Too many cooks spoil the broth!

In Chinese, we have a saying, "人多手腳亂", to describe a circumstance that too many people involve will lead to a bad result, which in English we called it "too many cook spoil the broth". Have you ever noticed in some circumstance, the more people, although they are simply offering the helping hand, causes the scene to become even more chaotic?

It was today afternoon when I decided to cook for my family lunch. I am the type of person who hardly ever cook, however, once I cook, even the famous chef, Gordon Ramsey, would crown me as "MasterChef". (lol, joking, keke~)

But I have to admit the food I cook, to a certain extent, is delicious !

At the beginning, I was chopping the potato and cleaning the beans by myself, which took quite a while. Due to hungriness, my mother couldn’t wait anymore, so she came to help me to prepare the pan and cook. With her help, the workload and the process became lesser and faster. Or else, it could really take approximately 1/2 hours to prepare for lunch. Later on, my sister, because of her growling stomach as well, she decided to help as well, so as to speed up the process of cooking.

But then soon I realized that it’s not helping much! Three woman in a kitchen helping to cook one dishes, not to mention that my home kitchen is pretty tiny. Instead, left the kitchen messier and the dishes almost burnt. This totally presented the definition of “too many cooks spoil the broths”.

In economics version, we called it “The law of diminishing marginal return(LDMR)”. The law stated in short run, that when more and more variable factors is added to fixed quantity of factors, the marginal product will first increase, then it will eventually drop.

Variable factor refer to the factors involve in production whose quantity varies with the output. If the output is zero, the quantity of it would be zero as well. Fixed factors are are factors that involve in production who quantity remain the same regardless of its total products produced.

One person cutting the ingredients and cooking simultaneously is not effective. (unless I have four hands + a super multi-tasking brain). I either cut or cook. If I cut, cooking part would have to wait for a while. Hence, it results in a low marginal product.

When another person came and helped for the cooking part, it allows me to focus in cutting. Both stages are not being left idle, which implies the quantity of fixed factors match the quantity of variable factors. In this circumstance, the marginal products will be at it's highest. Do keep in mind that, despite of reaching the highest point of the LDMR curve, it doesn't imply that the total product will grow as well, but it does mean that the tools are being used at their full utility, efficiently and the firm is enjoying maximum productivity.

However, if another person come, adverse effect will be created! There are no more work he/she could help. If they insist to help, they simply will disturb us which prolong the finishing time, leading to a decline in marginal product. And usually during these moment, you will hear "it's okay, you go out and prepare for the plate". (Remember, economics is the studies of human behavior how they maximize their benefits!) Perhaps, that could be how and kitchen could be where the idioms, 人多手腳亂 and too many cooks spoil the broth, were originated~

This law can helps solving and implies in our lots of daily life headaches. For instance, factories determine the number of workers to be hired by using this law. It let us know what is the perfect quantity of variable factors to be added to the fixed quantity of fixed factors, in order to maximize our benefit and minimize the cost as much as possible!

As I've always said, if you pay attention to your daily-life more carefully, economic is everywhere! Understanding it, could helps you to maximize your gain in a lot of way (and makes yourself feel smarter, keke). And of course, at last, the lunch was delicious. Without any doubts~ Well, but after all, I am still that lazy girl when it comes to cooking.

(Here is a photo of our today lunch! The newspaper? Oh, it's a common habit among most of us, Nepali, to put newspaper underneath as the table cloth, we basically do that to keep the table clean, I guess~)