I certainly admit I know a lot less than academics. Or maybe I say it like Robin Hanson put it.
Eistee, Wasn't that exactly your point when you said we know nothing about the subject? If it is, that is my point exactly.
1. Austrians have made numerous to economics (like Carl Menger marginal utility), and have received 1-3 Economic Nobels depending on who you count. Even today Hayek's Use of Knowledge in a Society is Top 20 article by AER.
2. Many academic can agree on Austrians on many issues, Austrians themselves have overstated a lot of differences with them. Both Austrians and mainstream agree price controls are bad, they just tend to come up with same conclusion in a different way (apriorism vs positivism). The thing is in the beginning of the century Austrian view was pretty close to what was "mainstream". Many economists wanted economists to be a hard science like physics and developed elaborate models like IS/LM-models but Austrians wouldn't accept them because of epistemelogical problems (you can read about Methodenstreit and Robert Lucas critique if you are interested). So in some sen mainstream has gone "forward" from the old classical economists. Mainstream is like Quantum physics whereas Austrians are Newtonians.
3. Respectable economists who are not Austrians find for example the trade theory still interesting, and even people like Paul Krugman have a beef with the overdone mathematics in mainstream econ.
4. I never said I was Austrian, so why the hell do you bring this up constantly? I only gave examples of something what they have said and predicted. I mentioned Austrians twice to my count and you have mentioned them like 6 times.
5. Funny thing. There was a study about favourite econ blogs chosen by economists and the top was a blog who was named after Austrian invention called Marginal Revolution and the author himself used to describe himself as Austrian once. He also predicted the crisis with Austrian methodology in 2005.
Yeah you are probably right. Academic economists have debated these issues long before we did and have been much more productive. Maybe I just see too much red whenever I see someone "going against the climate conspiracy or economics conspiracy" or whatever.
ah gay that is so easy cause you obviously had nothing useful to say and you prove that once again by deflecting upon that sidetopic(smileys) that noone cares about !
Done and Done !
And i am out .. you ppl just annoy me cause you keep posting here and i d like blinds topic to stay on top so ppl can write there ffs !!
But hey knock yourselves out i dont read any of your marathon crap anyway !
Respectable economists who are not marxists still accept a lot of Marxist critique of capitalist systems.
The fact that there are similarities between mainstream neo liberalism and the austrian school doesn't really mean much in this context given that your defences for the failings of capitalism to date rest on the explicit differences between these ideaologies and endorsing the austrian position.
If you think you haven't been endorsing the austrian position then what is your position? literally everything i've seen you type fits with either the austrian or ancap schema. The fact you haven't used the word "Austrian" in the paragraphs you've been doing it doesn't really change that.
edit by jiriki: I accidentally removed this post so I recovered what I could of it manually.
Do you actually seriously think what you wrote is something to be taken seriously? Something that merits an in depth response? You're saying that "real" debates can only be had in real time. Do I really need to spell out to you why that's a pretty fucking stupid thing to say?
not really my point jiriki but close enough . When i said nothing i was ofc extrapolating a little but hey who doesnt .. yeah sure you know a bit and the rest comes from the itnernet!
And Well ofc we learn from "experts" or teachers it is the only way for us to learn the other thing is really understanding it and as long as you cant put it into your own words everything you copy down is worth NOTHING! Because you dont know what you just "said" anyway !
So basically my point is: The only knowledge we can use is someone elses but we should not use it unless we understand it ! .. tbh i did not read what you guys wrote i was just assuming that in your fricking long posts there is a lot of room for stuff you dont understand !
What do you mean "marxist critique"? Its one thing to say that marxists do critique and another thing to realize their alternative is even worse. Its one thing to say Austrians may be right in their criticism of math overuse, but then again it doesn't really prove if ABCT is right for example. That is a seperate issue.
Your defence of marxism rested on Chomsky's argument that Lenin was right-wing. Yeah roger that. In fact socialism is mostly Lenin's invention. Marx just moaned about capitalists forever but he sacrified very little thought how to organize an economy after those capitalist bastards were hanged. He just thought anyone capable of "basic arithmetic" could do it but then it was the biggest problem in a command economy, the calculation problem.
Besides, I have never said there are not failings in the market economy. That is complete nonsense. In a perfect economy, there wouldn't even be money. Its only the mainstream that use "homo economicus", as an example of a person with full rationality and perfect information. Mainstream economists know this is a bit silly but it can predict economic phenomenon and be useful that way.
And no, my "defences for the failings of capitalism" rests on all kinds of arguments. Maybe you should read them, most of them are not Austrian invention. And like I said, I don't disagree there are failings, in many cases I just think any government solution just makes things worse. Even left-wing economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman have realized this on some occasions.
What does it matter what is my position. Austrians are not the only ones who advocate free markets. Milton Friedman wasn't Austrian, in fact he famously said "there no such thing as Austrian economics, there is only good economics and bad economics". While given the current quite stark paradigm difference, there might be a reason for such distinction, you can still do a lot of analysis without having to hang into Austrian methodology.
My defence of Marxism from the SPECIFIC criticism of historical atrocities commited under its name was to point out that the likes of Lenin were right wing socialists. You can actually try discussing why you think he wasn't if you like, but you might come up against some problems like for instance the fact that you've already stated that you think the differences between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were essentially superficial. Whoops.
This is what you said "3. Respectable economists who are not Austrians find for example the trade theory still interesting, and even people like Paul Krugman have a beef with the overdone mathematics in mainstream econ." Do you realise how what you've now just said actually debunks the point that you were initially trying to make?
Sorry I guess I must have read you suggesting things like private property rights being the only needed state law.
I did read them, and I repsonded to them on the prior page. Looking forward to your responses.
Because you're having a debate? Pointing out neoliberals also like the market doesn't matter if you're using different arguments to defend something.
edit: probably not going to be on the internet again for about a week
It doesn't really. If I said Austrians are right, and mainstream is wrong that'd be going against the whole mainstream academia. For example mainstream economists have shown interest in ABCT, its not about taking their whole aprioristic methdology. And the jump from Paul Krguman's "there should be room for sensible stories" in econ journals to making Austrian conclusion that mathematics is almost useless main social sciences, is quite a leap. I'm not making that.
I am saying a free market doesn't need more than private property rights to function.
And you are jumping to conclusions. I know Internet has all kinds of "failures" but I don't want the government controlling it in order to protect "network security" or whatever. I don't want some government agency like Department of Internet which would grant privileges to run websites. Same thing with market. I see the market as a lesser evil.
I don't want to succumb into any dogma. If you don't like it, its your problem. In some cases I think Austrians provide the necessary logic to validate a point and some cases I think they go too far and there're better ways to analyze the specific issue.
How do you come up with these arguments. Yes their military budget was massive like Soviet Union, like many totalitarian states have, but that is not the reason their agricultural industry was fucked up their while South had massive increase in agricultural productivity. The same thing in other production.
According to which economist? The price can reflect only existing demand. Higher prices induce increased supply which pushes the price to the marginal cost.
Money is just intermediary that makes exchange easier because barter would require perfect information. In theory, you could have a perfect market economy without money at all. What you are saying is that some people cannot produce stuff someone else would like to trade with them voluntarily, so they have to force someone to buy their products or get paid some other way or reason. It is obvious there will be people who cannot work etc, the real question is whether these people are taken care by private or public means.
Also redistribution hurts incentives. Equality is kind of like how the pie is shared and economic growth is the speed how fast the size of it increases (this is from my textbook). The more you have former, the less you have letter. Many government redistributional things are likely to come pareto-inferior in higher timespan. If you think we need a welfare state, then fine I don't care - I am not interested in arguing about that with since we cannot agree on much simpler issues.
I'm sorry but if you think your book which one guy has reviewed on Amazon (maybe it was you) claims to show why like several thousand (if not dozens of thousand) academic economists in the world have got the basics of their own profession wrong because of some world global corruption conspiracy, don't expect me to reply.
Movie as an argument. Is this a joke?
The thing is, I do respect mainstream economic consensus. They agree on things like price controls are bad, marxist ideology is a dead end etc. but then they have a million disagremeents, especially how much the government should intervene in the economy. I always respect economic-based arguments by good economists (even Paul Krugman). I have no problem with them. Almost all my opinions have been endorsed by some Nobel laurates.
No they weren't. It wasn't that first there was no computer, government comes and bam we have a computer. First we had mathematics, then someone made mechanical devices to calculate mathematics, someone invents logic games, someone makes Neumann, somone makes prototypes etc. There were companies like IBM, Henschel involved. Just look at the damn timeline. As you can see its full of steps, not a single big leap made by government.
Frédéric Bastiat wrote in his famous essay, What is Seen and What Is Not Seen, that things that were produced by government can be seen but it is impossible to say hindsight in what would have been developed if people had kept their money. We are never going to see those things.
First of all. You might think this makes for a scientific analysis, but it doesn't actually. The question of public good is a debate in economic circles. Some economists left-wing ecnomists see public goods everywhere, indeed lighthouses were used as an example of a public good until Ronald Coase proved that market can and has provided such things aswell. You have to also remember that government crowds out private forces. Welfare states for example crowded out a lot of charity (and true caring aswell).
Hahaha. Exactly like Marx. He thought as soon as you get "rid of those capitalist scum", the economy can be easily fixed, just a bit of algebra. Ops wait, need linear programming. Oh fuck, wasn't that easy. Hold on, I'll figure this out..
That is like saying when we produce an efficient way to produce food, the state should start running the farms. Yeah those things are called agricultural subsidies.
Well when you said that "let government intervention to the hands of private firms to make profit" is like company A saying that "the company B made profit out ouf our idea". So it may not have been your point but it sounded like you were making the case for royalties or something.
The book of Boldrin and Levine covers the issue of patents pretty well. A lot of Austrians are actuallly against IP (patents and copyright), and you might want to check this video from 03:20 onwards, that is where I took the Wrights example from, its from the Boldrin book originally.
And if Patents are of any interest to you, the book is excellent but also Stpehan Kinsella's writings on mises.org should be interesting. He is a former patent attorney and was kind of sick of all the patent wars that did nothing but promote rent seeking.
Lots of arguments against IP can be made from economic theory to history of innovation. The problem with patents and IP is that they create artificial scarcity to a place where there is not. We need property rights because real resources (like land and items) are scarce, but ideas are not. Everyone in the world can benefit from an idea because the marginal cost of information is zero.
I remember one of our more known politicians hearing from Indian prime minister that if medical patents were abolished, the health situation in India would improve considerably.
Yeah well iirc. corectly Soviet Union's production was so inefficient that the black market outcompeted the state in many areas.
My point is the same as it was with Bangladesh, it wouldn't improve the living standards of the people in the developing countries a lot and would probably create perverse incentives. In fact, you need to have supply side in order to be able to afford food or clothes on constant bases, fixing he demand side can only go little way ahead.
It is a proper answer. Milton Friedman said pretty much the same and he sure isn't an ancap. Ancap's dont want state at all.
Well given that most Internet is owned by private means your statement kind of falls on its head. Indeed most of the network infrastructure is owned by ISPs and their collabaration organizations (like non-profit organization FICIX in the Finland). Internet is great example of what people working freely with each other can achieve.
When your understanding of marginal utility is at this level, you should read more economics.
I ain't no dogmatic Austrian. While I find some axiomatic ethics useful, any sane person needs to be open to proper consequential ethics. But usually me consequential ethics reasoning means strong economic arguments (by professors of economics).
You should really investigate Austrian arguments better before calling them rubbish.
According to which economist?
I am not justifying anyone's death. If a study concludes that the situation in Africa is because of weather, IQ or whatever how is that justifying anyone's death?! How can seeking the truth be some kind of gravejumping.
And I think if they just could run same policies as Hong Kong, or perhaps some Western countries could set up Hong Kong type charter cities, they could improve considerably and make beacon of progress for others to imitate. Why they haven't been able to reach better market policies is a more difficult question that involves politics, history and perhaps IQ, but that wasn't my study. I point that as a one possible explanation and you just go on for several posts how I'm using low IQ as justifying their death, great logic.
And I didn't "start talking about IQ levels", I said "excluding things like IQ" regards to Africa. I gave the economic reasons why their policies are not working. Why they have such bad policies is another question. IQ is one hypothesis, and it isn't mine.
First of all.
How do you expect us to have a decent conversation if you can't stop just adding ad hominems and all kinds of ridiculations all the time. What does it tell of your thought process. Why is that so many left-wing people act like these. Tom did this before.
Austrian solution would probably to remove central pank, don't do do bail outs (like in 1921) and remove like most federal government agencies and regulation. But the question of how much central bank affects business cycles is a scientific question and even if the answers turns out to be "considerable", then it doesn't necessite an "Austrian solution" of removing all bank regulation.
Look the academic debate whether government should run the production is over. I'll just give you Use of Knowledge in a Society by F.A. Hayek. It is in my opinion the best argument against command economy, and it still is among the Top 20 articles by AER. I think in fact it is probably the best insight to anything. I didn't understand the significance of it at first but over the years I've come to appreciate it more and more. It is pretty thereotical in the nature, but I think that is at the bottom of it.
First of all, if you socialize all the means of production, you are going to have decide who is going to do what. This is exactly the Marx ignored, he didn't realize how complex a market economy is and just cleansing capitalists doesn't solve the problem of designing. Lenin had to figure something out there.
On the contrary, do you need to show Internet is perfect to prove that it doesn't need government intervention to work? There's nothing perfect in this world because humans are imperfect.
Like pirated software? Yeah very easy. The difference is that I do not want any power. All political power corrupts. And second of all, can you say which economist backs up your claim? In fact running monopolies under international competition is incredible hard. Anti-trust laws have likely caused more problems than they have created.
The government run economy will work out soon in North korea, just you wait!!
In fact historically, before the neoclassica explanation of monopoly, nevermind any anti-trust laws, monopoly was defined as state-sponsored privilege to produce something. Like intellectual monopoly, where government limits who can produce something. In our legislation pharmacy and taxi monopolies are an example of that. Massive rent seeking.
You can read about externalities and their from Wikipedia or your nearest Economic textbook. I can't be arsed to explain everything to you.
If you like ie. a Pigovian solution to externalities, then fine I have no problem with that. There are certain problems with that too.
Like I said the debate over means of production is over, I can't arsed with this anymore. This is so full of logical problems. I mean I can say that if politcians were rational, non-self-interested and have perfect information, socialism could work. Otherwise it would become a very depresisng fetish of rich elites and useful idiots. Was that meaningful academic analysis? No, and neither was yours.
It is, comparative advantage proves this. Ask Paul Krugman, the intellectual leader of American left-wing.
Are you seriously saying that as a serious argument? Andy got all this figured out, he just skipped whole academic research by saying that they think they everyone is a psycopath, smart.
Oh please, can you not enter a debate without calling other people ideological retards? Is it really that hard? And you are going against whole mainstream academia with marxist doctrine supported and calling other people ideological retards, impressive.
You can't really give up on the IQ thing can you? It is like mentioning Austrians, it seems to set off some kind of a emotional overdrive with you.
Oh right, in the 1870s? That recent, gosh. What was their GDP per capita? 100$? I mean, yeah famines can happen in market economies but when you let prices function, they bring higher supply because people respond to monetary incentives. I don't actually deny that redistributional means on the demand side cannot work, I just think the supply side should be left to work itself out.
Oh right, so markets are to blame for government colonisation of Africa and whatever.
Where did I say I defend status quo? I've said Western countries are imperfect examples of capitalist countries. I have never approved any invasions, stop putting words into my mouth. What US or UK does is your problem. Capitalist states, communist states, fedual states have all invaded other countries. Politicians and kings are like that. Power corrupts.
Me too. I can't be be arsed to respond to economic analysis by a linguist, just pasting several pargraphs text and expecting me to explain that. Maybe I will start doing that too, oh definitely!
Does anyone know what this argument is about any more?
Just looks like a bunch of nerds arguing about absolutely anything and everything.
Pro tip: I can play devil's advocate to any point you make by quoting random events, because human history is long enough to have explored every possible permutation of event, such that I can interpret it in any way I see fit to "prove" any point I want to make.
Well my point was that Nazi and real-world communist states have been totalitarian nightmares. Since Gay clearly thought they are completely different, I should have just stopped there. It was obvious nothing productive would come out of this.
Well this is my point exactly. At the end of the day, whether it is the economy, NS or Starcraft we can give examples of what happened and make random claims like.
So how do we do know which of these claims are true and which are not?
Answer: experts.
Experts make mistakes sure, but atleast they know much better than we do. Patrick you do understand when people who know nothing about how Lerk works go suggest sporemines, spikes and whatever. They ruin the lerk for experienced players. It is the same thing with economy. People who have no economic education can make claims, and it fucks up, in this case, the economy.
nothing productive? I dunno why people are slating discussions like this so much, I've generally learned a fair bit about various economic viewpoints, experts and non-experts both stating some interesting truths!
Jiriki, why do you say governments should be left out of these decisions? Who should make decisions instead? The free market, just let the system be in control and people adapt to it's affects?
If you think that any other group of people should have a say in the decision then I'm pretty shocked, economists have had enough say in political decisions and the private sector is no different; both have led to terrible circumstances.
I'm leaning towards Jiriki now. However, I would like to know how the free market can take into consideration events of an extreme and infrequent nature like earthquakes or climate change.
It seems to me that a free market doesn't have enough foresight to cope with things like an earthquake and so structures would be built that are cheap but fragile. This is partly because of consumer ignorance and partly because the market is best at making changes when they are of immediate benefit, not when they are risk factors in fifty years time.
Likewise, I find it hard to imagine how competition can lead to effective cooperation on the issues of climate change. Isn't this an instance where you need to agree to *stop* (or at least moderate) competition?
Hey guys, guess what, it appears their models don't take into account the possibility of lots of bad things happening all at once. If they do, the huge loss is obviously balanced by the unlikelihood of it happening.
Of course, if you lose your house in this situation, you've still lost your house.
Most of you probably need to go and watch Question Time. Not for it's razor sharp critique of our politicians, or the chance to see said politicians engage with the public.
No.
You need to watch it to realise how pathetically fucking ignorant both the politicians and the moronic proles who ask the questions are, with respect to any kind of understanding of how the world works. They go around expressing anecdotes as if they are absolute fact and apply to all situations. They cherry pick statistics from terribly unscientific studies. They generally lie to the public, who lap it up and ask cretinous or whimsical questions for these charismatic pricks to annihilate.
So to come back to my actual point, government is elected by fucking idiots and the government therefore generally consists of fucking idiots - charismatic they may be - who are entirely focussed on a short term plan.
This is why the most largest companies who employ the most intelligent people to purposefully avoid economic laws set out by governments are so successful.
The most _idea_ to come from this rant is this:
Maybe this is a meritocracy and maybe this is the most effective way to run a civilization. Perhaps the right wing, interference-free method of governing is the best way, because you remove control from the weak.
I must stress I am a liberal and not some sort of conservative but it's hard to see what the arguments for that viewpoint are any more.
Well nobody controls Internet either, and that's a good thing! Some things like music tastes, culture, prices and paradigm (ie. IPR) changes are out of anyone's control, and trying to "fix" these issues is just going to make things worse.
Well I don't believe economists have had a lot to say in political decisions but I agree, not a single group should have more power, but is obvious some people know more about mechanics of society than others (like some people do know more about medicine or engineering) and the question is how we use that information without letting these people do it for their own benefit. Read few paragraphs below.
Market is only an extension of spontaneous order. How do markets take into consideration rare events like computer attacks? Do you think government should tell which firewall software you should use? Do you think our computer security would be better? Answer is no, this is because governments don't really posses any information all humans don't have.
Compare Haiti to Japan for example. While both suffered from massive earthquakes, Japan's capital structure was much higher and suffered from much less human casualties than Haiti (5 to 30 times less). And its an individual choice to live in earthquake areas and pay lower rent (ceteris paribus).
But yes there're all kinds of case studies of special situations that might require government action. However the more I've read about market, the more I've come to appreciate how people, voluntarily working with each other, can overcome problems that were previously thought impossible for market or liberty to resolve. It is like the Internet, even though there's all kinds of nasty stuff out there and politicians are always trying to use than as en excuse to regulate it, many people know that humans can freely overcome those problems much better than the politicians would.
To be honest, rare events, while they are a problem, are really a marginal problem. Most rare events have happend in some form or another in the past can its more of an individual choice on how to protect against it. I don't see the most interesting questions there at all.
Climate change is just really another question of externalities. There're many solutions to them, provisions, Pigovian taxes and Coasean solution for example. They all have drawbacks and benefits. I think David Friedman wrote pretty well about it. It is well worth a read if you are interested in the subject.
I think in some sense these words have lost their purpose. Originally liberal refered to classical liberals. Now most European countries are welfare states, and liberals usually favor that, which is status quo, and in some sense conservatism.
Sublime, much of our current day's political problems are because of the knowledge problem. That is, the information how to resolve these issues rationally exists, it just isn't used. Democracy or autocracy do not aggregate information very well, rather they respond to political incentives. Robin Hanson, who is an economist (and physicist and computer scientist) has written a lot about human rationality, signaling and biases such as over-confidence, ideological bias etc. Prediction markets are very good, and probably the best, at overcoming these problems as long as the problem can measured somehow.
And this is exactly the same problem Hayek wrote about in 1945, just a modern application of it. Tbh, I think Hayek's insight is probably the smartest in social sciences. If we used prediction markets, we could see if eg. Austrians have "rubbish" ideas or the smartest insights that others have ignored for decades, or marxists for that matter, why not.
Gay: go ahead but I'm unlikely to respond to any qualitative statements that are more of a question of expertise than layman discussion. I think I've had enough of that. We're both making claims about things that need careful study, not random statements one way or another. There's no way I can "prove" you wrong, so we just keep making random statements around the subject until either of us is too bored to continue, and I think I'm there.
The thing is, there're certainly problems in market that require careful consideration, but the intellectual debate is just not really about socialism. Just like there are problems in evolution theory, which can be stated in mathematical form, but that doesn't mean scientists are seriously talking about creationism (anymore). The interesting academic debate in economics is about monetary policy, fiscal policy, welfare policy etc.
Just like in evolution debate, it just a matter of time when the religional fanatics realize what is wrong with creationism. Same thing with marxists.
Just for the fun of it, I could point some problems with mainstream (academic, esp. economic) thinking.
1. Ideological bias. A lot of economic opinions are ideologically biased, either free-market or anti-market way. Saying someone favours either doesn't however tell anything if his analysis is intellectually honest though. The reality could be either, and can be only known if the subject is approach with intellectual honesty and competence.
2. Inertia. Unlike in market, it can takes decades for a paradigm change to happen in academia. In market, people can lose their property on the same day if they don't put their money where their mouth is. That is, markets are very good at transfering information.
3. Systematic bias. Especially in social sciences (esp. macroeconomics), where you cannot verify your results, you can make horrible models that do not predict reality at all but please their fellow academics. It is like programmers making programrs without ever testing them. Economists with highest credentials can call each other crackpots and make models that tell everthing and nothing.
The thing is, I started somewhere middle-of-the-road welfare state supporter like 90% of people in Nordic states, but my never-ending interest in the truth of matters has made me realize the people who enraged me before were actually right. And nobody can turn libertarian overnight and be capable of intellectually defending his positions against every possible counter-argument. It is a process of years like learning mathematics or a music intstrument. It takes time to read lots of articles and books to understand how people can solve coordination problems without our friend government, and why such solutions would be any better.
Hmm actually a lot of these things get controlled by the free market to a great extent, also government has a big say in what happens on the internet. The media is massively controlled and guided by marketing strategies and corporate intentions.
It may not be 'direct' control but it's still control, actions don't necessarily result in the anticipated outcomes but they're still majority responsible for what happens a lot of the time.
Almost the whole of Margaret Thatchers administration was under the thumb of Milton Friedman. The amount of economists involved in government is nearing a majority and for the last 100 years, political leaders have been going to economists and psychologists for advice.
I'd say when it comes to 'knowing more about the mechanics of society' it depends on which society you're talking about.. I'd be surprised if many economists had a clue about the real mechanics of the society I spend most of my time with here in oz, never-mind societies in Indonesia, Nepal and highly spiritual societies (comprising the majority of the global population). There's a lot more to human communities than can be seen and counted... which is the way most things are encouraged to be (guided by stats) and was a massive problem with communist Russia.
Governments do not have much to say what happens in the internet. Indeed politicians have been annoyed by the fact they cannot control it like they can traditional media. And controlled by "free market" is more like controlled by the marginal choices of all individuals.
I'm not aware of details of UK's policies but whatever policies Thatcher made but they were hardly Friedman's ideals. I read one left-wing doctor writing here that Thatcher didn't really change the size of the government (I think change was 45 -> 39 per cent of GDP in the end), and neither did Reagan, who just expanded it. Friedman's ideals woul be somewhere near 2 to 5 percent. You have to put things into perspective.
Its like public players getting half-assed bhop in NS2 and saying "well this doesnt feel NS1 and it didn't bring back all those hardcore players you promised, lets remove it". Indeed to get NS2 to level of NS1, you need to make a lot of changes. Look, I am PT Lead for NS2, but does it mean NS2 is anywhere near NS1 in terms of depth (yet)? No. I'm just doing everything I can stop from public players from ruining this game. Friedman was in the equal position.
While Thatcher agreed with Friedman on many occasions, she was no libertarian and she was lightyears behind of of understanding economics or history at the level Friedman did.
Some libertarians have criticized Friedman for jumping into bed with politicians because he favored making policies that went into "better direction" (such as negative income tax and vouchers) even if they were far from ideal. It is like we accepting Q3 movement system instead of bhop.
The thing is when talking about things like rent control, you don't really need Thatcher or UK's political history, the optimal solution can be found in economics. Equally, when we are talking about bhop for example, the resource model is irrelevant. It is just public players whining "we have already made too many concessions to hardcore NS players, it is time to go back to crippled physics model and spore mines". They make arguments that are irrelevant to the subject at hand.
This has some truth to it, but here's the catch. The law of gravity is same in the UK as it is in the US and Finland. Likewise, the reasons for inflation or effects of rent control or real estate tax are scientific questions and are not really specific to the country at hand.
And to continue my analogy, this is what some guys on NS2 forums are saying. "This is NS2, so its all different, it shouldn't have that NS1 feature you moan about!" Indeed, we can analyze the usefulness of skill-based movement without having to care if this is NS1, NS2, NS3 etc. or if it was made in Russia or California. Its irrelevant.
However Hayek always appreciated local knowledge. Indeed that is why markets are so efficient, because they gather information from people fof all walks of life. You certainly have information nobody does on the planet, and market provides the incentives to use that. If we had a prediction market to measure the optimal social policy, we could see if your local knowledge of the oz is real or not.
Yeh definitely, the government have never had anything to do with websites that were shut-down before... *rolleyes* Go make a kiddy-fiddling website in china and then start sharing copyrighted media without a license or selling drugs.
Websites still have to follow the laws like anything else, laws set by the government, generally.
funny you should say that, thatcher and friedman were virtually side-by-side all the time making public appearances together and both proclaiming how amazing their system was.
In the age of the Internet, it becomes very hard for government to control the flow of information. Pirate bay is still there. Tor networks are unstoppable. China's firewall stops nothing for a person who knows what hes doing.
In my country, they've tried to censor Web aswell. Guess if it worked? Nope.
"Their system"? If you would have asked if Friedman supported government 40% size of GDP, he would have laughed.
Its just not about their system like bhop, resource model, aesthetics, phyiscs model are all seperate issues. While someone could call it "our system" because we agree on so many of those issues, making such a blanket argument is just being intellectually lazy and unable to understand the specific arguments at hand.
And what is the debate here? I don't know what is even meant with "their" system. It is exactly like public players trying out NS1 and saying "well wow this is boring, I want my flamethrower". These people just don't know anything about making video games with depth. Are we talking about monetary policy, labour regulation, consumer regulation, welfare policy, what? They are all seperate issues and need some careful analysis, not some blanket statements. For example, I reckon Friedman's k-percent rule didn't work out that well, but then again he thought that'd better than having a keynesian monetary policy, his ideal would be no central bank at all.
I can see this is hard for you to understand so let me put it another way.
I live in a squat, I don't pay any rent and my living here had nothing to do with the economy or tax in any way. Rates of inflation, effects of rent or real estate tax, you say they're global laws but, they don't even exist in my situation. You can't apply a scientific theory to.. well.. nothing. I'm not the only person in my situation and mine is a very subtle case when you compare it to other societies around the world where ownership of anything is just not even considered.
You seem to think that everything needs to be fit into a capitalist system because and only because you're in a capitalist system already. Not everyone cares so much about what's there's and what isn't. If you want to get productivity and improvement you should probably engage people in what's important to them instead of pressuring them into wasting resources for nothing more than a counting competition.
Inefficient policies or inflation means you are paying higher prices for stuff and getting less pay than you would normally. Maybe you don't care about your food bill but a society that has inefficient policies is wasting resources.
Like normal person does not care much if he pays 2 or 5 dollars for sugar per year, but then when you've the special interest inefficiency there for 200 years, it kinds of builts up. It is like a memory leak in a program. In the short term its not a problem but in the long term it is. If we hadn't many of the inefficient policies, our living standards could be hundreds, if not thousands of percent higher even with 100-year period. You may think, "well I don't care, I have everything I need", but thats probably what a lot of people used to say in the beginning of this century.
@jiriki - You say focus on the argument at hand but you're actually replying to my point about decision making. Can you try to remember the argument at hand and even attempt to make some connection between the points being made please?
China will quite happily throw you in jail for making such a site and shut the site down. Now I dunno about you but I honestly think that that's having some control of the information flow... :/ Pretty sure a few other countries have thrown a webmaster into jail before.
Yes, their decisions regarding the economics of Britain. I can't even see how your argument for any economist to have his 'complete economic idealogy' or nothing, has any validity?
From what I can tell.. you're saying:
- an economist having no say is a terrible thing
- also an economist having some say is a terrible thing
- a government having any say is a terrible thing
- and the public having say is a terrible thing.
hence, that explains why all of them sucked when they had some say in the societies decision making; but actually, we still should listen to economists. Because economists are experts, despite that the decisions they make will never work because they can only work in their extreme ideals.
That's your argument, right there. It makes no sense even on a basic level, how can you take it into any greater detail when even the easy stuff doesn't add up?
Don't care about my food bill?!! WHAT! you clearly have absolutely no idea who you're talking to, haha, I purposfully aviod having a food bill all together! I get 80% of my food for free these days! A friend of mine hasn't bought anything for 3 months.
I get products for free, urm, transport is free too, i walk and own a pushbike that was given to me.
If I buy something it's often at a market with some strange discount or good-will gesture.
