Why are most politicians in Western Democracies lawyers?

[KrazyHorse]

KH: Are you in favour of legal tender laws, or market set units of account? How about interest rates? Totally free or in a band or set?

I seem to recall from ancient threads that you were in favour of a single government enforced and controlled unit of account, but I could be wrong...?

I think that people should be free to contract in whatever units they'd like, but that fiat currencies are superior to the other natural points of focus that arise without government backing (e.g. metals).

[KrazyHorse]

So in your world view, individuals as economic actors are always rational

No, simply that they make better decisions for themselves than *******s like you make for them.

[KrazyHorse]

'Nuff said. That is the entirety of the argument against letting people do whatever the hell they want or that individuals know best about what's good for them. People are ****ing stupid and behave like children.

Given that you're a ****ing absolute child yourself, you'll pardon me when I discount the opinion you have of the great majority of people born with far less in the way of brains than you who are making far more of their lives than you.

Also, you absolute ****wit, I'd like to ask you what the **** being sober has done for you?

[KrazyHorse]

The problem is that the choices of one person almost certainly will affect others.

Are you talking externalities or marginal market effects? The former are first-order. The latter are demonstrably second-order (in 1/N_individuals) for any reasonable elasticities

[Kuciwalker]

It's like you can watch him read the thread in real time...

[KrazyHorse]

DING DING DING, we have a winner!

People do not live alone. I have never seen an economic study on hermits, mainly because the issue is irrelevant since economics applies to interactions between people. One person's "rational choice" might very well lead to negative consequences for another. Simplest argument, lets say I want a piece of land and the most cost effective manner for me to get it is homicide - an extreme case for sure, but not improbable or impossible.

This I also why I say that all economics are politics. If one person stakes a singular title to some piece of land, they are obviously excluding others - why should person B respect person A's claim? You need a social order (which comes naturally for humans, as social apes) to make such a system work without constant violence being necessary.

Yes, people may know what they want better than anyone else, but it does not mean the understand the consequences to others, immediate or long term, better than anyone else. I also am not at all sure that they always understand the complete cost or understand the full possibility of rewards - plenty of behavioral economics out there that shows that people have a poor sense of risk based on out evolution. In some ways, we are not much better than monkeys at making certain risk-cost analysis.

Do you just post to see your words on the screen? This is classic facile GePap. In the absence of well-defined externalities THE INDIVIDUAL'S CHOICE FOR HIMSELF IS BEST FOR SOCIETY. Even when there ARE externalities, Coasian equivalence tells us that under some circumstances people will STILL find the socially optimal solution. Finally, even when such transactions are impossible, the most recent (2nd most recent?) Nobel Prize went in part to people who demonstrated that close to optimal social solutions endogenously arise WITHOUT the need for meddling jackasses like you sticking their nose in other people's business.

Going from "no man is an island" to "we must interfere whenever we feel like it" in a paragraph is so ****ing ridiculous that even you should be ashamed of it. In the context of the American feds, most economic interventions either don't have a well-defined externality they try to correct, overstate a minor externality as justification for ridiculous overreaction, or correct an externality by command and control because the market can't be trusted, what with all those greedy people.

****ing retarded

[KrazyHorse]

Yes, the value here is that you, just like curtiswhatshisname from a while back, would prefer that all of society be arranged according to your own design, over people actually being happy.

It's always the people whose lives are the biggest disappointments who think they should be in charge of the lives of others.

[KrazyHorse]

Jon, the entire drug-addicted parents thing is strawman. There are agency issues involved.

Holy ****, just looked up "crack baby". Apparently the phenomenon ISN'T EVEN REAL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_cocaine_exposure

No disorders or conditions have been found to result for people whose mothers used crack while pregnant. Studies focusing on children of six years and younger have not shown any direct, long-term effects of PCE on language, growth, or development as measured by test scores. PCE also appears to have little effect on infant growth. However, PCE is associated with premature birth, birth defects, attention deficit disorder, and other conditions. Cognitive, motor, behavior, developmental, and language problems also appear to result from PCE. The effects of cocaine on a fetus are thought to be similar to those of tobacco and less severe than those of alcohol. No scientific evidence has shown a difference in harm to a fetus of crack and powder cocaine.

EDIT: wtf happened to bold tags in quotes?

[Kuciwalker]

Wait, but then how was Minority Report supposed to work?

[KrazyHorse]

It's like you can watch him read the thread in real time...

done

[KrazyHorse]

Are you talking externalities or marginal market effects? The former are first-order. The latter are demonstrably second-order (in 1/N_individuals) for any reasonable elasticities

To reiterate this point (and it's actually a fairly subtle one), the reason that my purchase of eggs, say (I believe this was the example used earlier) does not cause first-order harm to others is that the loss to other egg consumers is almost entirely balanced out by a gain to egg producers. Therefore the first-order benefit I get from choosing to consume eggs as I see fit swamps the harm done to society as a whole. This is the difference between externalities and the simple movement of the market caused by my decisions. Distinguishing between these two things is something even economics educators neglect to do clearly. Perhaps it's because the argument is fundamentally mathematical (or at least I'm not smart enough to come up with a completely intuitive example to explain it nonmathematically)

[Hauldren Collider]

The egg analogy was mine

[KrazyHorse]

a) it was not an analogy
b) that's not much to be proud of. Work harder

[DaShi]

To reiterate this point (and it's actually a fairly subtle one), the reason that my purchase of eggs, say (I believe this was the example used earlier) does not cause first-order harm to others is that the loss to other egg consumers is almost entirely balanced out by a gain to egg producers. Therefore the first-order benefit I get from choosing to consume eggs as I see fit swamps the harm done to society as a whole. This is the difference between externalities and the simple movement of the market caused by my decisions. Distinguishing between these two things is something even economics educators neglect to do clearly. Perhaps it's because the argument is fundamentally mathematical (or at least I'm not smart enough to come up with a completely intuitive example to explain it nonmathematically)

I'm not sure that purchasing eggs is the best example in this case. Pollution by a factory that directly harms the output of another is the more traditional example of a harmful externality, one that the market won't fix naturally.

[KrazyHorse]

Reading the post I state I'm following up on is generally helpful

Are you talking externalities or marginal market effects? The former are first-order. The latter are demonstrably second-order (in 1/N_individuals) for any reasonable elasticities