Table Of Content
UUNNCCOOMMMMOONN SSEENNSSEE
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Chicago and London
economic insights,
from marriage to terrorism
GARY S. BECKER is University Professor in 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 1 2 3 4 5
the Department of Economics, the Department
of Sociology, and the Graduate School of Business isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 04101- 8 (cloth)
at the University of Chicago. isbn- 10: 0- 226- 04101- 8 (cloth)
RICHARD A. POSNER is a judge of the Library of Congress C ataloging-i n-P ublication
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Data
and senior lecturer in law at the University of
Chicago. Becker, Gary Stanley, 1930–
Uncommon sense : economic insights, from
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 marriage to terrorism / Gary S. Becker and
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London Richard A. Posner.
© 2009 by The University of Chicago p. cm.
All rights reserved. Published 2009 Includes index.
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 04101- 8 (alk. paper)
Printed in the United States of America isbn- 10: 0- 226- 04101- 8 (alk. paper)
1. Economics—Miscellanea. 2. Law and
economics. 3. Posner, Richard A.—Blogs.
4. Becker, Gary Stanley, 1930– —Blogs.
I. Posner, Richard A. II. Title.
hb71.b435 2009
330—dc22
2009009198
o The paper used in this publication meets
the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ansi z39.48- 1992.
CCOONNTTEENNTTSS
Introduction to the B ecker-P osner Blog 1
part i part iii
SEX AND POPULATION UNIVERSITIES
1 The Sexual Revolution 11 14 Plagiarism 103
2 Gay Marriage 17 15 Tenure 109
3 Polygamy 25 16 For- Profi t Colleges 117
4 Sex Selection 31 17 Ranking Higher Education 123
5 Immigration Reform 37 Afterthoughts to Part III 129
6 Putin’s Population Plan 43
Afterthoughts to Part I 49 part iv
INCENTIVES
part ii 18 Fat Tax 133
PROPERTY RIGHTS 19 Trans Fats Ban 139
7 Kelo and Eminent Domain 53 20 Libertarian Paternalism 147
8 Pharmaceutical Patents 59 21 Chicago and Big Boxes 153
9 Grokster, File Sharing, and Afterthoughts to Part IV 159
Contributory Infringement 65
10 Orphan Drugs, Intellectual part v
Property, and Social Welfare 73 JOBS AND EMPLOYMENT
11 Organ Sales 79 22 Judicial Term Limits 165
12 Tra≈c Congestion 85 23 Economics of the Revolving
13 Privatizing Highways 91 Door 171
Afterthoughts to Part II 97 24 CEO Compensation 177
25 Income Inequality 185 part viii
26 Corporate Social THE WORLD
Responsibility 191 42 Economic and Political
Afterthoughts to Part V 197 Freedom 315
43 Size of Countries 321
part vi 44 Hamas, Palestine, and
ENVIRONMENT AND DISASTERS Democracy 327
27 Tsunami 203 45 Google in China 333
28 Major Disasters 211 46 Economics of National
29 Federalism, Economics, and Culture 339
Katrina 219 47 Microfi nance and
30 Post- Catastrophe Price Development 347
Gouging 225 48 World Inequality 353
31 Global Warming and Discount 49 Foreign Aid 359
Rates 231 Afterthoughts to Part VIII 365
32 E≈cient Water Conservation 239
Afterthoughts to Part VI 245 Index 367
part vii
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
AND TERRORISM
33 Capital Punishment 251
34 Doping Athletes 263
35 Drunk Driving 269
36 Internet Gambling 275
37 Preventive War 281
38 Ethnic Profi ling 285
39 Privatizing Security 291
40 Antiterrorism Allocations 297
41 Collective Punishment 303
Afterthoughts to Part VII 309
IINNTTRROODDUUCCTTIIOONN TTOO TTHHEE
BBEECCKKEERR-- P POOSSNNEERR BBLLOOGG
Blogging is a major new social, political, and economic phenomenon en-
abled by the Internet, a transformative technology of vast social impor-
tance (think of what it is doing to the conventional news media, such as
newspapers!). The Internet has revolutionized access to information, and
sometimes misinformation as well. Information on the Internet comes
from many sources. It is a fresh and striking exemplifi cation of Friedrich
Hayek’s thesis that the knowledge essential to society (he emphasized
the economic activity of a society, but the point is general) is widely dis-
tributed among people and that the social challenge is to create mecha-
nisms for pooling that knowledge. The mechanism that was the focus of
Hayek’s work, as of economists generally, is the price system (an explicit
market). Price impounds the information of buyers and sellers concern-
ing values and supply; the market is thus a method of aggregating infor-
mation. The Internet illustrates the possibility of alternative mechanisms
of such aggregation. The newest is the I nternet-b ased “blogosphere.” The
Internet enables the instantaneous pooling (and hence correction, refi ne-
ment, and amplifi cation) of the ideas and opinions, facts and images, re-
portage and scholarship, generated by bloggers. The blogosphere diΩers
from a system with explicit prices and monetary compensation because
information in this sphere is usually made available without expectation
of any monetary compensation or other fi nancial rewards, although some
bloggers have managed to attract advertising revenues and others (pres-
ent company included) have made book deals. The blogosphere neverthe-
1
less forms a “market,” though one without explicit prices to users (the
major cost, for both the bloggers and the blog readers, is time), in which
tens of millions of participants interact in the provision of information.
There are many examples of other markets, such as fraternal organiza-
tions, or men and women looking to fi nd marriage partners, that do not
involve explicit fi nancial compensation either. But the blogosphere is
new and would have been impossible without the electronic revolution
that enabled the creation of the Internet. Apart from advertising revenue
(our blog, however, does not carry advertising), compensation for posts
in the blogosphere is also unusual since it involves such forms of com-
pensation as the pleasures from writing—as in Wikipedia—or the plea-
sure from expressing opinions, or the pleasure from seeing one’s name on
the I nternet.
The fi rst Web log, or blog, was started in the United States about a
decade ago, and the number has increased very rapidly. No one knows the
exact number of blogs, especially since each day brings many new blogs
throughout the world. The vast majority are personal diaries that are read
only by family members and close friends. A relatively small (though large
in absolute terms) number are addressed to larger audiences. Call these
“network” blogs. Some primarily provide links to various online sources
of news and opinion (including other blogs); others oΩer frequent, often
daily, commentary on political and other (such as cultural) subjects. These
are “opinion” blogs.
In December 2004, we started the “Becker- Posner Blog,” http: //
becker- posner- blog .com /, an opinion blog that would have an unconven-
tional format. We would post only once a week, and on a topic with con-
siderable general interest. The posting would consist of a brief lead essay
by one of us on a topical issue, followed by a still briefer comment by the
other. This discussion format would enable us to use the Internet as a
platform for serious but fresh, pointed, and lively analyses of major issues.
Because we do not blog on a daily basis, do not (with infrequent excep-
tions) link to other online sites, and our pieces are in the nature of brief
essays rather than informal, c onversation-s tyle jottings, we are outside
the mainstream blog culture as it has evolved; but there is no reason why
the mainstream should be considered so narrow.
One of us (Becker) is a Nobel- prize- winning economist who in addi-
tion to scholarly publications on a wide range of economic issues includ-
ing education, discrimination, labor, the family, crime, addiction, and
immigration, for many years wrote a monthly column for Business Week.
Posner also has done some writing for the press and once had a very brief
2 Introduction
stint writing a column for the Atlantic Monthly. We thought the blog
would have three advantages over a magazine column. First, it would
elicit more comments, because it is easier to post a comment than to write
a letter to the editors, and also because the space that newspapers and
magazines are willing to devote to readers’ letters is so limited that only a
small number of letters is published, which discourages readers from writ-
ing letters. Second, the blog would attract more readers than a magazine
column, as a consequence of more frequent (weekly rather than monthly)
writing, the blog versus magazine format, and the unbundling of a column
from a magazine. (Someone wanting to read Becker, for example, would
no longer have to subscribe to Business Week to be able to read it.)
Posner is a federal appellate judge and also a writer of books and ar-
ticles in a variety of fi elds, including antitrust, intellectual property, and
other fi elds in which economics is applied to law, but also topical fi elds
such as impeachment, contested elections, and national security issues.
The rules of judicial ethics forbid Posner to comment publicly on pend-
ing or impending litigation or to participate in politics, as by endorsing
candidates; hence the avoidance in the blog of certain topics that might
seem a natural focus of our interest.
This book collects the postings in the fi rst two and a quarter years of
our blog (the latest piece reprinted in the book was posted on March 4,
2007)—more than 125 essays and comments. The range covered is vast—
from global warming to New York City’s ban on trans fats; from foreign
aid to doping athletes; from the privatization of toll roads to the French
propensity for riots; from Internet gambling to China’s eΩort to buy an
American oil company; from the governance of Harvard University to
gay marriage; from orphan drugs to drunk driving; from fi ghting AIDS
in Africa to the cost of the war in Iraq. What unites this p romiscuous-
appearing array of blog entries is that they are all about contemporary
issues of economic policy, when “economics” is broadly understood (see
below). Informal, topical, practical, and policy oriented, our postings do
not address abstract economic issues, employ the technical apparatus of
economics, or always rest on a rich foundation of empirical knowledge.
Nor is the analysis exclusively economic in the usual meaning of this
word; we have felt free to range widely in our consideration of policy-
relevant factors.
The postings appear here without substantive changes, but with cor-
rections of typographical errors and minor changes in punctuation and
style. The postings are grouped by subject matter—sex and population,
property rights, universities, incentives, jobs and employment, disasters
introduction 3
