Unqualified Offerings

The Whores of Densa

13 Responses to “The Whores of Densa”

1. Comment by sglover —
   October 28, 2009 @ 11:27 pm

   But golly, Brad DeLong assures me that Stevey Levitt’s a whiz kid!

2. Comment by joe from Lowell —
   October 29, 2009 @ 9:20 am

   People who excel at crunching numbers and drawing innovative, but well-supported, conclusions from those numbers often suck when they start holding forth on psychology and ideas.

   For example, Chuck Todd.

3. Comment by Jennifer —
   October 29, 2009 @ 10:40 am

   Hmm. Coincidentally, I’ve a piece on this very topic slated to come out in the Guardian sometime in the next couple of days, written from the perspective of a woman who paid for college via the presumably exploitative job of stripping, and I’m amazed how the simple addition of “sexiness” makes people ignore basic economics. Yes: service-industry workers who appear to like their jobs tend to get more money from customers than those who don’t. It’s true for waiters, strippers, prostitutes and even writers: if every time I made a pitch to the editor it carried the undertone “I hate you, loathe writing for you and am appalled I’ve sunk so low,” I’d wager that would have a deleterious effect on my income.

4. Comment by Barry —
   October 29, 2009 @ 10:59 am

   Re Brad DeLong, and many others:

   The biggest lie in the world is not ‘the check is in the mail’; it’s ‘my colleague is a good, honest man’, when said colleague has just publicly demonstrated that he’s definitely not either.

   In Economics, there’s alse this thing where somebody is praised for being smart, when the true accuasations are that he’s lying or evil.

5. Comment by Jim Henley —
   October 29, 2009 @ 11:50 am

   Jennifer, what you say is undoubtedly true – ceteris paribus.

6. Comment by Jim Henley —
   October 29, 2009 @ 11:51 am

   Clicked SUBMIT too soon. In the two-member data s – I’m sorry, I can’t get the words out – double-barreled anecdote Leavitt and Dubner give us, ceteris ain’t even close to paribus.

7. Comment by The Medium Lobster —
   October 29, 2009 @ 2:31 pm

   If only LaSheena had had the foresight to emerge from a rich, white vagina, her career in the sex industry might look much brighter.

8. Comment by Jennifer —
   October 29, 2009 @ 2:42 pm

   Most low-paid people would enjoy more lucrative opportunities if only they’d been born to rich parents. I surely would have.

9. Comment by All Your Summer Songs —
   October 30, 2009 @ 12:32 am

   Coming soon to an art-house theatre near you: David O. Russell’s The Housewife Experience (w/ Nina Hartley as the wife).

   http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39495

10. Comment by Aunt Deb —
    October 30, 2009 @ 12:32 pm

    Thanks so much for the link, Jim — that was a wonderful read!

11. Comment by J sub D —
    October 31, 2009 @ 5:52 pm

    It’s well established that professional and financial success in America and by extension all of the evil westerm capitalist exploitive world is determined by who your parents are. Effort, natural and nurtured talents, self-discipline, attitude and luck (yes luck) have nothing to do with it at all.

    So goes the blame somebody else meme and frankly, I’m sick and tired of hearing it.

12. Comment by Jim Henley —
    October 31, 2009 @ 6:23 pm

    J: You gotta do better, man.

13. Comment by Glen Raphael —
    November 3, 2009 @ 1:25 am

    The linked article goes off the rails in the very first paragraph and never finds its way back. Somehow these people managed to read the question “Why aren’t more women successful prostitutes?”[emphasis added] and turn it into “why aren’t most women prostitutes.” The former is an interesting question in the context of what we are told about Allie; the latter not so much.

    If Allie is telling the truth, she seems to have found an unusual niche – an unpleasant-for-most-people job which has very low barriers to entry and yet persistent high pay. Drug dealing is illegal and unpleasant but we know from the first Freakonomics that drug dealers make less than minimum wage. Allie makes quite a lot more.

    One possibility is that Allie is just unusually good at the job in ways she doesn’t perceive. She might be unusually attractive, unusually good at marketing, unusually lucky at making the connections she did, might have unusually strong willpower to avoid various possible pitfalls…such that other women of similar mind would not be as successful.

    But “sex-for-money is just *icky and illegal*” doesn’t speak to the question. lots of jobs are icky (garbageman/janitor) or illegal (drug dealing – yet pay nearly nothing. “well, *I* certainly wouldn’t want to do it!” doesn’t speak to the question either.

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