Problem with America, market based solution?

[DinoDoc]

OH NO, THE JON MILLERS ARE BACK!

I thought he'd gotten his love of DP'ing things out of his system with his wife.

[MRT144]

I thought he'd gotten his love of DP'ing things out of his system with his wife.

That requires a genetic enhacement

[Sava]

That requires a genetic enhacement

or prosthesis

[MRT144]

Whats the point of doing it if you cant feel it?

[Sava]

Whats the point of doing it if you cant feel it?

[snoopy369]

The problem with ideas/discussions like this is that the people who are not economists don't understand how things work well enough to have a cogent discussion about it, but EVERYONE thinks they understand basic economics. This thread is roughly identical to me posting a thread where I say "You know, that grand unified field theory, it's pretty dumb. What should we do about it?" ... except people generally know that they don't understand physics beyond dropping a bowling ball and a hollow bowling ball, and even most people don't know _that_.

[MRT144]

All an economist is going to do is wring their hands and do nothing and propose nothing

[snoopy369]

That's a rather defeatist answer. Lots of economists have lots of interesting ideas for how to solve various problems, some of them even very liberal. It's completely unhelpful to say that the experts in a field are not useful in solving problems in a field; honestly it sounds a lot like the anti-medicine people who claim you shouldn't go to doctors or use modern medicine because the CDC has an agenda to kill your babies. You don't know the answers yourself because you don't have the training or knowledge to solve the problem intelligently, and you don't like the answers you're getting (partially because the answers may not be what you want them to be, and partially because it may not be an easily solved problem) so you accuse the experts of damaging the process. Go get an economics degree, or at least spend a few hundred hours learning real economic theory, or stop complaining.

[Sava]

It's completely unhelpful to say that the experts in a field are not useful in solving problems in a field; honestly it sounds a lot like the anti-medicine people who claim you shouldn't go to doctors or use modern medicine because the CDC has an agenda to kill your babies. You don't know the answers yourself because you don't have the training or knowledge to solve the problem intelligently, and you don't like the answers you're getting (partially because the answers may not be what you want them to be, and partially because it may not be an easily solved problem) so you accuse the experts of damaging the process. Go get an economics degree, or at least spend a few hundred hours learning real economic theory, or stop complaining.

false dichotomy
thinly veiled ad hominem

I consider myself an expert in the field of forum trolling. You are advised to shut up and accept my evaluation of this situation.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

OH NO, THE JON MILLERS ARE BACK!

OH YES!

[OneFootInTheGrave]

rubber hand

I thought he will hit the real hand with the hammer at the end for change... and they will feel nothing... but no. Health and safety

[Sava]

I thought he will hit the real hand with the hammer at the end for change... and they will feel nothing... but no. Health and safety

in soviet science, rubber hand hit YOU

[snoopy369]

false dichotomy
thinly veiled ad hominem

I consider myself an expert in the field of forum trolling. You are advised to shut up and accept my evaluation of this situation.

I'm not trolling If I were trolling you'd know because there would be thinly veiled references to YOURMOM in there

When are you coming downtown to have lunch with me

[OneFootInTheGrave]

That's a rather defeatist answer. Lots of economists have lots of interesting ideas for how to solve various problems, some of them even very liberal. It's completely unhelpful to say that the experts in a field are not useful in solving problems in a field; honestly it sounds a lot like the anti-medicine people who claim you shouldn't go to doctors or use modern medicine because the CDC has an agenda to kill your babies. You don't know the answers yourself because you don't have the training or knowledge to solve the problem intelligently, and you don't like the answers you're getting (partially because the answers may not be what you want them to be, and partially because it may not be an easily solved problem) so you accuse the experts of damaging the process. Go get an economics degree, or at least spend a few hundred hours learning real economic theory, or stop complaining.

This is defeatist - stop complaining! Oh my! Bring the censorship on, let fertilizer plants fester and explode next to schools, let the people who know what they are doing do it some more.

Or on the other hand you can complain about Snoopys dictatorial tendencies.

[snoopy369]

I have no problem with complaining, or intelligent discussions, or educating onesself. MRT made the simple comment that asking economists would be unhelpful, which is nearly identical to saying 'Cancer sucks, but we shouldn't ask doctors how to cure it." I don't suggest censorship at any point - what I suggest is that if you are trying to have a reasonable debate about what to do about something, either educate yourself sufficiently to be able to have an intelligent debate, or don't try to pretend you understand the very complicated science that is economics.

If we were having a debate about how to cure cancer, there's nothing wrong with saying "Hi, I think we should try to cure cancer"; but if you start saying "I think we should start by finding the cells that are cancerous and making a device that will eat them up", you sound like an idiot, and people rightly tell you to leave that level of discussion to actual doctors or immunologists or whatnot. Economics (and to a lesser sense, political science) is something people feel like they can talk about as if they were experts without having any understanding beyond making a budget at home (if that).

Economists are not policy makers, so you're confusing things there. SOME economists are policy makers (and a lot of our problem are that more policy makers aren't economists or at least trained in it...) but there are lots of economists (ie, people with economics degrees) who don't make policy, and many who don't agree with current policy (in both directions). Painting all economists with the same brush is idiotic.