EclectEcon

The Pricing of Corn

It is sweet corn season, and we buy and eat a lot of it this time of year. During the past week, we have bought corn at several different stores and considered it at several different roadside stands. Here are the prices we observed:

• Major grocery store: $1.99/dozen
• Small-town grocery store (affiliated with the same chain as the Major grocery store): $1.99/dozen
• Small-town grocery store a different one: $3.49
• Farmers' Market a farmer near the back with no tables: $4/dozen
• Farmers' Market a nicely laid out stand at the entrance: $5/dozen
• Roadside stand: $5/dozen
• A Different Roadside Stand: $5/dozen.

My reaction to the roadside stand prices was "Huh?" Is the corn at roadside stands really worth that much more? Well, of course it is if people are willing to pay that much more.



But why do people pay $5 at the roadside for what they can buy for $2 at a major store?

• Is roadside corn fresher than grocery store corn? Maybe, but the corn at the grocery store seems mighty fresh, and just how often is the corn at roadside stands picked and then transported to the stand? once a day? if so, that corn is probably not much, if any, fresher than grocery store corn.
• And does an extra 12 hours of freshness matter with sweet corn? Not so far as I can tell. In fact, when we buy a dozen ears of corn, we don't eat them all that day or evening. We often save some for a day or even two, and they still taste just as good as the ones that we ate on the day we bought them.
• Is roadside corn more costly to produce? So what if it is? If there is little to no difference in quality, then why do people pay such a hefty premium for it, even if it is more costly to produce. And isn't the usual argument that roadside produce is cheaper because of the cost savings from avoiding all the intermediaries? If so, why are the roadside prices higher? Let's hear for the efficiency and cost savings provided by intermediaries!
• Do people pay more just to support local farmers? I expect some do. But given the corn lobby's influence on corn subsidies and inefficient ethanol production, I certainly have no desire to give them any charity.
• or, and this seems most likely, do tourists and cottagers in this area not know that fresh corn is readily available in local grocery stores for a much lower price; or, having stopped and picked out some corn, do they just go ahead and pay the price despite feeling uneasy or unhappy about its high price? [not me; I told the person it was too high and left].

Global Warming, Opportunity Costs, and Broken Windows

I am skeptical about the various concerns many people have about global warming. But suppose they are right. Even if they are, devoting scarce resources to fight global warming is not win-win, as Hilary Clinton has recently argued: to create jobs in industries that spring up to help fight global warming is to attract those scarce resources away from some other use. That is a cost to society, not a benefit! Those employees, those machines, supplies, and buildings, all have some alternative use. And by attracting them to the fight against global warming, we must give up the alternative use -- a forgone opportunity, an opportunity cost.



From James Pethokoukis:

"This issue of energy and global warming has the promise of creating millions of new jobs in America. It can be a win-win, if we do it right."—Sen. Hillary Clinton, at last night's Democratic debate in South Carolina



And with that, Clinton seemingly stumbled into the classic economic trap known as the Broken Window Fallacy. As described by the French economist Fredric Bastiat, the fallacy imagines some punk kid chucking a rock through a store window. A bad thing, right? Yet a contrarian onlooker offers that the troublemaker may have actually helped the economy because now the storeowner will have to hire a glazier, who will make money replacing the window. Then the glazier will use that money to buy bread from a baker, who then might buy shoes from a cobbler. And the "multiplier effect" goes on and on, creating a more prosperous economy.



But Bastiat points out that such reasoning ignores the hidden costs to the shopkeeper, who was forced to spend money on windows instead of something else that may have had higher value to him or society, like a new suit or investing in a start-up tech firm.

Yet another reason policy makers need to learn more about the "natural unemployment rate" (even with its failings) and stop talking about "job creation".

Global Warming Causes Wetter and Dryer Summers...in the same locations!

As I have written often, I am skeptical about the concerns over global warming. Here is one reason: the predictions of the climate models have spectacularly wide confidence intervals and even lead to wildly different conclusions. From Melanie Phillips:

... [G]lobal warming is a truly miraculous theory. It means that, without a shadow of a doubt, we will have dry summers and wet winters, and wet summers and er, well, wet winters. As Dr Stott says:

‘In the UK wetter winters are expected which will lead to more extreme rainfall, whereas summers are expected to get drier. However, it is possible under climate change that there could be an increase of extreme rainfall even under general drying.’ (my emphasis [M.P.])

As it gets dryer, it will get wetter. Truly, this global warming theory has some extraordinary properties.



Bewildered? Wake up at the back there —haven’t you got it straight yet? We’re going to be frying and freezing, drowning and dehydrating at the very same time. And carbon emissions will be to blame for the planet getting hotter and getting colder, getting wetter and getting dryer. Because global warming means that whatever happens to the weather, wet dry, hot, cold— it’s all our own fault.



Those who still nurture an old-fashioned regard for facts as opposed to tendentious and indeed ridiculous hypothesis might like to bear in mind that these torrential downpours are not unprecedented in Britain at all. Indeed, we have had worse in the past. As Michael Hanlon reports in the Daily Mail:

On May 29, 1912, nearly five inches of rain fell in three hours near the town of Louth in Lincolnshire. The flood-water practically razed the town and killed 22 people. Even more spectacular was the deluge that occurred three months later in Norfolk: Brundall, near Norwich, experienced more than eight inches of rain on one hellish August day — roughly double the total measured anywhere in the recent floods. Much of Norfolk was still under water six months later.

And on August 15 that year, a depression moving up the Bristol Channel deposited nine inches of rain over Exmoor, spawning the lethal flood that was nearly to wash away the village of Lynmouth. More than 30 people were killed. The record for rainfall in one 24-hour period occurred on July 18, 1955, when nearly 12 inches of rain fell on parts of Dorset. So there is certainly nothing unprecedented about these floods, and similar deluges occurred long before we worried about global warming.

But then global warming theory represents the ultimate triumph of hypothesis over experience, as the latest distinguished scientist in the Canadian Financial Post’s series of climate change sceptics recently made clear. Tom V. Segalstad, head of the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo and formerly an expert reviewer with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says the whole theory is nonsense.

Why does he say it is nonsense? Because it relies on a crucial assumption that the CO2 being produced will hang around in the atmosphere for 50 years or more rather than be absorbed by the oceans, whereas all the evidence to date suggests that C02, on average, stays in the atmosphere for no more than 5-10 years.

Amazingly, the hypothetical results from climate models have trumped the real world measurements of carbon dioxide’s longevity in the atmosphere. Those who claim that CO2 lasts decades or centuries have no such measurements or other physical evidence to support their claims. Neither can they demonstrate that the various forms of measurement are erroneous. ‘They don’t even try,’ says Prof. Segalstad. ‘They simply dismiss evidence that is, for all intents and purposes, irrefutable. Instead, they substitute their faith, constructing a kind of science fiction or fantasy world in the process.’



In the real world, as measurable by science, CO2 in the atmosphere and in the ocean reach a stable balance when the oceans contain 50 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere. ‘The IPCC postulates an atmospheric doubling of CO2, meaning that the oceans would need to receive 50 times more CO2 to obtain chemical equilibrium,’ explains Prof. Segalstad. ‘This total of 51 times the present amount of carbon in atmospheric CO2 exceeds the known reserves of fossil carbon– it represents more carbon than exists in all the coal, gas, and oil that we can exploit anywhere in the world.’

Global warming: religion, not science.

Does the BBC Have ANY Credibility... At All???

It has recently come to light that some employees of the BBC knowingly flagrantly lied about the timing of events in stories involving the Queen and phone-in scams. So what is upper management doing about it? SFA. From Melanie Phillips:

The BBC is apparently in crisis. We are told that its top brass take very, very seriously the blow to its integrity delivered by the recent series of scandals involving the reversed footage of the Queen and the phone-in scams. Yet the Chairman of the BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons, whose whereabouts when the furore exploded on July 19 in New Zealand were revealed when his phone-line went down in the middle of his interview on the BBC Radio Four Today Programme, appears therefore to have conducted his stern encounter the previous day with the Director-General, Mark Thompson — in which we were told Thompson was summoned to explain the BBC’s behaviour — in a long-distance telephone call. Some stern summons. Now we read today that the Commons Culture Select Committee, which was due to grill Mr Thompson yesterday, had to make do instead with his deputy, Mark Byford, since Mr Thompson had gone off on a family holiday - forcing the committee to listen incredulously as Byford declared that every BBC employee would be sent on courses teaching them about the importance of not lying to the public. Thus the BBC’s response.



Like Macavity, it seems, Mr Thompson is never there to face the music in person. What does this tell us about the seriousness with which the BBC takes this fundamental blow to its integrity?

I think they should hold the courses at Ben Miller Inn, a lovely resort/spa near here, so my friends can come to visit and go geocaching with me.



More seriously, sending EVERY employee on a course because of the sins of a few is really dumb. It would be much more effective just to fire those involved in the lies.

Freedomnomics

I have been reading Freedomnomics by John Lott. He is a good writer, and he is relentless in his pursuit of better economic models to explain the world.



Because I teach and often do research on economics and law, I have been especially interested in chapter 4, "Crime and Punishment". In this chapter, we learn that crime rates have been declining, but not because of legalized abortion, as argued by Levitt et al. In fact Lott presents a strong case that after legalized abortion, more teens had more unprotected sex, thus leading to more, not fewer, unwanted children.



This argument continues through the chapter: that when behaviour is constrained in some way on one front, people respond by altering their behaviour on another. E.g., when people are required to lock up their guns, accidental killings don't go down much, if at all, but robberies, etc., go up because criminals know that victims will not have ready access to their guns. And, as should be expected, Lott provides much more evidence that gun control laws are actually counter-productive, at least in the US. Despite his growing evidence that right-to-carry laws help reduce crime, politicians and victims still do not see the overall validity, on a probablistic basis, of Lott's analysis. For example, from a recent incident in Toronto,

The killing prompted Mayor David Miller to renew his call for a total federal handgun ban and help stemming the flow of guns from the United States.



"It's time for the Canadian government to say to the U.S. 'we are good friends, but your gun laws are exporting a problem to our country and it is not acceptable any more and you need to take action,'" he said Monday.



Audette Shephard, whose only son, Justin, was shot dead in 2001, also called for a handgun ban. "Guns are a weapon of mass destruction," said Ms. Shephard, a member of Mayor Miller's community safety panel. "You can't defend yourself against a gun."

In Lott's book, we also see evidence that as arrest (not necessarily conviction!) rates go up, crime rates go down. In general, it appears that Lott has found many instances in which if the expected value of something is changed by altering either probability of an outcome or by altering the value of that outcome, should it occur, then people often react by adjusting the other variable. And that's sort of a neat result, not unlike the Peltzman seat-belt arguments of several decades ago.



More later on this intriguing book. For a comprehensive review, see this by Craig Newmark.

Please Sign the Petition Opposing the Boycotts

Scholars for Peace in the Mideast have an on-line petition opposing the proposed UCU boycott of Israeli academics. If you are an academic or a professional, please go to their site to read about the petition and to sign it:



http://www.spme.net/cgi-bin/display_petitions.cgi?ID=9&Action=Sign

The Weekend Begins on Thursday...

For the past several years, all of my teaching at The University of Western Ontario has been concentrated on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It makes for long days, but also long weekends and long blocks of time to read and do research.



I always conclude my last Thursday class with,

Thank you, keep well, and have a nice weekend. The weekend begins on Thursday at Western.

I wouldn't ordinarily have said something like that except that several students in previous years had told me that Thursday night was the best night to go out, and then they would just cut their classes on Fridays.



Imagine my surprise (and this just shows how naive I really am) when [h/t to Newmark's Door] I read this statement as the third of about 120 items in the list, "You Know You're in College When..."

3. Weekends start on Thursday.

Many of the students who had classes on MWF told me they didn't understand why I said that since they still had classes on Fridays. They tended to be among the better students, of course.



In the spring and summer, when I have taught at the International Study Centre at Herstmonceux Castle, there are no Friday classes. Fridays and Saturdays (and some Sundays) are reserved for field trips for various classes. So at that institution, the weekends do indeed begin on Thursdays.



And this coming academic year, I will be on sabbatical at Guelph University, where I will be visiting every Tuesday through Thursday. Once again, the weekends begin on Thursdays!



Digression: Further evidence of my naivete is that there are several references to "beer pong" in that list. I could easily infer that it is some kind of drinking game, but I had to look it up on Wikipedia to see what it really is all about. The most amusing part of that article comes at the end, when it talks about "Bud Pong", a variant of the game from Anheuser-Busch:

Bud Pong was the branded version of beer pong that brewer Anheuser-Busch said involved the drinking of water, not Budweiser or any other beer. In the summer of 2005, the company began marketing "Bud Pong" kits to its distributors. Francine I. Katz, vice president for communications and consumer affairs, was reported in The New York Times as saying that Bud Pong was not intended for underage drinkers because promotions were held in bars, not on campuses. And it did not promote binge drinking, she said, because official rules call for water to be used, not beer.



The New York Times quoted a bartender at a club near Clemson University as saying she had worked at several Bud Pong events and had "never seen anyone playing with water. It's always beer. It's just like any other beer pong."[1]



Some expressed incredulity at Anheuser-Busch's public statements. Henry Wechsler, director of the College Alcohol Study at the Harvard School of Public Health, said: "Why would alcohol companies promote games that involve drinking water? It's preposterous,"[1] while advertising news site Adjab opined that "someone playing Bud Pong with water is about as likely as a teenage kid using the rolling paper he bought at the convenience store to smoke tobacco."[10].



On October 19, 2005 the company professed surprise that some players were using beer instead of water, and withdrew the game in response to criticism. Francine I. Katz stated that "Despite our explicit guidelines, there may have been instances where this promotion was not carried out in the manner it was intended."

If I ever play this game, I want Phil Miller on my team. And Ms. Eclectic thinks it should be played with single-malt scotch!

Quaker-nomics Please, Oppress Me Some More

My grandfather was a Quaker, as were many others of my ancestors on his side of the family. I was always intrigued by and a bit proud of this pacifist heritage.



At the same time, the lack of understanding of economics among some of my current Quaker relatives has always irritated me. This sign sponsored by the Quakers in the small town of Settle in the Yorkshire Dales illustrates their ignorance very well. It reveals appalling ignorance of two important facts:

1. Generally speaking, people who appear to be exploited by wealthier people or wealthier economies have far worse alternatives available to them if the jobs generated by global demand were not available for them. It's the greedy folks who want stuff the poor can produce who help make the poor better off than they would otherwise be. And
2. caring, sharing societies almost always end up with everyone worse off economically than societies filled with greedy overachievers; when people can count on others to care for and provide for them in their times of need, they do less to provide for themselves, they do less to prepare for contingencies, and they just have tonnes more "needs" that others (often via the gubmnt) are expected to look after.

The drive of individuals trying to make themselves better off in a material sense generates incentives, innovations, and demand for goods and services which lead to improvements in the lives of others, too.



It is the "grasping for wealth" by so many that creates jobs and spurs people on to do better. If the grasping for wealth causes oppression, please oppress me some more.



And don't give me any guff about corruption and theft types of oppression: these are at least as rife in gubmnt-controlled economies as in market-based economies (probably much more so), and the people in those economies are no less greedy, either. Gubmnt control does little more than convert people from being producers into being rent-seekers (pursuers of gubmnt handouts).

Rising Anti-Semitism in Britain

From Fox News:

According to government reports, the chief sources of the hatred of Jews are native-born fascists, far-left political extremists and Muslim radicals [emphasis added]. The physical attacks are mainly directed at Orthodox Jews, who are highly visible because of their skullcaps and traditional dress. Secular Jews, who are not as easily identifiable by their clothes, are less likely to be attacked.



The number of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain increased by 34 percent last year, according to records collected by the Community Security Trust, a charity that monitors anti-Semitism in Britain and is regularly cited in government reports for being more comprehensive than police data.



That was the biggest annual increase since 1984, when the charity began collecting figures. Based on current projections, the number of incidents this year is on track to equal last year's.



Many of the physical assaults on British Jews are committed by Muslim extremists who blame all Jews for the conditions of Palestinians in Israel and Israeli-occupied areas. According to a poll in the London Times in December 2005, 37 percent of Britain’s 2 million Muslims agreed that all 268,000 members of the Jewish community were legitimate targets because of Israel’s policies.



“Bigots try to make all Jews responsible for the actions of the only democratically elected government in the Middle East,” John Mann, a member of Parliament, told FOXNews.com. “Anti-Israeli sentiment does go over the line to anti-Semitism,” said Mann, who chaired a bipartisan committee that studied anti-Semitism in Britain.



Israel-bashing has been fueled in Britain by militant left-wing trade unionists, academics and some members of the British press who regard Israel as an apartheid state determined to eliminate the Palestinians.



A proposed academic boycott would end exchanges between British and Israeli universities. Then-Prime Minister Tony Blair called on academics to abandon plans to boycott Israeli universities during a speech in the House of Commons last month, saying a boycott would do absolutely “no good for the Middle East peace process.”

Stalled at 20

As promised, I will join Facebook if fifty people join this group, but right now the membership total is stalled at just 20.

How Much Do You Love Your Children?Would You Give Anything to Protect Them from Risks of Harm?

The title of this item sounds suspiciously like the patter of a saleperson, trying to sell you some new safety device. After asking those questions, the sales rep might then go on to demonstrate some new product that would reduce the probability that your child will die during the next year from .00000002 to .00000001. And if, after you decide not to buy the product, your child were to die, and that death could have been prevented had you bought the product, you would be happy to go back in time and buy the product.



But this example illustrates a basic feature of economics, which is forward-looking and asks about decisions made ex ante. We all must make decisions about the future, and that involves risk, uncertainty, and imperfect information. As a result, we often choose to accept risks for ourselves and our children, knowing that the probability of the loss is very small and we would rather take the risk and use the money for something else. We buy cars that, deep in our hearts, we know could be safer. We drive cars when we know that trains, planes, and teleconferencing are safer. Most of us do not keep childproof locks on all the doors of our houses. Etc. The point is that ex ante there is a limit to how much we would spend to reduce risks of even serious, major losses by miniscule amounts.



And many of us choose to buy back-seat DVD players for our cars rather than buy back-up cameras (see what Phil Miller has written about this), even though the latter will probably reduce the risk that we might back over our children or pets (or those belonging to others). I guess it could be argued that a DVD player, by keeping the kids quiet and well-behaved, reduces the distractions for a driver and actually leads to more safety than we'd get from back-up cameras.

Is the War in Afghanistan a Just War?

The Taliban-controlled country hosted and hid al Qaeda and was part of the violent attack on the Western way of life. So, yes, I think it is/was a just war, which is how my friend Eric referred to it. Rondi had a great column along similar lines, "Support the Troops".

Jack Layton is always good for a platitude or two (or three). And the one that appears on his party's website concerning Canadian troops in Afghanistan is exceptionally plebeian. "Support our troops. Bring 'em home," it pleads. How perfectly banal. I love the "'em" – lest we forget that Layton is a man of the people (and not just of the people who would take Afghanistan back to the eighth century), he reminds us by dropping that snooty "th."



In a statement on the website, Layton refers to the war in Afghanistan as a "George Bush style counter-insurgency war." (In case we've forgotten who we should be blaming!) But Canada's soldiers are volunteers. They have signed up for a profession that is not, by definition, safe (unlike Layton and Miller). And they do their job well (unlike Layton and Miller) – so why "bring 'em home" as though they were hapless children or disillusioned draftees?



The need to offer surface "support" for troops stems, of course, from the Vietnam era. So I would suggest that rather than declaring, "I support the troops," people with misgivings about Afghanistan wear stickers that say, "I promise not to spit on troops or call them baby killers."



I support our troops because I support the war in Afghanistan. That includes supporting the deliberate killing of bad people. It also includes accepting that civilian deaths and military casualties will occur and that both are grim inevitabilities of war.



Still, I would prefer that, rather than spout clichés, all Canadians understand why our troops should be encouraged to do their job with the best possible weaponry on this most important battlefield.

Rising Food Prices:Three Reasons

Ron sent me this link from the BBC, which (amazingly) got this right. Food prices have been rising rapidly in the UK, and there are three basic reasons.



First, rising oil prices. Oil and other petroleum products are important inputs in food production. As the prices of inputs increase, the supply curve shifts to the left, driving up the equilibrium price. I'm not too sure how important the price of oil has been in causing rising prices over the past year or two, though, since they do not seem a lot higher than they were two years ago. Also, I'm not sure how much farmland would be taken out of production as a result of the rising price of oil, and in the long run, that's the only way rising oil prices could affect food prices.*



Second, rising demand for food.

A second [reason] is increasing demand for western foodstuffs from developing countries like China.... more affluent Chinese consumers eat more meat; China needs to import more cereals to feed its mushrooming population of pigs and poultry.

As people in developing countries demand more food and more food that is more easily produced in western countries, the demand curve for this food shifts to the right and forces up the equilibrium price. This effect, combined with the apparent increased food intake by people in developed countries, is probably important.



Third, the opportunity cost of selling grains for food has risen greatly because of the (misplaced?) increase in demand for grains to produce biofuels. We know that ethanol can be produced most efficiently from sugar cane, but the sugar and corn lobbies in the US and elsewhere have persuaded politicians and voters that diverting corn/maize from foodstock to the production of ethanol is somehow a good thing. As the price of corn/maize is driven up by this increased demand, less farmland is available to raise food. These higher opportunity costs have contributed greatly to the increased price of food, throughout the world.

[B]iofuels are already big business in the United States, where bioethanol is seen as a greener and more sustainable alternative to traditional petrol.



The downside is that land which until recently was growing crops for food is now growing crops for fuel.



The United Nations says a third of the total US maize crop went for ethanol last year.



The International Monetary Fund say there's no question that demand for biofuels is driving up food prices - and that it will go on doing so...

I know it is naive of me, but the strength of the US corn and sugar lobbies never ceases to amaze me.



*1b? It is likely that the recent drought in Australia has also shifted the supply curve to the left for this year.

British Medical Journal Poll:Unsettling, and Worse

The BMJ is hosting a poll about the proposed boycott of Israeli academics. Here is the link.



Fortunately, the last time I looked, about 90% of the respondents opposed the boycott. My major concern is that even 10% of the respondents support the boycott of Israeli academics. I hope I never end up having to be treated by one of the supporters of the boycott.



The comments on the proposed boycott are generally very good. To see the comments of the responders to the poll, click here.

What Do Madison, Wisconsin, and Kalamazoo, Michigan Have in Common?

My friend Jack is traveling out west. He wrote from Madison, Wisconsin, that he quite enjoyed the city and much preferred it to Kalamazoo, Michigan.



I'm sure he had his reasons. But perhaps that was the wrong comparison. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to compare Madison with Ann Arbor and then compare, say, Milwaukee with Kalamazoo. Madison and Ann Arbor both house major, first-class universities. Milwaukee and Kalamazoo are homes to good, but secondary institutions of higher learning.



At the same time, I would not want to stack up Madison against Lansing, Michigan; both are state capitals and both host Big-Ten universities, but for some reason I prefer Madison.

The BBC

Shortly before I left England, I met a person who works for the BBC.

Me: Gee, you don't seem like a flaming bleeding-heart elitist liberal to me...



BBC employee: I'm not a journalist; I do technical work for them.

I guess that explains it pretty well.

Does "Popular" mean "Good"?

Yesterday, I was challenged in the comments to explain how I could think that good and popular mean the same thing. Here's my answer.



I may not think something is very good, and you might. But so what? Maybe we just have different tastes.



For example, when it comes to chocolate, regardless of price, I am very happy to eat North American Cadbury chocolate, or Hershey's milk chocolate; and I much prefer them to French, Belgian, or Swiss chocolate.



More generally, if something is popular, it is undoubtedly good in the minds of those who buy it. In this case, "good" means "all things considered", including price, quality, etc.



But most importantly, who sets the criteria by which something is judged "good"? Is it the elitist snobs of the NYTimes? or is the philistines of the world? My preference is to let each person decide for themselves what they think is good.



As JB (my favourite drug dealer) wrote to me in e-mail,

[N]eoliberals love to sublimate truth, taste and many other human qualities by appealing to some transidealistic criterion that is reducible to nothing more than, "because I say" or "because I will not listen to you". People who disagree are ipso facto part of the problem, not the final solution. The telltale sign of the intellectually bankrupt are ad hominem arguments.

More Evidence of the NYTimes Anti-US Bias

This is probably a trivial example, but it frosts me anyway. The NYTimes recently had a lengthy article about why English chocolate and candy bars are so much better than the same brands produced in the U.S. [h/t to BenS]. The article is titled, "The World's Best Candy Bars? English, of Course".



The article is replete with quotes from people who go way out of their way to get English versions (vs. US versions) of certain candy bars. From these instances, the writer concludes that English candy bars are better? What about all the people in the US who avoid English candy because "it tastes sort of funny"?



If English candy and chocolate is so dad-blamed good, why does Hershey still survive? And why do the US candy manufacturers (and the Chinese ones, too) continue to produce what the NYTimes considers an inferior product? Surely, if English candy is so much better, the process by which it is made should have emerged as the competitive victor in the US as well.



That fact that it hasn't suggests that perhaps most people in the US prefer the US versions of the chocolate and candy bars. And if they prefer the US versions, that suggests that in their minds, the US versions are better, despite the continuing anti-US biases of the NYTimes.



Digression and warning to readers: I have to admit that reading the article made me rush down to the corner variety store to sample a few different chocolate bars. Oh well, I can always go back on the diet tomorrow....



Addendum: Of course one might expect anti-US elitist snobs to write nonsense like the NYTimes piece. They also tend to put down things like light beer, plonk, and fast food, all of which pass the market test with flying colours.

World Clock Full of Misleading (and Wrong) Precision

Recently, Jack sent me a link to a World Clock site. The site appears to offer the exact time for whatever time zone you are in. But it also presents what can only be termed estimates, at best, for the number of births, deaths, abortions, U.S. divorces, etc. since the beginning of the the year.



And it also purports to provide the earth's average temperature, a figure which Chris Essex and Ross McKittrick argue has no meaning in the realm of thermodynamics (see this).

Sarkonomics: How Free Market is France's Sarkozy?Not Very

Newsweek International is finally picking up on a theme I wrote about back in early May: France's Sarkozy may be a tad more free market than Chirac was, but he is still a big-time interventionist.

But what, exactly, is Sarkonomics? His mix of free-enterprise friendliness and state-coddling can seem erratic. But it's a pragmatic way to get results from the globalization-leery French, who need to be reassured as much as they need to get moving. The president has won kudos from economists by promising supply-side reforms like the end of the 35-hour workweek, a curtailing of union power and more-flexible work contracts that would make firing easier. But his first steps have been muddled with some gratuitous spending, and they've tended toward demand-side change, boosting purchasing power via things like a too-generous mortgage-rate cut, instead of fixing French firms' competition problems.

Until the rigidities in the France's labour market are loosened and until the strength of gubmnt unions is reduced, anything Sarkozy does, free market or not, will likely be little more than applying a band-aid to a gaping wound. As the Newsweek article continues,

France's arcane labor, tax and social systems don't lend themselves well to quick fixes. And economists are still waiting for promised supply-side reforms, particularly labor-market liberalization, which some believe could turn France into another Germany by better leveraging a strong skill base to boost growth.

[h/t to BenS]

SkipBo

Our family has enjoyed playing the card game SkipBo for more than two decades. It's fun and strategic (well, sort of).



Last week we played with friends and used the rules to play the partners version of the game. Wow! What a difference! Instead of trying to hide what cards you have, you put them out so your partner can use them; but that means your opponents can see what you have, too, and that gets even more confusing for strategies.



We loved it. We're going to try it again soon.

Confusing Detour Signs

In Alliston, Ontario, as you go into town from the west:

I wonder if they learned to do this from the folks in Herstmonceux.

Zeke Returns

Last winter, I wrote about a black rabbit that had been marauding Ms. Eclectic's garden (see here, or here, or here). After soliciting suggestions from readers here, I decided his name should be "Zeke". I figured he was an escaped domestic pet, and I did not really expect to see him again after a few weeks.



But he was back several times last week, bigger and fatter than ever:

The Globe Restaurant (in Rosemont, Ontario): An Historical Application of the Coase Theorem?

Earlier this week, we had occasion to dine at The Globe Restaurant in Rosemont, Ontario, maybe an hour or so NNW of Trono. It was superb -- excellent food and excellent service -- so much so that Ms. Eclectic has now declared it to be her favourite restaurant.*



But the point of this posting comes from a brief historical statement about the Globe:

In the early days, Rosemont boasted four hotels, one of which was the Globe. One night, a fire broke out in the hostelry built where the Anglican church now stands. The wife of the owner of the Globe rose from her bed, and grabbing her husband's shotgun, ran outside in her nightgown and mounted guard over the well — the main source of water for the village, but located on her husband's land. She stood there, daring anyone to fetch water to aid her chief rival for business until the building was past saving. The pump she guarded so valiantly is still to be seen outside — a tribute to the competitive instincts of our forebearers!

Interesting that the Globe owner's wife valued a reduction in competition more than the competitor valued saving its hotel. Wouldn't one expect that otherwise the competitor would pay enough to induce her to let them use the water to save the hotel?



Not necessarily. The transaction costs may have been too high -- it may have been next to impossible to make a deal quickly that would stand up in court and not be deemed "unconscionability under duress". Also, maybe they just plain hated each other, and she received considerable utility from seeing the rival hotel go up in flames.



Can you imagine trying that today? "I have a monopoly of the water supply and you can't have any to put out a fire," would not go down well with most politicians, I'm afraid. At the same time, some municipalities do, I've been told (anyone have a reference here?), have private fire departments, and if you don't pay in advance for their protection, they will watch your house burn rather than put out the fire.



Fire protection provides a good example of anticipating risks and deciding to negotiate ways to bear the risks or to pay someone else to bear them. In this case, the competitor could, possibly, have paid the Globe owner in advance for the right to use the Globe's well in the case of a fire. Failing that, the competitor might then have decided to dig its own well or take other precautions... or self-insure, as it apparently did.



*I liked the food, and the service was great, but I have several other "favourites", including The Red Pump, The Albion, McDonald's, and Kelsey's; but remember, I'm the chair of the PLO.

Facebook?

Jason, Rondi, and Erin are still haranguing me to join Facebook. I'll tell you what. If they can get the group up to 50, I'll join.

Tie-In Sales --

I was visiting a garden shop last week that had a pine bench, chair, and table for sale. The table and chair looked like the photo on the left.





On the table was this sign (photo at right). I asked why they wouldn't sell the table unless you also bought the chair or bench, and was told,

Because they're part of a set,

which does not really answer my question.



Why are they sold as a set? If a customer wanted to buy only the table, chair, or bench why not sell it to him/her? Does this mean the table is priced too low and the chair and bench are priced too high? One possible explanation is that the supplier to the garden shop would sell them only as sets and would not provide additional tables for sale, but then why would a producer require such a tie-in sale?



Or possibly I misinterpreted the sign, and it means that if you buy a chair or bench, you must also buy a table, but again, I ask, "Why?" Wouldn't a profit-maximizer eventually just regear production to manufacture and sell more of what people want to buy?



I don't see this as a long-run equilibrium.



and,no, I don't think this is a case of "extension of monopoly" that the gubmnt should look into...

Shakespeare on Leadership

There is an interesting article in today's edition of Wharton@Work about the use of Shakespeare in Leadership training courses.

At the battle of Agincourt on October 25, 1415, the young English King Henry V faced extraordinary odds. To make his claim as ruler of France, Henry had crossed the channel to Calais with 10,000 men. In his first battle at Harfleur, he lost 4,000 men. The French army pursued him, with 30,000 to 60,000 men (or more), well armored, well fed, and well rested, with a strong cavalry. Henry chose to stand his ground with his 6,000 men at Agincourt and prevailed against the odds — primarily through his clever strategy and force of leadership.



During a recent session of Wharton's The Leadership Journey: Creating and Developing Your Leadership program, executives considered the lessons from William Shakespeare's play Henry V. Why study Shakespeare? While some managers may be put off by the language of Shakespeare's plays ("It's Greek to me," as the Bard would say), there are three reasons to use Shakespeare to study leadership. First, he offers a window into human nature. Second, he tells the best stories, and stories are critical to leadership. Third, he is a master of language, and leaders need to be effective communicators.

The article has several other interesting examples from Henry V.

This Blog is Rated PG

Mingle² - Online Dating [link removed for no good reason at the request of the linked site]

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* sex (3x)
* kill (2x)
* abortion (1x)

[h/t to Rondi]

Sony: How Do Big Companies Like This Survive?

I stopped buying Sony products many years ago when the ones I had didn't work as well as I thought they should. Add to that, Sony's inexorable attempts to lock their customers into proprietary memory and peripherals, and I don't even think about buying Sony products. And now Jane Galt (and commenters) have horror stories about Sony customer service.

"It's a Small World After All"

From the AFP (courtesy of Jack):

The world is smaller than first thought, German researchers at the University of Bonn said on Thursday.



They took part in an international project to measure the diameter of the world that showed it is five millimetres (0.2 inches) smaller than the last measurement made five years ago.



Dr Axel Nothnagel, who led the Bonn researchers, told AFP the difference was crucial in the study of climate change.



"It may seem a very small difference, but it is essential for the positioning of the satellites that can measure rises in sea level.



"They must be accurate to the millimetre. If the ground stations tracking the satellites are not accurate to the millimetre, then the satellites cannot be accurate either."

Jack suggests, tongue-in-cheek I hope, that the earth is shrinking because of global warming.



Regardless, I blame the shrinking earth for all the difficulties I have locating caches with my handheld GPSr when we are out geocaching.