If you want to see fairness at work, watch a queue form where there is no reason for one. Nobody sets out to be governed by the borrowed book, yet it shapes an astonishing share of the ordinary day. We describe the departure from the model as an error. We might equally describe the model as a hopeful guess about us. Notice how rarely anyone is argued out of the borrowed book, and how often they are simply moved past it by a change in circumstance.
Where the model breaks
The usual story is that we are careless calculators. The better story is that we are careful about the wrong things. We describe the departure from the model as an error. We might equally describe the model as a hopeful guess about us. The strange thing about the borrowed book is not that it exists but that it works, most of the time, for most people. None of this is new. Adam Smith noticed most of it, and then the profession spent two centuries forgetting.
