first world problems

The wire is a piece of fiction and using it to show that the world is bad and man is evil, because of the actions of a few characters in there is a joke.

stick to poker bro.

On April 08 2013 10:51 Royal_Rumble wrote: The wire is a piece of fiction and using it to show that the world is bad and man is evil, because of the actions of a few characters in there is a joke.

your first point is correct. The wire is fiction, but it does have parallels with the real world, you've got to be blind not to see it. I could have easily said AiG would fire an employee if they told the everyone that they were bullshitting about credit ratings. Or i could link this aritcle which is a real life example http://www.chomsky.info/books/power01.htm You can look the names up of the people in the article on wikipedia and find it's all true. I just put the wire in as an example because i know a lot of people on LP watch and respect the show.

Your 2nd point is a fabrication. I think the world can be made better. I don't think man is evil, i think the common man shares a lot of common moral views, which most people consider good. I just think that the world that we live in at the moment marginalizes people that pursue common moral values.

Most liberal discourse, especially those published by academics, portray a distorted view of libertarianism.

'There was a recent study done at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics on attitudes of young people from ages eighteen to twenty-nine. It was pretty striking. There’s a lot of commitment to what in the United States are called libertarian ideas. Libertarian in the United States is pretty close to totalitarian.

Addressing some of the points you brought up, libertarians don't want "concentrations of private power." Libertarians want to take power away from a corrupt centralized government that subsidizes private sector risk and pours endless tax dollars into programs that aren't well managed. Historically, strong central power has always been GOOD for large businesses and people with money because they can simply lobby for laws which protect their interests and raise barriers to entry for entrepreneurial competitors. Libertarians want power in the hands of INDIVIDUALS irrespective of wealth/status while rewarding merit, hard work, and true value-creators. De-centralizing government means people don't have to suffer because of poor decisions made by bureaucrats and the entities which control them.

i'd also like to add that in the survey just 13% of people trust wall street to do the right thing. Yet libertarian ideas of minimal regulation on authoratarian power systems like businesses in wall street would allow wall street complete freedom to do anything they want. I mean this is so contradictory you could almost compare it with religion.

In regards to financial regulations, current regulations are heavily convoluted , poorly written, and become antiquated very quickly because financial markets adapt much more quickly than regulators. In the current US system, many regulators actually go on to work for the bulge bracket banks after they leave, getting paid large premiums to navigate through the regulations they themselves wrote. Another drawback of regulations are the ENORMOUS compliance costs that basically make it impossible for smaller banks to compete. Larger and medium-sized institutions can shoulder these fixed costs, but as regulations increase, entrepreneurship decreases in the space and the incumbents become more centralized and powerful. Historically, regulations have never prevented crisis and would not logically be able to prevent one in the future. However, with fewer regulations and no bailouts, entrepreneurs would have the opportunity to step in to compete and de-centralize the whole system, reducing systemic risks dramatically.

There is a ridiculous assumption here for a free market to work. It requires that humans behave like emotionless pre-programmed beings. No such humans exist. tldr: a lot of young people today advocate their own slavery without knowing it.

A free market works as long as people make free choices for themselves whether they think it is good for them or not (this is the exact opposite of slavery fwiw). For example, drugs are obviously bad for you (in one perspective) but if weed were to be legalized in the US, how should they be priced? The correct answer is no one (not even the government) can possibly know so it's best to just let price discovery and supply/demand dictate price. How much are buyers willing to buy for vs and how much sellers are willing to sell for will determine a fair price. Any attempt of a government price control will create either an un-natural shortage or surplus, which IMO will spur irrationality more than anything else. At the end of the day, the focal point of libertarianism is to maximize PERSONAL LIBERTY and to allow people to pursue their own lives and make their own decisions as they see fit, again the opposite of slavery. Rational behavior is +ev for the economy but not necessary for a free market to work.

Of course, all I've stated above is a single viewpoint. However, I don't think you should discard libertarianism without trying to understand it more clearly especially since you say you haven't taken an economics course since high school. It's great that you have an "opinion" but you should study both fiscal and monetary policy from both Keynesian and Austrian viewpoints before arriving to a firm conclusion on what you personally think is best.

Don't think libertarianism , just like most theories, should not be discarded. Problems relies on idealist who want to "achieve" a certain theory, whether it be free markets, supply/demand theories, profit maximization theories or more general theories, like capitalism and communism.
The goal should be to have a dynamic system, always evolving, always adapting to realities and ideas (theories).


Oh and "rational behavior" is biggest (false) assumption of neoclassical economic theories and kind of displays the aspect of "faith" in economic thinking. (Rational behavior only happens if user is not being influenced by his environment, emotions or predetermined ideas/past experiences or genetically predispositions; which will never happen and 100% impossible) Basically rationality involves the concept of consciousness, and more profoundly, expects humans to have a consciousness that is not affected by its environment.

I think you should read libertarian authors and learn about Austrian economics before blindly accepting the traditional left-wing criticism of libertarianism as factual. I used to think the same thing you do back when I was 17-18 and got into politics. Then I studied economics and my understanding evolved, leading to a massive change in my ideology.

https://www.coursera.org/course/macroeconomics

It only just started so you can still catch up.

On April 08 2013 10:51 Royal_Rumble wrote: The wire is a piece of fiction and using it to show that the world is bad and man is evil, because of the actions of a few characters in there is a joke.

incapable of any thought experiments?

to stroggoz:

great blog, i'm not sure if you skipped college, but if you did i think a major in economics would completely suit you as i think economics simply stresses critical thinking, cause/effect analysis.

the contradictory logic concerning wall street:

as you illustrated earlier in your wire example, it's extremely easy to have corrupt government leaders sacrifice the utility of society and increase their own personal utility. so for wall street, government regulation still would not be the appropriate antidote in order to solve the problem.

one thing i want to add about wall street, is that very few people understand what wall street is, what it encompasses and what it entails. i can't help but feel as though it is such an easy scapegoat for anyone to simply take advantage of and pander to the masses. there's a lot of selling in wallstreet, since bull or bear market as long as people are selling/buying, wallstreet is making commissions but i dont see how this is different then any other industry where people charge fees or commissions for services or goods.

individual human rationalism,

this is the first premise of economics, that people behave rationally. the first and only assumption made in order to derive the whole science. i don't think it's that far fetched as 95% of the time we do in fact act rationally. there is a whole new exploding field of "behavioral economics" and this pretty much addresses the 5% of the time where people act "irrationally."

i say "irrational" with quotations because economist like to think that they can analyze the "irrationality" and find its rational components however intricate and complex they may be. i HIGHLY recommend the book "freakonomics.:" despite its popularity and despite the fact that levin "sold out" in creating the book, it definitely illustrates what economists do. they look to understand and create models to forecast future events. it's all about finding the right data.

lastly i think the smartest people are more inclined to be altruistic. i don't have data on this and i'm not quite sure how one could measure this, but i think if there are smart and capable people, they tend to realize how much of their work is due to their genes/environment and somewhat accept that nothing was truly of their "own" will power/efforts. And if they ARE in fact EVIL, then we are fucked anyways however when you have government regulations and corrupt officials all this changes, as its a war on the 'rich' or what i would like to think as the most capable, then we all lose.

think of the US postal service. it went fucking bankrupt and had to be bailed out. they were giving out ridiculous fucking pensions and couldn't cover costs. this would never ever fucking happen in a private industry.

think of your time at the DMV. think how inefficient it is and how literally half of the people working here would NEVER have jobs in the private sector.

think of a number 2 pencil. think of how the wood required to make this pencil comes from 4 continents. how the metal piece of aluminum has come from all different regions. think of how many languages and country barriers these resources have passed through. all for what? all for a necessary tool that the people of the earth demand. that they want.

now think of how the company that makes the number 2 pencil, how they are using all resources to the best allocation. how if they find a better supplier of wood for instance in country X, how they would use the more cost effective wood, and how that cost savings would be passed on to the consumers.

economics maximizes the people's resources. if there is a shitty pencil factory, than it will go out of business because they couldn't make the same product at an equal cost. perhaps it was a higher cost. or they didn't have the best engineers in order to create more efficient manufacturing processes.

they should go bankrupt. it's not in society's best interest to bailout or keep alive this inefficient entity. except this is EXACTLY what the government does. we shouldn't be producing NEAR the ammount of for instance, high fructose corn syrup. that industry is falling, and we the people, don't demand it. yet the corrupt government (just like the wire example) FORCE the demand, by PURCHASING EXCESS DEMAND with the PEOPLE's TAX MONEY.

when i was in college, out of the 1000 peers that i encountered taking basic micro/macro economics as either a student or a TA, i can honestly say that maybe 10% of the people truly understood economics.

i'm not sure why it is such a complicated topic, but it was extremely apparent how small a percentage of people understand economics. this isn't to say that 10% of the people got A's, but many of them got by through memorization.

When a politician reach's the pinnacle of success, they are no longer someone you would want running your country. Power corrupts and so does the path to achieving it, the very nature of the people who choose such a path makes them far from desirable as leaders.

Imagine if our leaders were simply chosen from a list of qualified candidates.

the problem with the world is that most people are just plain idiots, this leads to having no introspection which leads to a shitty copied twisted moral compass which leads to suffering.

strog you still seem to fail to understand what the word liberal means

i relate really well w/ your point about the world being one which marginalizes people who try to spread the wealth and make things better for everyone.

i have more money than pretty much all my friends and its really hard to conceal that. i also like to do them favors and help them out if i can. at the same time ... i have to be constantly on guard for people realizing my situation and taking advantage of me for it. its super annoying.

wow, at first i didn't like marshall but i guess i didn't realize the struggles he lives with everyday. hang in there dude.

On April 08 2013 21:43 MARSHALL28 wrote: i relate really well w/ your point about the world being one which marginalizes people who try to spread the wealth and make things better for everyone. i have more money than pretty much all my friends and its really hard to conceal that. i also like to do them favors and help them out if i can. at the same time ... i have to be constantly on guard for people realizing my situation and taking advantage of me for it. its super annoying.

/thread
+ Show Spoiler +

I once tried to teach some poker theory to my dad. He triumphantly told me that he makes his decisions based on the cards he's holding and not on this "range"crap and therefore all my maths didn't work. I see it as the same sort of thing in economics, sure people might suck at determining what value a purchase might actually bring but it doesn't change how they're currently valuing it. Fish don't break the whole model.

you should challenge your dad to hu4rollz

First of all, in most western countries, the politicians are controlled heavily by the media and education system. You have to follow the doctrine enforced into the minds of the masses if you're a politician or you get marginalized. You cannot say anything that is far too radical. like the reasons behind war for example, if you say that you'll get marginalized. (There's a good example of ron paul getting booed off a stage for argumentation against the war, that's an example of marginilisation) Or that the neoliberal economic polcies enforced everywhere in the world has shrunk economic growth and created vast inequality, the media would definitely say your crazy for saying that. But just look at the stats.

In new zealand it's not so bad, but i think britain/american attitudes have still has a huge influence over us. marijuana is still legalized here for example. It's interesting to question why it even got legalized here in the first place, it was because of class warfare that it was made illegal in america. So why here?

The way indoctrination- the power system works is that it empowers the people that do not question it, and marginalizes people that do. So the people who are most brainwashed will get to the top more easily. In america government is also controlled through funding of crazy freak shows called election campaigns.

if free markets are based on informed decisions then certainly none exist. Just look at advertising, it's designed to misinform you. If you watch some fast food advert the burger always looks better on tv than in real life. That doesn't inform your decision. When someone at AiG tells you a credit rating is AAA+ they are misinforming, for example. We are being constantly misinformed so we can make irrational decisions. I agree that government is corrupt in that in protects the rich and powerful, through bailouts ect. We can see this in america and europe. But to get rid of government is just to make the corporations the government-that's a lot worse because corporations purely run on the chain of command hierarchy. Most rich countries became rich through strong protectionism (not protecting the rich and powerful but protecting their developing industries) America, Britain are both examples. Japan spent a lot of years protecting toyota before it became profitable. But now i just see businesses like activision blizzard, controlled by some douchebag at the top who just wants to make a couple mill for himself in a year, and destroy the creativity of the company in the process, by forcing them to make sequels over and over.

The solution would be to try to introduce democracy into the workplace, especially the media and schools. Or to passively resist these institutions by not working, because then they would stop making money and collapse. the public should decide what gets taught, not just a few people. When schools are privatized their control gets given to the will of a few people. Our thoughts and attitudes are becoming more and more controlled by the will of a few people.

The world we live in is designed more and more to self destruct. global warming, slavery and extremely dangerous warfare is upon us.

Get ur facts str8. What the hell are these liberal policies u r speaking of :-| clearlymu have no ideanwhat it means

Free market canr exist coz ppl make bad decisions... So we need more democracy to solve problems, makes sense. Mediaare controled by ppl behind politics, not the other way., etc. Most of ur statemnets are twisted

On April 08 2013 17:22 Baalim wrote: the problem with the world is that most people are just plain idiots, this leads to having no introspection which leads to a shitty copied twisted moral compass which leads to suffering.

I think people are born with very creative minds, but then they just lose a lot of that creativity as they get older and its beaten out of their head. We are all victims of this, some more so than others.