tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post117106523208106423..comments2024-03-29T00:39:31.629-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: DARK & LIGHT SCENARIOS: Swinging from optimism to pessimism to hilarityDavid Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger78125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-45547088073552937022007-02-28T15:35:00.000-08:002007-02-28T15:35:00.000-08:00Betting on climate change: there are climatologis...Betting on climate change: there are climatologists waiting and willing to take bets.<BR/>http://www.google.com/search?q=stoat+bet+climateAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-24914330896427913702007-02-16T16:13:00.000-08:002007-02-16T16:13:00.000-08:00Off topic, but I thought that the comic might amus...Off topic, but I thought that the comic might amuse many of the readers here:<BR/><BR/>http://xkcd.com/c224.htmltodurohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02040040498120852795noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-49879739880654881362007-02-14T14:47:00.000-08:002007-02-14T14:47:00.000-08:00I love Colbert. His performance at the correspond...I love Colbert. His performance at the correspondant's dinner last year showed how powerful smart comedy could be.gghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00257391877175337352noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-91847746622545357272007-02-13T18:20:00.000-08:002007-02-13T18:20:00.000-08:00Just thought I'd add a little levity to the discus...Just thought I'd add a little levity to the discussion here.<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://www.spaff.com/poesy/blog.html" REL="nofollow">I Blog Alone</A><BR/><BR/> - Doug S., using his Google accountDoug S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/11918949543315280580noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-9000706669807403172007-02-13T14:55:00.000-08:002007-02-13T14:55:00.000-08:00Reason: adding a comment area would be a good idea...Reason: adding a comment area would be a good idea. One of these days...<BR/><BR/>And I do have a couple more articles in the queue -- religion oriented, so you might not be interested. (Sidenote: the religion articles are the hardest ones to write. Once I am done with them, the remaining articles should come more rapidly.)<BR/><BR/>As for a blog, I write a biweekly column for a local paper. These articles then get reprinted at freeliberal.com.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-23375818691016461812007-02-13T14:24:00.000-08:002007-02-13T14:24:00.000-08:00Doug S:Simulated worlds are a great ideas for expe...Doug S:<BR/><BR/>Simulated worlds are a great ideas for experiments. Is anyone funding that?<BR/><BR/>But the basic problem is still that the math is nasty. Nobody has yet found general solutions to these problems. First guy to do it get to be Newton 2, and revolutionize almost every field, from biology to economics, and ultimately politics (usually have to wait 100-200 years for that trickle down, though).<BR/><BR/>In the meantime, we may get a few specific solutions, and a whole bunch of rules-of-thumbs, that are useful (biology lives on it), but won't give you a theoretical structure to engineer.RandomSequencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12259854206507818658noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-6443796523487937472007-02-13T14:23:00.000-08:002007-02-13T14:23:00.000-08:00Doug S.Revealing my geekiness, I play World of War...Doug S.<BR/><BR/>Revealing my geekiness, I play World of Warcraft (WoW). And I've seen some 'robber baron' type activity.<BR/><BR/>Take wool. Fairly easy to acquire, needed by certain characters, useful to all, good resale. A character with enough resources can 'corner the wool market' at the auction house by selling wool for a set (artificially high) price while buying any wool that shows up at a lower price. It's amusing to watch. And easy to avoid, since any given auction can only last 24 hours, and nobody can stay online ALL the time...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-9815691037492109152007-02-13T14:02:00.000-08:002007-02-13T14:02:00.000-08:00Random comment:One of the problems with economics ...Random comment:<BR/><BR/>One of the problems with economics as a science is that it is very difficult to perform experiments. After all, you can't just go fool around with a country's monetary policy just to see what happens. On the other hand, technology seems to be offering a solution to this problem. It seems that MMORPGs would be a great laboratory to perform economics experiments; the programmers can create whatever kinds of conditions they want, and then turn the players loose! It seems like a gold mine of opportunity - I wonder if some graduate student somewhere happens to be working on a dissertation on the economy of World of Warcraft?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-10641545739393400642007-02-13T14:00:00.000-08:002007-02-13T14:00:00.000-08:00Carl, I'm also fond of your website, as it is an ...Carl,<BR/> I'm also fond of your website, as it is an approach that will attract a lot of moderates. <BR/> But please (apart from toning down the colours!) finish the bits that are not finished (they are bits I'm really interested in) and give a chance for feedback (or just set up some blog pages). Surely you want some criticism - CITOAKE and all that?reasonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06594313655855683716noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-9931352397634531002007-02-13T12:10:00.000-08:002007-02-13T12:10:00.000-08:00Glad to see you here Carl. I've been promoting yo...Glad to see you here Carl. I've been promoting your site and approach for a while, and your take on Keynes is exactly what mine has always been (though note that mercantilist "capitalists" had been promoting many of Keynes's policies for years, and had invented the indignation at falling rates of return that he formalized and justified). <BR/><BR/>Likewise David's proposal probably needs to be worked out in a bit more detail not to be horribly destructive (ditto Georgist proposals, but the amount of work required is probably 1% as much) but with the right details added seems likely to be incredibly productive and beneficial. I really think this is one of the best places on the web for good new ideas. <BR/><BR/>Great job all!Michael Vassarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14093368267892307038noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-63213489497343878642007-02-13T11:39:00.000-08:002007-02-13T11:39:00.000-08:00Regarding equilibria of wage rates: still classica...Regarding equilibria of wage rates: still classical economics has much to say. Adam Smith had much to say <I>on how to lower the rates of profit while boosting wage rates.</I><BR/><BR/>Later, John Maynard Keynes, put forth proposals designed to nullify the equalization mechanisms described by Smith. We live with these nullifications to this day, with the result being widening wealth disparities despite the income tax and a cornucopia of welfare schemes.<BR/><BR/>Smith noted that wages and profits are part of a trade: employers/capitalists provide capital in return for labor. Supply/demand theory would indicate that whichever of these factors is in short supply would receive the higher price.<BR/><BR/>Smith observed that as a market economy matured, savings accumulated, which lowered real interest rates, and thereby lowered profits. More capital chasing the same labor pool boosted labor rates.<BR/><BR/>Fast forward to the 20th century. Keynes claimed that this mechanism was causing depressions, that there was too much savings chasing the same pool of investment opportunities. So Keynes called for a set of price support programs for the rich, with some welfare programs thrown in to make it seem progressive:<BR/><BR/>* Deficit spending is a subsidy for those who have money to lend.<BR/><BR/>* Social Security discourages savings by the working class, reducing the total savings pool.<BR/><BR/>* Government pure research programs create new investment opportunities, helping to support higher capital costs.<BR/><BR/>* Inflation is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it produces a temporary jubilee for debtors (until the markets discount for inflation). On the other hand, it is a subtle mechanism for lowering real wages (which does reduce unemployment) until unions discount for inflation (which carried out indefinitely leads to Latin American economies).<BR/><BR/>While I don't believe it was part of the Keynesian program, the creation of the SEC was part of the New Deal. Yes, the SEC has damped down some of the criminal activities that were going on on Wall St. during the 20s. It also made the cost of capital MUCH higher for start up businesses.<BR/><BR/>If you really want to take big business down a notch, create a viable penny stock market that allows new businesses to be floated withtout requiring angel investors, venture capitalists and investment banks.<BR/><BR/>Savings accumulation cannot do its full magic if the capital markets are restricted to the rich.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1171392282951141162007-02-13T10:44:00.000-08:002007-02-13T10:44:00.000-08:00Moreover, if a ship or factory or tool is owned by...<I>Moreover, if a ship or factory or tool is owned by a company, that is owned by a holding company, etc... such chains of ownership can be no more than three layers deep, before arriving at actual human beings.<BR/></I><BR/><BR/>That's an interesting idea ... in this scheme, you would have no problem with partial ownership, would you? For example, I would imagine that a factory-line wrench owned by Lockheed-Martin would be x% owned by each shareholder?<BR/><BR/>Fortune would probably be one of the first places to go for this, since they try to estimate net worth all the time.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1171391914125454602007-02-13T10:38:00.000-08:002007-02-13T10:38:00.000-08:00reason: I would have thought the easier to see pro...reason: I would have thought the easier to see problems with extreme Libertarianism were pragmatic (and your website is very pragmatic) not theoretical. Just goes to show.<BR/><BR/>That's what I was getting at up-thread. The problem is one of culture, not of empiricism. Theory is terribly important, because it's how we interpret the data. It's very easy for a theory that is wrong in a number of specific ways (particularly not self-consistent) to arrange any arbitrary set of data. And so you can't undermine it with facts, you have to attack the axioms.<BR/><BR/>In biology, for example, folks have a tendency to stick everything as a sum of exponentials, and think they have an "explanation" or "theory." Of course, with enough exponenentials, any data set can be described. It's even worse: multiple exponential decompositions are not unique, without data errors smaller than most real data sets.<BR/><BR/>I have the feeling that this is a general problem, which often appears as a cultural disconnect where people are talking past each other.RandomSequencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12259854206507818658noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1171391598593494242007-02-13T10:33:00.000-08:002007-02-13T10:33:00.000-08:00Yeow. It was time to post another entry, but the ...Yeow. It was time to post another entry, but the intellectual level you guys have been displaying makes me loathe to interrupt!<BR/><BR/>I confess to finding it interesting that some "georgist" libertarians see the flaw in accumulation of elite lordship, and try to solve it by limiting land ownership. Likewise, Carl's unconventional willingness to see incentive/disincentive use of the tax system (though carefully done) shows the kind of pragmatic openmindedness that libertarianism badly needs.<BR/><BR/>My own radical idea is far less radical and confiscatory than georgism, and yet VERY radical in its immediate potential for upheaval. It is simply this. Declare by worldwide treaty that <I>all people must, within a year, publicly avow what they claim that they own.</I><BR/><BR/>Moreover, if a ship or factory or tool is owned by a company, that is owned by a holding company, etc... such chains of ownership can be no more than three layers deep, before arriving at actual human beings.<BR/><BR/>Yes, just getting everybody to claim what they own will expose a lot of ambiguity and start a million (billion?) lawsuits rolling along. Nations would have to grapple with (and possibly streamline) their adjudication procedures. In some cases, utterly outrageous disparities of hidden wealth would be revealed and subjected to local or national law.<BR/><BR/>But note. No actual socialization, confiscation or nationalization or redistribution is called for, in this act! All that happens (at first) is that world democracies and markets get information in order to work better.<BR/><BR/>Of course a lot of property would go unclaimed, a sudden boon to governments and taxpayers...<BR/><BR/>There. My radical "transparency" idea. In fact, those who scream at it would be hard-pressed to actually justify rejecting it on any reasonable grounds. <BR/><BR/>Feel free to continue this discussion, either here or underneath the next posting.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1171390106845180432007-02-13T10:08:00.000-08:002007-02-13T10:08:00.000-08:00Some more example of Smithian economics at work:* ...<I>Some more example of Smithian economics at work:<BR/><BR/>* The government builds high speed toll free highways out of the cities. Result: people move out into the exurbs., etc.</I><BR/><BR/>I'll agree with each of these. I guess the part I was talking more about was trying to use marginal returns to find "optima" for things like wages, etc.<BR/><BR/>Trends we are good at identifying. That is actually one of the foundations of system dynamics - if you sit enough people down for a time, you can often tease out all of the various feedbacks and interactions in a system. It's just that people have biases toward localism and are *really* bad at dealing with feedback and complexity.<BR/><BR/>On the liberal side, this is often a weakness in not considering the hazards like regulatory capture ... how to get money out of the system is a constant problem for us to figure out.<BR/><BR/>To go crazy on the metaphor, it's kind of like trying to hold the Borg down with a battle-mech - you've only got so long before they adapt and learn how to control the thing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1171389817493651852007-02-13T10:03:00.000-08:002007-02-13T10:03:00.000-08:00random sequence:If you want predictions from econo...random sequence:<BR/>If you want predictions from economics, look to the tax system. Talk to a smart thoughtful person unaccustomed with economic thinking about what they would do if designing a tax system from scratch. Then use economic tools to take their proposals apart and predict what the outcomes would be with far more precision than was possible with their implicit model.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1171388252376863192007-02-13T09:37:00.000-08:002007-02-13T09:37:00.000-08:00Carl:Local equilibrium theory is incredibly useful...Carl:<BR/><EM>Local equilibrium theory is incredibly useful in physics and economics. Just because it is hard to predict the weather, doesn't mean physics has no predictive power.</EM><BR/><BR/>I agree with the first part. Equilibrium theory is extremely useful in physics, <EM>near equilibrium</EM>. Physics has great predictive power, when the math is properly used, building up from well-defined, self-consistent systems, such as the family of partitions. You don't have that in economics. <BR/><BR/>Your example of the gas-lines, all I can say is: well, maybe. Or not. Because in economics you lack the rigor of physics. You can also see this all the time in biology, where half-ass application of physics sometimes guesses right, but for no good reason (a stopped clock, and all that).<BR/><BR/>The example of weather was specifically chosen as an example of where we <EM>know</EM> that equilibrium theory fails. That's the beauty of physics, you can actually know what you don't know (I will know channel Rumsfeld). You simply don't know the limits in economics.<BR/><BR/>I think reason has it right on the money. We need to abandon simply minded adherence to century old philosophers. If the goal is self-sustaining economic systems, that use a minimum of force, then we need to go beyond these ancient "approximations," which aren't even approximations in a physical sense, where you know the degree of approximation.<BR/><BR/>We need to look at a number of different fields, cybernetics, anthropology, science of religion (as opposed to religion per se), maybe even meteorology for new basis for understanding non-equilibrium systems. We know the market works reasonably well under a small range of conditions; we can argue back and forth all day about the conditions that it fails, what it's metastable states are, how we can build a system that doesn't get trapped in local minima, etc.<BR/><BR/>If the goal is freedom and prosperity, we have to recognize that we didn't reach the end-point of our tactics back in the 18th century, any more than physical theory should be centered on Newton. At best, there were some reasonable guesses made, which we can almost guarantee were mostly wrong.RandomSequencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12259854206507818658noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1171388110286661782007-02-13T09:35:00.000-08:002007-02-13T09:35:00.000-08:00odinseye2k: In California the left tried to get pe...odinseye2k: In California the left tried to get people to use less electricity without allowing consumer electricity prices to rise.<BR/><BR/>Result: shortage.<BR/><BR/>The liberals are trying the same thing where I live.<BR/><BR/>If you want people to use less electricity, jack up the price. It's that simple.<BR/><BR/>And I'll give Al Gore a big credit on this one. He has recently called for replacing the Social Security labor taxes with a carbon tax. This would definitely work to reduce carbon emissions, at a rate far faster than required by the Kyoto Protocol. If Gore opts to run again, I'll very likely vote for him, for this alone. (It would take something improbable like Ron Paul winning the Republican nomination to make me change my mind.)<BR/><BR/>Some more example of Smithian economics at work:<BR/><BR/>* The government builds high speed toll free highways out of the cities. Result: people move out into the exurbs.<BR/><BR/>* The government subsidizes rural electricity distribution. Result: death of wind power and other alternative energy for a couple of generations.<BR/><BR/>* The government subsizes remote mail delivery and now phone and Internet delivery. Result: encroachment into the wilderness, and decay of inner cities. (Many other factors involved for the inner city one.)<BR/><BR/>Classical economics can be applied to further modern liberal goals, but there are many liberals who resist economics as strongly as the conservatives who resist global warming predictions.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1171386846121832102007-02-13T09:14:00.000-08:002007-02-13T09:14:00.000-08:00Random Sequence,Yes! Someone else who understands...Random Sequence,<BR/><BR/>Yes! Someone else who understands a part of the farce that microeconomics can be! Someone else who recognizes the scam that Walras played on an entire discipline, and Veblen tried to warn against.<BR/><BR/>It is very hard to demonstrate that we are anywhere near an equilibrium in many cases, which is the necessary condition to use near-equilibrium approximations. What we have are vague intuitions - people will pick up a large number of cheap things more readily than a small number of expensive things, all factors being equal.<BR/><BR/>But, it is very difficult from these tendancies to derive optimal policies from first principles. That is why I tend to be rough on those that attempt to push inhumane policy based on the "science" of economics, where consensus is yet to be reached, and there are many "guerilla" movements hatching. Evolutionary, behavioral, developmental, and so on and so forth.<BR/><BR/>Markets are not optimal creations because they harness some logic of convergence to a natural ideal. They are the social equivalent of genetic algorithms - the tool we use because we are too dumb to utilize a less messy scheme. Markets give us better results than human pre-selection, but only because they kill off many of those that guess wrong.<BR/><BR/>The reason the social contract is a good thing is to allow people to go into the market machine and watch their ideas die, but be able to live and try again another day. We want to select on ideas, not people.<BR/><BR/>Small quibble with Carl,<BR/><BR/>The energy crisis in CA can arguably be seen as due less to natural restriction of supply (especially considering that much of the activity occured during CA *winter,* often a low point in electrical demand) and more of illegal cheating by power companies. I've also hard people suggest that Davis' state of emergency could have been used to force power plants back online.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1171386512047030392007-02-13T09:08:00.000-08:002007-02-13T09:08:00.000-08:00Carl... I agree with some of your points, others I...Carl...<BR/> I agree with some of your points, others I strongly disagree with (gross oversimplifications especially wrt Great Depression). <BR/><BR/>But it is interesting how people come to doubt their particular ideological position. I would have thought the easier to see problems with extreme Libertarianism were pragmatic (and your website is very pragmatic) not theoretical. Just goes to show.reasonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06594313655855683716noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1171382278464791702007-02-13T07:57:00.000-08:002007-02-13T07:57:00.000-08:00reason: I used to be as radical as Broken Ladder. ...reason: I used to be as radical as Broken Ladder. I can't get mad at someone for being where I used to be. (I can get mad at the L. Neil Smith's out there who mix that radicalism with incredible amounts of rudeness.)<BR/><BR/>Was a big fan of Rothbard. Then, I finally grokked the essential unprovability of the various a priori natural rights theories -- realized that moral axioms are essentially aeasthetic axioms, and are thus subject to trade-offs, marginal utility analysis, etc.<BR/><BR/>This led to my holistic approach to politics, and the recent attempt to get the LP to embrace it a bit. Odds are pretty good it won't. A new party is likely in the future.<BR/><BR/>David: The Laffer Curve is real. The Republicans abuse the concept, however. The 70% top rate that existed before Reagan was on the right side of the curve. In the 1986 tax reform, the top rate was cut below the maximum of the Laffer Curve. Bill Clinton probably got us closer to the max than anyone.<BR/><BR/>As for the GI Bill, once upon a time you didn't need a university education for a great many jobs. Then the left destroyed lower education with look-say reading, lack of discipline, over centralization, busing etc.<BR/><BR/>It is the left that gave us the SUV craze. Before CAFE (corporate average fuel economy standards), people with families bought big cars.<BR/><BR/>It is the left that made the Great Depression Great. Previous bank panics produced a period of deflation, including lower wages, and then the economy picked back up. The New Deal included many measures that kept unemployment high. It wasn't until the Fed seriously got into inflating the currency via open market actions to finance the war that the market price caught up with the artificial wage rates pushed by the government (as well as inflated away much of the debt burden).<BR/><BR/>randomsequence: Local equilibrium theory is incredibly useful in physics and economics. Just because it is hard to predict the weather, doesn't mean physics has no predictive power.<BR/><BR/>Adam Smith's economics predicted the gas lines that resulted from the price controls of the 70s. It predicted the unemployment that results from high minimum wage laws and other artificial wage boosting measures. It predicted the California energy crisis under Gray Davis, and the destruction of passenger rail when the ICC was created.<BR/><BR/>Smith also predicted the widening wealth gap caused by government deficit spending, BTW.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1171366669988497792007-02-13T03:37:00.000-08:002007-02-13T03:37:00.000-08:00Carl..a personal question. aside... I like some of...Carl..<BR/>a personal question. <BR/><BR/>aside... I like some of your ideas a lot by the way. Personally I find the appeal to religion very offputting (not being a fan of religion myself) but I can understand why as a political ploy you might want to do it (but warning it might backfire - the religious think they are all the same but their differences run deep).<BR/><BR/>How do you personally react to extremists from your own stable like Broken Ladders? In same ways you must be angrier at them than the rest of us (without a committment to the Libertarian label) are.reasonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06594313655855683716noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1171341950031065322007-02-12T20:45:00.000-08:002007-02-12T20:45:00.000-08:00I'm pretty sure Bush wants a war with Iran, becaus...I'm pretty sure Bush wants a war with Iran, because that'll take the domestic pressure off his massive failures in Iraq, or at least so he thinks. It would be an unqualified disaster, though. It'd drive most Iranians to the radicals on their side, by proving what they've been saying about "the Great Satan" right. It wouldn't stop or even really slow any nuclear program (whose threat is also overrated, I think), and it'd put our army on the ground in Iraq under attack from Iran AND from the Iraqis who Iran would send weapons to.<BR/><BR/>But, looming disaster aside, two things. One of history, where "Only Nixon could go to China" because Nixon and his ilk (plenty of whom are still in power) had spent years calling anybody who wanted to talk to China commies and traitors and worse.<BR/><BR/>The other... Crap. I forget what it was. It must not have been that interesting, then.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1171325678000408122007-02-12T16:14:00.000-08:002007-02-12T16:14:00.000-08:00Carl, try the exercise. From combatting German an...Carl, try the exercise. From combatting German and Japanese fascism to the containment of communism. From moon landings to civil rights to womens’ rights to GI Bills to fostering public universities....<BR/><BR/>II have offered this bet for years, and my conservative friends seldom rise to the challenge. A few (in fairness) mention the Interstate Highway system - a mixed blessing but a bold accomplishment that was shared, bipartisan between the best GOP president, Eisenhower and a democratic Congress. <BR/><BR/>The other top GOP idea was Kissinger’s brilliant chess move reaching out to China. I have to give that full marks. Moreover, it stands in sharp contrast to the blithering insanity of Condi Rice’s diametrically opposite stupidity toward Iran.<BR/><BR/>As for the examples you mention, I have to tell you that I take your four examples very un-seriously. I was of draft age in those days. I’ll give Nixon some credit for ending the draft... as I will credit him for offering a national health care plan MUCH more ambitious than Hillary’s was!!! (The dems torpedoed it because in 1970 they wanted even more. Damned fools.)<BR/><BR/>But today I have to tell you that I have deep deep doubts that the all volunteer army was the way to go. With every passing day I worry more.<BR/><BR/>Sorry, the Laffer curve is a joke, pure and simple. A rationalization. It began the era when the right can sing with a straight face:<BR/><BR/><I> “Bad times? Cut taxes for the rich!<BR/>Good times? Cut taxes for the rich!<BR/>Deficits? Cut taxes for the rich!<BR/>Surpluses? Cut taxes for the rich!<BR/>Savings up? Cut taxes for the rich!<BR/>Savings down? Cut taxes for the rich!<BR/>Peacetime? Cut taxes for the rich!<BR/>Wartime? Cut taxes for the rich!</I><BR/><BR/>I’d be amused, except that the final one is damned treachery. The first time in our history that the elites would not step up to help pay for a war fought by other peoples’ sons. Bastards.<BR/><BR/>As for the modern hagiography of Ronald Reagan, I can only shrug at the idolatry from the right and console myself that he wasnot deliberately evil, like the present monsters. He was not the devil portrayed by the left, nor the demigod worshipped by the right. What he was was a gambler. <BR/><BR/>Who rolled dice with all our lives by PUSHING the USSR as it entered its time of crisis. A gambit that could JUST AS EASILY resulted in a spasm war as in the toppling of walls. We live in the parallel universe where (partly thanks to Gorbachev) it worked. So I say let the goppers give him all the credit for bluffing a speedup of the end game...<BR/><BR/>... even though George Marshall and Dean Acheson deserve credit for the strategy and game plan itself. Just remember, there is a parallel universe where Reagan is NOT a hero. One just as likely as this one, where he fried us all and the survivors put his picture at the bottom of every urinal.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1171323966547065772007-02-12T15:46:00.000-08:002007-02-12T15:46:00.000-08:00Carl,But that's the point. There's no reason to be...Carl,<BR/><BR/>But that's the point. There's no reason to believe that there's even a local equilibria, in the physical sense. Maybe a dynamically stable state, but NOT equilibrium. It's a far-from-equilibrium state. And I don't know of good research about searching for any "optima" inside that envelope. If anything, you're very likely to have a non-ergodic system in that case, where just wandering about blindly is unlikely to find anything close to what you're searching for.<BR/><BR/>It was a good intuition from Smith, but centuries later we're still stuck with it. The metaphor doesn't hold, as much as folks would like it to. We need to advance massively in understanding non-equilibrium conditions to have any genuine understanding of what economic systems can do spontaneously. <BR/><BR/>When biologists can understand how proteins function, then maybe you'll have the mathematical tools. But in the meantime, we work with rules-of-thumb, which means any dogmatism is insane, and a combination of systems, on an empirical basis, is the best we can hope to do.<BR/><BR/>And that's where all the economic schools fail. They each act as if economics was a science, in the way that physics or chemistry is. But its simply not -- economics is at bottom simply intuitions placed into mathematical formalisms, creating the illusion of science. When someone comes up with something like a 1/r^2 law for economics, then they'll be unto something.<BR/><BR/>If economics were a science, it would predict data from the known to the unknown. You could set up a model, and predict to a given accuracy the economic consequences. Then, such institutions as the stock market would be limited to betting on the inherent noise in the system. But that's not what I see: I don't see even the predictability of the weather. I don't see back-predictions of the collapse of the Roman Empire. I see a monkey throwing darts.RandomSequencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12259854206507818658noreply@blogger.com