Atheistforums.com

Humanities Section => Political/Government General Discussion => Topic started by: Xerographica on August 01, 2013, 12:21:06 PM

Title: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 01, 2013, 12:21:06 PM
Minimum wages are false values.  They do not accurately reflect society's true preferences.  In economics "preferences" are the same as "demand".  So false values/preferences are the same thing as a false demand.  Pseudo-demand will always result in pseudo-supply.  Minimum wages (psuedo-demand) prevent us from maximizing the value we derive from our limited resources.
 
Anybody a fan of Monty Python?  Here's a fun clip to illustrate the concept of false values...

[youtube:2e3qwcj0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMxWLuOFyZM[/youtube:2e3qwcj0]

If somebody asks you what your favorite color is...why lie?  Why risk being cast into the gorge of eternal peril?  In other words, why risk having to wear an orange sweater when orange is your least favorite color?  If your favorite color is green, then clearly there's going to be a value disparity between wearing a green sweater and wearing an orange sweater.  
 
When we input false values into the impossibly complex equation which determines how society's limited resources are allocated...it's a given that the output will not be accurate.  It will be less valuable than the output would have been if true values had been inputted.  The size of the value disparity will depend on how false the inputted values were.  

In computing, this is known as garbage in, garbage out (//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_in,_garbage_out).  It's equally relevant to economics...pseudo-demand, pseudo-supply.    

Just like it would be detrimental to lie about how much you value something...it would also be detrimental to have your true values ignored.  Here's a funny story from the bible that perfectly illustrates the problem with command economies (our public sector)...

Genesis 29

1 Then Jacob went on his journey, and came into the land of the people of the east.
2 And he looked, and behold a well in the field, and, lo, there were three flocks of sheep lying by it; for out of that well they watered the flocks: and a great stone was upon the well's mouth.
3 And thither were all the flocks gathered: and they rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the sheep, and put the stone again upon the well's mouth in his place.
4 And Jacob said unto them, My brethren, whence be ye? And they said, Of Haran are we.
5 And he said unto them, Know ye Laban the son of Nahor? And they said, We know him.
6 And he said unto them, Is he well? And they said, He is well: and, behold, Rachel his daughter cometh with the sheep.
7 And he said, Lo, it is yet high day, neither is it time that the cattle should be gathered together: water ye the sheep, and go and feed them.
8 And they said, We cannot, until all the flocks be gathered together, and till they roll the stone from the well's mouth; then we water the sheep.
9 And while he yet spake with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep; for she kept them.
10 And it came to pass, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother.
11 And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept.
12 And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's brother, and that he was Rebekah's son: and she ran and told her father.
13 And it came to pass, when Laban heard the tidings of Jacob his sister's son, that he ran to meet him, and embraced him, and kissed him, and brought him to his house. And he told Laban all these things.
14 And Laban said to him, Surely thou art my bone and my flesh. And he abode with him the space of a month.
15 And Laban said unto Jacob, Because thou art my brother, shouldest thou therefore serve me for nought? tell me, what shall thy wages be?
16 And Laban had two daughters: the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel.
17 Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favoured.
18 And Jacob loved Rachel; and said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy younger daughter.
19 And Laban said, It is better that I give her to thee, than that I should give her to another man: abide with me.
20 And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.
21 And Jacob said unto Laban, Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in unto her.
22 And Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast.
23 And it came to pass in the evening, that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to him; and he went in unto her.
24 And Laban gave unto his daughter Leah Zilpah his maid for an handmaid.
25 And it came to pass, that in the morning, behold, it was Leah: and he said to Laban, What is this thou hast done unto me? did not I serve with thee for Rachel? wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?

LOL...that's a really funny, but messed up story.  It's interesting that Jacob only realized the trickery the morning after.  Do you think that you would have realized that you were sleeping with the wrong sister? Maybe it was really dark...and/or Jacob must have been really drunk...and Leah didn't say anything before, during or after sex.

Imagine Jacob went to a drive through restaurant.  Except, the menu consisted of women (Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, etc.) rather than food.  Jacob ordered Rachel, drove up to the cashier and paid 7 years of his life.  Unfortunately, it was only after he consumed his "meal" that he realized that he had been given the wrong woman.  

Command economies are non-sequitur economies.  The conclusion (Leah) did not follow from the premise (Jacob's preferences).  As a result, value was destroyed.  Pseudo-demand, pseudo-supply.

How much does our society truly value unskilled labor?  We really don't know.  And that's a problem.  If students don't know how much society truly values unskilled labor...then how can they possibly make an informed decision regarding how much effort/time/money (life) to invest in acquiring skills?  Why would you want to incentivize your son or daughter to drop out of school?  If we say that we value unskilled labor more than we really do...then we're increasing the incentive for unskilled people to immigrate to America.  Why lie to poor people in foreign countries?  If wages don't truly reflect the demand, then the supply won't truly reflect our preferences.  

The immediate consequences of living/minimum wages might be beneficial...but the subsequent consequences will always be far more detrimental.  This is because false values prevent resources from being efficiently allocated.  If you really don't believe me...then the next time you're at a bar/club...lie about your sexual preferences.  Let me know how it goes.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Fidel_Castronaut on August 01, 2013, 12:37:30 PM
Request to merge this with all the other carbon copy threads.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Bibliofagus on August 01, 2013, 12:45:05 PM
Unskilled labour?

Does that exist? Are there many jobs in your country for which you do not need to understand any language at all?

What are your thoughts about the costs of teaching someone a language?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: the_antithesis on August 01, 2013, 01:09:26 PM
What the fucking fuck are you talking about?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Bibliofagus on August 01, 2013, 01:13:18 PM
Quote from: "the_antithesis"What the fucking fuck are you talking about?

He appears to think wages that are unsufficient to make a living, let alone raise your kids to have any chance in society... are too high.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 01, 2013, 01:41:54 PM
Xero, the minimum wage has nothing to do with value, it has to do with the least-skilled people either being paid enough to live on directly by their employers or indirectly by their employers.  They're going to be paid the minimum wage, whether there's a minimum wage or not.

The negative value to society of people who can't afford basic food and shelter is far greater than the positive value of paying them that enough to be able to afford them.

Anyone who doesn't understand that shouldn't be discussing economics.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: LikelyToBreak on August 01, 2013, 01:44:31 PM
I feel the minimum wage is there to stop the masses from rioting, while the banksters rip off the country.   So, I agree with the idea:
QuoteThe immediate consequences of living/minimum wages might be beneficial...but the subsequent consequences will always be far more detrimental
Not that the masses can have any real affect on the value of money, because the masses only control about 15% of it.  The real masters of inflation are the top 1% who control most of the money.  And congress.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 01, 2013, 02:46:54 PM
Quote from: "Colanth"Xero, the minimum wage has nothing to do with value, it has to do with the least-skilled people either being paid enough to live on directly by their employers or indirectly by their employers.  They're going to be paid the minimum wage, whether there's a minimum wage or not.
A wage is simply a price.  It either reflects what consumers (employers) are willing to pay...or it doesn't.  That you think prices have nothing to do with value...means that you shouldn't be discussing economics.  

Naw, I'm just kidding.  You can discuss economics if you want to.  Go ahead.  Here's a topic for you...do you think the preference revelation problem is a real problem?  Probably not right?  I'm sure that, just like the rest of the pseudo-atheists you have strong faith that congresspeople are omniscient.  They can reach into all our heads and pull out exactly how much we'd be willing to pay for defense, education and healthcare.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 01, 2013, 08:55:42 PM
Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"I feel the minimum wage is there to stop the masses from rioting, while the banksters rip off the country.   So, I agree with the idea:
QuoteThe immediate consequences of living/minimum wages might be beneficial...but the subsequent consequences will always be far more detrimental
Not that the masses can have any real affect on the value of money, because the masses only control about 15% of it.  The real masters of inflation are the top 1% who control most of the money.  And congress.
Consider this quote from Michael Moore...

QuoteI'm a millionaire, I'm a multi-millionaire. I'm filthy rich. You know why I'm a multi-millionaire? 'Cause multi-millions like what I do. That's pretty good, isn't it?
So millions and millions of individuals reached into their pocket and "voted" for Michael Moore.  They gave him positive feedback.  Why?  Because they like what he does.  Therefore, his wealth is a reflection of how much he benefits people.  

This is how and why markets work.  It's not the 1% that decides one day that they are going to be the 1%...it's the 99% who chooses them.  It's the masses of self-interested consumers with their diverse and unique preferences and circumstances.  

When you go shopping...do you look at the "wealth tag"?  No...because there aren't any.  Consumers could care less how wealthy producers are.   They just want the most value for their money.  Therefore, people are wealthy because they provide the masses with the most value.  

Getting rid of minimum wages will provide the masses with even more value...yet you're concerned with the masses rioting?  Why would the masses riot when they could simply evenly distribute their money?  They could simply stop trying to get the most bang for their buck.  They could stop shopping around for the best deals.  They could stop trying to get more for less.  That would show the 1%.  It would also greatly decrease everybody's well being.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: AllPurposeAtheist on August 01, 2013, 09:22:07 PM
Read thread now attempting to unread thread..failing miserably. :|
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 02, 2013, 12:20:20 AM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Colanth"Xero, the minimum wage has nothing to do with value, it has to do with the least-skilled people either being paid enough to live on directly by their employers or indirectly by their employers.  They're going to be paid the minimum wage, whether there's a minimum wage or not.
A wage is simply a price.
As I said, people who don't understand economics shouldn't talk about it.  It makes no difference whether the employer pays by giving the employee a check or by giving the government additional taxes to make up for the increased welfare, Medicaid, etc. - the employer is paying the same (or more if the government gets involved in the money trail).

Walmart "saves" money by not providing medical insurance or enough wages for employees to buy insurance.  The government pays more for Medicaid and hospitals pay more for indigent care (a hospital can't turn you away, in most states, until it makes sure that you're stable - even if you have no insurance and no money). And many Walmart employees are on welfare and or collect food stamps.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 02, 2013, 12:23:38 AM
Quote from: "Xerographica"Getting rid of minimum wages will provide the masses with even more value
And higher taxes (or more crime) - which will leave them with less money to spend.

The wealthy eliminate the spending class at their own peril.  How many poor people jumped out of windows in 1929?  How many wealthy people did?  (By October 1929, the wealthy had pretty much eliminated the spending class.)
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 02, 2013, 12:46:06 AM
Quote from: "Colanth"As I said, people who don't understand economics shouldn't talk about it.
Do you know what it means for resources to be efficiently allocated?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Jmpty on August 02, 2013, 01:13:47 AM
Pseudo-intellectual idea.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Fidel_Castronaut on August 02, 2013, 03:28:31 AM
Quote from: "Jmpty"Pseudo-intellectual idea.

Pseudo-intellectual per se.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 02, 2013, 03:11:24 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Colanth"As I said, people who don't understand economics shouldn't talk about it.
Do you know what it means for resources to be efficiently allocated?
It means that we'd have to reprogram the species.

Do you understand the difference between theory and reality?  In theory the concept of a minimum wage is ridiculous.  In reality, in a freely-capitalistic environment, it's mandatory.  (Unless the capitalists are suicide-prone.)
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Mister Agenda on August 02, 2013, 03:18:47 PM
Quote from: "Colanth"
Quote from: "Xerographica"Getting rid of minimum wages will provide the masses with even more value
And higher taxes (or more crime) - which will leave them with less money to spend.

The wealthy eliminate the spending class at their own peril.  How many poor people jumped out of windows in 1929?  How many wealthy people did?  (By October 1929, the wealthy had pretty much eliminated the spending class.)

It's kind of a myth that a lot of people committed suicide, expecially by jumping out of windows, in 1929. It seems to be based on one incident.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Mister Agenda on August 02, 2013, 03:48:48 PM
There is a way to have our capitalistic cake and eat it too. If we agree that everyone should have a minimum income, that doesn't necessarily mean that they have to get it all from employers. Every adult could have a base income of, say, $10,000 a year tax free; and no minimum wage. Employers would provide wages based on the usual considerations, like 'will people qualified to do this job do it for this much money?' Note that with this guaranteed income, you could have an income of $20,000 a year with a job that pays less than 5.00 an hour.

It would be very expensive and taxes would have to be raised considerably (at least +20%, I'm guessing) to pay for it; but you would get a pure market wage system similar to Hong Kong's. The middle class would find their take-home pay not much affected (they make $10,000 more on paper but pay it back out in taxes), while business owners and investors might come out ahead from lowered labor costs.

The thing is, automation is going to make unemployment endemic anyway. Tasks that have traditionally been automation-proof like labor and customer service are becoming less and less so. We're going to need some kind of cushion to transition to an economy. My suggestion is off the top of my head, the point is that we're going to have to find a different way to skin this cat at some point. It could be a good thing, if we're smart enough to make it good.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: LikelyToBreak on August 02, 2013, 04:05:08 PM
Just to add another 2 cents.

Xerographica wrote in part:
QuoteThis is how and why markets work. It's not the 1% that decides one day that they are going to be the 1%...it's the 99% who chooses them. It's the masses of self-interested consumers with their diverse and unique preferences and circumstances.
That would be great, if that was how it actually worked.  The 1% er's get favored deals and manipulate congress to get richer.  They also collude together to get more money without adding any value to the system.  Study up on the housing crash and what really caused it.  It was not caused by the people who ended up loosing their houses due to foreclosure.

Xerographica also wrote in part:
QuoteDo you know what it means for resources to be efficiently allocated?
Please explain.  Because I really wonder if you do.  

Many people don't know that Mexico is a rich nation.  They have more billionaires per capita than any other nation on Earth.  They are also considered a third world nation because of the life style which most of the people are forced to endure.  Mexico also has a high kidnapping rate as well.  Does anyone besides me remember the civil war in Chiapas?  Look into it and tell me how the 99% er's in Chiapas voted with their pesos.

Colanth wrote in part:
QuoteDo you understand the difference between theory and reality? In theory the concept of a minimum wage is ridiculous. In reality, in a freely-capitalistic environment, it's mandatory. (Unless the capitalists are suicide-prone.)
All us poor people want is a decent chance to live.  While most of the 1% er's couldn't care less if we lived or died.  They have more money than they could spend on themselves and their family in their lifetimes. Yet, they want more money.  It seems to just be a game to them, and money are the points to be gotten.  Damn the peons if they don't like it.  They'll just use their influence to have the peasants killed.  Just like they did in Chiapas.  But, if we are going to die anyway, we will at least try to thin the numbers of the Praetorian Guards of the rich.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Mister Agenda on August 02, 2013, 04:08:37 PM
Markets operate less efficiently when an oligarchy can influence the government. Which company can get the most favorable terms from the government is not based on which can offer the best product for the most reasonable cost.

There's a lot broken where business and government meet.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 02, 2013, 05:40:23 PM
LikelyToBreak and Mister Agenda...if I was in favor of crony capitalism...then I wouldn't advocate that taxpayers be allowed to choose where their taxes go.   If pragmatarianism was truly more beneficial for the crony capitalists...then tax choice would have far more than 28 likes on facebook.  

Did you guys ever read Calvin and Hobbes? In one strip Calvin is happily pounding nails into the coffee table..."WAP, WAP WAP". His mother walks into the room and screams "Calvin what are you doing to the coffee table?!?". He takes a second and replies, "Is this some sort of trick question or what?"

Clearly Calvin derived utility from how he was using society's limited resources...and clearly his mother did not.

What you two fail to grasp and understand...is the importance of being able to give others feedback on how well they are using society's limited resources.  Yet, I'm sure that you appreciate that some people really should be in jail...right? You agree that it's a more efficient allocation of resources when murderers and arsonists are in jail. Why? Because we really do not value how they used society's limited resources.

So it's a given that some people are "better" at using society's limited resources than other people. And who defines "better"? Other people...consumers.  If we want to maximize the value that we derive from society's limited resources...then it's essential that we allocate resources according to how effectively people are using them. This means giving people the freedom to give other people feedback on how well they are using society's limited resources.

Wages, given that they are the price of labor, are simply positive feedback. And there should absolutely not be a ceiling or a floor when it comes to positive feedback. Dictating how much positive feedback consumers should give will always reduce the amount of value that we, as a society, derive from our limited resources. Why? Because minimum wages are false values...they are lies. When you input lies into the equation which determines how society's resources are used...it's a given that the output will be garbage. Garbage in, garbage out. Pseudo-demand, pseudo-supply.

Mister Agenda, yes, you could certainly give each adult $10,000 a year tax free.  You could also give me $1 billion dollars.  What would happen if you gave me one billion dollars?  Well...I'd have far far far far far more influence over how society's limited resources were used.  Here in California there would be orchids on all the trees and all over the country there would be advertisements for tax choice.  

The amount of influence somebody has over how society's limited resources are used shouldn't be arbitrarily determined...it should be determined by other people.  If I come up with some invention that makes millions and millions of people's lives that much better...then yes, by all means, I should have far more influence over how society's limited resources are used.  Why?  Because millions and millions of people are better off as a result of how I used society's limited resources.  They vouched for me.  They made sacrifices to me.

Equalizing influence is arguing that we are equally effective at using society's limited resources.  This is far far far from the case.  So if you do so, it's a given that society, as whole, will be significantly worse off.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Jmpty on August 02, 2013, 09:42:07 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"LikelyToBreak and Mister Agenda...if I was in favor of crony capitalism...then I wouldn't advocate that taxpayers be allowed to choose where their taxes go.   If pragmatarianism was truly more beneficial for the crony capitalists...then tax choice would have far more than 28 likes on facebook.  

Did you guys ever read Calvin and Hobbes? In one strip Calvin is happily pounding nails into the coffee table..."WAP, WAP WAP". His mother walks into the room and screams "Calvin what are you doing to the coffee table?!?". He takes a second and replies, "Is this some sort of trick question or what?"

Clearly Calvin derived utility from how he was using society's limited resources...and clearly his mother did not.

What you two fail to grasp and understand...is the importance of being able to give others feedback on how well they are using society's limited resources.  Yet, I'm sure that you appreciate that some people really should be in jail...right? You agree that it's a more efficient allocation of resources when murderers and arsonists are in jail. Why? Because we really do not value how they used society's limited resources.

So it's a given that some people are "better" at using society's limited resources than other people. And who defines "better"? Other people...consumers.  If we want to maximize the value that we derive from society's limited resources...then it's essential that we allocate resources according to how effectively people are using them. This means giving people the freedom to give other people feedback on how well they are using society's limited resources.

Wages, given that they are the price of labor, are simply positive feedback. And there should absolutely not be a ceiling or a floor when it comes to positive feedback. Dictating how much positive feedback consumers should give will always reduce the amount of value that we, as a society, derive from our limited resources. Why? Because minimum wages are false values...they are lies. When you input lies into the equation which determines how society's resources are used...it's a given that the output will be garbage. Garbage in, garbage out. Pseudo-demand, pseudo-supply.

Mister Agenda, yes, you could certainly give each adult $10,000 a year tax free.  You could also give me $1 billion dollars.  What would happen if you gave me one billion dollars?  Well...I'd have far far far far far more influence over how society's limited resources were used.  Here in California there would be orchids on all the trees and all over the country there would be advertisements for tax choice.  

The amount of influence somebody has over how society's limited resources are used shouldn't be arbitrarily determined...it should be determined by other people.  If I come up with some invention that makes millions and millions of people's lives that much better...then yes, by all means, I should have far more influence over how society's limited resources are used.  Why?  Because millions and millions of people are better off as a result of how I used society's limited resources.  They vouched for me.  They made sacrifices to me.

Equalizing influence is arguing that we are equally effective at using society's limited resources.  This is far far far from the case.  So if you do so, it's a given that society, as whole, will be significantly worse off.

Like Halliburton, and union Carbide, and British Petroleum, to name but a few.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: the_antithesis on August 02, 2013, 11:50:08 PM
Quote from: "Bibliofagus"
Quote from: "the_antithesis"What the fucking fuck are you talking about?

He appears to think wages that are unsufficient to make a living, let alone raise your kids to have any chance in society... are too high.

Ah. So it's more wank again.

Got it.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: LikelyToBreak on August 03, 2013, 12:23:46 AM
QuoteEqualizing influence is arguing that we are equally effective at using society's limited resources. This is far far far from the case. So if you do so, it's a given that society, as whole, will be significantly worse off.

Let's look at history for a minute.  During WWII, the veterans were given the G.I. Bill which enabled them to go to college.  This bill was done away with in the 80's and replaced with a piece of crap matching funds bill.  But, at any rate, the G.I.'s came back to from the war and went to school.  The 50's and 60's had a huge amount of growth American scientific achievements.  While not completely equalizing society's resources, it did help to make a better place for everyone.  

Now with the cost of education and housing having skyrocketed, less lower income families are able to get their kids through college.  Which is okay, because the corporations have sent the jobs overseas, where labor is cheaper.  Despite the fact, that the American worker is the most productive workers in the world.  Primarily due to American automation, but true non-the-less.  

The trouble is, it is not the person who comes up with the good idea or the person being able to make it happen.  It is the financiers which make money out of the air and then lend it at high prices and the speculators who drive up and crash economies who get the money.  Did you realize for instance, that Bank of America had lent $42 for each dollar they actually had, when the housing bubble burst?  And then speculators bought securities on that debt, essentially betting that the loans would be paid back.  When the securities went bad, they went to congress and demanded 750 billion dollars.  Congress, both sides of the congress, as well as the President and future President gladly gave it to them.

I don't see that as equally effective at using society's limited resources.  I see that as highway robbery.  They even threatened that would be riots on Monday, if they didn't get the money by Friday.  I am not making this up.  It happened.

South, Central America and Mexico have a bunch of poor peasants, because the Spanish Crown gave out land grants to their most favored people.  The people living on the land, then had to leave or work for the "landowner."  The landowner maximized profits for himself, without regard to those working for him.  What we have today are countries of the rich and the poor.  No middle class to speak of.  That is where America is headed.  The middle class is diminishing in America, and the rich are getting richer.  

The middle class, have the false hope that they too can become part of the rich class.  But, unless they have government connections, they are doomed to failure.  Because the rich take care of each other.  Yeah, they may get ahead some, but the people really getting ahead are rich people who control where the money goes.

Which is why although not a Libertarian anymore, I'm still libertarian.  Because as long as the government can arbitrarily decide which businesses will make it and which will not, there is no chance for a level playing field.  As Jmpty alluded too.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Bibliofagus on August 03, 2013, 01:30:45 AM
Quote from: "Xerographica"So it's a given that some people are "better" at using society's limited resources than other people.

True. The guys who owned slaves are a good example.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Jack89 on August 03, 2013, 02:21:58 AM
Quote from: "Colanth"
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Colanth"Xero, the minimum wage has nothing to do with value, it has to do with the least-skilled people either being paid enough to live on directly by their employers or indirectly by their employers.  They're going to be paid the minimum wage, whether there's a minimum wage or not.
A wage is simply a price.
As I said, people who don't understand economics shouldn't talk about it.  It makes no difference whether the employer pays by giving the employee a check or by giving the government additional taxes to make up for the increased welfare, Medicaid, etc. - the employer is paying the same (or more if the government gets involved in the money trail).

Walmart "saves" money by not providing medical insurance or enough wages for employees to buy insurance.  The government pays more for Medicaid and hospitals pay more for indigent care (a hospital can't turn you away, in most states, until it makes sure that you're stable - even if you have no insurance and no money). And many Walmart employees are on welfare and or collect food stamps.
Well, just a thought, but what does that say about welfare, food stamps, medicaid, and even mandatory medical care in hospitals?  Are these unquestionable givens that require a government mandated minimum wage?  I really don't know either way, but it seems short-sighted to assume that these factors are absolute necessities, especially in their current states.  Perhaps these other variables should be questioned as well.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Shiranu on August 03, 2013, 04:26:33 AM
QuoteWhy would the masses riot when they could simply evenly distribute their money? They could simply stop trying to get the most bang for their buck. They could stop shopping around for the best deals. They could stop trying to get more for less. That would show the 1%. It would also greatly decrease everybody's well being.

Holy fuck, it was like looking through a portal into some crazy alternate reality where having less money means you have more money!

*cue X-Files theme*

We have people who make less than minimum wage... you know what happens? The state has to pay for them, otherwise they wouldn't have the means to stay healthy enough to be productive.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 03, 2013, 03:25:37 PM
Quote from: "Jack89"Well, just a thought, but what does that say about welfare, food stamps, medicaid, and even mandatory medical care in hospitals?  Are these unquestionable givens that require a government mandated minimum wage?  I really don't know either way, but it seems short-sighted to assume that these factors are absolute necessities, especially in their current states.  Perhaps these other variables should be questioned as well.
No, they're not mandatory - if you don't mind if people die from starvation, exposure and curable illnesses.  But if that's the case why do we need civilization at all?  Only to assure that the 1% get richer?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Jack89 on August 03, 2013, 09:16:07 PM
Quote from: "Colanth"
Quote from: "Jack89"Well, just a thought, but what does that say about welfare, food stamps, medicaid, and even mandatory medical care in hospitals?  Are these unquestionable givens that require a government mandated minimum wage?  I really don't know either way, but it seems short-sighted to assume that these factors are absolute necessities, especially in their current states.  Perhaps these other variables should be questioned as well.
No, they're not mandatory - if you don't mind if people die from starvation, exposure and curable illnesses.  But if that's the case why do we need civilization at all?  Only to assure that the 1% get richer?
It was actually a serious question, the sarcasm wasn't necessary.  No matter, you answered my question.  By the way, I'm pretty sure civilization predates medicaid and food stamps.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: AllPurposeAtheist on August 04, 2013, 12:04:35 AM
I didn't see that a sarcasm. It snapped things back to reality instead of the OP's fixation on some warped Orwellian world'. Poverty is rich, the rich should be pittied and adored both equally.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 04, 2013, 09:55:58 PM
Quote from: "Jack89"By the way, I'm pretty sure civilization predates medicaid and food stamps.
Medicaid and food stamps are just formalized ways of caring for those in your group who aren't as fortunate as you are.  We were doing that in an informal way before we became human beings.  (Bonobos share.)  When the population gets to the point that there are more people on your block than there were in your clan 35,000 years ago, we need a formal way of doing it.  "I cooked too much, so you feed your family with it before it goes bad" doesn't work when the family that needs the food is 200 miles from you and you never heard of them.

So no, civilization doesn't predate what Medicaid and food stamps represent.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Jack89 on August 05, 2013, 12:30:08 AM
Quote from: "Colanth"
Quote from: "Jack89"By the way, I'm pretty sure civilization predates medicaid and food stamps.
Medicaid and food stamps are just formalized ways of caring for those in your group who aren't as fortunate as you are.  We were doing that in an informal way before we became human beings.  (Bonobos share.)  When the population gets to the point that there are more people on your block than there were in your clan 35,000 years ago, we need a formal way of doing it.  "I cooked too much, so you feed your family with it before it goes bad" doesn't work when the family that needs the food is 200 miles from you and you never heard of them.

So no, civilization doesn't predate what Medicaid and food stamps represent.
There is a big difference between voluntarily sharing and helping your fellow man, which is a good thing, and forcing other to do it, which is not.  But that's not what I was asking.  This thread is just a piece of the free market vs welfare state argument that never gets resolved.  I was questioning the justification for your argument, and you answered as I expected you would.  I was thinking you might consider that part of the problem lies, at least partially, with the other social welfare programs you mentioned besides minimum wage.  You implied that you wouldn't.  Fair enough.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 05, 2013, 01:51:01 AM
Quote from: "Jack89"There is a big difference between voluntarily sharing and helping your fellow man, which is a good thing, and forcing other to do it, which is not.
And the biggest difference is that once the population exceeds a certain point, voluntary assistance no longer works, so government gets invented.

A clan of 10 people doesn't need a government (and can't afford one).  A city of 3 million people needs a government to function.  And part of the job of that government (the major one, actually) is to replace those functions that the clan could perform without a government.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 05, 2013, 03:15:56 PM
Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Which is why although not a Libertarian anymore, I'm still libertarian.  Because as long as the government can arbitrarily decide which businesses will make it and which will not, there is no chance for a level playing field.  As Jmpty alluded too.
But the government can arbitrarily decide how much employers pay their employees?  In your example businesses demand a free lunch from the government and in my example voters demand a free lunch from the government.  

As Bastiat said, "the state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."

When businesses demand subsidies / bailouts they are trying to live at the expense of others.  When voters demand minimum wages they are trying to live at the expense of others.

Given that I'm not an anarcho-capitalist...I don't advocate throwing the baby out with the bath water.  As a pragmatarian, my argument is simply that taxpayers be allowed to choose where their taxes go.  So if you want other people to have a free lunch...then you're going to have to pay for it.  If you want to help bail out auto manufacturers...then you're going to have to give your taxes to whichever government organization is responsible for bailing out failing companies.  If you want employees to have more money...then you're going to have to give your taxes to whichever government organization is responsible for subsiding companies that pay a living wage.  

Resources cannot be efficiently allocated without individual valuation...and there is no individual valuation if you're spending money that you did not earn.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 05, 2013, 03:45:31 PM
Quote from: "Colanth"
Quote from: "Jack89"There is a big difference between voluntarily sharing and helping your fellow man, which is a good thing, and forcing other to do it, which is not.
And the biggest difference is that once the population exceeds a certain point, voluntary assistance no longer works, so government gets invented.

A clan of 10 people doesn't need a government (and can't afford one).  A city of 3 million people needs a government to function.  And part of the job of that government (the major one, actually) is to replace those functions that the clan could perform without a government.
Pseudo-atheists have a poor understanding of history.  Let me give you a hand...

QuoteOn the whole, then, we seem to be justified in inferring that in many parts of the world the king is the lineal successor of the old magician or medicine-man. When once a special class of sorcerers has been segregated from the community and entrusted by it with the discharge of duties on which the public safety and welfare are believed to depend, these men gradually rise to wealth and power, till their leaders blossom out into sacred kings. - James George Frazer
From kings to legislators...

QuoteApparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind; if so, let them show their titles to this superiority. - Frédéric Bastiat
What makes you a pseudo-atheist is that you simply replaced God with the state...

QuoteBut what if Nietzsche is right? What if God is dead? What happens to the person who is forced to recognize that the ordering presence of God is no longer real? What if God cannot be depended on to clean up the mess, even in some last resort sense? Who and/or what can ful?ll the surrogate parent role? Who and what is there beyond the individual that can meet the yearning for family-like protectiveness? Who and what will pick us up when and if we fall? Who and what can provide the predictability that God and his agency structures seemed to offer? - James M. Buchanan, Afraid to be free: Dependency as desideratum (//http://www.esi2.us.es/~mbilbao/pdffiles/buchanan.pdf)
QuoteIn short, persons are afraid to be free. As subsequent discussion will suggest, socialism, as a coherent ideology, has lost most of its appeal. But in a broader and more comprehensive historical perspective, during the course of two centuries, the state has replaced God as the father-mother of last resort, and persons will demand that this protectorate role be satis?ed and ampli?ed. - James M. Buchanan, Afraid to be free: Dependency as desideratum (//http://www.esi2.us.es/~mbilbao/pdffiles/buchanan.pdf)
You still want to put your life in the hands of some superior entity who knows what's best for you...

QuoteBut where Wicksell proceeded to examine the process of preference revelation, Samuelson provided a more general definition of the efficient solution. Preference revelation is disregarded as the model visualizes an omniscient referee to whom preferences are known. - Richard A. Musgrave
In a pragmatarian system, you would still be able to worship congress all you wanted.  Given that you believe them to be superior/omniscient...you would still be able to give them all your taxes/sacrifice.  Personally, I'm a nonbeliever.  I don't believe that congress knows my preferences better than I do.  Therefore, I would wish to allocate my taxes according to my preferences.  

Clearly I'm capable of tolerating your belief...so why are you incapable of tolerating my disbelief?  I accept the possibility that I might be wrong...is it really so difficult for you to accept the possibility that you might be wrong?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: LikelyToBreak on August 05, 2013, 04:32:42 PM
Xerographica wrote in part:
QuoteIn a pragmatarian system, you would still be able to worship congress all you wanted. Given that you believe them to be superior/omniscient...you would still be able to give them all your taxes/sacrifice. Personally, I'm a nonbeliever. I don't believe that congress knows my preferences better than I do. Therefore, I would wish to allocate my taxes according to my preferences.
Others may very well worship congress, but I don't.  Especially as I see them as being under the thumb of the richest 1%.  Who most definitely don't have my best interest at heart.  

As it seems you are a history buff, remember how the Romans used to feed the masses and occasionally forgave all debt?  This was to gain loyalty from the masses and to stop them from rioting.  I agree the current welfare system is terribly flawed, but something has to be done to help the bottom 10%.  Many of these people are sick or crippled.  And many of them would happily work, if they could find a job.  Or even start their own businesses if they knew how and had the capital to start it.  

Congress and the Executive branches of government have done little to keep jobs in this country or to try to make the U.S. competitive overseas.  Which means we have less jobs and a growing population looking to fill the jobs which are available.  They also allow the Federal Reserve to increase inflation making it harder for everyone else to make ends meet.  There is a dying middle class in the U.S.  This is something dictators prefer.  After all, it is usually the middle class which drives revolution.

Oh, and I am trying to understand your view.  Actually, I think I do as it sounds very much like a view I used to hold.  But, time and experience have modified my views.  I'm not a socialist, but I despise having different rules for the select and the masses.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Fidel_Castronaut on August 05, 2013, 05:10:45 PM
You keep saying pseudo-atheist like a fucking moron, you know that?

Atheism has nothing to do with political science. So pull that stick out of your ass.

My request to mods: merge all this joker's threads into one. All of them are carbon copies and he contributes literally nothing.

On ignore. I suggest everyone else does the same till he's left the building.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Plu on August 05, 2013, 05:17:54 PM
Quote from: "Colanth"
Quote from: "Jack89"There is a big difference between voluntarily sharing and helping your fellow man, which is a good thing, and forcing other to do it, which is not.
And the biggest difference is that once the population exceeds a certain point, voluntary assistance no longer works, so government gets invented.

A clan of 10 people doesn't need a government (and can't afford one).  A city of 3 million people needs a government to function.  And part of the job of that government (the major one, actually) is to replace those functions that the clan could perform without a government.

This. Share and care works for small groups, but fails terribly for big ones. People are simply unable to give much of a fuck about others once they reach a certain number of people they know. Anyone outside that range is irrelevant to them.

If share and care worked, there wouldn't be cities full of blocks worth of "bad neighbourhoods". Those things exist because even with government mandated care for the less fortunate and the option to go and help those people even more if you feel like it, we still can't give enough fucks to actually solve those problems.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 05, 2013, 05:28:57 PM
Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Others may very well worship congress, but I don't.  Especially as I see them as being under the thumb of the richest 1%.  Who most definitely don't have my best interest at heart.  
Show me how you spend your time/money and I'll show you who you worship.  My guess is that you give far more of your money/sacrifice to the 1% than you do to congress.  Of course, you have no idea whether this is true or not...given that you have no idea who exactly you're giving your money to when you're at the grocery store.  The large majority of the products and services we purchase do not have labels that indicate whether the producer is in the 1%...but chances are pretty good that they are.  They are in the 1% because we worship them.  We worship them because they give us the most value for our sacrifice.  

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"As it seems you are a history buff, remember how the Romans used to feed the masses and occasionally forgave all debt?  This was to gain loyalty from the masses and to stop them from rioting.
Yeah, just like how Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses.  Why revolt when you're assured eternal happiness in the next life?  

Why revolt when you can vote for a free lunch?

QuoteAgain, it may be objected that the poor are never invested with the sole power of making the laws; but I reply, that wherever universal suffrage has been established the majority of the community unquestionably exercises the legislative authority; and if it be proved that the poor always constitute the majority, it may be added, with perfect truth, that in the countries in which they possess the elective franchise they possess the sole power of making laws. But it is certain that in all the nations of the world the greater number has always consisted of those persons who hold no property, or of those whose property is insufficient to exempt them from the necessity of working in order to procure an easy subsistence. Universal suffrage does therefore, in point of fact, invest the poor with the government of society. - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (//http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/tocqueville/alexis/democracy/index.html)
Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"I agree the current welfare system is terribly flawed, but something has to be done to help the bottom 10%.  Many of these people are sick or crippled.  And many of them would happily work, if they could find a job.  Or even start their own businesses if they knew how and had the capital to start it.
Efficiently allocating resources creates jobs/wealth while inefficiently allocate resources destroys jobs/wealth.

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Congress and the Executive branches of government have done little to keep jobs in this country or to try to make the U.S. competitive overseas.  Which means we have less jobs and a growing population looking to fill the jobs which are available.  They also allow the Federal Reserve to increase inflation making it harder for everyone else to make ends meet.  There is a dying middle class in the U.S.  This is something dictators prefer.  After all, it is usually the middle class which drives revolution.
In the 50s and 60s unions were at the height of their power.  They drove wages so high that manufacturers moved their factories overseas.  Why?  Because they wanted cheap labor.  Cheaper labor meant greater profits.  They opened up their factories in Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong.  Why not in China and North Korea?  Because they were planned/command economies...just like our public sector.  

Obviously, as we already established, wages were cheap in the four countries that I mentioned.  Are the wages still cheap now?  

In 1978...Deng Xiaoping replaced Chairman Mao.  He gradually opened China up to foreign investment.  But it wasn't just American businessmen looking for cheaper labor and higher profits...it was now also South Korean businessmen...and businessmen from those other countries that had opened up their economies.  They opened up factories in China because wages in China were cheaper than the wages in their respective countries.  

And are the wages in China still cheap?  

QuoteRising wages in emerging markets and higher shipping costs are also closing the cost gap between developing markets and the United States. - Scott Malone and Ernest Scheyder   Outsourcing Losing Its Allure As China Costs Soar (//http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/24/outsourcing-losing-its-al_n_1698178.html)
If you really want to screw the poor...just replace allocative efficiency with altruism.  Take money from the people using society's limited resources for all our benefit...and give it directly to the poor.  Ignore the fact that some unknown percentage of people are poor because they waste their resources.  

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Oh, and I am trying to understand your view.  Actually, I think I do as it sounds very much like a view I used to hold.  But, time and experience have modified my views.  I'm not a socialist, but I despise having different rules for the select and the masses.
I also despise having different rules for the select and the masses...but I also despise the view that people are equally effective at using society's limited resources.  It's a good thing that the two views are not mutually exclusive.  

I'm against subsidies and bailouts just as much as I'm against minimum wages.  I'm against giving businesses free lunches just as much as I'm against giving voters free lunches.  

As Bastiat said, "the state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."

But, unlike libertarians and anarcho-capitalists who either want to severely reduce or eliminate the public sector...I don't believe it's necessary to throw the baby out with the bath water.  All that's needed is to allow taxpayers to use their taxes to indicate what parts of the government are worth saving and what parts need to be thrown out.  The least beneficial government organizations would lose funding and the most beneficial government organizations would gain funding.

If you want to truly raise the standard of living for everybody, you have to recognize that some people are better at using society's limited resources than others.  By far and large, employers are better at using society's limited resources than employees.  Therefore, eliminating the minimum wage and allowing taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes will give more influence to employers, and as a result, they'll do better things with society's limited resources and the standard of living will improve for everybody.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Jmpty on August 05, 2013, 05:44:39 PM
Ignore.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Hijiri Byakuren on August 05, 2013, 05:56:02 PM
Quote from: "Jmpty"Ignore.
Same here.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 05, 2013, 06:28:25 PM
Quote from: "Jmpty"Ignore.
LOL.  I guess you could have just not replied to the thread...but then I suppose I wouldn't have known that you were ignoring it.  If you hadn't replied to the thread then my feelings wouldn't have been hurt...but now my feelings are hurt.  Your mission has been accomplished.  :)  I mean... :(

Here's a deal, rather than only replying to threads that match our preferences and ignoring the rest, we should also reply to threads that don't match our preferences and say "this topic does not match my preferences".  

Kinda like how facebook should also have a "dislike" button.  Youtube has one.  

In fact, maybe on facebook we should be able to unfriend people that we aren't even friends with!  That would show them!

Also, at bars and clubs, we should walk around rejecting people who haven't even shown the slightest interest in us!  

And employers can go around firing people who don't even work for them!  LOL...too much fun.  You should ignore me more often.  :)  I mean :(
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 05, 2013, 06:50:59 PM
Quote from: "Fidel_Castronaut"You keep saying pseudo-atheist like a fucking moron, you know that?

Atheism has nothing to do with political science. So pull that stick out of your ass.
So Buchanan, the Nobel Prize winning economist, had no idea what he was talking about when he said that the state had replaced God?  

Richard Musgrave, a highly respected public finance economist, had no idea what he was talking about when he said that our current system is based on the assumption that congresspeople are omniscient?

Quote from: "Fidel_Castronaut"My request to mods: merge all this joker's threads into one. All of them are carbon copies and he contributes literally nothing.

On ignore. I suggest everyone else does the same till he's left the building.
Yeah, people should be free to boycott me...but taxpayers shouldn't be free to boycott specific government organizations?  

Even some liberals aren't that stupid...Velazquez: Funding war should be taxpayers' choice (//http://thevillager.com/villager_221/velazquezfundingwar.html).
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: LikelyToBreak on August 05, 2013, 11:22:43 PM
Xerographica wrote in part:
QuoteShow me how you spend your time/money and I'll show you who you worship. My guess is that you give far more of your money/sacrifice to the 1% than you do to congress.
Gotta eat dude.  I'm not against people doing better than me.  In fact, I'm all for it.  What I am trying to get across, is that it is not a fair playing field and if it was many of those 1% er's would be replaced.  Right now we have hierarchical government under a different guise.  Yes, there are a few who break into the upper ranks, who do deserve to be there, but most are born into the position.  Then they manipulate government to stay there and keep others down.

In China the working conditions are terrible.  People are working 16 hour days 7 days a week for a little more than subsistence.  Is that what you would have for us and the rest of the world.  Screw that!  I don't want to be a slave in anyway.  

Xerographica wrote in part:
QuoteLikelyToBreak wrote:
"As it seems you are a history buff, remember how the Romans used to feed the masses and occasionally forgave all debt? This was to gain loyalty from the masses and to stop them from rioting."

Yeah, just like how Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses. Why revolt when you're assured eternal happiness in the next life?

Why revolt when you can vote for a free lunch?
I'm sorry, but you completely lost me here.  What does the pagan Rome have to do with eternal happiness an Marx?  What I was trying to get across is, that the government and the ruling elite have to appease the masses or the whole system breaks down.

Xerographica wrote in part:
QuoteBut, unlike libertarians and anarcho-capitalists who either want to severely reduce or eliminate the public sector...I don't believe it's necessary to throw the baby out with the bath water. All that's needed is to allow taxpayers to use their taxes to indicate what parts of the government are worth saving and what parts need to be thrown out. The least beneficial government organizations would lose funding and the most beneficial government organizations would gain funding.

If you want to truly raise the standard of living for everybody, you have to recognize that some people are better at using society's limited resources than others. By far and large, employers are better at using society's limited resources than employees. Therefore, eliminating the minimum wage and allowing taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes will give more influence to employers, and as a result, they'll do better things with society's limited resources and the standard of living will improve for everybody.
This makes no sense.  First you say the masses should decide how to spend the money, then you say they don't know how.  I already conceded that some people are better able to use resources than others.  But, allowing an electorate, many of who don't even know who their congressman is, to decide how to spend the money, just doesn't make sense.  We are supposed to have a representative republic, but many people don't even understand that.  The idea being, some people can spend the time and effort to figure out the best uses of governmental resources.  Your idea turns the country into a democracy.  If I am right in what I am reading, then I find it illogical.

Xerographica. Just to see if you are paying attention, you do realize that the top 1% control like 85% of the money don't you?  

Another question, do you (Xerographica) have plans for any other changes besides eliminating the minimum wage and allowing the masses to vote on government spending?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 06, 2013, 12:20:47 AM
Quote from: "Xerographica"What makes you a pseudo-atheist is that you simply replaced God with the state...
When you have no argument ...

Read my posts (any of them, anywhere on AF or Usenet) to see whether I've ever replaced God with the State.  (I'm not pro-state, I'm pro-people.  If the State is needed to assure that people survive, so be it.)

QuoteClearly I'm capable of tolerating your belief...so why are you incapable of tolerating my disbelief?
We're not talking about beliefs, we're talking about knowledge of economics, which is fact, and you don't get to make up your own facts.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 06, 2013, 12:24:35 AM
Quote from: "Xerographica"Show me how you spend your time/money and I'll show you who you worship.
So Bill and Melinda Gates worship the poor?

Bri has a few graphics for you.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 06, 2013, 12:33:48 AM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Fidel_Castronaut"You keep saying pseudo-atheist like a fucking moron, you know that?

Atheism has nothing to do with political science. So pull that stick out of your ass.
So Buchanan, the Nobel Prize winning economist, had no idea what he was talking about when he said that the state had replaced God?
No more than someone who said that all Americans are Episcopalians.  (Or don't you understand that?)  

QuoteRichard Musgrave, a highly respected public finance economist, had no idea what he was talking about when he said that our current system is based on the assumption that congresspeople are omniscient?
//https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Achyperbole&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

QuoteYeah, people should be free to boycott me...but taxpayers shouldn't be free to boycott specific government organizations?
Specific ones?  No.  If you want to opt out of financing the government, you also opt out of receiving any benefit that you'd get by having a government.  (Like not being cheated, sold bad food, drinking polluted water or breathing polluted air, not being invaded by a foreign army, etc., etc.)

Alternatively, you can opt out of paying for certain programs, but the government can opt out of providing you with the benefits you receive from other programs that suffer because their funds have to be cut to pay for the funds you aren't paying.

Can you just opt out with no penalty?  TNSTAAFL.

QuoteEven some liberals aren't that stupid...Velazquez: Funding war should be taxpayers' choice (//http://thevillager.com/villager_221/velazquezfundingwar.html).
You mean he isn't that intelligent.  Even ants know that if individuals can "opt out of war", the whole clan dies.

Tell you what - when you graduate high school (I don't care if you have a diploma - when you actually learn what a high school graduate should understand), let me know and I'll think about taking you seriously.  Right now, every post of yours screams "I really don't understand anything I'm talking about, but I want to keep posting".
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Fidel_Castronaut on August 06, 2013, 03:00:08 AM
Quote from: "Colanth"Right now, every post of yours screams "I really don't understand anything I'm talking about, but I want to keep posting".

Yeah that's all this joker is good for. There's always someone who is extremely selfish and screams 'I don't like government! Everyone should hate government like me!' Whilst they post from a country that probably is extremely stable and relatively safe thanks to government infrastructure.

On almost every forum there's always one, although technically this guy isn't a member as he just comes here to spam the same shit in every thread he starts.

Whate a boring, tedious individual. The 'market' says he should be hung drawn and quartered. None of his ideas are new, but all of them are tripe. He knows a lot of books, but he hasn't read any of them. yet he still insists on trying to lecture people who know better how the world works. We had a word for people like that at Trinity, "a cunt".
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 06, 2013, 07:08:50 AM
Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Gotta eat dude.  I'm not against people doing better than me.  In fact, I'm all for it.  What I am trying to get across, is that it is not a fair playing field and if it was many of those 1% er's would be replaced.  Right now we have hierarchical government under a different guise.  Yes, there are a few who break into the upper ranks, who do deserve to be there, but most are born into the position.  Then they manipulate government to stay there and keep others down.
I totally agree with the following passage...

QuoteTheir resources can be used in two ways:investment in capital goods that can be used to produce a product for sale in competitive markets, or investment in lobbying and bribing politicians and in trying to develop legislation that will protect firms from competition or provide them with a share of the public budget.  Under a large government, "political investment" can become relatively more profitable than "market investment," and a shift in investment from the market to the political arena should be expected.  In private competitive markets, a firm must appeal to buyers to enter mutually beneficial trades: in political markets it can enlist the power of the state to force people to give up part of their income for the firm's benefit. - Richard B. McKenzie, Bound to Be Free (//http://books.google.com/books?id=dHI2I5m0sZ0C)
But as I've tried, and failed, to explain...pragmatarianism would solve the problem of "concentrated benefits and dispersed costs".  

Farm subsidies are an example of a concentrated benefit and a dispersed cost.  What would happen to farm subsidies though if taxpayers could choose where their taxes go?  You still gotta eat...so you'd still give your money to farmers...but would farmers still bother with lobbyists and congresspeople?  Maybe?  But they could also give their taxes directly to the Dept of Agriculture.  The question is...how many other people would give their taxes to the Dept of Agriculture?  Clearly there's a threshold where if too few taxpayers gave their taxes to the Ag Dept...then society would debate whether or not the Ag Dept qualified as a truly "public" good.  Do you know what I mean?  The more concentrated the benefit...the stronger the argument for the good being private rather than public.  

It's the same exact concept with war...

QuoteThere are multitudes with an interest in peace, but they have no lobby to match those of the 'special interests' that may on occasion have an interest in war. - Mancur Olson
There will always be people who stand to benefit from war.  But my theory is that only a very small percentage of any society would choose to pay for offensive wars.  As such, if too few taxpayers were willing to support a war, then the war could not truly be considered a "public" good.  

With WWII...many voters supported the war.  Why not?  Just like voters now...why not accept a lunch that somebody else has to pay for...

QuoteAs was noted in Chapter 3, expressions of malice and/or envy no less than expressions of altruism are cheaper in the voting booth than in the market.  A German voter who in 1933 cast a ballot for Hitler was able to indulge his antisemitic sentiments at much less cost than she would have borne by organizing a pogrom. - Geoffrey Brennan, Loren Lomasky, Democracy and Decision (//http://books.google.com/books?id=I3mal2inJQgC)
But who had to bear the cost?  Taxpayers.  And who were the taxpayers?

QuoteBy the way, during Germany's Weimar Republic, Jews were only 1 percent of the German population, but they were 10 percent of the country's doctors and dentists, 17 percent of its lawyers, and a large percentage of its scientific community. - Walter E. Williams, Diversity, Ignorance, and Stupidity (//http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/diversity-ignorance-and-stupidity)
Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"In China the working conditions are terrible.  People are working 16 hour days 7 days a week for a little more than subsistence.  Is that what you would have for us and the rest of the world.  Screw that!  I don't want to be a slave in anyway.
When I lived in China I didn't see any slaves.  I saw more and more fat people in nice, if not a bit outdated, clothes talking on cell phones that were newer models than we had over here.  Not that I didn't see poverty...but I didn't see 30-40 million people starving to death as a result of the famine that Mao Zedong caused by his allocation of the country's resources.  

If you want what's best for a country...it really helps to understand what truly helps raise the standard of living.  As I've said before, progress depends on efficiently allocating resources...which depends on giving people the freedom to choose how they spend their time/money.  

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"I'm sorry, but you completely lost me here.  What does the pagan Rome have to do with eternal happiness an Marx?  What I was trying to get across is, that the government and the ruling elite have to appease the masses or the whole system breaks down.
Marx's argument was that the rulers pushed religion on the peasants so that they wouldn't revolt.  

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"This makes no sense.  First you say the masses should decide how to spend the money, then you say they don't know how.  I already conceded that some people are better able to use resources than others.  But, allowing an electorate, many of who don't even know who their congressman is, to decide how to spend the money, just doesn't make sense.  We are supposed to have a representative republic, but many people don't even understand that.  The idea being, some people can spend the time and effort to figure out the best uses of governmental resources.  Your idea turns the country into a democracy.  If I am right in what I am reading, then I find it illogical.
Everybody has ideas...markets give us the freedom to spend our time/money on the ones we value most.  When you, I, and millions of other people...all agree that the same exact idea is "good"...then we give our money to the people responsible...which increases their influence over how society's resources are used.  So their influence is directly tied to our benefit.  If our benefit diminishes...then so will their influence.    

In essence, allowing people to say "no thanks" is a fail safe device that does not exist in the public sector.  Without it, resources can really really be misallocated...as was seen in Germany with Hitler and China with Mao.  

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Xerographica. Just to see if you are paying attention, you do realize that the top 1% control like 85% of the money don't you?
Of course, they have that influence because we indicated, with our dollars, our sacrifice, that we benefit from how they are using society's limited resources.  As such, I'm almost entirely certain that WWII never would have occurred if pragmatarianism had been implemented.  Please reread Williams' passage.

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Another question, do you (Xerographica) have plans for any other changes besides eliminating the minimum wage and allowing the masses to vote on government spending?
Uh, plans?  Heh...you make it sound like I'm running for office.  I'm a pragmatarian...which is all about ceteris paribus (all other things being equal).  So there's pragmatarianism...and then there are my own personal views and preferences.  

In terms of the logistics of tax choice...taxpayers would be able to pay their taxes at anytime throughout the year.  You could go directly to the EPA website and make a payment.  They'd give you a receipt and you'd submit all your receipts to the IRS by April 15.  Anybody who didn't want to shop for themselves would still have the option to give their taxes to congress.  

Personally, I don't see any reason why taxpayers shouldn't be allowed to give their taxes to specific congresspeople.  Plus, rather than limiting the "menu" to only our country's government organizations....I'm leaning towards the idea that taxpayers should be free to order from any country's menu.  For example, if you're an environmentalist, then you should have the option to give your taxes to Brazil's EPA in order to help conserve the rain rain forest.  If you think their EPA gives you more conservation/value for your tax dollar than our EPA...then maybe you know something that I don't.  Markets create the most value because individuals are allowed to spend their money on whatever it is they value most.    

Kinda along the same lines...I believe voters should have the freedom to sell their votes...and the age restriction should be eliminated (universal suffrage).  I'm also against preventing business owners from discriminating for any reason.  Just like you should have the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot, business owners should have the freedom to arbitrarily limit their customer base and labor supply.  But, just like my support for abolishing the minimum wage, these are my personal views...and are separate and distinct from pragmatarianism.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Atheon on August 06, 2013, 07:30:55 AM
Anyone who disagrees with minimum wage should be forced to experience working for next to nothing, yet still have to pay rent, buy food, get to and from work, etc.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Plu on August 06, 2013, 07:31:04 AM
QuotePersonally, I don't see any reason

Well, you got that part right  :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 06, 2013, 07:43:12 AM
Quote from: "Colanth"No more than someone who said that all Americans are Episcopalians.  (Or don't you understand that?)
Who's "someone"?  Were they a Nobel Prize winning economist?

Quote from: "Colanth"
QuoteRichard Musgrave, a highly respected public finance economist, had no idea what he was talking about when he said that our current system is based on the assumption that congresspeople are omniscient?
//https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Achyperbole&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
What was "hyperbolic" about Musgrave's statement?  Before you answer that, why not first learn something about public finance?  If you truly want to defeat my argument...then you'll have to actually understand it first.  So go ahead and google the preference revelation problem.  

Quote from: "Colanth"Specific ones?  No.  If you want to opt out of financing the government, you also opt out of receiving any benefit that you'd get by having a government.  (Like not being cheated, sold bad food, drinking polluted water or breathing polluted air, not being invaded by a foreign army, etc., etc.)
Thanks for sharing that argument.  Next time I run across an anarcho-capitalist I'll be sure to share it with him.  Can you give me your e-mail address so that I can share it with him?  Better yet, why not start a thread where you critique anarcho-capitalism and then I'll share the link with him?  

Uh, by the way, I'm a pragmatarian.  Maybe eventually you'll figure out the difference between myself and an anarcho-capitalist.  I'm not gonna hold my breath though.  

Quote from: "Colanth"You mean he isn't that intelligent.  Even ants know that if individuals can "opt out of war", the whole clan dies.
If you'd read the article, then you would have known that opting out of war doesn't mean opting out of taxes.  And if you were smarter than an ant you'd know that war doesn't necessarily mean peace...

QuoteA second point of broad consensus among critics stresses that publicness in consumption must not necessarily mean that all persons value a good's utility equally, Mendez (1999), for example, illustrates this point by examining peace as a PG. Some policy-makers might opt for increased defense spending in order to safeguard peace. However, this decision could siphon off scarce resources from programmes in the areas of health and education. Other policy-makers might object to such a consequence and prefer to foster peace through just the opposite measure -- improved health and education for all. Especially under conditions of extreme disparity and inequity, the first strategy could indeed provoke even more conflict and unrest, securing national borders by unsettling people's lives. - Inge Kaul, Public Goods: Taking the Concept to the 21st Century (//http://www.yorku.ca/drache/talks/pdf/apd_kaulfin.pdf)
Quote from: "Colanth"Tell you what - when you graduate high school (I don't care if you have a diploma - when you actually learn what a high school graduate should understand), let me know and I'll think about taking you seriously.  Right now, every post of yours screams "I really don't understand anything I'm talking about, but I want to keep posting".
You're welcome not to take me seriously...but that's why I share a lot of passages from people who should be taken seriously.  The fact that you don't know that they should be taken seriously is proof positive that your critiques do not reflect what serious thinkers know.  No surprise there...

QuoteIt is easy to believe; doubting is more difficult. Experience and knowledge and thinking are necessary before we can doubt and question intelligently.  Tell a child that Santa Claus comes down the chimney or a savage that thunder is the anger of the gods and the child and the savage will accept your statements until they acquire sufficient knowledge to cause them to demur.  Millions in India passionately believe that the waters of the Ganges are holy, that snakes are deities in disguise, that it is as wrong to kill a cow as it is to kill a person - and, as for eating roast beef...that is no more to be thought of than cannibalism.  They accept these absurdities, not because they have been proved, but because the suggestion has been deeply embedded in their minds, and they have not the intelligence, the knowledge, the experience, necessary to question them.
We smile...the poor benighted creatures!  Yet you and I, if we examine the facts closely, will discover that the majority of our opinions, our most cherished beliefs, our creeds, the principles of conduct on which many of us base our very lives, are the result of suggestion, not reasoning...
Prejudiced, biased, and reiterated assertions, not logic, have formulated our beliefs. - Dale Carnegie
Right now you accept an absurdity...that congresspeople are omniscient.  Except, you don't realize that you accept an absurdity because you haven't seriously studied the topic.  Why should you?  You're not a public finance economist.  Then again, neither am I.  However,  I have studied the topic because I find the topic fascinating.  

You're not going to spend any time doing any relevant reading.  Why should you?  It's far easier to believe that I'm just some nut case.  Because, what are the chances that I'm right and most everybody else is wrong?  Pretty slim...right?  Well...that's how it goes...

QuoteOur creed is that the science of government is an experimental science, and that, like all other experimental sciences, it is generally in a state of progression. No man is so obstinate an admirer of the old times as to deny that medicine, surgery, botany, chemistry, engineering, navigation, are better understood now than in any former age. We conceive that it is the same with political science. Like those physical sciences which we have mentioned, it has always been working itself clearer and clearer, and depositing impurity after impurity. There was a time when the most powerful of human intellects were deluded by the gibberish of the astrologer and the alchemist; and just so there was a time when the most enlightened and virtuous statesman thought it the first duty of a government to persecute heretics, to found monasteries, to make war on Saracens. But time advances; facts accumulate; doubts arise. Faint glimpses of truth begin to appear, and shine more and more unto the perfect day. The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and reflect the dawn. They are bright, while the level below is still in darkness. But soon the light, which at first illuminated only the loftiest eminences, descends on the plain and penetrates to the deepest valley. First come hints, then fragments of systems, then defective systems, then complete and harmonious systems. The sound opinion, held for a time by one bold speculator, becomes the opinion of a small minority, of a strong minority, of a majority of mankind. Thus the great progress goes on, till schoolboys laugh at the jargon which imposed on Bacon, till country rectors condemn the illiberality and intolerance of Sir Thomas More. - Thomas Macaulay
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Plu on August 06, 2013, 08:05:54 AM
QuoteBecause, what are the chances that I'm right and most everybody else is wrong?

We've long figured out it's 0%. You don't actually have any interesting revelations, because if you did you
A) would not be posting on some backwater forum, but have an actual name in the scientific community
B) be able to rebut even the most basic counter arguments against your position
C) not keep posting wordpasta every few months without ever bringing anything new to the table
D) be living in some african country in the middle of a civil war, because that's the kind of civilization you're arguing for

(But you don't even understand that D) is the most likely outcome of your "solution" to civilization's problems, which is why we know the odds of you being right is 0%. Cue some stupid response about "why don't you give me all your money then?" right about..... now)
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 06, 2013, 08:29:11 AM
Quote from: "Plu"
QuoteBecause, what are the chances that I'm right and most everybody else is wrong?

We've long figured out it's 0%. You don't actually have any interesting revelations, because if you did you
A) would not be posting on some backwater forum, but have an actual name in the scientific community
What's the difference between my argument and Buchanan's?  What's the difference between my argument and Le Grand's?  

Quote from: "Plu"B) be able to rebut even the most basic counter arguments against your position
If you haven't studied public finance...then how would you know whether or not I've rebutted your counter arguments?  

Quote from: "Plu"C) not keep posting wordpasta every few months without ever bringing anything new to the table
Yet, here you are, just like clockwork.  

Quote from: "Plu"D) be living in some african country in the middle of a civil war, because that's the kind of civilization you're arguing for
If I thought that a civil war truly matched the preferences of American taxpayers...then I wouldn't support giving them the freedom to choose where their taxes go.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Plu on August 06, 2013, 09:03:49 AM
QuoteWhat's the difference between my argument and Buchanan's? What's the difference between my argument and Le Grand's?

Yours is stupid.

QuoteIf you haven't studied public finance...then how would you know whether or not I've rebutted your counter arguments?

A better question, perhaps... if I haven't studied public finance, how would I even know how to spend my own money? What makes you think I'm qualified to determine how much of my money a hospital needs in order to run properly?

QuoteYet, here you are, just like clockwork.

I'm bored and exhausted. Posting in non-sensical topics is good in such cases.

QuoteIf I thought that a civil war truly matched the preferences of American taxpayers...then I wouldn't support giving them the freedom to choose where their taxes go.

Ah, so people being able to choose where their taxes go is only important as long as they put them towards things you personally consider important? Why, who would have thought your entire argument was only about "I don't like when money goes to places that I don't want any money to go to"

If the people want a civil war, who are you to deny them one? Isn't that what your whole argument is about? People being able to choose?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Bibliofagus on August 06, 2013, 10:50:04 AM
Plu nailed it. This guy doesn't care at all about consequenses for people.
He is just butthurt about the fact that some taxes are being spent on stuff he thinks have no benefit for him.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: LikelyToBreak on August 06, 2013, 12:31:45 PM
Xerographica wrote in part:
QuoteUh, plans? Heh...you make it sound like I'm running for office. I'm a pragmatarian...which is all about ceteris paribus (all other things being equal). So there's pragmatarianism...and then there are my own personal views and preferences.
I think this indicates why we cannot endorse your ideas.  The market, and society in general doesn't work as you seem to think it should.  You need to expand your thinking to encompass the whole, rather than just the parts.  Consider the doctor who states, "The operation was a success.  Unfortunately, the patient died."

I did a little looking into pragmatarianism and it just doesn't look very pragmatic to me.  Way to narrow minded.  It also does not take into account how people really are.  Ask any salesperson and they will tell you, people don't buy what they need, they buy what they want.  Which is why you see so many Corvettes on the road.  You have not convinced me that pragmatarnism would work in running a small general store, let alone the whole damn country.

Consider what Xerographica quoted and wrote here:
QuoteLikelyToBreak wrote:
Xerographica. Just to see if you are paying attention, you do realize that the top 1% control like 85% of the money don't you?

Xerographica answered:
"Of course, they have that influence because we indicated, with our dollars, our sacrifice, that we benefit from how they are using society's limited resources. As such, I'm almost entirely certain that WWII never would have occurred if pragmatarianism had been implemented. Please reread Williams' passage."
So how would getting rid of the minimum wage change anything.  The bottom 10%, hell the bottom 50% can do little to nothing to cause or stop inflation.  And the top 1% can use it to take even more money from those with less to "vote" with.  Yes, if the people of the world could have voted against WWII under pragmatarianism, it would never have happened.  Because there would be no need to try to expand any country's borders.  Enough people would have starved to death to make it not worth the bother.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 06, 2013, 02:29:29 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"But as I've tried, and failed, to explain...pragmatarianism would solve the problem of "concentrated benefits and dispersed costs".  

Farm subsidies are an example of a concentrated benefit and a dispersed cost.  What would happen to farm subsidies though if taxpayers could choose where their taxes go?  You still gotta eat...so you'd still give your money to farmers
Bad example, since almost all farm subsidies go to large agribusiness.  (You DO understand how they're insulated from the problem subsidies are supposed to solve, right?)

But if we were a nation of family farmers, and there were no subsidies, there would be no farmers.  No one throws money into a hole in the ground, year after year, with a negative return.  Either you can't pay off this year's seed loan, or you can't pay your real estate taxes, and you're no longer a farmer.

What do you eat when the last farm is taken over by the bank?  What you grow in your own kitchen garden?

(Why doesn't anyone heed Santayana?  It was only 80 years ago.)

I will grant you this - farm subsidies are NO LONGER needed (for the most part) - to keep farms in existence.  But if they ceased tomorrow, the cost of food would skyrocket.  And the poor would starve.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 06, 2013, 02:50:19 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Colanth"No more than someone who said that all Americans are Episcopalians.  (Or don't you understand that?)
Who's "someone"?  Were they a Nobel Prize winning economist?
"Nobel prize winning" != "is never wrong".  George Reisman, for example, is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Pepperdine, and well-respected in economics circles.  And a proponent of a particularly stupid economic fallacy.  (Not according to me, according to Thomas Sowell and John Kenneth Galbraith.)  Even Friedman, a Nobel Prize winner, clings to the nonsense.

Sorry, but "Nobel Prize winning" doesn't convey some "higher than thou about everything" status.

Quote
Quote from: "Colanth"
QuoteRichard Musgrave, a highly respected public finance economist, had no idea what he was talking about when he said that our current system is based on the assumption that congresspeople are omniscient?
//https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Achyperbole&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
What was "hyperbolic" about Musgrave's statement?
His statement.  Intelligent people don't think that most congresspeople are particularly knowledgeable.

QuoteBefore you answer that, why not first learn something about public finance?
Says someone whose only understanding of economics seems to be having read a few quotes?

QuoteIf you truly want to defeat my argument...then you'll have to actually understand it first.  So go ahead and google the preference revelation problem.
Not everyone believes that Congress is omniscient - or even very intelligent.

Our current system is based on the fact that it takes enormous sums to get elected at the national level, and only the wealthy have enough money to finance campaigns.  (And yes, that's pretty much a tautology.)  Whether the common man believes that congress is omniscient, or that congress is a bunch of buffoons, doesn't change who holds the purse strings.  Or which way the beneficiaries of that purse will vote.

QuoteUh, by the way, I'm a pragmatarian.
A non-pragmatic pragmatarian?  Quite a funny creature.

Quote
Quote from: "Colanth"You mean he isn't that intelligent.  Even ants know that if individuals can "opt out of war", the whole clan dies.
If you'd read the article, then you would have known that opting out of war doesn't mean opting out of taxes.
If there's no armed force - for whatever reason - any nation is free to march in.  See what happens when all you know is what you read?

QuoteYou're welcome not to take me seriously...but that's why I share a lot of passages from people who should be taken seriously.  The fact that you don't know that they should be taken seriously is proof positive that your critiques do not reflect what serious thinkers know.
Or that the people you think should be taken seriously shouldn't be.  You probably even believe that you should be.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 06, 2013, 02:55:40 PM
Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"The bottom 10%, hell the bottom 50% can do little to nothing to cause or stop inflation.
Neither can the top 1%.  Capitalism is based on inflation.  If you want to stop inflation you have to stop Capitalism.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: surly74 on August 06, 2013, 03:04:12 PM
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"Every adult could have a base income of, say, $10,000 a year tax free; and no minimum wage. Employers would provide wages based on the usual considerations, like 'will people qualified to do this job do it for this much money?' Note that with this guaranteed income, you could have an income of $20,000 a year with a job that pays less than 5.00 an hour.

no you can't.

and in your example. to make 20,000 a year in a 40/hr work week that is $9.61 and hour. That's working 52 weeks. it's impossible to pay someone $5 an hour and have them make 20k a year. They would have to work almost 80 hours a week.

If we are going to throw out scenarios lets make them realistic.

but at least in Canada. My first 11K is taxed at 0 percent. If I make minimum wage then it's going to take me longer to get to that point then if I make say $25/hour.

Does the US have personal tax exemptions?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: The Skeletal Atheist on August 06, 2013, 03:31:44 PM
Just as an aside, the minimum wage in 1967 would've been around $10 in today's money:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-2 ... e-day.html (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-28/minimum-wage-in-u-s-fails-to-beat-inflation-chart-of-the-day.html)

And if minimum wage was tied to productivity it would be around $17 (that's with a conservative estimate of productivity):
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cep ... mic-growth (http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/the-minimum-wage-and-economic-growth)
(note footnote #1).

But yeah, whatever. We're paying these people too much! Lazy fucks! Working 60+ hours a week, having different positions get counted as different "jobs" so the employer doesn't have to pay their benefits, and getting paid barely enough to survive? Who the hell do they think they are?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 06, 2013, 05:05:09 PM
Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"I think this indicates why we cannot endorse your ideas.  The market, and society in general doesn't work as you seem to think it should.  You need to expand your thinking to encompass the whole, rather than just the parts.  Consider the doctor who states, "The operation was a success.  Unfortunately, the patient died."
My ideas are wrong, therefore you're choosing NOT to give me your limited time/money.  Therefore, my influence over how society's limited resources are used does not exceed the benefit I provide for others.  Yes, this is exactly how the market does NOT work.

You lack enough awareness to even grasp how my argument applies to this very situation of my sharing an idea on these forums.  This is you, choosing not to buy a ticket, for this crazy train.  And this has absolutely no significance or consequences?  

This is me, randomly knocking on your door, trying to sell you a product that you don't think will benefit you...therefore you say "no thanks".   Uh, what?  Obviously you value the very product that I'm trying to sell you.  If you didn't, then your response would have been, "let me buy it even though it really really does not match my preferences".  

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"I did a little looking into pragmatarianism and it just doesn't look very pragmatic to me.  Way to narrow minded.
Markets work because they integrate infinitely more information than command economies.  You simply take this information (your preferences, circumstances) for granted when you decide to purchase...or forego....a product/service.  And it's impossible for you to imagine the total amount of information which goes into determining how markets allocate resources.  So there's nothing narrow minded about allowing the supply of public goods to be determined by everything that's on the minds of millions.  

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"It also does not take into account how people really are.  Ask any salesperson and they will tell you, people don't buy what they need, they buy what they want.  Which is why you see so many Corvettes on the road.
So you don't know what you "need"...but congresspeople do?  How does it follow that somebody you've never even met knows what you "need"?  

Right now you have the wrong priorities...true or false?  Markets work because you're free to have the wrong priorities...and others are free to disagree with your priorities.  But if they value how you are using society's limited resources...if your use of society's limited resources match their priorities...then they'll give you their positive feedback.    

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"You have not convinced me that pragmatarnism would work in running a small general store, let alone the whole damn country.
Uh, what?  Why would I try and convince you that pragmatarianism would work in running a small general store?  So consumers would decide how Bob, the owner of the general store, allocates his revenue?  They'd buy some products...and then indicate how they want Bob to spend that money?  "Please spend this money on advertisement please".

Markets work because Bob makes educated guesses about the priorities/preferences of others.  If the products he puts on his shelves really do not match their preferences...then they won't give him their positive feedback...his influence over how society's limited resources are used won't increase...and he'll go out of business.  And this will be a net positive for society because the resources will be shifted from Bob to the business owners who have correctly guessed what the priorities/preferences of others are.  

In other words, in markets, it's demand that determines the supply.  The people who correctly guess what consumers are willing to pay for...stay in business and gain influence over how society's limited resources are used.  

In the public sector...there's just as much guessing going on...but there's no accurate feedback (shopping) to indicate whose guesses are the most accurate.  

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"So how would getting rid of the minimum wage change anything.  The bottom 10%, hell the bottom 50% can do little to nothing to cause or stop inflation.  And the top 1% can use it to take even more money from those with less to "vote" with.
Again and again, markets work because influence can never exceed benefit.  Maybe it's not "perfect"...but it might as well be when compared to the alternative.  

The 1% making more money is the same thing as them receiving more positive feedback and increasing the total benefit that we derive from society's limited resources.  Oh the humanity?  The horror...the horror?    

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Yes, if the people of the world could have voted against WWII under pragmatarianism, it would never have happened.  Because there would be no need to try to expand any country's borders.  Enough people would have starved to death to make it not worth the bother.
Good call...food is never a priority for consumers.  I think you're a few history lessons short of the obvious.  Read up on the Great Leap Forward.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 06, 2013, 05:19:44 PM
Quote from: "Colanth"I will grant you this - farm subsidies are NO LONGER needed (for the most part) - to keep farms in existence.  But if they ceased tomorrow, the cost of food would skyrocket.  And the poor would starve.
Farm subsidies exist because of cheap imports.  Why should American agribusiness try and compete with Mexican farmers?  It's far more profitable for them to spend their money on lobbying.  Get rid of the subsidies and both the poor in our country and in developing countries would benefit.  Our poor would get less expensive food and their poor would have their farm jobs.  

It's really twisted that you truly believe that corporate welfare really helps the poor.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 06, 2013, 06:50:53 PM
Quote from: "Colanth"His statement.  Intelligent people don't think that most congresspeople are particularly knowledgeable.
Again, this clearly reveals your ignorance of public finance.  But what's the point of sharing the relevant information with you?  Obviously you find it impossible to believe that I've seriously studied the topic.  

Eh, what the heck.  I'll try anyways.  

The definitive, theoretical, justification/defense for the existence of the public sector was written by the Nobel Prize winning liberal economist Paul Samuelson.  His paper...The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure (//http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Courses/UCSBpf/readings/sampub.pdf)...is ridiculously short, but very to the point.  It's been cited over 5000 times.  

Our public sector is supported by tradition...and logic.  Take away tradition and we're left with Samuelson's paper.  

Of course, I could simply be using his paper as a straw man...a weak argument that is easy for me to destroy.   But, unlike most of you, I do make a genuine effort to understand my opponent's arguments...which is why I know your own arguments better than you do.  I haven't just thoroughly researched one side of the issue...I've researched both sides...and Samuelson's paper is the most widely cited defense of the public sector.  It's extremely doubtful that a stronger argument, that's been published, exists.  Of course I could be wrong...and given that I'm interested in the topic....would be extremely interested to read a more widely cited paper on the same topic.

Basically Samuelson's argument boils down to the free-rider problem.  He acknowledges that we would want to know the true demand for public goods...but, if taxation were voluntary, given that people would have an incentive to under-report their benefit...it's unlikely that we could ever determine what the true demand really is.  This isn't such a big deal for Samuelson though...because he's pretty confident in the ability of congress to divine the true demand for public goods.  

The thing is, he wasn't just confident that government planners could divine the true demand for public goods...he was also confident that government planners could divine the true demand for private goods as well...

QuoteThe Soviet economy is proof that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, a socialist command economy can function and even thrive
Maybe Samuelson was wrong about government planners when it came to private goods...but right about their abilities when it comes to public goods?

Nope, you can either "know" the demand...or you can't.  It doesn't make a difference whether we're talking about defense or nachos.  You either know everybody's true preferences...or you do not.  

So where we at?  The definitive, theoretical, justification for our public sector is based on the assumption that congresspeople, like god, are omniscient.  I'm not making this up.  As usual though, you really don't have to take my word for it...

QuoteBut where Wicksell proceeded to examine the process of preference revelation, Samuelson provided a more general definition of the efficient solution. Preference revelation is disregarded as the model visualizes an omniscient referee to whom preferences are known. - Richard A. Musgrave   Public Finance (//http://www.dictionaryofeconomics.com/article?id=pde2008_P000244&edition=current&q=%22Preference%20revelation%22&topicid=&result_number=1)
QuoteEssential though the efficiency model of public goods is as a theoretical construct, standing by itself it has little practical use.  The omniscient referee does not exist and the problem of preference revelation must be addressed.  The Wicksellian perspective is thus needed. - Richard A. Musgrave, The Nature of the Fiscal State (//http://books.google.com/books?id=jEnjN7dKrzcC&pg=PA39&dq=Public+finance+preference+revelation&hl=en&sa=X&ei=5yciUYvqCYfV2QWZuoHIBw&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Public%20finance%20preference%20revelation&f=false)
QuoteThe fact that such a tax institution always exists conceptually does not, of course, imply that it can be determined independently of the revealed choices of individuals themselves.  If an omniscient observer should be present, and if he were asked to "read" all individual preference maps, he could then describe the "optimal" structure of tax prices.  Failing this, there is no means of ascertaining with any degree of accuracy the "efficient" tax structure or institution. - James M. Buchanan, Public Finance in Democratic Process (//http://books.google.com/books?id=TS2tK4equ0YC&pg=PA289&lpg=PA289&dq=If+an+omniscient+observer+should+be+present&source=bl&ots=6pVwDpvq1f&sig=tZEM3xRqbrKDK_kdRSTteAkEX7Q&hl=en&sa=X&ei=57AuUajmCaGpiQKppoDgBQ&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=If%20an%20omniscient%20observer%20should%20be%20present&f=false)
QuoteOur discontent with the original Samuelson rule stems from its failure to account for tax payers' response to public expenditure and taxation. The rule was derived for an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent government, a government which, by definition, need not consider people's responses to its actions. Drop that assumption, restrict government to the choice of tax rates and public expenditures, and the response to its actions must be taken into account.   Dan Usher, Should the Samuelson Rule Be Modi?ed to Account for the Marginal Cost of Public Funds? (//http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/working_papers/papers/qed_wp_1065.pdf)
QuoteDeprived of this guidance, and without the incentive of personal interest, accounts and statistics, however complete, would be of very little use, and unless they were the mundane representatives of an omniscient providence, the directors of production would be quite unable to avoid occasional excess or deficiency of supply, which would cause terrible disorder and confusion, with effects infinitely more serious than mistakes made by private enterprise, which, as a whole, is never actuated by precisely similar motives; thus its errors correct each other, and being uninfluenced by prejudice, or amour proper, it shows a marvellous quickness of adoption; mistakes committed by the state would be not only far more serious, but far more difficult to remedy.   - Paul Leroy Beaulieu, Collectivism (//http://books.google.com/books?id=94MuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA164&lpg=PA164&dq=and+unless+they+were+the+mundane+representatives+of+an+omniscient+providence&source=bl&ots=QPMb7H_bR_&sig=ZaQhtHCpOIUxxkgHGQrIhyYWHJ4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WbEuUdnpL-GWjALZs4DwCg&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=and%20unless%20they%20were%20the%20mundane%20representatives%20of%20an%20omniscient%20providence&f=false)
Ok, so aside from tradition, it should be clear that our current system is based on the assumption that congresspeople are omniscient.  Clearly this is a false assumption, or else there wouldn't be any economists trying to figure out how to get individuals to reveal their true preferences for public goods.  

I'm sure we both agree that congresspeople are not omniscient...but you could argue that neither are consumers.  

QuoteIndividuals are not, of course, omniscient, even those who think themselves to be. The securing of information about the predicted effects of alternatives is a costly process, even in a world with reasonable certainty. Recognizing this, individual utility-maximizing behavior remains "rational" when choices are made on the basis of less-than-perfect information. There is some "optimal" investment in fact-finding and analysis for the deciding individual at each stage of his deliberation. - James M. Buchanan
Consumers don't have to be omniscient given that they are only allocating their own resources.  They know their own preferences and allocate their resources accordingly.  Given the fact that none of us are omniscient...all we can know about other people's preferences has to come from either their words or their actions.  Because words are cheap...it's far more accurate to look at actions in order to determine people's preferences.    

If we want the optimal supply of public goods to be produced...then we should simply allow taxpayers to choose which government organizations they give their taxes to.  It will be "optimal" because the supply of public goods would be determined by the demand for public goods.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: surly74 on August 06, 2013, 07:20:01 PM
Are you the Harvard grad student from Good Will Hunting?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 06, 2013, 07:43:54 PM
Quote from: "surly74"Are you the Harvard grad student from Good Will Hunting?
Naw, after the military, I went to a community college because my grades in high school were so lousy.  Manged to get into UCLA though...my best friend swears I only got in because I'm Mexican...he's probably right.  hah...stupid affirmative action.  

The Harvard Grad student in that movie was pretty obnoxious.  I'm sure I come off pretty much the same way though.  It's really not my intention...but my arguments challenge people's fundamental assumptions...on the left and right...so it's inevitable that they are going to be on the defensive...and then on the offensive.  And it's extremely difficult to not reply in kind.  The army infantry was great for all sorts of reasons...but not for helping me learn to turn the other cheek.  

Anyways, if somebody judges my arguments based on who I am as a person, rather than on their own merit, then they probably aren't smart enough to grasp the arguments anyways.  

Of course, if I was smarter then I'd be able make an argument that even the dullest tool in the cookie jar could easily follow.  Unfortunately, I'm not that smart.  Then again, it's pretty rare that any of these Nobel Prize winning economists present their ideas in a way that's easily accessible to most people.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: LikelyToBreak on August 06, 2013, 07:53:58 PM
Xerographica wrote in part:
QuoteUh, what? Why would I try and convince you that pragmatarianism would work in running a small general store?
Because if it doesn't work in a general store, how in the world could it work in running a country?  Although there is much more involved in a country, a general store is a microcosm of the country.  If it would go under using pragmatarianism, then you could expect the country to as well.

But, you are correct in thinking that the country is run differently.  The Federal Reserve determines how much money will be available and at what interest rates.  This is a private group of bankers who don't give a damn about the country, let alone its' people.  They just care about their money, which to them is just a way of keeping score while they play a game with people's lives.  This is most of the 1% which controls 85% of the money.  They don't guess about what the demand is, they make the demand.

Without figuring the Federal Reserve into your ideas, they are bound to be wrong.

Xerographica also wrote in part:
QuoteThe 1% making more money is the same thing as them receiving more positive feedback and increasing the total benefit that we derive from society's limited resources. Oh the humanity? The horror...the horror?
They don't give a flying rat's ass feedback from society.  They see all of the resources as theirs, which they allow us peasants to have a little of.  And they are not maximizing the total benefit from society's limited resources.  They are maximizing profits to themselves.  If someone comes along and has a way to better maximize the limited resources, but they don't have a stake in it, they shut them down.  

Colanth wrote:
QuoteLikelyToBreak wrote:
"The bottom 10%, hell the bottom 50% can do little to nothing to cause or stop inflation."

Neither can the top 1%. Capitalism is based on inflation. If you want to stop inflation you have to stop Capitalism.
Which is true, but the top 1% er's use inflation to get more of the limited resources under their control.  Thus, getting themselves a bigger piece of the pie.

I believe the Capitalism which you are talking about, is the Capitalism controlled by the top 1%.  Julius Caesar had a way of ensuring the top 1%er's didn't have any control.  He made up charges against them and seized their property.  Making sure they weren't alive to protest too strongly as well.   :Hangman:   Caesar's type of Capitalism might just work, if it was modified a little.  :twisted:
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: NatsuTerran on August 06, 2013, 08:26:01 PM
The whole disagreement here is summed up by the different underlying moral goals we are trying to get at. That guy only thinks people's preferences are what matters. A famous quote goes something like " There are only two tragedies: Not getting what you want, and getting what you want."

From a utilitarian standpoint (i.e. the only logical moral standpoint, because who would want to be born into a less probable society in terms of granting well-being?) people's decisions are not inherently correct. People make mistakes, so it becomes obvious that by giving people free choice about every little thing leads them to making crucial mistakes. Why do people make mistakes? Because their needs and wants are at war with each other, among other things. What is someone who is rationalizing about your well-being, but not directly experiencing, doing? They have the ability to rationalize about your well-being based on needs in the long run, rather than being carried away by subjective wants that override rationality.

Like when my dad had a ruptured appendix, he had harsh pains but refused to see a doctor because he thought it would blow over after the weekend. My mom yelled and *forced* him to see a doctor. What happened was his life was saved because he would have died if he waited.

People make mistakes. People don't know what is best for themselves. Why wouldn't he go to the doctor? Comfort reasons. Sometimes it's a hassle to get up and drive somewhere while you're in pain. It maybe sounded more comfortable to wait until it blows over while laying in bed. So in this case a "preference" would lead to disastrous outcomes down the road. People may understand their initial preferences, but they do not understand their future preferences very well, and they are sometimes bad at deciding *which* competing preferences give the best overall results. Morally speaking, we should seek to maximize good results in terms of a person's overall life cycle, and not just their initial choices. In terms of luxuries and hobbies, like what you do in your free time, why not be libertarian or pragmatarian? If you get burned or lose a couple bucks or whatever, so what? You learn from the mistake and identify better with what preferences you should look for. But when it comes to basic well-being and not luxury, it is a moral imperative to guarantee utilitarianism.

Cognitive Psychology basically proves human irrationality when people only make decisions for themselves, as well as showing how and why people are more rational thinking in someone else's shoes. People routinely overestimate their ability to adapt to small discomforts in luxuries and routinely underestimate the importance of basic needs in comparison to these things. People are children. The response that "So Congress knows what you need more than you do?" is fallacious and a straw-man, but there is a point to be said about this. Psychology has demonstrated consistently that people are better decision makers about other people rather than themselves. This is because we still may have an idea of what that person "prefers," but we have a stronger sense of what is objectively more important and thus overshadows their initial preferences. People let subjective wants overshadow objective needs far too much. And if this doesn't happen as much with individuals making decisions about their own lives, it definitely comes into play when people are expected to care about others when they don't have to.

So ask yourself, who would you rather be? My dad when granted complete sovereignty? Or my dad when he is coerced in some areas? You can say you want liberty without experiencing it, but once you are in the shoes of the miserable, you realize it to be objectively the worse position. There are such a thing as objective values that can be answered by science. Our values aren't just a bunch of relativism that should be treated as sacred because no one knows better. Just like he makes the straw man of saying Congress is omniscient about our wants and needs, I can say that he is stupid for thinking individuals are omniscient about their own wants and needs. And even if I couldn't, I can definitely say that individuals are most certainly not omniscient about what policies lead to utilitarianism, which is the ultimate goal, and the be all end all of what any decision should be based on.


Another example from a Cog. Psych. book I have is someone who could get a really good and cheap apartment as opposed to a more expensive and cramped one. The person may go for the expensive apartment because the cheap one is close to a busy road with car noises. But we know through the science of the brain that the person will quickly adapt to the car noises and it will not be a problem at all for their *future preferences.* People routinely get wrong their future preferences, but they are entirely predictable, manufacture-able even, by simply taking yourself out of their position and looking at things objectively. That guy's problem is that he thinks preferences are the be all, end all, and that there is no such thing as an objective moral value like statistics regarding various aspects of societal well-being.

To clear myself of potential straw mans, I'm not saying no one should make a single decision for themselves since we are bad at it. I am saying that there should be a group whose job is to make decisions about common pitfalls that effect everyone. This keeps people from needing to be vigilant in life, which is the most important freedom. We should have a "package" of guaranteed well-being that is made for everyone, so that our needs are settled and out of the way, and then all the rest of our decisions as they apply to our wants and preferences can have free reign after this point. So that our minds aren't bogged down trying to be vigilant about a bunch of things that will likely slip through the cracks and catch us. Of course, this guy is probably going to come in here saying I don't understand economics. I don't care, and you know why? Because this isn't about economics, it's about morality and it's about human psychology. Whatever is best economically has no bearing on what is best morally or whether it even works by misunderstanding human psychology. I'm done with this thread.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 06, 2013, 09:53:37 PM
NatsuTerran, nice hit and run..."oh yeah, psychology proves all of what I'm saying...but I'm not going to stick around to cite my sources.  Why?  Because psychology trumps economics."

LOL...weaksauce.  Here's some psychology for you...

QuoteKahn and Baron's (1995) results represent additional evidence in support of psychologists' assertion that contrary to rational choice theory, people do not always hold stable and clearly ordered preferences that are simply retrieved at the moment of the choice. On the contrary, according to psychology research, most of the time, people do not know their preferences before their decision-making task, but they construct them on the spot during the decision process; therefore, preferences are subject to contextual influences (Feldman and Lynch 1988; Payne, Bettman, and Johnson 1993). - Simona Botti and Sheena S. Iyengar, The Dark Side of Choice (//http://faculty.london.edu/sbotti/assets/documents/Dark_side_of_choice.pdf)
...and here's some economics...

QuoteIndividuals do not act so as to maximize utilities described in ''independently existing functions''. They confront genuine choices, and the sequence of decisions taken may be conceptualized, ''ex post'' (after the choices), in terms of "as if" functions that are maximized. But these "as if" functions are, themselves, generated in the choosing process, not separately from such process. - James M. Buchanan, Order Defined in the Process of its Emergence (//http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_content&task=view&id=163&Itemid=282)
What's the difference?  Oops, you didn't stick around did you?  You bravely ran away.  

Yup, unlike yourself...I can actually back up my claims.  Take this paper for example...Behavioral Law and Economics: Its Origins, Fatal Flaws, and Implications for Liberty (//http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2147940)

It destroys your point.  Same thing with this study by Joel Waldfogel...

QuoteConsumers fare better [at identifying their own preferences] than all types of givers except significant others and possibly grandparents...it seems unlikely that an alternative chooser would do better than friends, siblings, and parents, all of whom have substantial amounts of information about the ultimate consumer's preferences. - Joel Waldfogel, Does Consumer Irrationality Trump Consumer Sovereignty? (//http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/1286.pdf)
As you can see...your anecdotal story about your mother coercing your father for his own good really disproves my argument.   LOL...naw, it really doesn't.  

And to prove that I've actually studied both sides of the issue...here's a pretty great lecture by the Psychologist Barry Schwartz...The Paradox of Choice (//http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html).  If NatsuTerran actually knew what he pretends to know, he would have shared that video...and all the other sources that supposedly support his claims.  He knew that he wouldn't be able to though...which is why he bravely ran away.  

Oh well...it did give me the opportunity to share both sides of the argument with anybody truly interested in the topic of paternalism (soft or otherwise) versus individual freedom.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 06, 2013, 10:35:05 PM
Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Because if it doesn't work in a general store, how in the world could it work in running a country?  Although there is much more involved in a country, a general store is a microcosm of the country.  If it would go under using pragmatarianism, then you could expect the country to as well.
Ok, the general store represents the public sector?  A taxpayer walks into the general store and puts some items in his shopping cart...quite a bit of defense, some infrastructure, a little bit of public healthcare...and so on.  He pays for his items and leaves.  And then the store owner makes sure that the shelves are adequately stocked?  

Yeah, we can pretend that the public sector is one store and the private sector is another store.  In the private sector store...you decide what goes in your shopping cart.  In the public sector store...somebody you may or may not have voted for decides for you.  

When you exit the private store...the items you go home with match your preferences... because you're the one who selected them.  When you exit the public store...the items you go home with do not match your preferences...because you're not the one who selected them.  

Value is destroyed when we go home with items which do not match our preferences.  

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"But, you are correct in thinking that the country is run differently.  The Federal Reserve determines how much money will be available and at what interest rates.  This is a private group of bankers who don't give a damn about the country, let alone its' people.  They just care about their money, which to them is just a way of keeping score while they play a game with people's lives.  This is most of the 1% which controls 85% of the money.  They don't guess about what the demand is, they make the demand.

Without figuring the Federal Reserve into your ideas, they are bound to be wrong.
What percentage of taxpayers would choose to give their taxes to the Federal Reserve?

If you argue that a large percentage would...then you're arguing that many people derive benefit from how the Fed is using society's limited resources.  If you argue that a small percentage would...then you're arguing that few people derive benefit from how the Fed is using society's limited resources.  Therefore, you're arguing that the Fed is not truly a public good.  

My argument, in case you missed it, is that the preference revelation problem is a real problem.  I have no idea what the demand for the Fed is anymore than I know what the demand for the EPA is.  If taxpayers could choose where their taxes go, then we would then know what the actual demand for public goods really is.  And then we would be able to easily and readily identify any public goods whose benefit was too narrow for them to qualify as truly "public" goods.  

And again, we would know whether a public good's benefit was narrow if too few taxpayers spent their tax dollars on it.  

For example...is the war on drugs truly a public good?  That depends on what percentage of taxpayers would choose to spend their own taxes on the war on drugs.  The larger the percentage...the more public goodness.  The smaller the percentage...the less public goodness.  If the percentage was too small...then the general public might want to remove it from the "menu".  

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"They don't give a flying rat's ass feedback from society.  They see all of the resources as theirs, which they allow us peasants to have a little of.  And they are not maximizing the total benefit from society's limited resources.  They are maximizing profits to themselves.  If someone comes along and has a way to better maximize the limited resources, but they don't have a stake in it, they shut them down.
They don't give a rat's ass about positive feedback?  In other words, they don't give a rats ass about revenue?  Then why do they spend money on advertising their products?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: LikelyToBreak on August 07, 2013, 12:34:15 AM
Xerographica wrote in part:  
QuoteTherefore, you're arguing that the Fed is not truly a public good.
Let me be clear on this.  The Federal Reserve is a monstrosity forced on the American people by really rich men who are busy taking us to the cleaners.  The Federal Reserve is a private institution.  It is not a part of the government.  There may not be any reserves either, as they are exempt from being audited.  It is a collection of banks, ran by bankers who own the banks.  The bill to establish them was passed when congress was supposed to be in recess.  But, the bankers friends in congress, you know the ones bought and paid for, came back into a secret session with just enough to establish a quorum.  Then Wilson was beguiled into signing the bill.  Something which Wilson later regretted.  

So, no the Fed "is not truly a public good."  It is run for and by a few super rich people.  They have let inflation rise for their own profit.  They were established to supposedly reduce inflation and alleviate depressions.  Since then inflation has skyrocketed and we had the Great Depression and several smaller ones.  Which the Fed was behind.

He are led to believe it is just another part of the government, when it is not.  The government gets to have a presidential appointee, who is sometimes allowed into meetings.  This appointee, always has ties to the banking industry.  In other words, we are sending in a fox to watch the other foxes as they play in the chicken coop.

Any economic idea which does not take the Federal Reserve into account, is a flawed idea from the start.  Because it starts with a flawed premise.

Just so everyone understands, I hate the Fed.  :evil:  They do no good for anyone, other than the rich bastards who run it.  Clear enough everyone?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: surly74 on August 07, 2013, 08:20:43 AM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "surly74"Are you the Harvard grad student from Good Will Hunting?
Naw, after the military, I went to a community college because my grades in high school were so lousy.  Manged to get into UCLA though...my best friend swears I only got in because I'm Mexican...he's probably right.  hah...stupid affirmative action.  

The Harvard Grad student in that movie was pretty obnoxious.  I'm sure I come off pretty much the same way though.  It's really not my intention...but my arguments challenge people's fundamental assumptions...on the left and right...so it's inevitable that they are going to be on the defensive...and then on the offensive.  And it's extremely difficult to not reply in kind.  The army infantry was great for all sorts of reasons...but not for helping me learn to turn the other cheek.  

Anyways, if somebody judges my arguments based on who I am as a person, rather than on their own merit, then they probably aren't smart enough to grasp the arguments anyways.  

Of course, if I was smarter then I'd be able make an argument that even the dullest tool in the cookie jar could easily follow.  Unfortunately, I'm not that smart.  Then again, it's pretty rare that any of these Nobel Prize winning economists present their ideas in a way that's easily accessible to most people.


there were some similiarities. you could be right on the money, or totally off the mark I have no idea. I don't think anyone here is judging your argument as a person, everyone here is here because they value evidence and challenging of assumptions. It's how it's done. A Nobel Prize winning economist telling someone they are ignorant of something is one thing, on an annoynomous message board just comes across as a weak argument. beat them with facts and reason. You may have thought you were doing that but veiled insults ruin it for me at least.

It's an interesting converstation, i can't be part of it as much as i want, knowledge and where I live for example. For the record I'm trying my hardest to become part of the 1% but i do have a bit of socialist still in me.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Jack89 on August 07, 2013, 08:22:40 AM
@Xerographica - Why are you posting on these forums?  What are your intentions?  If you're trying to convince people that you have good ideas that they should consider, you're going about it all wrong.  Some of your ideas are interesting, but your approach sucks.  You come of as pretentious and condescending, which certainly isn't the way to persuade and influence others.  
Even if your ideas are the greatest thing since sliced bread, not too many will take you seriously with your present attitude.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Jack89 on August 07, 2013, 09:13:14 AM
Quote from: "Jack89"@Xerographica - Why are you posting on these forums?  What are your intentions?  If you're trying to convince people that you have good ideas that they should consider, you're going about it all wrong.  Some of your ideas are interesting, but your approach sucks.  You come off as pretentious and condescending, which certainly isn't the way to persuade and influence others.  
Even if your ideas are the greatest thing since sliced bread, not too many will take you seriously with your present attitude.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Mister Agenda on August 07, 2013, 10:03:08 AM
Quote from: "surly74"
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"Every adult could have a base income of, say, $10,000 a year tax free; and no minimum wage. Employers would provide wages based on the usual considerations, like 'will people qualified to do this job do it for this much money?' Note that with this guaranteed income, you could have an income of $20,000 a year with a job that pays less than 5.00 an hour.

no you can't.

and in your example. to make 20,000 a year in a 40/hr work week that is $9.61 and hour. That's working 52 weeks. it's impossible to pay someone $5 an hour and have them make 20k a year. They would have to work almost 80 hours a week.

If we are going to throw out scenarios lets make them realistic.

40x5x52=10,400.00. Add this to the base income of $10,000 and you have an income over $20,000 a year. If you are going to throw out criticisms of my scenario, at least be able to do simple multiplication and addition.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: surly74 on August 07, 2013, 10:35:43 AM
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"
Quote from: "surly74"
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"Every adult could have a base income of, say, $10,000 a year tax free; and no minimum wage. Employers would provide wages based on the usual considerations, like 'will people qualified to do this job do it for this much money?' Note that with this guaranteed income, you could have an income of $20,000 a year with a job that pays less than 5.00 an hour.

no you can't.

and in your example. to make 20,000 a year in a 40/hr work week that is $9.61 and hour. That's working 52 weeks. it's impossible to pay someone $5 an hour and have them make 20k a year. They would have to work almost 80 hours a week.

If we are going to throw out scenarios lets make them realistic.

40x5x52=10,400.00. Add this to the base income of $10,000 and you have an income over $20,000 a year. If you are going to throw out criticisms of my scenario, at least be able to do simple multiplication and addition.

i didn't think giving out 10K in cash every year to adults for doing nothing, you were actually being serious. Are there no personal exemptions in the US for wages? who would qualify for this money? Fine, my math is wrong but this whole premise is not even based in reality.

instead of 10K have the US give everyone 50K? why 10K?

it's called personal exemptions.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Mister Agenda on August 07, 2013, 10:49:16 AM
Quote from: "Xerographica"LikelyToBreak and Mister Agenda...if I was in favor of crony capitalism...then I wouldn't advocate that taxpayers be allowed to choose where their taxes go.   If pragmatarianism was truly more beneficial for the crony capitalists...then tax choice would have far more than 28 likes on facebook.  

Snip

What you two fail to grasp and understand...is the importance of being able to give others feedback on how well they are using society's limited resources.  Yet, I'm sure that you appreciate that some people really should be in jail...right? You agree that it's a more efficient allocation of resources when murderers and arsonists are in jail. Why? Because we really do not value how they used society's limited resources.

Please quote the part of my post that shows that I fail to grasp and understand the importance of being able to give others feedback on how well they are using society's limited resources.

Quote from: "Xerographica"Wages, given that they are the price of labor, are simply positive feedback.

Saying that they are 'simply' postive feedback is a claim that they aren't anything else. However, they are also what people live on.

Quote from: "Xerographica"And there should absolutely not be a ceiling or a floor when it comes to positive feedback.

Witholding food from your child when it doesn't behave is also 'postive feedback'. So it follows that you think there shouldn't be a limit on how much food a parent can withold from their child in order to secure the child's obedience.

Quote from: "Xerographica"Dictating how much positive feedback consumers should give will always reduce the amount of value that we, as a society, derive from our limited resources.

It is an observable fact that pure market efficiency isn't the only thing we, as a society, value. As a society, we have demonstrated that we are willing to sacrifice some efficiency in resource allocation to secure other goods.

Quote from: "Xerographica"Why? Because minimum wages are false values...they are lies. When you input lies into the equation which determines how society's resources are used...it's a given that the output will be garbage. Garbage in, garbage out. Pseudo-demand, pseudo-supply.

You are correct that raising wages by caveat has unintended consequences for our least qualified workers.

Quote from: "Xerographica"Mister Agenda, yes, you could certainly give each adult $10,000 a year tax free.  You could also give me $1 billion dollars.  What would happen if you gave me one billion dollars?  Well...I'd have far far far far far more influence over how society's limited resources were used.

If I gave everyone a billion dollars (which would cause dramatic inflation as it would have to be merely printed rather than paid for honestly with taxes) you'd have no more influence than anyone else.

Quote from: "Xerographica"Here in California there would be orchids on all the trees and all over the country there would be advertisements for tax choice.

What you fail to grasp and understand is the difference between shifting existing resources and 'poofing' a billion dollars for everyone out champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

Snip

Quote from: "Xerographica"Equalizing influence is arguing that we are equally effective at using society's limited resources.  This is far far far from the case.  So if you do so, it's a given that society, as whole, will be significantly worse off.

Equalizing influence is an act, not an argument. The argument would be about the consequences of doing so. You still seem to be talking from your fantasy of everyone getting a billion dollars, rather than everyone getting $10,000; which is so far from equalizing influence that it's a ludicrous comparison. A billion dollars for everyone would cause severe damage to our society due to runaway inflation. $10,000 for everyone, taxed so that most people break even on spending power, would not have such a dramatic effect. It would be a disincentive on the margin of people who aren't willing to work in order to make more than $10,000 a year, but that it would be an overall detriment to the economy is by no means a given.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Mister Agenda on August 07, 2013, 12:17:18 PM
Quote from: "surly74"
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"40x5x52=10,400.00. Add this to the base income of $10,000 and you have an income over $20,000 a year. If you are going to throw out criticisms of my scenario, at least be able to do simple multiplication and addition.

i didn't think giving out 10K in cash every year to adults for doing nothing, you were actually being serious.

That would be a reasonable conclusion from the statement that I ended the post you originally quoted with: "My suggestion is off the top of my head, the point is that we're going to have to find a different way to skin this cat at some point. It could be a good thing, if we're smart enough to make it good."

Quote from: "surly74"Are there no personal exemptions in the US for wages? who would qualify for this money?

Yes there are. Taxable income is total income minus allowable deductions. There are many types of deductions because the tax code is complex, but they include a personal exemption, which was $3,800 last year. There's also an earned income tax credit for low wage earners. Most people don't have to file if they make less than $9,750. People who make less than $15,000 don't pay much in income tax.

Quote from: "surly74"Fine, my math is wrong but this whole premise is not even based in reality.

Well, if you assert that it is not based in reality, it must not be. That's just logic.  

Quote from: "surly74"instead of 10K have the US give everyone 50K? why 10K?

I see you're on the same page with Xenographica, although at least you didn't go all the way to la-la land with a billion dollars. 50K would be five times as expensive and would be more than most people make working, so it's an astounding disincentive to work. 10K is little enough that few people would elect to forego working in order to just live on the 10K. Thus we avoid 50 million people quitting their jobs.

What makes it unrealistic isn't the economics. Once you take into account that the stipend can be subtracted from social security and unemployment benefits, it would leave us paying taxes like the Swedes. They don't complain much because most of them think the benefits are worth it. What makes it unrealistic is that the USA doesn't have the political will to make it happen.

I'm sure there are better ways to do things. I'm only an armchair economist. The point of throwing out a proposal was to show that minimum wage is not the only way to address the needs of poor workers. I included a basic income that includes non-working citizens because I happen to think giving every citiizen at least a bare minimum to subsist on even if they can't hold down a job is a good idea. A sufficiently generous negative income tax could do the same without giving people without jobs a dime.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Mister Agenda on August 07, 2013, 12:52:34 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Jmpty"Ignore.
LOL.  I guess you could have just not replied to the thread...but then I suppose I wouldn't have known that you were ignoring it.  If you hadn't replied to the thread then my feelings wouldn't have been hurt...but now my feelings are hurt.  Your mission has been accomplished.  :)  I mean... :(

Here's a deal, rather than only replying to threads that match our preferences and ignoring the rest, we should also reply to threads that don't match our preferences and say "this topic does not match my preferences".  

Kinda like how facebook should also have a "dislike" button.  Youtube has one.  

In fact, maybe on facebook we should be able to unfriend people that we aren't even friends with!  That would show them!

Also, at bars and clubs, we should walk around rejecting people who haven't even shown the slightest interest in us!  

And employers can go around firing people who don't even work for them!  LOL...too much fun.  You should ignore me more often.  :)  I mean :(

They weren't announcing they're ignoring the thread. They're announcing that they put you on 'ignore' so they will no longer see your posts. I'm sure you'll conclude that people desiring to see nothing more of your posts has nothing to do with their quality.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Mister Agenda on August 07, 2013, 01:04:32 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Plu"
QuoteBecause, what are the chances that I'm right and most everybody else is wrong?

We've long figured out it's 0%. You don't actually have any interesting revelations, because if you did you
A) would not be posting on some backwater forum, but have an actual name in the scientific community
What's the difference between my argument and Buchanan's?  What's the difference between my argument and Le Grand's?  

You think their arguments have something to do with atheism and they don't.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 07, 2013, 06:04:50 PM
Quote from: "surly74"there were some similiarities. you could be right on the money, or totally off the mark I have no idea. I don't think anyone here is judging your argument as a person, everyone here is here because they value evidence and challenging of assumptions. It's how it's done. A Nobel Prize winning economist telling someone they are ignorant of something is one thing, on an annoynomous message board just comes across as a weak argument. beat them with facts and reason. You may have thought you were doing that but veiled insults ruin it for me at least.
I might be wrong...but I wouldn't be surprised if you looked through the thread and couldn't find a single instance where I took the first swing.  

If you're really curious...you could read through discussions on the same exact topic that I've posted in other forums...

xkcd (//http://fora.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=103957)
NationStates (//http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=255364)
DebatePolitics (//http://www.debatepolitics.com/economics/168419-pseudo-demand-pseudo-supply.html)
Ron Paul Forums (//http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?423010-Pseudo-demand-Pseudo-supply)

Having participated on numerous forums...this forum by far and large has the most insults.  Which is great.  I hate overly moderated forums.  They are a dime a dozen.  

Quote from: "surly74"It's an interesting converstation, i can't be part of it as much as i want, knowledge and where I live for example. For the record I'm trying my hardest to become part of the 1% but i do have a bit of socialist still in me.
I think it's interesting too.  It's so interesting that I'm willing to spend the time discussing the same thing on numerous forums.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 07, 2013, 06:18:00 PM
Quote from: "Jack89"@Xerographica - Why are you posting on these forums?  What are your intentions?  If you're trying to convince people that you have good ideas that they should consider, you're going about it all wrong.  Some of your ideas are interesting, but your approach sucks.  You come of as pretentious and condescending, which certainly isn't the way to persuade and influence others.  
Even if your ideas are the greatest thing since sliced bread, not too many will take you seriously with your present attitude.
I'm throwing the ideas and arguments out there.  That's how forums work.  People can focus on me...or they can focus on the arguments.  It's their choice.  

If you look through this thread...isn't it obvious that when people focus on me...it's because they are incapable of focusing on my arguments?  They disagree with my arguments...but are incapable of articulating their disagreements...so they go after me instead.  

It doesn't bother me though.  

I wish I was smarter so that I could present my arguments in ways that even they could understand.  But I'm not that smart.  I'm smart enough to understand the arguments of Nobel Prize winning economists...and I'm smart enough to share them with all of you...but I'm not smart enough to simplify their arguments enough for stupid people to understand them.  

But maybe there's somebody here who can?  Maybe not.  But I'm casting a wide net.  Who knows who will stumble upon this thread in the future?  Maybe somebody will find my arguments and improve on them.  I guess that's the hope.  

Until then, I try and defend/explain the arguments as best as I can.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Plu on August 07, 2013, 06:33:25 PM
Quoteisn't it obvious that when people focus on me...it's because they are incapable of focusing on my arguments?

Nah, it's because you refuse to actually reply to anyone who is responding to your arguments, except with more meaningless word-salad.

We've given you hundreds of reasons why your ideas would fail in practice, but you cling to something that can only work in theory and keep shouting that we should do it anyway.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 07, 2013, 06:42:57 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Colanth"His statement.  Intelligent people don't think that most congresspeople are particularly knowledgeable.
Again, this clearly reveals your ignorance of public finance.
How has what people think of Congress to do with public finance?

Oh, that's right - they have absolutely nothing to do with one another.

QuoteObviously you find it impossible to believe that I've seriously studied the topic.
I find it impossible to believe that you're even capable of serious study - of any topic.

QuoteThe definitive, theoretical, justification/defense for the existence of the public sector
It doesn't need a defense.

QuoteIf we want the optimal supply of public goods to be produced
That's not the point of Capitalism.  You're arguing for something to be done to improve the efficiency of a system we don't have.  You're doing what philosophers do, and it's not polite to do that in public.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 07, 2013, 06:44:21 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"but my arguments challenge people's fundamental assumptions
You're wrong - most of us DON'T assume that you know what you're talking about.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 07, 2013, 06:46:53 PM
Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Caesar's type of Capitalism might just work, if it was modified a little.  :twisted:
To quote someone we all know all too well, "as long as I'm the dictator".
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 07, 2013, 06:57:06 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"If you're really curious...you could read through discussions on the same exact topic that I've posted in other forums...

xkcd (//http://fora.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=103957)
NationStates (//http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=255364)
DebatePolitics (//http://www.debatepolitics.com/economics/168419-pseudo-demand-pseudo-supply.html)
Ron Paul Forums (//http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?423010-Pseudo-demand-Pseudo-supply)
The response most people on THIS forum have to a statement like that ("I've said the same thing on this forum and this one and ...") is to put you on ignore without reading anything else you said, since it labels you as a troll.

You're not doing yourself any favors by not having spent a week or two reading the forum before making a serious post.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 07, 2013, 06:57:28 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Colanth"I will grant you this - farm subsidies are NO LONGER needed (for the most part) - to keep farms in existence.  But if they ceased tomorrow, the cost of food would skyrocket.  And the poor would starve.
Farm subsidies exist because of cheap imports.  Why should American agribusiness try and compete with Mexican farmers?  It's far more profitable for them to spend their money on lobbying.  Get rid of the subsidies and both the poor in our country and in developing countries would benefit.  Our poor would get less expensive food and their poor would have their farm jobs.
Really?  Is THAT how government works?

If you got rid of farm subsidies you'd probably also get rid of food imports.  (Enough duty would be imposed that Mexican farmers wouldn't ship to us.)  Congresscritters aren't going to vote their contributions away.  To do what you want, we'd have to get rid of Capitalism, and that's a terrible idea.  (Decimation is only one problem.)

BTW, a LARGE reason for produce imports is that farms in the southern hemisphere can produce when ours are under 3 feet of snow.  And you can't legislate that away.

You have a very naive understanding of reality.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 07, 2013, 07:22:55 PM
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"Please quote the part of my post that shows that I fail to grasp and understand the importance of being able to give others feedback on how well they are using society's limited resources.
Either you grasp and understand the importance of being able to give people feedback on how well they are using society's limited resources...or you support minimum wages.  It can't be both...which is it?

Quote from: "Mister Agenda"Saying that they are 'simply' postive feedback is a claim that they aren't anything else. However, they are also what people live on.
This is what people live on ______ how well people use society's limited resources.  

Fill in the blank using one of the following signs...>,=,<

What people actually live on is really the supply of food, shelter, clothing...and this supply depends entirely on how well people are using society's limited resources.  Therefore, it's really NOT ok to be loosey goosey with the accuracy of the positive feedback we give each other.  Doing so simply diminishes the supply that we all need to survive.


Quote from: "Mister Agenda"Witholding food from your child when it doesn't behave is also 'postive feedback'. So it follows that you think there shouldn't be a limit on how much food a parent can withold from their child in order to secure the child's obedience.
Withholding food is negative feedback.  Giving your child an ice cream cone is positive feedback.  Obviously though parents have an obligation to provide a bare minimum to their children.  The parents made a choice to have kids...they should be responsible for their decision.

But I do not have an obligation to provide you a bare minimum of positive feedback.  I'm pretty sure you're not my child.  So if you want my positive feedback...then you'll have to earn it.  And if you don't think I'm giving you enough positive feedback...then either you try harder/smarter or you find somebody else who is willing to give you more positive feedback than I'm giving you.
 
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"It is an observable fact that pure market efficiency isn't the only thing we, as a society, value. As a society, we have demonstrated that we are willing to sacrifice some efficiency in resource allocation to secure other goods.
No, all we've "demonstrated" is that we want a free lunch.  And politicians take advantage of this fact to get into office.  Everybody, not just voters, want a free lunch.  

The only way to know what society truly values...is to prevent them from spending other people's money.  The challenge is showing people that more value is created when they can only spend their own resources.  This isn't an easy challenge, and I doubt I'm up for it....but it's fundamentally important.  

The problem with a free lunch is that it is a fiscal illusion.  The lunch appears magically like pulling a rabbit out of a hat.  But you know that the magician didn't create the rabbit...the rabbit had to come from somewhere.  

With free lunches...voters don't know or care where the value was taken from.  They are just happy that it didn't come from them.  But how could they possibly know that when they have no idea where exactly the value was taken from?  Sure, somebody who doesn't have to pay federal income tax won't have to pay for more welfare benefits...but those resources have to come from somewhere.  Chances are good that it will be manifested in the form of more expensive commodities that they need to survive.  So in essence they are in fact worse off for voting for a free lunch.  

The only way we can ensure that voters are not actually made worse off...is to ensure that they can see the price tags.  Then, and only then, can they decide whether the benefit is worth the opportunity cost.    

Quote from: "Mister Agenda"If I gave everyone a billion dollars (which would cause dramatic inflation as it would have to be merely printed rather than paid for honestly with taxes) you'd have no more influence than anyone else.
That wasn't the point.  The point was to try understand the problem of influence exceeding benefit.  

Quote from: "Mister Agenda"What you fail to grasp and understand is the difference between shifting existing resources and 'poofing' a billion dollars for everyone out champagne wishes and caviar dreams.
If shifts do not reflect the true preferences of consumers...then value is destroyed (resources are inefficiently allocated).

Quote from: "Mister Agenda"Equalizing influence is an act, not an argument. The argument would be about the consequences of doing so. You still seem to be talking from your fantasy of everyone getting a billion dollars, rather than everyone getting $10,000; which is so far from equalizing influence that it's a ludicrous comparison. A billion dollars for everyone would cause severe damage to our society due to runaway inflation. $10,000 for everyone, taxed so that most people break even on spending power, would not have such a dramatic effect. It would be a disincentive on the margin of people who aren't willing to work in order to make more than $10,000 a year, but that it would be an overall detriment to the economy is by no means a given.
Listen, you don't evenly distribute your money for a reason.  You know what that reason is?  It's because you're not crazy.  Except, here you are thinking there's value in minimum wages.  A minimum wage is the same thing as you distributing your money more evenly.  

When you go shopping...your goal is not to evenly distribute your money.  Your goal is to maximize the amount of value you get for your money.  You want the most bang for your buck.  Therefore, you give your bucks to the people who give you the most bang.  Decrease the bucks you give them...transfer it to their employees...and you'll end up with less bang.  We all will.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: LikelyToBreak on August 07, 2013, 10:55:26 PM
Xerographica wrote in part:
QuoteEither you grasp and understand the importance of being able to give people feedback on how well they are using society's limited resources...or you support minimum wages. It can't be both...which is it?
This logical fallacy is called a false dichotomy.

Besides you still have not addressed how the top 1% er's in the Federal Reserve get their positive feedback by maximizing society's resources.  They can, and often do, get monetary feedback by selling short.

The minimum wage worker also gets feedback pretty damn directly by being fired, layed-off, or just let go, if the worker in question is not giving his employer at least as much back as he is paid.  Usually, the minimum wage worker has to make at least 50% more for their employer than what they are actually paid.

Anyway, work on learning logical fallacies and try to eliminate them from your writings.  Assuming you want your ideas to actually be accepted and aren't just trying to get people going with bullshit.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 08, 2013, 12:46:30 AM
Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Xerographica wrote in part:
QuoteEither you grasp and understand the importance of being able to give people feedback on how well they are using society's limited resources...or you support minimum wages. It can't be both...which is it?
This logical fallacy is called a false dichotomy.
How is it a false dichotomy?  Hmmm...maybe you're right.  I suppose you can say that you grasp and understand the importance of safe sex...but never use protection when you do have sex.  There is a possibility you really do understand the importance of safe sex but just don't care about the consequences.  

But at least with sex though there is a possibility that you might get lucky.  Just like with Russian Roulette.  The same could not be said with minimum wages.  The consequences will always be detrimental.  Like I said, if we want the most valuable output...then we have to input true values into the equation which determines how society's limited resources are used.  

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Besides you still have not addressed how the top 1% er's in the Federal Reserve get their positive feedback by maximizing society's resources.  They can, and often do, get monetary feedback by selling short.
In a tax choice system, if you valued how the Fed was using society's limited resources, then you'd give them some of your taxes.  What percentage of taxpayers would give the Fed their taxes?  

The correct answer is...that you don't know.  You have absolutely no idea what the actual demand for the Fed is.  Does it matter?  Of course...just like it matters that you have no idea what wages would actually look like if the minimum wage was abolished.

If we don't know what the demand is for milk...then how can the optimum quantity of milk be supplied?  It can't.  Therefore, the wrong quantity of milk will be supplied.  We'd either have a shortage of milk or a surplus of milk.  And a surplus of milk is just as detrimental because those resources could have been used elsewhere.

Imagine meat was a public good.  The government was responsible for deciding how many animals should be killed for food.  The vegetarians, of course, would protest that too many animals were being killed.  Except, the vegetarians, just like the government, wouldn't know what the actual demand for meat was.  Would it matter what the actual demand for meat was?  

So I think rather than worrying about the Fed...you need to step back and ask yourself a bigger question.  Does it matter whether or not we know how much of any good or service is truly demanded?  Most economists would agree that it does matter.  Most people on this forum would disagree.  

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"The minimum wage worker also gets feedback pretty damn directly by being fired, layed-off, or just let go, if the worker in question is not giving his employer at least as much back as he is paid.  Usually, the minimum wage worker has to make at least 50% more for their employer than what they are actually paid.
Mr. Baker owns a bakery.  He's run the numbers and determined that he needs to cut his costs or he'll go out of business.  He looks at all his expenses and the only area where he can see some leeway is labor.  It turns out that he could keep the business running by reducing the wages of his minimum wage workers by $1.  The problem is...he doesn't have that option.  You know why?  Because you took it from him.  Except, you didn't just take it from him...you took it from his employees as well.  

Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Anyway, work on learning logical fallacies and try to eliminate them from your writings.  Assuming you want your ideas to actually be accepted and aren't just trying to get people going with bullshit.
Thanks, but I'm already familiar with logical fallacies.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Poison Tree on August 08, 2013, 01:13:25 AM
Xerographica, if your way for people to give feedback through allocating their money is clearly such a superior system, then why haven't people used their current method of giving feedback (voting) to institute just such a system?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Plu on August 08, 2013, 02:21:09 AM
QuoteThe same could not be said with minimum wages. The consequences will always be detrimental.

Dude, do you even history? Do a quick side-by-side comparison of life just before and after the introduction of minimum wages, and then come back to apologize. We'll be waiting.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 08, 2013, 02:39:57 AM
Quote from: "Poison Tree"Xerographica, if your way for people to give feedback through allocating their money is clearly such a superior system, then why haven't people used their current method of giving feedback (voting) to institute just such a system?
Most people don't know that tax choice is a clearly superior system.  Once they get the memo then I'm sure they'd vote for it.  It might be a while though.  I'm still trying to figure out how to word the memo.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Plu on August 08, 2013, 03:09:35 AM
Imagine, you can't even expect people to understand the basics of tax-choice, but you expect them to be able to figure out exactly how much money they need to give to each and every government agency so that they get exactly the level of care that they exactly know they need.

Sounds clearly superior alright  :roll:
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 08, 2013, 03:28:22 AM
Quote from: "Plu"Imagine, you can't even expect people to understand the basics of tax-choice, but you expect them to be able to figure out exactly how much money they need to give to each and every government agency so that they get exactly the level of care that they exactly know they need.

Sounds clearly superior alright  :roll:
There's a difference between understanding economics and knowing your priorities.  People know their priorities, and in a pragmatarian system, would be able to allocate their tax dollars accordingly.  This would determine how much funding each government agency received.  

As such, it would be nonsensical to say that important government organizations would be underfunded.  That's because the only measure of "importance" is how much people are willing to sacrifice for something.  If public healthcare received a lot of funding, then, and only then, could we say that public healthcare is important to society.  

But you'd be welcome to wave your hands at the crowd and tell them that their priorities were wrong.  In fact, that's kinda what I'm doing right now.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Bibliofagus on August 08, 2013, 03:51:00 AM
You'd imagine that it could be usefull to know how much resources were already allocated to what before deciding where to allocate yours...
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Plu on August 08, 2013, 03:52:04 AM
QuotePeople know their priorities

 :rollin:

Name your top 10 priorities. You have no fucking clue what they are. If you even post 1 (which you probably won't), it's just most likely something you made up on the spot depending on your current mood. No person with even a passing level of knowledge of economics would ever say people know their priorities. It's a well known fact that people have no idea what their priorities are. They just make shit up on the spot when you ask them.

Hell, you wouldn't even be able to list your top 5 favorite government agencies without making up a list in your head while you're reading my post. And I doubt you'd be able to list them even then. You probably don't even know most of them.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 08, 2013, 03:58:18 AM
Quote from: "Bibliofagus"You'd imagine that it could be usefull to know how much resources were already allocated to what before deciding where to allocate yours...
At anytime throughout the year you could go directly to the EPA website and submit a tax payment.  I'm sure the EPA website would have a fundraising progress bar.

Generally people don't shop to shop...the motivation to go shopping is some real or perceived shortage of some service or good.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Bibliofagus on August 08, 2013, 03:59:55 AM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Bibliofagus"You'd imagine that it could be usefull to know how much resources were already allocated to what before deciding where to allocate yours...
At anytime throughout the year you could go directly to the EPA website and submit a tax payment.

Why would I want to pay early? Don't you have interest in your country?
I will be paying just in time. All smart people will.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Plu on August 08, 2013, 04:02:15 AM
QuoteGenerally people don't shop to shop...the motivation to go shopping is some real or perceived shortage of some service or good.

So they'll only start funding the police after they've laid off half their force due to lack of funds and after criminals really start going to town?

That sounds like a great system. I'm gonna invest in a crowbar and a ski-mask if they ever implement this.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 08, 2013, 04:05:48 AM
Quote from: "Plu"
QuotePeople know their priorities

 :rollin:

Name your top 10 priorities. You have no fucking clue what they are. If you even post 1 (which you probably won't), it's just most likely something you made up on the spot depending on your current mood. No person with even a passing level of knowledge of economics would ever say people know their priorities. It's a well known fact that people have no idea what their priorities are. They just make shit up on the spot when you ask them.
Pragmatarianism is definitely on the list.  You know that for a fact.  How do you know that?  Because clearly I'm willing to sacrifice so much time writing about it.

If people didn't know what their priorities were then they'd never make any decisions regarding how to allocate their resources...

QuoteWe call contentment or satisfaction that state of a human being which does not and cannot result in any action. Acting man is eager to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory. His mind imagines conditions which suit him better, and his action aims at bringing about this desired state. The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness. A man perfectly content with the state of his affairs would have no incentive to change things. He would have neither wishes nor desires; he would be perfectly happy. He would not act; he would simply live free from care. - Ludwig von Mises
And it's only in observing how people allocate their resources can we have any insight into what their priorities are.  This is why economics is all about actions speaking louder than words.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Plu on August 08, 2013, 04:07:32 AM
QuotePragmatarianism is definitely on the list. You know that for a fact. How do you know that? Because clearly I'm willing to sacrifice so much time writing about it.

If people didn't know what their priorities were then they'd never make any decisions regarding how to allocate their resources...

See? You can't even place the one thing you're always whining about in a top 10. So much for "knowing your priorities".
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 08, 2013, 04:08:57 AM
Quote from: "Bibliofagus"
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Bibliofagus"You'd imagine that it could be usefull to know how much resources were already allocated to what before deciding where to allocate yours...
At anytime throughout the year you could go directly to the EPA website and submit a tax payment.

Why would I want to pay early? Don't you have interest in your country?
I will be paying just in time. All smart people will.
LOL...why not just give your taxes to congress then?  Congress, our personal shoppers, would still be there for the people who had no interest in shopping for themselves.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 08, 2013, 04:12:55 AM
Quote from: "Plu"
QuoteGenerally people don't shop to shop...the motivation to go shopping is some real or perceived shortage of some service or good.

So they'll only start funding the police after they've laid off half their force due to lack of funds and after criminals really start going to town?

That sounds like a great system. I'm gonna invest in a crowbar and a ski-mask if they ever implement this.
It's all about incremental decisions...

QuoteIncremental decisions can be more fine-tuned than deciding which candidate's whole package of principles and practices comes closest to meeting your own desires. Incremental decision-making also means that not every increment of even very desirable things is likewise necessarily desirable, given that there are other things that the money could be spent on after having acquired a given amount of a particular good or service. For example, although it might be worthwhile spending considerable money to live in a nice home, buying a second home in the country may or may not be worth spending money that could be used for sending a child to college or for recreational travel overseas. One consequence of incremental decision-making is that increments of many desirable things remain unpurchased because they are almost–but not quite–worth the sacrifices required to get them.    - Thomas Sowell
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Bibliofagus on August 08, 2013, 04:15:08 AM
Quote from: "Xero"LOL...why not just give your taxes to congress then?  Congress, our personal shoppers, would still be there for the people who had no interest in shopping for themselves.

That is not an answer to my question. I'll restate for your convenience:

Why in the world would anyone want to pay their taxes early?
Don't you have interest in your country? Shares? Ways to make money off money?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Plu on August 08, 2013, 04:20:56 AM
QuoteIt's all about incremental decisions...

Incremental decisions require you to see the impact of the previous decision before you decide to increment or not. That doesn't work with a service that requires days, months, or even years before you see the effect of the previous decision.

Incremental decisions are great to decide "should I eat another piece of candy?" but they don't work for "should I buy a loaf of bread in the knowledge that somewhere between 0 and 15 loaves of bread have already been purchased by other people in my home, with no way of knowing how many we already have?"
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 08, 2013, 04:23:33 AM
Quote from: "Bibliofagus"
Quote from: "Xero"LOL...why not just give your taxes to congress then?  Congress, our personal shoppers, would still be there for the people who had no interest in shopping for themselves.

That is not an answer to my question. I'll restate for your convenience:

Why in the world would anyone want to pay their taxes early?
Don't you have interest in your country? Shares? Ways to make money off money?
Maybe because they were certain that the sky was falling?  Maybe because a government agency came up with a really convincing advertisement?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Plu on August 08, 2013, 04:30:25 AM
So basically the two reasons you give are
A) mass hysteria
B) being tricked into doing something not in their favor

Great system.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 08, 2013, 04:37:08 AM
Quote from: "Plu"So basically the two reasons you give are
A) mass hysteria
B) being tricked into doing something not in their favor

Great system.
This right here right now is the same system.  It seems pretty great.  You and I are both free to exit at any time.  What's not great about that?  

QuoteCapitalism is the best. It's free enterprise. Barter.  Gimbels, if I get really rank with the clerk, 'Well I don't like this', how I can resolve it? If it really gets ridiculous, I go, 'Frig it, man, I walk.' What can this guy do at Gimbels, even if he was the president of Gimbels? He can always reject me from that store, but I can always go to Macy's. He can't really hurt me. Communism is like one big phone company.  Government control, man. And if I get too rank with that phone company, where can I go? I'll end up like a schmuck with a dixie cup on a thread. - Lenny Bruce
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Plu on August 08, 2013, 04:48:29 AM
Capitalism is, like the other crap you're spouting, great in theory, but worthless in practice. Like every system of trying to manage civilization for billions of people, it requires bits and parts from many different philosophies to work.

Because answering the question in the quote above is simple: what can this guy do if he's the president of gimbles? He can meet up with the other presidents and tell them to evict the guy from their stores as well. Then he can call up his workers and say "any man caught talking to this character is fired". And then he calls up the other presidents and tell them "anyone we fire can never be hired by any of us again".

And then, hey look, you're back to "one big company" only this time under the name of "capitalism", but the concept is the same. And no, "free market" won't help. There's simply more money to be made in a shared dicatatorship than in a free market. That's why we don't have a free market anywhere except in the shittiest places to live on earth.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Bibliofagus on August 08, 2013, 05:13:15 AM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Bibliofagus"
Quote from: "Xero"LOL...why not just give your taxes to congress then?  Congress, our personal shoppers, would still be there for the people who had no interest in shopping for themselves.

That is not an answer to my question. I'll restate for your convenience:

Why in the world would anyone want to pay their taxes early?
Don't you have interest in your country? Shares? Ways to make money off money?
Maybe because they were certain that the sky was falling?  Maybe because a government agency came up with a really convincing advertisement?

Allright... Advertisements saying 'pay more taxes!'... Erm...
Paying taxes must be VERY popular in your country, given the fact that you seem to think that would work.

Furthermore it would not be in the best interest of the 'government agency' to advertise for early taxpayment. It would be in their interest to maximise taxes allocated to them, and in your system that would mean that they would want to appear/be underfunded for as long as possible. Until the day of the deadline to be precise. In the morning you put out a pressrelease: "The police in your county is going to dissapear if you don't pay up".
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: LikelyToBreak on August 08, 2013, 09:09:06 AM
Xerographica once again, despite my effort of explaining it to you, you have shown no understanding of the Federal Reserve and how it works.  Go and find my post about the Federal Reserve and educate yourself a little.  Federal Reserve could care less about feedback, they make money out of thin air, so why would they care about feedback.  

In economics, like most things in life, there are more than two choices about anything.  Like the safe sex analogy you put up, you could choose not to have sex or to just have sex with someone you knew was HIV free.  In your bakery example as well, if the baker lowered wages and the people could find other places to work, he would lose workers anyway.  Those who stayed, probably because they couldn't find any other work, then have to figure how to make ends meet with less money.  Which if they can't, they will turn to other ways of making money.  Like stealing from their employer, for instance.  They are not going to work until they drop from slow starvation.

Large corporations have a board of directors.  This board decides on the course of the company.  This board also wants money this quarter because next quarter they are going to sell their stocks and buy stock in another company.  So, they run the company into the ground for the short term profit and split.  How is that maximizing the use of our limited resources?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: surly74 on August 08, 2013, 09:27:56 AM
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"I see you're on the same page with Xenographica, although at least you didn't go all the way to la-la land with a billion dollars. 50K would be five times as expensive and would be more than most people make working, so it's an astounding disincentive to work. 10K is little enough that few people would elect to forego working in order to just live on the 10K. Thus we avoid 50 million people quitting their jobs.

What makes it unrealistic isn't the economics. Once you take into account that the stipend can be subtracted from social security and unemployment benefits, it would leave us paying taxes like the Swedes. They don't complain much because most of them think the benefits are worth it. What makes it unrealistic is that the USA doesn't have the political will to make it happen.

I'm sure there are better ways to do things. I'm only an armchair economist. The point of throwing out a proposal was to show that minimum wage is not the only way to address the needs of poor workers. I included a basic income that includes non-working citizens because I happen to think giving every citiizen at least a bare minimum to subsist on even if they can't hold down a job is a good idea. A sufficiently generous negative income tax could do the same without giving people without jobs a dime.

The US is at one end of the Capitalist spectrum with most other countries near the middle. Like anything else, Moderation is key. I'm not sure I'm on the same page as Xeno I think there are better solutions than handing out cash. Keeping more what you make no matter the hourly wage would make sense....raising personal exemptions for Income tax. If the first 10K you made wasn't taxed at all, at both the state or federal level that would help things.

I'm in favour of raising any minimum wage if personal exemptions aren't going to be increased. Either way purchasing power needs to increase. There is no reason to work when you are losing so much in tax if you are at a minimum wage job.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: surly74 on August 08, 2013, 09:36:26 AM
Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Large corporations have a board of directors.  This board decides on the course of the company.  This board also wants money this quarter because next quarter they are going to sell their stocks and buy stock in another company.  So, they run the company into the ground for the short term profit and split.  How is that maximizing the use of our limited resources?

What you described was insider trading...probably the one financial crime people get prosecuted for.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: LikelyToBreak on August 08, 2013, 09:48:59 AM
surly74 wrote:
QuoteWhat you described was insider trading...probably the one financial crime people get prosecuted for.
How many examples can you come with?  And would they have been prosecuted under pragmatarnism?  After all, they are just voting with their dollars.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: surly74 on August 08, 2013, 10:08:06 AM
QuoteHow many examples can you come with?  And would they have been prosecuted under pragmatarnism?  After all, they are just voting with their dollars.

Examples of insider trading prosecutions? There are some stats at the bottom of the article. Almost 700 cases opened in the year after the article was written.

//http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-growth/a-world-of-difference-on-insider-trading-prosecutions/article1360483/

Does pragmatarnism have anything to do with this? There wasn't a vote, do publically traded companies work under the philosophy of pragmatarnism? In fact they work the opposite...almost like little governments. You want a vote? own shares and vote in people. if you like what they do for you, in this case make you money, then you keep voting for them. Other wise they are voted out.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Mister Agenda on August 08, 2013, 10:15:16 AM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"Please quote the part of my post that shows that I fail to grasp and understand the importance of being able to give others feedback on how well they are using society's limited resources.
Either you grasp and understand the importance of being able to give people feedback on how well they are using society's limited resources...or you support minimum wages.  It can't be both...which is it?

False dilemma voiced from an inability to tolerate nuance. And I don't support minimum wages, brainiac.

Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"Saying that they are 'simply' postive feedback is a claim that they aren't anything else. However, they are also what people live on.
This is what people live on ______ how well people use society's limited resources.  

Fill in the blank using one of the following signs...>,=,<[

No. Again, you rely on trying to limit the other person's options.

Quote from: "Xerographica"What people actually live on is really the supply of food, shelter, clothing...and this supply depends entirely on how well people are using society's limited resources.

And what do they use to obtain their supply of food, shelter, clothing... ? Hint: for most people, it starts with a 'w'.

Quote from: "Xerographica"Therefore, it's really NOT ok to be loosey goosey with the accuracy of the positive feedback we give each other.  Doing so simply diminishes the supply that we all need to survive.

It is okay to have less-than-perfect resource allocation if society as a whole decides that is a price worth paying for some other good, such as making sure some minimum amount of resources reaches the poor. We are allowed to make that choice.

Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"Witholding food from your child when it doesn't behave is also 'postive feedback'. So it follows that you think there shouldn't be a limit on how much food a parent can withold from their child in order to secure the child's obedience.

Withholding food is negative feedback.

Since you keep referring to lowering wages or not purchasing things as positive feedback, I attempted to use your terms in hopes you would understand them. I see now that was foolish of me.

Quote from: "Xerographica"Giving your child an ice cream cone is positive feedback.  Obviously though parents have an obligation to provide a bare minimum to their children.  The parents made a choice to have kids...they should be responsible for their decision.

Society has made a choice to provide a bare minimum to wage earners. Due to the feedback effects you mention, I would prefer society do it a different way to minimize the disruption to efficient resource allocation.

Quote from: "Xerographica"But I do not have an obligation to provide you a bare minimum of positive feedback.

Clearly, you do have a legal obligation to do so.

Quote from: "Xerographica"I'm pretty sure you're not my child.  So if you want my positive feedback...then you'll have to earn it.

Evidently not. I can get your 'positive feedback' by being unable to provide for myself. You have no power to impose the negative feedback of witholding any benefits I may qualify for.

 
Quote from: "Xerographica"And if you don't think I'm giving you enough positive feedback...then either you try harder/smarter or you find somebody else who is willing to give you more positive feedback than I'm giving you.

You seem to be speaking from a fantasy land in which your desired system already applies. You're talking about how you wish it were rather than how it actually is.
 
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"It is an observable fact that pure market efficiency isn't the only thing we, as a society, value. As a society, we have demonstrated that we are willing to sacrifice some efficiency in resource allocation to secure other goods.
No, all we've "demonstrated" is that we want a free lunch.  And politicians take advantage of this fact to get into office.  Everybody, not just voters, want a free lunch.

Our poverty rate may be a little higher than we'd like, but we don't actually have enough people collecting benefits to make up a majority that can control our government through the sheer weight of their votes. The majority of productive citizens are willing to provide at least some assistance to the less fortunate through government programs. They don't want a free lunch, they don't want anyone going hungry and they're wiling to pay to prevent it.  

Quote from: "Xerographica"The only way to know what society truly values...is to prevent them from spending other people's money.  The challenge is showing people that more value is created when they can only spend their own resources.  This isn't an easy challenge, and I doubt I'm up for it....but it's fundamentally important.

If it's so important, do a feasibility study. You're never going to convince many people your system is best through mere argument. A successful demonstration is what you want.

Quote from: "Xerographica"The problem with a free lunch is that it is a fiscal illusion.  The lunch appears magically like pulling a rabbit out of a hat.  But you know that the magician didn't create the rabbit...the rabbit had to come from somewhere.

That is true...but you're the one who brought up free lunches, not me. I'm not under the impression that providing a basic income is cost-free.

Quote from: "Xerographica"With free lunches...voters don't know or care where the value was taken from. They are just happy that it didn't come from them.  But how could they possibly know that when they have no idea where exactly the value was taken from?  Sure, somebody who doesn't have to pay federal income tax won't have to pay for more welfare benefits...but those resources have to come from somewhere.

Most voters DO pay federal income tax...I suspect they've an idea where the money for social programs comes from.

Quote from: "Xerographica"Chances are good that it will be manifested in the form of more expensive commodities that they need to survive.  So in essence they are in fact worse off for voting for a free lunch.

The average voter IS worse off for voting for a free lunch. Your mistake is thinking they are unaware of that and would vote differently if only they knew they were paying for other people to eat.  

Quote from: "Xerographica"The only way we can ensure that voters are not actually made worse off...is to ensure that they can see the price tags.  Then, and only then, can they decide whether the benefit is worth the opportunity cost.

From whence comes our duty to make sure that voters are not actually made worse off by thwarting their votes?    

Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"If I gave everyone a billion dollars (which would cause dramatic inflation as it would have to be merely printed rather than paid for honestly with taxes) you'd have no more influence than anyone else.

That wasn't the point.  The point was to try understand the problem of influence exceeding benefit.

You failed and continue to fail to make that point.

Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"What you fail to grasp and understand is the difference between shifting existing resources and 'poofing' a billion dollars for everyone out champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

If shifts do not reflect the true preferences of consumers...then value is destroyed (resources are inefficiently allocated).

Consumers seem to be willing to allow some value to be destroyed in order to provide a safety net for those who need it. What right do you have to prevent them from making that choice?

Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"Equalizing influence is an act, not an argument. The argument would be about the consequences of doing so. You still seem to be talking from your fantasy of everyone getting a billion dollars, rather than everyone getting $10,000; which is so far from equalizing influence that it's a ludicrous comparison. A billion dollars for everyone would cause severe damage to our society due to runaway inflation. $10,000 for everyone, taxed so that most people break even on spending power, would not have such a dramatic effect. It would be a disincentive on the margin of people who aren't willing to work in order to make more than $10,000 a year, but that it would be an overall detriment to the economy is by no means a given.

Listen, you don't evenly distribute your money for a reason.  You know what that reason is?  It's because you're not crazy.  Except, here you are thinking there's value in minimum wages.  A minimum wage is the same thing as you distributing your money more evenly.

I suppose if you make up your definitions as you go along, a basic income could be said to be the same thing as a minimum wage. Under that rule a goose could be said to be the same thing as a lion, but I can't stop you from doing that if you want to.

A basic income would allow wages to be set by market forces. A basic income would eliminate the need for much of the bureacracy surrounding social programs. A basic income would reduce the amount needed to be distributed for unemployment and social security benefits. A basic income wouldn't make keeping benefits a part-time job (talk about destroying value!). What I'm saying is that if society wants to provide for people less able to earn money it should be willing to do so directly rather than mandating businesses to do it.  

Quote from: "Xerographica"When you go shopping...your goal is not to evenly distribute your money.  Your goal is to maximize the amount of value you get for your money.  You want the most bang for your buck.  Therefore, you give your bucks to the people who give you the most bang.  Decrease the bucks you give them...transfer it to their employees...and you'll end up with less bang.  We all will.

In this case, what we are shopping for is provision for the less-advantaged. Maybe more people would be better-off if the government had stayed out of charity work in the first place, but we don't live in that alternate universe and can't know that for certain. We agree that minimum wages distort the labor market and increase unemployment. We disagree on it being the right of the citizenry to choose to do that. I propose a solution (just one of many possible ones) that mitigates the market distortion while still accomplishing the aim of the citizenry. You want to change the aim of the citizenry. If you want to do that, you'll have to show your way is better, not just proclaim it.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Mister Agenda on August 08, 2013, 10:21:09 AM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Poison Tree"Xerographica, if your way for people to give feedback through allocating their money is clearly such a superior system, then why haven't people used their current method of giving feedback (voting) to institute just such a system?
Most people don't know that tax choice is a clearly superior system.  Once they get the memo then I'm sure they'd vote for it.  It might be a while though.  I'm still trying to figure out how to word the memo.

Give the job to someone who can write the memo with brevity and without arrogance and condecension. You're the worst salesman for tax choice I've ever encountered.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: surly74 on August 08, 2013, 10:30:07 AM
Quote from: "Bibliofagus"Furthermore it would not be in the best interest of the 'government agency' to advertise for early taxpayment. It would be in their interest to maximise taxes allocated to them, and in your system that would mean that they would want to appear/be underfunded for as long as possible. Until the day of the deadline to be precise. In the morning you put out a pressrelease: "The police in your county is going to dissapear if you don't pay up".

or the police having a list of who put taxes towards the police force...call 911, did you pay to the police force? Yes, we'll be right there. No? We'll get around to it.

same with fire, ambulance. any public service.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: zarus tathra on August 08, 2013, 11:20:05 AM
Without the government, labor would eat capital ALIVE. You people are all waiting for "the government" to save you and protect you, even though it's obvious that "the government" is made up of people like you. It's the same psychology that underpins "consumerism."
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 08, 2013, 11:57:40 AM
Quote from: "Xerographica"In a tax choice system, if you valued how the Fed was using society's limited resources, then you'd give them some of your taxes.  What percentage of taxpayers would give the Fed their taxes?  

The correct answer is...that you don't know.
Actually we do.  Greece has a voluntary tax system.  Guess what?  IT DOESN'T WORK, which is why Greece went bankrupt.

So it seems as if you have to come up with something else.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 08, 2013, 11:59:30 AM
Quote from: "Xerographica"Most people don't know that tax choice is a clearly superior system.
Allow me to correct that for you:

People who understand what happened in Greece know that tax choice is a very inferior system, and just doesn't work.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 08, 2013, 12:05:08 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"There's a difference between understanding economics and knowing your priorities.  People know their priorities, and in a pragmatarian system, would be able to allocate their tax dollars accordingly.  This would determine how much funding each government agency received.  

As such, it would be nonsensical to say that important government organizations would be underfunded.  That's because the only measure of "importance" is how much people are willing to sacrifice for something.  If public healthcare received a lot of funding, then, and only then, could we say that public healthcare is important to society.
Well, no.  That's NOT what "important to society" means.  What you're talking about is what's important to certain members of society.

Remember, a large percentage of society doesn't earn enough to pay ANY tax, and what's important to THEM isn't very important to those who pay the most tax.

So all your "tax choice" would do is allow the 1% to OPENLY decide what gets funded, rather than doing it by stealth the way it's done now.

At least, the way it's done now affords SOME protection for the plebs.  Your way provides none, and we'd either have a revolution (in which the wealthy, good or bad, would be strung up from the lamp posts) or the stench of unburied bodies (of the dead ex-poor) would drive everyone left alive to the wilderness.

Anyone who remembers Watts doesn't want a pleb revolution.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 08, 2013, 12:13:30 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"If people didn't know what their priorities were then they'd never make any decisions regarding how to allocate their resources...
Most people don't.  They buy what they want NOW.  Then, when they run out of money but they actually NEED something, they put it on plastic.

So when the government has put most of its bills "on plastic", the vast majority (a LOT more than now) will be the interest on the national debt.  And how many people, given free choice, will send one thin dime of tax to pay that?  It's not a need of theirs, it's not a want of theirs, so they won't allocate any money to it.

Then, when the government declares bankruptcy ...

Have you spend even 5 minutes thinking this plan of yours through to its end?  I doubt it.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 08, 2013, 12:23:37 PM
Quote from: "surly74"If the first 10K you made wasn't taxed at all, at both the state or federal level that would help things.
It wouldn't help the guy making $1/hour in the slightest, since $2,000/year isn't even enough to starve to death in a Western country.

QuoteI'm in favour of raising any minimum wage if personal exemptions aren't going to be increased. Either way purchasing power needs to increase. There is no reason to work when you are losing so much in tax if you are at a minimum wage job.
But you can't raise the purchasing power of a man making less than the minimum tax cutoff by raising it. And you can't increase purchasing power by giving everyone a minimum annual income.  (Prices will just rise to account for the increase in the money supply.)  And if the minimum wage is raised enough that one person earning it can support a family, prices will rise so much that he'll no longer be able to.

IOW, the first clause of Matthew 26:11 will always apply, no matter what we do.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 08, 2013, 12:28:12 PM
Quote from: "surly74"
Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"Large corporations have a board of directors.  This board decides on the course of the company.  This board also wants money this quarter because next quarter they are going to sell their stocks and buy stock in another company.  So, they run the company into the ground for the short term profit and split.  How is that maximizing the use of our limited resources?

What you described was insider trading...probably the one financial crime people get prosecuted for.
It's not.  If they sell the stock short, knowing that they're going to run the company into the ground, it is.  But if the profit comes from running the company into the ground, it's not trading at all.  (They can raise their salaries, then sell off capital goods to pay for it.  They can lay off workers and add those salaries to their own.  Etc., etc.)  They then sell the stocks (not at a loss, because they never paid anything for them) for less than they were worth when they received them, so they wouldn't be prosecuted even if it WERE insider trading.  (You don't usually get prosecuted for insider trading if you take a bath.)
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: LikelyToBreak on August 08, 2013, 12:47:06 PM
surly74 see what Colanth wrote.  I think it is a pretty good explanation.  

Also note:
QuoteIn the years 1997 through 1999, white-collar crime accounted for less than 4.0 percent of the incidents reported to the FBI. The majority of those offenses were frauds, counterfeiting, and forgery. Currently, one in three American families is a victim of white-collar crime, yet very few are actually reported. Of those reported only 21% made it into the hands of a law enforcement agency. This translates into less than eight percent of all white-collar crimes reaching the proper authorities.
//http://ezinearticles.com/?White-Collar-Crime-and-Prosecution&id=2085528
So, although there maybe 700 cases being prosecuted, there are about 7,000 cases of it going on.   And maybe even more which are never even detected.  Also prosecutors don't like trying white collar crime, they say it is because it is hard to get a jury to understand what actually happened and what laws were broken.  Anyway pragmatarianism doesn't seem to take cases like this into account.  Or then maybe I missed something, which is highly likely considering the confusion of this topic.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 08, 2013, 05:43:49 PM
//http://libertariananarchy.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/hello-world/ may interest you.  It's an economic breakdown (and total destruction of the feasibility of the idea of) pragmatarianism.  Unlike pragmatarianists, the author actually looks at consequences.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 08, 2013, 06:18:51 PM
Quote from: "Colanth"//http://libertariananarchy.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/hello-world/ may interest you.  It's an economic breakdown (and total destruction of the feasibility of the idea of) pragmatarianism.  Unlike pragmatarianists, the author actually looks at consequences.
Heh, those two anarcho-capitalists couldn't quite explain how, exactly, we would end up at a 100% tax rate.  There are far better critiques...just Google "critique of pragmatarianism" (//https://www.google.com/search?q=%22critique+of+pragmatarianism%22&oq=%22critique+of+pragmatarianism%22&aqs=chrome.0.69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8).

It's nice to see though that you're actually researching the topic.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 08, 2013, 06:29:14 PM
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"Give the job to someone who can write the memo with brevity and without arrogance and condecension. You're the worst salesman for tax choice I've ever encountered.
How many tax choice salesmen have you encountered?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 08, 2013, 07:01:36 PM
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"In this case, what we are shopping for is provision for the less-advantaged. Maybe more people would be better-off if the government had stayed out of charity work in the first place, but we don't live in that alternate universe and can't know that for certain. We agree that minimum wages distort the labor market and increase unemployment. We disagree on it being the right of the citizenry to choose to do that. I propose a solution (just one of many possible ones) that mitigates the market distortion while still accomplishing the aim of the citizenry. You want to change the aim of the citizenry. If you want to do that, you'll have to show your way is better, not just proclaim it.
We clearly disagree on how we can truly know exactly where the citizenry is aiming.  You seem to have great confidence in voting...but voting is a contingent valuation technique.  It's people simply stating what they want/value/believe.  That's why "contingent valuation" is also known as "stated preference".  

Shopping, on the other hand, is demonstrated preference.  So when we say that actions speak louder than words...we're saying that demonstrated preference is more accurate than stated preference.  

There's often a disparity between what people say, and what people do.  As such, you're giving way too much weight to people's words and not nearly enough weight to their actions.  

This is something that we disagree on...but it's not really something that experts disagree on....

QuoteFurthermore, social scientists know that there is often a big gulf between consumers' answers to surveys questions and what they actually do when confronted with real choices involving real prices and the immediate circumstances of consumption. - Richard B. McKenzie, Bound to Be Free (//http://books.google.com/books?id=dHI2I5m0sZ0C)
QuoteThere are, however, several other considerations that are sometimes mentioned in the context of revealed preference that do suggest a systematic and predictable bias in the divergence between actions and words (and by extrapolation between market and electoral preference), and these considerations are of more interest in the current setting. - Geoffrey Brennan, Loren Lomasky , Democracy and Decision (//http://books.google.com/books?id=I3mal2inJQgC)
You seem to think that I have some issue with society choosing to help the poor.  But this is ridiculously far from the mark.  I'm a pragmatarian...this means that I believe that taxpayers should be free to choose where their taxes go.  If taxpayers want to spend their taxes on the poor...then so be it.  If they want to spend all their taxes on the poor...then I'll probably disagree but that doesn't mean that I'd want to limit their freedom.  If they don't want to spend any of their taxes on the poor...then I'll probably disagree as well...but it would be proof positive that there is a often a huge disparity between words (voting) and actions (spending).

But given that you believe 1. that voters are taxpayers and 2. voters are truly willing to make significant sacrifices for the poor...then you should have confidence that, given the choice, they would choose to give a good portion of their taxes to the poor.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Plu on August 09, 2013, 02:30:04 AM
Why do you keep saying "society wants"? Under you system it's irrelevant what "the people" want. It's only relevant what "the rich" want. They have the money, they pay the taxes, they make the decisions.

If you'd start replacing "the people" with "the rich" in your stories, at least you'd be honest about you're advocating.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 09, 2013, 03:54:06 AM
Quote from: "Plu"Why do you keep saying "society wants"? Under you system it's irrelevant what "the people" want. It's only relevant what "the rich" want. They have the money, they pay the taxes, they make the decisions.

If you'd start replacing "the people" with "the rich" in your stories, at least you'd be honest about you're advocating.
Let me, ummm, kill two birds with one stone here...

From the xkcd thread (//http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=103957)...

Quote from: "Silknor"That has virtually nothing to do with what I was asking. So lets rephrase. You have the option of living in two societies:
#1 The US as it is now.
#2 InequalityLand. Here, 1% of the population is incredibly wealthy, another 2% are comfortably middle class, and 97% live in abject poverty. But the overall level of production and wealth is 10% higher than in #1.

It's clear that the InequalityLand ranks higher on efficiency (must be all those socialist redistributive policies in the US, holding their efficiency down). Now, if you can pick which society you'd prefer to live in, but you don't know where in the wealth distribution you'll end up (we'll assign you at random), which would you pick?

Personally, I would pick #1. Would you? And if you would as well, why in the world would we approach economic policy caring only about efficiency and consumer sovereignty. So, what's your true preference? The more efficient society? Or the less efficient but more equitable one?
My reply...

This reminds me of a terrible critique of pragmatarianism written by two anarcho-capitalists...Pragmatarianism Disproved (//http://libertariananarchy.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/hello-world/).  It made me laugh because they attempted to demonstrate how a pragmatarian system with a 100% tax rate wouldn't work.  But when I asked them to explain how we would end up at a 100% tax rate...they were unable to do so.

How does consumer sovereignty lead to the second option?  

Here in Southern California it's kind of the coolest thing.  We have flocks of wild parrots that have completely naturalized.  Have you ever heard a flock of wild parrots?  It's pretty much the noisiest thing.  Especially at the butt crack of dawn right outside my open bedroom window when they are swarming the large fig tree that's weighed down with a ton of ripe fruit.  

There the parrots are...happy as can be...squawking and squawking and chowing down on fig after fig.  Then, in a flash of green, they fly off to who knows where.  Maybe to another fig tree?  Surely my fig tree can't be the only fig tree that they visit.  I wonder how many fig trees they visit?  But wherever they go, they deposit fig seeds.  During fig season...what's the average amount of seeds that each parrot poops out?  What percentage of seeds actually germinate and make it to maturity?

I wonder if you can already see my point here.  I'm talking about parrot sovereignty.  With this process at work...how could we end up with fig trees that did not match the preferences of the parrots?  Why would the parrots eat figs that didn't match their preferences?  How could uneaten seeds possibly be dispersed?  Given that no two seed grown fig trees are exactly alike, wouldn't the parrots prioritize and eat the figs that provided them with the most bang for their buck?  

I'm sure you've heard the expression..."as happy as a kid in a candy store".  That expression is applicable to the parrots during fig season.  Why is the kid in the candy store so happy?  Because there are so many items that match his preferences.  Why are their so many items that match his preferences?  Because he has the freedom to choose whichever candies match his preferences and candy makers are free to innovate and offer newer types of candies.  Less wonderful candies are replaced by more wonderful candies...it's creative destruction that results in more and more value.

Basically, consumer sovereignty will lead us to heaven on earth.  Except, not in your scenario.  What gives?  The next time you're at the mall...step back, sit down and pay attention to the throngs of consumers picking x or y.  You won't be the only one doing so.  If producers want consumers' money...then they are going to have to produce items that are closer matches to the preferences of consumers.  

Am I wrong?  Perhaps.  If so, then please walk me through a step by step process showing exactly how consumer sovereignty leads us to society #2.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Poison Tree on August 09, 2013, 12:30:32 PM
The easiest way to move towards society #2 is that the richest people are much better off spending their huge proportion of the money on themselves, not society. Why should they allocate money to a general hospital serving the community when they could higher a privet doctor and get more return on their money? Why pay for cops to protect the city when you can higher private guards for your own property? As the riches people withdraw into their little forts the bulk of society has a decreasing share of money to attempt to use to cover all of their needs, and they are also likely to be better off by spending the money strictly on themselves rather than spreading it around. Soon you end up with Detroit--anyone with the money to pay for services uses it to move somewhere better.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Mister Agenda on August 09, 2013, 12:47:23 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"Give the job to someone who can write the memo with brevity and without arrogance and condecension. You're the worst salesman for tax choice I've ever encountered.
How many tax choice salesmen have you encountered?

11. I actually thought it might have advantages until you explained it.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: josephpalazzo on August 09, 2013, 02:49:04 PM
Quote from: "Poison Tree"The easiest way to move towards society #2 is that the richest people are much better off spending their huge proportion of the money on themselves, not society. Why should they allocate money to a general hospital serving the community when they could higher a privet doctor and get more return on their money? Why pay for cops to protect the city when you can higher private guards for your own property? As the riches people withdraw into their little forts the bulk of society has a decreasing share of money to attempt to use to cover all of their needs, and they are also likely to be better off by spending the money strictly on themselves rather than spreading it around.

We already did that. It's called the Feudal Age.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 09, 2013, 03:59:27 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Colanth"//http://libertariananarchy.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/hello-world/ may interest you.  It's an economic breakdown (and total destruction of the feasibility of the idea of) pragmatarianism.  Unlike pragmatarianists, the author actually looks at consequences.
Heh, those two anarcho-capitalists couldn't quite explain how, exactly, we would end up at a 100% tax rate.
Nice way of saying that you don't have a clue about how financial analysis is actually done.  Thanks.  Now I know I can totally ignore your opinions on finance.  (They COMPLETELY explained why they chose a 100% tax rate for the analysis.  They were PAINFULLY obvious.)
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 09, 2013, 04:02:47 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"This reminds me of a terrible critique of pragmatarianism written by two anarcho-capitalists...Pragmatarianism Disproved (//http://libertariananarchy.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/hello-world/).  It made me laugh because they attempted to demonstrate how a pragmatarian system with a 100% tax rate wouldn't work.  But when I asked them to explain how we would end up at a 100% tax rate...they were unable to do so.
Unable?  No, since they explained it on the site.

Unwilling to waste time on someone who obviously doesn't understand anything about finance or analysis?  Probably.  If you can't understand the explanation on the site, what makes you think you'd be able to understand one they send to you personally?  It would be about the same words they posted on their site.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Sal1981 on August 09, 2013, 04:03:17 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"Just like it would be detrimental to lie about how much you value something...it would also be detrimental to have your true values ignored.
Ever heard about game theory? Or, ever heard about bartering?

Here's a simple scenario: Say you want to buy a car, but you don't want to pay more than 10k for it, do you start by offering 10k for it? Yeah, if you're never bartered before. You start low, like 6k, then the one selling might say 14k or something, and you work your way to your ideal price, be it 10k or maybe if you're good less than what you aimed for. This is just one example, but you're basically rambling in OP.

demand/supply is overrated and simplistic anyways.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 09, 2013, 08:42:24 PM
Quote from: "Colanth"
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Colanth"//http://libertariananarchy.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/hello-world/ may interest you.  It's an economic breakdown (and total destruction of the feasibility of the idea of) pragmatarianism.  Unlike pragmatarianists, the author actually looks at consequences.
Heh, those two anarcho-capitalists couldn't quite explain how, exactly, we would end up at a 100% tax rate.
Nice way of saying that you don't have a clue about how financial analysis is actually done.  Thanks.  Now I know I can totally ignore your opinions on finance.  (They COMPLETELY explained why they chose a 100% tax rate for the analysis.  They were PAINFULLY obvious.)
Yeah, they did explain why they choose a 100% tax rate for their analysis...but when I asked them afterwards to explain exactly how we would arrive at a 100% tax rate...they completely failed to do so.

Let me try and explain this in more detail.

If we implemented a pragmatarian system tomorrow...the tax rate would be exactly the same.  That's because pragmatarianism is all about ceteris paribus (all other things being equal).  

So if we start off at a 40% tax rate then how do we end up at a 100% tax rate?  Well...who controls the tax rate?  Congress.  Would congress randomly bump the tax rate from 40% to 100%?  It's entirely possible...given that they are in charge of the tax rate...but it's just not very probable.  Could they gradually increase the tax rate over time?  Sure, that's a lot more probable.  

But unlike with the current system, in a pragmatarian system, congress, just like every other organization, would depend on positive feedback from consumers.  

So the question becomes...what tax rate would taxpayers prefer?  A higher tax rate would mean that taxpayers could spend more of their money in the public sector and less of their money in the private sector.  A lower tax rate would mean they could spend less of their money in the public sector and more of their money in the private sector.  Basically, it's a question of how much value each sector provides.

If congress starts going the right direction with the tax rate...then they would gain revenue (positive feedback).  If they start going the wrong direction with the tax rate...then they would lose revenue.  Basically the change in their revenue would indicate whether they were going the right or wrong direction with the tax rate.  So in order to maximize their revenue...they would have to pick the optimal tax rate.  

So if we ended up, over time, with a 100% tax rate, then it's not just because congress arbitrarily decided to up the tax rate...it would be because taxpayers were deriving all their value from the public sector and absolutely no value from the private sector.  

It's hilarious because we have two anarcho-capitalists...people who want to eliminate the public sector...people who argue that the private sector is far superior...envisioning and critiquing a scenario where all taxpayers, completely of their own free will, choose the public sector entirely over the private sector.  Not just partially, but entirely.  

Why would taxpayers want MORE public sector if it wasn't providing them with MORE value?  They wouldn't.  Therefore, if taxpayers wanted ALL public sector it would be because that's where ALL their value was coming from.  

The public sector, I guess, must have really changed for the best.  Public agencies would compete for revenue...they would try and offer taxpayers the most bang for their tax dollar.  But there wouldn't be any profit...or price tags!  So the motivation... incentive... would be to increase your influence over how society's limited resources were used.  Wasting society's limited resources would decrease your influence.  That's because nobody would want to give their tax dollars to the most wasteful government agencies.  So if you didn't work hard/smart, then your agency would lose revenue and your own influence would decrease.  Rather than give your favorite band $100 tax dollars...you would only be able to give them $5 tax dollars.  Same thing with your favorite author and restaurant.  This means that you'll end up with marginally less of the things that match your preference.

It's really difficult, but nicely challenging, to try and imagine how a 100% tax rate would work in a pragmatarian system.  But to argue that it wouldn't work...but we still somehow managed to end up there...is ludicrous.  This is because at every step of the way taxpayers would be deciding for themselves whether they wanted more or less public sector.  If something isn't working...if you're not getting any value from it...then why would you want more of it?  You wouldn't.

You continue to try and engage me in discussion...therefore you must be deriving value from our discussion.  When you stop demanding more of me...then you must be deriving more value elsewhere.  It's a pretty straightforward concept...and it's equally applicable to the tax rate in a pragmatarian system.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Mister Agenda on August 10, 2013, 10:39:18 AM
You never seem to respond when it's pointed out that the top 5% of income-earners who pay over half of all income taxes would determine how the bulk of government money is spent. We voted with our wallets that their stuff was worth buying, we didn't vote them into defacto office. They have enough influence over the government already, IMHO.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Poison Tree on August 10, 2013, 11:19:21 AM
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"You never seem to respond when it's pointed out that the top 5% of income-earners who pay over half of all income taxes would determine how the bulk of government money is spent. We voted with our wallets that their stuff was worth buying, we didn't vote them into defacto office. They have enough influence over the government already, IMHO.
But don't you realize that, unlike congress--who we have a method of replacing when they stop acting as society wants--, the top 5%--with no practical method of replacement--really are omniscient.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 10, 2013, 04:22:06 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"Yeah, they did explain why they choose a 100% tax rate for their analysis...but when I asked them afterwards to explain exactly how we would arrive at a 100% tax rate...they completely failed to do so.
Because the question shows that you completely failed to understand what they said on the site, so they probably figured that you wouldn't understand the same thing (which was kindergarten-simple) in an email.

And evidently you don't understand it.

QuoteLet me try and explain this in more detail.

If we implemented a pragmatarian system tomorrow...the tax rate would be exactly the same.
But it wouldn't work under a 100% tax rate - and THAT'S how you analyze whether it would work or not.

If you can't understand that (and it's evident that you can't), I have to assume that you don't actually understand pragmatarianism (which is more complex than analysis), you're just parroting what someone else said.  Kind of like Christians just repeating what the priest or minister told them.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 10, 2013, 04:28:05 PM
Quote from: "Poison Tree"But don't you realize that, unlike congress--who we have a method of replacing when they stop acting as society wants--
A method that doesn't actually work, because most of the electorate can't hold a whole thought, let alone two or more thoughts, in their heads at the same time.  Tell a rabid Christian crowd that you're anti-under-any-circumstances-abortion and you're assured of their vote.  Even if you're opposed to them earning enough money to keep from starving.

Many of the North Carolina unemployed will be voting for the legislators who voted against accepting the federal unemployment extension.  But they're Christians and they're "pro-life".  So tell me again how the system "works"?
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Poison Tree on August 10, 2013, 05:01:33 PM
Quote from: "Colanth"
Quote from: "Poison Tree"But don't you realize that, unlike congress--who we have a method of replacing when they stop acting as society wants--
A method that doesn't actually work, because most of the electorate can't hold a whole thought, let alone two or more thoughts, in their heads at the same time.  Tell a rabid Christian crowd that you're anti-under-any-circumstances-abortion and you're assured of their vote.  Even if you're opposed to them earning enough money to keep from starving.

Many of the North Carolina unemployed will be voting for the legislators who voted against accepting the federal unemployment extension.  But they're Christians and they're "pro-life".  So tell me again how the system "works"?
I said that we had a method of replacing them, not that the system was perfect or that voters only vote with a rational mind or that one sacred cow will not trump other issues  for them or anything of that kind. It seems bizarre to us that choosing a "good, honest christian" is the most important thing to some voters, but they still have that choice and their choice has an impact on the candidate, regardless of the voters lack of economic power or focus on his own self-interest. However, voters do have a method of voicing dissatisfaction, a more tangible method then exists against the top 5% or other unelected powers.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 10, 2013, 11:26:25 PM
Quote from: "Poison Tree"However, voters do have a method of voicing dissatisfaction, a more tangible method then exists against the top 5% or other unelected powers.
An ineffective method and no method are like a god that chooses to do nothing and a non-existent god.  A distinction without a difference.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 11, 2013, 02:24:07 AM
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"You never seem to respond when it's pointed out that the top 5% of income-earners who pay over half of all income taxes would determine how the bulk of government money is spent. We voted with our wallets that their stuff was worth buying, we didn't vote them into defacto office. They have enough influence over the government already, IMHO.
We voted for taxpayers with our actions...but we voted for politicians with our words.  Actions speak louder than words...

QuoteFurthermore, social scientists know that there is often a big gulf between consumers' answers to surveys questions and what they actually do when confronted with real choices involving real prices and the immediate circumstances of consumption. - Richard B. McKenzie, Bound to Be Free (//http://books.google.com/books?id=dHI2I5m0sZ0C)
QuoteThere are, however, several other considerations that are sometimes mentioned in the context of revealed preference that do suggest a systematic and predictable bias in the divergence between actions and words (and by extrapolation between market and electoral preference), and these considerations are of more interest in the current setting. - Geoffrey Brennan, Loren Lomasky, Democracy and Decision (//http://books.google.com/books?id=I3mal2inJQgC)
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 11, 2013, 02:33:06 AM
Quote from: "Poison Tree"
Quote from: "Mister Agenda"You never seem to respond when it's pointed out that the top 5% of income-earners who pay over half of all income taxes would determine how the bulk of government money is spent. We voted with our wallets that their stuff was worth buying, we didn't vote them into defacto office. They have enough influence over the government already, IMHO.
But don't you realize that, unlike congress--who we have a method of replacing when they stop acting as society wants--, the top 5%--with no practical method of replacement--really are omniscient.
I don't think you quite grasp the concept of "consumer sovereignty"...

QuoteWal-Mart can't charge more; if it does, its customers will go elsewhere. The same is true of Target and Costco. In a sense, Wal-Mart is the elected representative of tens of millions of hard-bargaining shoppers, and, like any representative, it serves only at their pleasure. - James Surowiecki, The Customer is King (//http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/14/050214ta_talk_surowiecki)
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 11, 2013, 02:37:36 AM
Quote from: "Colanth"But it wouldn't work under a 100% tax rate - and THAT'S how you analyze whether it would work or not.

If you can't understand that (and it's evident that you can't), I have to assume that you don't actually understand pragmatarianism (which is more complex than analysis), you're just parroting what someone else said.  Kind of like Christians just repeating what the priest or minister told them.
If you can't explain how we would end up at a 100% tax rate...then the critique is completely irrelevant.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 11, 2013, 07:30:21 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Colanth"But it wouldn't work under a 100% tax rate - and THAT'S how you analyze whether it would work or not.

If you can't understand that (and it's evident that you can't), I have to assume that you don't actually understand pragmatarianism (which is more complex than analysis), you're just parroting what someone else said.  Kind of like Christians just repeating what the priest or minister told them.
If you can't explain how we would end up at a 100% tax rate...then the critique is completely irrelevant.
If you can't understand how we use a 100% tax rate for analysis even if it's impossible to actually have a 100% tax rate, you don't understand enough about financial analysis to even be asking the questions you asked in this thread.

We DON'T end up with a 100% tax rate.  No one ever claimed we would.  That's totally irrelevant to the analysis.  Stop asking for an explanation of a graduate level subject when you're still in 3nd grade.
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Xerographica on August 11, 2013, 08:39:47 PM
Quote from: "Colanth"
Quote from: "Xerographica"
Quote from: "Colanth"But it wouldn't work under a 100% tax rate - and THAT'S how you analyze whether it would work or not.

If you can't understand that (and it's evident that you can't), I have to assume that you don't actually understand pragmatarianism (which is more complex than analysis), you're just parroting what someone else said.  Kind of like Christians just repeating what the priest or minister told them.
If you can't explain how we would end up at a 100% tax rate...then the critique is completely irrelevant.
If you can't understand how we use a 100% tax rate for analysis even if it's impossible to actually have a 100% tax rate, you don't understand enough about financial analysis to even be asking the questions you asked in this thread.

We DON'T end up with a 100% tax rate.  No one ever claimed we would.  That's totally irrelevant to the analysis.  Stop asking for an explanation of a graduate level subject when you're still in 3nd grade.
Let me see if I follow your logic...

1. Tax choice would never result in a 100% tax rate
2. Tax choice wouldn't work at a 100% tax rate
3. Therefore, tax choice wouldn't work

Let me try...

1. Tax choice wouldn't turn people into marshmallows
2. Tax choice wouldn't work if people were marshmallows
3. Therefore, tax choice wouldn't work
Title: Re: Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply
Post by: Colanth on August 12, 2013, 04:01:26 PM
Quote from: "Xerographica"Let me see if I follow your logic...

1. Tax choice would never result in a 100% tax rate
2. Tax choice wouldn't work at a 100% tax rate
3. Therefore, tax choice wouldn't work
Nope, you don't.  Not at all.

I spelled it out to you, but it's now even more evident than it was before that you don't understand enough about economics to understand the simplest explanation possible.