Strange, you always hear people ask the question about what you'd do if you found a lost wallet, but you never really expect to actually find one....as I did walking home the other night.
So anyway, contacting the owner would be a relatively simple task, but damned if this isn't a ton of money. There's no credit cards or anything, but the IDs put the owner around my age....which means that all this cash is probably not some rich dude's chump change, and is somewhat important.
The funny thing is that I don't think I would have any trouble returning it if there was a couple hundred bucks, but damn I could use half a grand. It would probably be an interesting experiment to drop wallets all over the place with different sums of money inside them, and see whether people are more likely to return the large sums or the small sums. On one hand you'd think they would be more apt to steal it if there's a lot of money, but on the other hand they might feel bad about depriving someone of so much cash (while taking 50 to 100 bucks might be more morally justifiable).
So I guess the options are many:
--take money, toss wallet in dumpster
--take money, throw wallet on ground outside and hope that someone else returns it (at least he gets IDs and stuff back)
--take money, return wallet to owner and claim that I found it without the cash (and deal with possible suspicion)
--return wallet with all money intact, feel very good about myself but reamain quite poor
Possible justifications for taking money: I could use it, IDs show he has a steady job and residence anyway (probably won't destroy his life), he gets an expensive lesson about why you shouldn't carry around huge sums of cash, finders keepers, nobody carries around that much money unless they are doing something illegal with it (drug buy)
Possible justifcations for returning money: It's not mine, he could really need it, etc, etc
So what would you do? What should I do?
So anyway, contacting the owner would be a relatively simple task, but damned if this isn't a ton of money. There's no credit cards or anything, but the IDs put the owner around my age....which means that all this cash is probably not some rich dude's chump change, and is somewhat important.
The funny thing is that I don't think I would have any trouble returning it if there was a couple hundred bucks, but damn I could use half a grand. It would probably be an interesting experiment to drop wallets all over the place with different sums of money inside them, and see whether people are more likely to return the large sums or the small sums. On one hand you'd think they would be more apt to steal it if there's a lot of money, but on the other hand they might feel bad about depriving someone of so much cash (while taking 50 to 100 bucks might be more morally justifiable).
So I guess the options are many:
--take money, toss wallet in dumpster
--take money, throw wallet on ground outside and hope that someone else returns it (at least he gets IDs and stuff back)
--take money, return wallet to owner and claim that I found it without the cash (and deal with possible suspicion)
--return wallet with all money intact, feel very good about myself but reamain quite poor
Possible justifications for taking money: I could use it, IDs show he has a steady job and residence anyway (probably won't destroy his life), he gets an expensive lesson about why you shouldn't carry around huge sums of cash, finders keepers, nobody carries around that much money unless they are doing something illegal with it (drug buy)
Possible justifcations for returning money: It's not mine, he could really need it, etc, etc
So what would you do? What should I do?
