01-26-2018 03:44 PM
#226
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01-26-2018 03:46 PM
#227
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01-26-2018 03:47 PM
#228
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01-26-2018 03:48 PM
#229
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Okay cool, that's a type of thing I am quite interested in hearing about. If you would like to expound that would be great. |
01-26-2018 03:49 PM
#230
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01-26-2018 03:51 PM
#231
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01-26-2018 03:52 PM
#232
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I'll add that this is maybe the only conceptual reason that I have come up with for why government can be good. The problem, however, is that I have not been able to figure out any way a centralized monopoly is better than otherwise, on average, over time, across all components, etc.. |
01-26-2018 03:57 PM
#233
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I think we touched on this a little bit earlier. One of the main reasons people would prefer centralization is simply related to space and/or aesthetics. |
01-26-2018 04:09 PM
#234
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01-26-2018 04:15 PM
#235
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01-26-2018 04:19 PM
#236
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I think this ground has been covered repeatedly in this forum, but ok. The advantage of centralized organisation is obvious in many domains. One would be military. The US would be much weaker if every state had to decide for itself who to send to war and with what weapons and for what purpose. | |
01-26-2018 04:19 PM
#237
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You didn't "give me credit" for anything. You recognize a fact that my IQ is what it is. I'm not sure why that would preclude me from having any particular response with regard to you. |
01-26-2018 04:27 PM
#238
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I recognized it well before you made some claim to it based on a test you supposedly took once, if we are to believe you. | |
01-26-2018 04:36 PM
#239
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01-26-2018 04:44 PM
#240
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Well, without thinking about it in great detail, I assume it would be hard to have a centralized military command structure without also funding it somehow. And I would guess funding it would involve some sort of centralized tax, be it income tax or tariffs or what have you. Unless you had a Pentagon based on volunteer work, how would you get around that? | |
01-26-2018 04:49 PM
#241
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People who value security voluntarily pay for it. The model works in a bunch of other markets and the military system already is voluntary regarding recruitment, so we have good reason to believe it would work. I estimate that if people were left to their own devices about what to pay for, security forces might even get MORE funding than they currently do. Lots of people really value that stuff but don't currently voluntarily pay for much of it since the tax-based monopoly of government crowds it out. |
01-26-2018 05:38 PM
#242
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Well there are some historical examples where this argument is demonstrably untrue. In the war of 1812 for example, there didn't exist a centralized command structure in the US that could draw on resources (generally, soldiers and guns) to defend the interests of the country as a whole. So you had states like VA saying 'this war with the British and Canada doesn't concern us why should we send soldiers to fight it? They're no threat to us.' Meanwhile the Brits could draw soldiers from every corner of their Empire to fight over N. America. And arguably that is the only reason the US doesn't own Canada today. | |
01-26-2018 05:45 PM
#243
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01-26-2018 05:56 PM
#244
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01-26-2018 06:34 PM
#245
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01-26-2018 06:34 PM
#246
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Yes, they absolutely are. Though not entirely so. As you know, nation is different than state. You can have a nation without a state. A person that interacts with others in a sufficiently large society depends a good deal on the nation, and the same is true if that person has a state that sets laws by decree and executes them through taxes. |
01-26-2018 06:37 PM
#247
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01-26-2018 09:40 PM
#248
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01-27-2018 09:38 AM
#249
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You seem to be ignoring the element of secrecy. |
01-27-2018 12:54 PM
#250
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This is only as possible in each of the private sector or government to the degree by which the consumers or constituents can make poor judgment and behavior on the part of those with the secrecy costly. As far as I can tell from the evidence, it is much easier to make firms in a free market account for the costs they cause than it is to do the same for government. |
01-28-2018 06:37 AM
#251
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I recognize all of those words. I know what they all mean. I can't for the life of me figure out why you arranged them that way. |
01-28-2018 12:52 PM
#252
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We'd be back where we started IF the revenues of the security firms came by mandate instead of by choice of the buyer (and also choice of the seller). |
Last edited by wufwugy; 01-28-2018 at 12:54 PM. | |
01-28-2018 01:08 PM
#253
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Which is one of the fundamental reasons why socialism and communism suck and why capitalism fucking rules. The shit's called a win-win situation. | |
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01-29-2018 03:53 PM
#254
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I really wish that tax cut was more efficiency oriented than cut oriented. Rate changes (other than marginal rate changes) might have a very small positive impact on real growth, but it's the efficiency gains from reform that have a large impact as well as make crises and recessions less likely and less severe. |
01-31-2018 06:17 PM
#255
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An economist describes how Canada didn't have the Great Depression and pre-Great Depression bank failures like the US did because US banks were highly regulated and Canadian banks were not regulated. |
01-31-2018 06:49 PM
#256
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01-31-2018 07:05 PM
#257
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It's more about what incentives individual regulations cause. I don't know anything about the Canadian banking system proximate to 2008. I know the US system well and the regulations incentivized the lending practices that have post hoc been labelled poor. |
01-31-2018 07:18 PM
#258
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BTW, this is the opinion (approximately) of a subset of economists. It is my opinion because it coheres the best with what I know of the data and the economic theory. A larger subset of economists is slowly (but surely) evolving towards many elements of the above. Neat to note, I had a professor who didn't agree with me at all on this, then at a later date I showed her data she hadn't seen before and she was surprised by it and she told me that she agreed with me on the relevant component (that she previously had said she didn't agree with). That was fun for me. |
01-31-2018 08:29 PM
#259
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Maybe you guys are more informed on the history of the 2008 financial crisis than I am, but the story I heard was that banks lacked solvency due to a high number of low-quality loans on their books. Loans that got there as a result of Clinton-era de-regulations that made mortgages more accessible. |
01-31-2018 08:47 PM
#260
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It isn't clear how this can be the case in theory. Market valuations are based on expectations that the evaluated components are causing that valuation. If it were the case that the banks were behaving in any ways that were harmful that others could identify, that would have been reflected in how others assessed them, which would have impacted the banks' abilities to continue their behavior. This also applies to any regulators. They don't have a magic crystal ball that allows them to see things the markets don't. If it is the case that the markets didn't evaluate the bank behavior as bad, then it is necessarily the case that regulators couldn't do so reliably either |
Last edited by wufwugy; 01-31-2018 at 08:50 PM. | |
01-31-2018 08:56 PM
#261
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I think the banks knew the loans were bad. That's why prior to this...poor people could not get mortgages. You don't need a crystal ball to predict that broke people can't pay bills. |
01-31-2018 08:57 PM
#262
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I'm reading up on some government sponsored enterprises again to make sure I remember facts correctly. This is simply mind-blowing: |
01-31-2018 09:06 PM
#263
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We should make a distinction between knowing that they're bad and knowing that they're bad, so to speak. Market evaluations change based on all information. They evaluate what are normally bad loans as not bad if there is a sufficient enough guarantee or payoff or risk-management such that makes those loans not bad. And banks got that from government. |
01-31-2018 09:11 PM
#264
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Most people (or all people) do not employ logic above first-order for most things. I think the reason I like economics so much is because it's all about higher order logic. It's about evaluating what an action incentivizes (first-order), what that result incentivizes (second-order), what that result incentivizes (third-order), etc.. |
02-05-2018 03:50 PM
#265
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Capitalism strikes again: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/549114...rder-and-rape/ | |
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02-05-2018 09:12 PM
#266
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02-07-2018 02:13 PM
#267
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02-08-2018 04:14 AM
#268
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I'm 99% sure this is spoon, and he's not even being subtle about it. | |
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02-08-2018 08:52 AM
#269
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02-08-2018 10:34 AM
#270
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Two hunter gatherers are talking. | |
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02-09-2018 01:25 PM
#271
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02-09-2018 01:48 PM
#272
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Let's say the whole planet switches to laissez-faire capitalism and in 2100 there's 15 billion people, with a global GDP (GGP?) of $1M per capita. How much is the average working salary in the US? | |
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02-09-2018 02:46 PM
#273
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02-09-2018 02:48 PM
#274
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02-09-2018 03:23 PM
#275
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02-09-2018 04:48 PM
#276
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Because it has been happening since the adoption of capitalism. Why does the term "middle class" even exists in the first place? It is a description of increasing resource equality. Back before the "middle class" was a thing, the gap in real resources between the rich and the poor was astronomical. Today it's much smaller, and in fact the poor today have more than the rich did a few hundred years ago. |
02-09-2018 05:02 PM
#277
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02-09-2018 07:16 PM
#278
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02-09-2018 07:27 PM
#279
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^^^I would like to know how those measurements are made. |
02-09-2018 07:48 PM
#280
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02-09-2018 08:21 PM
#281
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Indeed. It is likely that the vast majority of the "income" being measured as income of the "top 1%" isn't comparable to the income of other brackets. Capital gains is not income like wage income. |
02-10-2018 04:10 AM
#282
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02-10-2018 01:04 PM
#283
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Thanks. I like reviewing the research. |
02-10-2018 01:32 PM
#284
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I'll add that econometrics (what this paper is) is wrought with problems. It isn't even that we know econometrics is not reliable for developing useful conclusions, but that we know it's mostly not reliable. Why is there movement in economics to do econometrics? I'm not sure. My guess is because it's sciency seeming. Taleb has said it's hack statistics. In my experience, it is hack statistics. I replicated a top econometric paper for a class, and yeah, it included a bunch of p-hacking and probably overfitting. Both not good. And the paper's conclusion? It was unable to adjust for some very important variables that could easily have changed the output entirely, but that didn't happen so the paper shows its particular and probably wrong effect. |
02-10-2018 02:05 PM
#285
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Another thing I want to add is that the study finds no impact on growth from changes within high incomes. It finds only impact on growth from changes between low and high incomes. This tells us that there is likely something else going on, that income inequality could be epiphenomenal. |
02-13-2018 09:36 PM
#286
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Economists are editing out basic economics in their textbooks based on their precious fee fees. |
02-14-2018 12:29 AM
#287
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I have a friend whose nephew is a little hustler in the making, and he's like 10 or 11 or so. He started buying packs of like five Reeses or small Hershey bars for $1 at the store and was selling them at school for $0.50 apiece out of his book bag. | |
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02-14-2018 02:53 PM
#288
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http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/...t-schools.html |
02-14-2018 05:47 PM
#289
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Same old shit. It's a perfect example of why I'm in favor of the voucher system. Competition and choice are good things. | |
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02-16-2018 09:42 PM
#290
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02-16-2018 09:59 PM
#291
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02-22-2018 02:27 PM
#292
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Maybe a decent way of conceptualizing the difference between free market capitalism and socialism is that in socialism you can't turn CNN off; in capitalism you can. |
02-22-2018 02:48 PM
#293
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I really wouldn't have a problem with CNN if they were just honest at this point about who and what they are. I mean, MSNBC is way left. But they aren't shy about it. They embrace it. It's part of their identity. |
02-22-2018 03:26 PM
#294
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02-22-2018 03:30 PM
#295
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02-22-2018 03:31 PM
#296
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02-22-2018 04:04 PM
#297
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02-22-2018 04:29 PM
#298
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02-22-2018 04:47 PM
#299
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02-22-2018 04:51 PM
#300
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Monsters like being famous for being monsters. |