tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648480292622180743.post4392887499660454191..comments2023-06-25T01:20:35.889-07:00Comments on Very Rarely Stable: What’s wrong with economicsDaniel Copelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05944461326199566111noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648480292622180743.post-61798247345842705122013-08-13T22:22:06.241-07:002013-08-13T22:22:06.241-07:00Well, seeing as I only ever saw half of one first-...Well, seeing as I only ever saw half of one first-year paper's lectures, I'd say a "first year understanding" is doing quite well. I wouldn't have minded staying in class and learning about income theory, but I got assigned to a whole bunch of Dentistry lectures this year instead. Them's the breaks.<br /><br />I must be a poorer communicator than I thought, though, if all you saw was me "mashing different subjects". Economics is (supposedly) the study of how people allocate resources, yes? Well, then, I'd think that the study of how people behave generally, that being psychology, was perfectly pertinent. The authors of the New York taxicab study seem to have thought so as well, and I'm guessing they had better than a first-year understanding of the supply/demand model and marginal utility. The research discussed in the Atlantic article shows at least that people's economic motivations appear to be consistent with the Weber-Fechner law, as we would expect. But all that is rather dry and potentially hard to follow, so I found a nice quotable quote that makes it seem intuitive, just to make sure the point was clear. That the quote happens to come from the Bible is neither here nor there.<br /><br />Since you seem to know about economics, perhaps you would care to enlighten me:<br />-- Why do economists call it "welfare" when they haven't distinguished between willingness to pay and ability to pay? (If they reserved that term for when they had made the distinction, I would be much less suspicious of their claim to know what's going on. But our lecturers didn't.)<br />-- If the labour market is negatively elastic, what are the implications for the market's competence to set wages? If it's not negatively elastic, what did the New York taxicab study get wrong?<br />-- What is the technical economic term for how the law of diminishing returns applies to the value of money, as opposed to the value of goods or services?<br />-- My lecturers drew most of their conclusions from a few broad axioms about how ideal rational agents behave. Can you give a few examples of empirical studies supporting free market theories of labour?Daniel Copelandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05944461326199566111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648480292622180743.post-87166668670445039532013-08-12T05:56:06.418-07:002013-08-12T05:56:06.418-07:00I'm not sure what I was meant to get out of th...I'm not sure what I was meant to get out of this. You try to tackle the problem of what's wrong with economics by showing a first year understanding of the supply/demand model and marginal utility, then you quote the Bible, and pscyhologists, and try to mash different subjects to reach some kind of conclusion.<br /><br />The supply/demand model and m.utility is a microeconomic theory that's only ever meant to satisfy basic knowledge of how tiny markets might decide how to allocate resources. You can't really extrapolate this out to apply to the world without additional knowledge, which is where macroeconomic theory kicks in. If you wanted to talk about ability to pay you should have stayed in class and learnt about income theory and the allocation of disposable income to resources.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648480292622180743.post-13813810803644524632013-05-08T01:33:20.551-07:002013-05-08T01:33:20.551-07:00BTW I don't seem to be able to follow you on W...BTW I don't seem to be able to follow you on WordPress. Sorry.Annahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10122648603079737993noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648480292622180743.post-48078186107328513872013-05-08T01:32:51.354-07:002013-05-08T01:32:51.354-07:00I have a thought. Often the right-wing comments I ...I have a thought. Often the right-wing comments I hear on the radio and so on about how tough things are for small-business owners (probably the same ones who have "mum-and-dad-investors") seem to take the kind of view of these employers that you evoked with your image of trying to sell your car or else live under a bridge - except with labour as the focus of desperation, not cash. These poor employers are desperate, and if you the labourer are not willing to work for them for a 'reasonable' wage, they will have to close down and then their mortgage will be foreclosed on and then they will lose the house and then their families will starve. I am thinking particularly of Christchurch after the quakes and people whose businesses had been literally destroyed, and whose workers had fled or couldn't get to work any more.Annahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10122648603079737993noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648480292622180743.post-70177788357195884422013-05-07T13:12:43.382-07:002013-05-07T13:12:43.382-07:00I have no idea either. I don't control the CS...I have no idea either. I don't control the CSS on this blog. Maybe I should find out how to do that.Daniel Copelandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05944461326199566111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648480292622180743.post-44719289826531917432013-05-06T19:38:22.644-07:002013-05-06T19:38:22.644-07:00Aargh! Apologies for the weird justification. I du...Aargh! Apologies for the weird justification. I dunno why the comment field did that...Wolfboyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04780236011500530931noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648480292622180743.post-53403488363030521062013-05-06T19:37:48.227-07:002013-05-06T19:37:48.227-07:00Re: the way Google operates (and might improve) - ...Re: the way Google operates (and might improve) - do you know about Valve? They seem to have taken the Google style of organisational structure all the way out to the level of near-anarchy.<br /><br />This is the copy of their employees' handbook they published: http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf Wolfboyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04780236011500530931noreply@blogger.com