E-40, Economics, and Life
What choices do you have?
Now if you’ve ever heard “Choices” and taken a few courses of economics, you would LOVE this song because basically he proves that choices are subjective to individual based on trade off. If you’ve ever heard of the marginal revolution (not that one) Carl Menger was right, individuals should be expected to rank possible uses of a resource and then use marginal utility to decide amongst trade-offs.
For example, say you have ten glasses of water, what do you use the first one for? Drink it, wash your hair, begin filling a pool? This is a choice that can be made only by the individual. Then the second? Also a choice by the individual, and so it goes. The point is that everybody has choices and E-40’s is getting bread (aka money, for those of you who are not up to terms with the “lingo”).
Now, some could argue that talk is cheap and we don’t really know if E-40 will really do everything he claims in this song. I, for one, do not want to test that theory, because as one choice goes:
Ever squeezed the trigger? Yup.
To empirically test this one I would have to be either be in a gun range with him or on the other side of the barrel. Which I do not plan on happening (maybe the former) but if you do, let me know how that goes.
There are some complicated lyrics that don’t make sense at times, and that’s the beauty of subjective choice, hip-hop, and life in general. At one point E-40 says “Star Wars? Nope.” but then follows up with “Yoda? Yup.” That seems contradictory to me, and also might be a bad move according to this one Star Wars fan.
“Basically every single word of advice Yoda offers Luke is dead wrong. In the end, Luke was right and Yoda was wrong. There was still good in Anakin, and the death of Palpatine came about because Luke ignored his advice.
“Yoda was also wrong about what to do at the end of Empire Strikes Back.Episode I — Yoda refuses to believe that Maul was a Sith, and he refuses to allow Anakin to become a Padawan until it is confirmed there were Sith about. Then he totally changes his mind, and he badly mishandles the crisis on Naboo.
“Episode II — Yoda not only takes the bait and jumps into the trap of taking the clones to rescue Anakin and Obi-Wan, therefore starting the events leading to the death of all the Jedi and the start of the worst war in millennia,” dot, dot, dot.
You sure you want to pick Yoda?
Also, E-40 doesn’t own property, but owns a Maserati…just a heads up E-40, you should go with property, that shit appreciates, and no, not just you, but also in value. Where as that Maserati will only cost you money and you can never sell it for the same price again due to depreciation.
Still we all have our own choices, and E-40 can do as he likes. But if you ask me I am confused by some of his priorities. After all, he says in his song that he won’t go broke. But making decisions like the Maserati will only make sense when you’re worth 8 million after 30 years in the business. But hey, at least you didn’t sell your soul and stuck to your own subjective values!
In future posts I’ll link lessons from economics to songs like C.R.E.A.M., Save dat Money, Get Money , Got your Money, Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems, as well as other types of music like Rich Girl, Money, Billionaire (ft. Travie McCoy), etc. I plan on posting as much as I can, because I’ll never run out of material.
