Unfinished Topics to Write On

• John Vandivier

This is a long list of topics I've been meaning to write on, but I haven't. There are many reasons I haven't written them including insufficient time or interest, or perhaps I haven't been able to fully resolve the content of what I have to say on the subject. But I think they are interesting so I am providing them to perhaps stoke some public interest or conversation.

  1. Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Economics, and Philosophy
    1. The Eichmann Defense
    2. Would the Founding Fathers approve of the NAP? Doesn't this prove that libertarians are not classical conservatives?
    3. Is proper conservatism = laissez faire + Christianity? Does this recipe prove a superior worldview compared to libertarianism (w/ NAP) or even polycentrism (w/ NAP optional)?
    4. Are we in the best of all possible worlds? I think so. Subtopics:
      1. Evidence of Fine Tuning
      2. Oliver Williamson, Fahma, and the Best of All Possible Markets
      3. tension between argument from evil and best of all possible worlds
    5. Topics in equity:
      1. The moral implications of God optimally causing certain people to be born rich and others poor.
      2. Revealed preference for income through unconstrained willingness to work
      3. Are labor constraints generally remediable? Disability, laws, geographic constraints, cultural constraints, etc.
      4. Is it unfair that some people have to work hard to obtain higher income? Putting constraints aside.
      5. Demand for fairness and relative fairness of constraints: Are all the unfair things equally unfair, and which should we seek to remedy?
    6. Applied comparative system influence: in our current system (the USA), is it cheaper for individuals to influence public policy or the policy of large companies? considering risk?
  2. Economics
    1. suicide as rational action and 21 pilot
    2. Schelling Points and Spontaneous Order vs Conspiracy Theories
    3. is it impossible to be both perfectly savings-smoothing and consumption-smoothing when income is changed
    4. intrinsic value:
      1. can we conceive of an article's intrinsic value as it's expected present value of cumulative value from now until t=infinite
      2. is the final state of rest value of any good always 0, or 0 in the limit?
      3. If such value is always 0 then is socialism feasible in the FSR
    5. Difficulties in time economics
      1. Production functions change at heterogeneous rates, so this makes the usual \"very long run\" definition (all factors can vary, even the production function) empirically not useful
      2. Synthesizing Neoclassical and Praxeological time: Asynchronous Praxeology
      3. Improved Long and Short Run Definitions, Part 2: The very long run and the final state of rest
      4. Long term investing as evidence against usual empirical evidence of the long run
      5. Asynchronous economics...augmenting dynamic models to account for simultaneous qualitative i/o (prod fxn) changes at hetero rates
    6. Goodhart's Law and The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
      1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect
      2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
    7. Synthesizing Market Process with Scripture
      1. Does Christianity(immoral = perishing) = Economics(inefficient = creatively destroyed)? Does sanctification ~ equilibration?
      2. Is Christian morality eventually consistent (eg very long run / FSR) with market outcomes?
      3. Is the eventual consistence causal?
    8. try to construct an edgeworth box with many agents
    9. Qualitative Considerations of Information
      1. More information is not always better. Even if the additional information is true it can negatively alter expectations in some cases.
      2. But in general, more true information is better for allocative efficiency
      3. But also, behavioral and utilitarian considerations of real humans: People can't deal w overload. But we do have computers
      4. Also, sometimes people don't want to know the answer. In a subset of cases it's good for them to know even if they don't want to.
  3. Politics
    1. 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)?
    2. 4 reasons to donate to a Super PAC
      1. 1 better performance 2 legal restrictions (donation limits)
      2. 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.
    3. the virtue of negative values in coalition building ie saying \"i am against\" vs \"I am for\" can unite otherwise unrelatable groups
  4. Science
    1. The underappreciation of small sample sizes
    2. problems w .05 alpha level (optimal level is 50% for axiomatic reasons)
    3. alpha levels are useless without case probability: the importance of meta analysis and scientist credibility
    4. R squared + Forward testing vs Truth: Does more explanatory power mean more likely to be true, or are there other factors and what are they?
  5. Website todo (not articles or topics)
    1. merge pages into a masterpage with either a detailed table of contents, an abbreviated one, or both.
    2. break loose articles into categories and revise into books with theses, maybe using bookpress or w/e
    3. 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
  • 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
  • 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
 
  • 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.
  • 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.