By Steve Sailer
05/15/2009
In Southern California, the closer somebody’s house is to the ocean, the more likely they are to passionately believe that global warming will cause the polar ice caps to melt and the oceans to rise. The less affluent folk who live in the high desert don’t seem to pay global warming much mind. They've got other troubles to worry about.Now, you could argue that this is purely rational, but here’s the catch: I see no evidence of people behaving as if they believed their beliefs about rising seas. For example, are real estate prices falling faster next to the beach than in the high desert, which you would predict if you believed that people believed their beliefs?
No, very much the opposite. While high desert home prices were dropping by half, Malibu’s average home sale price rose from 2007 to 2008. The LA Times recently made a big deal out of the fact that quarterback Carson Palmer had sold his Manhattan Beach place for somewhat less than he paid for it around 2006, as an indicator that the Great Crash was finally hitting the beach, which mostly shows how it hasn’t hit beachfront land much yet, even though the conventional wisdom implies that that property won’t be there anymore not too far off in the future.
Something does not compute.
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