Between The Tick And The Tock

So I've been busy obviously from the dead silence on here. Work, baby, and a trip to the hospital all seem to have interfered with my blogging life, but we must soldier on!

I just finished reading Freakonomics. It is a book I gave to my father, and my father in law, but not have gotten a chance to read until recently. I loved this book. It really has no unifying theme, except asking strange questions like "Why to crack dealers live with their mothers?" and analyzing the data to come up with some surprising results.

I've always been a large fan of economics (which is why I minored in it), and frankly econ 101 should be a required class for any college degree. Its the basics of how the world works. Supply, demand, and above all, incentives.

It always amazes me how people don't get the basic grasp of how things work, why people act they way that they do. Make everyone take this course (and pass it), and I think the amount of stupidity in politics and tv news will go down.

At least it would stop people from whining about gas companies gouging us. Now I'm not saying that they are the most ethical companies in the world, and god knows they could spend some of those profits on maintenance and saftey. But seriously, the prices are competitive, and they're driven by the simple fact that more people are driving cars all over the world. The price of drilling oil hasn't gone up much, and the cost of refining it is about the same, which means that since more people WANT the gas, it costs more. Which means that the company makes more profit. Its not evil, its supply and demand (though my explanation was extremly summerized).

Besides, we can afford it. Not everyone of course, the lower end of the spectrum is really feeling it, it sucks. But as a nation, our economy can handle it. If we couldn't, we'd be really serious about alternative fuels? Are we, no. Why not? Because we just don't have the incentive yet (see, econ 101!). Let gas go up to $4, and MAYBE we'll get serious. If we threw on a larger gas tax we might really be able to improve public transport, and throw more money at research. It would also stabilize prices for a while as well.

Anyway, just wanted to say, go out and read Freakonomics. It doesn't talk about gas, but it will open your eyes to some cool stuff.