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evilweasel posted:Nobody undecided is ever actually convinced by the argument "the other side are hypocrites" nor should they be. Its not actually an effective argument and only resonates with people already on the other side. He....literally just said that the point of this thread is not to collect materials to convince people, but to provide general evidence and data for reference? I don't think anyone here thinks that logic, data and real world evidence will convince anyone of anything; That's not the point of collecting it. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Oct 22, 2011 |
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Oct 22, 2011 08:08
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It's obvious that minorities simply haven't yet mastered the free market. Although, sadly, the ACTUAL arguments I hear from most libertarians is that government programs are what actually caused them to remain poor.
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Nov 5, 2011 04:00
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2banks1swap.avi posted:Do those arguments have anything more than "I'm begging the question but it's so stupid nobody's found anything to refute!" going for them? If you believe in something strongly enough you'll find ways to get around pesky things like "facts" and "refutation". That's the whole problem with the human condition, in fact. See the thread on postmodernism, or "cultural studies", or whatever.
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Nov 5, 2011 04:41
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Dominoes posted:You just proved evilweasel's point. Instead of admitting that you might be wrong, that evilweasel has a valid point, that he misread or misinterpreted your posts, you criticized and insulted him. Instantly combative, no humility. Well, to his credit he doesn't go around hand waving away arguments and calling people "twits" or some other equally condescending name, he'll come right out and call your argument wrong for actual reasons and you an idiot. Same thing really, but a whole hell of a lot less obnoxious. trollstormur posted:This is a pretty absurd statement, recent statistics show corporations funding campaigns to the scale of two orders of magnitude greater than labor contributions. Not to mention moneyed politics forces labor to compete monetarily. I'm assuming their answer is just 'get rid of unions', but that obviously wouldn't solve any of the issues. The people saying things like that by and large don't know what they're talking about, with a minority not caring if they're wrong, whether out of arrogance or some ulterior motive to have lies spread. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Nov 19, 2011 |
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Nov 19, 2011 20:48
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Kieselguhr Kid posted:There's also not an unspoken threat of probation for disagreement. That makes things a lot different, especially when you're playing that 'my argument is so self-evident you're clearly wrong if you disagree, so I don't have to argue for it' game. You know, when someone accuses you of abusing your power, I'd think that the proper reaction wouldn't be to abuse your power. But that's just my opinion. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 21, 2011 03:40
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Crossposting this from the Libertarians thread, it's a study by the University of Minnesota about the cost effectiveness of school vouchers and charter schools in improving student performance (hint, it's not very). Not sure if it's been posted before but it seems like something that should be in here. http://www.growthandjustice.org/sit...5_4-19-2007.pdf
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Feb 29, 2012 18:48
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Does anybody have any data on the prevalence of voter fraud? I don't think any's been posted in this thread. Google comes up with promising stuff, but I'd like something a little more concrete.
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May 25, 2012 01:40
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King Zog posted:I am currently discussing with some libertarian guy but I am severly lacking in sources in order to bring a discussion forwards. He's currently saying that the reason why the EU-economy is in bad shape is because of the market regulations imposed by the states affected and by introducing a completely free market system, you will guarantee a safe recovery and a progressive economy. Ask him to explain how the economies of Germany and the Scandanavian states are doing so well. Tell him Greece was a clusterfuck that had very little to do with regulation and a lot more to do with corruption, same with Italy. Not sure about Spain but I suspect the same. The economies of northern Europe are doing just fine, and they were the most left wing ones the whole time.
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Jun 2, 2012 22:11
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Does anyone have any data on what other countries' single payers systems pay doctors for procedures, and also what the average quality of care in other countries is, if there is even a way to measure that? And I would venture to say that most red states are much more suburbanized, and probably have fewer regulations of all kinds, even less unionization than normal, and a lower quantity of government services. I know minimum wage in most red states is no higher than federal. Unfortunately they probably don't consider those things pluses. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Jul 19, 2012 |
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Jul 19, 2012 05:21
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King Zog posted:I'm a member of a Norwegian political discussion group on Facebook, and it's been flooded by Norwegian libertarians lately. I want to come up with arguments against this guy(translated by me): Ask them why Norway isn't a complete hellhole if regulations are bad (I'm assuming Norway has much stricter regulation than the US in most areas).
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Jul 19, 2012 22:06
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Loving Life Partner posted:So if you read a book like Capital that destroys capitalism, and a book like something Mises writes that destroys socialism, and it seems like you can probably find a book that posits good theories and decent inferences to destroy any established system or order or government, so where the hell do you decide to stand as an individual? Well, I always try to use empiricism as a basis for political beliefs. If a system of thought or theory explains the physical world accurately, then it is a good system. I tend to be left wing because left wing theories tend to explain the world I see around me better than right wing ones do. Note that Mises actually explicitly rejects empiricism and falsifiability. He literally says "I'm right, this is an axiom, evidence is irrelevant". Besides this most anarcho-capitalist works tend to twist logic to such an extreme and make such ridiculous assumptions and axioms that they lose any amount of credibility they might otherwise have. I'm not really set exactly in my political beliefs because obviously I don't know everything about the world around me, but I think that's a pretty good system.
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Jul 21, 2012 20:42
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Aeolius posted:One thing people tend to assume is that LTVs ignores supply and demand, which would appear to be a point for marginalism, seeing as those are clearly important determinants of market prices. However, supply and demand are entirely compatible with labor values. This post explains how it all fits together. I highly recommend it. that blog posted:
This is pretty much bullshit. First off, why is there a sharp division between workers and capitalists? Neoclassical economics describes a worker selling labor, a corporation selling machines and a guy selling bananas at a roadside stand in the same terms. Why should they be any different? This is an ideological distinction, not a legitimate one. Second, with the healthcare example, people who "can't afford" it still buy it, just very little of it. You pay for one operation instead of the six or whatever you need. Just because they may physically require it to survive or be happy doesn't matter. People who can't afford healthcare who don't buy it have maximized their utility. If they stopped buying food to get healthcare they would be dead, aka worse off. That doesn't make that price illegitimate. That's not what economic theories are for, that's what philosophy and morality are for. Third, the bolded parts are false, and possibly intellectually dishonest. No, corporations don't get more profit the more inputs they buy. They may or may not depending on what their production function is. That's one possibility, but it doesn't continue indefinitely. At some point the market will become saturated and they won't be able to sell the poo poo they're buying. No, rich people do not continue to buy regardless of price. If yachts became 100$ trillion apiece nobody would buy them anymore. This whole article is garbage. Its entire criticism of neoclassical economics is "Well some people can't afford healthcare/food/happiness at the market price, therefore the market price is WRONG!!!!" What if society cannot provide those things at any price? What the hell is the point of saying that the entirety of human civilization before technological advancement was horrific and unjust? Duh? Why make a whole bullshit theory to dress up that statement? I think people have a right to healthcare, but trying to inject morality and philosophy into economics like this is very unhelpful. Keeping the systems separate allows you to make societal and political decisions much easier. edit: Jesus, this article makes me angrier as I reread it. quote:Neoclassical economics draws the demand and supply curves as mirror images of one another in this way conflating the motives of consumers and capitalists. This allows economists to claim that just as capitalists seek to sell at a price which maximizes their profits consumers buy at a price that maximizes their utility, giving them a “consumer surplus”. Yet unlike capitalist profit, which is a real objective magnitude measured in money, this consumer surplus can’t be found anywhere in the real world. It exists only in the minds of economists. A surplus of money is a clearly objective phenomenon. Psychological satisfaction is not an objective thing. It can’t be measured in any numerical amounts, and there clearly can be no such thing as a surplus of subjective satisfaction over an objective amount of money spent. That’s like having a surplus of love over bananas. Such logical mistakes abound in marginal utility, reducing its theories to circularity and meaninglessness. Are "capitalists" and "workers" like two entirely different species or something? The people who run a corporation don't do it because they're robots that literally measure their life's worth in cash money profit, they're people who do it sometimes to get money, sometimes to get luxuries/stuff, sometimes for status, whatever. Corporate Profit is not an objective thing, just like personal satisfaction is not an objective thing. Just because the libertarian/Adam Smith-esque ideal of two naked men in the woods exchanging fish for medical services doesn't exist and never existed doesn't mean it can't be a useful tool to explain economics. Nobody thinks that that exists. It's just an assumption, a backdrop to make useful commentary on the world around us. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Aug 17, 2012 |
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Aug 17, 2012 04:12
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Cahal posted:Because they clearly play different roles in the economy? Capitalists - the recipients of profit - consume a lot less of their income and invest/save more. Workers consume most of their income. And the (upper) middle class? What about small business owners / people who have money invested somewhere and also an actual job? People who mortgage their home and work? They don't exist according to this theory. I'm not saying we should focus society on them, but in this dichotomy they don't exist. You're either a fatcat billionaire or a tenement slum wage laborer, with no room in between. This is visibly not how society is composed, and therefore it is a bad theory. edit: This is why marxism never caught on in America and to an extent western Europe. It basically tells the fairly sizeable petit bourgeoisie middle class 'get hosed, you don't exist'. Cahal posted:Morality and economics are inseparable - you are making judgments about how we should allocate scarce resources. Neoclassical economics itself is full of value judgements - competition is good, choice is good, markets are desirable. No it isn't. This is the whole loving point. Neoclassical econ doesn't say free markets are good, it says they're efficient. That's it. Those two concepts are not linked in any way. Many people think those two are the same, but the theory itself says nothing of the sort. Enjoy posted:So liberal simplifications that never existed are useful tools but socialist simplifications that actually existed strongly in the past are not "legitimate" (whatever the hell that means) Neoclassical economics (which is morally neutral / not really concerned with morality) can be combined with philosophy to flexibly produce ideas on how to run society. This Marxist theory rolls the two into one and can't really be adapted in any way. So if those socialist simplifications cease to exist in the future (many of them already have, like the lack of a real proletariat with the demise of the industrial economy) it is now a useless theory. Final edit: and one last thing. Remember that this marxist economics is NOT the same as 'socialism'. All socialism refers to is the democratic ownership of capital. There is no reason at all why you can't base a socialist ideology on neoclassical economics. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Aug 17, 2012 |
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Aug 17, 2012 07:05
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Cahal posted:Neoclassical economics pretends to be value free, sure. But it isn't. As you said, it thinks 'efficiency' - more q, less p, is good. There you go: value judgement. Well except for the fact that I said the opposite of that? People use economics as a tool to push right wing policy, but the economics itself is neutral. Coming up with a whole new system of economics with a leftist slant to compete with this perceived right wing slant is not good. Do you deny that we should at least try to keep economics, as a social science, at least somewhat grounded in, you know, science? It's not like history where you can say nobody is unbiased because economics actually works with real world, objective numbers and data. You're saying "well gently caress science, some people can and do use it for bad things". This is the same reasoning behind Austrian economics, that intellectual honesty doesn't get us what we want, so toss it out. Enjoy posted:Except it obviously has been adapted so you're full of poo poo. Third Worldism, feminism and minority studies have all benefited from class analysis. Even right-wing shills like Christopher Hitchens and Niall Ferguson have said they're heavily influenced by Marxian ideas So what you're saying is to throw out neoclassical economics entirely, and abandon any pretense of the scientific method or objectivity because everything has to be adapted to fight the right? That 100% of economic thought should be heavily stained with ideological and philosophical thought? Congratulations, like I said, you're no better than an Austrian economist. Mans posted:I guess the fact that 10 to 20% of the French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish population openly saying they're communists or anarchists shows that marxism is a wee-bit more popular in western europe than you might think. Spain and Portugal don't really count, seeing as they aren't as developed as the rest of Western Europe and were military dictatorships until the 70s, and Italy isn't particularly left wing. France is the best example here, but it still isn't anything near a socialist paradise. The brand of left wing thought that succeeded in Europe (and in America) was social democracy, or flavors of socialism that weren't based on economics written in the 1860s. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Aug 17, 2012 |
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Aug 17, 2012 20:13
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Enjoy posted:I just pointed out Marxism isn't heavily strained with ideological and philosophical thought since right-wingers can easily adapt it to analyse the world too. I don't think you addressed my point. Uhh, what? Do you have a single example of right wingers adapting Marxist economics to support their views? Your other post mentioned how a focus on class conflict has helped feminism and minority studies, but unfortunately, neither of those are economics. Your first post said that liberal simplifications are bad but Marixist simplifications are good. The difference is that the liberal simplifications are hypotheticals, they have an if before them. If P then Q. Marxism doesn't have that if. It says this is how things are, therefore this is how things should be. P, so Q. The problem is that the modern (first) world does not match up with the assumptions that are used by Marxism, like the lack of a homogenous proletariat and the huge mass of skilled, college educated, petite petite bourgeoisie. I'm going to say anyone with any college degree fits in this category. There are sometimes similarities to a classical proletariat, but what you have now is different enough to break Marxism to the extent that it really doesn't have anything useful to say about economics, at least the economics actually described by Marx in the 1860s. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Aug 17, 2012 |
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Aug 17, 2012 20:33
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Enjoy posted:Except it obviously has been adapted so you're full of poo poo. Third Worldism, feminism and minority studies have all benefited from class analysis. Even right-wing shills like Christopher Hitchens and Niall Ferguson have said they're heavily influenced by Marxian ideas Is this serious? A militant atheist Irish republican socialist is now a "right wing shill"? Whatever he is, he is not a typical right winger, in either Britain or America. As for Ferguson, it appears he's a TV celebrity historian who thinks the British Empire was great. This does not make him a typical right winger. If "right wing" doesn't mean either pro free market or some form of authoritarian socially, then we're not using anywhere near the same definition. namesake posted:'Marxism is wrong because we don't work in assembly line factories' is really just the laziest critique. You are arguing that neoclassical economics should be thrown out entirely and replaced with Marxism. I guess Marx's economics still sort of work in the third world, but in terms of first world domestic policy, they're pretty much meaningless. Class themed and otherwise Marx inspired analyses of stuff are fine, but using this framework as the basic economic theory is ridiculous. Cahal posted:You keep stating economics is neutral but you have not addressed any of the value judgements I have suggested it makes. I am not trying to put a 'left wing slant' on anything. In any case, let's defer to a third party - Mankiw's is popular: I guess Greg Mankiw now has the final say on all economic orthodoxy? You've quoted from a 101 level textbook / personal blog, all this shows is that Greg Mankiw is a right winger. Cahal posted:I deny that is possible. If we are discussing the distribution of scarce resources to real people then at some point we have to 'judge' that somebody does/doesn't need something, and advocate certain institutions that result in our preferred method of distribution. This is value based. And neoclassical economics doesn't do that. It says if goods are distributed in a free market then the total amount of goods that society in aggregate has in the end will be highest, outside of market failures. That's it. It does not say goods should be distributed in such a manner. Cahal posted:Economics would do well to admit it is not separate from the other social sciences, and learn from them. So I guess you're denying that a scientific study into how and why economic efficiency works will never be useful and we shouldn't bother? Cahal posted:Unsubstantiated straw man. No it's exactly the same thing. Neoclassical economics doesn't make value judgements about where goods should go, Marxism does, just like Austrian economics. Cahal posted:No. This and the above are two different things. Both ideologies have at their core a flat denial of the usefulness of objective/falsifiable theories. Considering how people pile on Austrian libertarians for being intellectually bankrupt, you'd think they'd do the same for this. You seem to be having trouble separating economic theory from the economists themselves. I guess you would also deny that pure sciences can't exist in any form because it's impossible for the scientists themselves to be perfectly unbiased. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Aug 17, 2012 |
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Aug 17, 2012 21:36
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namesake posted:Right so at the heart of it you accept that it can be valid and is valid in some places. Why does education and the expansion of the petit bourgeois from around 1945 to 2007 such as found in the first world somehow undo his analysis? Differing poverty levels is not indicative of this. I'm not saying it's entirely useless, I'm saying that for the purposes of domestic economics in a first world country, it is a bad choice for a basic economic theory.
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Aug 17, 2012 21:44
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Enjoy posted:I didn't say anything about typical right-wingers. A right-winger using Marxism is not going to be typical. Why? He isn't a "typical" right winger, he doesn't even fit the common definition of right wing. Why would you describe him as right wing? What possible definition of right wing would fit this man? This is the same kind of thinking that leads Austrian economics to denounce neoclassical econ as left wing communist tripe (they actually do). In any case, this doesn't change the fact that economics that at least tries to be objective and scientific has a very useful role to play. You're outright denying that and saying it should abandon the idea of falsifiability and the scientific method altogether. This is religious thinking, and while it might be useful in some cases, it certainly won't do any good if that's all there is to economic though. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Aug 17, 2012 |
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Aug 17, 2012 21:51
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namesake posted:Yes I understand that but I'm not seeing your reasoning for this except for suggesting that there are fundamental differences in first and third world populations like education which undo his analysis. But you're just stating this; how does first world education disrupt the exploitation of the workplace? People are still hired for set wages by contract and businesses still make (or try to make) profits, extraction of surplus value is still inherent and thus so is alienation and class struggle. How does education alter this? Because many of the college educated are not wage laborers, they own their own business. By definition this makes them the owners of capital, and therefore part of the bourgeoisie. Home ownership is a smaller version of the same thing. Any kind of consultant or professional is part of the bourgeoisie. Obviously these are not a majority of the population, but they're enough now to significantly disrupt the class breakdown of Marxism. Cahal posted:Yes, I have quoted directly from a frequently cited and well known economist's textbook to show that there are value judgements in economics. What's the problem? Still not engaging the specific one. Do you understand the idea that science is separate from scientists? If I came up with an example of a biologist who didn't believe in evolution, would you say Biology obviously doesn't support it? Why are you insisting that the science of economics doesn't exist independent of the scientists? Do you think the same for physics, or astronomy? Cahal posted:You don't think economists and those who have studied economics generally get the impression markets are a desirable way to distribute many resources? Do I need to dig up more textbook quotes? "The theory of economics believes A" does not follow from "Economists believe A". Cahal posted:No, I'm not. Though how we define 'efficiency,' presuming it is desirable, is in part a normative decision. The standard neoclassical definition of efficiency is the total amount of goods and services produced in the entire economy. This is not a normative definition. It might not be easily or feasibly measured, but it is a number that exists. Cahal posted:Again, you're simply seeing what you want to see to try and discredit me as an ideologue. I'm all for falsifiability. I don't think economics can be completely free of value judgements, though, and that's fine - at the very least it needs to say 'we should feed and clothe everyone.' You haven't provided any reasons that economics is somehow incapable of being positive instead of normative besides some quotes from freshman level economics textbooks. Find me some examples of economic journal articles and I'll consider it. Cahal posted:Again, no. You are putting so many words in my mouth it's ridiculous. I'm saying neoclassicism itself contains some value judgements. Science doesn't contain value judgements because it's not about people (though of course it can be used to help them, which is what many scientists are interested in). You think neoclassicism makes value judgements because some economists make value judgements. Cahal posted:Before you make another reply, realise what I am saying. I am saying neoclassical economics contains implicit value judgements. You have not really responded to the evidence I have given, or to the specific judgements I have suggested it makes. All you've done is assumed I'm an ideologue, tried to make out I'm antiscientific and thrown 'marxist' and 'Austrian' around like they are swear words. You seem to be saying that unlike every other hard and soft science, economics alone is incapable of being unbiased and descriptive rather than perscriptive. Every other one can be, psychology, sociology, biology, physics, chemistry, linguistics, etc, etc, but not economics. Enjoy posted:He supported capitalism, saying that it had proven to be more revolutionary than socialism, especially globilisation. No you've come up with some people who use Marxism to explain their worldviews and called them right wing. From wikipedia on Hitchens, about capitalism and globalization quote:Hitchens became a socialist "largely [as] the outcome of a study of history, taking sides ... in the battles over industrialism and war and empire." In 2001, he told Rhys Southan of Reason magazine that he could no longer say "I am a socialist." Socialists, he claimed, had ceased to offer a positive alternative to the capitalist system. Capitalism had become the more revolutionary economic system, and he welcomed globalisation as "innovative and internationalist", but added, "I don't think that the contradictions, as we used to say, of the system, are by any means all resolved." He stated that he had a renewed interest in the freedom of the individual from the state, but that he still considered libertarianism "ahistorical" both on the world stage and in the work of creating a stable and functional society, adding that libertarians are "more worried about the over-mighty state than the unaccountable corporation" whereas "the present state of affairs ... combines the worst of bureaucracy with the worst of the insurance companies."[64] It sounds like he's an idiot, but more importantly this is not particularly pro capitalism. He started out as an anti-capitalist and still has issues with capitalism. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Aug 17, 2012 |
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Aug 17, 2012 22:02
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rscott posted:Do you have any stats at all to back up this assertion that "many" (how many? Is it a majority) college educated people own their own business? A quick googling results in 27 million small businesses, so probably less than 10%. The point is that a large class of people have invested significant amounts of money, either in homes, businesses, the stock market, etc, and so are extracting surplus value from rents and interest. I'm sure you would agree that there has been a concentrated push since the 1970s for people to become their own micro capitalists, with mortgages and investments. Cahal posted:@icantfindaname No term is value laden until you give it a definition. If you don't know what 'failing' means, then how could it possibly have a connotation? And I'll ask you again, why is economics, out of all the other sciences that seem to do it fine, incapable of making unbiased, falsifiable predictions? icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Aug 17, 2012 |
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Aug 17, 2012 22:27
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Cahal posted:?? You're taking an external definition of good and linking it to an internal definition in economics. All failure means in economics is not ending up with the largest possible amount of goods and services. Good and bad are external concepts. The word 'failure' has no moral connotation at all on its own. It could describe a failure to get enough to eat, or a failure of an attempted murder. Language is entirely subjective. I'll pick apart your post for you. quote:Failing in neoclassicism clearly means not allocating resources efficiently. Yep, this is true. quote:We then go on to see how these 'failures' can be 'solved,' which we want to happen because we want the system to be more efficient! The bolded part does not follow. This is like basic high school mathematical logic. Do you really just not get that it does not follow that 'efficient' automatically means 'good'? What if I'm an extremely efficient serial killer? Economic theory is not the same as what economists individually believe. This isn't that hard. Like I said earlier, if a famous biologist came out one day and said they believe in creationism not evolution, would you think that Biology itself posited that?
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Aug 17, 2012 22:54
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Cahal posted:Here is a textbook I own: 'Social efficiency' and 'social goals' may be either good or bad depending on who you talk to. There are no values inherent in either the phrases themselves, or in the definitions ascribed to them by that textbook. People give them values. Economics does not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_economics Here you go. There is a wikipedia article for this thing that you keep claiming doesn't exist (and I also guarantee it's in that Mankiw textbook you're quoting, not that you bothered to read that bit). Explain? icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Aug 17, 2012 |
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Aug 17, 2012 23:04
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Cahal posted:It implies that these things are desirable when it says market failures are a major reason for government intervention. Why couldn't the author support market failures and be opposed to social goals? It is entirely conceivable that a person who wants monopolies to run the economy is writing this passage to describe a situation where things that in his opinion are bad happen. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Aug 17, 2012 |
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Aug 17, 2012 23:08
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Cahal posted:Wow you are really grasping at straws here. I just think you're too entrenched in your initial position (happens with debates) and are now determined to be condescending to me and paint me as ideological/stupid. Whatever - anyone with an open mind can see there are clear ethical goals in that textbook excerpt. In physics, motion is only measured relative to other objects in a particular frame of reference. For instance, you could say a car is driving down a road, with the road immobile, or you could say that the earth is spinning under the car and the car is immobile. Depending on the frame of reference. Your criticism of utility is that it's measured only in relation to other objects. Please come out and say that motion cannot be measured empirically, or that there is a universal frame of reference in physics, because it will plainly show that you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Besides that, I'm going to stop this debate now, because you really don't have any idea how science works.
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Aug 17, 2012 23:18
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My main criticism at this point is the seeming eschewal of the idea of objectivity by Marxist economics. Something really doesn't sit right with me with a theory that says "Well, it's impossible to be unbiased, so let's not even bother". Marxism can be a useful analysis, but I maintain that it's not an end all theory that makes everything else obsolete. Neoclassical economics can actually take a particular market, examine it, and produce a (rough, usually) number for say the elasticity of demand, or do regression analysis for businesses and banks. Obviously this isn't the end all of economics, but saying it's useless and should be thrown out because it usually promotes a bad ideology seems dangerous to me.
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Aug 19, 2012 03:48
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Enjoy posted:Examples? It's been mentioned multiple times here that economics should stop pretending to be unbiased, like history does (or so I hear?). Thinking of it, I guess that's not really the same thing as a lack of objectivity, but this attitude seems to carry with it a lack of emphasis on mathematical models and data. I'm saying that stuff is very important.
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Aug 19, 2012 05:11
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The fact that Fox News is reporting that one of the Good Guys lied about something is enough to tell you it isn't typical Fox News.
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Aug 31, 2012 |
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Aug 31, 2012 02:56
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Jonny Angel posted:So an old talking point that's been getting dusted off a lot recently is the "Well if rich liberals like Soros/Buffett/etc. want to raise taxes, why don't they just give more to the government on their own?" The whole mentality where you can checkmate progressive taxation by pointing out that Berkshire Hathaway owes back taxes or whatnot. Does anyone have tips for how to show conservatives that this argument is a bullshit sideshow? It seems like it's hard to make any point that doesn't just result in them repeating "Liberals want you to pay more taxes but dodge their own taxes, wrap it up hypocrites". If they're Christian, ask them why they haven't sold all their worldly possessions and taken a vow of poverty. The bible is pretty clear that you have to do that, or something approaching it, to be a moral person. Or for a more realistic answer, don't bother. The mindset of these people is pretty much a toddler screaming NUH UH with their fingers in their ears when their hypocrisy is pointed out.
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Sep 7, 2012 03:22
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Tiny posted:Is that also the answer for people who are against "obamacare" because it includes coverage for birth control pills? Well, I actually have more sympathy for that, though I still disagree with it. It IS somewhat of a dilemma if tax dollars are spent on something people are religiously opposed to, though in my opinion opposition to birth control is ridiculous bullshit, and dangerously close to misogynistic if not outright so. That's less a case of hypocricy and more of being open with their horrible opinions. There is always the whole 'render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's' thing though, where Jesus pretty much said don't bother worrying about the horrible stuff your taxes are funding. But that probably won't change their opinion.
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Sep 7, 2012 07:36
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The fact that it's both a workday lenth and schoolyear length increase makes me more sympathetic. Giving them nothing seems terrible, if that's what this secret agreement entails then gently caress that. 30% seems a little high, but 20% or so would be entirely reasonable for an extra month of school.
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Sep 11, 2012 03:39
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Zeitgueist posted:- Unions are cool and should be allowed, but now when they have special priveleges: IE the ability to have closed shops, card check, etc. The ability to have closed shops is just basic contract law. If the contract says the employer can only employ union members, if the parties disagree they simply stop abiding by it. IE the union strikes and the employer goes out of business. This is literally no different than a bunch of companies teaming up to deny people employment, which he'd obviously be fine with. Zeitgueist posted:- One of the times that property law was enforced well was the British Industrial Revolution, because factory owners were held responsible for pollution. Without any kind of sources besides Mises I don't believe that for a moment. Zeitgueist posted:- India and China are great examples of capitalism working because worker wages and benefits are starting to increase. This is due to workers becoming more skilled and thus able to command more. Chinese "capitalism" is not remotely laissez faire, because the state controls the financial system and doesn't even let the currency's value float, among other very large issues. Basically your new friend lives in a fantasy world that actively contradicts observed facts in multiple important ways. Surprise.
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Sep 13, 2012 19:17
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dorkasaurus_rex posted:Ask him why the Chinese economy is expanding while ours isn't (well, hardly at all). Ask him what, if any role, the Chinese government's actions has had on their own domestic economy. Remember according to him China is capitalist when it does things successfully, and anti capitalist when it doesn't. Because capitalism causes success and anti capitalism failure, you see? PokeJoe posted:I once got him to claim it was the US government's fault that slavery was practiced in the US. They have to, because the growth of African chattel slavery was one of the biggest effects free trade / protocapitalism had on the world when it appeared in the first wave of globalization in the 1500s. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Sep 14, 2012 |
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Sep 14, 2012 16:33
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gaan kak posted:It wasn't the CRA (relaxed mortage requirements), it was the risky financial instruments built on top of the subprime loans. That study's methodology appears to be this: quote:Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation. First off, I don't know what 'referred to' means. They could be referring to them in a negative light or a positive. If they're simply counting the number of times the name of a think tank appears in news articles then it's a ridiculous methodology and that article is pretty much bunk.
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Sep 23, 2012 06:02
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Does anyone have an overview of the energy subsidies in the recovery act, specifically a list of companies that received loans like Solyndra?
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Oct 30, 2012 23:36
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Yeah, that's it. Of course the people I was arguing with demanded colorful graphs with the financial histories and stock prices of all the companies benefiting, otherwise they claim Obama is obfuscating the info and generally lying to the public, but just for my own curiosity it's pretty interesting. Thanks.
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Oct 31, 2012 00:07
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The price gouging law only applies in emergency situations, right? That sounds entirely reasonable. The reason we think poor people should get their water and batteries is because they might need them to survive. Is that really such an unbearable restriction on the beloved free market, that one week of the year you can't gently caress people over so bad they might actually die?WoodrowSkillson posted:No, the point is one of the argued benefits of gouging is that stores will increase the availability of crisis items. I'm saying they won't since its not profitable long term to let 4 snowblowers sit in the back as inventory when you do not need too. Even more importantly, the only reason it would be a good thing to increase the availablility of crisis items is if there is a crisis going on while they're in stock. Price gouging would (theoretically) increase their supply after the crisis is over, when they don't do anyone any good. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Nov 1, 2012 |
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Nov 1, 2012 01:27
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FISHMANPET posted:Holy poo poo, there's a lot of (wrong) words about how I hate poor people. I'd like to thank Cahal for at least keeping an open mind and not immediatly assuming that I'm a shithead. So what the hell is the point? In both cases there are people who don't get all the stuff that they want, but in the free market case those people are conveniently all people who can't afford the prices. You're saying that poor people being priced out of the market is inherently better than a mixture of poor and rich people being excluded at random. I don't really see how rationing would be any different than anti-price gouging laws, except the price would be locked down even more. FISHMANPET posted:Now in this case the socially optimal outcome is everybody has what they need to weather the storm, and I'm not sure which of those two options is the best. Allowing merchants to charge whatever they want at least has the benefit of being 100% enforceable, while requiring rationing is not. However, I don't think leaving prices flat and doing nothing else gets anywhere near to an optimal outcome for anybody. Making indiscriminate murder legal would also be 100% enforceable, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. That's really not much of an argument. FISHMANPET posted:I will also say that in general, I think the concepts of supply and demand do a better job of allocating resources than some kind of command economy. In normal cases, if the demand for batteries goes up, we can order more batteries and the factories can make more batteries. In this case the supply is almost completely inelastic, and the demand is mostly inelastic, we end up with a problem. I understand the leeriness of command economies, but this really isn't a case where the inefficiency breaks the deal. I also don't have any kind of data on whether there are problems with these laws, but I suspect not, so take that for what it's worth I guess.
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Nov 1, 2012 02:14
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If they managed to get the full replacement sales tax with prebate enacted, the prebate would immediately be denounced as Russian Communism by the very people who are in favor of a flat tax to begin with, and it would be cut, leaving us with graph #1. Maybe that's all part of the plan? 
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Nov 3, 2012 05:25
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I'm actually rather looking forward to Libertarianism replacing the GOP. I'm not a historian, but it seems to me that it's very had to sell the people on liberal capitalism without some kind of bigotry to back it up. If people aren't distracted by race or religion they respond very negatively to getting hosed economically. The only real way around this is through state coercion / police brutality, which is what happened during the growth of capitalism, and I don't think they'll be able to manage it again, now that people are used to things like not living in a slum and having semi-decent working conditions. This is all predicated on racism slowly declining as a force in politics though, which is not guaranteed, but things are starting to look good for the first time in a while.
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Nov 9, 2012 06:31
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Does anybody have any information about the prevalence of NSA or other government domestic surveillance, and about whether it has actually stopped any domestic terror attacks? I mean, obviously not, but does actual hard data for this exist?
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Dec 11, 2012 |
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Dec 11, 2012 19:52
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