Guy selling loosies in NYC killed by police, caught on video, no indictment

[wufwugy]

I recommend not reading zerocred

[a500lbgorilla]

I recommend not reading zerocred

I genuinely lol'd

[wufwugy]

Great article on topic. I know you said you're done. I'm just posting this in case you wish to read it

http://www.bloombergview.com/article...ics-gets-right

It should be clarified that the inability for economics to predict recessions isn't a fault. If economics could predict recessions, they would be corrected for and wouldn't happen in the first place. What economics can do is predict theoretical recessions quite easily. It just can't predict all of them because the options are endless, and the times recessions happen are either when something unpredicted happens or the politics of the matter don't listen to the science

I'm not an economist yet I can predict a recession if the money supply is reduced to zero. Robustness of said prediction is 100%

[JKDS]

How does the idea that "business run society beats government run society" hold any muster at all when we have countless examples of businesses ruthlessly exploiting both their own employees and society as a whole?

I've watched the cute videos, but they dont explain how human behavior actually works. People operate in their own best interests and will do so at the expense of other people's best interests. When businesses lack regulation and government control, we dont get utopia. We get chinese sweat shops and Sinclair's Jungle.

[wufwugy]

How does the idea that "business run society beats government run society" hold any muster at all when we have countless examples of businesses ruthlessly exploiting both their own employees and society as a whole?

I've watched the cute videos, but they dont explain how human behavior actually works. People operate in their own best interests and will do so at the expense of other people's best interests. When businesses lack regulation and government control, we dont get utopia. We get chinese sweat shops and Sinclair's Jungle.

It isn't that business runs societies better, but that an environment of private entities within a competitive field does. A society with only monopolies would be just as bad as government. It would be government effectively

Business is supposed to try to exploit everything they can. That's why you don't want them to have monopolies. It is the competition between businesses and freedom of choice of consumers that provides the power for consumers to exploit the desire for profits of businesses.

Regulation and government control of business has done nothing for workers or consumers. Supply, demand, and freedom of choice is what has improved wages and working conditions.

Greed is good because it is by that greed that a seller will do what he can to get the chosen purchases of consumers. It is only when legal monopolies are granted that greed becomes bad since there is no competition and consumers no longer have a choice.

Here's a short one. It's only tip of the iceberg



If you wish to spend a deal of time, you can watch any amount of the series in the next post since only one video per post is allowed

Milton Friedman was a great spokesman for economics. In his videos, he does answer all the questions you ask. This stuff is specifically about explaining how human behavior really works.

If you take anything away from this, take away that business != markets. Business operates within a market but is not its only factor. The existence of freedom of the consumer and free trade necessarily means that there can be no monopoly that overly exploits its position since there is necessarily competitive space.

If we look at the current biggest deal -- ISPs -- the popular idea is that there is no competition because the businesses have colluded and prices are jacked and service sucks because of it. This is not true. There is no competition because of government regulations making it virtually impossible for new competitors to enter the space. Google is trying really, really hard to enter the space, but there are a billion miles of red tape and unions to deal with, most of which will take probably more than a decade. Apple would probably have already tried to enter the space if it wasn't for the regulatory nightmare. The government and lobbies (in this case, mostly unions, voters, and ISPs) have created monopolies in the space by making it virtually illegal for competitors to enter.

Competitive greed is great. Greed backed by the law is terrible

[wufwugy]

[seven-deuce]

Anarchy is the way to go imo.

[wufwugy]

Anarchy is the way to go imo.

I like some anarchistic elements, but I don't think it works as an organizing principle of the whole since baked into the philosophy is a rejection of authority. We need authority, what we don't need is mandated authority that we have no choice over. If the US were to transition to a no-tax no-govt system, it wouldn't be anarchy because we would all still choose to organize the way we already do. It would just be far more functional, prosperous, and with far fewer victims

[Renton]

Well most anarchists are punk rock retards who have more in common with socialists and fascists than with true anarchists. Clearly there would be things like law enforcement and armies in a stateless society, it's just a matter of how human ingenuity would step up to fill these roles.

[a500lbgorilla]

http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,30174.0.html

[a500lbgorilla]

Voluntary trade benefits both sides because otherwise the trade wouldn't occur. The proof that it benefits both sides is the fact that the value of anything is individually subjective. There is no such thing as objective value. Every resource has a different worth in the hands of different owners. If I distribute a bunch of bouncy rubber balls of different colors to a kindergarten class, and then allow them to trade with one another, trade will almost certainly occur and everyone who trades will increase his/her value. More people will be able to have a preferred color than if I had prohibited trade to occur.

All economic growth that occurs is because of this very simple theory that voluntary trade results in mutual benefit. There's nothing imaginary or abstract about it. Someone with a large quantity of raw cocaine doesn't try to sell it to just anybody, he looks for a distributor. He wants to sell the cocaine preferably in one transaction for minimal risk, and thus is willing to accept far less than the retail value of it. A distributor will pay this price because, in his hands, the cocaine is worth far more. After all, he has the distribution network and has a system in place that will allow him to mitigate the risk that the wholesaler was trying to avoid. He's looking for dealers who can sell small quantities of the cocaine, and is willing to sell for significantly less than retail. Dealers at the local level are willing to accept the risk, which is now more minor because the quantity is greatly reduced, and are willing to do the legwork involved in selling the cocaine 1 gram at a time. As before, the resource is worth more in the hands of a dealer than in the hands of a distributor. The same resource has greatly different per capita values in the hands of different people all along the supply chain.

Renton, I understand that this makes perfect sense to you - how could it be wrong? Do you understand that that doesn't mean it's right?

Not even wrong - they call it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

The phrase "not even wrong" describes any argument that purports to be scientific but fails at some fundamental level, usually in that it contains a terminal logical fallacy or it cannot be falsified by experiment (i.e. tested with the possibility of being rejected), or cannot be used to make predictions about the natural world.

[a500lbgorilla]

Economics doesn't deny this. Economics tries to explain how this -- and everything else -- relates to a system of production and trade

If you don't like social sciences, then cool. Just keep in mind that they're just an extreme extension of physics (really, just math, as is everything). Also if you ever demonstrate something that doesn't work, you're doing science

Not even wrong.

[a500lbgorilla]

Rilla I think your problem is that you believe that basic economic principles do not work (or at least, aren't always beneficial to society) because of the lack of perfect information when people transact. But there's nothing to say that every participant in trade need be rational or have perfect information for economic benefit to occur. Sowell's definition of economics (which he ripped from others no doubt) is the study of scarce resources which have alternative uses. Information is a scarce resource that has alternative uses, one of the scarcest and most useful resources there is. Free trade between individuals does a pretty good job of efficiently distributing scarce resources in an economy, and one of the ways it does this is by propagating information about those resources to others within the economy. When someone in an economic transaction gets "duped" out of some of his resources due to a lack of knowledge, those resources are displaced to people who have a clearer view of the true value of the resource, and society benefits greatly from this.

If a farmer is growing peas on his land, oblivious to the fact that his land is sitting on a couple of cubic miles of oil, he is clearly making very poor use of the land. If an oil speculator has the expertise to know that there's a high probability that this parcel of land is rich in oil, he has every right to offer to buy the man's land. When he does so it is his responsibility to get the lowest possible price just like its the farmer's responsibility to get the highest possible price. When the oil man exploits this asymmetry of information, the rest of us gain when the price of oil goes down.

Not even wrong.

I understand that Economics isn't way out in the fuggin weeds with their understanding. But you have to admit that they don't understand reality. The study right now is useful for making guesses, not for building economic rocket ships.

[wufwugy]

http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,30174.0.html

I recommend not confusing economics with politics.

Engage in the economics blogosphere. You'll still find some political polemicists (Krugman), but there are plenty who still teach the subject for a living and who have slowly but surely been putting a stamp on the misinformation about economics

[a500lbgorilla]

The point of Not Even Wrong is that it's hard to be right. The only thing that's right is reality, not your intellect, not what makes sense, only what is. You can't tell me that you learned about special relativity or quantum mechanics and thought "oh sure, that's what I expected!" The reason they're accepted is because the evidence supports them. If you want to tell me about the wonderfully vetted out system of economics that you understand, you've just got to show me how you know you're right. Otherwise I'll just assume you're playing guessing games.

[a500lbgorilla]

I recommend not confusing economics with politics.

Engage in the economics blogosphere. You'll still find some political polemicists (Krugman), but there are plenty who still teach the subject for a living and who have slowly but surely been putting a stamp on the misinformation about economics

Wuf, what do you think I've been saying in this thread?

[wufwugy]

Renton, I understand that this makes perfect sense to you - how could it be wrong? Do you understand that that doesn't mean it's right?

Not even wrong - they call it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

You're in luck. Falsifiable predictions and experiments are happening in the blogosphere conducted by actual economists. The news hasn't made its way to the public

[wufwugy]

Wuf, what do you think I've been saying in this thread?

Maybe I don't know.

[a500lbgorilla]

Maybe I don't know.

I know you don't.

[Renton]

I won't argue with the statement that "economics" as a whole is populated with a lot of pseudoscientific shit. The OP in the thread you linked said he spent a lot of time studying Keynesian economics, so it's no wonder he came off feeling that way. However, to extend the pseudoscience umbrella to the entirety of basic economic concepts is absurd.

Pretty much every human interaction, transaction, relationship, partnership, or collaboration can be explained by basic economic principles like supply vs demand, the subjective theory of value, etc. I dare you to attempt to think of anecdotal cases where this isn't true. The jury is in on basic economics. Yes, there are several "schools" of economics with differing views, but that doesn't mean its all quackery. It's a relatively new discipline, after all. There were several competing theories of gravity that were attempting to explain the discrepancies in Newtonian gravity, and Einstein's prevailed (for the moment). That's the last I'll compare with physics since I know you hate that.

Keynesian/Krugmanian economics is IMO what happens when economists have a blind spot for the state, and I completely disagree with that stuff. On the other hand classical liberal economists like Rothbard, Friedman, Hayek, Mises, and Hazlitt appeal to me greatly because the concepts are simple and demonstrable. But what they all have in common is that they believe that people act on incentives, free trade is mutually beneficial, supply and demand determine the prices of goods and services, reputation is important, competition is good, and monopolies are bad.

I don't think this thread is going anywhere as long as we keep discussing this stuff on a macro scale. Again, I challenge you to think of some specific circumstances where basic economic fails us. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

[wufwugy]

I know you don't.

Let me rephrase: I do know what your point is, but since you asked that, I assume there might be something you think I'm missing, so you should clarify

[wufwugy]

Renton fwiw a lot of what Krugman says Keynes never said. A lot of what Krugman says he said the opposite a decade ago. The word among all the working/teaching economists I've seen is that Krugman is still brilliant in some ways, but he has abandoned a decent amount of established economics to pursue his political goals.

IIRC the only big name who hasn't contributed at all to the field is Marx

[a500lbgorilla]

I accept things like supply and demand as that has been bolstered by observation. I don't accept the sort of far out conclusions that come from assumptions that I believe are observably false like rational actors. Nor do I think it's robust to brush away how it is people make decisions by saying, "when they trade, they 'value' the thing their trading for more than what they're trading." There are examples from Behavioral Economics where people do not 'properly' value things because of loss aversion or an inability to know preferences like here:

[a500lbgorilla]

Admittedly, I don't know that that survey was properly conducted.

[a500lbgorilla]

Pretty much every human interaction, transaction, relationship, partnership, or collaboration can be explained by basic economic principles like supply vs demand, the subjective theory of value, etc. I dare you to attempt to think of anecdotal cases where this isn't true. The jury is in on basic economics. Yes, there are several "schools" of economics with differing views, but that doesn't mean its all quackery. It's a relatively new discipline, after all. There were several competing theories of gravity that were attempting to explain the discrepancies in Newtonian gravity, and Einstein's prevailed (for the moment). That's the last I'll compare with physics since I know you hate that.

I don't hate it when you do it, Renton. As this is a good example for me to get to my point. The reason Einstein won out was the 1919 Eclipse. Just show me all the 1919 Eclipses of economics and I'll be a chipper beaver.

[wufwugy]

I accept things like supply and demand as that has been bolstered by observation. I don't accept the sort of far out conclusions that come from assumptions that I believe are observably false like rational actors. Nor do I think it's robust to brush away how it is people make decisions by saying, "when they trade, they 'value' the thing their trading for more than what they're trading." There are examples from Behavioral Economics where people do not 'properly' value things because of loss aversion or an inability to know preferences like here:

I very much enjoyed the Ariely stuff when I first watched it years ago

The definitions of the terms you are using are not what economists use them as. When economists discuss rationality and other concepts, they are not talking about perfection of knowledge or a lack of varied subjective and unknown influences. Those are baked into the models already. Economists don't ignore the kinds of variables that behavioralists find.

That video is more about psychology than economics. It is not a coincidence that Ariely is not an economist. He's a psychologist. If he is using his material to explain what is wrong in economics, it's no different than if a chemist were to use chemical models to try to explain what mathematicians are doing wrong in their mathematical models

What economists say is much different than what everybody else, including behaviorists, says

[Renton]

I don't accept the sort of far out conclusions that come from assumptions that I believe are observably false like rational actors. Nor do I think it's robust to brush away how it is people make decisions by saying, "when they trade, they 'value' the thing their trading for more than what they're trading."

Well I don't believe all participants in trade are rational so I guess I'll have to agree with you on the first part. As for the second part, the problem is there's just no other way to ascribe value to anything than to say it's subjective to the individual. Other than what someone is voluntarily willing to pay for or accept, any other way of valuating a good or service will be arbitrary and inaccurate.

As for your video, I saw it before and I don't see any problem with it. There's nothing wrong with a vendor having psychological marketing savvy, in fact I'd argue it makes people happier in general. I don't see how that breaks some fundamental law of economics. This isn't hypnosis, there's nothing coercive here. Why are the customers "susceptible to influences of external forces" as he put it? Why use a negatively connoted word like "susceptible" to describe this? There's nothing wrong with people buying dumb shit because it makes them happy, and there's nothing wrong with smart marketing.

[a500lbgorilla]

Is Sowell a good source for the fundamentals of economics, whatever they may be?

[Renton]

Basic Economics is a good source for a few hundred concrete examples of how controlled or semi-controlled economies fuck things up and it's mainly about the importance of prices and what happens when they aren't allowed to naturally develop. It doesn't read like a textbook though.

[wufwugy]

Sowell doesn't get discussed a ton in the blogosphere. I have seen him briefly discussed, but don't remember in what way.

Sumner's view of him is probably relevant:

I got a better understanding of culture by reading travel books and novels by V.S. Naipaul and his brother Shiva. Thomas Sowell’s books convinced me that culture was very important in explaining economic inequality. And yet, I still find cultural theories of economic development to be unsatisfactory. When Asia was far behind the West you could point to cultural differences. When Asian started doing well you could point to the high IQs scores in some Asian countries. When Ireland was poorer than Britain you could point to the conservative Catholic culture. But then it suddenly got richer. The poor performance of Latin America was due to the Spanish influence. But then Spain started growing much faster than Italy. No problem; now people could point to all the Italians in Argentina. The theories seem disturbing ad hoc (and perhaps offensive as well.) I still think culture matters, but I’m just not sure how.

http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=4462

Glancing over his wiki, he seems pretty standard free market

[a500lbgorilla]

Pretty much every human interaction, transaction, relationship, partnership, or collaboration can be explained by basic economic principles like supply vs demand, the subjective theory of value, etc. I dare you to attempt to think of anecdotal cases where this isn't true. The jury is in on basic economics. Yes, there are several "schools" of economics with differing views, but that doesn't mean its all quackery. It's a relatively new discipline, after all. There were several competing theories of gravity that were attempting to explain the discrepancies in Newtonian gravity, and Einstein's prevailed (for the moment). That's the last I'll compare with physics since I know you hate that.

I don't hate it when you do it, Renton. As this is a good example for me to get to my point. The reason Einstein won out was the 1919 Eclipse. Just show me all the 1919 Eclipses of economics and I'll be a chipper beaver.

Economics for me right now is the search for this. I'll run down the fundamentals, but as I've said before, until I can find this, the best it can be is a good guess.

[Renton]

Well the problem is since people are free to do whatever they want, nothing is going directly follow any economic model. As has been said, many participants in trade aren't rational or aren't acting on perfect information or aren't acting perfectly on the information that they have. The principles of price coordination act probabilistically on society as a whole, though.

Random example, there's this Vietnamese pho joint here in Cambodia where I like to eat. It's a tiny place with like 8 tables crammed in it, it's always full of people and I have to wait for a table whenever I get there. They sell bowls of pho soup for $2.50 each and by Cambodian standards it is probably a quite successful business.

Basic economic principles would dictate that since the supply of soup from this restaurant is exceeded by the demand, one of two things *should* occur. Either the supply should increase, or the price should increase. And yet years have elapsed and this has not been the case. The most likely problem is that the owner of this restaurant isn't aware of basic economic principles, is happy with the business he is doing, and has no desire to expand or increase his prices. But if he were, he would bump his soup up to $3 and capitalize the difference in profits into a larger space.

I think these sorts of issues take form on a larger scale in developing countries like Cambodia because there isn't as much business savvy. And the reason there isn't much business savvy is because it is a fledgling and less-competitive market than in a developed country like the U.S. Rents and labor costs are quite low here, and its very easy for businesses to clear their overhead, so there isn't nearly as much incentive to maximize profits, cut costs, or be more efficient. On the other hand, the costs of goods are quite high for the same reasons. Almost every economic problem in a country like Cambodia can be explained by one or both of the following factors:

1) A lack of economic freedom:

Usually in third-world countries this is because of an oppressive government that makes it against the law or extremely inconvenient to run a business, or in Cambodia's case, local small-ball corruption causes some problems.

2) A lack of capital accumulation:

This is the big one. Loads of poor countries have child labor, sweatshop labor, etc, in spite of relatively high economic freedom. Capital accumulation is when the pho restaurant takes profits and invests them into a bigger restaurant which can make more pho, then invests those profits into a machine that can make the noodles faster, then invest those profits into buying motorbikes and hiring drivers to run their new delivery network, etc. This just takes decades and we have to be patient.

How does the idea that "business run society beats government run society" hold any muster at all when we have countless examples of businesses ruthlessly exploiting both their own employees and society as a whole?

I've watched the cute videos, but they dont explain how human behavior actually works. People operate in their own best interests and will do so at the expense of other people's best interests. When businesses lack regulation and government control, we dont get utopia. We get chinese sweat shops and Sinclair's Jungle.

^ Capital accumulation is the answer to this, not governments. Capital increase correlates directly with wage increase (in real dollars) and inversely with the prices of goods, which results also in wage increase (in effective purchasing power). All taxation, but especially business and corporate taxation, is a direct drain on the speed with which this is able to occur.


Pretty sure I didn't do any voodoo in this post.

[wufwugy]

As usual, Renton explains it better

[wufwugy]

Relevant article

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...ay_125126.html

Love this line

What really galls the regulators, though, is that by providing a better service, Uber exposes the political process as protectors of the taxi industry rather than consumers.

Pretty good too

But analysts and investors have apparently decided that satisfied consumers matter more than angry regulators.

[wufwugy]

speaking of sowell. this is great

[wufwugy]

super good interview with thomas sowell

http://thefederalist.com/2015/01/13/...thomas-sowell/

[wufwugy]

Main issue though is when he discusses Quantitative Easing. He's right that the government shouldn't intervene in the economy, but he's also wrong since the government MUST intervene in monetary policy since it holds a monopoly on money. The best solution is to dissolve the monopoly on money, but since we don't have that luxury, we've created a system where said monopolist has to do a bunch of other stuff in order to not turn everything to shit. Basic policy moral hazard. It's also a good microcosm for why government shouldn't have a say in anything. 2008 happened because the money monopolist misbehaved. Then everybody else suffered and the money monopolist claimed it could do nothing

Also I don't think any economists who support a negative income tax do so on top of other programs. Basic income ideas require an elimination of all other welfare

[Sin Uggla]

speaking of sowell. this is great

Please tell me this was on Comedy Central.
This kind of arrogant pseudo intellectuals should not be given a microphone. Maybe there should be more and better
schools to train kids better, but this sort of TV shows definitely helps make everybody dumber.

Even worse, this video is from what year? Sad but true equal salaries are far from being established even today.

[wufwugy]

Please tell me this was on Comedy Central.
This kind of arrogant pseudo intellectuals should not be given a microphone. Maybe there should be more and better
schools to train kids better, but this sort of TV shows definitely helps make everybody dumber.

Even worse, this video is from what year? Sad but true equal salaries are far from being established even today.

im not sure what exactly you're referring to, but the claim that there isn't equal pay for equal work is a myth. it's telling that the media loves the idea and sometimes show one or two data sets to make the case, yet basically no economists support the idea

you can say anything you want with not enough data. that's what the media has done and it has convinced everybody of something false. albeit inadvertently. journalists dont understand why the last thing they should be doing is making claims about a handful of data sets

[wufwugy]

one example for why if you ever see somebody make a case based on a set of data, you should be skeptical: if every US citizens' incomes were doubled, poverty would be all but eliminated YET income inequality would increase. so much for journalists trying to claim that income inequality is a bad thing

[Renton]

If there were a true gender or racial pay gap, then wouldn't firms be buying up all that cheap labor and outbidding all of the discriminating firms, eventually putting them out of business?

Anyway, I doubt the veracity of any study that claims a significant wage gap between equally qualified men, women, whites, blacks, latinos, or asians. That said, I think it is possible that there should be an inherent male/female gap. The reason for this has simply to do with the nature of risk.

When a company makes a new hire, that company is usually taking a significantly large risk. New employees are usually not productive for the first few months at least, i.e. they lose money for the company if you deduct their salary from their productivity. This is especially true if the company has to expend significant resources to train the employee. So right away, embedded in the hiring decision, is a risk/reward analysis that heavily favors employees who will be STABLE. Stability is almost more important than the actual qualifications. Women, particularly women in their 20s and 30s, are inherently less stable hires than men, controlling for other factors. Employers have to adjust their bet to account for this, and sadly, those career-minded women who have no interest in raising children are penalized. It is kind of like how single males under 30 pay much higher car insurance premiums, in spite of the fact that they may be individually far less risky drivers than the mean for their age and sex bracket.

There are other reasons that would explain a mild wage gap between men and women or whites and minorities, having mostly to do with the state meddling in the employer-employee contract. It's harder to fire women or minorities than to fire a white male, all other factors controlled. Employees that are difficult to fire are riskier hires by nature. And all of these employee safeguards instituted by the state only decrease overall employment because companies must be far more selective in light of them. Also, employers who provide healthcare, especially those who are forced to provide it, must pay more to cover a woman than a man. Women are larger healthcare risks than men, all other factors controlled. Again, the decision to hire, and the salary with which to pay that hire, are effectively a bet which must be adjusted to account for any such factors as this.

[wufwugy]

wanna make employment for women zero? make it illegal to fire women

[Sin Uggla]

im not sure what exactly you're referring to, but the claim that there isn't equal pay for equal work is a myth.

No it's not. It's a proven fact.

yet basically no economists support the idea

Yes they do. Many of them.

you can say anything you want with not enough data

That's what you are doing.

journalists dont understand why the last thing they should be doing is making claims about a handful of data sets

See above.

It's an old mechanism to agree on singulary statements expressing minority positions, based on personal preference. Along with that goes the claim that everybody else has no clue / is doing what they should not be doing / is part of a big media/journalism/(politics) conspiracy. Major political parties, mostly right wing conservative, use this pattern to try to deny reality and to turn facts into fairytales.

This is bar level reasoning, tpyically a few beers help. The others stick to facts and try to solve the apparent problems. "Those who don't know are condemned to believe."

[wufwugy]

No it's not. It's a proven fact.

You are confused on the definitions of proof and fact

Yes they do. Many of them.

Show me

That's what you are doing.

I have not presented any data

It's an old mechanism to agree on singulary statements expressing minority positions, based on personal preference. Along with that goes the claim that everybody else has no clue / is doing what they should not be doing / is part of a big media/journalism/(politics) conspiracy. Major political parties, mostly right wing conservative, use this pattern to try to deny reality and to turn facts into fairytales.

This is bar level reasoning, tpyically a few beers help. The others stick to facts and try to solve the apparent problems. "Those who don't know are condemned to believe."

Ad hominen

[Sin Uggla]

Ad hominen

You meant "ad hominem" ?
Not at all, just describing the context.