Current topics to write on

• John Vandivier
  • libertarians are not classical conservatives; part of the irreconciliation betw libertarians and conservatives...nonaggression principal would've been laughed at by the founding fathers, who were violent revolutionaries...conservatism is superior to libertarianism, but they can be reconciled on the free market, which is arguably better than either....bc it is conservatism well understood (that is, conservatives strive to preserve tried-and-true mechanisms, but tried-and-true mechanisms are really justified by their efficient emergence on the market and their value as information-rich, low-risk institutions.)
  • best of all markets - we are in the best of all worlds, free market already exists and is in fact inescapable, voluntary action is necessary (action axiom)
  • canadian shooter further evidence of islamic extremism not a minority issue, also pro-gun
  • consistency analysis to detect lying: if better explains then more likely to be true. equal explanation = equally likely to be true
  • organic unity; one major factor, but not only factor, is ideological resonance; which can be directly coordinated, indirectly coordinated, or not at all coordinated.
  • free market vs natural market
  • survival preference is preference. Savings is preference
  • are people threshold actors? (survey, observation...)
  • intrinsic value of a good is not present value of final value (ie, 0) it's expected present value of cumulative value from now until t=infinite.
  • it is impossible to be both perfectly savings-smoothing and consumption-smoothing when income is changed
  • How confident can we be that turnout will be greater than or equal to the average of the last 3 similar races (industry standard practice)?
  • PredictIt vs BitBet vs phone poll/survey
  • predictit and bitbet as subsidized betting better than a poll?
  • 4 reasons to donate to a Super PAC
    • 1 better performance 2 legal restrictions (donation limits)
    • better performance in 4 ways:
    • 1 increased flexibility http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/12/romney-tweeted-by-committee-199600.html
    • 2 good cop bad cop - pacs can go negative
    • 3 proven track record - with new transparent modelling, you know we will outperform even if the candidate is a new campaign
    • 4 eliminate risk, or diversify - not convinced a PAC can outperform? Fine, but don't put all of your eggs in one basket.
  • Garner and Ferguson - Racism: Hate or Fear?
    • And while hate may be irrational, is fear really irrational? crime stats, and more
    • race problem or police problem?
    • http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/12/04/eric-garners-daughter-on-her-fathers-death-this-is-not-a-black-and-white-issue/
    • 'don't be racist' is same people as 'don't stereotype, that's an oversimplification.' We can also say the terms 'racist' and 'racism' are similarly oversimplificaitons; fear, hate, and rational expectation are all importantly different reasons for predjudice. The politically incorrect truth is that some, although certainly not all, racism is justified.
  • goodhart's law and heisenberg uncertainty principal; the robustness of the observer effect
    • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect
    • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
  • Leaders lead by opportunity cost; virtually every action creates an external effect on decisions of others; it is easier to do something which has already been done by the catch-up effect then to engage in new activity (econ growth model), but when you do something new you 'break the barrier' in that direction and people will now have an incentive to 'catch-up' with you in the same direction; you lead by enabling and you enable by leading
  • Equity in the nature of demand; two people on an island, peanuts wash ashore, classically, any allocation is 'efficient' because they will not trade...or will they? assuming services are valuable then the one who wants the peanuts more will work harder to get them, obtaining them in the long run (if they are durable and not consumed)...basically, \"life's not fair\" applies only in the short run for the hard worker, if it applies at all - you can make your own fairness....If you don't want to work so hard then isn't it really unfair that you don't get more of what you want?
  • the underappreciation of small sample sizes (part 2, part 1 already posted): rejection w/out substitute, 50% level
  • the virtue of negative values (coalition building) ie saying \"i am against\" vs \"I am for\" can unite otherwise unrelatable groups
  • suicide as rational action and 21 pilot
  • Todo:
    • merge pages into a masterpage with either a detailed table of contents, an abbreviated one, or both.
    • break loose articles into categories and revise into books with theses, maybe using bookpress or w/e
    • lesson plans, curriculum -> tests, certifications, diplomas, degrees
  • Drug trade bigger than overbearing drug laws:
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahDRMpqeIhY
    • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerry_Committee_report
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hl5zt3MvzE
    • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Views_of_Lyndon_LaRouche_and_the_LaRouche_movement
    • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_LaRouche
    • Also, LaRouche is a liberal democrat in the US democrat party and an extreme conspiracy theorist
      • but is he on to something? Paul talked good about Sen John Kerry and the Kerry Committee back in late 1980s. Notably, Chris Dodd of Dodd-Frank and more helped form the committee by calling for investigation, along w Republican Sen Richard \"dick\" lugar, preceeded and succeeded by Joe Biden, Bush and Kissinger buddy.
    • http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1997/eirv24n35-19970829/eirv24n35-19970829_022-george_soros_the_queens_drug_pus.pdf
    • http://www.theworldoftruth.net/HallettReport/No6.html#.VNoUzS696fU
  • Construct or reconstruct edgeworth box to allow many firms in competition
  • systematic thinking includes mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, as well as funnel process mapping
  • Utilitarian Design:
    • obtain by creating or licensing. License by fee or free. Obtain by photography or by drawing. Learn photoshop and illustrater. Edit. Keep UI clean and drive action. Economies of scope vs scale and the cost of exhaustion risk versus trust failure risk
  • https://www.facebook.com/john.vandivier/posts/10205948519130990
    • http://dailysignal.com/2015/05/01/judicial-activism-on-marriage-like-abortion-can-cause-harms/
    • http://dailysignal.com/2015/04/29/in-depth-key-questions-and-remarks-from-the-supreme-court-oral-arguments-on-marriage/
    • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_and_sexual_orientation
    • en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_who_have_sex_with_men
  • in our current system, the voters have more power to change the government, than to change large companies.
    • Is this true? Is it easier (more cost-effective) to change a particular practice through market activism or political activism? If this is modeled probabilistically, do we see an accurate picture of social preference?
  • You're not poor, your spoiled, stupid, or just plain wrong
    • If you think 'white privilege' matters at all. If you think 'equality' matters at all. If you really think life was ever 'fair' or even should be.
    • Poor people, I mean people that are really poor, either can't get a job or have a job but maybe still can't afford a place or eat ramen every day, have an illness they can't treat, can't provide for the family...These people don't care about fairness, about equality, or about privilege - they just want to get better.
    • A poor person who is really poor and in suffering would have no problem with equality, as long as the unequal society is one in which they are no longer suffering. They don't care about the big picture - they are suffering and it is taking all their focus. It's not that the poor are unfeeling - it's just they are too busy trying to work and solve their problem to think about other things. I been there.
    • If you are more concerned about feminism, privelege, socio-economic status (most poor don't even know what that last one means) than you are about putting food on the table, a roof over your families head, and clothes on their back...You aren't poor, you're spoiled, stupid, deluded, or just plain wrong.
  • Walter Block v Bryan Caplan 'apodictic statements' is the unemployment thing apodictic or empirical?
  • Walter Block and Property Rights vs Contracts
    • People can and will make invalid contracts
    • Walter Block's view of property rights is incorrect
  • Walter Block and deceitful contracts
    • ie sign up for the nazis and blow them up from within
    • these contracts are both immoral and inefficient
  • Micro vs Macro: Supply and Demand
    • Individual demand curves have 0 utility and perfectly inelastic demand all the time (I don't want it), but for macro demand almost every good has some elasticity (practically, not in theory) bc there is some implicit reallocation of demand to other goods, ie someone is buying and selling the good or it wouldn't be in question to begin with and therefore some share of the whole economy is affected, but not each individual only some share of the 'average individual'
    • We can view high negative utility as a supply. If my demand for butter is low enough to be negative I may only consume it for a negative price. In this case I cam actually supplying something, not demanding something, because I can be viewed as charging a price for my services. Also, I don't actually demand the good but I have a demand for money which is greater than the cost of rendering the service; so eating butter becomes a factor of supply for a service I am rendering.
  • Experiments in Hypocrisy
      1. difference between what i say on survey and what i do
      2. difference between what i say vis a vis others and what i do
      3. difference between what i say about others and what i say for me (a separate sort of hypocrisy)
    • What is an instrumental variable? It is the variable used for operationalization. It is the variable used to measure the concept of interest. It is the key tool used to validate or invalidate some statement
    • So if hypocrisy is our instrument variable what can we explain? Perhaps we can link hypocrisy to stupidity, low social capital, or low productivity

  • Jesus on market process and guided evolution/intelligent design:

    • Immoral = perishing => inefficient = creatively destroyed; or, moral = extant in the long run.

    • Get verses and make sure that is a correct exegesis

    • So we continue with the thesis that efficiency, quality of life, etc move with morality and intensify in the long run (holiness, sanctification, eschatology…)

 

 

  • Economics = sociology = political science bc microfoundations. Microfoundation idea is needed and goes back to Greeks, but we need micro-micro: individual, not household/firm. macro = economics of aggregation.
  • Theory of causality; ceteris paribus creates needed situation to argue for proximal cause, explanation as proximal cause, and god as final/ultimate cause and effect.
  • The roots of conspiracy are interest, qui bono, and moral hazard.
  • The Coase Theorem need not require 0 transaction costs. We could rephrase it so say negligible transaction costs. We could also simply adjust the expected outcome based on transaction costs. We could rephrase so that we say \"as transaction costs approach 0, efficiency is optimized.\" Transaction costs are going to 0 each and every day in the real world. Social media and crowd-sourcing are giant leaps forward in this, as well as innovative payment processing and logistical technologies. So the Coase Theorem is becoming more true each day. Lastly, even if we consider the transaction costs to be a dead-weight loss and simply add it on to the required detriment (eg the socially optimal result will only be produced on the market when at least one party has an incentive to pay the transaction costs; the difference between cons and prod surplus is sufficiently large to incur an additional cost) it would not work in all situations, but it would work in many. AND in those situations were it didn't optimize the outcome, the suboptimal outcome would still almost certainly be better than government intervention as the transaction costs would be less than the costs of government action + inefficiency from distortion effects.
    • http://economics.about.com/od/externalities/a/The-Coase-Theorem.htm
    • http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/04/the-coase-theorem-is-widely-cited-in-economics-ronald-coase-hated-it/
  • Social Costs and Benefits are better referred to as Political Costs and Benefits because it is the political system which prices these. A more concise term would be Political Prices. Political prices sometimes do not equal economic prices, although they will reach equilibrium in the long run. This is due to the relative inefficiency of political structures, not due to a market failure or inability for the market to produce ideal prices.
  • Voluntary information:
    • As you approach omniscience, your actions will optimize your own utility.
    • You would always want to gain more information from the above perspective, but you might not want new information if it results in direct dis-utility from something like depression, or something like maintenance costs, or reduced efficiency from an inability to quickly call bits of information when a large amount of information is stored (there is evidence this happens in old people.)
    • dis-utility: reason for willful ignorance; value current pleasure more than long-term utility or current pleasure more than morality (in a way the same, in a way not).
    • You would not want to give information if it would be bad for you - Lois Lerner, etc.
    • \"Information\" is only valuable when it's true.
    • Regardless of whether giving information is good for you, it is good for society.
    • Lack of free information aka secrecy is incentivized by political structures which censor or regulate speech, usage of data, and means of transaction - transactions and prices are communication as well.
  • Secrecy as a route to American anarchy - innocent until proven guilty is an american doctrine. Black market is legal until discovered. Anarchy is legal until discovered. In light of cryptography, as well as utilizing covert everyday methods, substantial anarchy can be legally created until it overpowers the traditional structure - not even violently. The traditional structure will conform voluntarily as it will be in the economic and rational interest of every personal member.
    • Free info is ideal, but govt gives incentive not to. In an anarchy info would be free, but in the transitional period there may be needed secrecy.
    • Public cryptography provides near-free information, and in some ways additional free information. It obfuscates identity, but that's all. We can discuss anarchy in public, but it's unclear who is doing so.
    • Christians face a morality vs law trade off, but then again they are commanded to follow the law. In cases of moral ambiguity, many Christians rightly chose the conservative principle of morality; if you aren't sure that it's good, consider it bad. For this reason they would avoid anarchy. However, with innocent until proven guilty it is no longer illegal, and it's also morally good, so there are no longer inhibitions to a Christian's acceptance of anarcho-capitalism in practice, as well as theory.
  • Confidence testing can separate stupid/foolish from ignorant/uninformed: It is quite possible to be extremely intelligent but uninformed. One way to estimate this difference is by asking a test taker, \"How sure are you of your answer?\" Two student may both make an 80% score in terms of getting the correct answer, but a stupid student would think he was right when he was wrong, while an intelligent student would recognize that his answer was possibly or probably wrong. A weighting system could be devised for this.
  • Income = Consumption + Savings = Y = C + I + G + NX + S
    • C = C0 + C1T | T = tax rate => C = take-home pay
    • Why don’t we consume all and save none now? Because we are interested in lifetime utility, not present utility. Saving per se increases utilty.
    • Savings doesn’t = investment, G spending is the same as any sort of spending (C, for example) in two ways – govt is a firm and regular consumption has a multiplier effect. Goods shocks have multiplier effects, the multiplier effects is all effed up in reality, govt spending involves misallocation with opportunity cost derived from calculation error
    • Money markets = supply vs demand for money (including cash, other sorts).
    • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saving
  • Free riders = positive externalities.
    • http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/PublicGoodsandExternalities.html
    • http://mises.org/daily/2769/Solving-the-Problem-of-Free-Riding
  • Natural monopoly problems?
    • The strong presumption of the benefits of privatization implied by the Niskanen model, however, is subject to two limitations. First, some markets may be natural monopolies, markets in which, because of the nature of the good, there is a cost advantage to having only one firm provide the good to all consumers in a market. Examples of such markets are those for utilities such as water, gas, or electricity. The provision of natural monopoly goods requires sufficient scale or size of the producer. It is not efficient for, say, five or six water companies to lay the pipes for water delivery all over town. The high level of the fixed costs associated with the provision of natural monopoly goods leads to economies of scale, whereby the average cost of production falls as the quantity of the output increases. Thus, in natural monopoly markets, only one firm will exist in the private market equilibrium. As a result, in natural monopoly markets, private provision will not be associated with competitive pressure; privatization in such markets can therefore lead to higher costs to consumers than does government provision. Evidence on this point comes from Kemper and Quigley (1976), who used data from municipalities in Connecticut to compare public and private refuse collection. They showed that private collection was much more expensive
    • Gruber, Jonathan (2012-12-01). Public Finance and Public Policy (Page 252). Worth Publishers. Kindle Edition.
  • Leviathin Theory
    • Leviathan Theory Niskanen’s theory assumes that individual bureaucrats try to maximize the size of their own agencies and that a larger government tries to rein them in. In contrast, Brennan and Buchanan (1980) see these two entities as one monopolist (which they call “Leviathan”) that simply tries to maximize the size of the public sector by taking advantage of the electorate’s ignorance. Under this theory, voters cannot trust the government to spend their tax dollars efficiently and must design ways to combat government greed. This view of government can explain the many rules in place in the United States and elsewhere that explicitly tie the government’s hands in terms of taxes and spending. In Chapter 4, we discussed rules for limiting the size of the government budget. Likewise, a number of U.S. states have passed laws limiting the ability of local communities to raise property taxes (taxes imposed on the value of homes and businesses and the land they are built on), as discussed in more detail in the next chapter. There is no reason to have these types of “roadblocks” if a benevolent government is maximizing social welfare, but with a Leviathan government, they may be a means of putting a brake on inefficient government growth. Another way to combat the Leviathan tendencies of government is to ensure that politicians face electoral pressure to deliver public services efficiently, as suggested by a study by Besley, Persson, and Sturm (2005). These authors studied the impact of the increased “political competition” in the southern United States during the twentieth century due to the enfranchisement of blacks and other groups. They measure political competition as the extent to which voters choose a fairly balanced slate of candidates in local elections, as opposed to always voting for one party or another. They find that areas with more political competition had much faster economic growth (25% higher growth in the long run), partly because of lower taxes and higher quality jobs.
    • Gruber, Jonathan (2012-12-01). Public Finance and Public Policy (Page 255). Worth Publishers. Kindle Edition.

  • White quiz

    o   It’s the models! Fisherian, Knightian Crusonia, Bohm-Bowerk, Real Capital