Reflection #3

ECON 490 LA Prompt for Reflection #3
Hold up is an example of "opportunism" - taking advantage of circumstances. Sometimes people don't act opportunistically, even when they have the chance. We talked about being a "good citizen"
and that might be one reason. Another is that opportunistic behavior can be unethical. Still another is that people are patient and "good things come out to those who wait." Give an example of where you or somebody you know didn't act opportunistically though they had the chance. Then speculate as to why. Also consider whether these various explanations amount to the same thing, or if they are different.


One afternoon I drove to pick up 2 friends I hadn't seen in a while so we could go to lunch.  We went to a nice restaurant nearby and had a good meal.  Afterwards, we were walking towards my car in the parking lot when I noticed something shiny on the ground.  It turns out the shiny object was a money clip with a wad of dollar bills -- $210 in total.  I looked around for a person who looked like they had lost something, but no one was around.  I went back inside the restaurant to ask if anyone inquired about any missing money, and no one had.  Finally, I waited in front of the restaurant for around 10 minutes, perodically checking inside the restaurant and parking lot for slightly panicked people.  When no one showed up, my friends and I left the restaurant.  In the end, we split the money evenly between the 3 of us.

In such a case, I believe there were two cases of opportunism.  One is when I initially found the money.  I could have quickly taken advantage of the situation by leaving immediately, completely disregarding the person who had lost their money.  However, I spent effort in locating them, in the process ignoring my friends' complaints of the chilly weather.  Another case of opportunism would be in the car.  I could have chosen to keep all the money myself, since I was the one who found it (finders keepers).  But I chose to split it evenly because to me, I didn't feel worse off if I had 1/3 of the money as opposed to all of it.  In other words, when splitting the money I felt it was a Pareto efficient outcome.

In evaluating my actions, I would say they were more "good citizen" in nature.  As a "good citizen," I felt I had a responsibility to find who the money belonged to, so I looked and asked around earnestly.  I believe those actions were part "good citizen" and part ethical.  Ideally, I would have found the owner of the money.  However, I'm not a "perfect citizen," so I did end up keeping the money.  Whether I should have left the money with the restaurant staff did cross my mind, but I thought the consequence from that would be the staff would not even try to find the owner, but instead instantly keep the money for themselves.

All in all, I'm still a bit unsure whether such a situation would be counted as not acting opportunistically.  Is there an amount of "good citizenship" or good ethics you must demonstrate before you're allowed to take advantage of the situation, if it can be called that?  I would be interested in hearing some input on this.