An elder Cherokee Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, "A fight is going on inside me...It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, pride and superiority. The other wolf stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. This same fight is going on inside of you and every other person too."
They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee simply replied..."The one I feed."
Monday, March 5, 2007
Sunday, March 4, 2007
you can only open your heart when you love your own life and take care of yourself!
Trust is not a passive thing. You trust with your intelligence and your strength, as well as with your vulnerability. You will be trusting again when you learn the essential paradox about love: You can only open your heart effectively when you are strong and insightful, when you love your own life and take care of yourself.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
stop telling kids they're special, too narcissistic!
Study: College students more narcissistic
Tue Feb 27, 12:32 AM ET
Today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.
"We need to stop endlessly repeating 'You're special' and having children repeat that back," said the study's lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. "Kids are self-centered enough already."
Twenge and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop Tuesday in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.
The standardized inventory, known as the NPI, asks for responses to such statements as "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place," "I think I am a special person" and "I can live my life any way I want to."
The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students' NPI scores have risen steadily since the current test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982.
Narcissism can have benefits, said study co-author W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, suggesting it could be useful in meeting new people "or auditioning on 'American Idol.'"
"Unfortunately, narcissism can also have very negative consequences for society, including the breakdown of close relationships with others," he said.
The study asserts that narcissists "are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors."
Twenge, the author of "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before," said narcissists tend to lack empathy, react aggressively to criticism and favor self-promotion over helping others.
The researchers traced the phenomenon back to what they called the "self-esteem movement" that emerged in the 1980s, asserting that the effort to build self-confidence had gone too far.
As an example, Twenge cited a song commonly sung to the tune of "Frere Jacques" in preschool: "I am special, I am special. Look at me."
"Current technology fuels the increase in narcissism," Twenge said. "By its very name, MySpace encourages attention-seeking, as does YouTube."
Some analysts have commended today's young people for increased commitment to volunteer work. But Twenge viewed even this phenomenon skeptically, noting that many high schools require community service and many youths feel pressure to list such endeavors on college applications.
Campbell said the narcissism upsurge seemed so pronounced that he was unsure if there were obvious remedies.
"Permissiveness seems to be a component," he said. "A potential antidote would be more authoritative parenting. Less indulgence might be called for."
The new report follows a study released by UCLA last month which found that nearly three-quarters of the freshmen it surveyed thought it was important to be "very well-off financially." That compared with 62.5 percent who said the same in 1980 and 42 percent in 1966.
Yet students, while acknowledging some legitimacy to such findings, don't necessarily accept negative generalizations about their generation.
Hanady Kader, a University of Washington senior, said she worked unpaid last summer helping resettle refugees and considers many of her peers to be civic-minded. But she is dismayed by the competitiveness of some students who seem prematurely focused on career status.
"We're encouraged a lot to be individuals and go out there and do what you want, and nobody should stand in your way," Kader said. "I can see goals and ambitions getting in the way of other things like relationships."
Kari Dalane, a University of Vermont sophomore, says most of her contemporaries are politically active and not overly self-centered.
"People are worried about themselves — but in the sense of where are they're going to find a place in the world," she said. "People want to look their best, have a good time, but it doesn't mean they're not concerned about the rest of the world."
Besides, some of the responses on the narcissism test might not be worrisome, Dalane said. "It would be more depressing if people answered, 'No, I'm not special.'"
Tue Feb 27, 12:32 AM ET
Today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.
"We need to stop endlessly repeating 'You're special' and having children repeat that back," said the study's lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. "Kids are self-centered enough already."
Twenge and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop Tuesday in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.
The standardized inventory, known as the NPI, asks for responses to such statements as "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place," "I think I am a special person" and "I can live my life any way I want to."
The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students' NPI scores have risen steadily since the current test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982.
Narcissism can have benefits, said study co-author W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, suggesting it could be useful in meeting new people "or auditioning on 'American Idol.'"
"Unfortunately, narcissism can also have very negative consequences for society, including the breakdown of close relationships with others," he said.
The study asserts that narcissists "are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors."
Twenge, the author of "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before," said narcissists tend to lack empathy, react aggressively to criticism and favor self-promotion over helping others.
The researchers traced the phenomenon back to what they called the "self-esteem movement" that emerged in the 1980s, asserting that the effort to build self-confidence had gone too far.
As an example, Twenge cited a song commonly sung to the tune of "Frere Jacques" in preschool: "I am special, I am special. Look at me."
"Current technology fuels the increase in narcissism," Twenge said. "By its very name, MySpace encourages attention-seeking, as does YouTube."
Some analysts have commended today's young people for increased commitment to volunteer work. But Twenge viewed even this phenomenon skeptically, noting that many high schools require community service and many youths feel pressure to list such endeavors on college applications.
Campbell said the narcissism upsurge seemed so pronounced that he was unsure if there were obvious remedies.
"Permissiveness seems to be a component," he said. "A potential antidote would be more authoritative parenting. Less indulgence might be called for."
The new report follows a study released by UCLA last month which found that nearly three-quarters of the freshmen it surveyed thought it was important to be "very well-off financially." That compared with 62.5 percent who said the same in 1980 and 42 percent in 1966.
Yet students, while acknowledging some legitimacy to such findings, don't necessarily accept negative generalizations about their generation.
Hanady Kader, a University of Washington senior, said she worked unpaid last summer helping resettle refugees and considers many of her peers to be civic-minded. But she is dismayed by the competitiveness of some students who seem prematurely focused on career status.
"We're encouraged a lot to be individuals and go out there and do what you want, and nobody should stand in your way," Kader said. "I can see goals and ambitions getting in the way of other things like relationships."
Kari Dalane, a University of Vermont sophomore, says most of her contemporaries are politically active and not overly self-centered.
"People are worried about themselves — but in the sense of where are they're going to find a place in the world," she said. "People want to look their best, have a good time, but it doesn't mean they're not concerned about the rest of the world."
Besides, some of the responses on the narcissism test might not be worrisome, Dalane said. "It would be more depressing if people answered, 'No, I'm not special.'"
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Bad Habits: Why We Can't Stop, inate human defiance, social acceptance, risk weighing
Bad Habits: Why We Can't Stop
It might seem a total wonder that a smoker won't quit after hearing that puffing away is a leading cause of death, or that an obese person can't shed a few pounds after learning that lethal ailments loom for the overweight.
But scientists have come up with a host of reasons why humans stick to bad habits, and they are zeroing in on what to do about it.
Kiling Ourselves
A study by scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that avoidable behaviors like cigarette use, poor diet and lack of exercise were the underlying cause of half of the deaths in the United States in the year 2000. Deaths cause by:
Tobacco: 435,000
Inactivity and bad eating: 400,000
Alcohol consumption: 85,000
SOURCE: March 10, 2004 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10 Easy Paths to Self Destruction
Among the reasons:
Innate human defiance.
Need for social acceptance.
Inability to truly understand the nature of risk.
Individualistic view of the world and the ability to rationalize unhealthy habits.
Genetic predisposition to addiction.
You'd think people were on a one-track mission to self-destruct rather than desiring immortality.
"We have found that people aren't changing their behaviors," said Cindy Jardine of the University of Alberta. "But it's not because they haven't gotten the information that these are big risks." She added, "We tend to sort of live for now and into the limited future—not the long term."
Killer knowledge
In a recent study, a group led by Jardine surveyed 1,200 people in Alberta, Canada in 1994 and again in 2005 about what they perceived to be risky behaviors. Many of the participants ranked lifestyle behaviors, such as smoking, drinking and sun tanning, as more dangerous than ozone depletion and chemical pollution.
In a related study that wrapped up this year, the scientists asked groups of indigenous Canadians why they ranked behaviors dangerous or not.
For instance, when asked about drinking and driving, most participants mentioned that you could hurt yourself or somebody else. If people know cigarettes can kill them or drinking and driving could be lethal, logic suggests they might quit it. Yet even with this knowledge, Jardine said, people continue to undertake these lifestyle risks.
Everybody's doing it
Jardine suggests several reasons for the contrary findings. For one, when a behavior is socially accepted or even considered desirable people tend to reconcile the fact that it's bad for them with the idea that "everybody's doing it," she said.
"I know this is bad for me but in social circles this makes me more accepted," Jardine said of the common reasoning. "It ends up being something people rationalize one way or another. And it's often easier to rationalize it in favor of trying to fit into your social group."
Addiction in Your Genes
Vulnerability to drug and alcohol abuse has been located to a particular gene.
Video News Story
One way of making it okay to smoke like a chimney or eat like a pig is with individual experiences that support your action. For instance, you could say, "It hasn't hurt me yet," or, "My grandmother smoked all her life and lived to be 90."
In 2004, Jardine found that stress moved past cigarette smoking as the most dangerous habit.
"Most of us wear our stress as a badge of honor these days," Jardine said. So rather than thinking about stress as causing physical damage to your body and perhaps hurting family relationships, "people often boast of their stress as a success."
Risky interpretations
Typically the likelihood of contracting a disease or dying from a substance or activity is reported numerically as a percentage or ratio [see The Odds of Dying].
Ellen Peters of the University of Oregon has found that people who are better at processing numbers look at the same information differently than people not as number-minded, who tend to rely more on fear than actual hard evidence. Being afraid of cancer could drive their decisions on whether or not to smoke or the importance of treatment for particular cancers. It comes down to emotions, which Peters suggests act as guiding lights in choices.
That's one reason she thinks the "truth" campaign by the American Legacy Foundation and other anti-cigarette campaigns have been so effective. The truth ads show gruesome images such as a bleeding brain or inflamed heart with text stating cigarettes as the cause. One video ad shows a human-size rat walking up from a subway station and then collapsing on the sidewalk with a sign about how cigarettes contain rat poison.
The Truth Hurts ... and Helps
The Canadian-based American Legacy Foundation's "truth" campaign relies on gruesome anti-smoking ads like this one of a giant, dying rat. Watch the Ad
A study by the American Legacy Foundation showed that 22 percent of the overall decline in youth smoking from 2000 to 2002 was attributable to their "truth" campaign.
No bad behavior vaccine
Social and physical environments also play large roles in fueling poor habits.
For example, if you perceive that all of your friends are staying up all night, baking in the sun every day at the beach or taking multiple smoke breaks during work, this will affect whether you also take part in the activities.
Couch potatoes might be glued to the TV by external factors more than a lack of desire to be healthy.
"We tell people they need to become physically active, but in certain neighborhoods if you get out and go for a walk you could be putting yourself in harms way from either traffic that's not well controlled or other kinds of things like violence in your neighborhood," said Andrea Gielen of Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Coming up with successful pro-health campaigns requires more research and multiple strategies, experts say.
"There's no single strategy or single bullet. We're not going to be able to find a vaccine for healthy behavior," Gielen said. "We have to be more creative. We have to have different kinds of partners and work with many different folks."
It might seem a total wonder that a smoker won't quit after hearing that puffing away is a leading cause of death, or that an obese person can't shed a few pounds after learning that lethal ailments loom for the overweight.
But scientists have come up with a host of reasons why humans stick to bad habits, and they are zeroing in on what to do about it.
Kiling Ourselves
A study by scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that avoidable behaviors like cigarette use, poor diet and lack of exercise were the underlying cause of half of the deaths in the United States in the year 2000. Deaths cause by:
Tobacco: 435,000
Inactivity and bad eating: 400,000
Alcohol consumption: 85,000
SOURCE: March 10, 2004 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10 Easy Paths to Self Destruction
Among the reasons:
Innate human defiance.
Need for social acceptance.
Inability to truly understand the nature of risk.
Individualistic view of the world and the ability to rationalize unhealthy habits.
Genetic predisposition to addiction.
You'd think people were on a one-track mission to self-destruct rather than desiring immortality.
"We have found that people aren't changing their behaviors," said Cindy Jardine of the University of Alberta. "But it's not because they haven't gotten the information that these are big risks." She added, "We tend to sort of live for now and into the limited future—not the long term."
Killer knowledge
In a recent study, a group led by Jardine surveyed 1,200 people in Alberta, Canada in 1994 and again in 2005 about what they perceived to be risky behaviors. Many of the participants ranked lifestyle behaviors, such as smoking, drinking and sun tanning, as more dangerous than ozone depletion and chemical pollution.
In a related study that wrapped up this year, the scientists asked groups of indigenous Canadians why they ranked behaviors dangerous or not.
For instance, when asked about drinking and driving, most participants mentioned that you could hurt yourself or somebody else. If people know cigarettes can kill them or drinking and driving could be lethal, logic suggests they might quit it. Yet even with this knowledge, Jardine said, people continue to undertake these lifestyle risks.
Everybody's doing it
Jardine suggests several reasons for the contrary findings. For one, when a behavior is socially accepted or even considered desirable people tend to reconcile the fact that it's bad for them with the idea that "everybody's doing it," she said.
"I know this is bad for me but in social circles this makes me more accepted," Jardine said of the common reasoning. "It ends up being something people rationalize one way or another. And it's often easier to rationalize it in favor of trying to fit into your social group."
Addiction in Your Genes
Vulnerability to drug and alcohol abuse has been located to a particular gene.
Video News Story
One way of making it okay to smoke like a chimney or eat like a pig is with individual experiences that support your action. For instance, you could say, "It hasn't hurt me yet," or, "My grandmother smoked all her life and lived to be 90."
In 2004, Jardine found that stress moved past cigarette smoking as the most dangerous habit.
"Most of us wear our stress as a badge of honor these days," Jardine said. So rather than thinking about stress as causing physical damage to your body and perhaps hurting family relationships, "people often boast of their stress as a success."
Risky interpretations
Typically the likelihood of contracting a disease or dying from a substance or activity is reported numerically as a percentage or ratio [see The Odds of Dying].
Ellen Peters of the University of Oregon has found that people who are better at processing numbers look at the same information differently than people not as number-minded, who tend to rely more on fear than actual hard evidence. Being afraid of cancer could drive their decisions on whether or not to smoke or the importance of treatment for particular cancers. It comes down to emotions, which Peters suggests act as guiding lights in choices.
That's one reason she thinks the "truth" campaign by the American Legacy Foundation and other anti-cigarette campaigns have been so effective. The truth ads show gruesome images such as a bleeding brain or inflamed heart with text stating cigarettes as the cause. One video ad shows a human-size rat walking up from a subway station and then collapsing on the sidewalk with a sign about how cigarettes contain rat poison.
The Truth Hurts ... and Helps
The Canadian-based American Legacy Foundation's "truth" campaign relies on gruesome anti-smoking ads like this one of a giant, dying rat. Watch the Ad
A study by the American Legacy Foundation showed that 22 percent of the overall decline in youth smoking from 2000 to 2002 was attributable to their "truth" campaign.
No bad behavior vaccine
Social and physical environments also play large roles in fueling poor habits.
For example, if you perceive that all of your friends are staying up all night, baking in the sun every day at the beach or taking multiple smoke breaks during work, this will affect whether you also take part in the activities.
Couch potatoes might be glued to the TV by external factors more than a lack of desire to be healthy.
"We tell people they need to become physically active, but in certain neighborhoods if you get out and go for a walk you could be putting yourself in harms way from either traffic that's not well controlled or other kinds of things like violence in your neighborhood," said Andrea Gielen of Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Coming up with successful pro-health campaigns requires more research and multiple strategies, experts say.
"There's no single strategy or single bullet. We're not going to be able to find a vaccine for healthy behavior," Gielen said. "We have to be more creative. We have to have different kinds of partners and work with many different folks."
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
believe in markets, they make sense except when they don't
Markets Make Sense, Except When They Don't
by Charles Wheelan, Ph.D.
Email this Page IM this StoryBookmark this StoryAdd to your Del.icio.us accountDigg this StoryPrint this Story Very Good (347 Ratings) 3.708948/5
Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007, 3:00AM
Do you believe in markets? Of course you do -- unless you're a communist.
Even the communists managed some pretty impressive black markets. I traveled for several weeks in the U.S.S.R. in 1988, and spent much of the time behind my hotel trading things out of my suitcase to Soviet teens for rabbit fur hats and Lenin pins.
Cornering the Market
Presumably, the 20th century proved that the market solution is usually the right solution. The theory is simple and elegant: Individuals and firms make themselves better off by entering into voluntary transactions, which collectively make up markets. By definition, all involved parties expect a transaction to make them better off, or else they wouldn't do it.
True, things may turn out badly, such as the hot stock you bought last year that fell 78 percent when the CEO revealed that all earnings since 1983 would have to be restated. But that's not what you expected. Nobody intentionally tries to lose money or to make their life worse. Instead, all parties to a transaction expect good things, or at least better than the alternatives.
That turns out to be pretty powerful stuff when you add it all up. If we leave people and firms alone, they naturally do things that make all of us richer -- they innovate, they work hard, they put resources to their most efficient use. Who can be against that?
Trapped by Progress
Just about everyone, it turns out, depending on the market in question. I would venture that economists like markets a lot more than the rest of the population, regardless of their political views.
Left-wingers aren't fond of sweatshops, for example. Why do we pay Vietnamese workers 75 cents an hour to sew shoes? Because we can. That's a pathetic reality; on the other hand, how exactly would closing the sweatshop make those workers better off? In all likelihood, if they had better options than sewing shoes for 75 cents an hour they wouldn't be working in a sweatshop in the first place.
Some liberal opposition to market outcomes is much more justifiable. We too often forget that every time someone builds a better (or cheaper) mousetrap, it's bad news for whoever made the old mousetrap. I don't advocate banning new mousetraps (or curtailing cheap imports from China), but there's nothing wrong with showing some empathy when markets create losers, as they always do.
Free and Easy Trade
What about conservatives? They talk the market talk, but don't always walk the walk. Try this experiment: Find a large Republican rally and take a turn at the microphone. Get the crowd warmed up with some general remarks about the elegance of markets and the evils of government. Then, when the applause lines are coming fast and furious, ask where you can buy some really good sex.
During the stunned silence, admonish these conservative market enthusiasts to fight against the oppressive zoning regulations that make it impossible for you to buy private property and build apartment buildings in most ritzy suburbs.
Why shouldn't you be able to do a tear down a single-family home on a five-acre lot in Greenwich if you can make a profit by replacing it with lots of cheap apartments? After all, don't they call it the housing "market"?
A Free-Market Self-Test
The reality is that most people -- from one end of the political spectrum to the other -- find some market outcomes objectionable.
Markets don't elicit any kind of consensus. The most interesting public policy questions often involve market outcomes that people decide they don't like -- whether it's sweatshops, prostitution, cheap imports from China, or something else.
So how do you feel about markets? Take this quick quiz. I've included my own (short) answers.
Should we legalize the sale and possession of drugs like marijuana, cocaine, and heroin?
My answer: I don't know. Certainly there's a market for these drugs -- lots of eager buyers and sellers. Society spends a lot of money trying to disrupt that market, seemingly to no avail.
Yes, drug use harms innocent third parties, but so do alcohol and tobacco. In those cases, we use taxes to raise the cost of smoking and drinking, and we regulate the specific behaviors that affect third parties, such as smoking at the office or driving drunk.
So why not do the same with drugs? Our current approach is both ineffective and expensive. Nonviolent drug offenders are clogging the courts and prisons. All the while, demand seems unabated and the illegal drug trade is empowering and enriching gangs and violent criminals, just as Prohibition did for organized crime.
Milton Friedman famously noted that everything wrong with drugs stems from the fact that they're illegal. I don't know about "everything" -- these are addictive substances that harm people and their families -- but I take his point.
And yet I'm not prepared to turn the sale of crack over to a Fortune 500 company that can maximize profits by finding new ways to get 18 year olds to sample their product. Nor do I want the government in the business of selling and distributing heroin. I don't have a moral objection to legalizing drug use and punishing only the behavior that affects the rest of us -- the drug equivalent of drunk driving. I just can't figure out how to do it.
Should we liberalize labor markets, so that workers can more freely cross international boundaries?
My answer: Yes. I find it hard to justify criminalizing anything that I would do myself. If I were poor and trying to raise a family in Mexico, I would do anything to get to the U.S. -- legally or otherwise. Capitalism is all about rewarding those who are willing to work harder or cheaper. Why is labor that crosses an international border any different?
When we buy a cheap stereo from China, that's globalization. When we give the kitchen remodeling job to the lowest bidder, that's competition. When some guy from El Salvador offers to cut the lawn cheaply, that's illegal. To an economist, it's just another voluntary transaction that makes both parties better off.
Yes, we need to police the borders -- for terrorists, not cheap poultry workers. You can reasonably disagree with me, but you must concede that I'm the one advocating the "free market" outcome in this case and you're not.
Should we implement a federal carbon tax and/or significantly raise the gas tax?
My answer: Absolutely. If you believe in markets when they work well, then you have to understand how they need to be tweaked when they don't. If page 10 of any introductory economics text explains the wonders of supply and demand, page 12 usually explains that markets don't deliver an efficient outcome when eager buyers and sellers impose some harm, or negative externality, on a third party.
If I can change the oil in your car more cheaply than the competition by dumping the old oil in Lake Michigan, that's not the kind of market transaction that got Milton Friedman so excited. Yes, I make profits and you save money -- a mutually beneficial, voluntary exchange -- but anybody who cares about Lake Michigan is not happy at all, and they aren't represented in our little transaction.
When the price of some activity is artificially cheap because society is picking up part of the tab, people do too much of it. That's not the economically efficient outcome that markets usually deliver. One standard economic fix is to impose a tax on whatever private activity imposes the social cost; when the price of the activity goes up, people do less of it.
That's exactly what a carbon tax or a higher gas tax would do. There's nothing voluntary about me breathing your tailpipe emissions. If we raise the private cost of driving, people will be less likely to commute 60 miles alone in a Chevy Tahoe.
The optimal market outcome isn't always synonymous with doing nothing; in this case, the market works best when the government does something. That something happens to be a tax, or anything else that raises the cost of the polluting behavior.
by Charles Wheelan, Ph.D.
Email this Page IM this StoryBookmark this StoryAdd to your Del.icio.us accountDigg this StoryPrint this Story Very Good (347 Ratings) 3.708948/5
Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007, 3:00AM
Do you believe in markets? Of course you do -- unless you're a communist.
Even the communists managed some pretty impressive black markets. I traveled for several weeks in the U.S.S.R. in 1988, and spent much of the time behind my hotel trading things out of my suitcase to Soviet teens for rabbit fur hats and Lenin pins.
Cornering the Market
Presumably, the 20th century proved that the market solution is usually the right solution. The theory is simple and elegant: Individuals and firms make themselves better off by entering into voluntary transactions, which collectively make up markets. By definition, all involved parties expect a transaction to make them better off, or else they wouldn't do it.
True, things may turn out badly, such as the hot stock you bought last year that fell 78 percent when the CEO revealed that all earnings since 1983 would have to be restated. But that's not what you expected. Nobody intentionally tries to lose money or to make their life worse. Instead, all parties to a transaction expect good things, or at least better than the alternatives.
That turns out to be pretty powerful stuff when you add it all up. If we leave people and firms alone, they naturally do things that make all of us richer -- they innovate, they work hard, they put resources to their most efficient use. Who can be against that?
Trapped by Progress
Just about everyone, it turns out, depending on the market in question. I would venture that economists like markets a lot more than the rest of the population, regardless of their political views.
Left-wingers aren't fond of sweatshops, for example. Why do we pay Vietnamese workers 75 cents an hour to sew shoes? Because we can. That's a pathetic reality; on the other hand, how exactly would closing the sweatshop make those workers better off? In all likelihood, if they had better options than sewing shoes for 75 cents an hour they wouldn't be working in a sweatshop in the first place.
Some liberal opposition to market outcomes is much more justifiable. We too often forget that every time someone builds a better (or cheaper) mousetrap, it's bad news for whoever made the old mousetrap. I don't advocate banning new mousetraps (or curtailing cheap imports from China), but there's nothing wrong with showing some empathy when markets create losers, as they always do.
Free and Easy Trade
What about conservatives? They talk the market talk, but don't always walk the walk. Try this experiment: Find a large Republican rally and take a turn at the microphone. Get the crowd warmed up with some general remarks about the elegance of markets and the evils of government. Then, when the applause lines are coming fast and furious, ask where you can buy some really good sex.
During the stunned silence, admonish these conservative market enthusiasts to fight against the oppressive zoning regulations that make it impossible for you to buy private property and build apartment buildings in most ritzy suburbs.
Why shouldn't you be able to do a tear down a single-family home on a five-acre lot in Greenwich if you can make a profit by replacing it with lots of cheap apartments? After all, don't they call it the housing "market"?
A Free-Market Self-Test
The reality is that most people -- from one end of the political spectrum to the other -- find some market outcomes objectionable.
Markets don't elicit any kind of consensus. The most interesting public policy questions often involve market outcomes that people decide they don't like -- whether it's sweatshops, prostitution, cheap imports from China, or something else.
So how do you feel about markets? Take this quick quiz. I've included my own (short) answers.
Should we legalize the sale and possession of drugs like marijuana, cocaine, and heroin?
My answer: I don't know. Certainly there's a market for these drugs -- lots of eager buyers and sellers. Society spends a lot of money trying to disrupt that market, seemingly to no avail.
Yes, drug use harms innocent third parties, but so do alcohol and tobacco. In those cases, we use taxes to raise the cost of smoking and drinking, and we regulate the specific behaviors that affect third parties, such as smoking at the office or driving drunk.
So why not do the same with drugs? Our current approach is both ineffective and expensive. Nonviolent drug offenders are clogging the courts and prisons. All the while, demand seems unabated and the illegal drug trade is empowering and enriching gangs and violent criminals, just as Prohibition did for organized crime.
Milton Friedman famously noted that everything wrong with drugs stems from the fact that they're illegal. I don't know about "everything" -- these are addictive substances that harm people and their families -- but I take his point.
And yet I'm not prepared to turn the sale of crack over to a Fortune 500 company that can maximize profits by finding new ways to get 18 year olds to sample their product. Nor do I want the government in the business of selling and distributing heroin. I don't have a moral objection to legalizing drug use and punishing only the behavior that affects the rest of us -- the drug equivalent of drunk driving. I just can't figure out how to do it.
Should we liberalize labor markets, so that workers can more freely cross international boundaries?
My answer: Yes. I find it hard to justify criminalizing anything that I would do myself. If I were poor and trying to raise a family in Mexico, I would do anything to get to the U.S. -- legally or otherwise. Capitalism is all about rewarding those who are willing to work harder or cheaper. Why is labor that crosses an international border any different?
When we buy a cheap stereo from China, that's globalization. When we give the kitchen remodeling job to the lowest bidder, that's competition. When some guy from El Salvador offers to cut the lawn cheaply, that's illegal. To an economist, it's just another voluntary transaction that makes both parties better off.
Yes, we need to police the borders -- for terrorists, not cheap poultry workers. You can reasonably disagree with me, but you must concede that I'm the one advocating the "free market" outcome in this case and you're not.
Should we implement a federal carbon tax and/or significantly raise the gas tax?
My answer: Absolutely. If you believe in markets when they work well, then you have to understand how they need to be tweaked when they don't. If page 10 of any introductory economics text explains the wonders of supply and demand, page 12 usually explains that markets don't deliver an efficient outcome when eager buyers and sellers impose some harm, or negative externality, on a third party.
If I can change the oil in your car more cheaply than the competition by dumping the old oil in Lake Michigan, that's not the kind of market transaction that got Milton Friedman so excited. Yes, I make profits and you save money -- a mutually beneficial, voluntary exchange -- but anybody who cares about Lake Michigan is not happy at all, and they aren't represented in our little transaction.
When the price of some activity is artificially cheap because society is picking up part of the tab, people do too much of it. That's not the economically efficient outcome that markets usually deliver. One standard economic fix is to impose a tax on whatever private activity imposes the social cost; when the price of the activity goes up, people do less of it.
That's exactly what a carbon tax or a higher gas tax would do. There's nothing voluntary about me breathing your tailpipe emissions. If we raise the private cost of driving, people will be less likely to commute 60 miles alone in a Chevy Tahoe.
The optimal market outcome isn't always synonymous with doing nothing; in this case, the market works best when the government does something. That something happens to be a tax, or anything else that raises the cost of the polluting behavior.
Monday, February 19, 2007
What does every woman want more than anything else?
What does every woman want more than anything else?
She wants to feel wonderful about herself.
She wants to be convinced that the man she loves more than any other considers her #1 on his "most important" list. Valentine's Day is simply an opportunity that her partner can express that. One way for a man to successfully convince her of his love and her position of importance in his life is to plan a way to express that before Valentine's Day, so that when he puts that plan into motion, his actions reflect his inner feeling that she is, indeed, the single most important part of his life. So it's not so much about the type of gift exchanged as it is the thought that is put into his expression of love. Keep in mind that a well-thought-out and executed plan to express one's love for another in your life can happen any day of the year.
What does every man want more than anything else?
He wants to feel wonderful about himself.
The shortest route to that feeling for a man has nothing to do with cards or presents. It has to do with a deep inner sense that the woman in his life trusts him at the deepest of levels, wants to give of herself fully and freely, and adores him through and through. She can show this to her partner by reflecting on their shared love and by expressing appreciation and trust in his love for her.
She wants to feel wonderful about herself.
She wants to be convinced that the man she loves more than any other considers her #1 on his "most important" list. Valentine's Day is simply an opportunity that her partner can express that. One way for a man to successfully convince her of his love and her position of importance in his life is to plan a way to express that before Valentine's Day, so that when he puts that plan into motion, his actions reflect his inner feeling that she is, indeed, the single most important part of his life. So it's not so much about the type of gift exchanged as it is the thought that is put into his expression of love. Keep in mind that a well-thought-out and executed plan to express one's love for another in your life can happen any day of the year.
What does every man want more than anything else?
He wants to feel wonderful about himself.
The shortest route to that feeling for a man has nothing to do with cards or presents. It has to do with a deep inner sense that the woman in his life trusts him at the deepest of levels, wants to give of herself fully and freely, and adores him through and through. She can show this to her partner by reflecting on their shared love and by expressing appreciation and trust in his love for her.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Love yourself enough to rise above the criticism
"Fabulosity" Law #14: "Love yourself enough to rise above criticism."
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