Saturday, January 24, 2015

Here's a mystifying NPR report on a community in upstate New York where women are pressured to not drive, apparently on religious grounds. Some questions: Why do religious people so often feel the need to impose their preferences on others? And why do they feel the need to segregate themselves into communities in which public morality can be imposed? Why are they so unwilling to consider religion to be a private matter? Why is it that the more punctiliously religious some people are, the more likely they are to be doing things that seem totally incomprehensible to me?

The Libertarian Utopia of Hazaribagh

This is an informative -- and transfixing, frankly -- report on the environmental impact of the tanning industry in the Hazaribagh area of Dhaka, Bangladesh, by Tania Rashid, a talented young Bangladeshi-American reporter for Vice News. Libertarian utopians in the West who decry environmental regulations -- and regulations in general -- should take note.

A Report on Rape in Bangladesh

The occurrence of rapes and gang-rapes in India have received a great deal of global attention. But if this report by Tania Rashid of Vice News is to be believed, the situation in neighboring Bangladesh may not be a whole lot better: "A recent UN report revealed that one in eight men in rural Bangladesh admit to having committed rape." (This Vice News report is revealing on multiple levels and bears repeated viewing. I was stunned by how astonishingly riverine and verdantly green Bangladesh looks in the video. Also priceless was the utter contempt Rashid expresses as she leaves a meeting with the head of a mosque.)

What Charlize Theron's Good Fortune Tells Us About Wages

I don't know whether the higher remuneration that Charlize Theron was able to obtain using information revealed by the Sony hack corrects an unfair outcome or makes a fair outcome unfair. But it does show how wages depend on bargaining power and the availability of information -- two factors that are generally ignored in undergraduate courses that discuss wages. (In the utopia described in those courses, the contribution of each worker is easily measured and known to all. And each worker gets paid what they contribute. I teach that material, but -- in my defense -- I do feel guilty about it afterwords.)

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