Why are soda/pop machines constructed differently than newspaper
machines? In other words why do they make it so you could take as many
newspapers as you want at one time, while you can only take one pop
can at one time?

Hello ange1, and thank you for your question.

The key phrase you need here to understand this concept is
"Diminishing Marginal Utility" There follows an explanation of your
scenario, and after that an explanation of the law of Diminishing
Marginal Utility.

"When I am done reading a newspaper, a second newspaper is essentially
useless to me. A second newspaper does not give me any new
information. If my friend wants to know the news, I can give him that
same newspaper; neither he nor I need a second newspaper.

When I am done drinking a can of soda, a second can of soda can be
potentially very useful to me. It can be consumed, stored for future
use, given to friends, etc.

In other words, the marginal utility (value) of a second newspaper is
close to zero. However, the marginal utility of a second can of soda,
although less than the first can of soda (per the Law of Diminishing
Marginal Utility), does not fall nearly as rapidly.

Thus, vendors face little risk of a customer taking more than one
newspaper, but face a much greater risk of a customer taking more than
one can of soda if soda was sold in the same way as newspapers. They
try to minimize the cost needed to sell their product without theft.
The single dispenser vending machine is likely more expensive than a
simple box. As a result, single dispensers are used to sell soda and
boxes are used to sell newspapers.

There are other issues that enter the picture - advertising, time at
sale, etc - but I think they are relatively small compared to the
marginal utility of a second unit of the good.

Is any of this particularly Austrian? Not really, other than the fact
that I used no numbers, equations, or graphs. And it demonstrates that
the utility of a good is ordinally determined by what end it helps
achieve and is defined at the margin, i.e., at the addition of a
single unit of that good."
http://www.catallarchy.net/blog/cgi-bin/archives/000427.html

===================================================================

I am probably an idiot for answering this. But I can't resist being
pulled towards the lightbulb.

Soda can be consumed only once, as opposed to a newspaper which can be
read over and over. There is less utility from having 1+ newspaper vs
1+ soda.

Newspapers have an expiration (one day), sodas have "no expiration".
Actually, the newspapers are worth much less by late morning than they
are early morning, a 4-6hr window. By midday the news has been
disseminated and there are enough newspapers floating around that you
would not need to pay for one to get your hands on one.

The problem for distributing anything as newspapers are, is the issue
of theft. But so long as the price of the individual paper stays low,
the threat of theft exists only at the margin. Only kids and
desperately poor would be motivated to steal and resell those
newspapers.
http://www.catallarchy.net/blog/cgi-bin/archives/000419.html

===================================================================

"Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility"
"This illustrates a general principle that has much wider application
in economics. In economics, we speak of a law or principle of
diminishing marginal utility.

The "Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility" states that for any good or
service, the marginal utility of that good or service decreases as the
quantity of the good increases, ceteris paribus. In other words, total
utility increases more and more slowly as the quantity consumed
increases.

This is "diminishing returns" from the viewpoint of the consumer, and
is a general principle of economics. There might be a threshold before
the principle applies. For example, the marginal utility of golf clubs
might increase until you have a fairly full set. But beyond some
threshold, marginal utility will diminish with increasing consumption
of any good.

As we will see, there are other applications of "diminishing
(marginal) returns" in other branches of microeconomics."
http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/prin/txt/MUch/Eco416.html

Thank you for your question and if you need any clarification of my
answer do not hesitate to ask.

Very best regards

THX1138
Search strategy included:
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Thanks very much, that completely answers my questions