How can I get people to read my blog?

[KrazyHorse]

And can you go into one thread without bragging about your paycheck? I went to a much better school than you did, one that churns out Wall Street stiffs. Had it been my goal, I'd be rolling in money right now, and within a couple of years I'd be on my way to seven figures. You'd be under my paygrade pretty damn soon. But, since I have self-dignity, I don't want to whore myself out to some investment bank and spend my time working with people like you. Money really doesn't appeal to me, not enough to convince me into leading a pointless, miserable existence.

1) I have no idea what school you went to (there's a couple of dozen which are better than the place that gave me my PhD), but you obviously didn't learn anything useful there (economics, logic, etc).

2) No, you couldn't have. You are far, far too stupid to even have managed to get into something requiring as little analytical prowess as IBD.

3) I love it when people tell me about what they "could" have done. You didn't do it, period. Maybe I "could" have won the Nobel Prize in physics (in all likelihood not) but I didn't, so I don't talk **** when I meet Nobelists about what I could have done.

[KrazyHorse]

By the way, the reason I brag about my paycheque is to stick my dick in the eye of every douche who thinks that volunteering to go kill foreigners at relatively low risk to himself should be the ambition of every human being.

In reality, I contribute far more to the defence of the United States than you ever will.

[KrazyHorse]

What does that have to do with finance? I'll accept his superiority in physics, but I can't stand his arrogance in regards to his economic opinions. He acts like he's the world's premier economic expert, yet he can't even understand how Speenhamland prevents the functioning of a natural labor market.

I work as a quant, ****. And I'm not the world' leading economic expert; I simply know enough economics to hold my own against, for example, a relatively intelligent econ undergrad.

This, by the way, is enough to absolutely **** all over you, because you are both stupid and ignorant.

[KrazyHorse]

Think of how many tank seeds you could plant in your fields with the money you win from the bet... and there's no downside because kuci has to be dead before he could collect. (And presumably have had a salary from the day he escaped his mother's womb.)

The Iowa Tank Crop

http://www.rtfm.com/movabletype/archives/001140.html

A thing of beauty is a joy forever, and nothing is more beautiful than a succinct and flawless argument. A few lines of reasoning can change the way we see the world.

I found one of the most beautiful arguments I know while I was browsing through a textbook written by my friend David Friedman. While the argument may not be original, David's version is so clear, so consice, and so incontrovertible, and so delightfully surprising that I have been unable to resist sharing it with students, relatives, and cocktail party acquaintances at every opportunity. The argument concerns international trade, but its appeal is less in its subject matter than in its irresistable force.

David's observation is that there are two technolgoies for producing automobiles in America. One is to manufacture them in Detroit and the other is to grow them in Iowa. Everybody knows about the first technology; let me tell you about the second. First you plant seeds, which are the raw materials from which automobiles are constructed. You wait a few months until wheat appears. Then you harvest the wheat, load it onto ships and sail the ships eastward into the Pacific Ocean. After a few months, the ships reappear with Toyotas on them.

International trade is nothing but a form of technology. The fact that there is a place called Japan, with people and factories, is quite irrelevant to Americans' well-being. To analyze trade policies, we might as well assume that Japan is a giant machine with mysterious inner workings that convert wheat into cars.

Any policy designed to favor the first American technology over the second is a policy designed to favor American auto producers in Detroit over American auto producers in Iowa. A tax or a ban on "imported" automobiles is a tax or a ban on Iowa-grown automobiles. If you protect Detroit carmakers from competition, then you must damage Iowa farmets because Iowa farmers are the competition.

The task of producing a given fleet of cars can be allocated between Detroit and Iwa in a variety of ways. A competitive price system selects that allocation that minimizes the total production cost. It would be unnecessarily expensive to manufacture all cars in Detroit, unnecessarily expensive to grow all cars in Iowa, and unnecessarily expensive to use the two production processes in anything other than the natural ratio that emerges as a result of competition.

That means that protection for Detroit does more than just transfer income from farmers to autoworkers. It also raises the total cost of providing Americans with a given number of automobiles. The efficiency loss comes with no offsetting gain; it impoverishes the nation as a whole.

There is much talk about improving the efficiency of American car manufacturing. When you hve two ways to make a car, the road to efficiency is to use both in optimal proportions. The last thing you should wnat to do is artificially hobble one of your production technologies. It is sheer superstition to think that an Iowa-grown Camry is any less "American" than a Detroit-built Taurus. Policies rooted in superstition do not frequently bear efficient fruit.

[Kuciwalker]

By the way, dibs on Yale as the university he at least claims to graduate from. (Nods to Jaguar for giving me the P(Yale | he did TFA) = large connection.) I'd suspected it was something like that from the "there are people at my school who, unlike me, are smart AND successful!" Now I can mock Jaguar mercilessly about how much his school sucks

[Jaguar]

Where did you go to school?


Please let it not be Yale, please let it not be Yale...

[Kuciwalker]

OTOH, if he's justifying his douchebaggery based on a degree from Cornell or Columbia or such, this becomes even more hilarious. If you're going to be unjustifiably arrogant based on the crappy signal you purchased, at least have it be a plausible candidate for #1.

[KrazyHorse]

By the way, dibs on Yale as the university he at least claims to graduate from. (Nods to Jaguar for giving me the P(Yale | he did TFA) = large connection.) I'd suspected it was something like that from the "there are people at my school who, unlike me, are smart AND successful!" Now I can mock Jaguar mercilessly about how much his school sucks

What is TFA?

[KrazyHorse]

plausible candidate for #1.

Yale

????????

EDIT: one of the guys in my group has a PhD from Yale, by the way.

He is not even close to the most impressive, academically.

I'd say that the math PhD from Berkeley, the math PhD from Stanford or the physics postdoc from Harvard wins that prize.

Note: this is out of a group of 7 people

[Kuciwalker]

Teach for America.

[Kuciwalker]

Yale floats around in the top 3 or so of the "lol we're going to apply some meaningless overall ordering to every university in the US".

[KrazyHorse]

Other two Harvard and Princeton?

[Kuciwalker]

IIRC Stanford more often than Princeton. It's been a while since I looked.

[KrazyHorse]

So, he graduated with a meaningless degree from Yale and he's working for TFA, which means the most impressive thing he's ever going to accomplish in his life he accomplished at the age of 17?

[Kuciwalker]

Whaddya know, it's currently Harvard/Princeton/Yale. So he's from 3rd place aka LOSER.