Eight How to Fix Everything Else - More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics by Steven E. Landsburg - #astadikramer #comepagareipompieri #esternalitàdellearmi @evasoreeroe #controiprofdimanicalarga #lacodamigliore
Eight How to Fix Everything ElseRead more at location 1279
Note: Brevetti e copyright: il metodo Kramer Tasse e incentivi distorti: il caso dei pompieri Tasse e antifurti Evasione: può essere un bene pubblico nel momento in cui ostacola la realizzazione di programmi pubblici inefficienti Edit
Inventiveness is good. It should be rewarded. Monopoly power, by contrast, is bad. It should be discouraged. So what does the patent system do? It rewards inventiveness with a license to monopolize.Read more at location 1280
There is at least one successful precedent. When Louis Daguerre invented photography in 1839, the French government purchased the patent and placed it in the public domain. But Professor Kremer seems to be the first to propose automatic patent buyouts as a matter of policy.Read more at location 1296
How to Fight Fires I believe firefighters should be allowed to keep all the property they rescue—including your house. Since the firefighters get to collect all the swag, we won’t have to pay them; in fact, we can auction off the right to be a firefighter and then use the proceeds to fund a general tax cut. That way, everyone’s a winner.Read more at location 1326
LoJack has the huge advantage of helping your neighbors rather than hurting them. The Club convinces thieves to steal someone else’s car instead;Read more at location 1367
A number of economists, most prominently John Lott and his coauthor David Mustard, have argued that the proliferation of handguns (and more specifically the passage of right-to-carry laws) significantly reduces crime rates: more guns, less crime. Lott’s work has attracted a lot of criticism, some of which is deplorably ad hominem and intellectually vacuous. There are also thoughtful critiques, which have generated many rounds of argument and counterargument that I won’t attempt to summarize or to judge.Read more at location 1387
assuming that Lott is right and guns reduce crime does it follow that we should subsidize gun ownership? And the answer is: of course not. Not everything good should be subsidized; otherwise we’d subsidize everything from Hostess Ho Hos to Internet porn. Everything depends on how guns reduce crime.Read more at location 1392
First possibility: My carrying a gun causes criminals to give up crime and thereby protects you as well as me.Read more at location 1394
Second possibility: My carrying a gun protects me but has no effect on you.Read more at location 1396
Third possibility: My carrying a gun protects me by encouraging criminals to prey on you instead.Read more at location 1398
Insofar as widespread cheating makes it more difficult to carry on the (sometimes insidious) business of government, cheating can be a socially beneficial activity. But insofar as the government offsets your cheating by raising my taxes, cheating becomes the moral equivalent of a burglar alarm that diverts the burglar from your house to mine.Read more at location 1404
It’s a cliché that when grades are inflated they convey less information. The cliché is only half true. On the one hand, inflated grades fail to distinguish between the merely above-average and the truly superior. But on the other hand, inflated grades do a super job of distinguishing among fine gradations of weakness. When the average grade is B, the strong students are all lumped together with As, while the weak ones are sorted into Cs, Ds, and Fs.Read more at location 1504
That’s still a net loss of valuable information, because employers care more about making distinctions at the top than about making distinctions at the bottom.Read more at location 1507
A college that can distinguish itself from the pack by maintaining high standards should be able to reap substantial rewards in the marketplace,Read more at location 1517
An untenured professor is like a corporate bondholder—as long as the institution stays above water in the short run he’s happy. A tenured professor is like a corporate stockholder—he has a permanent stake in the fortunes of the institution. Professors should have job security for the same reason the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board should have job security: it instills a healthy respect for the long run.Read more at location 1524
First, college transcripts could show each professor’s overall grade distribution, allowing employers to interpret each individual grade in context.Read more at location 1530
Second, the dean’s office could assign each professor a “grade budget” consisting of a certain number of As, Bs, etc.Read more at location 1531
With grade budgets, professors would be forced to give fewer As, but the As they gave would be more valuable.Read more at location 1540
How to Shorten Waiting LinesRead more at location 1544
Note: Code. Come razionalizzare le precedenze? In via di principio chi ha fretta potrebbe acquistare il diritto ad avanzare da chi lo precede ma la negoziazione sarebbe estenuante... Regola x minimizzare il tempo xduto: dare la precedenza agli ultimi. In qs modo quanto più la coda è lunga tanto più diventa rischioso accodarsi. In qs modo le code restano corte. Chi è fortunato e arriva quando nessuno è in coda entra senza attese. Visto che l'attrazione è appetita il flusso sarà costante e le attese nulle. L'ideale per i parchi con tante attrazioni, o per l'Expo. Ok, qualcuno verrà tagliato fuori ma anche col metodo tradizionale è così. Bisogna xrò impedire il fenomeno dei "rientri": i rinunciatari nn possono riprovarci... Vuoi lasciare la fila? Vuoi restare? Scegli come vuoi ma il bello che in qs modo costi e benefici della tua scelta ricadranno su di te... Pttimo anche x i call center: un annuncio ti dice che al termine di ogni minuto le nuove telefonate passetanno avanti (oltre a informarti sulla frequenza media delle chiamate)... Edit
In principle, there’s a market solution to this problem. If I’m in front of you, you can pay me to leave, or take up a collection among the people behind you and then pay me to leave. But you don’t because the negotiations are a hassle,Read more at location 1550
Here’s a different solution: Change the rules so each new arrival goes to the front of the line instead of the back. Then people near the back will give up and go home (well, actually they’d leave the line and try to reenter as newcomers, but let’s suppose for the moment that we can somehow prevent that). On average, we’d spend less time waiting and we could all be happier.Read more at location 1553
Imagine a water fountain in a city park with a steady gaggle of equally thirsty joggers running by. Each jogger looks at the line and decides whether it’s worth joining.Read more at location 1556
But what if we send newcomers to the front of the line? Then—because we’ve assumed a steady stream of new arrivals—the second guy in line never gets to drink; by the time it’s his turn, someone else will cut in front of him. So as long as someone’s drinking, you might as well jog right by. But if you’re lucky enough to arrive just as someone else is finishing, you immediately take his place. That’s a great outcome, because nobody ever wastes time in line. You might think it has the offsetting disadvantage that a lot of people never get to drink, but that disadvantage is an illusion.Read more at location 1562
Under the traditional system there are also a lot of people who never get to drink—namely the ones who never join the line because it’s too long. Under either system the fountain is in constant use,Read more at location 1567
Now let’s tweak the example to make it more realistic: Suppose the newcomers arrive not in a steady stream but sporadically and unpredictably.Read more at location 1569
The only hard decision is whether to leave the line. And that decision is made by the guy at the back, who doesn’t hurt anyone if he stays and doesn’t help anyone if he goes. In other words, the decision maker feels all the costs and benefits of his own actions!Read more at location 1574
Those assumptions can all be tolerably well approximated in the queues for telephone customer service.Read more at location 1581
An initial recording announces the average frequency of calls and explains that each new call will be placed in front of yours. Every minute or so,
