Hummingbirds and flowers co-adapted over millions of years. As with the shapes of the flowers they take nectar from, hummingbird beaks grew to different lengths, some straight, some curved.
Photo: Sonia Nadales
However, some bees learned that they could access the nectar within tubular flowers by chewing a hole at the base and robbing the nectar from there. When that happens, the flower loses its nectar without getting pollinated.
While I discussed silver, tulips, and drugs in Changes in Value Part I, here I look at education, art, spices, chicken feet, and conformity. What systems influence the value of things? Why does value change?
At the end I provide suggestions to assess your own situations.
Education
I’ve been critical of higher education on this blog before, but for other reasons. When it comes to the the price of a college degree — and here I’m mostly talking of the price of American college tuition — we’ve seen a doubling in price, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years. A number of factors combine to drive up the price.
Long-time readers of this blog know that I wrote about how disease spreads several times well before the recent coronavirus news. And then I wrote threepostson that. I’m hardly alone in my interest on this topic.
But apart from what we’re going through now, infectious diseases generally don’t get as much attention as I think they deserve. In terms of unintended consequences, I’m interested in the impact of disease on human decision making and where things went wrong, or well, in the past. As for the potential impact of COVID-19 in the near-term, some minds are changing in the midst of political, business, social, and educational impact.
And then there is the look back in history. When I recently learned the story of a European plague year’s impact on Dutch “tulipmania,” the modern and historical protective images intrigued me as well.
Left: a protective white suit used when dealing with extreme infectious environments. Right: European plague doctor “Doctor Schnabel” (Dr. Beak). Doctors stuffed sweet smelling flowers and herbs into the mask’s beak to protect against noxious fumes believed to transmit disease. Also note the waxed coat, hat, and gloves.
If you want to get in an argument when you travel (especially internationally), talk about history.
There isn’t a single, correct history. For multiple reasons, places around the world treat history differently than other subjects. The ways we deal with uncomfortable topics include suppressing, not learning, and biasing others. Continue reading “A Very Different Funeral (for Deng Xiaoping)”
I tend to stay away from current events in writing about unintended consequences, but I’m weighing in on the recent college admissions scandal. After all, I’m a professor at the school with the most involvement. And the story isn’t really all that new. But it might play out differently than you expect.
There are many frameworks with which to evaluate unintended consequences. So far in my writing here I’ve looked at examples arranged around a theme (species introduction, food, government policy, human behavior etc) where there is a somewhat clear relationship between cause and effect (even if sometimes only in hindsight). I haven’t yet touched frameworks of complexity and won’t do so until I go deeper into more second-order effects.
This week I step back and look at basic categories of unintended consequences and call out potential new areas of exposure to second-order effects.
Costs work differently depending on who pays and when they pay. These questions of “who” and “when” and innovations that change them are second-order effects that impact what society gets more or less of.
Some products come with only a cost of production, paid first by the producer and then pushed on to the purchasing customer. This is in spite of the products themselves creating external costs that greater society or specific individuals must bear later on. Other products have these external costs built in at the point of production. In either case, the type and severity of the costs can vary. These costs may be unseen to the product’s end customer, but it is the difference in cost type that changes behavior and leads to unintended consequences. Continue reading “Visibility of Cost”
Over the past two decades, American universities have created reasons to spend more and raise large donations, without end. What are the second-order effects of this increase in fundraising activity?
American universities remain highly sought after for both American and international students. The trends over the last few decades include a larger population now attending college (both in total numbers and percentage of population) with lower acceptance rates (partly driven by the increased number of applications per applicant). These two trends continue in spite of greatly increased tuition. Continue reading “The University Fundraising Arms Race”
