One Banana Only, Please!

Banana is one of the cheapest fruits available in grocery stores nearby. It is our house-fruit, mainly because of two reasons: healthy and budget friendly. With approximately $135/weekly budget for dinner and shared food such as bread, milk, peanut butter and jelly, and banana (of course), we really need to be wise on deciding what to buy. Buying bananas is definitely a win-win solution so we do buy them every week. Here comes the problem though:  bananas are usually gone by Wednesday. Thus, we keep buying more, but seriously, how many bananas are too many? We can't just fill the whole shopping cart with bananas because then the other people will lose the opportunity to keep their budget low (not the actual reason).

This banana-scarcity-phenomenon reflects a larger scale community living issue. How does a community maximize the limited budget in order to deliver the highest satisfaction possible to the people? Is it even possible to make everyone satisfy? How to minimize the gap between those who are satisfied and those who are not?

There is nothing such a one-right-answer. Every community is different, with various daily challenges. The solutions differ day to day under many circumstances.  It is crucial to experiment various solutions though the goal should not be to eliminate the problem but to make it just a bit better for everyone.  For now, in order to increase satisfaction (assume that everyone is happier when they eat banana daily), we have this rule: one banana per person per day.

P.S. In reality, this banana issue and rule are no big deals at all. I just need to make a point J