holy cow!

(OR) how economics drives religion ..

consider the religious importance associated with the cow in india. how did the cow get bestowed on itself an important status in religion? there were 3 obvious uses for the cow -- meat, milk, domestic labor. between the three resources provided,
there is an evident tradeoff between immediate return vs long term returns, and individual good vs. greater common good.
one rational alternative is always to pick the immediately optimal/ individual good solution . i.e. to slaughter a cow. the long term/ societal good option is to milk the resources as much as possible (pun intended!) until it is no longer useful and then slaughter it. even if the long term returns outweigh the immediate benefit, it requires some sort of external agency to prevent principals from entering a locally optimal state or to be reasonably altruistic. by associating a divine status to the cow the economists of ancient times effectively ensured that people were forced into the longer-term option which is also more useful for the society.