Recently in Entertainment and Culture Category
Productivity Shock posted a great abstract on this topic. I would guess that any number of the following might be true and also contribute to the phenomenon in question, but might not be detectable by the existing data.
1. Bumming out cigarettes is more likely when you have to go outside to smoke because smokers are put in a more socialized setting -- smoker solidarity. Smokers have to stock up mid-way through the night, thus driving is increased.
2. Most cities don't let you take your drink outside when you go outside for a smoke. This resulted in a date rape drug problem in New York when women left their drinks unattended. Tobacco companies also pushed smokeless tobacco campaigns because it was so inconvenient to go outside of large night clubs. In addition to the above my guess is that smokers are more likely to order shots and hard spirits rather than beer with smoking bans because they can drink their drink go out and smoke, come back and repeat. My guess is that their on average more drunk than they otherwise would be.
3. The costs to leaving a bar in search of another (better) bar are lower with smoking bans. You've stepped outside, you don't have a drink in your hand. The costs of hopping in your car and checking out another bar to inform your social group about once you're there are lower than if you'd stayed inside. In other words, it's not just traveling to one bar across the border that's more likely with smoking bans but also multiple different locations in a single night - again on net more driving.
Are Smurfs a public good? Ryan Somma seems to think so. Apparently if no one owns something everyone must own and have a right to it. This article gets an A for effort but could use a dose of Coase. La la la la la la la...
As I'm bunkered down in the library this early evening plowing my way through back issues of Crime and Delinquency, I couldn't help but get sidetracked by reading this paper unrelated to my dissertation.
It definitely has the scariest abstract I've read in quite some time:
This article focuses on the juvenile justice system in California and outlines approaches currently taken in response to teenagers who are part of the “punk” and “heavy metal” subculture. Data were collected from hospitals that have adolescent care programs. When these hospitals were given a hypothetical situation in which the parents' main problem with their child was the music he or she listened to, the clothes he or she wore, and the posters on his or her bedroom wall, 83% of the facilities believed the youth needed hospitalization. These findings were placed within a labeling framework in order to understand the effect of these policies.
Apparently some California courts went so far as to tack on these stipulations to juvenile parole sentences:
1.Not to dress in any style that represents Punk Rock or Heavy Metal. 2.Not to wear hair (dye or cut) in any style that represents Punk Rock or Heavy Metal. 3.Not to associate with known Punk Rockers or Heavy Metalers. 4.Not to wear any Punk Rock or Heavy Metal accessories – earrings, or jewlery, spikes or studs. 5.Not to frequent any place where Punk Rock or Heavy Metal is main interest. 6.Not to listen to Punk rock or Heavy Metal music. 7.Not to write or draw Punk Rock or Heavy Metal. 8.No to tattoo, cut, harm or injure self in any way. 9.To keep parents of whereabouts at all times.
Maybe this explains why west coast punk rock sucks.
Tyler Cowen posts to Randall Collins's, Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory. To sum up; the rise of popular music created new social spaces and opportunities for kids to challenge the traditional social hierarchy awarded by the control of traditional social venues (high school athletics).
It reminded me of this excerpt from McCloskey's Bourgeois Virtues.
I've been on a kick about the communicative role of prices lately. Prices in the market serve as signals between buyers and sellers about the quality, quantity, and type of goods that should produced and distributed throughout the economy. In this sense the product outputs of a market economy are representative of social preferences, values, and beliefs.
When on a road trip recently, my roommate popped in an old VHS of a movie that he had recorded off TV in the mid 1980s. While listening to the now retro commercial jingles and slogans, I thought about how advertising is also an explicit signal in the market process. I think the old commercials for toys, movies, and other stuff, when interpreted in the correct light could give a richer description of society in that time than could a typical piece of art (novel, painting, music, movie). Even though we often attribute value and quality to art that represents its time and context, on average it seems that commercials are more representative of what society was actually like.
Commercials are specifically trying to appeal to the tastes and preferences of defined customer groups who are most likely to be watching a certain type of program. Something about this made me want to tell Naomi Klein to shove it.
Consider yourself informed.
Stalone to Remake Death Wish.
Mathew O'keeffe (1989) wrote in Legal Notes No. 5 for the Libertarian Alliance some sensible conclusions as to the empirical results of the incentives promoted by retribution based criminal sentences:
The increase in criminality was matched by a decrease in apprehension; people were far less willing to "shop" their friends if they thought this would mean certain death. And the criminal himself was naturally far less likely to turn himself in, and, if caught, plead guilty. The juries themselves often chose to acquit a criminal rather than condemn him to an unfair punishment for a petty offense. The very great severity of punishments - in particular the irreversibility of the death sentence - led juries to be very cautious about their verdicts... The message is simple; the greater the punishment ("deterrent?"), the greater the crimes actually committed, the smaller the number of apprehensions, and the smaller the number of convictions.
Later sections of the article make me wonder if Walter Block ever used O'keeffe as a pen name:
[C]onvicted criminals could finance restitution by fighting to the death in televised gladiatorial combat or accepting roles in "snuff movies." Robert Burrage (A Free Market in Human Organs, Economic Notes No. 10 Libertarian Alliance) has even made the suggestion that after death, the criminal's body be reduced to spare parts and sold on the market! Perhaps the space age will offer less barbaric options; it could well offer a whole range of high pay, high risk, menial occupations. Criminals could be sent to work in perilous, frontier condition places to repay the more sizable restoration debts. A particularly attractive feature of this option would be that after a certain period away from earth, the effects of gravity on the body would be such that no criminal could ever live on earth again.
In honor of Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize, I invite everyone to watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle" its a great documentary on climate change. Alongside "Mine your own business" these are a hard hitting duo against the anti-development consequences of the modern environmentalist movement. Hat tip to Michael Thomas for the great reference.
