A conversation relating to Pinker "Myth of Violence," fractals, facebook, tulipomania, one-to-one correspondences, ergot, Soteria and Welfare and Instiutions Code 5150
okerlaw
monoculture, belief change and revision, cybernetics, credence,
partial belief, dutch book, temporal Bayesian networks, Richard
Macduff, Gordon Way, Reason, Japanese Tokkotai pilots, Cherry
Blossoms, Invisible Hand, Keynesian, fallacy of central planning,
infrastructure spending, sales tax, Debt Virus, Jacques S. Jaikaran,
Bombing Yemen, six-sigma, war spending, Ike, Brittney Spears' tampon,
Mag Lev Rail, Golgafrinchian economics, reality-based economics,
casino-style capitalism, Peter Schiff, Adam Smith, Friedrich von
Hayek, Léon Walras, Kenneth Arrow, Milton Friedman, Robert Lucas, John
Maynard Keynes, Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman, Benoit Mandelbrot,
Hyman Minsky, Glass-Steagall Act, cognitive bias, loss aversion, base-
rate fallacy, status quo bias, Nisbett & Wilson, ethnography,
sociocultural orientation, tacit epistemological assumptions, Norwood
Russel Hanson, Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, conceptual framework,
anchoring, Richard Bandler, John Grinder, Neurolinguistic Programming,
Rousseau, Kant, Categorical Imperative, loss-seeking, Arrow's
impossibility theorem, Apollonian mono culture, boundary conditions,
fractal phenomena, Myth of Violence, Steven Pinker, Mandelbrots,
iterations, recursion, Barack Obama, algorithms, scripts, japanese
pornography, jewelery on lingere of japanese sex workers, everything
boils down to the expression of an individual string of characters,
Shannon entropy, kolomorgov complexity, Michael Pollan, Botany of
Desire, Tulipomania, met de borden, wijnkoopsgeld, carnival
atmosphere, Conrad Black, Lloyd Blankfein, greater fool theory, tort
reform, decision-making algorithms, jobs for accountants, investment
bankers, and due-diligence people, contingency fees for lawyers,
LLC's, L.P.'s, Mother corporations, subsidiaries, Nautic Partners,
LLC, Internal Revenue Service, Security & Exchange Commission,
Monomorium modestum Santschi, chemical warfare, monogamy, public
policy, marriage, child support, the state's interest in prohibiting a
biological father from performing a dna test because of the public
policy interest in preserving the institution of marriage, Canadian
mortgage and banking system, Zbigniew Herbert, black tulip, theatre of
cruelty, Antonin Artuad, deregulated laissez faire capitalism,
February 2, 1637, Haarlem, Temporary Autonomous Zone, cronyism, Kenny
Boy, Andrew Jackson, spoils system, George W. Bush's literary
preferences, Tom Wolfe, Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse, Gonzo Journalism,
The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, skulls and bones, one-to-one
correspondence, emergent complexity, Google, Neural Network, fiat by
computation, revisionism, decision on margin, marginal payoff,
marginal return on investment, Baidu, censorship, legislation, Public
Choice Theory, Hillary Clinton, Anonymous, Scientology, Sea Org,
Thetan, literacy, Dostovesky, Cannibalism, 2-bromo-alpha-ergocryptine,
Saalem Witch Trials, The Crucible, Arthur Miller, bones whore, bukkake
pole, Satan, Don Quixote, Mark Twain, The United States of Lyncherdom,
Secret Society, Total Institution, Soteria, Luc Ciompi, Lauren Mosher,
Negative Capability, Schizophrenia, Dopamine D-2 Receptor, labelling,
degradation ritual, Alexander Shulgin, Keats.
Jeremy Sofian Ex Fed Boss and austerity specialist Paul Adolf Volcker
wants to impose a new sales tax during an economic contraction. This
is the same Paul Volcker who bankrupted atleast 25% of the U.S.
manufacturing base with his 22% prime discount rate at the FED in the
1980's to "fight inflation" -- Monetarism at it's finest.
Volcker: Raise Taxes to Curb the Deficit
www.washingtonsblog.com
Paul Volcker says that the U.S. will probably need to raise taxes to
curb the deficit.
9 hours ago · Comment · Like · Share
Jeremy Sofian Of course, an increase in capital gains taxes is not
even considered, instead they should tax sales and further slow down
the velocity of money.
9 hours ago
Michael Okerblom monetarism, austrian neo-liberal school...there is a
different kind of discussion going on: we now have more of an
intellectual divide between two idealist theories, rationalism and
constructivism. Actually, they’re not even real paradigmatic theories
but rather content-less analytical languages dealing principally with
beliefs. Recently it's it’s all about the ‘American School vs the
British School’, and two-thirds of all articles deal only within one
paradigm, which is liberalism. In the U.S., scholars should break out
of this straitjacket of working only in one paradigm. Not that I have
anything against paradigms, they are very useful, but I am
increasingly convinced that ‘analytical eclecticism’ is at this stage
a superior way of doing theory because we are so paradigmatic; had we
been predominantly eclectic, I would’ve said we should be a little
more paradigmatic – but right now we almost work in a monoculture,
which intellectually is pretty unhealthy.
9 hours ago ·
Jack Rachlin I would say "almost" is generous, Michael.
8 hours ago
Michael Okerblom IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS-
PART A: SYSTEMS AND HUMANS, VOL. 26, NO. 3, MAY 1996 Believing Change
and Changing Belief Peter Haddawy, excerpts:
1) capable of expressing the four types of higherorder
probability sentences relating subjective probability and
objective chance
2) ...an agent using this representation believes with certainty...
3) Temporal Bayesian networks have become an important technique for
modeling the uncertain temporal evolution of processes...
DIRK GENTLY'S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY, Douglas Adams:
1) "Well, Gordon's great insight was to design a program which allowed
you to specify in advance what decision you wished it to reach, and
only then to give it all the facts. The program's task, which it was
able to accomplish with consumate ease, was simply to construct a
plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises
with the conclusion.
"And I have to say that it worked brilliantly. Gordon was able to buy
himself a Porsche almost immediately despite being completely broke
and a hopeless driver. Even his bank manager was unable to find fault
with his reasoning. Even when Gordon wrote it off three weeks later."
2) ..."So much so, in fact, that looking at Pentagon policies over the
last couple of years, I think I can be fairly sure that the US Navy is
using version 2.00 of the program, while the Air Force for some reason
only has the beta-test version of 1.5. Odd that."
COMMENTS:
It is convenient for a society that worships knowledge to orchestrate
the creation of an Apolloian monoculture, with rigidly defined just
boundaries and monoparadigmatic sociocultural orientations, so that if
a member wishes to persuade a member of culture to immediately take
action in response to a projected series of instructions in language,
one need not empathize with, ascertain, or use psychoassic elicitation
techniques to identify the value set of the banker who supplies the
little green pieces of paper for the Ferrari, or the congress that
supplies the authorization to allocate resources to the Gulf of
Tonkin. Instead, one only need reference the tacit assumptions and
epistemological arguments that have been indoctrinated into the
general membership of the culture during the critical developmental
stages when Japanese Tokkotai pilots were persuaded that the “general
will”, was perceived as the general will of Rousseau and Kant, they
were disarmed and did
not suspect that they were being manipulated.
8 hours ago ·
Bill Glueckert If they seceed in raising taxes, it will give them a
bunch more money to spend and consequently a better chance to futher
raise the deficit. Ha!
7 hours ago
Jeremy Sofian All it will do is plug up holes caused by the donation
of trillions of dollars to Wall Street and then the holes will re-open
as the velocity of money slows down and tax reveneues collapse again
when businesses start selling less. Monetarists believe a mythical god-
like hand will swoop down and fix everything so long as we balance the
budget, and they have been proven wrong everytime it was attempted
during a contraction... yet they still persist in their delusions...
many of the ones in charge know they are delusions and are attempting
to keep the monetary system from blowing out with brutal austerity as
their means to an end.... but the end will still blow the system out,
this will just prolong it.
6 hours ago
Jacob Bloom Well, they had to fight inflation. Everything has a price.
They have to tax people to get the money they need or cut the
programs.
6 hours ago
Jack Rachlin what is the alternative, Jeremy? I'm not trying to be
snarky but if the Invisible Hand can't do it, then what can?
5 hours ago
Jeremy Sofian No. The most accepted principle in economics is if the
monetary supply keeps pace with the aggregate production output, there
is no inflation. All they had to do was expand the aggregate
production output, not bankrupt people to slow down the velocity of
money in the system and inflict austerity.
This whole concept of "We have to either tax or cut" bypasses how a
currency is valued and ignores the factors that lead to the situation
to begin with. In that particular situation it was the intentional
destruction of the Bretton Woods system which allowed currency
speculators to go bananas and the repurcussions of the vietnam war.
The value of money is reflected by the net production out-put relative
to population density of the underlying nation.
Spending into something that actually expands that output
(Infrastructure) will appreciate the value of the currency. Spending
into something that is absolutely worthless like bombing Yemen or
opening the Department of Homeland Security.
Not that i advocate deficit spending really because it's debt based as
we have to borrow it from a private bank, but it's clearly the lesser
of two evils when we are stuck in a perpetual downward spiral. The
impact of the "Balance the budget" method is most clearly seen in
1931-1932 Germany by Heinrich Bruning which drove the population into
insanity via brutal austerity.
5 hours ago
Jacob Bloom To be fair, I don't think this has anything to do with
invisible hands. We're talking public policy here. These are not
options brought about by spontaneous order but rather direct
intervention of central planners, both monetary and fiscal. We're
talking about the visible hand.
5 hours ago
Jacob Bloom Lol, EXPAND THE BASE!!
5 hours ago
Jeremy Sofian The Monetary Base? the monetary base is irrelivant most
of it isn't even in circulation. The M1 is the most relevant measure
of the money supply and as i just said, if instead of insane wars and
bureaucratic, worthless departments in Government they decided to
actually monetize infrastructure it would *offset* the inflation.
5 hours ago
Jacob Bloom The economic base. Invest in public works projects and try
to encourage growth so that cuts don't have to be made. It's
Keynesian. The problem is the fallacy of central planning. There is no
way for a few intelligent policymakers to know exactly where the
resources need to go in order for growth to occur. Sounds nice in
theory, doesn't always work in practice. Possible, ofcourse, but not
guaranteed, risky in fact. Everything has a price.
5 hours ago
Jacob Bloom In this case, taxation may get them the money they want
but at what cost?
5 hours ago
Jeremy Sofian No Keynsian is deficit spending through a central bank.
I absolutely reject Keynsian economics as i do Austrian economics.
I am saying monetizing infrastructure is the lesser of two flawed
methods here, and i am not talking pet projects... i am talking Mag-
Lev Rail and other things that would clearly benefit the entire
economy.
5 hours ago
Jacob Bloom Where do you propose to get the money for your
infrastructure projects?
5 hours ago
Jeremy Sofian The cost of a sales tax? well, think about that for a
moment... most small businesses are already in perpetual debt slavery
because they cannot capture enough money in the system to service
their debt and meet their break-even point.
What is the cost of imposing a sales tax? bankrupting them.
5 hours ago
Jacob Bloom Well, there you go, if you are right, the gained revenue
isn't worth the loss in productivity. That should be case closed.
5 hours ago
Jeremy Sofian Ideally? If the Treasury could print money, you wouldn't
have to "Get money" you can print it. As i said, the current system is
flawed, horribly flawed.
Since the FED prime discount window is still less than 1% the Federal
Government should be able to force them to open a line of credit for
that rate insofar as infrastructure... of course i'd rather see the
FED gone so it doesn't create more debt money... but this situation is
insane.
California attempted the cut everything system and they have decended
into absolute chaos. The Tax hikes will further wreck the economy as
well, unless perhaps they decided to shift the burdern and tax the
friggen banks for speculation... or even instead of a sales tax a
capital gains tax would be better.. but no, they have to choke the
economy.
5 hours ago
Jacob Bloom Someone loses here, you know this.
5 hours ago
Jeremy Sofian Yea, my intent is to make speculators lose and save the
rest of the people.
5 hours ago
Jacob Bloom Seems unrealistic tbh.
5 hours ago
Jacob Bloom just saying
5 hours ago
Michael Okerblom re: Thwarting the invisible hand ~
http://www.farfignugen.com/ugh.html
3 hours ago ·
Michael Okerblom re: "Monetary supply keeps pace with aggregate
production output" ~ I remember picking up the book "Debt Virus" by
Jacques S. Jaikaran while at Ruben Zamora's (the current Ambassador
from El Salvador to India) house. There is an interesting figure on
page 169 of the Google Books copy of that book has, Exhibit 15.
Michael Okerblom Bombing Yemen serves a political value, inasmuch as
that it creates a new generation of terrorists who can function as the
impetus for strange attractors like the 9/11 incident, giving rise to
pretexts for the executive branch of the American Imperium to avail
itself of marital law powers, which allows for the consolidation of
power in a single individual, thus streamlining the efficiency of the
national progress towards the collective goal of achieving six-sigma
for all government operations by the end of Barack Obama's
presidency...
3 hours ago ·
Michael Okerblom the monetary base that is not in circulation still
can be used as leverage
3 hours ago ·
Michael Okerblom re: war/worthless ~ "Every gun that is made, every
warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a
theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and
are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is
spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the
hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true
sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of
iron." –Dwight D. Eisenhower in a speech given to the American Society
of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953
3 hours ago ·
Michael Okerblom a 2% increase in sales tax will not bankrupt 99% of
small businesses.
3 hours ago ·
Michael Okerblom re: "I'd rather see the FED gone..." ~ who is going
to eliminate the FED? The governments that owe money to it? A
democratic uprising of the people who are preoccupied with watching
youtube videos depicting Brittney Spears' tampon hanging out from
beneath her skirt onstage at the MTV music video awards? Your mom?
3 hours ago ·
Michael Okerblom Mag Lev Rail would completely fuck over Enron's
interests, and the jobs of all its lobbyists and think tanks, and the
private interests of many other members of the creative intelligentsia
currently in power in our current American economy.
3 hours ago ·
Michael Okerblom Re: "The Treasury could print money..."
ALTERNATIVELY, WE COULD SWITCH THE CURRENCY TO THE LEAF, AND BURN THE
FORESTS:
...The Indo-Europeans were not an altogether unproductive people,
however. They set right to work holding Committee Meetings (wherein
nothing was accomplished) but holding them none the less. The standard
'leaf' was adopted as Legal Tender, but when bath-loving Indo-European
captain realized what an overabundance of leaves there were, orders
were made immediately to have most of the forests burned down. Guards
set to work on this at once, glad to finally have some importance in
their lives other than declaring war on uninhabited pieces of land and
interrogating various gazelle. Did the Hairdressers' Fire Developement
Subcommittee invent fire? No! They did however come to a (semi-
un)conclusive decision as to whether or not people want fire that can
be fitted nasally. Yes, this is our people. And so they thrived, on
the lush thick lands of ancient earth, completely oblivious to the
fact that their race would die out in 2 million years anyway, even
though Ford Prefect had spent a great deal of energy trying to tell
them just this.
3 hours ago ·
Kelly Bokenfohr @ Jeremy I agree with you on many points. In an
economic crisis when the free market is in ruins ,gov't spending is
the only thing that can step in and fill the void. Some sort of
productive capacity is needed and gov't spending on infrastructure
could fill the void.
3 hours ago
Jacob Bloom @ Kelly, that's straight out of General Theory.
3 hours ago
Jacob Bloom The problem is that the government hasn't the money.
2 hours ago
Kelly Bokenfohr So what! Show me this free market that is suddenly
going to come to the rescue and stop a deep deflationary spiral
downward. That is straight out of Austrian economics or whatever form
of market fundamentalism you want. It never has worked in the past.
It's one big myth. How about reality based economics for the real
world in which we live rather than this delusional free market utopia
embraced by ideologues.
2 hours ago
Kelly Bokenfohr http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_47/b4156079791251.htm
Here is your reality based economics
2 hours ago
Jacob Bloom I'm not saying Keynes' tool set doesn't work. Austrian
school doesn't say that either. They say it comes with a price. In
other words, you get your consumption back up, then what?
2 hours ago
Jacob Bloom Btw, I don't understand why you think that in reality, you
can do just one thing.
2 hours ago
Kelly Bokenfohr All these sovereign nations with the exception of the
Euro Zone have the ability to issue their own currencies. The issue is
not the money spent but the goods and services produced.Spending can
be done by either the gov't or the private sector. Since the private
sector is in ruins the gov't is all that is left for the time
being.The problem is that all these countries blew their money bailing
out the corrupt financial sector.
2 hours ago
Jacob Bloom The public sector is in worse shape than the private
sector.
2 hours ago
Jacob Bloom The issue is both the goods and services produced AND the
money spent. They both matter.
2 hours ago
Jacob Bloom But look, bottom line, they either raise taxes or cut
spending. Neither will happen.
2 hours ago
Kelly Bokenfohr Jeremy has made many points about the danger that
derivatives and all this financial speculation has placed on the
global economy. Wall Street and London just reinvented Vegas with
their casino style capitalism that adds little value to the real
economy. So now their is a lack of money for services. The average Joe
has to pay for this while the financial sector continues to receive
huge compensation . For what????? This is the reward for being a
corporate sociopath.Just remember that we are no longer on a gold
standard.Peter Schiff peddles plenty of misinformation on this topic.
2 hours ago
Jacob Bloom Lol, who incentivized the "casino-style" capitalism?
2 hours ago
Kelly Bokenfohr @ Jacob they should try reducing taxes and increasing
spending to provide the stimulus needed. Or you can just say that they
are dammed if they do or don't.
2 hours ago
Kelly Bokenfohr Wall Street lobbyists that were enabled by the
gov't.This is what incentivized casino style capitalism. I'm sorry but
I do not buy that false argument that every economic crisis is the
fault of the gov't.
2 hours ago
Jacob Bloom That's just it, they're damned if they do, damned if they
don't. For different reasons ofcourse. If they cut spending, demand
might come back down and we enter another recession triggering a
collapse in the housing market. If they raise taxes, they pull more
and more money out of an already stifled private sector. If they cut
taxes, people whine that they poor are getting hurt and the rich
aren't paying their fair share moreover, there's no way to be sure
that cutting taxes necessarily increases spending right away
(keynesian multiplier.) There is not the political will to do anything
right now because every action has a downside and one way or another,
someone gets screwed.
2 hours ago
Jacob Bloom @Kelly, not every economic crisis is the fault of the
gov't, but this one clearly was. If you take the risk out of lending,
don't be surprised when the lenders start taking on more risk.
2 hours ago
Kelly Bokenfohr The libertarian cult needs to get over that whole myth
that greed is mitigated by risk and that the free market on its own
can do no harm. It's a complete fallacy.
2 hours ago
Jacob Bloom What is greed but expectation of gain? If I know I do not
stand to lose, what reason do I have to not be greedy?
2 hours ago
Jacob Bloom Moreover, why do you assume that when people work for the
government that they are not greedy? Are they not human?
2 hours ago
Kelly Bokenfohr I'm in favour of reality based economics for the real
world in which we live. The reality is that humans by nature are
flawed and need to be managed with some rules and gov't checks and
balances.Look pardon me for being nasty but the Schiff site sounds
like a bunch of naive college frat boys embarking on their first job
in the free market utopia. Schiff himself sounds like a lip syncing
washed up former top ten recording hit with OCD. This is why I got
tired of that site.
2 hours ago
Michael Okerblom Kelly, the article you cited mentioned Adam Smith,
Friedrich von Hayek, Léon Walras, Kenneth Arrow, Milton Friedman,
Robert Lucas, John Maynard Keynes, Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman,
Benoit Mandelbrot, and Hyman Minsky, as well as the Glass-Steagall Act
which Jeremy has written extensively about in facebook notes.
I would like to make a few general observations:
1) Kahneman and Tversky worked on cognitive biases, such as loss
aversion, base-rate fallacy, status quo bias, etc. Offspring of their
work includes Nisbett & Wilson's observation that psychology is
anthropology, or ethnography, and that the sociocultural orientation
of a group affects the tacit epistemological assumptions that the
group makes which function as the precursors to the formation of
ostensible perceptions. Norwood Russel Hanson would probably want to
point out that each individual's neural pathways specify for a
discrete "conceptual framework" for processing experience, which lead
to the formation of divergent perceptions across subjects. Kahneman
also worked on anchoring, an idea that was developed by Bandler &
Grinder and other members of the neurolinguistic programming (nlp)
community. This relates back to the point I made earlier about
Japanese Tokkotai pilots visualized themselves as cherry blossoms.
2) Kenneth Arrow's impossibility theorem informs us that a candidate
solution to the challenge associated with our collective action
problem is dispensing with the non-dictatorship condition that is
imposed by the limits of the constitution we have created for our
democratically organized state. This goes back to my earlier point
about how a society that worships knowledge has an incentive to create
an Apollonian mono culture, in which "just boundaries" are placed to
limit the range of choices available to the private actors in the
market, such as the limits on the choices that were made available to
the Banking Industry under the Glass-Stegal Act.
3) Benoit Mandelbrot is responsible for our enlarged understanding of
fractals. Almost everything is a fractal phenomena, for example, in
his September 2007 "The Myth of Violence" speech on ted.com (http://
www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html), Steven
Pinker identified at 2:17 in the video that the decline of violence is
a fractal phenomenon...
2 hours ago ·
Kelly Bokenfohr Greed is fine as long as its managed with some rules.
There is nothing wrong with gov't workers. Many of them have to work
10 times harder than a wall street sociopath for only a fraction of
the pay because services and staff have been cut.
2 hours ago
Jacob Bloom Ok, well ya know you can think whatever you want of
Schiff, what you're making isn't an argument against Schiff's
argument, but an argument against him and his followers. That's ad
hom. I have never said that we don't need government, I'm a big
believer in government. But I think that the government can do harm as
well as good. I also believe humans are flawed. Very flawed. But not
just the ones participating in the market, but also the ones working
in the government. My question to you still stands, first of all, if
risk cannot mitigate greed what can? Secondly, what makes you think
that people working for government are not also greedy?
2 hours ago
Jacob Bloom Look, if deregulation is the problem, pass glass steagal
again. Case closed, right?
2 hours ago
Jacob Bloom how do you manage greed with rules? Government workers are
people are they not?
2 hours ago
Kelly Bokenfohr Yes I believe in a strong regulatory environment
because this worked in my country and our financial system as a
consequence has not melted down.Political leaders are the only greedy
gov't workers I can think of at the moment because they accept
political bribes.
about an hour ago
Michael Okerblom Jacob has pointed out that people who work for the
government, in spite of their purported fiduciary duties to their
constituents, nevertheless frequently adopt a rationalist approach to
decisionmaking, factoring in their own selfish interests into their
decisionmaking policies. So, the conversation has been taken towards
public choice theory, which leads us back to Arrow and his
impossibility theorem.
Kelly has pointed out that Schiff's apocalyptic predictions that the
troy ounce will reach $5,000 USD, and his fatalistic aversion to
Barack Obama's inclination to increase government regulation are
probably the result of some cognitive bias on his part.
Schiff however does make the valid point that in order to be viable in
the global economy, states need to have some kind of production going
on. In the information economy, this means that members of the
population from whatever sector have to possess the knowledge or
resources requisite to solve problems, or provide real benefits to
somebody.
It is largely irrelevant whether those resources consist of little
green pieces of paper, leafs, options to acquire little green pieces
of paper, algorithms that predict the distribution of alleles within
the given domain of a particular gene pool, or whatever foo, bar,
xyzzy, etc. The US can sustain its economy by writing a darwinian
script that evolves various kinds of fractals, changing the colors of
the fractals periodically, and selling the output of this script to
japanese pornographers to include as jewlery to attach to the lingere
of sex workers. Combine these fractals with a black tulip bulb in the
right conditions, and the troy ounce will reach $0.01 USD.
In summary, everything boils down to the expression of an individual
string of characters.
about an hour ago ·
Kelly Bokenfohr Risk does not always mitigate greed because the free
market is full of over confident people that know much less than what
they think, yet get to handle a tremendous amount of money.
about an hour ago
Jacob Bloom So wait, if they're not a political leader, they're not
greedy? Are you saying working for the government makes people not
greedy?
Also, which country are you talking about and what regulations are you
talking about?
about an hour ago
Jacob Bloom @Kelly, if the free market lacks the information to make
"proper decisions" and avoid excessive risk, why would the government
have access to this information? Why do you have so much faith in
central planners?
about an hour ago
Michael Okerblom Regarding the tulip trade in Holland between 1634 and
1637, here is an excerpt from The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan
(pp. 102-103, paperback version):
At its height, the trade in tulips was conducted by florists in
"colleges"--back rooms of taverns given over to the new business two
or three days a week. Colleges quickly developed a set of rituals that
sound like a cross between orderly stock market protocol and a
drinking contest. Under one common set of procedures, called met de
borden, or "with the boards," a seller and buyer who wanted to do
business were handed slates on which they wrote an opening price for
the tulip in question. The slates were then passed to a pair of
proxies (essentially arbitrators nominated by the traders), who would
then settle on a price somewhere between the two opening bids; this
they would scribble on the slates before passing them back to the
principals. The traders could either let the number stand, signifying
agreement, or rub it out. If both rubbed out the price, the deal was
off; but if only one party declined, that florist had to pay a fine to
the college--an incentive to close the deal. When a deal did close,
the buyer had to pay a small commission, called the wijnkoopsgeld:
wine money. In keeping with the carnival atmosphere, these fines and
commissions were used to buy wine and beer for everyone--another
incentive to make deals. In a satirical pamphlet describing the scene,
an old-timer advises his neophyte friend to drink up: "This trade must
be done with an intoxicated head, and the bolder one is, the better."
about an hour ago ·
Jacob Bloom btw, I just want to add that there's this horrible
misunderstanding about what markets can and cannot do. They cannot
avoid mistakes ever being made. What they can do is provide incentives
to avoid mistakes and give consumers a way to choose who to fund after
mistakes have been made.
about an hour ago
Jacob Bloom @ Michael, I've never said that speculative manias cannot
occur sans government.
about an hour ago
Kelly Bokenfohr The financial system has gotten too big and too
dangerous thanks to the repeal of all these rules and regulations. We
now have this huge shadow banking system of unregulated trades that
are sheltered in tax havens.Secondly a stronger judicial system is
needed. It's a joke that Conrad Black is in jail while Lloyd Blankfein
is reaping huge compensation. The legal system is a fraud and has been
enronized. In theory the GS boys should be in jail for what they did
but are free because this is all legal and within the confines of the
current legal system
about an hour ago
Michael Okerblom The bubble logic driving tulipomania has since
acquired a name: "the greater fool theory" (aside: Read Kaheneman and
Tversky, Nisbett & Wilson's papers--or just skip to wikipedia's "list
of cognitive biases"). Although by any conventional measure it is
folly to pay thousands for a tulip bulb (or for that matter an
Internet stock), as long as there is an even greater fool out there
willing to pay even more, doing so is the most logical thing in the
world. By 1636 the taverns were crowded with such people, and as long
as Holland remained home to an expanding population of greater fools--
people blinded by their desire for instant wealth--the truly foolish
act would have been to abstain from the tulip trade.
about an hour ago ·
Jacob Bloom lol who is supposed to regulated trades, the sec?
about an hour ago
Jacob Bloom ok, so how did the monetary and credit expansion occur
during tulipmania?
about an hour ago
Kelly Bokenfohr http://american.com/archive/2010/february/due-north-canadas-marvelous-mortg
This type of financial system does involve central planning
about an hour ago
Jacob Bloom @ kelly, the link was broken
about an hour ago
Michael Okerblom Kelly, so the new hot topic is...tort reform? In the
context of increased accountability for corporate executives, which
means more liability which means more risk for people who want to do
business which means more careful and intricate decision-making
algorithms get implemented prior to the deal's close, more jobs for
accountants, investment bankers, and due-diligence people. And of
course, more contingency fees for lawyers. So then, consolidation of
wealth in a certain sector, and possibly more class distinctions,
resulting in the advent of variance in the degree of inequality
experienced by the average member of the population.
So then, LLC's, L.P.'s, Mother corporations that own subsidiaries
which own subsidiaries which own subsidiaries...did you know that in
Providence, Rhode Island there is a building in Kennedy Plaza that is
the house of probably more than one hundred business entities, which
are all operated, more or less, by the ten people listed here:
http://www.nauticpartners.com/team, and those ten people are a spin-
off of Fleet Boston, and that subsequent to Nation Bank's acquisition
of Bank of America back in--whenever--most everyone works for uh,
grin--have you ever typed about 100,000 words onto a piece of paper,
and as a result, gotten a check for $2,200,000?
Opportunities exist in every economy.
about an hour ago ·
Michael Okerblom (chuckles softly)
about an hour ago ·
Michael Okerblom Regarding the SEC ~ I regard the SEC as a source of
information. Like if I want to know which individuals entered into a
management services agreement with Nation Bank in 1999, because I
think that Scott Hilinski was an employee of Bank of America in 2005,
when he made a variety of misrepresentations to people in California
that affected the Healthcare Industry, then I go onto the SEC website
and I read papers.
So maybe the SEC makes rules or something, but I don't know if I care
about those rules, or what kind of reulgations they impose, because I
don't have to comply with them because the last time I tried to form a
LLC, the Secretary of State of California sent my paperwork back to me
stating that I couldn't name my company "Lyra Banks, LLC" because it
contained the word "Banks" which is subject to blah blah blah, so I
form a trust fund, and I don't make a paper trail, and nobody can keep
track of what I'm doing...or maybe they can, since I got a letter from
the IRS last week, but that's probably because my dad claimed that his
business hired me as an independent contractor and paid me some
$23,000 in 2008 or something, so I might have to pay penalties and
declare that as income, but whatever, I'm surprised the government
doesn't use advanced surveillance techniques to keep track of
everything that's going on...seems like a security issue to me...but
if you're going to audit the flow of electrons through the
constellations of synapses in every nervous system extant within your
population, screening for impulses that could generate foreseeable
security risks, why not use the same data to tax people? And why not
raise the tax rate to 100%, and make like Monomorium modestum Santschi
and take over the whole hive, using chemical warfare to make copies of
yourself at the expense of the efforts of all the worker bees?
In other topics, I would like an ethical consult regarding the a
policy that involves "only fucking married women," on the grounds that
one does not incur an obligation to pay child support for one's
offspring because there is a public policy interest in stopping the
biological father from compelling a dna test to obtain rights as a
father because of the public policy interest in preserving the
institution of marriage.
about an hour ago ·
Michael Okerblom Kelly meant
http://www.american.com/archive/2010/february/due-north-canadas-marvelous-mortgage-and-banking-system
about an hour ago ·
Jacob Bloom "Almost all Canadian mortgages are “full recourse” loans,
meaning that the borrower remains fully responsible for the mortgage
even in the case of foreclosure."
I like this a lot.
"Instead, the Canadian government provides public funding for low-
income rental housing, rather than encouraging homeownership for low-
income households, and Canada has thus avoided the American mistake of
using misguided policies to turn good, low-income renters into bad
homeowners."
Not a big fan of welfare programs, but this one is definitely better
than CRA.
"Banks in Canada keep and service 68 percent of the mortgages on their
own balance sheets that they originate and underwrite."
I assume there's no Canadian freddie and fannie?
You know, reading this, these things are much more akin to free
markets than what we have here. I see these advantages as being
advantages of sticking closer to a free market model than a government
run model. Also, I do not see where the central planning comes in?
about an hour ago
Michael Okerblom Jacob, tulipomania wasn't about monetary or credit
expansion, it was about tulips. There is a story about a black tulip
discovered by a poor shoemaker at the height of the madness. In the
version that Zbigniew Herbert tells, five gentlemen from the union of
florists in Haarlem, all dressed in black, pay a visit to the
shoemaker, professing to do him a good turn by offering to buy his
tulip bulb. The shoemaker, sensing their avarice, begins to bargain in
earnest, and after much haggling the two parties settle on a price for
the bulb: 1,500 florins, a sum that to the shoemaker is a windfall.
The bulb changes hands.
"Now something unexpected happened," Herbert writes, "something that
in drama is called a turning point." The florists throw the precious
bulb on the ground and stomp it to a pulp.
" 'You idiot!' they shouted at the stupefied shoe patcher, 'we also
have a bulb of the black tulip. Besides us, no one else in the world!
No king, no emperor or sultan. If you had asked ten thousand florins
for your bulb and a couple of horses on top of it, we would have paid
you without a word. And remember this. Good fortune won't smile on you
a second time in your entire life, because you are a blockhead.' " The
shoemaker, devastated, staggers to his bed in the attic and dies.
about an hour ago ·
Jacob Bloom How did it become a bubble without a monetary or credit
expansion?
about an hour ago
Jacob Bloom in other words, who was financing this boom in tulip
prices?
about an hour ago
Michael Okerblom Herbert's view of the tulipomania is itself
unremittingly black. To him the Dutch frenzy had nothing whatever to
do with beauty, only with the consuming evil of the fixed idea, a
phenomenon that can, at any time, destroy the "sanctuaries of reason"
on which civilization depends. Herbert's tulipomania is a parable of
utopianism, specifically of communism. It is true that, after a
certain point, the flowers themselves became irrelevant--a time came
when crushing a particular tulip bulb, or holding a paper "futures
contract" for another still in the ground, conferred greater wealth
than the most beautiful blossom ever beheld.
about an hour ago ·
Kelly Bokenfohr Come on you guys wake up! The current legal system is
another fraud. It never use to be this way until the enronization
process happened.What a joke that a small fish in comparison called
Bernie Madoff is the only guy going to jail. You guys are inserting
thoughts into my head. No economic system is perfect just like no
human employed either publically or privately is. Look deregulated
laissez faire capitalism was tried in the financial markets and that
was enough to take out the global economy. The whole developed world
was built on varying degrees of the mixed economic model.I'm sorry but
the whole libertarian ideology embraced by the masses on FB is simply
not grounded in reality.
about an hour ago
Michael Okerblom Well, the "greater fool" was financing this boom, and
it lasted until February 2, 1637, when the florists of Haarlem
gathered as usual to auction bulbs in one of the tavern colleges. A
florist sought to begin the bidding at 1,250 guilders for a quantity
of tulips--Swisters, in one account. Finding no takers, he tried again
at 1,100, then 1,000...and all at once every man in the room--men who
days before had themselves paid comparable sums for comparable tulips--
understood that the weather had changed. Haarlem was the capital of
the bulb trade, and the news that there were no buyers to be found
there ricocheted across the country. Within days tulip bulbs were
unsellable at any price. In all of Holland a greater fool was no
longer to be found.
about an hour ago ·
Jacob Bloom @ Kelly, deregulated laissez faire capitalism does not
exist in this country and has not existed in the financial markets at
least since 1913. Kelly, you may not realize this, but I think the
article you posted about Canada really shows that they're more laissez
faire there than we are here when it comes to banking and housing.
Moreover, what do you really know of libertarian ideology?
about an hour ago
Jacob Bloom @ Michael, where was the greater fool getting his money?
Was it all out of savings or was he borrowing money from someone to
fund his purchases of bulbs with the expectation of capital
appreciation?
about an hour ago
Kelly Bokenfohr @ Jacob there is no Freddie and Fannie up hear and
just keep in mind that this system does require some gov't oversight.
If the banks had their way they would like all the regulations
repealed so they could push all that toxic crap and make billions.
about an hour ago
Jacob Bloom @ Kelly, it may require some government oversight, but
it's clearly much more geared to free markets than you seem to think
it is. Tougher lending standards, incentives not to borrow more than
one can afford to repay, no incentives for banks to lend out money to
subprime candidates and no one to sell securitized mortgages to on a
secondary market.
59 minutes ago
Michael Okerblom Kelly, what's so fraudulent about our current legal
system? Are you upset about cronyism, "Kenny Boy" and other stuff that
has been going on ever since Andrew Jackson ostensibly introduced the
spoils system into American politics? Do you also want to take issue
with George W. Bush's literary preferences--you think he shouldn't
like Tom Wolfe more than Jane Austen or P.G. Wodehouse? Maybe we
should burn all copies of The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. Maybe we
should outlaw all secret societies, and close down room 322 at Yale.
Maybe we should hire a computer to make all our decisions for us. And
we should do this by acting collectively, as a democracy, to rewrite
our constitution and impose a new set of rules which we will modify
every nanosecond until the perfect set of laws emerges which
legislates into existence a one-to-one correspondence between all
biological, psychological, and other complex realities that exist, and
our "map" of those realities. Maybe we should elect google as
president, but Google is a small man, who can't even do business in
China, because Baidu got its cronies to pass laws that flow contra to
Google's "don't be evil" ideology, and so Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton had to characterize Google's choice to pull out of China and
re-direct traffic through Hong Kong as a "Business Decision" in order
to signal to American investors that they should not penalize Google
for helping Anonymous to run a campaign against Sea Org, Iranian
fascists, and etc...
IN OTHER NEWS:
Brittney Spears was seen leaving a library carrying a copy of
Dostovesky's Crime and Punishment.
Rhianna issued a public acceptance of Chris Brown's apology, stating
that "the truth is I like the way he treats me."
George W. Bush admitted to participating in cannibalism during his
sophomore year at Yale, stating that members of his fraternal
organization were fed 3 grams of 2-bromo-alpha-ergocryptine, each,
that the senior bone, dressed in the don quixote costume, tied the
bones whore to a bukakke pole, that the man in the satan costume slit
her wrist and filled a chalice with her blood, and the cup was passed
among bonesmen. The bones whore, Bush reports, did not object to being
treated this way, and the following ensued:
The negro was taken to a tree and swung in the air. Wood and fodder
were piled beneath her body and a hot fire was made. Then it was
suggested that the woman ought not to die too quickly, and she was let
down to the ground while a party went to Room 322, about two halls
away, to procure coal oil. This was thrown on the flame and the work
completed.
See http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enam482e/lyncherdom.html, and
http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/2006/10oct/illconfsnb322.html
John Kerry was asked to comment about the statements elicited from
George Bush during an interview with Alexander Shulgin. Kerry declined
to comment, stating "that's so secret that I can't even talk about
it."
49 minutes ago ·
Michael Okerblom Jacob, I don't know where do you think the Greater
Fool was getting his money from? His bank account? The services and
goods he produced in exchange for value, which he supplied as security
for the loans taken out in order to purchase tulip bulbs/futures?
Maybe he went into the forest and found a bee hive and stole the honey
from the bees and sold it at the farmer's market, and used the
proceeds to purchase tulips while his children starved to death the
way Avoren Palacost did. Who knows? Every man has his speculations,
but not every man dwells upon them until he makes a false coinage and
deceives himself...The invisible hand should be great & unobtrusive, a
thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle or amaze it
with itself but with its subject.—How beautiful are the retired
flowers! how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the
highway crying out, ‘admire me I am a violet! dote upon me I am a
tulip!”
42 minutes ago ·