Russ Roberts: evaluation

Transcript context

…An Israeli friend of mine suggested I ask you the following question: “Are you tired of being a freier?” [laughs] Freier is the slang phrase, I think it’s Yiddish. There’s a few Yiddish words that get peppered into Israeli daily speech. Not much, not like you’d think. Because of course, the early days of Israel was very much a revolt against the Eastern European mentality. Hebrew was going to be spoken here and not Yiddish, and Jews here were going to be strong and proud, not hunched over a book. And they were going to fight in the army. There’s a certain huge pride, actually, in that here. As a result, the best langue is Arabic. There’s an enormous number of Arabic words that are used daily. I like to tease my Israeli friends that there’s no Hebrew word for “fun.” When you tell them that, they say, “There’s kef.” It’s an Arabic word. It’s a cheap shot at the seriousness of life here, and that’s not true. There’s a lot of vibrancy and people here have a lot of fun, but there’s no native Hebrew word for fun. I blame it on Ben Yehuda. The word freier is a very, very interesting word, and it’s an interesting aspect of human nature, because it means a sucker. Some Americans here will talk about the freier tax, the amount of money extra you pay because you just don’t know what you’re doing here. You’re just lost; you don’t know the norms. I try not to worry about being a freier. I view it as a form of charity. I have a comfortable life. I can pay a little bit extra, it’s not a problem, I’m happy to do it. But people worry about it, I think, emotionally. I think it’s an important part of human nature that economics doesn’t have much to say about. The fear that you’re being taken advantage of drives a lot of bad behavior on both sides of various transactions if you don’t have a good level of trust. As you well know, a significant portion of the population of Israel is Arabic in descent. What do you think you’re learning about those Arabic cultures, living in Israel?…

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