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> human tendency of blaming externalities as to avoid serious self reflection
Everybody does it but you have to wonder why. What is the evolutionary purpose of denial?
Surely changing one's mind is often easier than changing the externalities, and surely the ability to change one's mind is the essence of adaption and adaptability? Or are we wrong to think so?
The only thing I can think of is that perhaps tribal signaling has a higher survival value for sinister reasons e.g. it's all very well an individual could introspect and change his/her mind but ultimately the next time there is a pogrom it better be very goddamn clear that you're a Red team/Blue team member...
It's actually really simple. An ability to see the world accurately was never a necessary condition for survival, so long as the model in your head was good enough to assure you could eat and reproduce.
People walk around with false stories/narratives (and increasingly intricate ones at that!) in their head not because it served some evolutionary purpose, but instead because it just wasn't consequential enough to prevent survival.
> It's actually really simple. An ability to see the world accurately was never a necessary condition for survival, so long as the model in your head was good enough to assure you could eat and reproduce.
Did you just read this in the latest Scott Adams post? I also agree with the way he is framing these issues. The Guy is a master persuader after all.
Since I know many here are much more inclined towards rigorous arguments, I highly highly recommend you read George Gilder's free book supporting something like a gold standard told through the lens of an information theory of money:
> And our current status quo of rampant and reckless monetarism is what causes such severe crashes and volatility.
Insofar as there is an overreliance on monetary policy, that's because Congress has been uninterested in fiscal intervention to.address problems, which is the real source of severe economic problems (some short-term market volatility may be tied specifically to monetary policy, but that's far less important.)
Eliminating the independent central bank (the Federal Reserve) -- thus making both fiscal and monetary policy dependent on Congress getting its actually together -- makes this problem worse, not better.
> It's also far less preposterous when you read the next sentence where he advocates banks have a 20% capital reserve requirement.
Increasing reserve requirements will probably reduce the incidencenter of failure slightly, at the expense of being a giant break on the economy. But it doesn't make eliminating the FDIC far less preposterous.
Too many assumptions about my opinions being made from my statement (which I agree I didn't substantiate). I'm making a more broad critique of fed.
We should have a federal reserve, but one who doesn't engage in central planning and has a healthy respect for the efficacy of free markets. If they raised rates fully in 2011-2013 they would've been heros, now they've completely distorted the global economy because prices simply cannot reflect information about the economy when money itself so widely fluctuates.
Money is a measuring stick, plain and simple. Economic activity can be thought of as scientific experimentation, except the results of these experiments can't reliably be measured when the measuring stick itself changes widely for political, and not fundamental reasons.
I'm not really making an argument for institutional changes, just that the people currently occupying the fed are benevolent morons.
> We should have a federal reserve, but one who doesn't engage in central planning and has a healthy respect for the efficacy of free markets.
The entire purpose of a central bank is to do central planning of monetary policy, so I'may not sure what a federal reserve that doesn't do central planning even means.
> If they raised rates fully in 2011-2013 they would've been heros, now they've completely distorted the global economy because prices simply cannot reflect information about the economy when money itself so widely fluctuates.
It sounds like you want them to do central planning, but optimizing different variables (rather than managing inflation against full employment, it sounds like you want them optimizing the much less clearly measurable degree to which prices reflect information about the economy.)
I'm also not sure what "raise rates fully" is supposed to mean; there isn't a fixed ceiling on rates.
Further, I'd like to see some reason to believe that your preferred policy would actually have produced better results by any concrete measure.
> I'm not really making an argument for institutional changes, just that the people currently occupying the fed are benevolent morons.
Well, you are clearly saying that. Some kind of support for that claim would be nice before calling it an argument.
Their job is to act a lender of last resort, not to centrally plan the economy despite what you think. They have as of only past couple decades taken on the latter role of central planning.
MV=PT
What you see above is central basis by which to interoperate all of the fed's behavior.
where:
-money supply is outstanding cash or dollars
-turn over rate is the frequency in which the cash changes hands
=
All the transactions that took place and their price
Current dogma of keynesian academic economists is that an ability to control the money supply will affect the rest of the equation and in theory the real economy. So (Money supply) is the variable the fed can control they use to pull the levers of our economy.
What's implied here then is a gross misunderstanding of what money actually is: a means of instrumentation and measurement.
For economies to properly function, entrepreneurs and participants in the economy need a consistent and reliable gauge to measure the performance of their (economic) experiments.
When supply of money in relation to other "things" is constantly and artificially manipulated, it becomes near impossible for the prices of goods and services to reflect actual information about fundamentals, comparative advantages, etc.
If you're technically inclined, I am essentially making an argument from the perspective of information theory.
Claude Shannon basically showed that to convey information, you need a medium that stays constant. Without that, it's impossible to distinguish the "medium" from the "message".
This is precisely what our academic oriented economists in charge of the fed and our prevailing economic school of thought have fucked up: They've tried to send a message through the medium itself in an attempt to activate parts of the economy, and have completely fooled themselves into thinking that while socialism and command economies are bad, control of the money supply is somehow different.
The issue is what people don't realize, is that free markets aren't about free exchanges of goods and services, but about free exchanges of information. And through the temptations and hubris of central planning they've compromised the medium through which participants in the economy can exchange information.
> Their job is to act a lender of last resort, not to centrally plan the economy despite what you think
The historical purpose of an independent central bank is to provide credibility to the currency (and, by way of that, also to provide some credibility to debt, especially government debt, denominated in the currency) by centrally planning monetary policy, and doing so at armsome length from the fiscal policy of the government.
The job of the Federal Reserve, specifically, as laid out in law expressly includes managing monetary policy with specific prioroties regarding productivity, employment, and inflation -- that is, within certain parameters management of the economy via monetary policy.
So, factually, you are wrong, no matter whatn ideologically, you think their job should be.
> What's implied here then is a gross misunderstanding of what money actually is: a means of instrumentation and measurement.
Money is a number of things, but while it's something of a very loose proxy measure for somethings, this is, historically, neither the primary intended purpose, nor the primary practical function of money.
> When supply of money in relation to other "things" is constantly and artificially manipulated, it becomes near impossible for the prices of goods and services to reflect actual information about fundamentals, comparative advantages, etc.
Insofar as this is true at all, it's just as true if the changes are due to forces other than central planning. And no matter what you use as money, and how you manage it, it's supply in relation to other goods and services is going to change.
The feds fund rate has been set to near zero for almost 8 years. This is acts as the baseline cost of credit in our country and given our global financial stature, the world.
Bear with me - how does that tie back to monetarism ( which, according to my dim lights , we simply don't do ).
I presume you mean QE{I,II,II...} ? Those have been zero velocity efforts; buried in the back yards of big banks without a trace. Increased reserves with interest being paid on them.
You're right, of MV = PT they have only manipulated the M (Money supply) so far.
But unless this destructive dogma and school of thought is put to an end they will begin to institute velocity efforts during the next crash since rates are essentially zero and it's all they'd have left: wealth tax or applied negative interest rate on deposits, helicopter money, etc.
Agreed. For lack of a better choice, I tend to line up with Sumner and the Market Monetarists, which is a different flavor of monetarism yet ( and I'd think more in line with trying to get V up ). So the pallitative for monetarism may well be monetarism :)
The most important I think is how credit has increased since Bretton Woods was abandoned, allowing the country to continue to run trade deficits. Previously, this was limited by a gold standard.
I think back when the Great Depression happened it was a US trade surplus which eventually ended. US now have a trade deficit and has been since around the 1970s.
A trade deficit has a well-defined meaning, and describes a thing that does really exist. It must, of necessity, be offset by a net capital flow from the partner with the surplus to the one with the deficit (usually, in the form of increased foreign ownership of firms and property in the country with the deficit.)
It's can't be made up for in financial services, because trade in services, including financial, are included in the calculation of the deficit or surplus.
No, it amounts to assets, either financial or concrete (e.g., real property). And there's nothing special about the "post-Bretton Woods US". Financial assets are not the same thing as financial services.
Not all financial assets are in real property. I'd call assets that are not real property pretty much an artifact of the financial services industry. I don't mean just fees.
Your usage is much more precise.
I invoked Bretton because Truman was running around trying to get as much of the finance industry for the US during Potsdam and thereafter. Bretton Woods was roughly the same time frame.
I remember as far back as 2012 seeing Gawker articles and truly feeling ashamed for humanity. You had these pompous writers completely mocking and attempting to knock down elon musk as some insane fool for his recent release of the hyperloop plans, etc.
So here's a guy actually moving our society forward in transportation and the environment, and these smug writers try to cast him as a clown.
Does anyone actually defend on substance any of the activities Gawker was engaging in? These people pushed wrong narratives and destroyed lives over reasons that were most often proven false and always self serving to the interests of gawker.
I think peter is a smart guy, but I really feel a sense of gratitude to him for ridding the world of that awful organization.
Everyone sensationalistically shouts he's an evil billionaire damaging free speech and journalism, but gawker was engaged in voyeurism and bullying. And a court of law agreed with it. We make exceptions to pure free speech all the time, such as not being allowed to shout fire in a movie theater, etc.
I don't care to comment about his support of trump, but I also find it curious most of his vocal critics are themselves journalists, and are in my opinion resentful of the fact he set a precedent that the power "journalists" have is also something that can be held accountable.
>"These people pushed wrong narratives and destroyed lives over reasons that were most often proven false and always self serving to the interests of ...."
Assuming our opinion is like above, but against Trump, do we have justification to attack Trump and Thiel based on their political opinion?
It can be your "political opinion" that the government should be small, taxes kept low, and regulation to a minimum.
When you start bragging about sexually assaulting women, advocating violence against your opponents, and feeding the flames of racial tension you've moved well beyond mere opinion.
It's bewildering that Thiel would support such a character now given how Thiel won't "suffer" from Trump not being in the White House.
It was under Bill Clinton that this entire tech party got started: The commercialization of the Internet. Laws favorable to the start-up investment scene. Freeing up investment banks to allocate capital more freely.
I just don't get Thiel's motivation here. You don't want a total lunatic in power, you want someone you can talk to and persuade.
The only people who keep fuelling racial tensions are Democrats, notably Obama and Clinton, constantly telling black people they’re oppressed and that the police is racist. Trump had to cancel a rally in Chicago after democrats started rioting, he’s not the one instigating the violence, but whenever it breaks out, it’s always described as a “fight breaking out”, and never as democrats assaulting Trump supporters, which is what it is.
Trump doesn’t bring race to anything. He’s just called “racist” by people who don’t understand the term “illegal alien”, or that Islam is not a race.
Trump said these terrible things a decade ago. A decade ago Clinton and Obama were strongly, and publicly, against gay marriage. A decade ago Clinton praised sen. Robert Byrd as her “mentor”, a former KKK member, and noted racist. Go back further, and you have tapes of her laughing at the victims of her husband and destroying their lives. The thing with Hillary though, is that you don’t have to go that far with her, if you stop ignoring the fact she should be in jail right now, and not running for office.
Who cares who endorses which candidate, that’s out of their control. Hillary was endorsed by the Californian leader of the KKK, if you care, i don’t. I’m not making any assumptions. Hillary’s on tape calling Byrd her “friend and mentor” after his death.
My point is not that these things are or are not true, nor whether they matter or not. My point is that you’re labelling Trump as the worst human being in history based on such minuscule things, but ignore everything remotely questionable about Hillary Clinton.
The point of an election is not to find the perfect human being, it's to pick between the lesser of two evils.
The dirt on Clinton is well known: Her hawkish attitude to war, her enthusiastic use of drones, her embrace of free-trade policies like TPP, and so on.
The dirt on Trump is way, way worse, and more keeps coming to light: What has he paid in taxes? What is he hiding? Why do his businesses keep failing in a spectacular way? Why is he constantly being sued by thousands of people? Why does he flip out at the slightest provocation?
Trump isn't the worst human being in history, but he's the worst major party candidate for president in the last hundred years.
If Thiel was supporting Romney, Cruz, hell, any of the last round candidates in the last twenty years, nobody would be upset. Why he chose to get in bed with this particular turd, I don't know.
Most of the negative things you had to say about Trump are a part of being a high-profile entrepreneur. How does any of that come even remotely close to purging a private e-mail server you used for communicating top-secret documents while in office, or collapsing on a warm day is beyond me.
Maybe Trump is just like every other entrepreneur that has a trail of wreckage behind them, but when running for President there's different standards and the tradition has been, virtually without exception, that you release your taxes and a doctor's assessment of your health.
"Collapsing on a warm day" from pneumonia? Seriously? You've got some issues if you're busting on someone for making every effort to show up to an event relating to September 11th.
We all know why he won’t release his tax returns. He knows the system, he can fix it. Hillary can complain about that all she wants, but she didn’t do anything about it while in office. That’s been one of his main campaigning points since the beginning.
Why would you even talk about Trump’s health records as a Clinton supporter. First it’s not pneumonia, then it’s pneumonia. She collapses from it, then hugs a child after it miraculously gets through the Secret Service, even though the disease can be contagious. Pneumonia can cause serious complications, Clinton doesn’t tell you about it, and now you praise her for how strong she is? Why would you do that?
Who cares what Bush did. He’s not running for president, why would that be even remotely relevant to the discussion.
The only bad thing you managed to say about Trump is that he’s a wild card, while completely ignoring, or trying to awkwardly justify, that Clinton committed crimes, and showed utter incompetence while in office.
What Bush did, what Clinton did, what countless others have done is delete email. You want to hold her to account, sure, but you better be prepared to accept that others have done the same thing. If that's a crime, there's a long list of criminals.
The FBI, however, has concluded that there was no crime. So hey, take it up with them.
If you think Trump's the candidate to vote for that says a lot about your judgement. Many people are voting for Hillary simply because there's no reasonable alternative.
Might want to consider the wikileaks revelation of clinton campaign coordinating and paying protesters to start violence at his rallys.
Trump is an exceptionally flawed candidate, but I encourage everyone to consider that perhaps their perception of him is to some debatable degree (a big degree in my opinion) due to people out there trying very hard and spending a lot of money to portay him as "literally hitler"
My experience as well. I'm from Seattle and have met (at my office and others) and overwhelmingly large number of asian, and especially female asians working in data science and machine learning.
https://twitter.com/ParisHilton/status/904456098035286016