It is not news that corruption and perverse incentives matter. But perhaps it is news that the problem of twisted rules and institutions explains not just a little bit of the gap between Cameroon and rich countries but almost all of the gap. Countries like Cameroon fall far below their potential even considering their poor infrastructure, low investment, and minimal education. Worse, the web of corruption foils every effort to improve the infrastructure, attract investment, and raise educational standards.

We still don’t have a good word to describe what is missing in Cameroon and in poor countries across the world. But we are starting to understand what it is. Some people call it “social capital,” or maybe “trust.” Others call it “the rule of law,” or “institutions.” But these are just labels. The problem is that Cameroon, like other poor countries, is a topsy-turvy place where it’s in most people’s interest to take actions that directly or indirectly damage everyone else. The incentives to create wealth are turned on their heads like the roof of the school library.

Why Poor Countries Are Poor

Sprawl is messy, chaotic, and sometimes annoying. In short, it is everything one expects from a free and democratic society. Leave the neat and clean societies for totalitarian regimes. Sprawl creates problems, just like every other social trend; but to damn it for its problems is akin to outlawing the sun for causing skin cancer.

Robert Bruegmann reminds us that much of the anti-sprawl crusade is a result of a rising level of prosperity, and the complexity of millions of individual decisions made on a daily basis by millions of citizens. Better to have to deal with long commutes and strained infrastructure than malaria, cholera, or declining life expectancy.

In terms of problems, I'd take sprawl any day.

The Way We Live Now

There are many political implications. We have had 30 years of deregulation in the United States, freeing up markets to work their magic. “Is that generally welfare-enhancing, or not?” Wanner asks. “Framing can call that into question. Everyone agrees that there’s informational asymmetry—so we have laws that ensure drugs are tested, and truth-in-advertising laws. Still, there are subtle things about framing choices that are deceptive, though not inaccurate. We have the power of markets, but they are places where naive participants lose money. How do we manage markets so that the framing problem can be acknowledged and controlled? It’s an essential question in a time of rising inequality, when the well-educated are doing better and the poorly educated doing worse.”

It’s a question that behavioral economics raises, and, with luck, may also be able to address. The eclipse of hyper-rational Economic Man opens the way for a richer and more realistic model of the human being in the marketplace, where the brain, with all its ancient instincts and vulnerabilities, can be both predator and prey. Our irrationalities, our emotional hot-buttons, are likely to persist, but knowing what they are may allow us to account for them and even, like Odysseus, outwit temptation. The models of behavioral economics could help design a society with more compassion for creatures whose strengths and weaknesses evolved in much simpler conditions. After all, “The world we live in,” Laibson says, “is an institutional response to our biology.”

The Marketplace of Perceptions

Join that speakers bureau, get on Oprah!

The Scrapbook salutes Harvey Mans-field, who is not only our favorite Harvard professor but also the first Weekly Standard contributor that we're aware of to make it onto the cover of Oprah magazine, thanks (ironically?) to his new book Manliness.

Mansfield has recently been on the interview circuit, introducing a new generation to some old wisdom. We've read four of these profiles, and they're all worth perusing, since Mansfield has an enviable ability to respond to all manner of questions with interesting, witty, and thought-provoking answers.

Oprah and Harvey Mansfield, and more.

We already covered this, but given the title of the article, I felt obligated.

The first batch of captured documents from pre-war Iraq and Afghanistan are now available online.

Post-Haste

Maybe we can get to Oprah through Dave.

Oprah Winfrey & Dave Letterman usher in a new era of love, understanding, and hilarity in this week’s gossip challenge.

Peace in Our Time : Radar Online

What a ridiculous word.

Main Entry: nose�gay
Pronunciation: 'nOz-"gA
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from nose nose gay ornament, literally, something gay, from gay
: a small bunch of flowers : POSY

nosegay

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Blurb is a company and a community that believes passionately in the joy of books – reading them, making them, sharing them, and selling them.

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You're trapped in a high tech Spanish slammer, crawling through real tunnels, behind real bars. First-person gameplay breaks out of the box.

Wired 14.03: The Great Escape