Feasting On Roadkill

via Chris Anderson’s Long Tail Blog

“Gift economy: This is driven primarily by people’s “spare cycles” (AKA cognitive surplus) and rising unemployment means more spare cycles, sadly. Obviously people still need to pay the rent, so many of these shared contributions are really just advertisements for the contributor’s skills. But other contributions will be idle hands finding work while they look for their next job. As a result I think you’ll see a boom in creativity and sharing online as people take matters into their own hands. Today, if you’re in-between jobs you can still be productive, and the reputational currency you earn may pay dividends in the form of a better job when the economy recovers. Result: Positive”

From here

“Professor Ruhm analysed death rates from 1972 to 1991, comparing them to economic shifts. He found that for every 1 per cent increase in unemployment rates, there was a 0.5 per cent decline in the death rate.

The number of suicides rose by an average of 2per cent during recessions in this period and cancer deaths by 23 per cent, but this was easily outweighed by the decrease in deaths from heart disease and car crashes. People not only eat more healthily in recessions but they tend to drive less, either as an economy measure or because they are no longer commuting to their jobs. When unemployment rates rise by a point, the number of fatal car crashes decreases by 2.4 per cent.

In another paper, Healthy Living in Hard Times, Professor Ruhm suggests that in America during the recession in the 1990s, smoking, particularly among heavy users, declined by 5 per cent”