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Mal Appétit

As the managing editor of a Condé Nast magazine, all I can say is, "Gee, Si, you've been holding out on us." Entertaining as "Let Si Get This" was, it bears no relation to my experiences at the company over the past year. Either those of us who work at the West Coast outposts aren't in on the perks, or your research was a tad out-of-date.

--Victoria von BielBon Appétit magazineLos Angeles

Negative Action

In "Blacks Only," Jacob Weisberg appears to be all over the map. On the one hand, he correctly diagnoses the central problem with affirmative action, which is that it causes one group of people (blacks) to be favored at the expense of another group (whites). Yet at the same time that he admits this is unfair, he proposes that we retain it.

How to justify, then, the fact that a white person who has never practiced discrimination, and who never had anything to do with the subjugation of blacks, should be placed at a disadvantage in relation to less-qualified blacks? "Why should whites who did not themselves discriminate against blacks be punished for what their or someone else's ancestors did? The answer is that it shouldn't be thought of as punishment."

This is Orwellian logic at its best; it is reminiscent of communist propaganda at its worst. Despite the fact that, on its face, it is punishment, we shouldn't think of it that way. Excuse me? Perhaps, extending Weisberg's philosophy a bit further, we should simply declare that there is perfect equality between blacks and whites in society, even though there isn't. Why should we ignore the fact that there is inequality between races in society? The answer is that it should not be thought of as inequality. Seems to work for me!

--Stephen Konig Roanoke, Va.

Irrational Exuberance

In "Take This Simple Test," Steven E. Landsburg goes into quite some mathematical detail about the public's so-called irrationality. But there's no need for woolly notions of "regret" to explain why someone would rather have $1 million than a shot at $5 million, but would rather have a shot at $5 million than a slightly better shot at $1 million.

It's very simple, really--$5 million isn't worth five times as much as $1 million. If I receive $1 million, I'm rich. If I receive $5 million, I'm rich. So the first choice should be read as being between the certainty of being rich and a possibility of being rich. The second choice is a simple mathematical choice--as Landsburg points out, $500,000 is a lot more welcome than $110,000.

I'm sure that if you asked the same questions, but divided all the amounts by a million, your answers would be very different.

--Felix SalmonNew York City

Steven E. Landsburg responds: I am deluged with e-mail from readers who want help understanding my column "Take This Simple Test." In the course of responding, I've found a much better way to explain the paradox.

In the original column, your cousins Snip, Snap, and Snurr asked you to choose among various gifts. Let's put those questions aside. Instead, here are three simpler questions:

A. I'm going to give you a Christmas gift. Do you prefer:

1. A duck.

2. A goose.

B. There's an 89-percent chance I won't give you anything for Christmas. There's an 11-percent chance I'll give you a choice of gifts. If I give you a choice of gifts, do you prefer:

1. A duck.

2. A goose.

C. There's an 89-percent chance I'll give you a duck for Christmas. There's an 11-percent chance I'll give you a choice of gifts. If I give you a choice of gifts do you prefer:

1. A duck.

2. A goose.

I define a rational person to be a person who gives the same answer to all three questions. Some rational people prefer ducks to geese, some prefer geese to ducks, but no rational person switches answers in going from one question to the next.

Now replace "a duck" with "$1 million" and replace "a goose" with "a 10/11 shot at $5 million." Then Questions A, B, and C are identical to the questions of Snurr, Snap, and Snip, in that order. So a rational person should give the same answers to the questions of Snurr, Snap, and Snip.

(To see that these questions are exactly the same as the Snip-Snap-Snurr questions, keep in mind that an 11-percent chance of a 10/11 shot at $5 million is the same thing as a 10-percent chance at $5 million.)

Notice that, contrary to the expectations of several readers, none of this has anything to do with the fact that $5 million is "worth" less than 5 times $1 million; replace the $5 million with any other amount whatsoever and the argument still holds.

Harry and Louise Practice Post-Structuralism

One glaring weakness of "deconstruction" (a method of literary criticism long favored by the academic ivory-tower elite) is that it often searches for meaning in a comparison where, in reality, there is none. However useful in the rarefied halls of academia, it is conspicuously ineffective in the real world. Robert Shrum's comparison of the "Harry and Louise" ad campaign with that being conducted by the Global Climate Information Project ("Harry and Louise Go to Kyoto") is no more than an interesting academic exercise and a cynical misrepresentation of both the facts of the global-climate debate and the membership of the National Association of Manufacturers.

It is wrong to characterize the U.N. Map ad campaign as a "use" of populism by big business. The ad campaign is simply one way in which we are attempting to educate the public on the effects a treaty in Kyoto would have on the 18 million people who make things in America. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of NAM members are small manufacturers. To lump these small companies, many of which are family-owned businesses with fewer than 500 employees, in with the artificial moniker of "big business" (itself a populist tool of the left) is a disservice to the men and women whose efforts form the backbone of one-quarter of our economy. These small manufacturers would, by the very nature of their size, feel the devastating impact that mandated carbon-based emission reductions would have on the U.S. economy to a greater degree than any other group.

The AFL-CIO and NAM are united in opposition to a treaty mandating emission reductions because such a treaty would take a bite out of the budget of every American family in the form of, among other things, higher costs at the gas pump, more expensive home heating, and lost jobs. The United States cannot see its competitiveness and prosperity erode for the benefit of developing nations that, for whatever reason, will not be required to abide by the strict impositions of a global-climate treaty. That is a fact that bears repeating over and over, until reason wins out over the scare tactics being employed by environmental extremists (and political consultants) in the furtherance of their own agendas.

--Paul HuardNational Association of Manufacturers

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