First, about the recent beggars post: you don’t give the kids large containers of biscuits. If they’re too large, they’ll try to sell them back to a local shop, defeating the purpose of giving the biscuits instead of change. But this raises more questions. If they sell the biscuits, doesn’t that indicate that they do, in fact, want the change more than the biscuits? And don’t we want to give the kids what they want? You give the biscuits because you assume the kid enjoys the biscuits, but is just giving the change away. But if they want the change instead of the biscuits, that indicates that they do get some utility out of the change, suggesting that the useless change hypothesis is false. I’d need to know more about the structure of these begging outfits to really know how to approach this.
Second, about the eunuchs. My mom asked, simply, “why are there still eunuchs?” Good question. First, many eunuchs are just transgendered men, living their lives as women. In those cases, the term "eunuch" is a misnomer. In addition, though, there are true eunuchs among them. The eunuchs are organized. I don’t want to say it’s like the Teamsters, but they have their own community and they stick together. When intersexual children are born, they are frequently shipped off to the eunuch community to be operated on and raised. So eunuchs are still “made,” but out of intersexual children.
According to Sanju’s roommate, the eunuchs have negotiated for their own time slots at pools where time is split between male swim and female swim. The eunuchs also have a pretty good racket of showing up to marriages and birth ceremonies and demanding money in exchange for not cursing the marriage/child. People are so superstitious that this tends to work. Just pay the eunuchs and get them the hell out of there.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)
3 comments:
With respect to "...don't we want to give the kids what they want," this is a central question in economics these days. Right?
Cornell's Robert Frank and a host of behavioral economists would argue (I not only agree, I am bowled over) that what people think they want is subject to a lot of error.
I think you *may* be a better judge.
See Daniel Kahneman, Daniel Gilbert, Gary Becker, Robert Frank, and many researchers working at the intersections of psychology and economics.
I agree completely. I think this is a prime example of where one's own rational decision may be anything but utility-optimizing. Like most of the people shopping at Aaron's.
But it's also possible that these kids get beaten or worse if they don't come up with, say, Rs.25/day. They won't bother trying to sell back a 1 Rupee pack of biscuits, but for 10 or so, they might consider it. See also the diminishing returns to scale of eating biscuits (first 5-6 are great, while the next 20 are less satisfying).
I'm not driving here. If I were, I'd give a small pack of biscuits instead of change. But I'd still want to know more about their situation.
All the beggars there are controlled by local "mafia" dons that lurk on every block. Essentially, the threaten the kids into earning as much money as possible (RE: Slumdog Millionaire). My good friend once gave a kid an ice cream (something he knew was perishable and had to be consumed quickly). Three minutes later a middle aged man approached him and said, "I think this is yours" gave the ice cream back, and left quickly.
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