HsSpider, you do realize that you have a vested interest in people being too stupid to figure it out for themselves because otherwise your idea of a benevolent dictators…, um, Social Democracy somehow goes down the drain…
Plus, if we are greedy, egoistic bastards, unable to fight it even when it would be in our best interest, what will the Social Democratic administrators be?
I even know the answer, they are different because they are social democrats, therefore enlightened and I am the one who is being religious.[/quote]
Very interesting thoughts here - and drilling into the real issue.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
HsSpider, you do realize that you have a vested interest in people being too stupid to figure it out for themselves because otherwise your idea of a benevolent dictators…, um, Social Democracy somehow goes down the drain…
Plus, if we are greedy, egoistic bastards, unable to fight it even when it would be in our best interest, what will the Social Democratic administrators be?
I even know the answer, they are different because they are social democrats, therefore enlightened and I am the one who is being religious.
Very interesting thoughts here - and drilling into the real issue.[/quote]
Yes. Let’s abandon all reason, ignore scientific facts and go by our gut and wishful thinking, shall we?
[quote]hspder wrote:
Yes. Let’s abandon all reason, ignore scientific facts and go by our gut and wishful thinking, shall we?
[/quote]
Isn’t that kinda the point of economics? You spend your time trying to make the best educated guess possible about what humans will think, or how they will respond?
Granted, I took just enough eco to get a degree - but the two classes I took seemed to be an educated guessing game.
Why isn’t it a valid effort to question the government’s motives as much as you question business’?
Do I need to educate you also in the Prisoner’s dilemma – that proves that, in fact, cooperation, not greed, is the one that yields that optimal outcome?[/quote]
No, I don’t need you to spin Game Theory to me too.
It’s game theory not game proof and it’s slightly irrelevant (not totally irrelevant, just oversimplified) as it’s ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ not ‘Social Democrat’s Dilemma’ or ‘Capitalist’s Dilemma’.
As you pointed out optimal navigation of the game requires luck/ESP/superrational thought. Neither you nor I believe the deity option is available in this instance. I also don’t believe any acronym behind your name or a group of people with a lot of acronyms endows any sort of superrational powers (back on topic!). Quite often we see the opposite, it’s out of context but still applicable when Coolidge says, ‘unrewarded genius is almost a proverb’. Set up the Roman Empire and put the King of the Jews next to it and you get a crucifixion, one of the earlier examples, but they really are exhaustive.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma supposes an artificial construct that may or may not be abundant in the real world (oddly enough the prototypical example doesn’t present itself in real life). In this construct it imposes intellectual limits on the players and then we are either a) justified when they think within those limits or b) surprised by ‘magical thinking’ when they violate those limits. Given this line of thought, one could quite easily foresee an artificially generated scenario where cooperation dooms both parties where defection could at least save one, had they only known…
I meant what I said, much the same way I split the hair from ‘most’ to ‘good’ you split ‘unable’ to ‘unwilling’. If a government is unwilling to force policy on it’s constituency, it is unable to meet it’s quotas.
[quote]Why are you pretending you do not know what standard of living is? Because it is convenient for you to play dumb?
[/quote]
You’re starting to sound like a short-sighted, calloused capitalist, “26 sick days a year, relatively rampant depression, and some social integration issues? Who cares! It’s not the government’s fault! Everything’s okay as long as our standard of living measures up!”.
Am I wrong, does Stanford have some defintion of free market that incorporates government regulation? (I wouldn’t be surprised if you did.)
I’d love to see the statistics on this. Also, let’s not confuse fiscal conservatism with civil/social conservatism. Looking strictly at voting can lead to false representation. Lastly, I’m not saying determine. I’m asserting an association or predisposition, I’d still like to see the data.
This raises a good question, at what point does a Social Democrat declare him/herself a success? Also, could you clarify the differences between having means and being successful?
[quote]Nephorm actually addressed that somewhere else; he was always a liberal; the reason he took a while before starting to share his wealth is that he believed that way he could give more over the long term – he makes money with money, after all, so giving away too much of his wealth would reduce his ability to make more and hence give more.
I completely understand this rationale and apply it myself.[/quote]
Right, oscillation (or cooperation) can buy you the best of both worlds (barring some artificially constructed doomsday scenario). Blanket policies like living wage laws, do not.
I’ll agree, it works great for a little bit when you have a fiscally depressed workforce and people willing to work to ‘win the war’. Carry it too far and you end up attaching the biggest fiscal tick this country has seen.
Especially when coupled with the concept of the helicopter drop of money (in case you don’t know what I’m talking about, look up Bernanke’s work – yes THAT Bernanke), that both Reagan and Bush used and abused – and allowed some momentum to be regained (at the expense of long-term growth and inflation, as Bernanke explains).[/quote]
The number of people you do injustice to by describing today’s economy as ‘Roosevelt’s momentum’ isn’t even funny. Famously, Truman was predicted to lose his re-election because of the abysmal state of the economy and labor that wasn’t his doing (well, he didn’t help). George Marshall is probably spinning over in his grave as well.
A social democrat, in favor of living wages, but against open-source or self-education? Interesting… I’m not asking you to write an essay, merely asking you to clarify your ‘superrational’ carrot and stick.
[quote]I’m closely involved with the GSB Alumni Association, which we keep very tight:
I’ve been able to keep tabs at least my best ex-students, and we get regular reports and survey responses from the rest, that we process and consolidate into one big annual report. The response rates are tremendous, 100% in most years, because, as I said, we keep the community very tight.[/quote]
I figured as much, so the most successful ones (not necessarily your best, of course) work in social democratic nations?
I thought they were educated to survive in less than optimal conditions?
[quote]Unfortunately, I can’t tell you more without breaking confidentiality rules. If you apply and drop by an admissions briefing, the admissions office might be able to tell you more after you sign a confidentiality agreement (they’ll go that extra mile if they feel that you’re a good candidate and the information will help convince you to join us – as long as you’re willing to sign the NDA).
[/quote]
So, no open-source education, and I have to stop by the admissions office and sign an NDA in order to find out where the graduates work/prefer to work? It’s like an educational Iron Curtain.
In all honesty, I believe in other forms of social democracy and less fiscally conservative ideas. I believe we’ve had a thread discussing the death tax, of which I’m a proponent. IMO this puts me on the social democrats’ side (I think). I am just of the opinion that ‘living wage’ laws create more problems than they solve and do the opposite of what you asserted when it came to worker incentive and competency.
