In the midst of patchy economic growth the sex cell industry is one of the few that is booming. Americans have increasingly turned to donating their sperm and eggs in an attempt to supplement their income in uncertain financial times. Rene Almeling’s book Sex Cells explored the culture and the people within the market. Salon
conducted an interview with her, and some of the highlights of the interview include:

• Sperm clinics recruit donors by advertising it as doing a job. Egg agencies prefer to market the idea of donating as giving a ‘gift’ to another woman who is unable to conceive. Part of the reason maybe procedural. Men have to come to the clinic to contribute many times over a period of a year. Women on the other hand have to go through a lengthy clinical procedure but only donate once. This conception is so deeply ingrained that egg agencies are more likely to reject a woman’s application if they claim that they are in it for anything other than altruism, and are especially likely to frown upon women who claim to do it for the money. Men do not face the same stigma.
• Most sperm banks require donors to be at least 5 feet 8 inches. Women don’t have any comparable height requirement but often have strict weight-height ratios that they must comply with. Men can normally donate into their 40s, women generally have to stop when they hit 30.
• All men are paid the same, but women might earn different rates based on their racial characteristics. There is a shortage of Asian and Black donors and those who come from under-represented cultural groupings might earn a few thousand dollars more than white donars.

Find out more about why egg donors do not think of themselves as mothers, while sperm donors do think of themselves as fathers, and the role that language plays in making people feel comfortable with what they are doing over here.

Source: Salon Read the rest of this entry →

Bank of America will begin charging $5 per month to use their debit cards next year. This new fee is seen as a response to new financial regulations enacted by Congress in response to the financial crisis. This legislation cut the amount of money banks could charge businesses for debit card transactions. Thus, this new fee is an attempt to regain some of the money that will be lost by the banks due to these new restrictions. How consumers will respond to these new fees remains to be seen, and it seems that those in the banking industry are also unsure of what will happen. If your bank decided to charge you $5 per month for using their debit card, would you switch banks?

Source: Washington Post

In India most people know that they shouldn’t drink the water that comes from the taps as it is unlikely to be safe for human consumption. A company called Piramal Water Private Limited decided to come up with a profitable solution to the clean water drinking crisis. The system involves:

• A solar powered ATM that dispenses clean water for ₹0.30 (US$0.60) a liter.
• These ATMs have wireless technology that continuously report the water usage to the company, and allow it to quickly repair any broken machines.
• The company uses a franchise model so that anybody can become a partner, thus spreading clean water throughout the country and improving living standards.

To find out why the water is sold under the brand name Sarvajal as well as to find out how the price of water compares to the income of the average rural Indian click here.

Source: Seattle Weekly

In this post on the Freakonomics blog, the writer takes a look at how much her friend values their friendship based on Radiohead tickets. The band is performing in New York, which will be their first concert in the U.S. in about three years, and tickets were sold out in a matter of minutes. Her friend was one of those fortunate enough to buy a ticket (2 to be exact) and asked her if she would like to go. The author quickly looked at Craigslist to see what some people were willing to pay for these tickets ($400 to $1000 seems to be the average at this point) and then asked her friend what price they would be willing to sell her ticket for. It appears she has a good friend as they stated they would not sell the ticket now that it has been given to her (for face value) but said that if someone was willing to pay $2000, they would consider selling their ticket. Regardless, given the fact that they would not sell the ticket for $1000 (which many tickets are selling for) that means that the value of the friendship is greater than $900 (when you subtract the face value). Clearly this person is both a good friend and a big fan of Radiohead!

Source: Freakonomics blog

In this article, the commutes of Americans are broken down into some interesting graphs. The first aspect of commutes that is evaluated is time. It takes the average American 25.1 minutes to get to work. Another piece of information looked at is the average time an American leaves for work in the morning, which turns out to be between 7:30 and 7:59 a.m. How Americans get to work is also analyzed, and it turns out that despite many Americans trying to be environmentally friendly in different aspects of their life, more Americans than ever are driving alone to work. Check out the rest of the article and find out how your commute compares to that of the average American.

Source: Economix Blog

The Kyoto protocol attempts to use the power of the free market to help deal with the problem of global climate change. One of the provisions allow for the trading of carbon credits. It’s a simple system where those who want to pump excess pollution into the atmosphere can buy the right to do so from somebody who pollutes less, or, indeed, scrubs the environment of pollution. As with most markets though, this one comes with unintended consequences. The New York Times reports that Ugandans were forcefully and violently evicted from their homes to clear the land for the planting of trees. Some of the highlights of the report include:

• New Forests Company bought a 50 year license to grow trees in three districts in Uganda. These trees would soak up carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere thus giving it the right, by the United Nations, to sell carbon credits on the open market.
• The company expected to make up to $1.8 million a year from selling the carbon credits to polluters from around the world.
• Over 20,000 people claim that they were evicted from their lands after their government and the company told them that they were living on the land illegally.
• One Ugandan later took a job with the very company that played a role in ejecting him. He claims that he was promised $100 a month but only received $30.

To read the company’s reactions to the report and the allegations, as well as to find out more about the investors that support the company click here.

Source: The New York Times

Wired has written an exhaustive overview of some of the features in a revamped Facebook that will seem unfamiliar to most. The wall is now just one small tile among many others, and the new profiles seem to focus around a new system called the Open Graph. Some of the highlights of the article include:

• The new Facebook is described by Wired as a “remote-control autobiography”, a “24/7 reality show” of a person’s experiences, and “a visual scrapbook of your life.” Clearly Facebook has something greater in mind than just being a purveyor of online profiles.
• People will be able to share the movies and music they watch. Friends looking at their Facebook pages will be able to click on the movie name or song title and instantly have the media start playing on their own computer, although in certain cases such as Netflix it might be necessary to have a prior subscription with the service.
• One developer compared it to the first day of the IPhone and said that there would be a wave of social apps that would rival the success of the mobile apps on Apple’s platform.
• With all this information on the types of media that people are consuming, Facebook will now be able to send out advertisements that are more targeted in scope than ever imagined before.

You can read more about the importance of Friends Lists as well as an odd legal ruling that limits the sharing of movie information for Facebook users in the United States, and what Netflix is asking voters to do about it over here.

Source: Wired

Reading lists of the richest people in the world can be fun if only to just imagine what it would be like to have that kind of money. Currently, the richest American atop the list is Bill Gates, who has approximately $56 billion (this number can change quickly, though, due to much of that money being tied up in stocks). Many variables come into play when trying to predict when there will be a trillionaire among us, including “inflation, tax rates, and overall economic growth.” If the inflation rate stays at 3% every year, and the richest man in the world were to stay at the value Gates currently holds (it should be noted that Gates is not the world’s richest man, as that title is currently held by Carlos Slim Helu, but the article uses Gates as the standard for this calculation), it will take 98 years for someone to amass $1 trillion. As the article points out, though, the world’s first billionaire is likely to come from a country other than the U.S. The conditions that would most likely bring about a trillionaire are low tax rates, minimal business regulations, and high growth rates which would all allow for greater wealth concentration. Given those conditions, it is certainly plausible that someone could become a trillionaire before the next century.

These guys must be looking on in envy.

Source: Slate

Freakonomics contributor Justin Wolfers recently examined a proposal to forgive all student loans as a short term simulative policy to help boost the economy. He was, to say the least, unconvinced about the merits of the policy. He points out four primary difficulties with the idea:

• Distribution. College kids typically have high incomes. It would further income inequality.
• Macroeconomics. With such a large debt relief only a fraction of the money would be spent. Most of it would be saved and would fail to stimulate the economy.
• Education Policy. It won’t encourage more students to get an education since only those who already have a college education would benefit from the policy.
• Political Economy. Everybody will want to have their loans forgiven in not just this crisis but future ones.

To read more about how such a plan would strengthen the lobbying industry as well as the political rhetoric that Wolfers believes is driving the policy click here.

Source: Freakonomics

A couple months ago, Netflix received some negative publicity when they announced price hikes for certain services. However, that announcement seems small in comparison to the one they recently made – they’re splitting their company in half. Half of their company will remain as Netflix, and this part of the company will offer online streaming services. The other half of the company will now be named Qwikster and will offer DVDs through the mail. Many customers are upset about this as the things now offered by Netflix will now be taken care of by two companies making some things more difficult for customers. However, Netflix originally started out as an innovative “disruptive technology” and was able to overtake Blockbuster in offering movie rentals. Once a company goes from “disruptive technology” to an established company, though, they tend to be a bit more conservative and adopt more traditional strategies. It seems that Netflix is not following this business template, though, as they continue to be aggressive and look for ways to change that may not initially make their customers happy. As the article points out, many great companies are overtaken by disruptive technologies because they listen to their customers and customers often don’t know what is in their best interest. Then, customers begin to see the disruptive technology as better than the company they currently use and the disruptive technology takes over. Perhaps by not listening to their customers, Netflix is staying ahead of the competition.

Source: Slate