How does all you can eat affect consumption?
The law of diminishing utility (if you believe it to be a law) suggests that there is a point when the utility derived from eating something diminishes until it no longer makes you happy. To absurdly extrapolate, when you apply this theory to an all you can eat buffet, this practice probably leads to an increase in overall unhappiness.
But then again, that could have nothing to do with the real way the world truly works.
There’s probably a study out there that’d answer this for me, but I’ll ask anyway. Let’s say every month I buy a $89 unlimited subway pass and ride the subway 89 times. My effective cost for a subway trip is $1. If I had the option to buy a $1 ticket, how much would I spend a month? I’d probably spend less by making active choices to avoid the subway. Not sure whether the true value (less mobile on subway = less happy) would be worth it, though.
