Recently, one of our NPR colleagues wrote a message to all of NPR saying he had extra eggs to sell for cheap, but needed a fair way to distribute them during a shortage. What is Planet Money here for if not to get OVERLY involved in this kind of situation?Our colleague didn't want to charge more than $5, so we couldn't just auction the eggs off. A lottery? Too boring, he said. Okay! A very Planet Money puzzle to solve.Today on the show, we go in search of novel systems to help our colleague decide who gets his scarce resource: cheap, farm-fresh eggs. We steal from the world of new product development to try and secretly test for egg love, and we discover a pricing method used in development economics that may be America's next great gameshow.This episode of Planet Money was produced by Emma Peaslee and it was edited by Marianne McCune. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Jimmy Keeley. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.Listen free at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.Music: NPR Source Audio - "Punchy Punchline," "Game Face," "Feeling the Funk," and "The Host Most Wanted"Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What sparked the egg distribution dilemma?
This is Planet Money from NPR. All right, Sam, you posted a thing in Slack. Do you just want to, like, read that message to start?
Sure. I'm bringing it up right now.
A couple of weeks ago, our NPR colleague Sam Mertens wrote something in our shared company messaging system. We called him up and asked him to read his message.
Today, I successfully delivered a dozen farm fresh eggs to a co-worker at HQ for $5.
HQ meaning NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C.
And $5 meaning $5 for a dozen farm fresh eggs in this egg-conomy.
Yeah, coming out of this nationwide egg shortage where farm fresh eggs have been selling for as much as $12, Sam has eggs and sold them for just $5.
I would be willing to do this again, but I expect demand to far exceed supplies. I'm sure I could jack up the price, but I'm not in the mood to price gouge. Any suggestions for a fair and equitable system? Okay.
Now, I mean, I'll just say this caught fire in the Planet Money slack. We just saw it as a bat signal for us. We're like, we can help. Sure. Sam clearly wanted our help, or at least that is what I'm hearing. Because look, we've got a scarce commodity with a dramatically low price ceiling in need of an optimized system of fair distribution.
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Chapter 2: What creative solutions can we propose for egg distribution?
I don't. No.
Okay. Because I would love to call this the I love eggs from my head down to my legs composite.
OK.
And with that. Hello.
Hello.
Hi.
We started calling people from that list of 15 NPR colleagues interested in buying Sam's eggs. Of course, we needed to blind the fact that this survey was secretly actually about those eggs.
Welcome to the inaugural Planet Money presents a food breakfast food preferences survey.
OK. Too many foods. Editor.
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Chapter 3: How does Sam's backyard chicken setup work?
And cue the music.
Keep going, Jeff. I'll dance. So we found a way to allocate the first dozen of Sam's $5 eggs. Success!
Sort of, because that method did rely entirely on us being sneaky. We were hiding eggs in a blinded survey, so that's probably only going to work one time. What about the next time Sam has a dozen eggs?
After the break, one more carton of eggs, one new customer, and a method that forces people to honestly state their truest value for anything.
Hi, girls. Sam Mertens is up early to give his hens some treats.
What was that? What was that? Huh? What was that?
Another day, another round of eggs to be collected.
But everybody seems to be in good spirits.
Now, before we decide how to allocate the next dozen eggs from Sam, we needed to have a delicate conversation with him.
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