infundibulum

The Freakonomics Blog is always worth a read. I’m not really qualified to put their claims into a broad enough context to decide to believe them, but they sure as hell make you think.

A recent post on economist Emily Oster is a good example of the stories they tend to pick up.

Here are her main ideas:

Three Things You Don’t Know About Aids In Africa

1. It’s the wrong disease to attack.
2. It won’t disappear until poverty does.
3. There is less of it than we thought, but it’s spreading as fast as ever.

I find the second reason to be the most compelling. Oster argues that different reactions to dealing with AIDs in Africa as compared to those in places such as the US are a function of how people in Africa estimate the quality of their future lives (with or without AIDs). In other words, if you you think your life is going to suck anyway, you just can’t work up the motivation to take care of yourself enough to prolong that life.

It’s a harsh assessment, but it seems to be that it’s not all remote from my own experience. Think about young people and drugs: why did people mostly think that Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign was so laughable?

Take the typical example of someone who’s strung out: they’re depressed. Their life sucks. They can imagine no way that it could improve. So, when someone in a frilly outfit comes along and says “just say no,” the rational replay is to say “what the fuck should I do that for?”

Of course, this is just me speculating, and I’m no economist. Good thing people like the Freakonomics twins and Oster are out there pushing buttons.