I'll try to do a books post by mid-next week, to wrap up the Christmas recommendations. But of course, you already know that you should own Discover Your Inner Economist, Tyler Cowen's brilliant opus on applying economic principles to everyday life.
There are so many areas in which one's life could be made infinitely better by the application of basic economic principles. For example, everyone has been in the position of awaiting a much-desired, but highly uncertain, outcome: finding out whether you got a coveted job, perhaps, or waiting to see if the person from that awesome first date calls you back. Why not hedge your net psychic wealth a little? Find an amenable friend, and bet against the outcome you desire. That's what friends and I did in graduate school with permanent offers from our summer internships: anyone who got an offer had to kick in $75 for those who didn't.
This did not, of course, erase the pain of those who didn't get permanent offers. But it did soothe it a little; the disappointment of "they hate me" was replaced with the sudden realization that you had a few hundred dollars to blow on something frivolous. Meanwhile, those who got a job had multi-thousand dollar signing bonuses, against which the pain of the lost $75 was invisible.
Recently, I have also been experimenting with bacon offsets. As longtime readers know, I only eat certified humane meat. This creates certain problems when I am invited to brunch or a weekend at someone's house, and they have thoughtfully provided me a meal laden with juicy, delicious, inhumanely raised and slaughtered bacon.
Luckily, the first time this happened, my friend Matt swooped to the rescue. Matt buys a lot of bacon, but has so far resisted my blandishments to purchase the certified humane kind. However, if I eat bacon out, Matt has agreed that the next time he buys bacon, he will buy the certified humane kind, and let me pay him the difference between its cost, and the cost of the regular bacon. This way I get to be a good guest, and the net amount of animal suffering in the world doesn't rise . . . indeed, it falls slightly, because the going rate is one pack per outing, and I don't eat a whole pack of bacon. Even nicer, the last time I went to brunch at someone's house, they bought "hippie bacon" rather than force me to excercise my offset option.
I assume that knowing you must pay the full differential on a pack of bacon motivates you to try to eat more bacon of the wrong kind (bowk) when the opportunity avails, to reduce your overpayment penalty. After all, everything after the first bite is free, right? To what extent might this offset your offset?
Next time we get together, can I take you out for Wagyu beef? A little Foie Gras?
"Certified Humane Meat" sounds like "Comprehensive Government Plan" to me.
So there's twice I've disagreed with you recently. Shouldn't I be dropping in condescending ad hominem remarks and calling you "teh Megan" or McMegan or something else inexplicably deemed clever enough to substitute for actual criticism?
Psh. Me, I'm still reeling from the fact that I first read it as "certified human meat". Casts that whole paragraph in a completely different light, let me tell you.
I am a big fan of the emotional hedge. Particularly when my favorite sports team is playing. When they are playing their main rival I almost allways bet against them because I know the money I win will offset some of the pain.
I also tend to bet against them when they are favored. That way if they win by less than the spread I can still win my bet win win for me and if they lose I get a little money to help my pain. And if they win big I am more than happy to pay.
Psh. Me, I'm still reeling from the fact that I first read it as "certified human meat". Casts that whole paragraph in a completely different light, let me tell you.
Actually, most Soylent Green typically is raised in a humane fashion.
Mindles HD wrote: So there's twice I've disagreed with you recently. Shouldn't I be dropping in condescending ad hominem remarks and calling you "teh Megan" or McMegan or something else inexplicably deemed clever enough to substitute for actual criticism?
The "Juvenile Typist" and the "Corporate Shill" are just two of the exciting options available to a buyer in your position. May I show you over to the exciting new '08 models?
Man, you would have fit right in with Johann Tetzel and the boys.
Just sayin'
You will like this then
http://www.cheatneutral.com/
"What is Cheat Offsetting?
When you cheat on your partner you add to the heartbreak, pain and jealousy in the atmosphere.
Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and NOT cheat. This neutralises the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience. "
I am willing to bet that extra pigs get slaughtered now.
The first pig, raised humanely and killed quite gently to appease the likes of guilt ridden animal eaters, will go towards Matt's pack of bacon. He will check it on his grocery list and assure Megan later that all is well; the world is in perfect harmony and animals will thank her.
The second pig goes for the extra bacon Matt decides to buy because he likes his original thick cut brand of harshly killed standard bacon. Megan won't know about this.
Thus done, the world spins into unbalance, though Megan continues on, untouched by guilt.
Here is a similar great offset:
"Prevent genocide, abort a Darfurian".
But of course Megan will argue, "You don't know Matt, his word is bond, and whatnot" (influences of urban DC drifting into her dialect).
So we revise:
Matt does in fact buy the one pack of humanely raised dead meat. Over at Goring Standard Bacon Company, they grow concerned, because sales are dropping as people start to buy bacon from pigs raised in mansions in Rhode Island and the Hamptons.
The Goring Standard Bacon Company decides that they must make more bacon, at less cost, to compensate for the loss of sales. More pigs are shoved into less space, and killed even more inhumanely.
Megan is still happy, because Matt is buying a pack of bacon.
What you are failing to account for is that "hippie bacon" tastes better than the regular kind . . .
Wait a minute. "Certified human meat?" "Hippie bacon?" I'm very skeptical of "certification" (Is it worth the paper it's printed on?) and I'm just not sure if i'm getting real hippies. I don't even know how "hippies" is defined for certification purposes. Aren't many of them rather old & stringy by now? Are they still even breeding?
And why does "hippie bacon" taste so much better? Is it the patchouli? The musk oil? Natural musks unaffected by bathing?
P. S.: "Dreck," you sawed off litle twerp, please note there was no ad hominem attack until the Post Script.
Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and NOT cheat.
I am pretty sure they cannot prove this. And it only works if you are as bothered by a crime against a stranger as you are by a crime against your spouse.
Which should not be true unless you do not care much about your spouse.
So cheatneutal can be little more than an exercise in self-deception.
But these arguments do not apply to Megans bacon offsets.
MM wrote: What you are failing to account for is that "hippie bacon" tastes better than the regular kind . . .
Of course it does. You do know what hippies use for "flavoring additives" in the smokehouse, right?