[b]Steven D. Levitt
Never, ever think that people will do something just because it is the “right” thing to do.[/b]
Anyone here ever done it?
But one need not oppose abortion on moral or religious grounds to feel shaken by the notion of a private sadness being converted into a public good.
Or: But one need not oppose forcing women to give birth on moral or religious grounds to feel shaken by the notion of a private sadness being converted into a public good.
And then there’s the tale of an economist on holiday in Las Vegas. He found himself one night in a bar standing beside a gorgeous woman. Would you be willing to sleep with me for $1 million? he asked her. She looked him over. There wasn’t much to see—but still, $1 million! She agreed to go back to his room. All right then, he said. Would you be willing to sleep with me for $100? A hundred dollars! she shot back. What do you think I am, a prostitute? We’ve already established that. Now we’re just negotiating the price.
Let’s decide how reasonable this is.
[b]In Freakonomics, we examined the causes of the rise and fall of violent crime in the United States. In 1960, crime began a sudden climb. By 1980, the homicide rate had doubled, reaching a historic peak. For several years crime stayed perilously high, but in the early 1990s it began to fall and kept falling. So what happened?
In Freakonomics, we identified one missing factor - the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s. The theory was jarring but simple. A rise in abortion meant that fewer unwanted children were being born, which meant fewer children growing up in the sort of difficult circumstances that increase the likelihood of criminality.[/b]
Let’s decide how reasonable this is.
Simply admit that the future is far less knowable than you think.
I predict that few will.
The brilliant rationalist had encountered a central, frustrating tenet of human nature: behavior change is hard. The cleverest engineer or economist or politician or parent may come up with a cheap, simple solution to a problem, but if it requires people to change their behavior, it may not work. Every day, billions of people around the world engage in behaviors they know are bad for them—smoking cigarettes, gambling excessively, riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Why? Because they want to! They derive pleasure from it, or a thrill, or just a break from the daily humdrum. And getting them to change their behavior, even with a fiercely rational argument, isn’t easy.
In other words, once an objectivist, always an objectivist. Well, not counting me of course.