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jerwin wrote:

I sure hope that Malaysian mine owner is paying proper mind to his tailings.

Eh?

charon wrote:

You're typing with a corporate-made computer on a corporate-made web site, probably wearing corporate-made clothes, sitting in a corporate-made chair, and the last meal you ate was likely corporate-made.  No impetus to do the right thing??  You got all these things from corporations.  Why did they provide these things for you?  For profit.  That's all it takes in the market--self-interest drives people to serve each other, because that's how money is made.

There's the disconnect.  You faithfully believe that every possible good can and will be provided because of it's profit potential.  Other's realize that profit is a very poor substitute for "good".  It works in many cases (your computer) but can't work in all (where's the profit in taking care of society's mentally or physically disabled?).

Last edited by menglish (2005-04-13 10:43 am)

jerwin wrote:

surely you realize that mines are not all benign?

Sure, I just don't know what a "tailing" is, nor if you're trying to refute something I said.

Last edited by charon (2005-04-13 10:56 am)

MrJ in OZ wrote:

where the profit in tipping?

I never said that profit is the only thing that drives us.

Why tipping is a comon practice in America is a fascinating question.  See this blog post for example, and I've seen other economists ponder the question.  I really don't know the answer.

charon wrote:

jerwin wrote:

surely you realize that mines are not all benign?

Sure, I just don't know what a "tailing" is, nor if you're trying to refute something I said.

Tailing: material rejected from a mill after the recoverable valuable minerals have been extracted.

Some mines produce particularly toxic tailings-- gold mine tailings are often laced with cyanide, sulfur mine tailings are highly acidic, and so on.

MrJ in OZ wrote:

charon wrote:

No I don't.  I never said that.  I'm not an anarchist, after all.  All that I've argued is that markets are generally superior to central planning, at least absent significant externalities that can't be eliminated.

Sorry central planning includes many various alternatives while markets create strict corridors of material flows through the fastest route. Central planning consdiers many more options.

What's your reasoning?   Central planners don't "consider more options" than anybody else.

And actually the opposite generally happens.  Central planning by its nature is more rigid than de-centralized decision-making.  When a relative few are making decisions on behalf of everyone, less diversity happens.  Central planning isn't nearly as effective at considering differences between individuals nor at responding to local changes as is individual, de-centralized decision-making.  That's why, for example, there's a lot more diversity in the sort of private schooling you can obtain (especially the curriculum) than in public schooling (where you generally don't have much choice which public school you go to).

In the context of commercial transactions, there are no "strict corridors of material flows."  People substitute and redesign business relationships constantly to maximize their returns.

Last edited by charon (2005-04-13 11:19 am)

MrJ in OZ wrote:

And then they abandon those corridors leaving development no one nees anymore costing tax payers moola.

I'm not following you.  Where did the taxpayers come into this?  Do you want diversity of options or don't you?

MrJ in OZ wrote:

Central planers apply economic, environment, social and cultural needs. Economics doesn't.

Since economics isn't a person, of course it can't.

If you meant to say market actors, my answer is: Balderdash.  First of all, everyone's concerned about their own various needs.  Second, so are the providers of goods/services.  Look at a Catholic school and tell me if they don't take into account those sorts of needs.  Or for that matter any business interested in making money has to cater to the needs and sensitivities of its customers.  And central planners aren't gods.  It's much harder to take into account all the very different needs of everyone when you're making decisions for an entire system, and there's less incentive for them to do so.

Environmental questions are tricky because of externalities.  But there are ways to solve these without resorting to central planning.  And it's not as if central planners magically solve the problem--government is the biggest polluter in the nation, after all.

Last edited by charon (2005-04-13 1:54 pm)

more or less wrote:

PROSTRATE YOURSELVES BEFORE THE MARKET !!!  SUBMIT!!!

HOSANNA!!

charon wrote:

If you meant to say market actors, my answer is: Balderdash.  First of all, everyone's concerned about their own various needs.  Second, so are the providers of goods/services.

I'm sure McDonalds is so concerned about your needs.

MrJ in OZ wrote:

charon wrote:

If you meant to say market actors, my answer is: Balderdash.  First of all, everyone's concerned about their own various needs.  Second, so are the providers of goods/services.

I'm sure McDonalds is so concerned about your needs.

If they can save more money by transferring to a different route then they will take it ruining livelihoods of others and costly taxes.

Example: lets say every company ships thru a highway from one point to another. It becomes cheaper to ship a different route or lets say by plane. Now, the people living along said highway have reduced livelihoods because of the switch over. No one is stopping at mom and pops dinner anymore, no one is sleeping at the trucker stop motel, and no one is gassing up as the station there anymore. Result: this township is now dirt poor and instead of communalism with their small town neighbors, they are competing. Add this effect to a world globalization scale where transactions and trade routes change in a moment and now small towns disappear. Small towns as one example are becoming extinct today. Town planners know these effect and plan for them with environmental and social needs to maintaine systems to be there far into the future.

I meant economic trade routes are strict because they do not allow for anything other than economic decisions. But economics are actually not separate from society or culture and environment like many think because they move in unison at different levels. If one is destroyed so are all the others.

Thar ya go. easy explaination




And knowing is half the battle.

Last edited by MrJ in OZ (2005-04-15 10:52 am)

I really ought to start proof reading and stop my laziness.

MrJ in OZ wrote:

Example: lets say every company ships thru a highway from one point to another. It becomes cheaper to ship a different route or lets say by plane. Now, the people living along said highway have reduced livelihoods because of the switch over. No one is stopping at mom and pops dinner anymore, no one is sleeping at the trucker stop motel, and no one is gassing up as the station there anymore. Result: this township is now dirt poor and instead of communalism with their small town neighbors, they are competing. Add this effect to a world globalization scale where transactions and trade routes change in a moment and now small towns disappear. Small towns as one example are becoming extinct today. Town planners know these effect and plan for them with environmental and social needs to maintaine systems to be there far into the future.

Town planners make plenty of mistakes in predicting the effects of change (look at what the early planners thought cities should be like, around the start of the 20th century) because no one is capable of knowing how society is going to evolve.  And if anyone's best-suited to knowing what Mom and Pop's fate will be, it's Mom and Pop.  Being given a lot of power doesn't give you any special ability to predict and keep track of what will happen to everyone under your power (the more people, the less able the planner).

I do agree with you on one point: The market means people can swiftly make react in response to new circumstances (new decisions by other people, new ideas, changes in natural conditions, etc.), and that can hurt other people.  Central planning can mitigate that in only one sense: it can restrict the ability of people to make changes and thus freeze society, albeit imperfectly.  The question is whether it's worthwhile to give up progress as well limit the ability to adapt to changes in circumstances that planners cannot control, which leads to regression.

MrJ in OZ wrote:

I meant economic trade routes are strict because they do not allow for anything other than economic decisions. But economics are actually not separate from society or culture and environment like many think because they move in unison at different levels. If one is destroyed so are all the others.

I'm not sure what you mean by a strictly "economic decision," unless you mean a decision that is driven only by the interest in making money.  My question is, when you participate in the market--whether you're buying something, or working for money, or whatever--do you always make purely "economic decisions"?  I would guess not.  That doesn't describe me.  I don't think it describes anyone.

Last edited by charon (2005-04-16 12:15 am)

While researching MrJ's interest in the Efficient Market Hypothesis, I came across this mildly amusing paper on the development of the Black-Scholes-Merton equation.