convenience store has no staff and no locked doors, it will definitely become a good prey for looters. Even if you get rid of these emergencies that might close your door, you won't be able to do much good by buying unlocked doors at convenience stores. Because the vast majority of industrialized mass-produced doors are sold to places that do not need to be open 24 hours a day. In these places, there is obviously reason to wish that the door was locked. So, since most industrial doors are sold with locks, it is definitely cheaper for all doors to be made according to the same model. This is the same as all ATMs (even those installed on the side of the highway) with Braille on their keyboards.

For example, why are some cars on the driver's side and others on the passenger side? One of the most frustrating experiences of renting a car is to park your car in front of the fuel pump as you normally would drive your own car, only to find that the fuel tank is on the other side of the body, and the fuel gun can't reach it. In fact, car manufacturers only need to set the fuel filler hole on one side of the car to solve this problem. But why don't they do it? In the United States and other countries where vehicles drive on the right, it's easier to turn right than left when crossing the street. So, most drivers go to a gas station where they can turn right to refuel. Assuming that the fuel tank is always located on the driver's side of the car, then, in order to refuel, the driver must park the car on the right side of the fuel pump. As a result, during rush hour, all right-facing pumps will be crowded with cars, while most left-facing pumps will not be used. Therefore, the fuel filling holes of different models are located on different sides, which means that some cars can be refueled from the left. As a result, drivers don't have to wait in line to refuel. This benefit (benefit) is obviously much greater than the cost of accidentally stopping in the wrong direction when refueling a rented car. If the gas fillers were all on the driver's side, there would definitely be a long queue at the gas station.

A similar phenomenon is this: Why do bars offer free peanuts for water when they ask for money? Why does the freezer light up when I open the fridge but not the freezer? Why laptops can work under the power supply standards of any country, but most other appliances cannot; Why cans canned to be shorter and fatter...... Readers can think about these questions according to this principle and exercise their economic thinking.