by Sherafgan Khan

Created on: December 03, 2009   Last Updated: December 05, 2009

Being bored in Chicago one night, my roommate and I decided to head out and play some economic games with the local residents. We grabbed a bag of jellybeans from the 7-11 and went to a bar downtown. We immediately spotted the perfect targets: five college aged girls, talking at a table.

After introducing ourselves, we asked if they were willing to play a game, being in the social setting and mindset they willingly agreed. I pulled out the bag of jellybeans, and after a few seconds of awkwardness, I laid ten of them in a pile on the table. We explained that they could each take as many as they wanted, but had to take at least one to "survive".

We then explained that after each of them had taken their share, I would add one more jellybean to the table for every bean remaining. The cycle would continue as long as there was one bean left. However, we did not explicitly tell them that the game would be over if the "crop" runs out.

Round one: they each took their desired shares, leaving two more beans on the table. Cycle two came around; I added two more beans, leaving four. They each took one, with nothing for the last girl. Game over. I told them to try it again. In round two, they at least got into the third cycle, but still weren't able to sustain the beans.

It wasn't until round four that they had caught on, and each took one bean, thus allowing for an infinite number of cycles (or until my stash ran out).

Wait, so it took them four cycles to figure that out? In hindsight, one may see the solution to my jellybean game as "common sense." David Harvey however, argues that "common sense is not a single unique conception, identical in time and space" (Harvey, 2006; 84).

What he means is that this notion of "common sense" is unique to each individual's mind, as their conception of the world is modeled by a variety of social and cultural environments. That being said, it is logical to see how "common sense" is a conception within each individual, and can variably contrast in conformity with the hegemonic philosophy of "common sense" (Harvey, 2006; 84).

Common sense to the girls at the bar could have been from a rational perspective; to maximize individual gains. I argue that they may not have been thinking about long-term sustainability when their pupils widened at the sight of the delicious beans.

In this review, I aim to show that people may initially behave in ways that are unsustainable because of the acute and immediate payoffs associated with the self-interested

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