Shut your mouths! I hate economists.

There is another article claiming that a male birth control pill is just around the corner and all anybody wants to talk about is how men will never use it. Can people at least support the research and wait to see how people react before spouting off inane things? We don't know how men might react to a male pill, but it took quite a while for the female pill to become as widely used as it is today and there are still groups that condemn it. I don't normally quote extensively, but some responses to this have really annoyed me, so I am going to go through it point by point.

One possibility is that women will infer that a man taking the pill is essentially paying other women for sex and she values him less highly.

Seriously, I normally like Tyler Cohen, but what horrid women does he hang out with? Does he also believe that men are often offended by finding out that a woman is taking the pill because that means she may have had sex with other men? I like to hope that one generally values a partner who acts in a responsible and adult manner, especially when it comes to something as serious as children.

Another possibility has to do with credibility combined with lags. If it's focal for the woman to be taking the pill, the woman is in any case taking her pill in advance. The male pill would have impact, at the margin, only on women who weren't really planning on having sex at all. And what kind of man spends his energy targeting such women? Yes, some men indeed do target such women, but then we're back to the male pill not really being so popular.

No the male pill is a safeguard for both parties. I would certainly want my brothers and my partner to be on the male pill if there was one because I know that no form of birth control is completely effective and because I think men should also be expected to take responsibility for their actions.

A third possibility is that women in any case want the man to use a condom, if only to prevent STDs. If the man is on the pill, it is harder to make that request without insulting him and thus a woman doesn't want her new paramour to be on the male pill.

This may be something that happens because there are women who are already uncomfortable insisting on condoms or bringing up birth control with their partners, but this is a very bad thing in our society. There is no excuse for raising our children in such a manner that they find it shameful or uncomfortable to talk with their partner(s) about sex and every aspect of it, which includes decisions about protection of any kind. However, does Cohen really think that the numbers of people who are uncomfortable talking about this sort of thing are suddenly going to magically increase once there is effective birth control for both sexes (because, I am sorry, but statistically a condom is only marginally effective birth control unless it is combined with another method and anyone who regularly uses only a condom is playing very dangerous odds).

As any woman can attest, it's all too easy to miss one or more of those pills. It's therefore very difficult to trust someone else to take them. It's especially hard if you are the one who will bear the heaviest price for a failure. As long as women have the stronger incentive to avoid pregnancy, it will be easier to trust them to keep taking their pills. Especially if you don't live together and thus can't watch him taking it at the same time every morning. The transactions costs on making a Coasean bargain are simply too high.

This is from Megan McCardle, who I normally like quite a bit (and who had a friend arrested for dancing at the Jefferson Monument last week, which I find both sad and hilarious), but she again completely ignores the male point of view. All the reason she lists here are reasons that both sexes should be responsible for birth control. While women do pay the larger price for accidental pregnancy, this is far less true for decent guys. I know plenty of really marvelous, good men and not a single one of them would consider it just the woman's problem if they fathered a baby, even by accident.

Anyway, I always have more to say on this subject, but I need to get some work done, so I will pause my sermon for now.