|
Private Speech posted:To be fair there haven't been any nazi posting ITT for a while. Could you enumerate all the things that are off limits? *sighs* looks like I'll have to make yet another list.
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2020 18:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 12:14 |
|
|
Orange Devil posted:Does it get tiring covering up the fact that you don't actually have a position with tedious nonsense? Hell, all you need to do is ask for consistant models that have been effective at predicting future economic conditions - that is the point of a model after all, and macroeconomics still can't manage it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2020 18:36
|
|
|
Orange Devil posted:Could you enumerate all the things that are off limits? It was pretty obviously meant in a "gently caress off wish you were dead" manner back then, which feels different to me. Or maybe it's not. I don't really care that much about it personally TBH, but I can see how it can be offensive. Though maybe saying that to an actual Nazi is somewhat reasonable, but Phlegmish pretty obviously is a left-leaning liberal at worst. e; To be clear I didn't mean the joking about blindfolds and cigars and walls and lists and all that. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Aug 25, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2020 18:41
|
|
|
I'm not a economist or statistician but discounting the recent coronacrisis, reality appears a bit more nuanced than "increasingly living below the poverty line" as far as I can tell: https://nos.nl/artikel/2300104-scp-...0werk%20hebben. Anyways the thrust of my point was not that the Netherlands is perfect, but that the vast majority, like me, is relatively comfortable and poll as such on happiness and satisfaction, or 80% of people are at least high-middle class I guess. Which makes talk of violence thankfully hugely unpopular IRL and them "that weirdo".
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2020 18:55
|
|
|
Private Speech posted:Actually your second set of graphs is misleading because of the time period you explicitly chose - if you expanded it 2 years in each direction it would look different. It's fairly obvious that it cuts off right before the recovery period from the price bubble, and it starts while the bubble is gathering pace. I didn't 'choose' anything, there is no Bulgarian data from before 2005 (presumably because that's when EU accession was set in motion), but I was also pretty sure yesterday that there was nothing past 2017 (probably because that's when the table cuts off), and apparently that's wrong. But that's okay. Here's the full period:  Belgium: 106,5/86 = 124 Bulgaria: 121,9/103,5 = 118 A reasonable conclusion is that Belgian housing prices grew slightly faster during this period, and (especially) that the Bulgarian housing market is much more volatile. Bonus chart going back to 1970 which shows Belgian real housing prices increasing almost interruptedly since 1985 and being extremely stable otherwise:  quote:Further to that you have the fact that the inflation (which includes house prices in itself, but that's another topic) has been historically low and even negative since the big property bubble burst, so the actual effect would have been negligible. Uhh...what? Barring the fact that Bulgaria doesn't have the Euro but the lev, that even countries with the Euro usually have different rates of inflation, do you know what these charts represent? Say my €100,000 house in Belgium increases by 50% in nominal terms in a specific period (i.e. it is eventually worth €150,000 on the Belgian market), and my 100,000 lev house in Bulgaria increases by the same percentage in the same period, that doesn't necessarily mean both of my houses got more expensive at the same rate in real terms. If the lev has a much higher rate of inflation than the Euro, which has been the case these past few decades, then in reality my house in Belgium has become significantly more expensive, since the lev is now comparatively worth less. tl;dr: The measure explicitly controls for inflation so that we can look at and compare the actual increase in housing prices, in purchasing power terms. If you don't like inflation-adjusted measures for whatever reason, here's the nominal price of housing compared to the nominal income for both countries:  Again, it is much more illustrative of my point than what I'd been posting up to now. e: I did not change anything regarding the Bulgarian data, it really does get cut off at 2017. Try it yourself: https://data.oecd.org/price/housing-prices.htm I have indeed messed up regarding reasoning and methodology during this discussion by being too hasty, mostly in ways that contradicted my own point, and I accept, even welcome, criticism of that. But please do not accuse me of deliberately manipulating the data. quote:Here's some more crap from the article I quoted above about the "no housing crisis": OK. That is fair. I have no problem admitting when I was wrong; if Boyan Zahariev says it, then I accept that there is indeed a housing crisis in Bulgaria. By the same token, I will also maintain that there's nothing in the data that shows us that the trend has globally been getting worse these past 15 years. In fact, comparing prices to income, and especially comparing Bulgaria to Belgium, the situation has improved significantly. e: to the different discussion going on right now, I don't actually care about being told that I'll be guillotined or sent to the gulags or whatever, and I would never think of reporting anyone for that, but also it's only fair for people to reply in kind. e2: just to make one of my earlier points clearer, here is the historical inflation rate of Bulgaria compared to the EU as a whole: https://www.worlddata.info/europe/bulgaria/inflation-rates.php. While there have been a few years with higher Bulgarian inflation, it is pretty clear that Bulgaria has generally had much higher inflation than the rest of the EU (let alone the Euro). Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Aug 25, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2020 19:05
|
|
|
Well that's fair that the data wasn't available, I didn't know which website you were using. Even so at best the picture is very complex. The price to income ratio doesn't really show much in the way of difference between Bulgaria and Belgium in the current prices to income, despite the Bulgarian one being far more volatile. Which I certainly don't dispute, but it's tangential at best. That is, as per your throwaway comment - developed countries don't have much in the way of housing bubbles [hello ireland but w/e] which at best serves to paint Bulgaria in negative light in comparison, without much relevance to the house prices as a whole. If anything large variation makes housing less affordable not more, since the actual inhabitants have to rent/buy houses bubble or not. As for the inflation it's that I feel it's more objective to use real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) income than inflation itself. Which effectively creates a negative correlation between inflation and affordability, since inflation reduces real income rather than increasing it. e, a bit more relevant point: If we were to apply inflation to the nominal income graph (to get real income) than the Bulgarian line would move massively in comparison, as Bulgaria has indeed had higher inflation than Belgium across the same period. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Aug 25, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2020 19:16
|
|
|
It's a relative index measure where 2015 is the baseline 100 for both countries (you can't change the year on the site but it doesn't really matter). It doesn't directly compare prices, just the evolution of them over time. That said, I suppose it is true that this evolution has been broadly similar since 2013. However, I'd expect the Bulgarian market to be hit much harder by the next crisis, since demand is less robust by all indications (higher elasticity). In fact, the corona period probably qualifies as an economic crisis. It will be interesting to see how the housing market ends up performing in both countries in 2020. I'll bookmark this discussion. If Bulgarian prices continue to evolve in the same way as Belgian prices, I will come back and concede that I'm full of poo poo. e: I think there is some confusing regarding the inflation point, the graphs using the 'Real house prices' category already take inflation into account. You can see it from the description in the site. In the spirit of full disclosure I will say that I had to look up 'consumers' expenditure deflator' meant when I first read it, but apparently it's just a slightly different indicator of inflation, similar to the consumer price index. e2: Belgium legitimately has not had a housing bubble (burst) in well over three decades. It might not be entirely representative of Western Europe, but it would seem that pretty much all of its neighboring countries at least, have also had stable housing markets despite occasional minor price decreases. Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Aug 25, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2020 19:33
|
|
|
I would expect there to be a small reduction for 2020 (as indeed there has been, at about -3.5%, as the data is already available) but across the next 2 years I believe it may catch up to, or even surpass Belgium in relative terms. It's more the "real" income, as opposed to the nominal one - everything getting more expensive effectively means people have less money to spend on housing while maintaining their standard of living. That is to say, if things are more expensive their money goes less far, rather than more.
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2020 19:39
|
|
|
Private Speech posted:I would expect there to be a small reduction for 2020 (as indeed there has been, at about -3.5%, as the data is already available) but across the next 2 years I believe it may catch up to, or even surpass Belgium in relative terms. It is a good point if you mean that it wouldn't matter that much if the nominal increase in housing prices didn't surpass the rate of inflation in Bulgaria, the situation could still be getting worse if nominal wages had at the same time stagnated (and thus decreased in real terms). However, this is covered by the 'Price to income ratio' category. You can see that the ratio has remained stable in recent years (after a precipitous decline, meaning housing became more affordable, caused by the 2008 financial crisis).
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2020 19:51
|
|
|
Somewhat tangential, but I think that pretending that increasing house prices are caused by a scarcity of habitable buildings rather than scarcity of houses that aren't being used as vessels for financial speculation and /or rent seeking is naive at best. There's simply so much money sloshing around in investment funds that it's constricting the options for normal people.
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2020 20:00
|
|
|
Osmosisch posted:Somewhat tangential, but I think that pretending that increasing house prices are caused by a scarcity of habitable buildings rather than scarcity of houses that aren't being used as vessels for financial speculation and /or rent seeking is naive at best. There's simply so much money sloshing around in investment funds that it's constricting the options for normal people. This is a problem that should be addressed with firm action, but it's not entirely separate from the simple supply-demand dynamic. Real estate is broadly seen as an attractive, safe investment in Western Europe precisely because prices are relatively stable while also consistently going up in real terms, and the former at least has a lot to do with demand being robust.
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2020 20:06
|
|
|
Haramstufe Rot posted:I think we talk past each other. I don't know what "microfoundations project" you are referring to. Earlier, I thought I did, but it has nothing to do with what I wrote, so I guess I don't. In the field of social science, "micro" theories are arguably more alive than "macro" theories. In fact the only macro tradition still being pushed as far as I am aware is macroeconomics and well, you know my opinion on that. why the devil would i be loving with you by citing habermas the dude's a very well regarded scholar the microfoundations project refers to the push, especially during the 2000s to try to anchor macroeconomic models in microeconomic assumptions. that push is mostly over because it seriously stopped progressing. this is pretty well known poo poo, and i assumed you were referring to it because you talk about the microeconomic foundations of a robust socialist society, which is a macro phenomenon. when there's been an attempt to ground macro theories in microfoundations, i assume that this is what you're talking about, but evidently not? i guess you also still haven't explained what you're on about when you're talking about dogmatism, which i sincerely do not understand
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2020 20:45
|
|
|
Nothingtoseehere posted:Hell, all you need to do is ask for consistant models that have been effective at predicting future economic conditions - that is the point of a model after all, and macroeconomics still can't manage it. Please remember that macroeconomics is garbage, all of it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2020 04:14
|
|
|
V. Illych L. posted:the microfoundations project refers to the push, especially during the 2000s to try to anchor macroeconomic models in microeconomic assumptions. that push is mostly over because it seriously stopped progressing. V. Illych L. posted:this is pretty well known poo poo, and i assumed you were referring to it because you talk about the microeconomic foundations of a robust socialist society, which is a macro phenomenon. V. Illych L. posted:i assume that this is what you're talking about, but evidently not? i guess Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Aug 26, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2020 04:23
|
|
|
Hello, I am the representative consumer. Today, the same as yesterday, I will be consuming an exact proportion of the current value of my future income which is two apples and one point three fish. I will be slightly surprised by an array of undefined things which will make me fluctuate around the mean of zero. Hence, I shall log-linearize myself and stop posting.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2020 04:29
|
|
|
Phlegmish posted:This is a problem that should be addressed with firm action, but it's not entirely separate from the simple supply-demand dynamic. Real estate is broadly seen as an attractive, safe investment in Western Europe precisely because prices are relatively stable while also consistently going up in real terms, and the former at least has a lot to do with demand being robust. People who confuse this with zoning being the problem simply do not understand the dynamics at play. I saw a housing researcher on Twitter propose that money used towards mortgage speculation could just as easily be used towards construction if zoning laws were deregulated. The rationale going that zoning constricts the natural supply, thus increasing prices (yes the econ 101 argument from a Phd). Reasons I think this argumentation is insane and bereft of empirical observable reality: 1. Construction booms and housing bubbles tend to go hand in hand 2. A very typical phenomenon in bubble cities (like Stockholm where I have practical experience with zoning) is that residential developers sit on building permits once they've acquired them, speculating on the land value and thus artificially decreasing supply. They will sit on the permits until they expire if prices don't turn favorable to their preference. 3. The wrong kind of construction is being done. The demand of the overall market and the market segment that are the most profitable will simply never overlap significantly. 4. Point 3 suffers a lot from bad housing regulation, bad rent regulation and bad property taxation enabling rent-seeking behaviour. Think your AirB2B sand the household rent speculant. If exorbitant value can be captured by not living in housing being constructed then that will dominate the demand being met. 5. Correlation between zoning laws or zoning statures and square meter value is generally very low. Correlation between interests rate and availability of mortgages to square meter value is generally very high. And on the list goes. As you say, housing is seen as a safe investment because of booming prices. If prices stalled or dropped, so would construction under our current paradigm.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2020 06:27
|
|
|
Haramstufe Rot posted:Hello, I am the representative consumer. Today, the same as yesterday, I will be consuming an exact proportion of the current value of my future income which is two apples and one point three fish. I will be slightly surprised by an array of undefined things which will make me fluctuate around the mean of zero. Hence, I shall log-linearize myself and stop posting. quoting this post cos it's shorter the reason i'm using habermas is his position on the positivism conflict - roughly speaking, he sees the sciences as divided into fields based on human interests: natural sciences which are based on control of nature, social science which is based on emancipation and humanities, on human improvement (obviously paraphrasing heavily here) - what we see increasingly in the social sciences is the importing of methods and perspective from the natural sciences, which are inarguably aimed at control and prediction, and using it to control and predict human behaviour. this is the opposite of emancipatory; as our knowledge of human behaviour expands, those with access to and the resources to act on that knowledge gain a big leg up. you can see this in practice with adaptive ads and social media manipulation - this is a real and present problem. the doctrine of microeconomics is a deeply ambiguous one from the perspective of emancipation, but one thing it does lead to is the generalisation of stock market behaviour as the purest human rationality, which is imo deeply concerning - and which has serious consequences, especially with regards to long-term social investments such as climate change prevention (thence my allusion to the stern review, a famous example of this happening). the reason i get grumpy at your demand for a more or less complete microeconomics is a combination of three things: one, that for microeconomics to be an empirical discipline it must be based on reality, and the actual reality of a post-revolutionary situation is so unpredictable that trying to model it on past assumptions is of sharply limited use, two, that it's unclear to what extent we *want* to base our society on a world view where human liberty and dignity is always secondary to some other goal and three, that none of this is addressing the main charge, which is that *what we're doing now is sitting in a burning house and discussing the weather outside* society is, right now, doing unprecedented damage to our ecosystems, and while i'm perfectly happy to discuss why i am utterly convinced that our present political economy *cannot* address this whereas a socialist political economy at least has a chance, from where i'm standing your objection seems like an academic quibble at best
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2020 10:10
|
|
|
AlexanderCA posted:I make 1600 euros a month lol (admittedly part time), my dad was a car mechanic who died young and my mom is a cleaning lady. I'm curious how you would define high middle class. You need to make at least 2k a month before you qualify to pick a class. I suggest mage, enchanter, or necromancer in today's meta. Physical-focused classes aren't doing so great right now, but a future patch might change that.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2020 11:34
|
|
|
V. Illych L. posted:quoting this post cos it's shorter I think the notion of understanding and control you reference in the approach of natural sciences is ambivalent. Behavioral economics has been successfully exploited to sell ads, true, but you will probably be an agreement that this is not an issue of knowledge as such but rather the system in which it is used. "Positive" examples exist equally. And I don't mean this in the sense of control, but in the sense of giving people the opportunity to consider themselves in social relation to others and enabling solidarity. Organ donation is an example of this. These examples are is also a rather specific application of scientific knowledge. I find that view too narrow: only small parts of social sciences are about control of people. More often, we are talking about the analysis of interdependency and limitations, due to scarcity in economics, society in sociology and so forth. For example, consider Roth's work on matching. At its core, this is purely about organizing around limitations. There is no reason not to call this emancipatory, as it literally allows people to express their desires in a social system. It can also be about control, of course, but it's not even a useful distinction at this point. There is no conceivable future were such limitations go away: People, if they are moving forward, remain interdependent. On the contrary: If the world changes, we most likely need to think much more about constraints. It's not so much that we seek to place shackles on people, but rather that any interaction and any system will provide both opportunities and limits thereof. So it seems to pay off to think about what these different systems are. The better we understand this, the better we can do. If we really want to tackle climate change, then these sorts of social issues are at the heart of the entire question. Because the solution will obviously not just come from the ether - no matter who owns the means of production. So overall, I fail to see why it would not be crucial to think about this. Aside: My impression is that the debate you are referencing is not really recent. When it comes to method, economics has arguably become less like natural sciences than it used to be, especially in the last decade. V. Illych L. posted:the doctrine of microeconomics is a deeply ambiguous one from the perspective of emancipation, but one thing it does lead to is the generalisation of stock market behaviour as the purest human rationality, which is imo deeply concerning - and which has serious consequences, especially with regards to long-term social investments such as climate change prevention (thence my allusion to the stern review, a famous example of this happening). I don't see this. Or let me say it differently: This is increasingly LESS true. Further, it was the continuous scientific effort that changed our outlook on these matters. There was a time when an economist would go and describe everything as a market of some sort. But both the social and the behavioral have become accepted, canonical influences, and today you'd have to be in a very specific small set of American economic departments not to be laughed out of the room with that approach. Take for example the rejection of ever more mathematically clever "equilibrium solution concepts" in favor of behavioral and experimental economics. This was during the late 80's and early 90's. Entire literatures were essentially discarded. Social sciences took a step back and said: "We need a better way to think about what rationality means". Also, this was not political - at the time, there was absolute primacy of game theoretic methods and the cleverer your math, the better your work. But this is really not the reality anymore, only because we keep thinking about these things. I would find it more dangerous to stop now than to continue and I find that actually to be consistent with Habermas' view of human evolution. Maybe I am more optimistic than you, but especially in micro approaches in social sciences it's hard to argue with the trajectory. And if we had that negative outlook on the scientific discourse, then this really should not be true given everything else that has been going in in society. V. Illych L. posted:the reason i get grumpy at your demand for a more or less complete microeconomics is a combination of three things: one, that for microeconomics to be an empirical discipline it must be based on reality, and the actual reality of a post-revolutionary situation is so unpredictable that trying to model it on past assumptions is of sharply limited use That smells circular to me. First, microeconomics can be both normative and positive. There is not even a particular need for empiricism in that you can use microeconomics purely as an indicator of "what the hell is the worst thing that could happen and what, if anything, can we avoid how?". After all, that is essentially the going argument to even consider rational behavior. Nobody thinks people are empirically rational in the economic sense, but even less people think they are individually devious at heart. And even if they were, wouldn't we want to consider that? But nevertheless, I think we do know things that would transcend a change from capitalism to post-capitalism, and I'd further argue that these things would be immensely valuable to consider ex-post and ex-ante the system change. And finally, even if almost everything we know about how people interact and depend on each other would change post capitalism, then even knowing this fact and the underlying reason would be one of the most important pieces of knowledge we could have and would arguably need. If, hypothetically, not every single thing about how people interact change, then there is good reason to suspect that a post capitalistic society may just as likely fail as it might succeed. So the "how" matters as much as the "if" when it comes to liberty and emancipation. So my frustration, and confusion, is that I would expect socialists to be students and scholars of contemporary social sciences, as opposed to denying their importance. And if I felt snobbish and would ignore your call for immediate action (which I don't), I'd say that the only other possible reason I can think of is dogma. And by that I mean the quintessential and tragic butterfly effect that Marx only finished his critique as opposed to his normative analysis. V. Illych L. posted:, two, that it's unclear to what extent we *want* to base our society on a world view where human liberty and dignity is always secondary to some other goal V. Illych L. posted:and three, that none of this is addressing the main charge, which is that *what we're doing now is sitting in a burning house and discussing the weather outside* So we may disagree here. However, I agree with you that, based on your premise, the important factor will be to initiate a system change. But then, I think the "how" will be a crucial factor in addressing the issues we face today, and I think the effectors of that change will be ill-prepared. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy in my view, and I don't see any difference to earlier socialist experiments. I already know we totally disagree here and we don't need to discuss this now. However, you will understand me given that the more we learn in interdisciplinary social sciences, the more we seem to understand what went wrong in the past, and the more the "how" seems to matter next to the "if". Lastly, and I want to emphasize this again, I don't think that the overall body of knowledge necessarily speaks against socialism at all, at least not in its entirety. As for academic quibble, well, certainly. I accept that academics have permanent brain damage, that doesn't mean we are inherently wrong. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Aug 26, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2020 14:42
|
|
|
please knock Mom! posted:You need to make at least 2k a month before you qualify to pick a class. I suggest mage, enchanter, or necromancer in today's meta. Physical-focused classes aren't doing so great right now, but a future patch might change that. I invested all my XP in crafting.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2020 14:45
|
|
|
V. Illych L. posted:the reason i'm using habermas is his position on the positivism conflict - roughly speaking, he sees the sciences as divided into fields based on human interests: natural sciences which are based on control of nature, social science which is based on emancipation and humanities, on human improvement (obviously paraphrasing heavily here) - what we see increasingly in the social sciences is the importing of methods and perspective from the natural sciences, which are inarguably aimed at control and prediction, and using it to control and predict human behaviour. this is the opposite of emancipatory; as our knowledge of human behaviour expands, those with access to and the resources to act on that knowledge gain a big leg up. you can see this in practice with adaptive ads and social media manipulation - this is a real and present problem. Natural sciences and social sciences that use natural sciences methods attempt to build models that explain the behaviour of the study system and ideally allow predictions about its behaviour under novel conditions, while the humanities at large often attempt to make statements about what types of human society or behaviour are desirable. What you consider to be control of nature vs emancipation and human improvement, I'd therefore consider descriptive vs prescriptive. Positivist scientific approaches are merely the most effective tools we have to gather the information necessary to build descriptive models. It should be obvious that a sufficiently good descriptive understanding of human behaviour would make it easier to formulate actually working policies (as opposed to policies which are well-intentioned but backfire or achieve nothing) to restructure society towards whatever we consider better in the prescriptive sense. In this context, the claim that science is a political project is weaker than you might think. Sure, there's complete bunk which only exists to reach a predetermined conclusion regardless of observable reality, but beyond that the political bias of science is in terms of which projects get priority funding rather than in terms of whether the results are relevant under different political conditions. Behavioural scientists or reality-based economists currently might not get a lot of funding or recognition for studying human behaviour under conditions specific to socialism, but the results from these fields we have are still relevant for a hypothetical new socialist society unless you claim that human behaviour in comparable situations fundamentally changes by instituting socialism. quote:the doctrine of microeconomics is a deeply ambiguous one from the perspective of emancipation, but one thing it does lead to is the generalisation of stock market behaviour as the purest human rationality, which is imo deeply concerning - and which has serious consequences, especially with regards to long-term social investments such as climate change prevention (thence my allusion to the stern review, a famous example of this happening). quote:society is, right now, doing unprecedented damage to our ecosystems, and while i'm perfectly happy to discuss why i am utterly convinced that our present political economy *cannot* address this whereas a socialist political economy at least has a chance, from where i'm standing your objection seems like an academic quibble at best
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2020 14:47
|
|
I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
|
AlexanderCA posted:I invested all my XP in crafting. sell widgets on etsy, citizen
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2020 14:51
|
|
|
MiddleOne posted:People who confuse this with zoning being the problem simply do not understand the dynamics at play. I saw a housing researcher on Twitter propose that money used towards mortgage speculation could just as easily be used towards construction if zoning laws were deregulated. The rationale going that zoning constricts the natural supply, thus increasing prices (yes the econ 101 argument from a Phd). Yeah, all good points. I would add that demand-side tax benefits for people seeking to buy their first home, while well-intentioned, are not very effective, since demand is so inelastic right now. Sellers will just raise their price by almost the equivalent percentage. That's why Flanders recently got rid of its 'Woonbonus'. I still feel like the supply side needs to be addressed somehow, but I honestly don't know how to do it without engendering a heap of unintended negative side effects. Relaxing zoning laws is indeed not the way to do it, even ignoring the fact that it would destroy what little open space and nature we have left. Ideally, we would encourage construction (or collectively construct quality, non-future ghetto housing) while simultaneously discouraging speculation.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2020 14:59
|
|
|
Haramstufe Rot posted:Please remember that macroeconomics is garbage, all of it. "For more than three decades, macroeconomics has gone backwards. The treatment of identification now is no more credible than in the early 1970s but escapes challenge because it is so much more opaque. Macroeconomic theorists dismiss mere facts by feigning an obtuse ignorance about such simple assertions as "tight monetary policy can cause a recession." Their models attribute fluctuations in aggregate variables to imaginary causal forces that are not influenced by the action that any person takes. A parallel with string theory from physics hints at a general failure mode of science that is triggered when respect for highly regarded leaders evolves into a deference to authority that displaces objective fact from its position as the ultimate determinant of scientific truth." From Paul Romer's The Trouble with macroeconomics
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2020 15:34
|
|
|
That is super interesting, thanks. I guess my macro prof was really conservative on this front. I now realize that he spent the entirety of his lectures subtly mocking that very strand of theory by which 'wait it's all exogenous shocks? always has been' and concurrently 'policy cannot influence the economy' that Romer deconstructs there.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2020 16:02
|
|
|
Haramstufe Rot posted:I think the notion of understanding and control you reference in the approach of natural sciences is ambivalent. Behavioral economics has been successfully exploited to sell ads, true, but you will probably be an agreement that this is not an issue of knowledge as such but rather the system in which it is used. "Positive" examples exist equally. And I don't mean this in the sense of control, but in the sense of giving people the opportunity to consider themselves in social relation to others and enabling solidarity. Organ donation is an example of this. i am not familiar with roth's work on matching, but i am absolutely not in agreement that it's not an issue of the knowledge as such; knowledge of regularities and predictions can only be used for control in some sense. you cannot use the rate of COVID-19 transmission to increase your appreciation of literature, at least not by itself. the only way one may act on the form of knowledge produced by the natural sciences is as empowering humans somehow; it's sincerely difficult for me to think of any case where strict empirical knowledge is not to be used to this end. of course, both sides can use this sort of knowledge, but if some dude publishes a paper on what sort of business practices correlate with unionisation, that is pretty obviously more useful for management than the people trying to unionise. there's a fundamental issue with this whole character of knowledge which is profoundly anti-human in practice, and a big problem with contemporary academia is its extreme preference for this sort of knowledge. this is why i'm a STEM guy and not a social scientist, though i hadn't got this formulation at the time. the sort of knowledge produced by predictive social sciences, i.e. the sort of stuff that actually gets published, will inevitably serve those with the power to access and utilise it, i.e. those on top in the present, utterly dysfunctional political economy. now, to be clear: control is often a good thing. it may very well be that this roth version of control is simply positive, and under most conceptions of socialism one assumes at least a degree of central planning, which necessitates this sort of control and most likely some form of microeconomic thinking. it's just a simple fact that powerful institutions have more access to such means per se than do, and under capitalism that means that every advance we make in the field of human prediction increases the power of capital against human interest. quote:It's not so much that we seek to place shackles on people, but rather that any interaction and any system will provide both opportunities and limits thereof. So it seems to pay off to think about what these different systems are. this i actually agree with, but i profoundly object to the notion that a completed microeconomics project must come prior to changing the world, both because the actually existing field microeconomics doesn't work that way and because it's, as i said, futile; actual systems are going to be decided by assholes who are able to leverage brute power, not academic models - the academic side of it is, of course, commendable and may be useful, but it cannot be a precondition to change or we're back to planning for all contingencies after we leave the house - until it burns down over our heads. it's probably already too late to stave off disaster; at this point, we're fighting no-poo poo civilisational collapse, and while we don't know how long we have, nobody who knows anything about it thinks it's more than a couple of decades. this is not only climate change, by the way, but general ecosystem collapse, which is a whole separate apocalyptic crisis we're standing in the middle of right now. we cannot situate the production of knowledge apart from the actual society and the systems generating that knowledge. to do so is idealistic nonsense. knowledge, like anything else, exists in a specific context and must be analysed as such. a missile can also in theory be used for human emancipation, but in practice it's a tool of some national army meant to enforce the interest of a certain faction of the Powers That Be quote:Aside: My impression is that the debate you are referencing is not really recent. When it comes to method, economics has arguably become less like natural sciences than it used to be, especially in the last decade. the positivism debate is a very sixties-seventies debate, and it's interesting in that as far as i know the anti-positivists are generally held to have won on merit, but the reality shifted sharply in favour of the positivists (note that this is a rather particular definition of the term "positivist", and it's moving a bit far afield of what we were talking about) - i am certainly prepared to be surprised at recent developments in academic economics, but the general trend and every professional social scientist i've spoken to bears witness to the near-total dominance of empirical-predictive science. quote:I would find it more dangerous to stop now than to continue and I find that actually to be consistent with Habermas' view of human evolution. Maybe I am more optimistic than you, but especially in micro approaches in social sciences it's hard to argue with the trajectory. And if we had that negative outlook on the scientific discourse, then this really should not be true given everything else that has been going in in society. i don't understand what you're getting at here; it seems perfectly obvious to me that if we had a totally solved system of human behaviour, it would lead to utter despotism of some sort, where conditions are carefully calibrated to extract the most possible value from people by some elite or other while keeping them from rebelling. fortunately, that's not likely to be possible. ugh you know what it's really frustrating to try to communicate via quote-blocs so i'm going to try to summarise things as far as i'm able and try to address your points more generally: we cannot situate the production of knowledge apart from the actual society and the systems generating that knowledge. to do so is idealistic nonsense. knowledge, like anything else, exists in a specific context and must be analysed as such. a missile can also in theory be used for human emancipation, but in practice it's a tool of some national army meant to enforce the interest of a certain faction of the Powers That Be. the only plausible and theoretically humane alternative to capitalism is socialism of some description, i.e. the abolition of large-scale revenue-generating private property to be replaced by something, which could be workers' cooperatives, centrally planned economies, weirdo primitivism, whatever. at the present, actually existing socialist and social-democratic parties have deep flaws. this is not disputed. the rational response to this is to try and address those flaws somehow, either by setting up new parties or political factions, or by internal critique. whether this is actually possible is unlikely, but it seems to me that it's the only possible way forward. placing too many preconditions on one's support here - such as an IMO bizarre demand for a standard of mechanical solution that we don't even have for our present society despite the vast resources available to it - is equivalent to more principled opposition, due to the extremely short time-scales available. i mean, if you want to do work on economic planning or projecting relations between cooperatives or something, i'm sure you'd be welcomed and discussed in the niches where such things are seen as useful, but i imagine it's going to be hard to make a career out of it given the political economy of contemporary academia - which is connected to the greater political economy of society, and the eliding of which is a large part of the reason for the initial hostility you faced finally, politics are not rational. the policies made may be influenced by academic work, but no matter how perfect your blueprint for utopia is it's not getting implemented except by force - and those groups able to wield force will tend to cherry-pick the research that supports what they wanted to do in the first place. we see this pretty constantly among decision-makers today - the determining factor is always some secular interest, it's fairly rare that the "best" scientific evidence is actually presented as a base. this doesn't necessitate bad faith on anyone's part in particular, by the way - but trade unionist or a politician or a lobbyist are all working for someone, serving some interest other than pure, rational governance, and even if they weren't there's only so many hours in a day to read hyper-specialised papers that one barely understands anyway. suck my woke dick i have to run now but i hope to be able to address your post at well at some point
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2020 18:10
|
|
|
mortons stork posted:That is super interesting, thanks. I guess my macro prof was really conservative on this front. I now realize that he spent the entirety of his lectures subtly mocking that very strand of theory by which 'wait it's all exogenous shocks? always has been' and concurrently 'policy cannot influence the economy' that Romer deconstructs there. Thats part of the problem that Romer identifies.the pushback is so subtle as to being non existent.it took a nobel prize sticking its neck out to really get the ball rolling, despite the Canova and Sala papper being super well known in academic circles. It also doesnt help that the political will behind using macro models is at least 15 years behind academia, and even them academic consensus takes a brutally long time to coalesce.where not living in a age where we can afford that, as a civization, any more. Thats (part of) why we end up with the Spreadsheet Error that Caused a Million Deaths. As a personal opinion, i think manufacturing consent is aplicable to more than media environments.im pretty sure some dude has made this acertation before. Also V.illych and Haramstufe gently caress you guys for making interesting and good posts in this thread.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2020 23:54
|
|
|
Antifa Poltergeist posted:Also V.illych and Haramstufe gently caress you guys for making interesting and good posts in this thread. You gently caress you guys for that. Also, I apologize for strawmanning you, rot.
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2020 00:15
|
|
|
Dawncloack posted:You gently caress you guys for that. Nah my entry post was confrontational. Antifa Poltergeist posted:Thats part of the problem that Romer identifies.the pushback is so subtle as to being non existent.it took a nobel prize sticking its neck out to really get the ball rolling, despite the Canova and Sala papper being super well known in academic circles. right back at ya. Indeed Macroeconomics IS the most predictive field because causal claims are so vacuous. At the same time, it really tries hard not to be, lest the next machine learning algorithm just replaces the whole thing entirely. So you come up with things like calibration which just lmao. There's this path dependency of, say, DSGE's with their highly specific structure and assumptions being the accepted approach when they really, really should not be. It's not that they shouldn't exist, but as a literature they are essentially built on concepts (like still having a set of representative consumers in General Equilibrium after Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu) that should normally call for a big, fat asteriks for all outcomes. The state of things seems to be that there is a collection of pretty decent approaches for some questions, but there is really no robust way to support all these political assertions. Macro will eventually collapse upon itself or become irrelevant, but politicians don't even take current results seriously, least of all newer approaches. Macroeconomics is also suuuuper political. I actually wrote a paper early on with a PhD student from Venezuela about the necessity and impact of protectionary measures (don't dox me bro). Oh boy was it a doozy to present. Like on the surface, the field seems pretty open to outcomes. But if you go against the highly politicised canon, you better be in some European department and even then you essentially torpedo your own career. This guy, who was great, ended up having real troubles getting forward because he was considered too heterodox (from him I know Steven Keen, whom I don't agree with as a scientist but who made his own niche because of it). Among other things, he was told explicitly by a well-meaning senior scholar to tone down the heterodoxity because jobs. In other fields, that problem doesn't exist nearly as much. I know some more interdisciplinary micro fields where really anything goes. Of course, the questions are not as political. Anyway, for me, the reason is precisely what Romer writes. V. Illych L. posted:i am not familiar with roth's work on matching, but i am absolutely not in agreement that it's not an issue of the knowledge as such; knowledge of regularities and predictions can only be used for control in some sense. you cannot use the rate of COVID-19 transmission to increase your appreciation of literature, at least not by itself. the only way one may act on the form of knowledge produced by the natural sciences is as empowering humans somehow; it's sincerely difficult for me to think of any case where strict empirical knowledge is not to be used to this end. of course, both sides can use this sort of knowledge, but if some dude publishes a paper on what sort of business practices correlate with unionisation, that is pretty obviously more useful for management than the people trying to unionise. there's a fundamental issue with this whole character of knowledge which is profoundly anti-human in practice, and a big problem with contemporary academia is its extreme preference for this sort of knowledge. Okay so I get your main contention now, and I don't say you are all wrong. However, I would invite you to see it differently: Micro fields in all social sciences are a diverse body of knowledge that will ultimately inform your choice of "how" to move forward. Since Micro fields tackle small issues, as opposed to sweeping political grand theories, they are easily applied without that bias. For example, matching theory is often very close to satisfying a collective need as opposed to allowing individual actors to dictate. That is, indeed, what is is made for. So ultimately, a socialist system that does NOT fail, will be built upon these sort of theories. It's about increasing your chances, so to speak. V. Illych L. posted:this i actually agree with, but i profoundly object to the notion that a completed microeconomics project must come prior to changing the world, both because the actually existing field microeconomics doesn't work that way and because it's, as i said, futile; actual systems are going to be decided by assholes who are able to leverage brute power, not academic models - the academic side of it is, of course, commendable and may be useful, but it cannot be a precondition to change or we're back to planning for all contingencies after we leave the house - until it burns down over our heads. it's probably already too late to stave off disaster; at this point, we're fighting no-poo poo civilisational collapse, and while we don't know how long we have, nobody who knows anything about it thinks it's more than a couple of decades. By contrast, I think that both things are important. First, it is a plus if you are able to convince people. Now, this may of course be my personal taste so what the appeal for most people is I don't know. Second, no matter how abrupt the change, there will be a need to organize efficiently - even if just to oppose powerful capitalist interests. Social science, microeconomics included, has its normative content in how people organize affairs. That's just what it is. Now, should it be a precondition? I don't know. For me, giving trust to a political movement would require that I believe they take these issues seriously from the start - which is when I think they will be important. I think there is much material to make a strong case for socialism, but of course it also means not every dogma survives critical reflection. V. Illych L. posted:this is not only climate change, by the way, but general ecosystem collapse, which is a whole separate apocalyptic crisis we're standing in the middle of right now. V. Illych L. posted:the positivism debate is a very sixties-seventies debate, and it's interesting in that as far as i know the anti-positivists are generally held to have won on merit, but the reality shifted sharply in favour of the positivists (note that this is a rather particular definition of the term "positivist", and it's moving a bit far afield of what we were talking about) - i am certainly prepared to be surprised at recent developments in academic economics, but the general trend and every professional social scientist i've spoken to bears witness to the near-total dominance of empirical-predictive science. V. Illych L. posted:i don't understand what you're getting at here; it seems perfectly obvious to me that if we had a totally solved system of human behaviour, it would lead to utter despotism of some sort, where conditions are carefully calibrated to extract the most possible value from people by some elite or other while keeping them from rebelling. fortunately, that's not likely to be possible. There is no determined human behavior in social science. It's inherently systemic. This is indeed what economics moves towards, a much more sociological conception (and actually vice-versa, see Granvetter 86' I think). This immediately implies that the question of behavior and system is one and the same, and the theory describes both exploitation and emancipation. At least, I'd argue, the large majority of it, and socialist (in a non authoritarian system) researchers would eventually find out the same things. The difference is on how it is framed. Your view is - value free - pessimistic at its core, you assume the most likely use will be exploitation. I am not so sure about that. V. Illych L. posted:ugh you know what it's really frustrating to try to communicate via quote-blocs so i'm going to try to summarise things as far as i'm able and try to address your points more generally: Yeah I am not disputing this. I am just giving you reasons as to why these choices of "whatever" matter. Immediately, not some time after the system change. Institutional and social systems are terribly path dependent. If any effort could be expended towards planning ahead, it would be well spent indeed! V. Illych L. posted:at the present, actually existing socialist and social-democratic parties have deep flaws. this is not disputed. the rational response to this is to try and address those flaws somehow, either by setting up new parties or political factions, or by internal critique. whether this is actually possible is unlikely, but it seems to me that it's the only possible way forward. placing too many preconditions on one's support here - such as an IMO bizarre demand for a standard of mechanical solution that we don't even have for our present society despite the vast resources available to it - is equivalent to more principled opposition, due to the extremely short time-scales available. Yes, knowledge exists in context, chances are exceedingly high that all those social scientists are unknowingly producing knowledge that you or anyone else could use. After all, that's what almost every genuine scientist tries to do (believe it or not). I have given several examples of this. Here is another one: the literature on what "leadership" is (as opposed to management) has shifted to a large degree towards giving meaning and purpose, away from "performance outcomes" (since little relationship could be identified). In a capitalistic firm, these things are always somewhat ironic, but they fit right in for a planned revolution, no? So this idea that you need to form a special work group for socialist economics is only a half truth. And it's in my opinion one of the major reasons WHY the left is so flawed. You need people to engage with and deeply understand organization theory including microeconomics (on your terms). V. Illych L. posted:finally, politics are not rational. the policies made may be influenced by academic work, but no matter how perfect your blueprint for utopia is it's not getting implemented except by force - and those groups able to wield force will tend to cherry-pick the research that supports what they wanted to do in the first place. we see this pretty constantly among decision-makers today - the determining factor is always some secular interest, it's fairly rare that the "best" scientific evidence is actually presented as a base. this doesn't necessitate bad faith on anyone's part in particular, by the way - but trade unionist or a politician or a lobbyist are all working for someone, serving some interest other than pure, rational governance, and even if they weren't there's only so many hours in a day to read hyper-specialised papers that one barely understands anyway. I guess I'll have to defer to your own opinion on how much that's all worth it. I essentially disagree in that I think there is a lot of knowledge to be had and it depends on you how much time you think the Left should spend on it. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Aug 27, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2020 07:32
|
|
|
I was reading on the economic policy of the Ulbricht administration in the GDR (the one preceding the charming fellow of whose fanclub I am a member). This is interesting for this discussion, because Ulbricht was interested in using science, technology like kybernetics, and economic theory to tackle the economic shortcomings of the early GDR. This ultimately brought him in conflict with the Soviets, because they were not interested in another country being a "model" country for socialism. Ulbricht is further relevant, because he actually wanted to stabilize socialism as opposed to seeing it as a short term, painful transition. So, he had an interest in making the system work well. The three key points of this approach were: - Get rid of market anarchy on the micro level by efficient, conscious planning efforts. This was only possible through collective ownership in socialism, as opposed to capitalism. It was believed, that the potential for welfare gains were now given. - Allocate participation of different sectors of the economy by what is needed in society, ensuring equity but also efficiency. This would allow a more proportional and eventually higher welfare than in capitalistic countries. - The increased productivity and welfare potential is coupled with a more just distribution of economic production. As a consequence, markets, ownership and other concepts would no longer be distinct from the political will and goals of the socialist state (its people). Rather, and crucially, this distinction was resolved in the above way with the objective of a better, more just and more efficient economic system. The idea that the details of the economic system are less important than political implementation of socialism has been voiced in this thread. It is further apparent that the initiators of Ulbricht's policies had a genuine interest in the betterment and increase of welfare for the GDR population, so this was clearly not (yet) an authoritarian approach or a "failed socialist state" or anything of that sort. If you can read German, a great source is then: http://leibnizsozietaet.de/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/06-Koziolek.pdf Which is an ex-post analysis of the new economic policy by one of the socialist economist who wrote said policy, who was in fact leader of the planning commission. I might go through this in detail, however, the author says that the implementation of these policies were not successful for two reasons: First, the environment in which they were implemented was not conductive to these policies. This is what I mentioned earlier as path dependence: Many years had gone by until the GDR was seriously thinking about how to organize the economy. At that point, it was too late. The grown power structures and economic forcing functions meant that these policies could not succeed. This is not immediately surprising, because at the time both politically and internally, socialism was far from stable and secure in the GDR. Nevertheless, even at this relatively early stage, historical and political facts were already binding. I have emphasized this earlier in saying that there is a point when it will be too late to think about "what comes next". Second, the approach itself was not consistent. The committee was not successful in implementing actual policies from the above guidelines. As it turns out, the above required simultaneously economic decentralization as well as political centralization. This axiomatic inconsistency could not be overcome. The author bemoans that the principle of proportionality required the subordination of efficiency to the political goals, which meant that even the best thought out theories and policies could not be implemented. The system of contracting on all levels failed and the "grand ideas" of inducing a positive dynamic in welfare turned out to be mere illusions. The author writes that the economic models that were developed were ignored when they were not convenient for the political goal of stabilizing socialism. In effect, the idea of "efficiency" was more crucial to the above guidelines than was recognized by the GDR and Soviet decision makers. Despite the positive dynamics before the 70's, the author is conscious that the incentive systems were failing and that the economy was on a failure path right from the start. He concludes that while the external factors, war reparations, Western influence and so forth were important detriments, it was the internal issues of economic policies that meant that the GDR was failing pretty much from the beginning. The author writes: "In conclusion, our new economic policies had no chance of succeeding in the long term". We all know that as a consequence, the GDR eventually turned into an authoritarian nightmare state. But I think it is important to emphasize that the GDR was initially not populated by power hungry opportunists, but driven by a genuine interest to make socialism work. And this was driven, albeit with some delay, by a group of intelligent and well educated technocrats and politicians. So long story short, a socialist system can fail catastrophically and need not do better than capitalism by default. Furthermore, the idea that everything will be different and no set goal for societal organization can exist ex-ante is a dangerous idea, because the failure of the internal policies of the GDR were not surprising, not even at the time, and correspond to things we knew about organizations even back then. For me, the conclusion is therefore that this issue needs to be approached differently. It seems likely to me that a new concept is required, because the key issue for the GDR was lack of initial planning and forcing functions of political necessity that subordinated other concerns. In contrast, socialists should strive for a concrete plan that works in unison with political goals right from the start. Let me quote: "Whoever considers the capitalistic market economy not as final ideal of societal development, must, in my opinion, analyze the failed socialist experiment in detail. There surely were other reasons for the failure of socialism despite the economic system, but it turned out to be the main one that permeated and was permeated by political system and ultimately led to the rejection by the population." Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 10:34 on Aug 31, 2020 |
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2020 10:21
|
|
|
I'm going to be honest, I can't follow a lot of what you're saying. I do know that we keep giving chances to capitalism, despite it loving over the planet and our fellow humans quite badly, whereas we have discarded socialism after like, two attempts.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2020 18:26
|
|
|
Social democracy, on the other hand,
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2020 19:25
|
|
|
No, i get what haramstufe is saying, my german is rusty and bad but im unpacking the pdf with the help of google translate and so far its interesting.although narrow in scope i feel.imma gonna need to munch on it a bit. There's something to be said about marxist economics not exactly giving much time to iterating on the economics of state and goverment, at least from my limited knowledge.i dont think its because of lack of intelectual rigor.i think its because any country that institutes a socialist society is immediatly under siege.and dont get me wrong.central planning is absolutely amazing for a war, or war-like-state economy.but watching what laos and vietnam had to do to survive and thrive you get the feeling that replacing central planning and 5 year plans with a finer focus on co-ops, local economy and some market liberalization is not a bad idea.and lots of strong, foreign currency, otherwise the imf and the wto will gently caress you up.see my previous point regarding sieges. Unfortunetly, we've run out of time for these experiments,because dealing with climate change will take a monumental, single focus herculean effort, a war time effort if you will and good news!we already know of a system that does really really well with that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 1, 2020 00:35
|
|
|
Antifa Poltergeist posted:. What metrics are you looking at? If you're talking about Soviet pre-war industrialization that includes repression, political persecution, forced labor canps and massive ethnic cleansing. Industrialization happened fast in part because it was a single-minded totalitarian state that could forcefully remove anyone not on board with the programme instead of working out messy compromises in a democratic system. If you're talking about the war itself then no, central planners did a piss poor job running the war. The same repression that allowed the SU to industrialize fast by removing malcontents is what decapitated military leadership and allowed the collapse during Operation Barbarossa. Everything that happened after that on the Eastern Front was the SU working to recover from that loss. You could say they were not ready for war at that time but that would be a failure of planning on their part. Which is not to say a totalitarian state established to fight climate change would not be effective but you can't achieve it through democratic or peaceful means and there's some human cost to make it run smoothly.
|
|
#
?
Sep 1, 2020 07:27
|
|
Owling Howl posted:Which is not to say a totalitarian state established to fight climate change would not be effective but you can't achieve it through democratic or peaceful means and there's some human cost to make it run smoothly. Steps to fix climate change: 1. Achieve totalitarian control through violence and coercion 2. Maintain totalitarian control through violence and coercion 3. Fix climate change I followed instructions but I can never get past step 2, can anybody help
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 1, 2020 07:44
|
|
|
Sulla Faex posted:Steps to fix climate change: Just repeat step one and two until enough violence and coercion has been done to remove all human emissions.
|
|
#
?
Sep 1, 2020 07:54
|
|
|
Haramstufe Rot posted:...
|
|
#
?
Sep 1, 2020 09:29
|
|
|
paradoxGentleman posted:I'm going to be honest, I can't follow a lot of what you're saying. Don't worry! I think the point I was arguing was so "academic" and overall so unimportant for socialist posters ITT that it essentially was meaningless or misunderstood as "lol socialism bad". At this point, I am just posting things I learned in my readings, just in case it's somehow interesting. You see, my brain doesn't really work particularly well most times, so leaving people puzzled with what I am saying because it makes zero sense is normal. Heck, half the times I can't even read my posts. If something seems to be a terrible "gotcha" or a particularly ill articulated argument, it's not me being smug, it's my garbage thinkbox tilting hard. Just to clarify this. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Sep 1, 2020 |
|
#
?
Sep 1, 2020 09:30
|
|
|
Haramstufe Rot posted:I think the point I was arguing was so "academic" and overall so unimportant for socialist posters ITT that it essentially was meaningless or misunderstood as "lol socialism bad". At this point, I am just posting things I learned in my readings, just in case it's somehow interesting. Do I summarise it correctly as: "Since a major factor in the failing of the GDR's economy was the fact that it was already locked into some bad practices once people started trying to fix it, a good lesson would be to have a solid economic plan in place in case we ever do manage to have a socialist revolution, since otherwise the emerging society is doomed to fail" ? I think people's objections to this largely boil down to "we could spend time/energy on that or on trying to make that revolution happen", implying that trying to come up with a foolproof plan will take so much time/energy that it's effectively delaying or even cancelling the revolution.
|
|
#
?
Sep 1, 2020 09:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 12:14 |
|
|
I say keep posting, econ chat is interesting even if I can't grasp most of it given i only studied half a semester of macro and micro and it was mostly cursory; enough to know the supply and demand graph but not enough to detail why it's bullshit as a bludgeon argument tool like everyone uses it
|
|
#
?
Sep 1, 2020 09:39
|
|