Definition of an Activist | Coyote Blog
27 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in occupational choice, Public Choice Tags: activists, do gooders, fascism of good intentions
Activist: A person who believes so strongly that a problem needs to be remedied that she dedicates substantial time to … getting other people to fix the problem. It used to be that activists sought voluntary help for their pet problem, and thus retained some semblance of honor.
However, our self-styled elite became frustrated at some point in the past that despite their Ivy League masters degrees in sociology, other people did not seem to respect their ideas nor were they particularly interested in the activist’s pet issues.
So activists sought out the double shortcut of spending their time not solving the problem themselves, and not convincing other people to help, but convincing the government it should compel others to fix the supposed problem.
This fascism of good intentions usually consists of government taking money from the populace to throw at the activist’s issue, but can also take the form of government-compelled labor and/or government limitations on choice.
The Bechdel Test: whether women are in a movie as fully human characters, or as plot devices for the male characters
27 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of media and culture, gender, industrial organisation, movies, occupational choice, survivor principle Tags: co-worker discrimination, consumer sovereignty, customer discrimination, employer discrimination, Hollywood economics, sex discrimination, The meaning of competition
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3332436/hickey-bechdel-11.0.png)
Hollywood is a slave to the box office on the most cutthroat industry there is. Film producers and screenwriters will portray men and women in whatever roles and whatever extent sells tickets.
How women are represented in the movies is determined solely by the preferences of the audiences willing to buy tickets. It’s a buyers market out there. Film producers would do whatever it takes to finance films that sell tickets, as even Five Thirty-Eight realised:
“Movies that are female-driven do not travel,” said Krista Smith, West Coast editor of Vanity Fair, describing the broader sentiment in Hollywood. There are almost no women who have sales value in multiple international territories, maybe with the exception of Sandra Bullock, she said.
Times change, and film producers change with the times. Consumers are both sovereign and change their minds, and in the case of movie audiences, constantly demand novelty and surprises, as even Five Thirty-Eight picked up on:
Hollywood is the business of making money. Since our data demonstrates that films containing meaningful interactions between women do better at the box office than movies that don’t, it may be only a matter of time before the data of dollars and cents overcomes the rumours and prejudices defining the budgeting process of films for, by and about women.
This moral panic over gender wage gaps between millionaire actresses and actresses dare not say that for want of offending the audience that is actually the main driver of any gender gap in movies.
Hollywood activists complaining about the gender wage are to business minded to dare insult the audiences that pay their wages.
Disability insurance recipients are disproportionately older and less educated
25 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, welfare reform Tags: David Autor, disability insurance, social insurance, welfare reform
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3329592/DI_Chartbook_Section_Three-04.0.png)
David Autor found that the effective replacement rate of Social Security disability insurance payments for labour earnings with SSDI benefits has also risen in recent decades due both to the rising value of in-kind Medicare benefits and to a subtle interaction between the benefits formula and rising income inequality in the U.S.
This interaction causes the effective generosity for low-wage workers to rise and encourages older workers with limited education to go on the disability benefit because its income replacement rate for what they can earn in the workforce can be as high as 80% when Medicare is included. As Autor and Duggan explain:
The rapid expansion of the beneficiary population has three main causes.
First, a set of congressional reforms in 1984 to Disability Insurance screening led to rapid growth in the share of recipients suffering from back pain and mental illness. Because these disorders have comparatively low mortality, the average duration of disability spells—and hence the size of the recipient population—has increased.
Second, a rise in the after-tax DI income replacement rate—that is, the ratio of disability income to former labour earnings—strengthened the incentives for workers to seek benefits.
Third, a rapid increase in female labour force participation expanded the pool of insured workers. The aging of the baby boom generation has contributed little to the rise of receipt of disability benefits, while improvements in population health have likely reduced the incidence of disabling medical disorders.
Overcoming Bias : Exposing Scientist Liberality
24 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, environmental economics, global warming, occupational choice, personnel economics Tags: academic bias, activists, climate alarmism, expressive 13, rational ignorance, rational irrationality
If the public knew the truth, I expect two effects:
- The public would consider scientists to be less authoritative as a neutral source on policy questions, and
- Since scientists are respected, the public would become less conservative and more liberal.
A simple model of crime waves, riots and revolution
23 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of crime, labour economics, law and economics, occupational choice Tags: Alexander Tabarrok, crime waves, revolutions, riots
In ‘A simple model of crime waves, riots, and revolutions’, Alexander Tabarrok puts forward a model of crime waves that applies not only to crime but also to phenomena like riots, strikes, and revolutions.
- In each of these cases, the probability of being punished is a decreasing function of the total amount of the activity.
- The probability that a rioter is apprehended falls the more rioters there are.
- The probability that a striker or a revolutionary is punished is less the greater the number of strikers and revolutionaries. This is true even if the revolution or strike fails.
The standard model of crime analyses a criminal’s decisions as if they were unrelated to the decisions of other criminals.
The game-theoretic approach examines the entire system of criminal decisions exploring the implications of interdependence.
As crime increases, police resources become strained at the margin and the probability of punishment falls, causing other criminals to increase their criminal activities.
As others turn to crime, the probability of punishment falls even further, giving each individual an additional reason to increase his criminal activities.
Joining into a revolution or a riot has the same calculus of independence. You are less likely to be caught and punished if you will face in the crowd.
This interdependence in the probability of detection, arrest and punishment lowers the cost of participation. Not surprisingly, judges of been aware of this for some time and have hand out severe punishments such as after the 2011 London riots. These riots fell away sharply once these penalties were handed out and more police were on the streets to catch rioters.
Francis M. Bator on the high road and the low road for the public sector economists.
23 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
Gender pay gap: do women earn 77% of what men do?
22 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of love and marriage, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - USA Tags: employer discrimination, gender wage gap, sex discrimination
Roger Pielke Jr. – Five Modes of Science Engagement
21 Jan 2015 3 Comments
in environmental economics, global warming, industrial organisation, liberalism, occupational choice, survivor principle Tags: activists, science engagement
You may have noticed that the title of this post promised five modes of engagement and I’ve only described four.
There is a fifth, what I call the Stealth Issue Advocate. This role is characterized by the expert who seeks to hide his/her advocacy behind a facade of science, either pure scientist or science arbiter.
This role seeks to swim in a sea of politics without getting wet. It is the fastest route to pathologically politicizing science. It is also what gives scientists as advocates a bad name.
via Roger Pielke Jr.’s Blog: Five Modes of Science Engagement.
Thomas Sowell Dismantles Feminism and Racialism
20 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in discrimination, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice Tags: gender wage you, labour economics, racial discrimination, racial wage gap, sex discrimination, Thomas Sowell
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments