Interesting article on AlterNet on Why Working Less is Better for the Globe. The article doesn't use economic analysis, except as a side item, but it an interesting wrinkle to the "more is more" attitude that seems intrinsic to the American version of capitalism.

My short economics analysis: Time is the ultimate constraint. Everyone gets about 24 hours in a day. You can purchase time by hiring people to do things you don't want to do like mow your lawn and clean your house, but generally, you'll hit your daily time ceiling pretty fast no matter what you do.

So, why would a rational consumer choose to allocate their incredibly-scare time resources past the point of diminishing returns? Why would anyone work 60 hours a week when research shows that 40 produces maximum output in the long run? Why do we work longer hours only to spend our increased income on daycare, fast food, and services we wouldn't need if we didn't work such long hours?

I personally have no idea, but I think it's odd.

X-posted to > economics

In honor of a rant by a well-published author (whom I've never heard of), I present my husband's on-line, for free, scab-waged story.

In case you don't know about the fuss, it's in response to this rant.

If you want to know what I think about this rant, you can read my rant about rants.

If you want to know what I think about this topic you can

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On the Economics of Freebies: In Brief

One way to market is to give free samples to potential customers. No one is forcing anyone to do so, but it has been shown to work. A writer who has been nominated for an award might think that posting the nominated work online increases his/her chances of winning. From a marketing standpoint, awards are useful. Internet-as-publishing-medium might not be a good idea, but it's a helluva marketing tool.

X-posted (minus the cranky economics) to mthielbar.

OK, the mthielbar blog is back. I want to keep it during the summer so my family and friends who don't have LJ's can keep up with my shenanigans.

The person I was 18 months ago: kinda fun. Who is this old, bitter woman who has replaced her.

Seriously, look at that sweet smile. What's she so happy about?

Read this instead.

Economically speaking, it's a much better use of your time. Henry Blodget explains investing much better than I can.

It is a proven fact that no one got rich preaching the dignity of labor or the divinity of poverty. The Franciscans were nearly burned out by their own church for saying Christ was probably poor. The Confucian doctrine holds that the well-ordered universe commands us to respect our betters, and Hinduism tells us that if we’re nice poor people this time around, we’ll be rewarded with better things next time. Oh, and don’t worry about that rich guy who keeps beating you. He’ll be reincarnated as a dung beetle.

( “In the absence of proof,” says Dr. House, “we can choose to believe what is most comforting.” If you’re in the business of faith, however, you can believe what is most profitable. )

This New Year, I am sending into the Universe my intention that we’ll all figure out that maybe some things are more important than having nice things.

P.S. For the "Were you talking about me?" set: No, I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about this guy

Dear Mr. Petty,

Now that I have mastered of Guitar Hero’s I and II, I would like to try out for The Heartbreakers. I have hit 97% of the notes for “Echo,” “Won’t Back Down,” and “Last Dance with Mary Jane”, so you can see I am well-qualified to play your songs. I have mastered the technique of “rocking out”, and all my friends agree that I have p0wned them enough times to be the top Guitar Hero player evar.

Please forward information on your next tour dates and where I can meet you. I am looking forward to joining the band.

Sincerely,

Melinda Thielbar, aka “Pandora”


Dear Ummm—“Pandora”:

Guitar Hero is a fun game, and it simulates playing an actual guitar better than any other video game I’ve seen (not that I’ve seen many, since I am an old fogy), but it isn’t the real thing. When you’re actually playing lead guitar in a band, there is no one to follow. You have to work with the drummer and the other members of the band to keep the tempo and create a sound. Also, the buttons on the Guitar Hero guitar make sure you hit the notes. That isn’t so easy with a real guitar.

If you really want to be a musician, I think you should take music lessons. Find some people in your area and form a band. Try writing your own songs and finding your own sound. The music business is a hard one, and I don’t envy anyone starting now, as opposed to when I started, but with a little talent and a lot of effort, you can go a long way.

Best wishes,

Tom Petty


Dear Asshole:

I can’t believe you don’t recognize the artistry required for Guitar Hero. It takes most people months to master the Easy level. I learned it in a day. I beat the Hard level in a month. Can you do that? I think not.

You’re just jealous because the cyber crowd cheers for me louder than your groupies ever did. Oh, and the cyber groupies are HAWT, not like those old fat ladies who like your songs.

I can see that you’re just like all the other bands I’ve written, unable to take the competition from all us up-and-comers.

I hope you burn in Hell,

The Woman Who’s Going to Platinum, BABY

P.S. “Yer So Bad” sucks. I could write a better song sitting on the toilet in the morning.


rdanksy bought Guitar Hero when it first came out. I stood behind the couch, watched him play, and said “I don’t get it.”

“You can pretend to be ZZ Top.”

“But I’m not ZZ Top.”

Last night, however, after Richard had wandered upstairs to work and I decided I was too tired to do much of anything, I picked up that plastic guitar. I name my band (“Moo”) and chose my character (“Pandora”). An 89% success rate on “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll”, and I was hooked. The crowed cheered my artistry. My little avatar threw the guitar up under her legs and spun it in the air. I was, in fact, a GUITAR GOD.

I was having such a good time, I forgot that the computer crowd was programmed to be forgiving, that the game gave me about three notes out of every five to play. I recalled watching Angus duck-walking across the stage and realized how freaking hard that had to be when you were actually playing.

About the time my left arm went numb, I realized that it was much like the few pieces of fanfic I had written. I was using someone else’s talent to generate my world. I had a built-in audience that was ready to be kind, and I only had to do the writing I wanted to do.

Thank you, Guitar Hero. Not only have you let me RAWK, you’ve also reminded me not to waste my time pretending to be ZZ Top when I might be a future Tom Petty just waiting to happen.

This is an actual BLOG!! OMFG! Someone gave me a pressy for News Years in the form of dissertation material.

My journey to a million dollars

I have a silent blog on here (meaning I will not read or allow posting of comments or anything of the sort) that I freely invite you all to follow. It will take place over the next two years as I track my path to my first million dollars. I am 23 years old now and as you can read in my blog, I am starting from scratch. I promise whoever cares to follow along, it will be an amazing 2 year journey of wealth and discovery for myself and anyone that watches from the sidelines.

Best of luck!
Andrew
syndicatered

New Years resolution: I will write and speak like a teenage girl at every possible opportunity. Preferably a not-very-bright one.

They’re giving a prize for a “written work” commemorating Thorstein Veblen’s 150th birthday.

Because I apparently don’t have enough to do.

For those of you who don’t understand, I heart Throstein Veblen, the man who was exiled to my alma matter for having an affair with a department chair’s wife (or maybe it was the chancellor's wife. It was a scandal, anyway).

When the people at good ole UMC asked him, “Mr. Veblen, we need your assurance that what happened at your last university will not happen here,” Veblen replied

“Gentlemen, I have met your wives. I assure you that will not happen here.”

Now that, my friends, is a cranky economist.

He was so freaking brilliant, they still had to hire him. I WORSHIP THIS MAN.

Ahem.

Dammit.

Apparently, the King of Saudi Arabia, who is Sunni Muslim, doesn’t want the US to exit Iraq and leave the minority group of Sunni Muslims who live there with their asses hanging out, especially since they weren’t so nice to the Shiites when they were in charge.

CNN’s crack reporting staff had an opportunity to interview the US ambassador to Saudi Arabia this morning. What follows is my paraphrased transcript of the five-minute interview.*

Reporter: How can the Saudi’s do this to us? Aren’t they our allies?

Ambassador: It’s not about their relationship with the US. It’s about their concern for people of a similar faith living in another country.

Reporter: Wouldn’t you say this is really about US-Iran relations?

Ambassador: Ummmm… No.

Reporter: Aren’t you really worried about a “Domino Effect”, whereby if the Saudis get involved, then Iran will get involved, then everyone else in the region will get involved?

Ambassador: Well, since all those countries are neighbors, they’re naturally concerned with what happens inside each other’s borders.

Report: Mr. Ambassador, I’ve given you multiple opportunities for a sound bite, and you’re really not helping me. Can’t you at least say “Domino Effect” for me?

Ambassador: I understand your predicament, but I’d rather not say anything to ignite the powder keg that is the Middle East.

Reporter: That’s awfully selfish of you.

Ambassador: I’m a selfish man.

Reporter: We’ll be watching this story carefully, but don’t expect us to give it top billing since you can’t say anything even remotely snappy.

Ambassador: I guess I’ll have to do my job without armies of reporters ringing my telephone.

Reporter: Don’t you feel silly now?

*Yet another cute white child has gone missing somewhere in the US, so naturally their time was limited.

Richard and I have decided to form a team for the annual Krispy Kreme challenge in Raleigh.

Krispy Kreme Challenge Website.

Run two miles
Eat a dozen donuts
Run two more miles

All on a Saturday afternoon. (January 27, 2007)

And it benefits a great cause, the Raleigh Children's Hospital!

If you're interested to come and have a good time, let us know. Entry fee ranges from $10 to $15. We can sign up as a team and all run together!

I’ll admit to being a little behind on this one, but I wasn’t willing to give Steven Levitt my hard-earned money, which meant I had to wait for the book to become available at the library. There is a surprising number of people who want the read this book. I find that interesting since Levitt pretty much claims that the word “expert” is synonymous with the word “terrorist”. Unless, apparently, your expertise is economics.

Levitt does a brilliant job of illustrating his own point. With a little chutzpah and common sense, almost anyone can make the deductions he makes. That alone would not rate a poor review, but the way Levitt chooses his facts to fit his theories, uses almost no statistical rigor, and begins each chapter with a quote about his own brilliance edges Freakonomics from “mildly interesting” into “incredibly annoying” territory.

In the introduction, Levitt confesses he “knows very little about economics.” This is obvious from the second chapter where he “proves” that real estate agents regularly cheat their clients (comparing them, in fact, to the KKK). His proof (other than two anecdotes) is that real estate agents regularly get better prices for their own homes than they get for their clients. Therefore, states Levitt, a real estate agent does not get a homeowner “top dollar”.

While this may be true, it is the wrong question. A potential seller of a home should not care whether a real estate agent will get him or her the maximum possible price. The seller should instead ask “Will the agent get me 6 percent more for my home?” If the answer to the first question is no, he or she should ask “Am I willing to forego 6 percent of my home’s price in exchange for the services an agent provides?” Not only does Levitt fail to discuss this much harder and more interesting question, he never even raises it.

That, in a nutshell, is the problem with Freakonomics Levitt does half of an academic’s job brilliantly. He asks interesting questions and postulates original answers. He never even attempts the other, more important half: finding evidence both for and against his hypotheses.

If Freakonomics were a senior thesis by an undergraduate, it would probably deserve an A. As work from a published PhD in economics, however, I give it a B+ for originality and a C- for academic value.

Economists call time “the ultimate constraint”. Of all potential resources, it is the only one you cannot buy, sell, or steal in unlimited quantities. It is possible in some instances to trade time for money by letting someone else do your laundry, clean your house, or wash your car, but there are still limits. Even procuring such services costs some of your limited time capital.

It therefore bewilders me that we spend so much of this precious commodity blathering about any tiny thing that comes into our heads. We spend hours in cyberspace reading the stream-of-consciousness bleating of others. We post, re-post, reply, and re-submit, indicating to ourselves and others that time is a free good, that we expect our friends, relatives, and complete strangers to spend part of their precious sixteen hours of non-sleeping time reading whatever sounded good to us at three o’clock in the morning. Coherency and brevity are no longer valued. After all, why spend two minutes making a careful point when you can always go back later and explain what you meant to write?

In the name of conservation, therefore, I ask everyone to consider the value of time when composing that post, comment, reply, or e-mail. The life you save may be your own.

Thank you,
The Management

Okay, I obviously no longer have the proper personality for LJ, if indeed I ever did. I have to stop, lest I go on another killing rampage and actually get caught this time. Journal goes down in about a week, save any copyrighted material that interests you before then.

Looking forward to the flurry of “Was it me?” posts, e-mails and phone calls. Not that it will stop anyone, but: No, it wasn’t you. How could it be you when you are special and perfect and the light of my life?

The Management

Is anyone using Netscape dial-up for internet service? And/or can anyone recommend a cheap, reliable dial-up internet service provider?

Aunt Dolores isn't interested in anything but getting her e-mail downloaded and checking a few websites. We're not wired for high-speed where she lives (yes, there are benighted areas of this fair realm within which the miracles of the cable modem are as yet unknown).

Any and all help is appreciated.

My niece was married on Saturday, with an unsurprising lack of complications. Now that the happy couple is in Jamaica, I can focus on my trip to Chicago, which starts--oh--tomorrow.

It's a good thing I don't have a job. I wouldn't have time.

I will be arriving late tomorrow night and will be staying through Sunday. Let the games begin!

So, not only has my business trip to Chicago totally sneaked up on me, I've also apparently failed to update my address book since half the e-mails I just sent bounced. *sigh*

I will be in Chicago next week, June 13-16. I can even stay the weekend if one of my local friends is kindhearted enough to take me in after I've completely forgotten to warn you all that I'm coming. I am definitely going to Friday pizza. Now would be a good time to let me know if Friday pizza has somehow ended without my noticing.

I love you guys!

Nice analysis of rental car, cell phone, and other insurance on Slate today:

Should you buy rental car insurance

I won't say what I'm thinking about the "rational expectations" assumption most of us hold so dear.

Liars! You're all liars!

Oops.

Hey, all. I'm thinking of putting together some analyses of Congressional voting habits for some of the big national races that are coming around in November.

Suggestions about races that might be of general interest are welcome.

Suggestions about issues that an economist should care about most are welcome.

Just for you, andelku.

Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work

"There's a bottom-line reason most industries gave up crunch mode over 75 years ago: It's the single most expensive way there is to get the work done."
--Evan Robinson

I try not to repeat work that is already available publically. This person does a lovely job of dispelling the myth that working your employees 60 hours a week is better than hiring an extra person or two to get the job done.

The basic lesson is that Americans work longer hours on average than any other industrialized worforce and yet accomplish less. This could be partly due to the sad state of our educational system, but it is also at least partly because in the long run, working long hours is less productive than working a forty hour week. People who are tired make mistakes, and if you're working in a "knowledge industry" like engineering, finance, or service, mistakes are expensive.

Recent questions asked in this journal lead me to believe that most people might not really understand the economics of taxes or why economists don’t like them. Understanding taxes and their effect on the market can help you refute arguments that all taxes are bad. Conversely, they can help you argue why a tax on something you like must be a detriment to society and all that we hold dear as Americans.

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About the “free market” series: Economists are supposed to love the free market. We do, when the market is actually free, that is free from government prodding, price fixing, and other shennanigans. The Cranky Economists makes it a point to call shennanigans where shennanigans are due.