Post #3- Acting Opportunistically

There are many possible ways to measure the statistics behind people, and their patterns of making decisions. It is difficult, however, to measure how often, or not so often, people behave opportunistically. That is, make decisions that allow the individual, or organization to maximize their effectiveness in achieving whatever their end goal may be. On an individual level, one of the more interesting in opportunistic behaviors to analyze is drug use, more specifically marijuana use. This an extremely common trend of in opportunistic behavior with young people. A friend of mine consistently displays this in opportunistic behavior, for many possible reasons.

One possible reason for this in opportunistic behavior, is a misconstrued idea of what is opportunistic when it comes to the use of marijuana. To be more clear, this individual might think that his use of marijuana is actually opportunistic because of how it reduces his stress, and in turn allows him to function more effectively when not under the influence. This ideology may, or may not, have a logical basis behind it, but when looked at from an economic standpoint it most certainly is not opportunistic. The amount of money he spends to purchase marijuana far outweighs the cost of reducing his stress using alternative methods. He also experiences both economic and, non-economic transaction costs in the pursuit of obtaining marijuana on a weekly basis. The non-economic transaction cost is the time that it takes him to contact someone who would distribute it, transportation to the location of purchase, and process of ingesting the substance. The economic transaction cost is the cost of materials necessary for ingesting the substance, also known as paraphernalia. So this person, possibly, acts in opportunistically because, he overlooks these costs, and only sees the positive effect of his reduction of stress.

Another possible explanation for this in opportunistic behavior is because of the personal enjoyment he experiences from using marijuana. This is similar to the previous explanation, but differs because of this one has no logical use that would increase his effectiveness in achieving his goals. This is why it is a clear in opportunistic decision because he is allowing personal feelings to outweigh his ability to maximize efficient use of his time and money. This is an extremely common explanation for in opportunistic behavior by many organizations. One example of this would be Chik-Fil-A.  Chik-Fil-A does not open any of its stores on Sundays. This  a clear in opportunistic decision because of the profit that could be obtained by remaining open for 16.67% longer. They keep the stores closed on Sundays because of the religious views (personal feelings) of the central organization.

A third possible explanation for this in opportunistic behavior is a habitual pattern that has led to his success in the past, and the transaction costs that he would incur by changing this pattern, He has used marijuana as a stress reducer for several years, and has experienced success in utilizing marijuana to better effectively accomplish his necessary tasks. By changing this habit, and looking for an alternative stress reducer, there are numerous possible transaction costs he could incur no matter that alternative he chooses. Say he chooses to exercise more in order to reduce stress. One non-economic transaction cost he could incur is the loss of time he could use to accomplish other tasks, that he spends exercising. The time it takes to reduce stress could vastly differ between the two options. Organizations experience this in that they may have a distributor that charges higher prices than a different distributor. But the possible costs of changing distributors, (i.e terminating the current contract, hiring lawyers to draft a new contract with the new distributors, time lost through the retraining of the new distributor on the organizations policies, etc) could possibly outweigh the loss incurred by remaining with the more expensive distributor.