tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post6978824147259103746..comments2024-03-29T06:22:47.638-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: Revisiting Adam Smith... and surprising trends in modern capitalismDavid Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-22746659873488801842016-07-23T15:23:43.897-07:002016-07-23T15:23:43.897-07:00Jumper, sure, Ike was a slightly-more-pro-business...Jumper, sure, Ike was a slightly-more-pro-business Rooseveltean. Because the GOP masters were desperate and wanted to win, at all costs. Still, they extorted his taking Nixon as VP, a crime against history. While Nixon did also continue some Rooseveltean trends - his main focus was to wage political war, sending us down this path.<br /><br />onward<br /><br />onward<br /><br /><br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-27749311001622975172016-07-23T13:40:17.030-07:002016-07-23T13:40:17.030-07:00I meant because of moving the "Overton window...I meant because of moving the "Overton window" a Clinton presidency would resemble an Eisenhower admin. were Ike's up to date, as I'm sure he would be. It was a joke. I'd sure prefer an Ike to WWZ Trump, and prefer Clinton for similar obvious reasons.Jumperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11794110173836133321noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-17160737226867085902016-07-23T11:51:28.184-07:002016-07-23T11:51:28.184-07:00onward
onward
onward<br /><br /><br />onward<br /><br /><br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-84425333333075598622016-07-23T11:10:18.499-07:002016-07-23T11:10:18.499-07:00@PaulSB - "Our market institutions are as vir...@PaulSB - "Our market institutions are as virtuous as we choose them to be..." <br /><br />I don't like this line of reasoning, because "we" may choose but still be disproportionately affected by a handful who choose otherwise, and we can be quite confident that some will indeed choose otherwise.<br /><br />Imagine a freeway, in which 1 driver out of 10,000 gets ahead of the traffic, stops his car on the freeway, and throws out blockades. Traffic piles up behind him, and he hires 4-5 others to collect a fee for "road clearance," splitting the fee with them.<br /><br />Most people are too far behind the lead driver to realize that the freeway was clear ahead - so they recognize they are stuck, and pay a toll hoping that the road will be cleared so they can move on. The other 9,999 drivers may be quite virtuous, but they'll not be able to move that car unless a handful in the front relay a message back to them, and they opt to cooperate in clearing the path.<br /><br />That's our market - and our political order as well (as if the two were really separated). The guy out in front may claim he got there through his "hard work" and is thus entitled to a "road clearance fee" for the service he renders. It's quite likely that there will be disputes among the people in the front, holding everyone else back - but ultimately, the 9,999 will only benefit if they DISTRUST one in the front and cooperate in removing the blockade.donzelionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05991849781932619746noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-37862624832270622832016-07-23T09:38:17.641-07:002016-07-23T09:38:17.641-07:00Jumper thanks for illustrating the other face-savi...Jumper thanks for illustrating the other face-saving delusion. Name an issue - other than trade - in which it is even remotely true.<br /><br />Even when waging war, dems and goppers have very distinctly different styles:<br /><br />http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-democrats-and-republicans-wage-war.htmlDavid Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-4353998329926780282016-07-23T09:03:43.180-07:002016-07-23T09:03:43.180-07:00Clinton is a moderate Republican, so who can say w...Clinton is a moderate Republican, so who can say what she's saying to herself?Jumperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11794110173836133321noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-41868035052584486542016-07-23T08:12:27.814-07:002016-07-23T08:12:27.814-07:00Dr. Brin,
I am not disagreeing with you on this, ...Dr. Brin,<br /><br />I am not disagreeing with you on this, not at all. I have never joined any political party, but you could call me a de facto Democrat. I get the impression that pre-Reagan the Democrats were not very effective, but have learned since then, while the Republicans have simply stagnated, building bigger walls and deeper trenches around the same old positions. I still don't think the Dems have a whole lot of solutions, and they have their blinders, too. But compared to the alternative of screaming, scapegoating xenophobes and Machiavellian thieves, I vote for Dems every time, all up and down the ticket. When I was younger I used to say it is better to have well-intentioned fools running the show than clever thieves. But between the quiet competence of the Clinton Administration and the raving lunacy of the Bush II years, it seems to me that well-intentioned foolishness is less the case among the Dems than it used to be. Bill Clinton's fiscally responsible policies - likewise Jerry Brown in California, who is doing a much better job second time around than his younger "Moonbeam" incarnation - convinced me that there is no equivalence between the two parties.<br /><br />But as a writer you can come across as a little partisan. I have been here long enough to read - and agree with - your thoughts on the extreme left, and the fact that they are a minority in their party, while extremists are the vast majority on the right. But I can see how more moderate people on the right can start to feel alienated, which only drives them further to the right. Just a suggestion. You have been around longer than I have, and been to places I can hardly dream of. But even the wisest among us can find their speech getting channeled into familiar patterns.Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-32756478067662233032016-07-23T03:25:44.728-07:002016-07-23T03:25:44.728-07:00Except Paul that the moderate republican is ration...Except Paul that the moderate republican is rationalizing - telling himself that the Dems are 'just as bad" when in fact, many market oriented solutions have been offered by DNC type dems... and these languished from utter lack of interest or even willingness to chat, let alone negotiate, on the part of the congressional GOP.<br /><br />It is these pretenses... that 'both sides are at fault ... that are the last ditch defense of moderate conservatives. Normally I would sigh and let them save face that way. But no. It has to stop. The madness.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-60751891433764124122016-07-22T21:41:29.000-07:002016-07-22T21:41:29.000-07:00Dr. Brin,
In the main post you gave a little bit ...Dr. Brin,<br /><br />In the main post you gave a little bit of advice to both Republicans and Libertarians, both of which seemed sound to my eyes. However, might have come across better if you also addressed Democrats? Given the context, maybe something about not being too disdainful of market-based solutions? <br /><br />This morning I heard an interview with one of the few Republican legislators, a fellow from one of the Carolinas, though I don't recall the name, who does not deny climate science. His take is that most Republicans are dooming this country to misery by denying what is happening, but most Democrats merely insist on top-down, heavy-handed solutions. He suggested that there are market-based solutions we could be promoting, with a little bit of government assistance, that would get the job done. I don't often find Republicans worth listening to, but in this case I thought the idea has merit. If more Democrats would come at climate change from a tweak the market approach instead of the heavy-handed regulatory approach, they might get more adherents, and more votes.Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-75341471216987808962016-07-22T21:25:59.678-07:002016-07-22T21:25:59.678-07:00Did anyone notice in the very first comment on thi...Did anyone notice in the very first comment on this thread that loci got his apostles mixed up? It's an easy enough mistake to make, and I suspect might be somewhat Freudian, since the other Paul has been a rival here longer than I have. I'm sure, though, that people noticed what he did. Quoting out of context to give something a very different meaning than was intended is a pretty old and underhanded method, especially among Bible thumpers. He suggested that Melania Trump's words were mockery, somehow meaning that Michelle Obama's words must have been equally mocking. In MO's case, she was simply expressing a commonplace value, and one that Democrats are often accused of not having. In MT's case it was mockery as a matter of context. Neither she nor her husband became wealthy by anything that could be called hard work, much less anything virtuous by most people's standards. Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-69323252637858736282016-07-22T21:16:38.126-07:002016-07-22T21:16:38.126-07:00Alfred,
Designated Optimist is far from the worst...Alfred,<br /><br />Designated Optimist is far from the worst label you can work under. You might be an incarnation of the Laughing Buddha : ] And if I keep posting in the wee hours, I'll end up as the Designated Eeyore. : [ An odd thought came to me this morning: if Shakespeare were in Purgatory, would his punishment be to write tragedies about mundane characters instead of the movers and shakers like Julius Caesar or Richard III? Could you imagine Shakespeare having to write the Tragedy of Pooh? "Begone with your gloom, oh small donkey! Show thy demon, Melancholia, to the door, and let him know he is welcome here no more! For your disposition casts a shadow upon all who dwell in the Wood of One Hundred Acres..."<br /><br />Okay, that was weird.<br /><br />"Blaming someone for being what they ARE is one of the most fruitless endeavors I’ve ever seen,"<br />- So few people get this! I spent a little time this afternoon going over the biological fiction of race with my summer school students. A few took an interest, but most just had their tongues waging. Of course, summer school doesn't exactly get the cream of the crop.<br /><br />"Our market institutions are as virtuous as we choose them to be, and very often we choose them to be so even though economists rarely understand that."<br />- Markets are made of people, and to the extent that people are virtuous, they will be, too. Most of the economists miss this, being very cerebral people who are trying to quantitatively analyze qualitative data (typical where naïve scientism reigns over truly reflexive science). But the relative virtues of the people engaged in market activity is not fixed. It changes through time and from place to place. I would agree with Duncan that the majority are decent folk but management is heavy with self-serving bastards. But if self-serving bastards are a numerical minority, their positions of power within corporate hierarchies / bureaucracies gives them a disproportionate influence over our superstructure. This, in turn, propagates self-serving bastard memes, which leads increasing numbers of people buy the bullshit that we are all evil by nature and we should be allowed to do unto others as much as we can get away with. <br /><br />Do you remember the TED Talk I linked to a couple years ago in which an economist was discussing the role of oxytocin in trust and relating it to Adam Smith? If not: http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_zak_trust_morality_and_oxytocin<br /><br />There is something about how you capitalize abstract nouns like Hope and Love that kind of worries me. It looks as if you are using them as prescribed by some guru's patented method and should have a little trademark symbol after them. I capitalize nouns at times for emphasis, generally when it is some technical term I don't expect most people to know and will have to explain, like Nucleus Accumbens. No offense intended, but it comes across as being kind of ... cult. : /<br />Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-63653310229699824452016-07-22T21:09:49.894-07:002016-07-22T21:09:49.894-07:00Hi Alfred
In terms of total understanding you are...Hi Alfred<br /><br />In terms of total understanding you are probably correct<br /><br />In terms of understanding what happens when we push "this lever" you are completely wrong<br />Economists do have a very good handle on what will happen - there will be surprises BUT in most occasions we do know what will happen - and we have an idea about quantitative results as well<br /><br />As far as Marx and Malthus are concerned they did a very good job of <br />"What will happen if this goes on"<br />Which effectively prevented that from happening - bit like 1984 <br />The opposite of a Cassandra!<br /><br />"As for the transactions that ARE numerous, we’ve only been doing them for thousands of generations and the techniques are burying themselves into our genetics by now not to mention our civilizations. Trading is positively ancient and Evolution rules."<br /><br />Now this is nonsense!<br />Trading rules and methods have changed - "reciprocal gifting" is NOT derivative trading!<br />Trading methods can change very fast - a simple change in the rules alters trading methods completely<br />Even a change in the interpretation of the rules - like the changes to the Trust Busting rules - can cause massive change<br /><br />A change in the rules (like the Anti-Trust) can cause changes that take decades to cause the failure<br />We change the rules far too fast for any cultural evolution<br /><br />Hold that thought<br />There is Biological evolution - very slow<br />Cultural evolution - faster but still slow<br />And - Cultural "Engineering" - Where the rules are changed - Much much faster<br /><br />Cultural "Engineering" - Engineering is too strong term <br />Legislatures change rules<br />We should be doing the FMEA work on those rule changes before implementing them<br /><br /> duncan cairncrosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14153725128216947145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-82622488532654225052016-07-22T21:00:21.229-07:002016-07-22T21:00:21.229-07:00Great too the superb examine! Which will write-up ...Great too the superb examine! Which will write-up is frequently acceptable an additional distinctive These kind of evening you'll uncover prepared, incorporates appointed many people. Keep obtaining of which inturn.<a href="http://www.camtecelectrical.com.au/" rel="nofollow">camtecelectrical.com.au</a><br />camtecelectrical.com.auhttp://www.camtecelectrical.com.au/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-8428067392495692842016-07-22T19:22:37.352-07:002016-07-22T19:22:37.352-07:00@Duncan: An engineer stuck with a Ptolemaic model ...@Duncan: An engineer stuck with a Ptolemaic model SHOULD accept it as useful, but when it fails to work over millennium length time spans, they should also accept that it is a kludge to be replaced at one’s earliest convenience. Addition of more epicycles to make it work should lead them to disbelief in its power to explain.<br /><br />The more I learn economics, the more I am led to disbelief. Some of their theory looks to me like an Aether concept, but few people know the trap physicists fell into as our empirical knowledge of electromagnetism grew. More know of Ptolemy and the related trap Arab astronomers explored in detail centuries later. Astronomers had Copernicus, Brahe, and Kepler extract them from the trap. Physicists had Michaelson, Morley, and Einstein extract them from the trap. Who will extract the economists? The economy isn’t an engine. People don’t trade by contractarian or utilitarian paths we can find with partial differential equations on simplistic state functions. Add more dimensions to the state space if you like, but you are going to need a Vinge-style transcendent power to understand how it works.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-68657276200660847552016-07-22T19:05:13.957-07:002016-07-22T19:05:13.957-07:00@Duncan: You are falling into an analogy trap I su...@Duncan: You are falling into an analogy trap I suspect.<br /><br /><i>If you restricted yourself to actual failure you would take hundreds of years to reach a decent level of quality - and the market will NOT wait for you</i><br /><br />I assure you that if we had to wait hundreds of years for market failures to manifest, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. I’d be as happy as a pig in the mud. I don’t have to understand those kinds of failures because I’d be content to leaving them to my great-to-the-Nth grandchildren who will all have fantastic AI support to see them coming.<br /><br />You needed to study those low probability failure modes because there was so many products out there that they were essentially guaranteed to occur. We don’t have that situation with our markets. There just aren’t that many markets. As for the transactions that ARE numerous, we’ve only been doing them for thousands of generations and the techniques are burying themselves into our genetics by now not to mention our civilizations. Trading is positively ancient and Evolution rules.<br /><br />No one doubts you are smart. What I doubt is that you are prophetic. Apply the lessons of history in a CITOKATE environment, but don’t be shocked when I snicker at your ability to predict future social failure modes we’ve never seen. You should snicker at me too if I tried and thought they were good enough to adopt large-scale. I’ll snicker because a civilization isn’t an engine. It is vastly more complex and probably something we won’t grasp until AI’s millions of times larger than our minds are arrive on the scene. Until then, our safest path is to stumble along with incremental evolution and hope smart folks figure out little pieces well enough to invent local theories analogous to Griffith’s Crack Criteria.<br /><br />There is a really good historical example of snicker worthy theories tossed about just as the Industrial Revolution was getting underway. Malthus made some dire predictions that if read to literally might have been taken as a message from him that we should all despair. Since Despair is a sin and the good Reverend didn’t want to promote that, he eased off in later editions of his work regarding populations and what we now call carrying capacities. Nowhere, though, did he imagine we’d do something that made his points moot. No one from his era did. You have to look to Thomas Macauley (historian) around when Marx published before you find someone who seems to get it that the world had changed. Many of his peers did not until later in the century and even then they misread it. Macauley was dismissed by many as overly optimistic, yet the evidence was in front of them all. They had theories about how things worked that said things couldn’t work that way. Theories are wonderful things when they work, but they are terrible chains when they don’t and you won’t realize how heavy they are until someone cuts them away. Evolution can do that if you let it.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-83140113031714704012016-07-22T18:35:29.914-07:002016-07-22T18:35:29.914-07:00@donzelion: If you want to lump unwilling or unkno...@donzelion: If you want to lump unwilling or unknowing creditors into the definition, you’ll just muddy the waters. I’m with you regarding recognition of negative externalities and finding a way to price them back into the transactions, but I’m disinclined to people who bear the externalities as creditors. They weren’t part of voluntary transactions, thus no loan was given. It is more like thefts than loans.<br /><br />I’m not just skeptical of would be prophets. I’m skeptical of people who think they can apply reason to abstract information about the past that would apply in the future. I accept that we have little choice but to try, though, and this explains why I support only incremental adjustments. I’d rather apply evolutionary methods to these guesses we make, so I see big adjustments as wild mutations. Most die.<br /><br /><i>In all things, we can strive to make those who cause harm pay the price of the harm, and those who derive benefit to pay the price of that benefit: and we can assume that some number of those causing harm do so surreptitiously, beyond our means to detect them - so a risk-tax may be appropriate.</i><br /><br />With you in the first part. Confused by the second part. Why should those who derive benefit pay? To whom? Voluntary or coerced? If you are focused on making those who benefited from the harm pay a fine, the confusion is resolved with a small reservation. Defining ‘harm’ will be tricky. I’m opposed to a risk-tax, though. Sounds like punishment to be delivered to those who have the courage to innovate just to make sure we get the cheaters among them. No thanks. I’d rather suffer the cheaters until we find a way to target them better. I don’t like chemotherapy style solutions.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-31404886861190701682016-07-22T16:45:25.734-07:002016-07-22T16:45:25.734-07:00Thank you for this analysis David.
Digital transf...Thank you for this analysis David.<br /><br />Digital transformation of the bank is not only linked to blockchain and financial issues. Indeed, big data is also a key aspect. And for the poor people, they will have a credit card for free in exchange of the use of personal data (purchases, geolocalisation) by the banks and theirs ecosystems. It is the same way as data used by FANG and more specifically Facebook and Google.<br /><br />And the Automated Clearing House, or ACH is going to be disrupted with companies such as Ripple.David Fayonhttp://davidfayon.frnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-78780222272051809262016-07-22T16:33:23.103-07:002016-07-22T16:33:23.103-07:00r Brin:
Bullpuckey locum. All you got on HC is th...r Brin:<br /><i><br />Bullpuckey locum. All you got on HC is that she charged a lot for speeches for Goldman-Sachs and such. I do too, (not as much!) but that doesn’t make me let up on em. Prove it. Prove anything!<br /><br />Fact, if HC and the dems get in big banks WILL lose power. There will be tighter regulations. Some may be broken up as too big to fail. The SEC and CFPB will be strengthened, as the GOP desperately ployed to weaken them. The IRS will be funded so that audits can return for the rich. THAT IS DIFFERENT!<br /><br />You know this, yet spread the “they’re all the same” lie. An outright and direct and deliberate lie.<br /></i><br /><br />So far, the set of Republicans who have been at best lukewarm to Trump seem to be falling back on the position that it is necessary to vote for Trump because Hillary would be so much worse. Yet, Hillary is ackowledged as too hawkish--too willing to use armed force--for many Democrats, while Trump is threatening to abandon NATO commitments. Couldn't those Republicans whose biggest issue is the military find it better to hold their noses and vote for Hillary rather than to hold their noses and vote for Trump?<br /><br />Also, from today's New York Times<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/us/politics/donald-trump-rnc-speech.html<br /><br /><i><br />He [Trump] even vowed “to do everything in my power to protect our L.G.B.T.Q. citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.’’ As the audience applauded, Mr. Trump made a deviation from his prepared text, observing: “I have to say, that as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said.”’<br /></i><br /><br />He makes it sound as if white American Christians have the backs of the LGBT community against a <b>foreign</b> threat from Islam, rather than that those Republicans (literally) don't know who to root for in that conflict. American gays don't need protection from Muslims nearly as much as they need protection from the Republican base.<br /><br />Finally, the popular view of Ted Cruz is that in failing to endorse Trump, he broke a pledge that all of the candidates took at the beginning of the campaign. But wasn't that mainly a pledge <b>not to run against</b> the nominee? Cruz at least isn't doing that, whereas Trump likely would have had he lost the nomination.<br />LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-85089799401476367582016-07-22T12:54:46.726-07:002016-07-22T12:54:46.726-07:00@Duncan re "Remember that Ptolemaic models ar...@Duncan re <i>"Remember that Ptolemaic models are pretty good at predicting the motion of the planets in our sky, yet they fail to explain anything" </i><br /><br />I wasn't critiquing Ptolemy with that comment, but efforts at prophesy (specifically Locum's projections about the downfall of Turkey, NATO, the EU, etc.). My point wasn't that the Ptolemaic model is useless, or that Locum was right or wrong - only that it's explanatory value is negligible, and the enterprise, harmful.<br /><br />Any useful model should (1) grow from actual observations, and theories growing from those observations, (2) be capable of challenge by better observations and alternative theories. The problem with prophetic models is that they invite doing nothing - just waiting passively to see if the prophet is touched by divine wisdom.<br /><br /><i>"Less inequality gives a better society"</i><br />In general, yes, provided other rules also apply. Dystopias of perfect equality and dystopias of perfect inequality are easily constructed - but we've often endured millennia of the latter, and never experienced the former (save in remote colonies, religious cloisters, and similar isolated incidents). Reason suggests we ought to fear one more than the other, and deal with the greater threats before dickering over the lesser threats. But we can see risks of equality enforced in a certain way, so equality itself should not be the ends, so much as a symptom of success.<br /><br /><i>"We worry that there may be a time when we will be "over the top" - but so far reducing inequality has continued to yield better societies"</i><br />In general, agreed. But just as progressing from the Ptolemaic model required looking at the few objects in the sky that violated the model closely, and then abandoning all of its assumptions and trying anew - I'd look at the players in capitalism that violate the model - those who are not 'free riders' so much as 'anti-social predators' - and responding to a world where they come into existence so often, initially appear to be entrepreneurs, but in practice, are simply exploiting power and risk for their own benefit. <br /><br />As there are many such people, a progressive tax rate is one (of many) measures that is appropriate to rein them in. As is a "risk tax" for exercises undertaken by the largest of the large, which can have very different implications than the same risks borne by smaller players who will have less capacity to shift the risks onto others.donzelionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05991849781932619746noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-90958243973935278712016-07-22T11:01:37.254-07:002016-07-22T11:01:37.254-07:00Joe Kennedy taught us everything we know. He just ...Joe Kennedy taught us everything we know. He just didn't teach us everything <i>he</i> knew.Jumperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11794110173836133321noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-64609561935007903912016-07-22T10:35:16.114-07:002016-07-22T10:35:16.114-07:00Dr. Brin,
FDR hired a thief to catch thieves and ...Dr. Brin,<br /><br />FDR hired a thief to catch thieves and it worked well. FDR hired Joe Kennedy as the first chairman of the SEC. When asked why he hired a crook, FDR replied “Takes one to catch one”. Kennedy was one of the most notorious Wall Street operators of the time and knew and used all the tricks to ripe off the public as well as other speculators. He was a crook but he set up the SEC and because of his knowledge was able to eliminate the unsavory practices and made the SEC feared until its teeth were pulled in the 2000’s. Of course he did it not because he wanted to become honest. He did it to clean up his legacy so that one of his kids could become president. He is not my favorite person but he did do an excellent job at the SEC.<br />Deuxglassnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-63486141267716281012016-07-22T09:34:34.489-07:002016-07-22T09:34:34.489-07:00Doomers. God, I'm tired of 'em. Carsitter ...Doomers. God, I'm tired of 'em. Carsitter prefers to snipe rather than even be aware that all-electric solar powered transportation is in our grasp if we just reach out and grab it.Jumperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11794110173836133321noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-5917048031533653172016-07-22T07:23:58.841-07:002016-07-22T07:23:58.841-07:00That NPR piece is party line for "burn Carbon...That NPR piece is party line for "burn Carbon like it's 1960"—of course yet more concrete and steel is necessary for yet more roads and bridges, as if, somehow, building just one more wafer-thin double crossover diamond sprawlway would vault America into the 21st and a half century (road deaths are up). Now, how exactly will the 47% of Americans who cannot pay a surprise $400 bill gain cheer on the news that apparently it is worse somewhere else? Hmm?<br /><br /> "entrepreneurship is down; productivity is declining"<br /><br />Speak to those points, oh blinkered optimist.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-60086558184894662532016-07-22T03:46:52.239-07:002016-07-22T03:46:52.239-07:00You still up for that bet? What terms are you offe...You still up for that bet? What terms are you offering?Annabellenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-20061355286129752442016-07-21T22:32:59.175-07:002016-07-21T22:32:59.175-07:00"Remember that Ptolemaic models are pretty go..."Remember that Ptolemaic models are pretty good at predicting the motion of the planets in our sky, yet they fail to explain anything" <br /><br />As an engineer or in days of old somebody who wanted to know when to when to plant I would take that in a shot<br /><br />Knowing how the engine works is great but just knowing what the controls will do right now is actually damn useful<br /><br />And that is where we are just now - to the engine analogy we know that more throttle gives more power<br />(Less inequality gives a better society)<br /><br />We worry that there may be a time when we will be "over the top" - but so far reducing inequality has continued to yield better societies<br /><br />If we had a good theory we could predict when we reach the optimum as it is we will have to suck it and see<br /><br />But our "Ptolemaic model" is still a huge (YUGE) amount better than no model or refusing to do ANYTHING because we don't understand everything<br />duncan cairncrosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14153725128216947145noreply@blogger.com