Randomness thread, part two.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

I get it, you know my motivations and you know that a field of study you know little about is bullshit.

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I just presented you with facts indicating these people are lying

"Yeah but you have to pay moar! 1 steak is not 20 steaks!"

Umm



I don't, can't and won't ever trust PROVEN liars that want me to "believe in their models" "because economics". Also, they are under legal obligation not to bullshit their shareholders, and guess what

https://arstechnica.com/information-...ps-themselves/

The exact opposite as to what they spent $600B arguing FOR.



They do, can and will bullshit the gullibles in the general public though

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Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

They ALREADY charge more for more use. Want more speed? Pay more. Some bitchy ISPs also have data caps in place. I dunno if you've notices, but it's already there.

They now want to double, triple and quadruple dip

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And?

That behavior is GOOD in an economy. All the great stuff you have in your life came from markets in which some companies did exactly that. Price discrimination is GOOD even when you don't understand why. The way in which it is a problem is when the market is monopolized. The question then is "why is it monopolized?" and then you solve for that. ISP is monopolized mostly due to municipal regulation. Fun fact: one of my professors is about as deeply populist progressive pro-government as it gets and even she acknowledged that the municipal regulations is the main problem causing lack of competition.

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Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

I just presented you with facts indicating these people are lying

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And?

If their answer is "we charge you more because we want to nah nah boo boo" it's still GOOD for the economy in the long term. It is an important part of how markets correct and ultimately end up with higher quality and higher quantities at lower prices than otherwise.

If the government regulates the market too much, then the described companies' behavior is feasibly bad (though not necessarily so) due to unforced error, self-imposed monopoly.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

And?

That behavior is GOOD in an economy. All the great stuff you have in your life came from markets in which some companies did exactly that. Price discrimination is GOOD even when you don't understand why. The way in which it is a problem is when the market is monopolized. The question then is "why is it monopolized?" and then you solve for that.

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Solve for that first then come back to me.

As is, it is incredibly difficult to enter this market and said barrier of entry keeps going up. I have already linked to an article detailing why, so here goes

https://arstechnica.com/business/201...s-really-hard/

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

ISP is monopolized mostly due to municipal regulation. Fun fact: one of my professors is about as deeply populist progressive pro-government as it gets and even she acknowledged that the municipal regulations is the main problem causing lack of competition.

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Great, so solve that first then give free reign to the internet to all the newcomers. As stands, I cannot allow this much power in the hands of an oligopoly who will legally fight you for their rights to exist into oblivion with a now huge warchest.

From the article:

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"I have never seen an independent… start up without having to fight the incumbent legally," Patten told Ars. "The incumbents are notorious for frivolous delay lawsuits. They know perfectly well they're frivolous, but it's a delay tactic. They have an army of lawyers and a budget to support lawsuits the size of Godzilla. That's one of their tactics, it always has been. It probably will continue to be so for many years yet to come."

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

And?

If their answer is "we charge you more because we want to nah nah boo boo" it's still GOOD for the economy in the long term. It is an important part of how markets correct and ultimately end up with higher quality and higher quantities at lower prices than otherwise.

If the government regulates the market too much, then the described companies' behavior is feasibly bad (though not necessarily so) due to unforced error, self-imposed monopoly.

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I believe you are either underestimating or forgetting about lobbyists

Wuf, you seem to think that adding and subtracting government is like addition and subtraction. You may be right. But Jack is making a strong case that it is like multiplication and division, wherein order of operations is paramount to a desired end. You're not making a good argument for your assumption.

I got tickets to go see Dinosaur Jr, literally no one I've told seems excited in any way about it. It's like I've told them I'm going to see some unkown band (including someone I'm going with). Am I just going to get there and it be twaty people my age and 40 year olds?

What's that movie about?

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Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

What's that movie about?

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Throttling 2018.

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Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

I believe you are either underestimating or forgetting about lobbyists

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The market correcting mechanism still works with the lobby. If incumbent ISPs increase prices such that they have increase profits then it incentivizes other firms to enter (and to lobby to do so) as well as incentivizes politicians to listen to those lobbyists more than the incumbent's lobbyists due to the addition of very angry voters.

Some of the fundamental models taught in ECON 101 are about how the more profits in a market the more input from firms/entrepreneurs who want to enter the market (also incentives to produce/consume substitutes). In the short run this always looks painful and people really don't like it, but allowing the process to play out makes for a more robust market than otherwise. When the market is a monopoly, the government cant fix it by setting price controls. With price controls, the government can only entrench the monopolies and keep a stasis of quality, quantity, and price. Yet, in a growing population and a growing economy, this is negative growth. And the setting of price controls eliminates most of the incentive of additional firm/entrepreneur entry and substitution.

It sounds like your view from your last two posts is that because we haven't done what solves the problem, we should instead do something else that doesn't solve the problem.

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Originally Posted by boost

Wuf, you seem to think that adding and subtracting government is like addition and subtraction. You may be right. But Jack is making a strong case that it is like multiplication and division, wherein order of operations is paramount to a desired end. You're not making a good argument for your assumption.

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It's probably addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Other than that, I'm not sure I understand your point. Can you clarify?

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

It's probably addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Other than that, I'm not sure I understand your point. Can you clarify?

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You've made the claim that decreasing the reach of the government, despite in which order you decrease specific instances of its reach, is a good. I'd argue that even if we concede that reduced government is a good, there is likely an order of operations and ideal ratios which much be respected to see the outcomes you want.

So, to be specific here, deregulating ISP's before dealing with their virtual monopoly is the wrong order of operations. Hell, for the sake of argument, I'll even concede that either order eventually gets us to where we want to be, but still the order matters in how long and how grueling the path ahead will be.

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Originally Posted by boost

You've made the claim that decreasing the reach of the government, despite in which order you decrease specific instances of its reach, is a good. I'd argue that even if we concede that reduced government is a good, there is likely an order of operations and ideal ratios which much be respected to see the outcomes you want.

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I completely agree.

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So, to be specific here, deregulating ISP's before dealing with their virtual monopoly is the wrong order of operations. Hell, for the sake of argument, I'll even concede that either order eventually gets us to where we want to be, but still the order matters in how long and how grueling the path ahead will be.

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I would agree if there was sufficient evidence that when bureaucracies gain power, that power doesn't stick around virtually without end. I don't want the FCC to set standards regarding the ISP because I believe it will nearly always do so from then on. If I can pull from Milton Friedman, when asked, he gave only one example of when he has seen government give up a power it had: the draft.

Also, I think that FCC setting standards and prices in the ISP market will have a further deleterious effect on firm entry and innovation regardless of the municipal regulatory situation. Firm entry, production increase, an increase in the supply curve -- come from investors and producers seeing the potential for profits in the market. Each marginal increase in profit in a monopoly market sends a less powerful signal than in the other more competitive market types, but it still sends the signal. Government setting prices in that market mostly eradicates the profit signal and thus entrenches the monopoly. The harder we make it for ISPs to profit, then the harder we make it for firms to enter the market and compete, resulting in being stuck with the same shitty ISPs for a long time.

I forgot to add that the more firm entry you get into a monopolistic market, the more competitive it becomes. The government disallowing ISPs to charge more money based on what they want can be the difference between being stuck with a monopoly ISP market vs. getting actual competition and choices and ultimately having price reduction and quality/quantity increase.

Ok, so are the ISP's (the two of them), ignorant of the fact that they're pushing for their downfall? Shouldn't they want to preserve the status quo, or even better for them, increase government overreach, thereby keeping the crowds out of the neighborhood?

If what you say is true, their actions seem terribly misaligned with their incentives.

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Originally Posted by boost

Ok, so are the ISP's (the two of them), ignorant of the fact that they're pushing for their downfall? Shouldn't they want to preserve the status quo, or even better for them, increase government overreach, thereby keeping the crowds out of the neighborhood?

If what you say is true, their actions seem terribly misaligned with their incentives.

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That's a great question. It's one I've thought some on. I've not seen the idea addressed specifically in economics and I don't think anybody knows the answer.

My idea for what's going on is that nobody knows how to quantify it. The more variables and the longer projected time, the more models fall apart. Smart companies certainly are not relying on models to determine how they should act now due to what they think will happen in 10, 20, 30 years*. The time value of money really throws this through a loop. For example, even if investors think that a gain of 1% profits today will result in a loss of 2% profits in 20 years, they make much more if they take the 1% gain now (because interest). Also, a company that makes more money now gets better at what it does, can expand more, can diversify more, and can innovate more. For example, if Comcast has some investment ideas that require a tremendous amount of capital but fundamentally change/strengthen the company, increasing profits now to make that happen can have a net positive result even if their initial business sees a decrease in profits later because of it.

Illustration of the above: if I invent the shovel and hire people to shovel things for customers, I make some sweet profits. But if I add to my business manufacturing of shovels and sell them to many more customers so they can shovel themselves, I make way more profits despite it decimating my original shovel-laborer-for-hire business.

On a more philosophical level, a decrease in profits due to how the market changes due to the profit-increasing behavior of companies is more an unintended consequence in the view of those companies. As we see in other markets, the consequence isn't enough such that the initial increase in profits is a net negative. If that was the case, profits would actually be losses.

*That's not to say that market prices don't reflect what the markets currently think about what will happen 10, 20, 30 years from now. It's common to think that markets only think in short term, but I estimate that is not true. The efficient market hypothesis (which is the standard used today) posits that current market prices do reflect what people think about any time in the future. An example to make it obvious: if we all thought that aliens are going to invade and try to wipe us out in 2075, market prices would be much different today than they are.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Smart companies certainly are not relying on models to determine how they should act now due to what they think will happen in 10, 20, 30 years*.

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I should rephrase this. They do use models, just when things are simple. For example, if they have two projects that are projected to take 20 years, wherein they can only do one, if they have sufficient quantitative knowledge of the costs and payoffs of the projects, there are financial models that can tell them which project to do. The stuff we're discussing is much more complex than that though. Nobody knows how to approximate Google Fiber's response to a change in behavior from Comcast.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

The efficient market hypothesis (which is the standard used today) posits that current market prices do reflect what people think about any time in the future. An example to make it obvious: if we all thought that aliens are going to invade and try to wipe us out in 2075, market prices would be much different today than they are.

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This is all fine and dandy and with perfect information it would work pretty well, then only stupidity and manipulation attempts would skew the results. I think it's needless to say that people suck at predicting, I see no good reason to think that masses of people would be significantly better. The market isn't a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire audience full of trivia geeks. Have there been even any attempts to measure how accurately these market predictions work, are they better than a random guess?

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

That's a great question. It's one I've thought some on. I've not seen the idea addressed specifically in economics and I don't think anybody knows the answer.

My idea for what's going on is that nobody knows how to quantify it. The more variables and the longer projected time, the more models fall apart. Smart companies certainly are not relying on models to determine how they should act now due to what they think will happen in 10, 20, 30 years*. The time value of money really throws this through a loop. For example, even if investors think that a gain of 1% profits today will result in a loss of 2% profits in 20 years, they make much more if they take the 1% gain now (because interest). Also, a company that makes more money now gets better at what it does, can expand more, can diversify more, and can innovate more. For example, if Comcast has some investment ideas that require a tremendous amount of capital but fundamentally change/strengthen the company, increasing profits now to make that happen can have a net positive result even if their initial business sees a decrease in profits later because of it.

Illustration of the above: if I invent the shovel and hire people to shovel things for customers, I make some sweet profits. But if I add to my business manufacturing of shovels and sell them to many more customers so they can shovel themselves, I make way more profits despite it decimating my original shovel-laborer-for-hire business.

On a more philosophical level, a decrease in profits due to how the market changes due to the profit-increasing behavior of companies is more an unintended consequence in the view of those companies. As we see in other markets, the consequence isn't enough such that the initial increase in profits is a net negative. If that was the case, profits would actually be losses.

*That's not to say that market prices don't reflect what the markets currently think about what will happen 10, 20, 30 years from now. It's common to think that markets only think in short term, but I estimate that is not true. The efficient market hypothesis (which is the standard used today) posits that current market prices do reflect what people think about any time in the future. An example to make it obvious: if we all thought that aliens are going to invade and try to wipe us out in 2075, market prices would be much different today than they are.

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This is all well and interesting, but it doesn't plug the huge plot hole. Your whole argument on the issue hinges on either this being true or the big ISPs being incompetent irrational actors. You don't provide enough support for the former to argue so forcefully against net neutrality.

ISPs just think it's a great way for them to make money in the short term, that's what they care about. In a market so monopolised maybe them all goofing off will allow others to enter but it's more likely that everyone just gets worse service for a quite a while.

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Originally Posted by CoccoBill

This is all fine and dandy and with perfect information it would work pretty well, then only stupidity and manipulation attempts would skew the results. I think it's needless to say that people suck at predicting, I see no good reason to think that masses of people would be significantly better. The market isn't a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire audience full of trivia geeks. Have there been even any attempts to measure how accurately these market predictions work, are they better than a random guess?

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What I was discussing isn't the market making predictions, but a reflection of prediction. Markets don't tell us what the future looks like but they do tell us what people think the future looks like.

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Originally Posted by boost

This is all well and interesting, but it doesn't plug the huge plot hole. Your whole argument on the issue hinges on either this being true or the big ISPs being incompetent irrational actors. You don't provide enough support for the former to argue so forcefully against net neutrality.

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My argument hinges on the supply and demand model. It's quite a robust model.

The discipline may be best thought of as having at its foundation in a few ceteris paribus models and some principles that usefully describe the evidence. Beyond that, scientific demonstration comes with too many confounding variables and even the most simple questions in economics have not been answered "by science". Economics is derivation from the aforementioned models and principles and behavior.

Regarding the topics we've been discussing, what we almost certainly know to be true is that increases in profits incentivize firm entry, that firm entry increases supply, and that a supply increase reduces price. What we don't know is everything else*. We just try to be as consistent and coherent in our logical derivations from what we know to describe generalities about what we on average expect to see happen in markets.

*There are some less direct but relevant things we also know. Like how a price increase decreases quantity demanded (how much depends on elasticity), decreases demand for complements, and increases demand for substitutes.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

My argument hinges on the supply and demand model. It's quite a robust model.

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-.-

I don't want to go round this circle with you again, wuf.

Can we just agree that that's not what robust means when you "almost" certainly know [broad generalities] and "not everything else?"

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

-.-

I don't want to go round this circle with you again, wuf.

Can we just agree that that's not what robust means when you "almost" certainly know [broad generalities] and "not everything else?"

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Supply and demand models function very well under widely variable conditions. I say we "almost certainly know" the things that supply and demand models say ceteris paribus because they're still just models of reality instead of actual reality.

If that doesn't address your point, please clarify.

As I understand it, the most we can say, is that supply and demand curves are relatively stable when looked at over long time periods, and accounting for large-scale financial buffers and man-power to smooth out adjustment periods.

Supply and demand curves are hypothetical. They are not based on measurements, and when used, the plots don't have labeled axes. It's merely a qualitative description that makes sense, under certain assumptions (assumptions which you and I strongly disagree about, i.e. whether rational actors exist).

They are good descriptors in retrospect, when the "actual" pressures of supply and demand are known. However, they fail at any present-tense descriptive power, because they can only, at most, describe the current state of supply and demand. Those curves are not static over time. The lines move as market adjustments are made.

Next, they are better and better descriptors of economic situations the more abstract their subject matter is. Supply and demand can be a rather stable long-term predictor of highly amalgamated economic sectors, like looking at the entire food industry. Broadly, supply and demand curves can be rather stable predictors of how the food industry's supplies and demands will find equilibrium.

However, if we zoom in on a mom-and-pop shop and try to quantify the exact supply pressures and exact demand pressures at any given moment, we're dead in the water. That's before we ask what the curves will look like next week, or maybe in the morning vs. in the afternoon.

The model fails at specifics, which is why I think calling it "robust" is a mistake. It gives a warm, pleasant feeling of describing things when we abstract those things further and further away from human decisions, but the more we try to apply the model to guide our decisions, the more it fails.

This isn't even discussing whether or not those business owners are capable of acting in their best interest, which is the fundamental assumption behind supply and demand, and which I think any observation of human activity shows the folly of.

Your characterization of supply and demand is correct regarding how it is taught regarding goods/services markets and how elasticity of the curves can change, yet we see the framework in specific ways too. For example, the model fits how stock prices adjust.

Regarding the rational thing, I don't disagree with you. "Rational" is a very misleading word economists chose to use. Within the economics framework, even acting against your own "best interests" is rational. To an economist, an choice in itself is rational. List any choice that looks irrational to a normal person and an economist will call it rational. It's because the word means something different to economists than to us normal folk.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Your characterization of supply and demand is correct regarding how it is taught regarding goods/services markets and how elasticity of the curves can change, yet we see the framework in specific ways too. For example, the model fits how stock prices have adjusted.

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FYP

Yeah, so I still think your case is less than compelling. Theoretically things should be better-- but how long it takes for the industry to settle is not clear, and how damaging a temporary, unregulated ISP monopoly could be is unknown. Five years of this could set us back fifty years. So many points can be conceded to you, and it's still not a rosy picture.

Got offered a place on a maths teaching course.

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Originally Posted by Savy

Got offered a place on a maths teaching course.

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:banana:

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

FYP

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Also how they will adjust.

Nobody's running around with any model that says an increase in demand reduces price. Is the supply and demand model not robust because we don't use it to get exact quantities?

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Originally Posted by boost

Yeah, so I still think your case is less than compelling. Theoretically things should be better-- but how long it takes for the industry to settle is not clear, and how damaging a temporary, unregulated ISP monopoly could be is unknown. Five years of this could set us back fifty years. So many points can be conceded to you, and it's still not a rosy picture.

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I'm not making the case that it *would* be better to let an ISP to set prices however it wants. I am making the case that economic theory says allowing that is how things have a higher likelihood of getting better in the long term. Economic theory also says that if you want a monopoly to get better in the short term, regulate their prices. Keep in mind that every bit of "damage" the ISPs cause, the greater the incentive for producers to offer their services and for consumers to substitute. This "damage" is so to speak what we've been talking about the whole time. Economics is largely about asking "what's the effect of that, and the effect of that effect, and the effect of that effect of that effect?" One of the effects in the chain is that the more "damage" the ISPs cause (from increasing prices), the greater the incentive to subvert them. In a free-ish market economy (which is what we have), this is part of the Invisible Hand (the observation that started it all).

If it sounded like I was claiming that a price increase is good, I never intended that. I've been trying to discuss how the effects of that are different than thought outside the field of economics. The ability to set prices however you want is of the utmost importance to a functioning economy. What I've been trying to say isn't that it would be better for Comcast to raise its prices, but that if it does, it's not bad for the economy the way popular discussion would have us believe.

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

:banana:

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Will be funny when nothing comes through and I realise the guy was just trolling.

Good to hear you may be teaching multiple math courses. Hope it works out.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Also how they will adjust.

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Well... not really, no.
It can say things like, stock prices are expected to [...], but it can't say, "GM stock will rise by 3 points today due to the combined pressures of supply and demand as they play out in the next 24 hours."

So we're back to this: Supply and Demand is a hypothetical model which seems to describe broad trends in a widely congealed market of many actors. It gains more and more power the further it is abstracted away from human decisions. It loses all power when it is used to describe any specific, human-decision based outcomes.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Is the supply and demand model not robust because we don't use it to get exact quantities?

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Partially, yes, but not the biggest reason, no.

The biggest reason is the abstraction argument. The model seems more and more useful the less pinned down by IRL facts it is. Its predictive power is not uniformly understood among credible economists, who will use the same model to formulate different predictions. This is because the abstraction isn't well-defined. The loose terminology of the model is understood differently by different economists, who are therefore not using the same model, despite using the same words.

If a model can explain an outcome and its antithesis outcome using the same inputs and mechanisms of the model, then the model is absurd.

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

Well... not really, no.
It can say things like, stock prices are expected to [...], but it can't say, "GM stock will rise by 3 points today due to the combined pressures of supply and demand as they play out in the next 24 hours."

So we're back to this: Supply and Demand is a hypothetical model which seems to describe broad trends in a widely congealed market of many actors. It gains more and more power the further it is abstracted away from human decisions. It loses all power when it is used to describe any specific, human-decision based outcomes.


Partially, yes, but not the biggest reason, no.

The biggest reason is the abstraction argument. The model seems more and more useful the less pinned down by IRL facts it is. Its predictive power is not uniformly understood among credible economists, who will use the same model to formulate different predictions. This is because the abstraction isn't well-defined. The loose terminology of the model is understood differently by different economists, who are therefore not using the same model, despite using the same words.

If a model can explain an outcome and its antithesis outcome using the same inputs and mechanisms of the model, then the model is absurd.

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It's important to distinguish between ceteris paribus and not. Economists don't disagree on the ceteris paribus effect. Disagreements come when extrapolating. You are correct that supply and demand doesn't tell us what will happen in the real world to GM stock due to a change in demand because what happens in the real world isn't ceteris paribus. An increase in demand for GM stock does push up its stock price (to the best of our knowledge), BUT a whole host of other stuff also happens, which can yield a lower price.

You're definitely right that we don't use S&D to tell us what a price/quantity will be, because S&D is ceteris paribus and the world is never ceteris paribus. Observations have been that over time the ceteris paribus effect holds directionally and on average.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

S&D is ceteris paribus and the world is never ceteris paribus.

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This is exactly my point. (Now that you made me google ceteris paribus.)

I'm fine with all else*, but it can't be considered robust under this condition.

I mean, my other criticisms dissolve as meaningless if the theory is not considered robust.

Make a law that says that anybody named MadMojoMonkey who post on FTR must be paid $200/hour by any employer, and the S&D forecast would be a decline of quantity of MadMojoMonkeys employed. This forecast would be extremely effective in this new and unique situation, because (if I may use my crystal ball) employment of MadMojoMonkeys would quite reliably fall to around zero. Does this not show robustness of the supply and demand model?

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Does this not show robustness of the supply and demand model?

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It does not. For I am employed.

Citing a hypothetical to convince me that what I called a hypothetical model is really real was pretty meta, though.
I can give you credit for that.

Oh, and these finally exist. At least for one guy for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI8E4cda_ww

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

It does not. For I am employed.

Citing a hypothetical to convince me that what I called a hypothetical model is really real was pretty meta, though.
I can give you credit for that.

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Assume the law gets passed and you are no longer employed. Would that show robustness?

Here's a better question. If you could address this I would be grateful.

A line from something I'm reading on robustness in economics regarding robust business finance models:

"traders analyze a security’s price data using technical analysis to forecast price movements that result from disparities in the security’s supply and demand of the moment."

Given that the robust technical analysis forecast depends on the consistency and effectiveness of the supply and demand model, does this not mean that supply and demand is a robust model? Or am I using the term wrongly? The law of supply and demand is a thing. Are laws not robust?

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Assume the law gets passed and you are no longer employed. Would that show robustness?

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Clearly you're campaigning to ensure I am underpaid, and employers will jump at that opportunity.
Besides all the other MadMojoMonkey's who post on FTR's will surely have some non-0 chance to actually be worth over $200 an hour or at least to convince someone that they are.

[total detour]These stories kind of congregate in a college engineering dept, but it's common to know of a professor who got their doctorate, "worked" for one summer, then "retired" to teaching. It's amazing how out-of-date some industrial processes are, even in huge manufacturing industries. An engineer with a 50-year updated education can walk in to some places and say, "How often do you replace that $100k bearing on that city-sized machine? Every 2 months? I think I can make it so you only have to replace it twice a year." and deliver. That company is like, "You just saved us $400k a year. Have a bunch of money to you which is now a trivial expense to us."[/detour]

Seriously, though. We'd need a Bayesian analysis on that to determine how much of that was a coincidence and how much causality.
I mean, there's a non-0 chance I become unemployed whether or not this law passes. This law is directed at a group of 1 individual, so I'd argue that there's no real way to determine the effect of the law, due to the law not being ... what was it... clitoris pubis? something like that.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Here's a better question. If you could address this I would be grateful.

A line from something I'm reading on robustness in economics regarding robust business finance models:

"traders analyze a security’s price data using technical analysis to forecast price movements that result from disparities in the security’s supply and demand of the moment."

Given that the robust technical analysis forecast depends on the consistency and effectiveness of the supply and demand model, does this not mean that supply and demand is a robust model? Or am I using the term wrongly? The law of supply and demand is a thing. Are laws not robust?

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As I understand it, Fourier analysis is the backbone of these analysis programs. The Fourier analysis is simply a way of describing any event as additive combinations of repeating events on various time-scales. I.e. it's frequency analysis. It's not actually inputting any data about supply or demand, just looking at a wiggly line, and decomposing that wiggly line into sine waves and using those sine waves to extrapolate into the near future.

It's a purely mathematical process, that takes 0 human factors into account.
So, while it would be in the position of increased authority, being well abstracted away from actual humans, that's not what it does.

Even in the article you cite, they're not willing to equate this to the supply and demand model.

"In fact, technical analysis can be viewed as simply the study of supply and demand forces as reflected in the market price movements of a security."

They start out by saying, "in fact," and then immediately offer an opinion. This kind of bogus use of words is typical of a charlatan.

In fact, my butt can be viewed as a work of art. No one has yet to do so, but it's a fact that it could happen.

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

In fact, my butt can be viewed as a work of art. No one has yet to do so, but it's a fact that it could happen.

---

I'm sure bitches be mirin'.

This is the article I was looking at: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/robust.asp

You'll not get an argument from me against the claim of charlatan-ness in the social sciences, humanities, or business. The shit bounds there.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

In fact, my butt can be viewed as a work of art. No one has yet to do so, but it's a fact that it could happen.

---

Well, it's true.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by boost

Yeah, so I still think your case is less than compelling. Theoretically things should be better-- but how long it takes for the industry to settle is not clear, and how damaging a temporary, unregulated ISP monopoly could be is unknown. Five years of this could set us back fifty years. So many points can be conceded to you, and it's still not a rosy picture.

---

Exactly.

And trying to strongarm said measures which will "help everyone" into place is mafia like. I have no interest in aiding the mafia.

If net neutrality is so harmful to you, why would you end an investigation into this exact thing? Afraid of the results, aren't we?

Why would you make it more difficult for poor people to get broadband subsidies?

And complaining about monopolies and their effects, and yet making it easier for large tv channels to merge? Monopolies, much?

You put in a decision to eliminate price caps into business broadband market by imposing a new standard that deems certain local markets competitive even when there's only one broadband provider. You know, because it's awesomely competitive when there is only one provider.

You open your proposal for "comments", and yet you know that it is bombarded with anti-net-neutrality bots. And you pay no mind to it. So the entire websites comment system is a farce. A joke. You know that, and love it like that

You got hit by a DDOS, know exactly who did the DDOS (ips ranges are a wonderful thing), yet claim ignorance and only say it happened "because John Oliver".

But more importantly, Title II hasn't hurt investments nor the ISPs themselves, according to the ISPs THEMSELVES.


These are all sourced and verified. It's not stuff I pulled out of my ass. It's also not based on some theory that "should work" because "my prof said so". This is the real world, and these shenanigans are real. This is as close to legalized mafia as I've ever seen, strongarming your benefit into existence by placing one unelected guy on your payroll in the one spot that he should be and fuck everything else. Burn, world, because profits.


I cannot fathom possibly defending such scummy behaviour ever

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

...

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TIL that when the government harms people it affirms the need for government intervention.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

TIL that when the government harms people it affirms the need for government intervention.

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What "harm" wuf? Where is the harm? Who got killed? What actual, concrete evidence do you have supporting this "harm"? Are you Ajit Pai?

I do see harm incoming, but for once its not from the government's part

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Savy

I'm sure bitches be mirin'.

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:h:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Well, it's true.

---

:shh:

Your links are all about what the government has done.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Your links are all about what the government has done.

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Ajit Pai is government, yes. He is an unelected bureaucrat put in place by dear leader Trum himself yes. He also happens to be an ex-verizon lawyer, who is currently doing verizon's bidding in the government, yes.

This is not as much what the government has done, but highlighting how corruption is being done right now. Pai is a hired goon put in place by Trump tasked with assassinating net neutrality at any cost. It does not matter any opposing viewpoints, these are simply readily dismissed as lunacy. It does not matter what evidence one brings, as these are dismissed as well. He has a single task, make his former and future employers as rich as possible. A monotasker if you will.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Your links are all about what the government has done.

---

Also, this link is not about what the government has done. I'm pretty sure you didn't click it, because if you did you would have known

https://arstechnica.com/information-...ps-themselves/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

This is the article I was looking at: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/robust.asp

---

I'm pretty cool with that interpretation of robust.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

Ajit Pai is government, yes. He is an unelected bureaucrat put in place by dear leader Trum himself yes. He also happens to be an ex-verizon lawyer, who is currently doing verizon's bidding in the government, yes.

This is not as much what the government has done, but highlighting how corruption is being done right now. Pai is a hired goon put in place by Trump tasked with assassinating net neutrality at any cost. It does not matter any opposing viewpoints, these are simply readily dismissed as lunacy. It does not matter what evidence one brings, as these are dismissed as well. He has a single task, make his former and future employers as rich as possible. A monotasker if you will.

---

TIL the government doing stuff isn't the government doing stuff.

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

I'm pretty cool with that interpretation of robust.

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If the robust financial models are based on the supply and demand model, does that mean the supply and demand model is also robust?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

If the robust financial models are based on the supply and demand model, does that mean the supply and demand model is also robust?

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No.

A single axiom may not be enough to form a robust model, but many axioms may. Even if none of the axioms individually give rise to complexity, the combination can.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

TIL the government doing stuff isn't the government doing stuff.

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Government bad! My government good!

SAD!

Edit: weak, wuf. I am dissapoint

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

No.

A single axiom may not be enough to form a robust model, but many axioms may. Even if none of the axioms individually give rise to complexity, the combination can.

---

So, the supply and demand framework is really, really, really effective. That was why I called it robust. Given that you say robust is the wrong word (you may be right, I'm not gangster enough at statistics to counterpoint further), what description do you think I should have used?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

Government bad! My government good!

SAD!

Edit: weak, wuf. I am dissapoint

---

I don't like corporations as much as you. They are greedy and selfish. However, the observation that spawned the field of economics is one that when greedy selfish entities are in competition, what arises is a societal good greater than otherwise. Even if it appears that my posts are not essentially about that observation, they are. Keep in mind that economics principles are deeply unpopular. Government intervention is a powerful tool that has restrained the societal benefit stated by this base observation of economics.

http://concave-asscheeks.tumblr.com/...bran-darthkres

just keep on reading ...it keeps on giving

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wuf

Government intervention is a powerful tool that has restrained the societal benefit stated by this base observation of economics.

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Without government intervention we have the black market and anarchism. Not that I'm against this in principle, but strip away government, and that's what we have.

The world would be more chaotic and dangerous, and the markets more volatile. Who's going to make sure chicken can't be sold unless the farm meets strict hygeine standards? Who's going to negotiate trade deals with other nations?

I would love to live in a world without government intervention, however that relies on everyone not being a cunt. Wishful thinking.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Keith

http://concave-asscheeks.tumblr.com/...bran-darthkres

just keep on reading ...it keeps on giving

---

Excellent trolling. The silly bitch thinks she won. 10/10 for lemon man.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

So, the supply and demand framework is really, really, really effective. That was why I called it robust. Given that you say robust is the wrong word (you may be right, I'm not gangster enough at statistics to counterpoint further), what description do you think I should have used?

---

I've said that I'm perfectly happy with the definition of robust in the link you provided. I'm not trying to crowbar the economics definition to be the statistical definition. That's pointless. I'm not telling other people what they're saying. I'm trying to understand what they mean when they say stuff.

Now that I understand the economics definition of robust, my opinion hasn't changed that it's not appropriate to call S&D robust.

The definition given in that link states that in order to call a model robust it needs to have specific predictive powers.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by robust link

Financial models are an integral part of running a corporation. From the corporate executives of large multinational corporations, to the franchise owner of the local burger restaurant, decision-makers need up-to-date information presented to them in a model form that best reflects the activities of the business.

[...]

A robust model will continue to provide executives and managers with effective decision-making tools, and investors with accurate information on which to base their investment decisions.

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There is nothing specific (quantitative) about S&D, so there can be nothing accurate about it.
Accuracy can't be applied to generalizations, that's more charlatan speak.

Then their summary:

Quote:

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However, when market conditions change, or the model is applied to another time period or the future, the model fails horribly, and losses are realized. This is usually the result of a trading model that is not robust.

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Which seems like them specifically excluding S&D from being considered robust w/o coming right out and saying it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

Without government intervention we have the black market and anarchism. Not that I'm against this in principle, but strip away government, and that's what we have.

The world would be more chaotic and dangerous, and the markets more volatile. Who's going to make sure chicken can't be sold unless the farm meets strict hygeine standards? Who's going to negotiate trade deals with other nations?

I would love to live in a world without government intervention, however that relies on everyone not being a cunt. Wishful thinking.

---

The first realization of economics states that these problems get solved by competition. Given that you said what I present relies on "everyone not being a cunt" suggests that you don't know what my point is. Everyone being a cunt is an input into classical economic philosophy. On the contrary, everyone not being a cunt is what is required to have good government. Since people ARE selfish greedy cunts, we had best work with the philosophy that best describes how to mitigate that damage.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

Accuracy can't be applied to generalizations, that's more charlatan speak.

---

Here's where I'm confused. S&D is one of the most reliable models that humans have. I would think that would make it quite robust. But if it's that something can only be robust if it tells you exactly what will happen at a certain time period based on a certain input, then no, S&D doesn't do that. Well, it actually might when it comes to financial markets, but I don't know. The goods/services market versions don't.

Maybe this will help me: are the thermodynamics laws robust? If they're not, the law of supply and demand might not be robust for similar reasons.

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Given that you said what I present relies on "everyone not being a cunt" suggests that you don't know what my point is.

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Yeah whatever, I was grunching and saw "blah blah govt intervention restrains social benefits blah blah".

It also advances social benefits. It does both.

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On the contrary, everyone not being a cunt is what is required to have good government.

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Not at all. You just need those who are governing to not be cunts. A big ask, I realise, but not as big an ask as "everyone".

For there to be no government intervention, for anarchism to work, the "don't be a cunt" rule is passed from government to the masses.

No it isn't it just self regulates better because people don't have the power to be massive cunts with no repercussions.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

Not at all. You just need those who are governing to not be cunts.

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Did you watch the short segment about the Unicorn State?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Did you watch the short segment about the Unicorn State?

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No. It's not this page or last page, and I got bored looking for it.

You win.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Savy

No it isn't it just self regulates better because people don't have the power to be massive cunts with no repercussions.

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Well this is my argument in favour of anarchy, but it doesn't sell well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Here's where I'm confused. S&D is one of the most reliable models that humans have. I would think that would make it quite robust.

---

Look at it this way: If the law of gravity was: "what goes up must come down," then that would be a broad description which doesn't really guide us on how to, say, design parachutes or safety brakes in elevators, etc. Furthermore, it would have a lot of loopholes and exceptions. E.g. escape velocity sending things up which don't come down, and the preponderance of stuff coming down which doesn't seem to have "gone up" so much as just be up.

That would not be a robust law, when compared to other scientific laws.

Understanding gravity as an acceleration equivalent to forces on masses not only explains the whole up and down thing, but so much more. It predicts things which were never anticipated, and thought to be absurd at first, but those predictions were later observed. Further refining our understanding of gravity to be a warping of 4-dimensional spacetime was another huge leap, with similar hallmarks of robustness.

Do you see what robust laws are compared to ... not robust ... laws?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

But if it's that something can only be robust if it tells you exactly what will happen at a certain time period based on a certain input, then no, S&D doesn't do that. Well, it actually might when it comes to financial markets, but I don't know. The goods/services market versions don't.

---

Well, that's a big part of, it, so do we agree, then?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Maybe this will help me: are the thermodynamics laws robust? If they're not, the law of supply and demand might not be robust for similar reasons.

---

The laws of thermodynamics make specific predictions, which have never credibly been shown to have made an incorrect prediction. Neither can be said about S&D. Thermodynamics makes predictions about things which are well beyond the known scope of the field when these laws were formulated.

By the economics definition of robust, this pings hard on all the criteria. It provides useful information to people who can make actionable decisions with known outcomes. The model provides (measurably) accurate predictions, even when the stimulus to the model is varied widely.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

Well this is my argument in favour of anarchy, but it doesn't sell well.

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It doesn't sell well because people think what we've built up so far even if it is massively flawed is still somewhat going in the right direction from nothing because the comparisons are now with what we have now which is pretty great or essentially caveman times with nothing when we have something that would be more like anarchy*. If you want to convince people what you have to do is come from a point of showing that something we have now does badly and showing how a form of liberalism is a better idea that than. Ideally without linking it with the negative imagery that words like anarchy highlight.

*And the idea of anarchy that is lighting everything on fire and watching it burn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4af3-GSFUrg


0 empathy. Until it happens to you

Let's discuss ideas that make peoples' lives better instead of assuming knowledge of others' internal thoughts.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Let's discuss ideas that make peoples' lives better instead of assuming knowledge of others' internal thoughts.

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I prefer to discuss how certain people's hypocrisies affect other other people's lives for the worse



What one can demonstrate with facts is real; assuming knowledge of others' internal thoughts is fantasy. My fantasy is reserved for GoT

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

I prefer to discuss how certain people's hypocrisies affect other other people's lives for the worse



What one can demonstrate with facts is real; assuming knowledge of others' internal thoughts is fantasy. My fantasy is reserved for GoT

---

Just to clarify, being a hypocrite means that by default your position is fucked; it's so bad that you yourself cannot support your own position. Now if you can't support your own position, how can you expect (and want!) others to do so?

Do as I say, not as I do. LOL

What's the hypocrisy you're referencing?

Tomi Lahren. Notorious Obamacare hater




And yet this exchange happened at politicon

Quote:

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“I believe it’s my right to purchase health care, I don’t believe it’s my right to pay for it for other people,” Lahren said. “We need to find alternatives — what we have now is not working. What we had before Obamacare wasn’t working.”


“Do you have a health care plan or no?” Handler asked.




“Well luckily, I’m 24, so I am still on my parents,” Lahren replied.




The Obamacare law allowed children to to stay on their parents’ health insurance until the age of 26. Previously, the cutoff age was 19.

---

Aside from fundamentally not understanding how insurance works ("I don’t believe it’s my right to pay for it for other people,”), her level of hypocrisy is astounding, And this is an all too common occurrence

New favourite channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPWxRXJbEyI

Are you open to the idea that that's not an example of hypocrisy?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Are you open to the idea that that's not an example of hypocrisy?

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Guy with the blender walks the walk imo.

Tomi Lahren isn't a hypocrite either. There's a difference between your parents paying your insurance and you paying taxes for a total stranger's insurance. Still doesn't change the fact that universal health care is the only civilized approach to the whole issue, as all of the civilized world minus the US figured out decades ago.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Are you open to the idea that that's not an example of hypocrisy?

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You're going to need to rephrase this, then, I think:

I choose to use gov't assistance; I am competent to earn my own money and purchase my healthcare independently, but I don't do that.
Furthermore, I believe that gov't assistance is wrong, and that you shouldn't use it.

***
EDIT: I choose to use gov't assistance let someone else pay for my healthcare. I am competent to earn my own money and purchase my healthcare independently, but I don't do that.
Furthermore, I believe that gov't assistance is wrong, and that you shouldn't use it, 'cause you should pay for your own stuff.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Poopadoop

Guy with the blender walks the walk imo.

Tomi Lahren isn't a hypocrite either. There's a difference between your parents paying your insurance and you paying taxes for a total stranger's insurance. Still doesn't change the fact that universal health care is the only civilized approach to the whole issue, as all of the civilized world minus the US figured out decades ago.

---

Just like universal food, universal housing, and universal dating.

Keep in mind that the kinds of problems that single-payer coverage causes are quite severe in these "rest of the civilized world" countries. Also, keep in mind that an actual free market would be remarkably better for their citizens.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

You're going to need to rephrase this, then, I think:

I choose to use gov't assistance; I am competent to earn my own money and purchase my healthcare independently, but I don't do that.
Furthermore, I believe that gov't assistance is wrong, and that you shouldn't use it.

***
EDIT: I choose to use gov't assistance let someone else pay for my healthcare. I am competent to earn my own money and purchase my healthcare independently, but I don't do that.
Furthermore, I believe that gov't assistance is wrong, and that you shouldn't use it, 'cause you should pay for your own stuff.

---

Her argument is that the system should be different. One can say that there should not be a law that forces insurance companies to allow people to stay on their parents' plans until the age of 26, while they themselves stay on their parents plans until the age of 26 when the system is organized such that that is the best option in the situation.

I don't think the government should own roads and I would gladly vote such that they would not own roads if I had the option, yet here I am, driving on roads that the government owns. What a hypocrite I must be.

The fact that you say all that without sarcasm is adorable.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1606969...-debate-on-the

Quote:

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When people have facts and reasons in their armory, they use them first. When they run out of rational arguments, they attack the messenger.

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http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1282673...ive-dissonance

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Personal Attack: A personal attack without reason is among the strongest tells [for cognitive dissonance]. That means the person being attacked has been so persuasive that it is shaking someone else’s self-image.

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Who should own the roads wuf? Private companies? How are they going to make a profit?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

Who should own the roads wuf? Private companies? How are they going to make a profit?

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Replace bus stops with toll booths.

Then add more toll booths.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

Who should own the roads wuf? Private companies? How are they going to make a profit?

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You know the answer to this, so what's your point?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

Replace bus stops with toll booths.

Then add more toll booths.

---

At least they'd have an incentive to speed up the toll booths thus making traffic flow quicker.

Her position is that Obamacare is so bad it has to go. It is a “a death spiral” and is “detrimental”. And yet here she is using it. She has the choice not to use that particular provision and get her own private healthcare, the “git a jub” approach to practicing what she preaches, and yet she chose to use Obamacare anyway




Don’t get me wrong, it is the logical thing to do. Obamacare, ahem, Affordable Care Act, while not perfect, particularly because it does include any provisions to lower or at least limit the cost of medical care and prescription drugs, is still much better than what there was before.




You can also choose to fix its shortcomings without having to bomb it. You know, like add provisions to lower or at least limit the cost of medical care and prescription drugs.




https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.650014314ef8




http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/...democrats.html








Point that out and you get the “This is unacceptable. So why model our entire healthcare system on a failed government experiment?. Also, fuck obama anyway” retort




http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blo...-a-great-event

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

I don't think the government should own roads and I would gladly vote such that they would not own roads if I had the option, yet here I am, driving on roads that the government owns. What a hypocrite I must be.

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Dem tolls yo

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Savy

You know the answer to this, so what's your point?

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The point is obviously to bait wuf into saying tolls. I'm curious if that's what he proposes.

Quote:

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At least they'd have an incentive to speed up the toll booths thus making traffic flow quicker.

---

cmon man this is 2017, and you're practically a millenial. How does someone pushing 40 immediately realise that the tolls would be digital while you think about traffic flow through booths? No need for toll booths, just cameras with number plate reading technology.

Privatising the roads sounds like a horrible idea to me. Then again, privatising trains and busses is also horrible, but we've done that. And the result is piss poor service, because it's a natural monopoloy. How many companies do you suppose run the busses in my shitty town? One. And we only have one train line going through the town. So there's no competition. Go onto Kidderminster Matters on facebook, and you'll see that the local bus company are considered a joke. Weekly photos of one broken down, daily tales of people being late for work due to unannounced cancellations, even the occasional engine on fire. But of course, fares rise above inflation.

It would be the same with the roads. Costs would go up at above the rate of inflation, slowly squeezing more money out of people who are just trying to get to work to make the economy work in the first place.

I'm down with small government... but that small government should be in control of critical state infrastructure and natural monopolies, with any "profit" going back into the public purse. The incentive for government to deliver is a booming economy with more tax revenue, and public approval which means more votes. Because the incentive is not profit, costs to the consumer are minimal.

This isn't socialism. The markets are still free. Government doesn't control bread. Government merely provides the environment in which the citizens can best thrive, based on their individual strengths and skills.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

Her position is that Obamacare is so bad it has to go. It is a “a death spiral” and is “detrimental”. And yet here she is using it. She has the choice not to use that particular provision and get her own private healthcare, the “git a jub” approach to practicing what she preaches, and yet she chose to use Obamacare anyway

---

And it would be hypocritical if she said that using Obamacare when it is the law of the land is wrong. Which she did not say. Virtually no conservatives believe using Obamacare when it is the law is wrong.

Quote:

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You can also choose to fix its shortcomings without having to bomb it. You know, like add provisions to lower or at least limit the cost of medical care and prescription drugs.

---

Some costs can be brought down by the power that single-payer can have regarding negotiating prices. The benefits are pretty small compared to the other costs created by using single-payer. Obamacare CANNOT be fixed because it is a third-party payer system and because it by nature cannot include market forces that reduce costs via competition. Obamacare certainly could be made better in theory, but it cannot be "fixed" such that citizens would receive as high of quantity and quality of care at as low of price as in a free market system.

Keep in mind that single-payer is a failed system. The last thing you wanna do in single-payer systems is get sick, because the way those systems are constrained means they must cut costs by rationing, which is why sick people get such delayed treatment (or no treatment) even when "insured" by the government.

Keep in mind that we are not dealing with new fundamental ideas regarding economic structure. Each idea that people think is a "new" idea that hasn't been tried before is not new and has been tried before. They each operate under one of two fundamental paradigms: Smithian capitalistic one or Marxist socialist one. The former is responsible for unfathomable improvements in the poorest peoples' lives and the latter is responsible for the suffering of tens of millions.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

The point is obviously to bait wuf into saying tolls. I'm curious if that's what he proposes.

---

I have covered this in the past.

There would be tolls on roads just like there is a toll to enter Walmart. And like there is a toll to enter Starbucks. And like there is a toll to enter an auto shop or a law or accountancy office.

Remember that not only are you NOT being tolled to enter those places, but you ARE ALREADY being tolled to use government roads. It's called taxes. And the roads are pretty shitty. Savy is correct. Private ownership would streamline traffic. It would also make the roads nice. This is because roads do not function much like consumer goods; instead they function like costs impeding consumption of different consumer goods. Private roads would result in the poor becoming much wealthier.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

cmon man this is 2017, and you're practically a millenial. How does someone pushing 40 immediately realise that the tolls would be digital while you think about traffic flow through booths? No need for toll booths, just cameras with number plate reading technology.

---

You say that but it doesn't work like that at all, it should, I agree, but it doesn't. So to assume it does is just wrong.

And don't use the bus & or train.

I agree though bastardised government monopolies sold off to individual companies to have a monopoly on is worse than the government doing it all especially when the government will step in to deal with shit caused by that company.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1606969...-debate-on-the



http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1282673...ive-dissonance

---

Hypocrisy is when you do exactly the thing you criticize in others.
Your hypocrisy is evident, here.

Furthermore, since when is 'adorable' a personal attack?
You're making a conflict that exists only in your mind.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

I have covered this in the past.

There would be tolls on roads just like there is a toll to enter Walmart. And like there is a toll to enter Starbucks. And like there is a toll to enter an auto shop or a law or accountancy office.

Remember that not only are you NOT being tolled to enter those places, but you ARE ALREADY being tolled to use government roads. It's called taxes. And the roads are pretty shitty. Savy is correct. Private ownership would streamline traffic. It would also make the roads nice. This is because roads do not function much like consumer goods; instead they function like costs impeding consumption of different consumer goods. Private roads would result in the poor becoming much wealthier.

---

Land is a finite resource. Roads have to go somewhere. Where is the competition to I70? Is another company going to lay a parallel highway to I70, so it can compete? What if they're both shit companies, and a third company wants to step in and compete? Are there now 3 nearly identical highways running parallel? Or damn, that first company went out of business. Now there's an abandoned highway running coast to coast, and the company declared bankruptcy, and there is literally no money to rennovate that land.

Private ownership of a lot of things is good, but roads, fire service and police, along with other services, cannot thrive in a competitive environment. They need sanctioned domains of coverage, which are publicly agreed upon, via representative democratic processes.

"Natural monopoly" as a reason for government intervention is funny, because it's not something that comes from economics. The concept of natural monopoly does and what theoretically makes one does, but all the supposedly natural monopolies that we're supposedly dealing with and that supposedly cause problems does not. Roads are not any different regarding their natural monopolistic elements than something like food.

Here's a natural monopoly (by a lot): smart phones. And yet, innovation is very high, quality and quantity are improving greatly, and costs are coming down, and most importantly disruption from substitution innovation is still robust. Add government intervention to the equation and we could easily find all that goes away.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

Hypocrisy is when you do exactly the thing you criticize in others.

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What is the example?

Quote:

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Furthermore, since when is 'adorable' a personal attack?

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When it belittles instead of addresses the argument.

Quote:

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Land is a finite resource.

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Yet somehow private ownership of farmland does the opposite of what you stated private ownership of this other finite land resource would, as well as how government ownership of farmland does the EXACT thing you stated government ownership of this other finite land resource protects against.

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Private ownership of a lot of things is good, but roads, fire service and police, along with other services, cannot thrive in a competitive environment.

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It would be very hard to find an economist who agrees with this. Economics teaches how things thrive due to being in competitive environments and how they don't thrive due to not being in competitive environments.

This is a cool development because the argument on this board against free markets used to always be about how certain markets aren't naturally competitive. The claim that those same markets can't work instead when competitive suggests we're converging on acknowledgement of the idea closer to the truth (though perhaps not since the claim change is cognitive dissonance, and that's something that seems to have an unlimited lifespan/number of uses).

One way of looking at it is that roads behave similarly to complementary goods even though they themselves are not the consumption goal. The complement of roads would be to most other goods. Example: everything sold at Walmart would be complementary with roads. For complementary goods, a decrease in price of one leads to an increase in demand for the other. Since the goods consumers want are the Walmart goods instead of the road driving "good" and since there is tremendous room for profit in the Walmart good but not in the road "good", firms would have incentive to decrease the price of the road "good" as much as possible.

We see examples of the type of thing already. Example: loss leaders. Razor blades and razors are complements. Firms have figured out that they make more money by selling blades for a profit yet the razors for a loss. Gillette essentially gives its razors away for free because it allows them to sell more blades for even greater profit than otherwise.

A private transportation system should be expected to function similarly. The faster the transport, the more comfortable the transport (up to a point), and the cheaper the transport -- the higher the demand for the unlimited number of other goods/services at the edges of roads.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

What is the example?

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:rolleyes:
IF what I said is a personal attack (it's not), then your response is equally so.
Perceived offense is not important.

My point is not based on emotion. My emotions are simply that I can't believe you keep saying the same things year after year, when you've pivoted around them by the end of the conversation every time you bring them up.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

When it belittles instead of addresses the argument.

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We've gone over this subject before. It's disingenuous for you to ignore all of my prior responses to this idea of yours. My act of marveling at the fact that you can seemingly ignore all of our past discussions and keep saying things you've previously recanted is not a fault in my critique of your ideas.

This is all just a rehash of prior discussions. It's just melodrama at this point.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

When it belittles instead of addresses the argument.

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So tell me why you belittle this discussion by pretending that all of our past discussions need to be repeated?

Why do you persist on belittling your entire profession? If you have evidence and proof that your ideas are better than our rebuttles, then we will all change our minds and sing the wufwugy song.

Don't belittle your entire profession by claiming to truths you cannot demonstrate, conclusively, to your fellow economists. Don't belittle your profession by asserting that you have it all figured out, but that somehow the problem is that the rest of us just wont listen to you. That's a cop-out, even if it's true. (I don't believe it's true for a second, but I could be wrong.) IF it's true, it is your responsibility to communicate what you know to be right, and not blame the ignorant people who don't know better.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

[...]

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You completely ignored the point.

Describe to me how there can be free market competition among highways.
Describe to me how St Louis carves another I70-wide path through the city so that the scandalous owners of the current I70 can face the competition they deserve.
Tell me how I am wrong to think this is an absurd proposition.