Economics has met the enemy, and it is economics

[Kuciwalker]

Yeah, like those nuances you are refusing to make in this thread? Like, maybe, that inflation could be a meaningless figure when you compare Bill Gates and a nurse?

Can you read? At all? I understand English isn't your first language but this is ridiculous. I complained that you aren't even telling us what these neglected nuances are! You've got this thing about inflation, but you keep using the word in ways that don't produce coherent sentences. It's as if I criticized your philosophy on the basis that colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

(This is not even considering that it would follow from wrongly distributed efficiency gains, that capital owners do not truly face inflation, because the benefits are absorbed in the value of capital).

This is another Not Even Wrong. The statements you're making are semantically empty. The only advice I can give you is to try to formulate them as claims about the actual production, distribution, or consumption of goods and services.

Early colonialism was mercantilist, later colonialism was about building by force a network of free trade. This also offered a convenient casus belli: "We are bringing them the benefits of civilization and free trade."

Wrong. Bilateral, exclusive "free trade" agreements imposed on countries like China were equally mercantilist. The mercantilists adopted the rhetoric of Adam Smith but none of the actual policy.

The overwhelming motivation for such interventions was always the profit of particular incumbent industries - which reaffirms my point that other interest groups are far more influential than economists.

[Kuciwalker]

Don't be an idiot. The treaty that Japan signed at gunpoint reduced legal restrictions on imports and exports, meaning it increased freedom of trade. Try harder next time.

This is not true, generally speaking.

[Jon Miller]

Also, obviously efficiency gains may not be evenly distributed. The point is that over extremely long time periods everything pretty much has to even out, because the alternative is that we end up Eloi and Morlocks. In many important ways, Bill Gates' life is much more similar to that of a janitor at Microsoft than to Andrew Carnegie's.

Boris lacks ability to communicate in economics speech, but your position here is nonsense.

JM

[Hauldren Collider]

Boris lacks ability to communicate in economics speech, but your position here is nonsense.

JM

His position is actually self evident. I mean that quite literally.

[giblets]

This is not true, generally speaking.

Just to be clear, you're saying it's true in this particular case but not generally true? I'm pretty sure Japan had less restrictions on foreign trade after it signed a treaty with the US.

[Kidlicious]

HC isn't capable of understanding economics. Don't waste your time.

[Hauldren Collider]

Coming from the guy who doesn't even understand what money is or why people want it, that's rich.

[Jon Miller]

His position is actually self evident. I mean that quite literally.

It is not.

Only if you say 'this part is hard to quantify, so it is 0'.

JM

[Kidlicious]

HC will say that he understands it perfectly, and he doesn't have a clue.

[Kuciwalker]

Just to be clear, you're saying it's true in this particular case but not generally true? I'm pretty sure Japan had less restrictions on foreign trade after it signed a treaty with the US.

Sorry, to be clear, it is not (necessarily) true in the general case and may not have been true in the specific case. Selective reductions in tariffs can create welfare-reducing distortions in the same manner as selective tax breaks. Moreover, the motivations for Western imperialism in Asia were almost uniformly mercantilist - to secure advantages for incumbent native firms, usually at the expense of the general welfare.

[KrazyHorse]

Boris lacks ability to communicate in economics speech, but your position here is nonsense.

JM

He lacks the ability to think meaningfully about any of the involved concepts, as do you (more precisely, he has not yet demonstrated this ability, and neither have you). Furthermore, Kuci's position is not nonsense, though it is a very weak point (in the sense that it is a weak statement, not that it is weakly supported by our experiences as a species over the last few thousand years).

[Jon Miller]

How can you talk about my ability to talk about economics concepts when you make the implication that humanity has experienced a coherent economic experience over thousands of years?

JM

[KrazyHorse]

How can you talk about my ability to talk about economics concepts when you make the implication that humanity has experienced a coherent economic experience over thousands of years?

JM

Is this supposed to be a Zen Koan of some kind?

[Asher]

I knew this thread would deliver.

[Jon Miller]

The discussion is of economics, and I would be interested in what your opinion is of the speech that Haldane gave, in particular the distortionary effects of interest deductions causing increased volatility and the role of equity versus assets relative to profit as a measure of productivity.

JM