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July 2, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person

Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya

July 1, 2009

Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken

The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts

June 30, 2009

Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent?

Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief

June 29, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor'

Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas

June 26, 2009

Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain

Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law

June 25, 2009

Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 24, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity

The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun

June 23, 2009

Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin

Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect

June 22, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm

N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews?

June 19, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity

June 18, 2009

Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 17, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and …

June 16, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel

Richard Z. Chesnoff: ‘Palestinians’: Never Missing an Opportunity …

June 15, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine'

Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed

June 12, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's High Commissioner

June 11, 2009

Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President

Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers

Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos

June 10, 2009

Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste

June 9, 2009

Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president?

June 8, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper?

Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past

Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic?

June 5, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams

Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth

June 4, 2009

Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock

The Kosher Gourmet by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette

June 3, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed?

Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action

June 2, 2009

Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 16, 2005 / 7 Adar I, 5765

Selfishness is bad, right?

By John Stossel


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "Public" is good. Better than "private." Sharing is good. Private property is selfish. That was what people told ABC News. As one man put it, "Society would clearly be better off if we all shared more." Some kids even sang, "Sharing is caring."

That's what we all are taught. But if kids get Tori Haidinger in high school, they learn a different lesson. The California teacher invites kids to experience basic economics firsthand: "You are the head of a family that is fed by catching fish," she says. "Our fish are Hershey's Kisses. You will get to eat them." Each table gets a beaker of Kisses. She tells the kids, "Share them with your friends. You can take as many as you want, but any left over will reproduce, just like fish, because I will double them." What happens? The kids quickly empty their beakers. No more Kisses.

That's what has happened in the real world, too. The supply of fish in the world's oceans has dropped because the oceans and the fish swimming through them are public property — shared property. The oceans are full of fishermen who know that if they don't catch a fish, the next guy might, so they have very little reason to cut back on fishing: The fish they leave behind aren't feeding their own future — they're feeding their competitors. As one of Haidinger's students said, "I was thinking ... I probably should share, but I didn't think anybody else was sharing, so I took more." Economists call this "the tragedy of the commons."

Then, Haidinger tries a different tack. She gives each student a private beaker of Kisses. "What this has actually done," she says, is establish "a sense of privatization." It's as if each student had a private pond and owned all the fish in it.

"Privatization" has a bad reputation, but this time, no student overfishes. Kids leave enough in their ponds so the teacher can double their number, and so new generations of chocolate Kisses are born. "So," asks a student, "are you saying that if it's ours, we will care more about it?"

"Yup." Owning is caring.

Compare a typical public toilet to a private toilet. Public toilets tend to be filthy. But private toilets, common in Europe, are clean. Their owners, selfishly seeking a profit — you have to pay a small fee to use them — work at keeping them clean. And think about your office refrigerator. The one I use at "20/20" is disgusting. There's cottage cheese in there that expired over a year ago. The refrigerator is covered with ancient spills, and you can't believe the smell. When something belongs to everyone, it really belongs to no one, and no one takes care of it. Sharing can be a mess.

Why does the United States have so many catastrophic forest fires? Did you know that most of them are on government land, land we share? The feds own only a third of the forests, but they have most of the forest fires. Private forests are less likely to burn because the livelihood of "greedy" timber companies depends on having healthy trees. So the companies clear out the underbrush. The government, managing land we all share, is less careful, and so thousands of acres burn.

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There are two cases where sharing may be better than private control. As Thomas Jefferson pointed out, the "peculiar character" of an idea is that "no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it." If you catch a fish, I can no longer catch it, but if you learn something I know, I still know it. That's why ideas are different from physical goods.

The other case is where the people doing the sharing have a special bond, for example, because they're very close friends or members of a happy family. Mutual caring — the kind of love that makes another person more important to you than almost anyone else, when we feel another's gains and losses as our own — can make sharing work.

But most of us don't feel that way about the whole country. My wife and I share our car, but if we shared it with the whole town, the car would soon be trashed. Private property sounds selfish, and we're taught that selfishness is bad. But it works.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

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JWR contributor John Stossel is co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20." To comment, please click here.




02/09/05: Fifth Avenue farmers
02/02/05: Buy a bridge? This $200 Million one isn't for sale — it's being paid for by taxpayers and it leads almost nowhere
01/28/05: Aren't science and scholarship supposed to ask questions and open our eyes to facts?
01/26/05: Forced altruism

© 2005, by JFS Productions, Inc. Distributed by Creators Syndicate, Inc.