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September 28, 2006
life is a highway / i wanna ride it all night long
Today we are going to discuss all the interesting things I have learned this week. My classes are so interesting. So much more interesting than quantum mechanics, though in realitity it and my stats course are all about the probability of things (electron locations, getting AIDs)
I just read an interesting paper for my Policital Economy course about car theft preventation precautions. Say you put a club on your car. It is big and visable. A theft comes along looking for a car to steal. He sees your club and moves on to the car behind you. Though you have increased the benefit to you, you have passed on the cost to the collective by increasing the probability their car will be stolen.
Say you put in a lojack, which is an unobservable tracking device. Your car may be stolen, but the recovery rate is higher. More over, the lojack tracking results in the break up of chop shops and arrests of professional theives. Becuase thieves don't know which car has a lojack, they decrease their car stealing. These are positive effects for everyone.
From the paper:
"Lojack appears to be one of the most cost-effective crime reduction approaches documented in the
literature, providing a greater return than increased police, prisons, jobs programs, or early educational interventions."
Because the lojack indivual cost is low, it will be undersupplied by the market, though it results in a large collective good. Therefore insitutions (govern'ts mostly) try to encourage lojack installation by law mandated insurance discounts.
Next on.....
The probability of getting AIDs through a single unprotected sex act. It is lower than you think.
Posted by christina at September 28, 2006 10:13 AM
Comments
Lower than the probability of getting entangled with some crazy bitch who won't stop correcting you and complaining that you don't call enough? (And what's more disuasive: the visible obvious one or the unseen, more potent one?)
Posted by: shelbinator at September 28, 2006 12:46 PM