Re: Economist IQ?
A far cry from perfect, but if you use the GRE as a test of intelligence, economics PhD students are the fourth most intelligent behind physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists - according to the ETS in 2002. Mean scores for engineering (in some forms) are not much lower - but anthropology, archaeology, history, political science, theology, sociology, and communications are all fields with significantly lower scores. I suspect intuitively, due to a number of reasons - mostly the analytical nature of the field and the mathematical rigor - that economists are significantly more intelligent than PhDs in many other fields. But probably not all fields, and maybe not even most. - Zac Gochenour [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: Stephen Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, December 15, 2003 10:40 am Subject: Economist IQ? I doubt anyone has hard data on this, but I'm wondering what people on this list would guess is the average IQ of Ph.D. economists? Would it be much different from the average IQ of Ph.D.s in general?
Re: Horses and Subsistence Farming
OK, but then the question applies to transportation. Can a horse really move as much as ten people, or is it that they can eat foods that are cheaper than food humans can live on? The fact that a horse can consume and digest grasses is a contributing factor, but definitely not the whole picture. A horse, galloping flat out, can reach speeds in excess of 30 mph (the top speed is around 45 mph, but unsustainable). A horse can walk all day with very brief rest periods and can carry humans, tools, and food. A well conditioned horse can travel 50 or so miles a day with a rider and a small load. When moving large loads over long distances, humans are notoriously bad. This is mainly because we're bipedals. While our top running speed is reasonably high, our endurance is lacking. Adding the marginal human being does not make you move faster, and with any significant load, human speed is drastically reduced. Horses can also walk at a rather young age, I believe. I do not know at what age they begin to be useful as far as transportation is concerned, but I'm positive it is only a matter of a few years at best. Human males take upwards of a decade to become useful at all in farming or foraging. Simply speaking, 1 horse is clearly better than 10 humans. The populations of the pedestrian foragers exploded when they began learning riding techniques and using horses because of the drastic increase in the available food supply. Before using horses, no number of humans could ever catch a migrating pack of bison or other large herbivores. But in a farming subsistence pattern, there really is no room for the horse, where transportation is a non-issue and land may be limited. - Zac Gochenour [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Family Businesses and Licensing
In my informal experience, fathers and sons tend to work together full-time only in professions with strict licensing or training requirements. Electricians, lawyers, realtors and even CPAs - I've found more father/son teams here than in any other type of job. All of those jobs have fairly rigid prerequisites (electricians have to pass journeyman and master-level tests; lawyers have the bar and law school, etc). Why is that? As Eric pointed out, farming is also a profession where fathers and sons usually work together: in addition to what was named: Carpenting, construction, medicine, mechanics, etc. This is a social phenomenom much older than government licensing; it spans eras and cultures. I'd say rather than licensing requirements, fathers and sons often work together in vocations with specialized training requirements. Sons often learn this trade from their fathers and grow up in an environment where respect for this trade is fostered and encouraged. Often in these professions, people must work together in teams and use very specialized knowledge to be successful. A family bond is a good way to reduce search costs for good employees. Vocational training is combined with father-son bonding for further reduction in the cost of training. In other types of jobs that require less specialized training, the benefits of working with/for your father are typically much smaller. Also - why is it more often father/son, and not mother/daughter or mother/son? Or father/daughter? In general, women do not go in to these types of professions. Sons tend not to follow in the footsteps of their mothers for obvious reasons. Mother-daughter professional relationships are less common because there are far fewer female professionals in these fields - but consider mother/daughter relationships in housewifery, modeling, beauty pageantry, etc. - Zac Gochenour [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Do Not Call -- The newest public interest miracle?
As most/all of you know, our favorite regulatory agency the FTC (the nation's consumer protection agency as they call themselves) has established a nation-wide do not call list (www.donotcall.gov). Of course, the list does not apply to politicians, only evil capitalists. Now, I registered my home and mobile numbers on this list. I will be the first to admit that I hate telemarketers with a passion. I usually hang up on them, sometimes tell them to go to hell, etc. I can't imagine what kind of person actually buys things form telemarketers (though they obviously do). I am not crying over the establishment of a do not call registry. On the contrary, it seems like a genuine public interest policy at first glance. I am not alone in my deep hatred for the telemarketer - the FTC expects 60M Americans to eventually register for its list. Most of the others will probably just never figure out how to do it. The question is, do we need a government regulatory agency to step in and do this? Could you really stop all telemarketers without a coercive government agency and its threat of an $11,000 fine? It must have something to do with the property rights of a telephone number. Should anyone have the right to call you? It is possible to set up your phone so that only people whose phone numbers you've specified can call you. Same goes for internet spam. But why should you have to restrict access to your email or phone from people who may have legitimate reasons to contact you (but you don't have their information ahead of time?) You would be blocking out emergency calls from hospitals, kids at friends' houses, telephone booths, etc. For businesses it would be impossible. How do you indicate to everyone who could possibly call you that telemarketing is an unacceptable reason to call and a violation of your property rights?Could you establish a private do not call list that you subscribe to and that then pays telemarketing companies not to call you? You'd have a pretty obvious holdout problem. Before the do not call registry was established, companies were required (by the FTC) to maintain their OWN do not call lists, and you would have to request to be added, only after they call you and harass you one time. But I know from experience that this is really an uphill battle (read: is not effective at stopping calls). There's also this thing called a telezapper that we tried but I never quite figured out how it was supposed to work, I just know it was also ineffective. Now, if they call, they will be slapped with an enormous fine, and the only people I have to tell to go to hell are politicians. Music to my ears, but could it be done more efficiently? Probably, but I can't think of it. - Zac Gochenour
RE: TV Seasons
Wei Dai asked: Why does TV have seasons? I know it's customary to propose possible answers to questions posted here, but I'm really stumped. I can't think of any reason why television networks all premier their new shows in the fall and play re-runs in the summer, instead of spreading out the premiers and re-runs more evenly throughout the year, or having seasons that aren't synchronized with each other. Why doesn't the fact that the competition is a lot weaker in the summer attract more premiers? In television's infancy, something like 40 episodes were taped of each program and reruns were shown in the summer, when people typically watched less television (because the weather was better? Not sure) Now, reruns are shown throughout the season, particularly if one of the major networks is airing a major event, such as the Oscar's or the Super Bowl, other networks will run reruns or old movies. The practice of seasons betweeen labor day and memorial day is still closely linked with the belief that people watch less television in the summer. However, some shows, especially on new networks, are premiered in the summer and advertised as being that show that premiers in the summer so you don't have to watch reruns. I have a few ideas about this. Revenue comes from advertising. The larger the audience believed to be watching a show, the greater the amount the network can bill for advertising time during the show. So it makes sense that companies will show reruns (avoiding the costs of production but still getting some revenue) when they believe a much smaller audience will be watching the show - production costs for prime-time television series are quite high (above and beyond the salaries of the actors which always becomes a public affair, e.g. Seinfeld, Friends, Sopranos). However, viewers may be frustrated if reruns are shown to frequently, so networks try to find the optimal balance between new shows and low-cost reruns. However, it is more acceptable to show reruns when everyone else is showing reruns. So the groundwork is: if you want to show reruns, you should show them when other networks are showing them, or when you expect your viewership to be very low (due to special events). There are only a few major networks - NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox (the newest). I've seen suggested in many places that network television is an oligopoly, and the practice of seasons is a form of (tacit?) collusion. This analysis makes sense in a number of ways. Consider the following: in the old days of tv, there were less reruns, and competition for viewership was strong even during special event broadcasting; with modern recording technology, special events could be viewed and other shows taped, but reruns are still shown during special events; in spite of (as Dr. Hanson pointed out) primitive technology for measuring television viewership of specific shows and the seemingly odd proposition that people watch much less television during the summer months, reruns are still shown primarily in the summer. Fox, the newest network, often shows new shows or movie premiers when, say, NBC is showing a special event and CBS and NBC are showing reruns. This might suggest that Fox, th! e newco.. It will be interesting to see if a wider variety of competition as there are more substitutes for the 3 old channels of network television, if improvements in technology that reduce information costs about viewership, or improvements in home recording technology will change the way reruns are shown. - Zac Gochenour
