Undead Astronauts

how would u react to this situation?

u are playing an impunity game in a game theory study. another player, player a, has been offered $100, and is instructed to share with you, player b, however much he wants and keep the rest. he offers to share $20, and will receive notice of either your acceptance or refusal of the money. do u accept? to reiterate, he keeps his $80 regardless of whether u accept his offer or not.

if u didn’t accept the initial offer, would u accept the money if player a won’t receive notice of your acceptance or refusal?

if u did accept the initial offer, would u still accept it if player a offered u only $2?

to see why i’m asking the question, read this link.

chinese preference for sons may have led to the bubble in the US. the theory is that boys’ families have to compete for marriagiable girls w/ high savings b/c of the girl shortage, and the high savings rate led the chinese gov’t to buy US treasury bills and depress interest rates in the US. i speculated years ago that chinese girls would necessarily become a highly valuable commidity. u can’t have a huge artificial shortage of something in demand w/o consequences, but i didn’t think about it leading to a US bubble. i did figure that chinese men would outsource the problem to poorer nations by marrying women of southeast asian origin.

another bubble may be close to popping. the cost of higher ed. has been rising far faster than inflation, but w/ the recession, many potential college students may head to community colleges instead of big name ivy schools. what’s in a name?

so the proposed solution is again to outsource the problem. prestigious colleges are thinking of propping their prices up by opening more spots to rich overseas applicants who don’t mind so much about paying inflated prices. yet.

over at the aptly named overthinking it, there’s an article analyzing the economic fallout from a zombie apocalypse. it assumes that post-apocalypse survivors would figure out how to tame the insatiable hunger for brains and use zombies for work.

In fact, rather than labor, one can view zombies as inexpensive factory tools, which require no maintenance or upgrades. If a government were to permit the use of zombies in the private sector, businesses would see marked improvements in their annual production levels, GDP would gradually rise, and the economy might stabilize more quickly. (more…)

peter schiff is an economist from the austrian school of thought. he delivers a few one liners on how the US is obviously not gonna pay china back.