And, even if he has the best of intentions he should still operate in the economic realities of his time.
Of course he should, but there is nothing good in his failure.
Sure, the time and money invested in his business can be used more productively elsewhere.
You like to soar like an eagle. Or like a vulture, that has magnification in the center of the retina. I prefer to look at the world from the eye level.[/quote]
There is a reason why they call economics the dismal science.
However ignoring its lessons means ignoring reality which leads to even more grief at the “eye level”.
And, even if he has the best of intentions he should still operate in the economic realities of his time.
Of course he should, but there is nothing good in his failure.
Sure, the time and money invested in his business can be used more productively elsewhere.
You like to soar like an eagle. Or like a vulture, that has magnification in the center of the retina. I prefer to look at the world from the eye level.
There is a reason why they call economics the dismal science.
However ignoring its lessons means ignoring reality which leads to even more grief at the “eye level”.
[/quote]
Economics is not natural science. It is better served with observation, not forecasts. Please withold utterances about goodness or badness for the time being.
And, even if he has the best of intentions he should still operate in the economic realities of his time.
Of course he should, but there is nothing good in his failure.
Sure, the time and money invested in his business can be used more productively elsewhere.
You like to soar like an eagle. Or like a vulture, that has magnification in the center of the retina. I prefer to look at the world from the eye level.
There is a reason why they call economics the dismal science.
However ignoring its lessons means ignoring reality which leads to even more grief at the “eye level”.
Economics is not natural science. It is better served with observation, not forecasts. Please withold utterances about goodness or badness for the time being.[/quote]
I did not bring up the notions of something to be good or bad.
I did however bring up that “good” intentions can have “bad” consequences and vice versa.
It would be foolish to ignore that.
Furthermore economics is not a natural science, it is in many ways closer to a formal science like mathematics and logic so forecasts are perfectly legitimate.
[quote]kaaleppi wrote:
And how is the class struggle absent in mr. Smith’s actions? What does he cultivate?[/quote]
Mr. Smith cannot cultivate anything if he is unable to stay in business because he feels pressure to pay higher wages. Both he and his employees suffer in that event. Benefit cannot be only one-sided as that defies the laws of economics. Both parties must want to voluntarily engage in an exchange for it to happen.
Class struggle will always be present and that is a good thing. It is what makes individuals strive to do better for themselves and thus ultimately society benefits.
The key point to keep in mind: without legalized competition it is impossible for individual refinement because there is no pathway for improvement and what results is stagnation – if one is lucky stagnation is all that happens and there is no degradation.
For the individual to better himself it requires a high-regard for individual liberty. In the US it is possible to raise one’s lifestyle precisely because we are relatively free to engage in the market in whatever way we want.
Protectionism and welfarism does not make the individual better off in the long run as it deincentivizes initiative.
Furthermore economics is not a natural science, it is in many ways closer to a formal science like mathematics and logic so forecasts are perfectly legitimate.[/quote]
Economics studies the interaction of humans in a large group that is under the influence of more or less haphazard forces from the physical world. That definition is mine. Mathematics is used to manipulate data to find some meaningfull correlations out of the material. Forecasts are drawn out from the ass.
All definitions, by definition have defined parameters – that is what makes concepts knowable. Whether they are reasonable or not is subjective and thus relative.[/quote]
You write the above, then in a different thread, you write:
Why would the author need to change “liberal” to “bleeding heart” if, in his relative subject judgment, “liberal” worked just fine?
[quote]kaaleppi wrote:
Economics is not natural science. It is better served with observation, not forecasts. Please withold utterances about goodness or badness for the time being.[/quote]
You are absolutely right. Observation does not work in economics. Check out the Austrian School and methodological individualism.
All definitions, by definition have defined parameters – that is what makes concepts knowable. Whether they are reasonable or not is subjective and thus relative.
You write the above, then in a different thread, you write:
Also, change liberal to bleedinghearts.
Why would the author need to change “liberal” to “bleeding heart” if, in his relative subject judgment, “liberal” worked just fine?
Same old low-grade nonsense we’ve come to expect.
[/quote]
Because I disagree with the word liberal because it is too general. Some liberals, such as yourself, are not bleedinghearts.
You are not very sophisticated and you grasp at straws.
Because I disagree with the word liberal because it is too general. Some liberals, such as yourself, are not bleedinghearts.
You are not very sophisticated and you grasp at straws.[/quote]
You’ve refuted yourself, again, Lifticus - good try, though.
Oh, and the “sophisticated” remark - nice. I supposed your subjective, relative definition of sophistication includes being a pretentious, bush-league wannabe-intellectual dilettante who hangs himself with his own inconsistent statements?
Oh well - we don’t share the same subjective, relative definition.
I’ll exit Entheogens’ thread so we don’t have to deal with yet another flimsy defense of whatever you believe this week - and the original topic can be focused on.
[quote]entheogens wrote:
Here’s the point…it’s a very complex situation. And to say the solution lies exclusively with the free market or, for that matter, exclusively with government regulation skirts the complexity and is just overly-simplistic in my honest opinion.
[/quote]
The complexity lies in the fact that what you really want is not realistic.
You want equality: there is no such thing.
You want fairness: life is not fair.
You want egalitarianism: this defies individual human intuition.
You cannot mandate these ideas because it requires theft and coercion which goes against our only natural right.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
kaaleppi wrote:
And how is the class struggle absent in mr. Smith’s actions? What does he cultivate?
Mr. Smith cannot cultivate anything if he is unable to stay in business because he feels pressure to pay higher wages. Both he and his employees suffer in that event. Benefit cannot be only one-sided as that defies the laws of economics. Both parties must want to voluntarily engage in an exchange for it to happen.
Class struggle will always be present and that is a good thing. It is what makes individuals strive to do better for themselves and thus ultimately society benefits.
The key point to keep in mind: without legalized competition it is impossible for individual refinement because there is no pathway for improvement and what results is stagnation – if one is lucky stagnation is all that happens and there is no degradation.
For the individual to better himself it requires a high-regard for individual liberty. In the US it is possible to raise one’s lifestyle precisely because we are relatively free to engage in the market in whatever way we want.
Protectionism and welfarism does not make the individual better off in the long run as it deincentivizes initiative.[/quote]
LOL, Finland has been the epitome of deincentiviness for the last twenty years, hasn’t it? Nokia, Linux, Polar, Suunto? What comes to your comment that " for the individual to better himself it requires a high-regard for individual liberty". Think of alchemy. I like my liberty and welfare but I know it is not necessarily the best way or only way to raise up responsible human beings.
No, you just don’t have the intelligence to distinguish meaning.[/quote]
Be serious, Lifticus. You don’t have the capital to go marching around here accusing people of being “not smart” and expect anyyone to take you seriously. You made one of your trademark “arguments” that winds up contradicting something else you said, and you don’t have the spine to own up to it.
[quote]kaaleppi wrote:
LOL, Finland has been the epitome of deincentiviness for the last twenty years, hasn’t it? Nokia, Linux, Polar, Suunto? What comes to your comment that " for the individual to better himself it requires a high-regard for individual liberty". Think of alchemy. I like my liberty and welfare but I know it is not necessarily the best way or only way to raise up responsible human beings.[/quote]
And if everyone in Finland sat around taking their welfare where would your Nokia, etc., be? Would you be better off if you did not have most of your income go to taxes and you could afford to invest in furthering your station in Finland or is welfare more important? Would you be good enough to donate some of that income to helping those less fortunate than you or have you been conditioned to wait for government intervention?
No, you just don’t have the intelligence to distinguish meaning.
Be serious, Lifticus. You don’t have the capital to go marching around here accusing people of being “not smart” and expect anyyone to take you seriously. You made one of your trademark “arguments” that winds up contradicting something else you said, and you don’t have the spine to own up to it.
[/quote]
There is no contradiction otherwise you would have pointed it out. You did not.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
kaaleppi wrote:
Economics is not natural science. It is better served with observation, not forecasts. Please withold utterances about goodness or badness for the time being.
You are absolutely right. Observation does not work in economics. Check out the Austrian School and methodological individualism.
[/quote]
Sorry, I don’t understand. Is that first sentence sarcastic and the rest is something self evident? That really heightens my trust in economics.
At the risk of continuing the digression, here are some good stats on how globalization has affected the U.S.:
EXCERPT:
[i]The first problem with what the candidates have been saying is that Ohio’s troubles haven’t really been caused by trade agreements. When Nafta took effect on Jan. 1, 1994, Ohio had 990,000 manufacturing jobs. Two years later, it had 1.03 million. The number remained above one million for the rest of the 1990s, before plummeting in this decade to just 775,000 today.
It’s hard to look at this history and conclude Nafta is the villain. In fact, Nafta did little to reduce tariffs on Mexican manufacturers, notes Matthew Slaughter, a Dartmouth economist. Those tariffs were already low before the agreement was signed.
A more important cause of Ohio’s jobs exodus is the rise of China, India and the old Soviet bloc, which has brought hundreds of millions of workers into the global economy. New technology and better transportation have then made it easier for jobs to be done in those places and elsewhere. To put it in concrete terms, your credit card’s customer service center isn’t in Ireland because of a new trade deal.
All this global competition has brought some big benefits, too. Consider that cars, furniture, clothing, computers and televisions - which are all subject to global competition - have become more affordable, relative to everything else. Medical care, movie tickets and college tuition - all protected from such competition - have become more expensive.[/i]
1) Over the last 14 years, the American economy has added a net total of 25 million jobs. When NAFTA took effect in 1994, the unemployment rate was 6.7 percent. Today it's 4.9 percent.
2) According to data compiled by Harvard economist Robert Z. Lawrence, the average blue-collar worker's wages and benefits, adjusted for inflation, have risen by 11 percent under NAFTA. Instead of driving pay scales down, it appears to have pulled them up.
3) Manufacturing output has not only expanded, but has expanded far faster than it did in the decade before NAFTA. The problem is that as productivity rises, we can make more stuff with fewer people. That's not a bad thing. In fact, it's essentially the definition of economic progress.
4) Gary Clyde Hufbauer, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, estimates that 90 percent of the people in his profession regard the accord as a good thing.
5) Jagdish Bhagwati, a Columbia University trade economist, supports Obama and thinks his positions on trade are generally better than Clinton's. "But on NAFTA," Bhagwati told me, "he is dead wrong."
[quote]kaaleppi wrote:
Sorry, I don’t understand. Is that first sentence sarcastic and the rest is something self evident? That really heightens my trust in economics.[/quote]
No, it was not sarcastic. I am a physicist and I too had a problem with economics for the same reason you stated about observation. Observation relies on historical data and history never repeats itself when it comes to human interaction (as compared to revolving planets in the natural sciences, for example). Thus economics requires a different methodology for understanding its laws.
The Austrian method relies on axiomatics instead of observation. The premise is: man acts with purpose. Everything we understand about economics must be derived from the implications of this statement.
If you want more information you can PM me and I will send you some links.
EDIT – sorry, I misread your original post. I thought you were against observation viz. economics.