A Curious Little Blog

The examples I gave in the last entry were clear-cut:  I'm pretty sure that, from the point of view of maximizing your personal pleasure (which is what economics is about), you should not consider the cost to the vendor in your calculations (unless for some reason hurting the vendor was part of your calculations -- but in that case, you would almost certainly be better off not buying from him at all).  The examples in this entry still puzzle me; I'm not sure where the correct logic lies. The first is from The Armchair Economist by Steven Landsburg, which I thoroughly recommend to everyone.  I found myself agreeing with almost everything in it, but one case still leaves me puzzled.  Suppose you are going to a show of some sort and have bought 2 tickets at $50 apiece for you and your guest.  When you get to the show, you can't find the tickets.  Should you buy more, or should you be unwilling to buy them because you don't want to pay for the same thing twi...

The discipline of economics is founded on the idea that people are rational, at least to the extent that they will buy less of a good the more it costs.  But people are not always rational, of course (see, e.g., Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational ). Some economists, such as Ariely, think our enduring irrationality is a blow against traditional economics.  I don't agree, but that is a topic for another entry.  What I'm interested in is some examples of apparently irrational purchasing behaviour that I have observed. For example, I once heard someone discussing what toppings to put on a pizza.  "If I'm going to pay for extra toppings, I like to get meat so it's worth the money," he said.  At first, that seems to make sense:  all toppings typically cost the same, but meat is obviously more expensive than, e.g., mushrooms or onions.  But if you think about it, you're not trying to get the most expensive toppings for your money; you're trying to ge...

One of the most annoying things about the tolerance police is that their irony meter seems to be permanently broken.  Otherwise, how could we get a comment like this from the mayer of Boston? “We’re an open city. We’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion. That’s the Freedom Trail. That’s where it all started right here. And we’re not going to have a company, Chick-fil-A or whatever the hell the name is, on our Freedom Trail.” ( link ) He's all for inclusion -- as long as you agree with him. Now, I'm not saying there isn't a point that you need to exclude some people to be inclusive of others.  But, come on.  Chick-fil-A advocates for traditional marriage.  You know, the kind humanity has practiced, exclusively, until the last 10 years or so.  To complain that they are threatening anyone with their policies is to degrade the concept of "threat" to the point of meaninglessness.  Even worse, to the point of doubldspeak.

The fact that the nation is stuck with Obamacare is the least problem with the Supreme Court's ruling today, because health care is -- thankfully -- still not a Constitutional right, and the law can be reversed.  The best thing that is likely to come out of the ruling is a Republican-controlled White House and Congress, which will have a mandate to repeal Obamacare as their first order of business.  I was hoping for a different ruling (more on that in a moment), but I can't deny that today's ruling is probably the best boost a Republican campaign could have. (It's probably pretty obvious that the reason for this is that Republicans are more likely to be fired up during this election.  For a more detailed discussion of the phenomenon of voting, see Satoshi Kanazawa's articles here , here , and here .  In brief:  people don't like to lose.  If that effect carries over from one presidential election to another, over four years, it seems likely to have an eve...

I have just read the article Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Level , and the comments, and the follow-up and its comments.  The author claims that straight white males (SWM, for short) don't like being told they are "privileged," so he is going to try to explain their advantages in terms they understand.  He then very condescendingly compares their lives to playing a game on the easiest difficulty level, whereas people in other categories have it harder, and black lesbians are playing on the hardest level of all. I understand that this is a metaphor, or an analogy.  I understand that it is not supposed to be a perfect model of reality.  There are, however, several reasons why I think it is a very poor and misleading metaphor. First of all, using the gaming-difficulty metaphor implies that SWMs have an easy life.  No one plays at the easiest level unless he is a total noob, and only college students with lots of time on their hands play at the hard...

I'm suffering from opinion overload after reading so many comments about the Treyvon Martin killing.  It disturbs me to see everyone so ready to draw conclusions about a case in which a great deal remains unknown.  It's probably no different than what has always happened when information about an event gets disseminated, but it is much easier to see the effects now. There are only two clear things about the case as far as I can tell.  One is that George Zimmerman should not have followed Trayvon Martin, and if he had not followed him, Martin would still be alive.  The second is that the police should have launched a formal investigation rather than just taking Zimmerman's word for it. Beyond that, it is mostly speculation.  The key question is how Zimmerman and Martin ended up in a scuffle.  Zimmerman said he was ambushed, which seems unlikely to me, but I have no way of knowing what scenario actually played out.  I'm afraid that no one may be able...

Is anyone else concerned that such a thing as "hate crimes" even exists in our law?  I was reminded of their existence because of the decision handed down today against a Rutgers student who videotaped his roommate engaged in a homosexual act ( here and here ).  Admittedly, the law uses the term "bias intimidation" instead of "hate crime," but it is widely reported as a hate crime law, and those words probably came up during the debate in the legislature. The concept of a hate crime seems disturbingly Orwellian to me.  I realize the law considers the mindset of the defendant, whether the act is premeditated, whether he feels remorse, and so forth, but that seems quite a bit different than debating whether he did it out of hate or some other motive.  The end result is the same, and whether the person feels indifferent or antipathy to the victim does not seem to matter much in practice.  Either way, he is sociopathic.  Even if the crime is committed out o...