More Sex Equals Safer Sex?

I didn't know Landsburg's new book was out;

"An economic professor and author is making the rounds in Washington County and stopped by Marietta College for a talk about a surprising subject, sex.

Dr. Steven Landsburg is an economics professor of at the University of Rochester.

Tonight he spoke to dozens of Valley residents about his newest book, "More Sex is Safer Sex, and Other Surprises."

It was all part of the Milton Friedman Lecture Series.

Tomorrow, Landsburg will talk to the Economic Roundtable of the Ohio Valley about how to fix everything."

Some excerpts;

"Economics is largely about the surprising and sometimes tragic consequences of rational behavior. When there's an exciting moment at the ballpark, everybody stands up trying to see better, and therefore nobody succeeds. At parties with a lot of simultaneous conversations, everyone speaks loudly to be heard over everyone else, and everyone goes home with a sore throat. Still, it's rational to stand at the ballpark, and to yell at the party. We stand and we yell for the same reason we blow leaves -- from exquisite (and entirely rational) concern for our own interests and none for the harm that spills over onto our neighbors.

It's a general principle of economics that things tend to work out best when people have to live with the consequences of their own behavior, or, to put it another way, things tend to work out poorly when the consequences of our actions spill over onto other people. Simple and obvious as that general principle might sound, it has the power to undermine vast deposits of conventional wisdom. It suggests that the world has too few people, too few misers, and not enough casual sex, but just the right amounts of secondhand smoke and child labor. It implies that a thirst for gold is socially ruinous, but a taste for revenge can be a social godsend. It casts light on why the tall, the thin, and the beautiful earn higher wages. It suggests sweeping reforms of the legal system, the political system, the tax code, and the rule against jumping to the front of the water-fountain line. And it explains why automobile insurance in Philadelphia is so damn expensive."

I think the cover is really lousy.