Emptying the Bottle: September '09 Links List

1) Economics of Fairy Tales

2) Does 1 abused woman equal 100 abused puppies?

3) What is Conservatism? Progressivism?

4) The greatest person you've never heard of recently died

5) Final words from death row inmates

6) Homeless people trade laughter for money

7) Car crash from 2009 vs. 1959

8) Baby agrees with Kanye (via Alyssa)

9) Economics of 3-D movies

10) The best of Time's best inventions of 2008:

• The Global Seed Vault
• Bullets That Shoot Bullets
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
• The Shadowless Skyscraper
• Bionic Contacts
• The Invisibility Cloak

Economics of Reader Requests

In case you haven't noticed I really like using the tools of economics to explain the world around me. I figured I'd test out my economic detective skills by asking my readers if they have any issues or questions they think I may be able to shed some light on. Well, do you?

Politics of Van Manufacturing

Several times a month, Transit Connect vans from a Ford Motor Co. factory in Turkey roll off a ship here shiny and new, rear side windows gleaming, back seats firmly bolted to the floor.

Their first stop in America is a low-slung, brick warehouse where those same windows, never squeegeed at a gas station, and seats, never touched by human backsides, are promptly ripped out.

The fabric is shredded, the steel parts are broken down, and everything is sent off along with the glass to be recycled.

Why would any business have such a wasteful production process? It's not a result of economic efficiency, but instead the consequences of political policy. Ford does this to redefine the van as a "wagon" to avoid a 50 year old trade tariff. Read the article for the details.

Economics of Engagement Rings

The Freakonomics Blog recently gave its readers a chance to ask author, blogger, and economist Tim Harford questions. His answers are all worth reading, but here's my favorite:

Q. It doesn’t seem rational for a young man to give his girlfriend an expensive engagement ring when he proposes. My thought is that the most efficient use of that dollar is to invest it into something that a young couple would value most e.g. a down payment on a first house, etc. The diamond market is a monopoly and diamond prices are manipulated so that prices are always high. Can you construct a concise and logical argument that young men across the world can use to not buy diamond rings? After all, you already are offering the most valuable thing that you have (your heart) to your soon-to-be bride.

A. You have a point. Engagement rings took off in the U.S. when the courts refused to hear “breach of promise” lawsuits. These suits were brought by women who had slept with their fiancés and then been abandoned. These women were then less attractive marriage prospects for anyone else.

Naturally, such lawsuits were sensational fun for the newspapers, and eventually the courts put a stop to the whole thing. The problem then became: how could a young affianced couple have sex with each other when she had no recourse to the law if he changed his mind? Both of them might well want to, but for the lady the risks were pretty high. And so the institution of the engagement ring came about. Such rings are non-returnable, meaning that if the man breaks off the engagement he doesn’t get the ring back. The system discourages him from running off and provides automatic compensation if he does. Very clever.

Given all this history, I tend to agree with you. Tell your girlfriend that you doubt she is a virgin and don’t care much either way, and you will thus be spending the engagement ring money on something more useful. Be sure to let me know how it works out for you.

Drug Decriminalization Has "No Adverse Effect"

After 8 years of not punishing and starting treating drug use and possession, Portugal has seen only benefits. The Economist reports that drug trafficking, drug-related STD's, overdose deaths, drug-abuse by the young all decreased. No block quote for this one; the article is short and worthwhile.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Teacher Responsibilities

I've been thinking lately about what my responsibility is as an educator. First and foremost it my job to present information and then measure student understanding. This is important for what I see as the three main purposes of public education: creating knowledgeable citizens, future job training, and signaling (intelligence and effort). However, in the last couple decades K-12 schools have been forced to wear more than just a teacher's hat (or should I say sweater vest with an apple on it). If you're familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, then you know humans can't learn if their more basic needs have not been met. A student can't problem solve if they are hungry, unsafe, or desperately removed from relationships. This implies that an effective school will close the gap when these needs are unfulfilled. So it seems my job just got a lot more complicated.

Lucky for me public schools spend tons of cash on non-instructional staff members. Whether it's lunch ladies giving free and reduced meals, school resourse officers, or guidance couselers, they all work hard so I can focus on classroom instruction. So as long as families and communities fail to provide all that students need, this new teacher will spend my constrained work hours focusing on the top two parts (esteem and learning) of Maslow's pyramid, but be sure to keep an eye out for those who aren't there and introduce them to the right person.

Economics of Blog Post Frequency

Loyal friend and reader Justin recently asked me this:

Do you think more people read a blog post if you don't publish anything new for a few days after it?

This made me to think through what might influence the possibility of a particular post being read by people who are already regular readers. So like any good economist, I've tried to put it into an equation. The variables I've come up with are Quality of Post Title (T), Quality of First Sentences (F), Quality of Recent Posts (P), Length (L), Time Until Next Post (N) and the Number of Readers Not Using a Feed Aggregator (A). Here's the equation:

Likelihood of Being Read by Regular Readers = T + F + P - L + (N x A)

So to answer Justin's question, I think the timing of the next post does affect the probability that a post will be read, but only for readers who don't subscribe to the feed and just check the site every so often.

The Government Takes My Drugs

I've been a long time proponent of legalizing most drugs. Not because I personally will use them, but I don't want tell someone else they can't. Also, banning substances gives criminals an advantage over legitimate businesses (think Al Capone) and can actually increase the power and influence of gangs. However, the government has recently extended its grasp into my preference for drugs. Starting midnight tonight, it will be illegal to sell clove and other flavored cigarettes. That means me, and mostly teenage girls, won't be able to have a tasty smoke break. Granted I rarely smoke, but I will miss the option. Oddly enough, cigarette giant Philip-Morris actually supported the law stating publicly that they side with lawmakers on their desire to decrease teenage smoking. As you might have guessed, there's more to the story. Clove cigarettes mostly come from Indonesia and compete with domestic menthol cigarettes. It seems this law is protecting big tobacco more than it's protecting impressionable youth.

Patience and Poverty

Whether in politics, economics or religion, poverty is an important issue. Why are some rich and others, who seemed to have similar opportunities, poor? We can probably agree the answer is some combination of genetics and socialization, but what else do we know? According to an experiment done in the 1960's, patience is an incredible predictor of academic and financial success. A group of 4 year olds were given the option to eat a marshmallow right away or, if they waited for a 15 minutes, they could have two. Here's a hilariously entertaining video of the experiment redone. Fifteen years later the research showed that children waited the full 15 minutes had an SAT score 210 points higher than the kid who only waited 30 seconds:



Not only is education effected, but the children who decided not to delay satisfaction had a higher average BMI and more problems with drugs. This explains why some people forgo a present job to invest in education to get a higher paying future one. Or why some people spend their paycheck instead of saving it with interest. Everyone has a different rate at which they discount the future. For children, the future is so far away that the present dominates almost all choices. One of the things that makes us adults is our ability to pass up immediate gratification for future security. Or is it? Are the children who couldn't wait for the second marshmallow worse off or were they just fulfilling their preferences? Surely at some point we would all stop waiting. Could this be applied to the poor who live paycheck to paycheck? If so, is there any solution that doesn't deal with this inherent lack of foresight. And finally, if these differences aren't 100% genetic, shouldn't we teach patience in school?

Economics of Therapy

For a long time I've thought most therapy can be replaced by a good set of friendships. Here's a conversation between two bloggers that reveals a flaw with that belief:

Penelope: Why are you not in therapy? It's so fun.

Ben: Because I can talk to you, Chris, etc.

Penelope: I am not your therapist, though. Friends are not therapists. Friends do give and take. You can just take from therapists. Which is why self-discovery goes so much faster in therapy. You should try it. You're so into experiences!

Friendships have a certain percentage give and take, unlike therapists who are equipped to just give, not counting the bill of course. So once again an economics question. If your productive enough to use your vocation to pay for your therapy, then go for it. If you're poorer, then your time is generally worth less and you'd probably rather use the longer, friendship route.

Also, there are plenty of examples where therapists' expertise exceeds the value of existing friendships. No matter how much I love someone, I don't feel equipped to counsel them through abuse, divorce, etc. However, there is one benefit you get from relational therapy that you can't get from professional:

Ben: To play devil's advocate, I sometimes find I learn things about myself when I'm giving advice to others. That is, during the "give."