Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…Exactly. I would say I would spend one week in Kenya and Tanzania seeing a mix of the large popular and small never-visited wildlife parks, partly because they’re amazingly well run, and they deserve to be rewarded with tourist dollars, but also because they’re incredible experiences. But I wouldn’t spend more than a few days on that. Then I would probably send someone to see the thing I haven’t seen. In spite of working in Ethiopia for many years, I never went and properly saw this 800-year-old state, as you’ve noticed. But seeing a state and its architecture and a culture that you’ve probably never thought about before and seeing that firsthand is not only spectacular, but I think you change some of your priors. Ethiopia. You have a famous paper on sweatshop jobs in Ethiopia, and one thing you found, I believe, is how often people quit these jobs, or they become unhappy with the jobs. Why are they unhappy with the jobs? When I first started studying these jobs, I thought they were jobs that were a little bit like winning the lottery. I thought you got paid more than your alternatives, as miserable as that pay might be. More importantly, I thought you got full employment more naturally than your alternatives, and I thought that there was upward trajectory. Maybe that was the most part, that it would lead you on this virtuous path towards more productive work and better pay. Instead, I think they turned out to be more like McDonald’s or Walmart jobs.…

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