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More Sex is Safer Sex
By Robert Skrob | March 22, 2009
I took my daughter to Barnes and Noble yesterday to find her a book she needed for literature class. As always I dropped by the business books shelf to see if my book was on the shelf.
A book title caught my eye, More Sex Is Safer Sex. I couldn’t resist picking the book up.
Written by economics, Steven E. Landsburg, the book makes several economic arguments about issues including the spread sexually transmitted disease, criminal punishment, jury selection, attractive people earn more than ugly people, divorce, motherhood and several other topics.
With an afternoon of sitting beside the pool ahead of me I decided to buy the book. I enjoyed the read and it helped me clarify my thinking on several things even though I don’t always agree with Dr. Landsburg’s assumptions.
Dr. Landsburg opens his book with the topic of the provocative topic that is the namesake of the book, how to decrease the risk of sexually transmitted disease by increasing the promiscuity of relatively unpromiscuous people.
The main argument is that when individuals who have below average sexual activity become more sexually active the population looking for a mate is on average, less likely to contract STD’s. Of course, the less promiscuous individual’s risk increases but that’s exactly Dr. Landsburg’s point in this book, there are a number if situations where the individual’s interests are at odds with the population’s interests.
Throughout the book Dr. Landsburg makes the assumption that people act in their best interests. And, as a society we should subsidize individuals to bring their decision making in line with what’s best for society rather than individuals.
However, I find that people don’t make decisions in their best interests. First of all their short term best interests and long term interests often conflict. For instance, in the short term I’d like to drink 2-3 beers today and sit in the sunshine. However, my long term interests dictate that I get a newsletter article written. Also, I believe that a lot of us make decisions without all of the relevant facts and therefore even if something is in our best interests we often don’t know about it.
On the whole, Dr. Landsburg’s book is an excellent primer on thinking and logic. If you’d like to think about how to think and analyize how to analyze issues impacting our society, grab a copy of More Sex Is Safer Sex by Steven E. Landsburg.
Let me know if you’d like me to invite Dr. Landsburg as a guest on Business Profits Radio.
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