PEOPLE RESPOND TO INCENTIVES. Daniel Drezner weighs in on David Brooks's visit to a campus. Here's Drezner: "It's always depressing when my best students ask for letters of reccomendation for admission into law school or B-school -- not that there's anything wrong with those choices, but there are more than two flavors of career in the world. Even as someone in the ideological minority, I love my job. I get paid to sit around, read, and think deep and not-so-deep thoughts all day. On regular occasions I'm asked to impart my thoughts to some students, who actually write down a lot of what I say. I'm something of a specialist in what I write, but I'm certainly not a specialist in what I read. The hours are flexible, the dress code is minimal. It's a good life."

All true, all true, but it takes a certain kind of stubbornness to discipline your own thoughts and get them on paper. Doing what someone else asks you to do is in some ways easier. But Adam Smith's observation about compensating differentials kicks in, because doing what someone else asks you to do means every time the 'phone rings, it's someone with a problem. Your compensation depends on making his problem your problem. I don't know what the equilibrium is, apparently there still is a reserve army of unemployed and underemployed Ph.Ds, as Drezner's closing line notes, despite the higher pay and potentially greater job security in business or the professions.