Namibian communities have been receiving nearly $10 million a year from wildlife, says Fred Nelson, a wildlife expert who spent 11 years in Africa developing wildlife management partnerships. Since the revenues come primarily from trophy hunting and tourism ventures, local communities had a strong incentive to protect the animals and their habitat. These new incentives led to a natural resurgence in wildlife numbers. Even the number of black rhinos in Namibia rose from 707 in 1997 to 1,134 in 2004. Clearly, property rights to ownership or use and freedom to trade are among the keys to conservation. These incentives can encourage protection, care, and increased numbers, just as they do with cattle. Indeed, after legal action by private rhino holders, a judge in South Africa lifted the ban on domestic trade in rhino horn. Trade will give those farmers and communities that own rhinos an incentive to protect them. But where ownership and trade are prohibited, the protection will be missing and poaching will probably continue.

Unfortunately, unemployment programs have an unintended secondary effect: They increase the unemployment rate. The benefits make it less costly for an unemployed worker to turn down available jobs and continue searching while receiving the payments. They also reduce the incentive of the unemployed to switch occupations or move to another location in order to find employment. As a result, workers stay unemployed longer and the overall unemployment rate is higher than it would be otherwise. In fact, empirical evidence indicates that there is a spike in the number of unemployed workers obtaining employment just before and immediately after their unemployment benefits are exhausted. The persistently higher unemployment rates in Europe, where the benefits are more generous, also indicate that the program pushes the unemployment rate upward, perhaps by as much as 2 or 3 percentage points.

The sense of familial and cultural solidarity that comes with feasting can be very pleasant and reassuring, rewarding in ways both nutritional and psychological. Eating to 120 percent full is probably a pretty standard performance at a feast, so over the course of a million-plus years of feasting, a strong psychological association likely evolved between being extra full and a sense of social well-being. The importance of social life to human beings cannot be underestimated. The common ancestor we shared with chimpanzees millions of years ago was likely a highly social species, just as chimpanzees and we are today. Over the course of our evolution, humans gained a tool — language — that has helped our kind to ratchet up all aspects of social life. Sharing food both on a day-to-day basis and on special occasions is part of the complex of behaviors that now defines how humans are social. In a less profound or obvious way, occasional overeating may also be part of this complex.

There are a number of ways our selfish behaviour can be moderated, especially when attention is drawn to us. For example, simply looking in a mirror forces adults literally to self-reflect, which studies have shown reduces cheating on a test. This effect of mirrored self-focus on morality is consistent with recent studies demonstrating that merely hanging up posters of staring human eyes doubled the number of diners that cleaned up after themselves after they had finished their meals. When we think we are being watched, we tend to behave ourselves. If the fear of exposure regulates our transgressions, then religions with an all-seeing God may operate to foster moral behaviour precisely because followers think that they are constantly observed. Most of the world’s religions promote prosociality in their teachings and practices. There is a common assumption that religions foster kindness and generosity, as epitomized by the parable of the Good Samaritan in Christianity.

Consider the old saying “A little learning is a ①perilous thing.” As individuals, we are quick to access information that helps us. But we often lack the ability to make sense of it, or to use it ②suitably. One of us has a brother who is a medical doctor. He encounters this problem on a daily basis (and we might add, he is not too ③unhappy about it). Patients show up with (often incorrect) self-diagnoses derived from spending a couple of hours on the Internet. It is the same in business: senior executives ④doubt their subordinates because their corporate IT system gives them line of sight down to detailed plant-level data. At a societal level, people believe they have the right to information that is in the public interest (think Wikileaks), but they are rarely capable of interpreting and using it in a ⑤reasonable way.

Many economic laws have been criticized as having only statistical necessity. Consider the law stating that the quantity sold varies inversely with its price. We can show that it is not universally true with a thought experiment featuring an isolated village of peasants. The villagers can subsist on a weekly ration of one pound of rice and two pounds of beans or can subsist on the tastier and more nutritious fare of one pound of rice, one pound of beans, and one pound of fish. Rice and beans each cost ＄ 1.00 per pound, but a pound of fish costs ＄1.20. Since the peasants are paid ＄ 3.20 a week, they spend it all on the rice, beans, and fish diet. What happens if the price of beans rises to ＄ 1.10? (It is impossible to buy less than a pound of anything.) ________.

We frame losses and gains relative to a subjective reference point. This means that we are concerned not so much about absolute wealth, but about our relative wealth. For example, if I have bought a house for £150,000, then this is likely to become my reference point, and it is against this value that I measure any gains or losses.

The other is preservation: The solution has to be transmitted to others and remembered, so everyone can continue using it even after the inventor or discoverer has died.

Reaffirming friendships is central in the lives of children. Organized sports provide contexts for making friends, but friendships are difficult to nurture when children see each other only at adult-controlled practices and games. Additionally, making friends with opponents is seldom considered in organized sports. Therefore, youth teams should be neighborhood- and school-based whenever possible. Pregame warm-ups should mix players from both teams, and players should introduce themselves to the person they line up with as each quarter or half begins. Unless children learn that games cannot exist without cooperation between opponents, they will have no understanding of fair play, why rules exist, why rule enforcement is necessary, and why players should follow game rules. Without this understanding, children don’t have what it takes to maintain fair play at the same time that they strive for competitive success. When this occurs, youth sports are not worth our time and effort.

Don’t you hate when you go to a buffet and everything tastes too good? You take great care to eat a healthy bountiful salad before you dig into the meats, vegetables, and side dishes. Much later, as you sit back in your chair and rub your stomach to find room, there is none.