2007/11/12
Marginal Revolution on vaccinations
People who have the flu spread the virus so getting a flu shot not only reduces the probability that I will get the flu it reduces the probability that you will get the flu. In the language of economics the flu shot creates an external benefit, a benefit to other people not captured by the person who paid the costs of getting the shot. The external benefits of a flu shot can be quite large. Under some conditions each person who is vaccinated reduces the expected number of other people who get the flu by 1.5.Perhaps we have been taking the wrong tack thinking about how to punish PC users who have malware on their machines.. Maybe offering additional benefits to users with verifiable security mechanisms is a better solution. Maybe one of those benefits would be access to IRC channels often used by malware to contact their controller.
- Category(s)
- Security and Economics
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- http://www.wikidsystems.com/WiKIDBlog/marginal-revolution-on-vaccinations/tbping
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