Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Dak]

Only a matter of time before people began inventing conspiracy theories about the oil spill

I don't know why a North Korea attack would be that far of a stretch. It would also make sense to black it out, because we simply can't go to war with North Korea right now, with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our current posturing against Iran and potentially Pakistani Taliban. So we can't let the populace know we were attacked or retribution would be demanded, and to not do so would look weak.

But I understand you don't really get into the whole geopolitics/military strategy stuff.

 

[The Ozzman]

I'm really surprised at how much people tend to trust their own governments with their well-being

 

[Cythraul]

REGULATION IS BAD!

It is, other things being equal. However, you can't adequately assess the value of any regulation or lack thereof unless you consider it in light of the existing market order. It's important to be aware of a few things here:

1. The limitation on BP's liability: This obviously greatly reduces their incentive to self-police. Without the liability cap, that company would be toast.

2. BP is a corporation: The corporate form is arguably a state construct, and it has agency problems that encourage irresponsible cost-cutting.

3. The existing property regime vis a vis oceans does not lend itself to good stewardship. In particular, actual resource users are not in a good position to negotiate with other resource users, exclude, or seek damages.

Now everybody and their brother is going to bloviate about how bad deregulation is, just like they all did after the economic crisis began back in '08. But none of these people will say a thing about the background conditions or think past immediate appearances.

I don't know why a North Korea attack would be that far of a stretch. It would also make sense to black it out, because we simply can't go to war with North Korea right now, with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our current posturing against Iran and potentially Pakistani Taliban. So we can't let the populace know we were attacked or retribution would be demanded, and to not do so would look weak.

But I understand you don't really get into the whole geopolitics/military strategy stuff.

So let me get this straight: If you can think of some reason why S might want to do x and some other reason why we'd have little to no evidence for the claim that S did x, then obviously S did x? Is that your logic here? Are you that fucked in the head?

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Cythraul, for a while I've been looking forward to the idea of debating political and economic philosophy with you at MDF, but more and more I'm coming to terms with the fact that I am so abysmally ill-informed that it would hardly be worth opening my mouth. I was just looking over your last post in the libertarianism thread and I was like, 'What the hell can I even say in response without having spent weeks or months studying economic theory and history?'

I am determined to one day achieve a higher level of understanding about these things than that of the average idiot who considers a few news articles enough to support his claims, but I am far from that point right now, and the career path I chose continues to exert the prevailing influence over my intellectual momentum. If you have any literature to recommend as a starting point though, I might try knocking some out before the end of the month.

 

[Cythraul]

Cythraul, for a while I've been looking forward to the idea of debating political and economic philosophy with you at MDF, but more and more I'm coming to terms with the fact that I am so abysmally ill-informed that it would hardly be worth opening my mouth. I was just looking over your last post in the libertarianism thread and I was like, 'What the hell can I even say in response without having spent weeks or months studying economic theory and history?'

I am determined to one day achieve a higher level of understanding about these things than that of the average idiot who considers a few news articles enough to support his claims, but I am far from that point right now, and the career path I chose continues to exert the prevailing influence over my intellectual momentum. If you have any literature to recommend as a starting point though, I might try knocking some out before the end of the month.

I read a lot. I've read some nice books during the past semester, including:

Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility by David Schmidtz and Robert Goodin.
--This book has a good balance of perspectives. One half is written by a guy who largely shares my perspective on things (D. Schmidtz; he's a professor of philosophy and economics at my alma mater). The other half is written by a guy who is pretty far on the other side of the political spectrum from where I am.

The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman.

From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State by David Beito.

The Triumph of Conservatism by Gabriel Kolko.
--This one explodes the whole mythology about the Progressive Era. An important book and a good illustration of the whole idea of regulatory capture and corporatism masquerading as social justice.

Organization Theory by Kevin Carson.
--This one can be read for free online here.

Check out these books if you can.

I also follow the blogs of a lot of professional economists:

http://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/
http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/
http://econlog.econlib.org/

I even follow the blogs of people that I find intellectually dishonest:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/
--That's nobel laureate Paul Krugman's blog. Whatever work he did to win the nobel must have been good, but his commentary on the political scene is awful and he doesn't understand Austrian econ even though he really likes to criticize it.

http://delong.typepad.com/
--This is Brad DeLong's blog. He's a Keynesian like Krugman, and a liberal. He is actually a genuine asshole. He routinely (1) publicly insults people he disagrees with and (2) deletes comments from his blog that are legitimate and persuasive criticisms of his views. He also sent me an email one time asking me to elaborate on why I called him out for being a hypocrite (this was one of those times when he was insulting a fellow economist.) He's also intellectually dishonest.

I added those last two ones for a balanced perspective.

 

[Einherjar86]

Kolko taught at the University at Buffalo.

I've never read that book, but I've heard lots about him.

 

[Dak]

Organization Theory by Kevin Carson.
--This one can be read for free online here.

Will check this out since A. It's free and B. Organization is one of my strong suits.

As far as the BP/NKorea thing goes you are missing the point. I am supporting the plausibility of article's suggestion. Is it still possible that a methane bubble blew the rig? Sure. But to just automatically discount a very plausible scenario (especially when I have read other reports saying that the methane bubble story is an impossibility) because it isn't the official story is equally ignorant as automatically accepting it.

I don't know enough about how deep sea oil rigs work to know whether or not the methane bubble story is false or not, but based off of what is going on geopolitically, the attack scenario makes plenty of sense.

 

[Matt]

Now everybody and their brother is going to bloviate about how bad deregulation is, just like they all did after the economic crisis began back in '08. But none of these people will say a thing about the background conditions or think past immediate appearances.

All you have to do is look at the history of this country to come to a conclusion that deregulation doesn't work. It's been made obvious a million times over that deregulation of business leads to exploitive and extremely unethical practices that are harmful to the American people.

I'd love to hear a counterargument.

 

[Dak]

It's been made obvious a million times over that over regulation of business benefits the current top dogs, because of lobbyist and backdoor appointments (Henry Paulson for example).

 

[Cythraul]

All you have to do is look at the history of this country to come to a conclusion that deregulation doesn't work. It's been made obvious a million times over that deregulation of business leads to exploitive and extremely unethical practices that are harmful to the American people.

I'd love to hear a counterargument.

If you're not familiar with any of the counterarguments, then you're not paying attention. It's been demonstrated countless times that many of the oft-cited cases of supposed deregulation are either (1) not genuine cases of deregulation, or (2) cases of partial deregulation which have predictably negative consequences. But I don't argue for half-assed deregulation. Furthermore, it's been argued quite convincingly that leaving the existing crony capitalist market order intact perverts incentives in certain cases of deregulation. But I don't support crony capitalism! Also, support for regulation per se assumes that political actors have the knowledge required to engineer society and the economy towards socially beneficial ends. But there are plausible arguments to the contrary. Lastly, if you would read up on who actually lobbies for regulations, you would find a litany of cases where it's one business trying to rent-seek or stifle competition from other firms. The "progressive" myth of regulations as some kind of cure for the ills of the market and society is, quite frankly, bullshit for the most part, just like the myth that we have some kind of unfettered market economy.

 

[cookiecutter]

Now everybody and their brother is going to bloviate about how bad deregulation is, just like they all did after the economic crisis began back in '08. But none of these people will say a thing about the background conditions or think past immediate appearances.

People do the exact opposite anytime the economy is good.

EDIT: One thing I notice with libertarians/austrian economic types is that they can always criticize the current and obviously imperfect economic system, but they themselves are basically unassailable because no one has bothered trying out their theory, so it remains unsullied by reality.

EDIT 2: Unless you consider late 19th Century Gilded Age era capitalism as roughly analogous, but I'm sure they have some sort of counterargument.

 

[Mort Divine]

Waste storage is the primary concern. Nuclear power is cheaper when compared to the total output it produces and reactors are built to contain meltdowns. Also, new methods of cooling would have to be put into practice to avoid hurting the environment.

Geothermal energy is also expensive but is probably the cleanest way to go. Wind power is takes up too much space and solar power is dictated by location/geography.

I'm still pretty iffy on nuclear power regardless, but if improvements were made I'd consider changing my stance on it.

Actually I was reading a magazine today where these people developed these wind turbines that basically were tethered to the ground with a strong flexible metal wire and then placed up in the wind so it could gather more than normal methods.

Only issue is it doesn't generate as much power as the massive unsightly current models.

 

[Badbird]

lol

 

[Cythraul]

EDIT: One thing I notice with libertarians/austrian economic types is that they can always criticize the current and obviously imperfect economic system, but they themselves are basically unassailable because no one has bothered trying out their theory, so it remains unsullied by reality.

Maybe some of them act like their position is unassailable, but I don't pretend that mine is. You see, some people look at the surface phenomena and conclude that they constitute a rebuke against laissez-faire. But I come to the opposite conclusion, because from my perspective those people are considering what appear to be laissez-faire "policies" in isolation. I see factors that are highly relevant that they simply ignore, but they shouldn't because those factors tend to undermine their conclusions as far as I'm concerned. But simply declaring "But we don't have a laissez-faire economy!" is not good argument either, because you have to say a lot more. I point to specific features of mixed economies and state/business collusion that tend to undermine the conclusion that laissez-faire doesn't work.

At any rate, even if something in its pure form has never actually been tried that does not put it beyond criticism. This should be obvious. But I would disagree that none of this stuff has ever been tried, at least in limited ways. But then whether that constitutes an argument in favor of what I support would require me to separate relevant background conditions from irrelevant ones. I'm pretty sure I can do that.

 

[Dak]

Bloodbath in the markets coming

 

[Matt]

While that conclusion does not sound totally far fetched, that isn't exactly a legitimate source for basing one's entire financial decisions/reasoning.

Also, Cyth: do you support Rand Paul? He's the epitome of a wacko libertarian.

 

[Dak]

While that conclusion does not sound totally far fetched, that isn't exactly a legitimate source for basing one's entire financial decisions/reasoning.

Also, Cyth: do you support Rand Paul? He's the epitome of a wacko libertarian.

How about this source?

As far as Rand Paul goes, nice ad hominem attack. If he really is such a "wacko", there should be no shortage of his supported policies that you could list that any reasonable person would also find "wacko". But you didn't.

 

[Saparmurat_Niyazov]

This could just as easiliy go in the "You laugh..." or WTF thread, but it is news:

 

[Cythraul]

Also, Cyth: do you support Rand Paul? He's the epitome of a wacko libertarian.

First of all, no. I do not support Rand Paul. Second of all, he is hardly the epitome of a "wacko" libertarian because he's hardly the epitome of a libertarian. Tell me if the following strikes you as particularly libertarian:

 

[cookiecutter]

As far as Rand Paul goes, nice ad hominem attack. If he really is such a "wacko", there should be no shortage of his supported policies that you could list that any reasonable person would also find "wacko". But you didn't.

He opposes the Americans With Disabilities Act which, among other things, protects disable people from discrimination. He also believes that private discrimination, including in the housing market, is acceptable because it is "free". Can you really say that is reasonable?