Ducks and Blueberries: A Reflection on Price, Cost and Value
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 550 Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this week's Frankly, Nate shares an excerpt from his daily life that mirrors a larger observation on the human predicament. A grocery shopping trip turns into a reflection on value vs cost, and how consumption in our society is driven by the perception of value that's presented to us.
What is the difference in value that our minds create between a $5 container of blueberries, and a $1 container? What is the difference between price, cost and value? What things in our lives do we treat as disposable when they are cheap, but treat as treasure when they are pricey? What would it look like if the things we consume were priced to account for both the value and the cost of that item? How do we approach our lives with a more critical and systems-lens eye?
Among the in-video questions for viewers: Have you had a "blueberry moment" in the buying and reflecting of things?
(Recorded August 13, 2025)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Why did I just greet you in duck? |
| 0:06.9 | Stay tuned to the end of this to find out. |
| 0:10.4 | But yesterday at the grocery store I had a little story happened to me. |
| 0:15.3 | And of course, a lot of stories these days always have a wider boundary implication and relevance to the |
| 0:23.2 | human predicament. |
| 0:25.7 | It is a story about price and cost and value and blueberries and ducks. So I went to the store, and of course, I always end up going for three things and buying 12. |
| 0:49.9 | I don't know how many of you are like that. |
| 0:51.9 | And I saw in the fruit area that blueberries were $1 for a pint, but limit one per customer. |
| 1:01.3 | I'm like, that's like really cheap. |
| 1:04.1 | I can buy them for a cheap snack for my ducks who love berries. |
| 1:09.8 | So I put them in the cart. I was in the checkout line and they're like, |
| 1:15.4 | well, do you have the app? I'm like, no, I don't have the app. Then they're $5. And I'm like, |
| 1:21.3 | well, I don't really need the blueberries, but there were people behind me and I didn't want to |
| 1:26.7 | cause a fuss. |
| 1:28.6 | So I bought the blueberries for $5 a pint. |
| 1:33.0 | But here's the twist. |
| 1:35.6 | At $1, I was happy to give them to my ducks. |
| 1:40.0 | But at $5, they suddenly fell too good and too expensive for the ducks. |
| 1:45.7 | So I planned to eat them myself. |
| 1:49.1 | Same blueberries, same Nate. |
| 1:51.6 | But the price changed the story in my head about what the blueberries were for. |
| 1:59.1 | And it got me thinking, how many things in our culture do we buy |
... |
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