Why isn't pain enough?

[Master of Ossus]

The recent thread on health care touched briefly on whether or not increasing or decreasing the monetary costs of things was valuable in encouraging or discouraging apparently self-destructive behavior (eg. smoking). This thread is not intended to rehash that thread (which I eventually conceded after much embarrassment), but rather to focus in on this particular issue.

Broomstick and others questioned the power of monetary cost incentives to operate on people who were apparently oblivious to the risks that they were running. To some extent, I agree: it makes little sense that someone would ignore the increased risks of cancer and other painful, debillitating conditions yet when faced with a small increase in the costs of tobacco would cut their consumption of cigarrettes.

Yet that's exactly what they do.

www1.worldbank.org/tobacco/Presentations/Presentation3/slide4.ppt]

A ten percent rise in the cost of tobacco leads to a 4% reduction in its use.

Nor are tobacco users the only people who seem to respond to monetary incentives, even when to take advantage (or, similarly, to avoid disadvantage) of such incentives requires undergoing considerable pain. It has been demonstrated that the implementation of Worker's Compensation benefits also increased the rate of industrial accidents (the source is cited below). Again, it seems that if pain or death were to be considered ultimate disincentives, then such legislation could not have had this effect since someone must injure themselves on the job to take advantage of the benefits provided. Yet that's precisely what occurred, even when correcting for people who falsely claimed these benefits and for the increase in reporting of accidents (for example, by examing specifically forms of injury that cannot be "faked" and would always be reported as industrial accidents [eg. work-related amputations] regardless of the laws).

The question, then, is not whether or not monetary incentives can influence human behavior when the risk of serious injury exists, but rather why this effect is observed. Why would a smoker not give a shit that they were jeopardizing their health and yet reduce their consumption when faced with a slight rate hike?

My only explanation is admittedly somewhat unsatisfactory: that people do not wish to be injured, but that this is insufficient in and of itself to absolutely discourage injury-related behaviors. People, instead, estimate (correctly or not) their risks of injury and the associated disutility that they would suffer if injured, and then minimize the disutility perceived by taking precautions such that the disutility of having to take the precautions and the disutility of the injury (after being corrected for the mental risk estimate) is minimized. This also explains, incidentally, why people who smoke or take other serious health risks may still exhibit behaviors designed to improve their health (eg. exercising). People thus retain their utility-optimizing decision-making structure, and so they do respond to typical economic incentives and disincentives.

Put it more succinctly, but with the assumption of an economics background: the cost that people associate with injury is finite. I would argue that there are offsetting disutility costs associated with the avoidance of injury, but these are not strictly necessary for the observed behaviors to occur.

Are there any other thoughts on this? I'm particularly interested in alternative explanations or criticisms of the "solution" that I have attempted to sketch out.


"Labor Markets in the Twentieth Century"
Claudia Goldin (April 1998 revised version of NBER Working Paper), in The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, Vol. III, S. Engerman and R. Gallman, eds. pp. 9, 12, 15-27, 99

[Gil Hamilton]

I think the answer lies in the fact that nicotine is one of the most powerfully addictive chemicals on the planet and leads to physical dependancy. In fact, it works on brain dopamine systems in a similar way to cocaine and cigarette companies design their product to be as efficient as possible in delivery. I think that people who smoke are unwilling to put up with the pain and complications of quitting smoking in the short term that they are willing to put up with pain in the long term.

Ruined teeth, tarred lungs, et cetera are a small price to pay, in some minds, if they think that their start gaining weight if they quit smoking or depend on nicotine to calm them down at work. I know people who don't handle stress well unless they can suck on a cancer and thus go through packs of the stuff in short order. Or the girls in high school who wouldn't quit because they were afraid of the associated weight gain. If you are shallow enough and short sighted enough, getting a little chubbier is worse than permenant damage to your lungs and throat. After all, people can't see your lungs and you don't squeeze your esophagus into a swim suit.

The thing is, many smokers want to quit (most, I think), it's just that there is a world of difference between wanting to give up the deadly, but powerfully addictive, poison and actually kicking the habit..

[Master of Ossus]

I think the answer lies in the fact that nicotine is one of the most powerfully addictive chemicals on the planet and leads to physical dependancy. In fact, it works on brain dopamine systems in a similar way to cocaine and cigarette companies design their product to be as efficient as possible in delivery. I think that people who smoke are unwilling to put up with the pain and complications of quitting smoking in the short term that they are willing to put up with pain in the long term.

I'm sure that these are true, but why would smokers respond so powerfully to fairly small price changes if they are incapable of quitting for health reasons or only to avoid long-term serious health consequences?

Ruined teeth, tarred lungs, et cetera are a small price to pay, in some minds, if they think that their start gaining weight if they quit smoking or depend on nicotine to calm them down at work. I know people who don't handle stress well unless they can suck on a cancer and thus go through packs of the stuff in short order. Or the girls in high school who wouldn't quit because they were afraid of the associated weight gain. If you are shallow enough and short sighted enough, getting a little chubbier is worse than permenant damage to your lungs and throat. After all, people can't see your lungs and you don't squeeze your esophagus into a swim suit.

I suppose, but this still doesn't explain why they respond to small price changes. If quitting smoking is so difficult, why are they so ready to cut back on their smoking? A ten percent increase in the cost of cigarrettes is not even a dollar per pack, yet smokers are willing to cut back on their dependency in response to this. Also, other people have been shown to respond to monetary incentives in such a way that they get injured more often following workers' compensation laws.

The thing is, many smokers want to quit (most, I think), it's just that there is a world of difference between wanting to give up the deadly, but powerfully addictive, poison and actually kicking the habit..

Yet they're willing to reduce their intake of tobacco by 4% in response to an increase in the cost of just 10%. I don't know what it costs to smoke, these days, but I'm guessing that a 10% increase does not constitute a substantial fraction of an average consumer's annual budget. Why, if smoking is so difficult, are smokers so seemingly ready to respond to economic incentives to quit?

[Bounty]

I suppose, but this still doesn't explain why they respond to small price changes.

That assumes the 4% drop consists of regular smokers. The monetary disincentive maight not convince the addicts, but casual smokers may reduce and/or stop their consumption.

[Broomstick]

Master of Ossus, I think part of your problem is in considering smokers (let's say "nicotine addicts") as a homogenous group. They aren't.

I worked with drug addicts for four years as part of my job. Addiction - to anything - is not a uniform affliction. In the smoking area outside the clinic you could, on any given day, find a half-dozen people who had given up heroin or cocaine and yet who could NOT give up tobacco. No one can explain that, but it's a consistant percentage of any group of addicts. I've seen people who've walked into the clinic one day and said "I'm done with drugs" and managed to make it stick, despite living surronded by temptation, and other who couldn't shake the habit despite the best support system in the world. Why is that? No one knows.

People aren't laboratory rats. They're different from each other, including their vulnerability to addiction.

Sure, a 10% price increase resulted in a 4% reduction in tobacco use... but surely that was an average reduction? Go back to the original source of the study. I suspect you'll find that some changed their habits not at all, and some reduced far more than 4%. Monetary incentives will work on some people. It won't work on all. Learn to be VERY critical of "results" of studies of any sort.

Parents supposedly will do anything for their children. Parents will often do for their children what they won't do for themselves. Back at the clinic, we did see women who were able to give up drugs for the 9 months of a pregnancy. And most of them went right back to using after they delivered. Why? Because after they delivered they weren't (in their mind) harming anyone else anymore with their filthy habit and lost their motivation to stay clean. The only way to get them to stop again would be to get them pregnant again - a "solution" with enough pitfalls to make it not only immoral but impractical.

And we saw a sizable amount of women who couldn't give up the junk even for their unborn baby. I've seen people being given a choice between their addiction and their children choose their addiction. Without hesistation. You're dealing with a formidable force here.

And then there are, as we all know, people who DO give up tobacco. At least for awhile. How do they do that? We don't know - we'd sure like to, though, because there's a fortune to be made if you can bottle it and sell it! But an addiction program is considered successful if only 15% of the patients are still clean after 1 year. That's the best we have right now, with ANY program for ANY addiction - only 1 in 6 will still be off the poison after a year's time.

[Darth Wong]

Smokers might reduce their cigarette consumption due to price hikes, but that doesn't mean they'll quit. And if the price hikes become excessive they'll create a black market, and then you'll really be in trouble. It may also be that the smoking reduction is illlusory because of this black market. In Ontario we've tried hiking cigarette taxes, and while the government gets more revenue and there are lower cigarette sales on paper, it is entirely possible that contraband sales made overall sales hit or exceed their original level without being documented in the stats.

As for worker's compensation, I think you're using a false cause fallacy there. The workers don't necessarily take more risks because of workers' compensation; it may be that the company takes less care in rigorously training them for safety and aggressively disciplining workers for safety violations.

[Broomstick]

The recent thread on health care touched briefly on whether or not increasing or decreasing the monetary costs of things was valuable in encouraging or discouraging apparently self-destructive behavior (eg. smoking).

People seldom make desicions based solely on one factor. So economic incentives can a tool to discourage bad behavior, but it won't cure it in most cases.

Broomstick and others questioned the power of monetary cost incentives to operate on people who were apparently oblivious to the risks that they were running.

I think it's not so much that they're oblivious to the risks involved as they are weighting those risks differently than you would.

Let's look at tobacco addiction again. Tobacco addicts, in addition to feeding that habit, also need food, clothing, a place to live.... They have a finite amount of money. This money must pay for everything they need. It is entirely conceivable that a rise in tobacco prices might prompt economizing in all areas of life - less or less wonderful food, foregoing that new pair of shoes, and, oh yes, cutting back marginally on tobacco so they can still pay the rent or mortgage. These decisions do not take place in a vacuum, after all. It's no differed than a junkie deferring shooting up his heroin or smoking his crack for a half an hour to avoid arrest - something most of them are capable of doing in order to preserve their freedom to get more poison later on.

Compensation benefits also increased the rate of industrial accidents (the source is cited below). Again, it seems that if pain or death were to be considered ultimate disincentives, then such legislation could not have had this effect since someone must injure themselves on the job to take advantage of the benefits provided. Yet that's precisely what occurred, even when correcting for people who falsely claimed these benefits and for the increase in reporting of accidents (for example, by examing specifically forms of injury that cannot be "faked" and would always be reported as industrial accidents [eg. work-related amputations] regardless of the laws).

Again, be very skeptical of these sorts of reports.

Prior to worker's compensation laws, workers reporting injuries were frequently fired. This gave them an incentive to underreport and conceal injuries. So, yes, there was a spike in reported injuries after these laws went into effect, and reporting and tracking mechanisms were mandated by this legislation. Which might well have turned up a lot of accidents that prior to that time weren't noticed or delibrately concealed.

And yes, there probably ARE a certain number of derranged people who injure themselves hoping for a big settlement. And fraud exists.

However, over the past century injuries of all sorts in most industries have gone down - look at, say, the stats for mining deaths in 1900 vs. 2000. Or the stats for steel-making. Or any number of high-risk industries. How can you say injuries have increased under worker's compensation laws when there is all that evidence that injuries as a whole have gone down a couple orders of magnitude, at least in some of the highest risk areas? Again, you are talking about a very complex system and making sure you have "clean" data that actually compares apples to apples and not to oranges is a more difficult task than would first appear.

Why would a smoker not give a shit that they were jeopardizing their health and yet reduce their consumption when faced with a slight rate hike?

Let's us my mother as an example again.

First of all, I do believe my mother "gives a shit" that smoking has damaged her health. She doesn't like being frail. Unfortunately, she seems to love tobacco more than her own self.

Anyhow - if mom goes to the store with $10 and finds that, instead of the 5 packs of coffin-nails she expected to buy with that $10, the sawbuck now only buys her 4 packs... well, if all she's got at the moment is $10 she'll buy the four and go home bitching. She's "reduced" her consumption of tobacco only because she doesn't quite have enough incentive to pull a gun and rob the place of all the cigarettes (she also doesn't have a gun. Details.) But - if she had the extra $3 to get that additional pack... she'd pay $13 and buy the five she intended. I know this, because I've seen her do exactly that more than once over the years. So... did that "economic incentive" actually change anything? Nope. As soon as she gets the money together for pack #5 she'll go out and buy it.

My only explanation is admittedly somewhat unsatisfactory: that people do not wish to be injured, but that this is insufficient in and of itself to absolutely discourage injury-related behaviors. People, instead, estimate (correctly or not) their risks of injury and the associated disutility that they would suffer if injured, and then minimize the disutility perceived by taking precautions such that the disutility of having to take the precautions and the disutility of the injury (after being corrected for the mental risk estimate) is minimized. This also explains, incidentally, why people who smoke or take other serious health risks may still exhibit behaviors designed to improve their health (eg. exercising). People thus retain their utility-optimizing decision-making structure, and so they do respond to typical economic incentives and disincentives.

But it's not just economic incentives at work here, and that's where your reasoning is most flawed.

Let's get away from tobacco for bit and discuss other optional behaviors that involve risk. Hell, let's use me as an example, why not?

It's no secret that I fly airplanes. Why the hell do I do that? I certainly don't want to die in a firey crash, don't want to be horrifically burned, or having body parts lopped off. Don't want to see anyone else killed, either, for that matter. Icky-POO!.

So why the hell do I fly primative, geriatric airplanes nearly every weekend, thereby GREATLY increasing my risk of dying in an airplane accident? This isn't as safe as the airlines.

There are certainly economic DISincentives at work here. It's a minimum of $70 an hour. I've paid up to four times that rate. I've been known to travel 70 or 100 miles - two hours driving - just to get to a particular airplane I want to fly. Four hours on the road for an hour in the air. Add in cost of autogas, wear and tear on the car, and my time. For the amount of money I've spent on flying I could have paid cash for a house. Put together a kick-ass retirement fund. I could have done a lot of things with that money, but I spent it on airplanes.

There there are all the other aggravations - rules and regs, being subjected to a government medical exam every two years, surrending my privacy in regards to medical records and driving records.

Not to mention that significant parts of society disapprove this activity altogether.

Why the FUCK do I put up with all this? I am risking death or injury, fighing enormous economic disincentives, personal incovenience, loss of privacy, and a certain amount of social hostility. Am I crazy or what???

Here's the answer: the pleasure I derieve from flying is so great that the benefits I perceive from flying exceeds the total of the negatives against it.

Now - you may disagree with that particular cost-benefit analysis. (You certainly wouldn't be the first). But you're not making the decision. I am.

And that, really, is at the heart of why people make "bad" decisions over the long term. Their perceived benefit outweighs their perceived loss. And don't forget for a moment that emotions come into play here, because people are NOT logical in most of their decisions.

What does smoking give my mother? Other than emphysema, of course (which it has). It calms her down, it reassures her, as a stimulant it perhaps makes her feel as if her thinking is clearer and she's more awake, it keeps those nasty withdrawal symptoms at bay, and, God help us, maybe she's even learned to like the taste! {{{shudder}}}} Now, that wouldn't be enough to convince ME to start, much less continue with that addiction but for her... well, gosh, when you get down to it, there really aren't any other reasons, are there? Well, OK, there's looking "cool" or losing weight I suppose, but mom has never expressed those motivations to me. Anyhow, she rates those benefits in excess of the negatives. Now that she's into heavy-duty negatives, like coughing tar out of her lungs every morning, she rationalizes that the damage is done and quitting won't improve her health or prolong her life at this point - so why give up the little pleasure it gives her?

And that, really, is why people engage in risky behavior. They get something out of it that, in their minds, outweighs the negatives they perceive (there may well be negatives of which they are unaware). Why do firefighters rush into burning buildings at risk to themselves? Well, yeah, they get paid for it - except we do have volunteer firefighters, why do they do it? But even in the case of the paid firefighters, there are lots and lots of people who wouldn't run into a burning building if you offered them a million dollars AND put a gun to their heads. Firefighters engage in highly risky activities as their job - and we call them heros. Because society as a whole benefits from the fact there are folks willing to take on those risks. Firefighters tend to be people who, above and beyond any pay they receive, get something else out of the job - excitement, status, free beer and laid by chicks - whatever. Even some that are burned or badly injured on the job will go back to firefighting if they are able to do so - can't say they're "oblivious" to the negatives in that case, yet they do it anyway.

Well, if a guy is willing to run into a burning building, should we be surprised if he smokes tobacco, too?

Humans, as a group, are actually pretty sucky at evaluating risks in a logical manner. This isn't always a bad thing - we DO need firefighters, after all - but it makes us suspectible to bad decisions and bad choices, including addictions.

As to why a smoker would do something to maximize his health otherwise - eat right, exercise, whatever - well... Yes, I'm going to resort to another aviation metaphor. Here it is: if you ask someone, if they fell out of an airplane while wearing a parachute, why would you pull the ripcord there are only two answers. One is found in the general public, one among skydivers. Here they are:

General public: I'll pull the ripcord because I don't want to die, I want to live.

Skydiver: I'll pull the ripcord so I can jump out of the airplane again, I want to freefall again.

I'll maximize my health so I can live longer. A smoker maximize his health so he can smoke longer.

[brianeyci]

Some people just don't think. They use their instinct or habit to think for them. People make decisions that are bad for them in the long term because they aren't thinking of the long term... they are thinking of the now, how much pleasure they can get right now regardless of the pain later.

Brian

[Gil Hamilton]

I'm sure that these are true, but why would smokers respond so powerfully to fairly small price changes if they are incapable of quitting for health reasons or only to avoid long-term serious health consequences?

Because smokes are pretty damn expensive. If you raise the price of a pack of cigs by 10%, people aren't going to be able to afford to buy a case whenever they feel like it, because no one likes dishing out a small stack of bills like that. They'll smoke less to conserve more and simply buy less cigs over all, or they'll pick up a loosy or something. Plus, as has been pointed out, the price might be dissuading people who don't smoke as much and thus aren't going to jones so bad.

I suppose, but this still doesn't explain why they respond to small price changes. If quitting smoking is so difficult, why are they so ready to cut back on their smoking? A ten percent increase in the cost of cigarrettes is not even a dollar per pack, yet smokers are willing to cut back on their dependency in response to this. Also, other people have been shown to respond to monetary incentives in such a way that they get injured more often following workers' compensation laws.

Because people like money and tend to value it more than long term health, I think. It may not be a more than dollar a pack extra, but you've got to figure that not even a dollar will add up significantly for a real nicotine junky. Plus, people tend to really want to quit, and making the price higher and providing monetary benefits gives them someone immediate to help them.

Yet they're willing to reduce their intake of tobacco by 4% in response to an increase in the cost of just 10%. I don't know what it costs to smoke, these days, but I'm guessing that a 10% increase does not constitute a substantial fraction of an average consumer's annual budget. Why, if smoking is so difficult, are smokers so seemingly ready to respond to economic incentives to quit?

Because the 10% increase adds up when you are buying smokes by the case. I don't smoke, so I can't give you an exact figure, but a box of cancers is not cheap and people who smoke heavily won't have a problem going through that in short order.

[Master of Ossus]

Master of Ossus, I think part of your problem is in considering smokers (let's say "nicotine addicts") as a homogenous group. They aren't.

Look, I haven't done that.

Sure, a 10% price increase resulted in a 4% reduction in tobacco use... but surely that was an average reduction?

Uh... yes. It was the bloody industry-reported change in tobacco use.

Go back to the original source of the study. I suspect you'll find that some changed their habits not at all, and some reduced far more than 4%. Monetary incentives will work on some people. It won't work on all. Learn to be VERY critical of "results" of studies of any sort.

The distinction you are drawing does not substantively change the study, and nothing I have written has suggested that all smokers uniformly reduce their consumption of tobacco in response to an identical tax (which would be an incredible finding).

[snip bit about parents]

First of all, I reject the hypothesis that parents will do anything for their children, but I also fail to see how any of this is relevant.

And then there are, as we all know, people who DO give up tobacco. At least for awhile. How do they do that? We don't know - we'd sure like to, though, because there's a fortune to be made if you can bottle it and sell it! But an addiction program is considered successful if only 15% of the patients are still clean after 1 year. That's the best we have right now, with ANY program for ANY addiction - only 1 in 6 will still be off the poison after a year's time.

Okay. And, yet, the total consumption of tobacco products is drops with even small increases in the price of said products.

[Master of Ossus]

Smokers might reduce their cigarette consumption due to price hikes, but that doesn't mean they'll quit.

Nonetheless, tobacco that would be used is no longer being used because of even small increases in the price.

Edit: Put another way: there are people for which the ordinary risks and costs of smoking are insufficient do dissuade their use of tobacco, but who are dissuaded by slight increases in the monetary costs of smoking. I am not trying to make a statement that one particular group of smokers is going to quit entirely, nor am I trying to even say that one particular group will reduce their consumption. It is sufficient for my hypothesis that there be some people for whom the additional cost of smoking is a sufficient deterrant to get them to alter their behavior by cutting back on their tobacco use.

And if the price hikes become excessive they'll create a black market, and then you'll really be in trouble. It may also be that the smoking reduction is illlusory because of this black market.

That's possible, but somewhat unlikely given that the price change is fairly small, although if the price were to change radically (say, tripling or quadrupling), then the black market would become a real concern.

In Ontario we've tried hiking cigarette taxes, and while the government gets more revenue and there are lower cigarette sales on paper, it is entirely possible that contraband sales made overall sales hit or exceed their original level without being documented in the stats.

That's true, but it asks the question of where the contraband tobacco is coming from. If it's coming from neighboring states or provinces, then that should also show up by the time it reaches the tobacco industry. If they're home-growing the stuff (which I suppose is possible), then in that case such activities would contribute to these statistics. Frankly, though, cutting my consumption of something seems to present a vastly smaller lifestyle change than beginning to grow something else in my garden.

As for worker's compensation, I think you're using a false cause fallacy there. The workers don't necessarily take more risks because of workers' compensation; it may be that the company takes less care in rigorously training them for safety and aggressively disciplining workers for safety violations.

I suppose that's true, but I also don't understand why a company would cut down on its safety training because of worker's compensation programs. If anything, the fact that workers no longer had to demonstrate someone else was at fault would make injuries even more costly to the company.

[Master of Ossus]

People seldom make desicions based solely on one factor. So economic incentives can a tool to discourage bad behavior, but it won't cure it in most cases.

Nor does this thread require the behavior to entirely disappear. It is simply pointing out that people are discouraged by economic motivations when the risk of death is apparently insufficient to dissuade them from an activitiy has an impact on their lives, and comes to the conclusion that people view risk of death as having a finite disutility associated with it.

I think it's not so much that they're oblivious to the risks involved as they are weighting those risks differently than you would.

I have no doubt, but this does not refute the proposed explanation that I advanced in the OP.

Let's look at tobacco addiction again. Tobacco addicts, in addition to feeding that habit, also need food, clothing, a place to live.... They have a finite amount of money. This money must pay for everything they need. It is entirely conceivable that a rise in tobacco prices might prompt economizing in all areas of life - less or less wonderful food, foregoing that new pair of shoes, and, oh yes, cutting back marginally on tobacco so they can still pay the rent or mortgage. These decisions do not take place in a vacuum, after all. It's no differed than a junkie deferring shooting up his heroin or smoking his crack for a half an hour to avoid arrest - something most of them are capable of doing in order to preserve their freedom to get more poison later on.

I have no idea why this is relevant to the thread. Tobacco users are almost certainly less economically well off after price increases than they were, prior to the change. This does not substantively change the fact that workers view risk of death or injury as having finite disutility.

Again, be very skeptical of these sorts of reports.

Prior to worker's compensation laws, workers reporting injuries were frequently fired. This gave them an incentive to underreport and conceal injuries. So, yes, there was a spike in reported injuries after these laws went into effect, and reporting and tracking mechanisms were mandated by this legislation. Which might well have turned up a lot of accidents that prior to that time weren't noticed or delibrately concealed.

Did you even read what I posted, which specifically advances methods that were used to mitigate the effect of this underreporting?

And yes, there probably ARE a certain number of derranged people who injure themselves hoping for a big settlement. And fraud exists.

However, over the past century injuries of all sorts in most industries have gone down - look at, say, the stats for mining deaths in 1900 vs. 2000. Or the stats for steel-making. Or any number of high-risk industries. How can you say injuries have increased under worker's compensation laws when there is all that evidence that injuries as a whole have gone down a couple orders of magnitude, at least in some of the highest risk areas?

Because states enacted worker's compensation programs at slightly different times, allowing the effects of these measures to be isolated using statistical methods.

Again, you are talking about a very complex system and making sure you have "clean" data that actually compares apples to apples and not to oranges is a more difficult task than would first appear.

Yes, which is why studies have to be done so carefully. Look, the NBER, which is responsible for providing economic analysis for the United States, has considered it a fact that worker's compensation programs had the unintended effect of increasing workplace injuries at least since they received the statistical tools to be able to do such surveys. It does not refute this work to point out that it's difficult to do.

Let's us my mother as an example again.

First of all, I do believe my mother "gives a shit" that smoking has damaged her health. She doesn't like being frail. Unfortunately, she seems to love tobacco more than her own self.

In other words, you have reached the same conclusion that I have:

The disutility of death and serious injury is viewed as being finite.

Anyhow - if mom goes to the store with $10 and finds that, instead of the 5 packs of coffin-nails she expected to buy with that $10, the sawbuck now only buys her 4 packs... well, if all she's got at the moment is $10 she'll buy the four and go home bitching. She's "reduced" her consumption of tobacco only because she doesn't quite have enough incentive to pull a gun and rob the place of all the cigarettes (she also doesn't have a gun. Details.) But - if she had the extra $3 to get that additional pack... she'd pay $13 and buy the five she intended. I know this, because I've seen her do exactly that more than once over the years. So... did that "economic incentive" actually change anything? Nope. As soon as she gets the money together for pack #5 she'll go out and buy it.

Your mother, then, would not be among the group of smokers that reduced their consumption of tobacco because she would presumably purchase the same amount over time, and her only limitation was that she was liquidity-constrained at a particular point in time.

This does not refute the idea that some people who smoke (and do not seem concerned enough about the health risks that it presents) do in fact cut their consumption of tobacco as a result of price changes.

But it's not just economic incentives at work here, and that's where your reasoning is most flawed.

Let's get away from tobacco for bit and discuss other optional behaviors that involve risk. Hell, let's use me as an example, why not?

It's no secret that I fly airplanes. [snip all those terrible costs]

Why the FUCK do I put up with all this? I am risking death or injury, fighing enormous economic disincentives, personal incovenience, loss of privacy, and a certain amount of social hostility. Am I crazy or what???

Here's the answer: the pleasure I derieve from flying is so great that the benefits I perceive from flying exceeds the total of the negatives against it.

Broomstick, I realize that people have hobbies. Economics realizes that people have hobbies. None of this substantively changes the thread, or the argument that I advanced in the OP.

Now - you may disagree with that particular cost-benefit analysis. (You certainly wouldn't be the first). But you're not making the decision. I am.

And that, really, is at the heart of why people make "bad" decisions over the long term. Their perceived benefit outweighs their perceived loss.

This, in fact, is necessary for my argument in the OP.

And don't forget for a moment that emotions come into play here, because people are NOT logical in most of their decisions.

This does not at all affect my argument, nor is it some grand secret or something that I have not considered.

What does smoking give my mother? Other than emphysema, of course (which it has). It calms her down, it reassures her, as a stimulant it perhaps makes her feel as if her thinking is clearer and she's more awake, it keeps those nasty withdrawal symptoms at bay, and, God help us, maybe she's even learned to like the taste! {{{shudder}}}} Now, that wouldn't be enough to convince ME to start, much less continue with that addiction but for her... well, gosh, when you get down to it, there really aren't any other reasons, are there? Well, OK, there's looking "cool" or losing weight I suppose, but mom has never expressed those motivations to me. Anyhow, she rates those benefits in excess of the negatives. Now that she's into heavy-duty negatives, like coughing tar out of her lungs every morning, she rationalizes that the damage is done and quitting won't improve her health or prolong her life at this point - so why give up the little pleasure it gives her?

And that, really, is why people engage in risky behavior. They get something out of it that, in their minds, outweighs the negatives they perceive (there may well be negatives of which they are unaware).

This is necessary for my argument in the OP. Again, I haven't missed anything here that you've been pointing out.

Why do firefighters rush into burning buildings at risk to themselves? Well, yeah, they get paid for it - except we do have volunteer firefighters, why do they do it? But even in the case of the paid firefighters, there are lots and lots of people who wouldn't run into a burning building if you offered them a million dollars AND put a gun to their heads. Firefighters engage in highly risky activities as their job - and we call them heros. Because society as a whole benefits from the fact there are folks willing to take on those risks. Firefighters tend to be people who, above and beyond any pay they receive, get something else out of the job - excitement, status, free beer and laid by chicks - whatever. Even some that are burned or badly injured on the job will go back to firefighting if they are able to do so - can't say they're "oblivious" to the negatives in that case, yet they do it anyway.

This example can easily be explained using the hypothesis that I presented in the OP.

Broomstick, I can't help but get the feeling that you feel that these things your saying are a refutation of my argument, but nothing you've said so far is something that I have not considered (with the exception of specific examples which do nothing to refute the overall hypothesis that I proposed).

Well, if a guy is willing to run into a burning building, should we be surprised if he smokes tobacco, too?

Actually, I would be.

Humans, as a group, are actually pretty sucky at evaluating risks in a logical manner. This isn't always a bad thing - we DO need firefighters, after all - but it makes us suspectible to bad decisions and bad choices, including addictions.

Regardless of how you logically believe that people should evaluate risks, the observed behavior of people indicates that they treat death and serious injury as if they had finite disutility costs associated with them. I would argue, actually, that this makes some amount of sense, but regardless of how I think that people should evaluate such risks, the facts seem to indicate that this is how people view death and serious injury.

[Surlethe]

Master of Ossus, am I correctly summarizing the conclusion your initial post as follows?

"Because humans, in general, lack rational foresight, when planning, they inflate monetary incentives and deflate painful disincentives."

[Master of Ossus]

Master of Ossus, am I correctly summarizing the conclusion your initial post as follows?

"Because humans, in general, lack rational foresight, when planning, they inflate monetary incentives and deflate painful disincentives."

Not at all. My conclusion is not to deride or cheer the motives that people have, but rather to identify the causes necessary for people to respond in the observed way. I think it dumb of people in real life when they assume that death presents infinite disutility, but even if I did not share that belief it seems to me to be demonstrable that other people respond to incentives as if death and injury had finite disutility (despite what personal injury lawyers would have you believe), and thus that they can be made willing to risk such things for sufficient rewards.

It is a factual statement that people seem to respond to monetary incentives and disincentives, and that this is true even in cases where responding or not responding to such incentives presents physical danger of injury or death. My conclusion is thus that people view the disutility of injury or death as being finite, and respond as if it were so, even though many people claim to view death as an infinitely damaging penalty or claim that people will avoid physical injury at virtually any cost. The latter views are not borne out by the evidence.

[Darth Wong]

I think the point Broomstick made earlier is still a valid one: even a tobacco junkie has only a limited amount of money available for his habit, so he may have no choice but to curtail his habit if the prices go up. As much as he may love cigarettes, his need to pay the mortgage and put gas in the car probably takes precedence.

I would suspect that a filthy rich person, on the other hand, would exhibit no particular tendency to reduce his consumption of cigarettes after a price hike.

[Master of Ossus]

I think the point Broomstick made earlier is still a valid one: even a tobacco junkie has only a limited amount of money available for his habit, so he may have no choice but to curtail his habit if the prices go up. As much as he may love cigarettes, his need to pay the mortgage and put gas in the car probably takes precedence.

I would suspect that a filthy rich person, on the other hand, would exhibit no particular tendency to reduce his consumption of cigarettes after a price hike.

The study cited did mention that the effects of price hikes was most prevalent in the young and the poor (who clearly have less ability to pay for such price hikes). This, though, does not invalidate the mechanism. Realistically, price rises place more of a burden on such groups such that their standard of living would decline more as a result of the payments, but this is still a statement that they value their mortgage and their gas more highly than they do their cigarettes, even though the gas certainly is a mere luxory in the sense that one would survive without it.

[Broomstick]

Master of Ossus, I think part of your problem is in considering smokers (let's say "nicotine addicts") as a homogenous group. They aren't.

Look, I haven't done that.

Then express yourself in a manner indicative of that.

Go back to the original source of the study. I suspect you'll find that some changed their habits not at all, and some reduced far more than 4%. Monetary incentives will work on some people. It won't work on all. Learn to be VERY critical of "results" of studies of any sort.

The distinction you are drawing does not substantively change the study, and nothing I have written has suggested that all smokers uniformly reduce their consumption of tobacco in response to an identical tax (which would be an incredible finding).

Yes, it IS an important distinction. Does that 4% drop result from a very few smokers giving the habbit up entirely, with the rest unchanged, or is it a matter that ALL of them (or a substantial majority of them) decrease usage (with the amount of decrease varying)?

Why is that important? Because if a "sin tax" tends to drive down usage in ALL users it may have social utility in discouraging bad habits. If it only prompts a very few to quit and doesn't significantly impact behavior in the rest of the group then it is not useful in discouraging use. Perhaps then it may be justified as a way to pay for societal costs of such usage, but the increase financial burden will not make significant numbers of people cease abusing tobacco.

[snip bit about parents]

First of all, I reject the hypothesis that parents will do anything for their children, but I also fail to see how any of this is relevant.

The "parents will do anything for their children" is an extreme view, but parents WILL tend to do things for their kids they wouldn't do for anyone else, sometimes including themselves. That's the first part of the point. The second point is that it is one sign of an addiction when a part will chose the Bad Habit over the kids.

[Master of Ossus]

Then express yourself in a manner indicative of that.

Where I have done otherwise? I have merely pointed out that tobacco useage drops when the price rises.

Yes, it IS an important distinction. Does that 4% drop result from a very few smokers giving the habbit up entirely, with the rest unchanged, or is it a matter that ALL of them (or a substantial majority of them) decrease usage (with the amount of decrease varying)?

Why is that important? Because if a "sin tax" tends to drive down usage in ALL users it may have social utility in discouraging bad habits. If it only prompts a very few to quit and doesn't significantly impact behavior in the rest of the group then it is not useful in discouraging use.

Except for the fact that you got a number of peopel to entirely give up the habit, who would otherwise continue with it. Both are useful goals, although you can argue about which one is more desirable.

Perhaps then it may be justified as a way to pay for societal costs of such usage, but the increase financial burden will not make significant numbers of people cease abusing tobacco.

I don't care if it actually gets some people to quit and has no effect on others or if it affects everyone but gets no one to quit. That is irrelevant to the fact that tobacco users (or whoever) have collectively responded to the rise in price.

The "parents will do anything for their children" is an extreme view, but parents WILL tend to do things for their kids they wouldn't do for anyone else, sometimes including themselves. That's the first part of the point. The second point is that it is one sign of an addiction when a part will chose the Bad Habit over the kids.

I'm sure that some people are more addicted to things than others and that their problems are even more serious than those of others. This in no way changes the fact that people who engage in bad habits can be collectively dissuaded from doing those things with monetary incentives, and that fairly small amounts of money succeed in dissuading or diminishing behavior even when the fear of death or serious injury should play the same role.

[Broomstick]

And if the price hikes become excessive they'll create a black market, and then you'll really be in trouble. It may also be that the smoking reduction is illlusory because of this black market.

That's possible, but somewhat unlikely given that the price change is fairly small, although if the price were to change radically (say, tripling or quadrupling), then the black market would become a real concern.

There's already a black market for tobacco, at least there is in the American Midwest

In Ontario we've tried hiking cigarette taxes, and while the government gets more revenue and there are lower cigarette sales on paper, it is entirely possible that contraband sales made overall sales hit or exceed their original level without being documented in the stats.

That's true, but it asks the question of where the contraband tobacco is coming from. If it's coming from neighboring states or provinces, then that should also show up by the time it reaches the tobacco industry.

Some of it is being smuggled in from states with lower prices into state with higher - but a substantial amount is obtained through out-and-out theft of semi-trailer loads of cigarettes.

If they're home-growing the stuff (which I suppose is possible), then in that case such activities would contribute to these statistics.

I believe it is still perfectly legal to grow tobacco for your own consumptions in your own backyard - it's selling it that's the issue.

Frankly, though, cutting my consumption of something seems to present a vastly smaller lifestyle change than beginning to grow something else in my garden.

Tobacco's pretty easy - doesn't take that much space, it's hardy, being native to North America, and that nicotine in it acts as a natural pesticide so not a lot of things will eat at it. Not only is it grown commercially out where my in-laws live, but a certain number of folks grow their own.

If you happened to be a gardening enthusiast it wouldn't be that big a deal.

---I also don't understand why a company would cut down on its safety training because of worker's compensation programs. If anything, the fact that workers no longer had to demonstrate someone else was at fault would make injuries even more costly to the company.

The people running a company don't always make decisions that are rational and logical longterm. So upper management might cut training programs to save money in 2002 with the result that in 2004 (as random examples) accident rates start going up as workers forget, get complacent, get careless, and new untrained workers are hired.

[Broomstick]

People seldom make desicions based solely on one factor. So economic incentives can a tool to discourage bad behavior, but it won't cure it in most cases.

Nor does this thread require the behavior to entirely disappear. It is simply pointing out that people are discouraged by economic motivations when the risk of death is apparently insufficient to dissuade them from an activitiy has an impact on their lives, and comes to the conclusion that people view risk of death as having a finite disutility associated with it.

I think you need to qualify "people" with a modifier like "some". The way you are phrasing it can be read as "all people" or "most people" or "a lot of people". It's ambiguous, and that's why you're irritating some people here. It's not a lot of people, but it's a significant number of people.

There's a difference between saying people are discouraged by economic motivations when the risk of death is apparently insufficient and SOME people are discouraged by economic motivations when the risk of death is apparently insufficient . The first implies a general state and the second makes it clear that some but not all people meet this condition. I think you mean the latter, but since you keep saying the former your meaning is not as clear as it could be.

Let's look at tobacco addiction again. Tobacco addicts, in addition to feeding that habit, also need food, clothing, a place to live.... They have a finite amount of money. This money must pay for everything they need. It is entirely conceivable that a rise in tobacco prices might prompt economizing in all areas of life - less or less wonderful food, foregoing that new pair of shoes, and, oh yes, cutting back marginally on tobacco so they can still pay the rent or mortgage. These decisions do not take place in a vacuum, after all. It's no differed than a junkie deferring shooting up his heroin or smoking his crack for a half an hour to avoid arrest - something most of them are capable of doing in order to preserve their freedom to get more poison later on.

I have no idea why this is relevant to the thread. Tobacco users are almost certainly less economically well off after price increases than they were, prior to the change. This does not substantively change the fact that workers view risk of death or injury as having finite disutility.

If, hypothetically, Bill Gates is a smoker (I have no idea if he is or not), and you double the price of cigarettes he won't even notice. In real terms, it would make absolutely no difference to him, give the financial resources he controls. To a single mother of five kids earning minimum wage it would be a catrstrophe.

The same absolute change in price will have different relative impacts on different segments of society.

Again, be very skeptical of these sorts of reports.

Prior to worker's compensation laws, workers reporting injuries were frequently fired. This gave them an incentive to underreport and conceal injuries. So, yes, there was a spike in reported injuries after these laws went into effect, and reporting and tracking mechanisms were mandated by this legislation. Which might well have turned up a lot of accidents that prior to that time weren't noticed or delibrately concealed.

Did you even read what I posted, which specifically advances methods that were used to mitigate the effect of this underreporting?

That sort of analysis is part of the bread and butter where I work, so I am famillar with the sort of things involved. How well were those analyses performed? What statistical methods were employed? How skillful was that "mitigation" of underreporting? Was there any possibility of bias on the part of the people preparing that report? Any potential conflicts of interest that might have influenced them? Are there any other, independent sources confirming the findings of this report?

Because states enacted worker's compensation programs at slightly different times, allowing the effects of these measures to be isolated using statistical methods.

So... how do you compare Alaska crab-fishing to Gulf Coast shrimp-boating?

The different states are, indeed, different. You must compensate for those differences, which would include environment, education, culture, and language - for instance, does the fact that in the US Southwest Spanish is a primary language for millions of people have any affect on safety? Does have a work force speaking two languages - Spanish and English - impact safety in any way? Are there communication difficulties between workers? This wouldn't be a factor in, say, Minnesota where English almost universal. But maybe accidents increase in Minnesota winters, due to factors that aren't present in Florida, where accidents due to alligators are more common than elsewhere.

Again, you are talking about a very complex system and making sure you have "clean" data that actually compares apples to apples and not to oranges is a more difficult task than would first appear.

Yes, which is why studies have to be done so carefully. Look, the NBER, which is responsible for providing economic analysis for the United States, has considered it a fact that worker's compensation programs had the unintended effect of increasing workplace injuries at least since they received the statistical tools to be able to do such surveys. It does not refute this work to point out that it's difficult to do.

No, it doesn't - but if the work was done well then it can survive scrutiny. You presented the report, you must defend it's integrity as evidence in this forum. Is this the only report showing such a result, or one of several?

Let's us my mother as an example again.

First of all, I do believe my mother "gives a shit" that smoking has damaged her health. She doesn't like being frail. Unfortunately, she seems to love tobacco more than her own self.

In other words, you have reached the same conclusion that I have:

The disutility of death and serious injury is viewed as being finite.

I think you're attributing a far more rational decision-making process than actually occurred here. She didn't sit down and rationally weigh the pros and cons. She wants it badly enough that no matter how bad it gets she'll rationalize away the cons and emphasize the benefits. She will attempt to alter reality to fit her addiction. There was never a "conclusion" to reach. It's like "concluding" you need to eat. The drive to consume is there, no intellect involved.

Your mother, then, would not be among the group of smokers that reduced their consumption of tobacco because she would presumably purchase the same amount over time, and her only limitation was that she was liquidity-constrained at a particular point in time.

That is correct. In fact, if the inability to get the amount of tobacco she wants at one time is stressful enough, she'll actually buy MORE and start stockpiling (I've seen her do that, too).

Perhaps you do not find the proportion of tobacco-usage-reducers vs. the no-change group to be significant. I do.

But it's not just economic incentives at work here, and that's where your reasoning is most flawed.

Let's get away from tobacco for bit and discuss other optional behaviors that involve risk. Hell, let's use me as an example, why not?

It's no secret that I fly airplanes. [snip all those terrible costs]

Why the FUCK do I put up with all this? I am risking death or injury, fighing enormous economic disincentives, personal incovenience, loss of privacy, and a certain amount of social hostility. Am I crazy or what???

Here's the answer: the pleasure I derieve from flying is so great that the benefits I perceive from flying exceeds the total of the negatives against it.

Broomstick, I realize that people have hobbies. Economics realizes that people have hobbies. None of this substantively changes the thread, or the argument that I advanced in the OP.

We are discussing activities that can increase disability and death and shorten the lifespan, and why economic incentives will work sometimes when the threat of death does not.

My flying is entirely relevant to that - it is, in fact, easier to purchase life insurance for someone who smokes than for a pilot. That should tell you something about the risks involved.

Death will not deter my desire to fly. I've seen accidents. I've helped clean up after accidents. I've been to a number of funerals as a result of this sort of thing. I don't do it as a fancy means of suicide, I'm as careful as I can be, but the fact is I'm running a real risk every time I go out to the airport.

Finances will deter me because if I haven't got the money to pay for the airplanes I rent no one will hand me the keys. It's not being alive or dead that grants me access, it's money. So if you raise the price of flying I will do less because I will have less access.

Likewise, for most tobacco addict it's money that grants access. If you raise prices they have less access to their vice. The higher up the economic ladder, though, the less impact a price rise will have. (And if the price is high enough, a certain number of people will resort to theft.)

A drop induced by economics is temporary at best - if the prices drops (through actual price reduction or the rise of a black market) usage will rebound to former levels. You haven't cured the underlying problem, you've only addressed the symptom.

Well, if a guy is willing to run into a burning building, should we be surprised if he smokes tobacco, too?

Actually, I would be.

And why would that be surprising? A firefighter is clearly someone with a higher than normal tolerance for risks.

Link: http://www.hon.ch/News/HSN/508791.html

Smoking Up Among Firefighters Since 9/11
NYC fire department running free smoking cessation course
By Ross Grant
HealthScoutNews Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 11 (HealthScoutNews) -- Martin Merrick, a 56-year-old New York City firefighter, has been smoking cigarettes since his early teens, but in all those years his strongest urge to smoke came right after the attacks on the World Trade Center.

In the city's tightly knit team of firefighters, Merrick knew 83 of the 343 firefighters who died in the disaster.

"My smoking went up. I'm sure of it," he says nearly a year later. "You don't realize it at first because you're busy, but then it hits you. I talked to another firefighter I know, and he said he started smoking like crazy after September."

The two men aren't alone. To deal with the stress and grief following the terrorist attacks, 29 percent of the smokers in the 11,000-person Fire Department of New York City admitted smoking more cigarettes; 23 percent of the ex-smokers said they had started again, according to data collected by the department's medical office.

The figures dovetail with estimates released this week by the New York City Department of Health that 75,000 people may have taken up the habit for the first time as a result of 9/11.

The disturbing trend didn't stop at the city line. Another survey found21 percent of smokers increased their smoking in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. One percent of nonsmokers started smoking and 3 percent of drinkers increased their alcohol intake, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, among the firefighters, who are often exposed to carcinogens that can become much more damaging when coupled with smoking, the risks are extreme, says Dr. David J. Prezant, the fire department's deputy medical officer.

There's a significant number of firefighters who smoke, even though their occupation puts them at even greater risk of health problems from smoking than the average person.

[Master of Ossus]

I think you need to qualify "people" with a modifier like "some". The way you are phrasing it can be read as "all people" or "most people" or "a lot of people". It's ambiguous, and that's why you're irritating some people here. It's not a lot of people, but it's a significant number of people.

There's a difference between saying people are discouraged by economic motivations when the risk of death is apparently insufficient and SOME people are discouraged by economic motivations when the risk of death is apparently insufficient . The first implies a general state and the second makes it clear that some but not all people meet this condition. I think you mean the latter, but since you keep saying the former your meaning is not as clear as it could be.

Throughout this thread, I have been describing the aggregate population of all smokers, and the effects that a price rise in tobacco products has on them. I don't care whether this figure represents a very small minority of them quitting entirely as a result of the price rise, or a very large portion of the population cutting back on their consumption of tobacco slightly. Either case supports my conclusion that they respond to a monetary incentive even when they would not ordinarily respond to the risk of death.

If, hypothetically, Bill Gates is a smoker (I have no idea if he is or not), and you double the price of cigarettes he won't even notice. In real terms, it would make absolutely no difference to him, give the financial resources he controls. To a single mother of five kids earning minimum wage it would be a catrstrophe.

The same absolute change in price will have different relative impacts on different segments of society.

Right. That's a well-understood economic principle and is specifically mentioned in the study on tobacco prices that I linked to. I have no idea how this substantively changes the conclusion, though, that the disutility of pain or death is treated as if it were finite.

That sort of analysis is part of the bread and butter where I work, so I am famillar with the sort of things involved. How well were those analyses performed? What statistical methods were employed? How skillful was that "mitigation" of underreporting? Was there any possibility of bias on the part of the people preparing that report? Any potential conflicts of interest that might have influenced them? Are there any other, independent sources confirming the findings of this report?

I have provided you with what I believe to be a fair citation that you can use to evaluate the study that I have referenced. If you require additional information about where the article is from, then by all means ask and I will attempt to find the relevant information for you. I can, though, say that the study had sufficient integrity to be reviewed and to survive the NBER's pre-publication process and was a study that was performed by the NBER.

So... how do you compare Alaska crab-fishing to Gulf Coast shrimp-boating?

Why would you need to do so for the purposes of a study on worker's compensation effects?

The different states are, indeed, different. You must compensate for those differences, which would include environment, education, culture, and language - for instance, does the fact that in the US Southwest Spanish is a primary language for millions of people have any affect on safety? Does have a work force speaking two languages - Spanish and English - impact safety in any way? Are there communication difficulties between workers? This wouldn't be a factor in, say, Minnesota where English almost universal. But maybe accidents increase in Minnesota winters, due to factors that aren't present in Florida, where accidents due to alligators are more common than elsewhere.

Are you sure that you work with such studies? None of this is necessary because you can quantify the changes that occurred within a single state and then apply that to all of the states as they changed their worker's compensation laws. No one needs to compare across state or cultural bounds for such studies because they can use information from each state and then aggregate those to determine the statistical significance of the results.

No, it doesn't - but if the work was done well then it can survive scrutiny. You presented the report, you must defend it's integrity as evidence in this forum. Is this the only report showing such a result, or one of several?

It is the NBER's summary report of a series of studies that were all done on the same field, and which are clearly described in the report. Again, if you are having difficulty accessing the report then please tell me what you will need in order to find it.

In other words, you have reached the same conclusion that I have:

The disutility of death and serious injury is viewed as being finite.

I think you're attributing a far more rational decision-making process than actually occurred here. She didn't sit down and rationally weigh the pros and cons. She wants it badly enough that no matter how bad it gets she'll rationalize away the cons and emphasize the benefits. She will attempt to alter reality to fit her addiction. There was never a "conclusion" to reach. It's like "concluding" you need to eat. The drive to consume is there, no intellect involved.

It doesn't matter because she is behaving in a way that is consistent with the view that the disutility of death is finite. It doesn't matter if she sits there and puzzles 'til her puzzler is sore. It doesn't matter if she's coming to a completely rational decision that she can use as the basis for future choices. What matters in this case is her behavior, and I would contend that it is consistent with the view that I have suggested: people behave as if the disutility of pain and death is finite. No value judgement is strictly necessary, here, although I personally feel this to be a reasonable belief.

That is correct. In fact, if the inability to get the amount of tobacco she wants at one time is stressful enough, she'll actually buy MORE and start stockpiling (I've seen her do that, too).

Perhaps you do not find the proportion of tobacco-usage-reducers vs. the no-change group to be significant. I do.

For my purposes it is irrelevant. I have no idea what purpose you are attempting to address in this thread, but in terms of addressing my hypothesis it is irrelevant.

We are discussing activities that can increase disability and death and shorten the lifespan, and why economic incentives will work sometimes when the threat of death does not.

My flying is entirely relevant to that - it is, in fact, easier to purchase life insurance for someone who smokes than for a pilot. That should tell you something about the risks involved.

Death will not deter my desire to fly. I've seen accidents. I've helped clean up after accidents. I've been to a number of funerals as a result of this sort of thing. I don't do it as a fancy means of suicide, I'm as careful as I can be, but the fact is I'm running a real risk every time I go out to the airport.

Finances will deter me because if I haven't got the money to pay for the airplanes I rent no one will hand me the keys. It's not being alive or dead that grants me access, it's money. So if you raise the price of flying I will do less because I will have less access.

Great. This is precisely consistent with my hypothesis.

Likewise, for most tobacco addict it's money that grants access. If you raise prices they have less access to their vice. The higher up the economic ladder, though, the less impact a price rise will have. (And if the price is high enough, a certain number of people will resort to theft.)

A drop induced by economics is temporary at best - if the prices drops (through actual price reduction or the rise of a black market) usage will rebound to former levels.

Do you have evidence of such activities?

You haven't cured the underlying problem, you've only addressed the symptom.

Which, again, is not relevant to the fact that this behavior is consistent with the view that the disutility of pain and death is finite.

And why would that be surprising? A firefighter is clearly someone with a higher than normal tolerance for risks.

1. Only a small fraction of the population smokes. For someone to smoke in ANY profession is unusual.
2. Just because someone has a higher than normal tolerance for some risks does not mean that they have a higher than normal tolerance for all risks, nor does it imply overlapping fields of risk aversion.

There's a significant number of firefighters who smoke, even though their occupation puts them at even greater risk of health problems from smoking than the average person.

What percentage of firefighters smoke? If it is more than a tiny fraction of the total population of firefighters then, yes, I would be surprised.

[Darth Wong]

I have no idea how this substantively changes the conclusion, though, that the disutility of pain or death is treated as if it were finite.

Why is that a more reasonable interpretation of the data than "people are fucking stupid and shortsighted?" I think people are terrified of death even if they won't admit it; the problem is that they're too goddamned stupid to realistically assess the chances of it happening.

[Master of Ossus]

Some of it is being smuggled in from states with lower prices into state with higher - but a substantial amount is obtained through out-and-out theft of semi-trailer loads of cigarettes.

Tobacco companies would take into account the theft of their products (since they're measuring output, in this case), but you're right that smuggling between states may be problematic for the purposes of the study.

I believe it is still perfectly legal to grow tobacco for your own consumptions in your own backyard - it's selling it that's the issue.

I'm not sure, but whether or not it's sold is not the issue to me. It's whether or not there is a genuine drop in tobacco use.

Tobacco's pretty easy - doesn't take that much space, it's hardy, being native to North America, and that nicotine in it acts as a natural pesticide so not a lot of things will eat at it. Not only is it grown commercially out where my in-laws live, but a certain number of folks grow their own.

Huh.

If you happened to be a gardening enthusiast it wouldn't be that big a deal.

Probably, but if you could see my lawn you'd understand.

The people running a company don't always make decisions that are rational and logical longterm. So upper management might cut training programs to save money in 2002 with the result that in 2004 (as random examples) accident rates start going up as workers forget, get complacent, get careless, and new untrained workers are hired.

I can understand a company cutting training, but I don't understand why this pattern would consistently coincide with worker's compensation laws.

[Master of Ossus]

Why is that a more reasonable interpretation of the data than "people are fucking stupid and shortsighted?" I think people are terrified of death even if they won't admit it; the problem is that they're too goddamned stupid to realistically assess the chances of it happening.

That's reasonable: it is possible that people are so dumb that they continue to evaluate smoking and other hazards as if they posed no risk of death to them.

[Darth Wong]

Why is that a more reasonable interpretation of the data than "people are fucking stupid and shortsighted?" I think people are terrified of death even if they won't admit it; the problem is that they're too goddamned stupid to realistically assess the chances of it happening.

That's reasonable: it is possible that people are so dumb that they continue to evaluate smoking and other hazards as if they posed no risk of death to them.

I spent 4 years living in a redneck small town after getting out of university, before moving back to Toronto. I wouldn't say the people there are all bad; there are some guys there that I was proud to call "friend". But a lot of them have seriously bad judgment about risk assessment.

One guy said that he had to keep smoking for his health. After picking up my jaw from the floor I asked him what the fuck he was talking about, and he said that it would be stressful to quit, and he's heard that stress is really bad for your health, so he figures it's healthier to keep smoking. He feared death as much as anyone else, but he just couldn't figure out how to weigh the risks.