Many women are willing to put enormous effort into becoming NFL
cheerleaders, even though the job pays virtually nothing -- at
least according to a reality TV series now running on cable.
Some viewers find that hard to understand.  Similarly, farmers
buy more and larger machines than seems necessary in the average
year. Some ag engineers and economists once thought that a
mistake.  Are these really examples of people not knowing what
is best for themselves?  Ted Schultz, the Nobel Prize-winning
farm boy from Arlington, S.D., who died in 1998, would urge
caution in making this conclusion. When he started working on
how to "transform traditional agriculture" in poor countries,
many outside "experts" thought peasant farmers did not know what
was best for themselves. But Schultz found that these small
farmers, even though often illiterate, were "poor but
efficient."  By "efficient," he meant that no one else, facing
the same resources, incentives and limitations, could produce
more outputs. Poor, low-resource and