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Magazine overload

In general, they say, a problem of plenty is a good problem to have. For example, if you have too many mangoes in your garden, then you could possibly sell some of them off for money or give away some of them for social "points" - even letting them rot isn't going to harm you at all (except the stench and the missed opportunity, perhaps).

The above presents a manageable problem. You have some trees, they grow and produce fruits on their own, and then you simply have to pick some fruits and sell them off, or you can even outsource this. Basically, then, you don't have any capital expenses (you didn't buy the trees), you don't have too much operational expenses (you don't need to water them daily), but you incur some cost while picking the fruit and marketing, which, even after outsourcing, is still a positive source of revenue for you. (My apologies for the business-speak - but these phrases are very succinct and capture the essence of what I wish to convey).

Now, consider a case where you actually pay for the mangoes to get to your home (i.e. buy them). You were able to eat most of them that you bought. At this time, a nearby store has given you some coupons for getting more mangoes, just because you buy other stuff from them often. Here is the bad news - these coupons expire after a certain period of time and they represent a good number of mangoes. You like mangoes, and with these coupons you can get all the different fancy mangoes which you never wanted to pay out of your pocket to eat. What would you do?

Note that the problem here is not that you don't know which mangoes to buy - there are plenty of choices there. The problem is that you can eat only so many mangoes every day or week. Would you still buy the new fancy mangoes and try them out? Or would you give away your coupons to someone else so that they could also get some free mangoes? (Cheap "mango points" come to mind, in exchange, but we shall let that pass for now :P).

I had the exact same problem. Except that in my case mangoes = magazines. (Yeah I know that sentence can be interpreted in so many different ways). I spent some good amount of money in getting a 5-year subscription to The Economist, and then out of more passion and the cheap price-point, subscribed to the Wired magazine. Lo and behold, I get airline frequent flier miles reminders that so many thousands of miles are about to expire and you can easily subscribe to magazines and newspapers using them before they do to use 'em up. So I browsed their offers. And got a couple more "fancy mangoes" which shall remain unnamed ;).

And now I suffer from "magazine overload" - a problem of plenty where I get more magazines than I can possibly read in a week. Ever. Which reminds me - I had subscribed to the Wall Street Journal as well for a couple of years using those miles! Damn those deliverymen - why am I not getting any of those? Hmm... need to pursue this and get fifty more pages to read every day... hey I paid for those!! :)

And this is the cheap mango points offer - if you live nearby and would like to get a few of the mangoes from me (again, no double meanings please, you dirty minds!), get in touch and I can give you both the regular and the fancy mangoes, in exchange of your goodwill :)

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