Dear Economist,
I like the idea of smoking; people who do it seem to get a lot of pleasure from it. But I don’t want it seriously to curtail my longevity. So at what age could I sensibly start smoking in order to achieve sufficient pleasure to make the shortening of lifespan worthwhile?
Peter, London
Answer at ft.com, subscription free.
I work as an escort in Canary Wharf. I wonder if you might have some sound business advice on how workers in my industry should tackle the sudden drop in demand following the collapse of Lehman Brothers?
Miss C
Shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed, a Russian bureaucrat travelled to the west to seek advice on how the market system functioned. He asked the economist Paul Seabright to explain who was in charge of the supply of bread to London. He was astonished by the answer: “Nobody.”
Fifteen years later, I had thought that almost everyone had abandoned the notion that a committee could plan its way through the unimaginable complexities of an advanced economy. I was wrong...
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