It amazes me that someone can claim to understand economics and still believe such things.
"Economic systems don’t run themselves."
Well, except for those which work. LOL. It's only when you believe economies "need" to be "run" at all that you see a problem you think you can solve with control.
"Even token-trained cellular automata (“capitalism”) needs someone to set up the rules that the components operate by or the individual nodes have no way of knowing whether they are producing desired outcomes or not."
Ummm.... the rules spontaneously organize and evolve just fine without a dictator (even a "capitalist" one) making them up. If you are making enough money to keep doing what you're doing, you are producing a "desired outcome". If you are not making enough money doing what you are doing, and you quit doing it and go to something else to see it that works better, that is also a "desired outcome". It's how the market meets needs, and keeps meeting changing and evolving needs which can't be predicted by anyone.
"there are no 'natural laws' of economics"
Coulda fooled me. I see them in operation all around me- and I also see the disaster which happens when they are ignored. Like, just about everything happening in the "above ground" economy around the world.
"There is no such thing as a 'free market' for example, all markets have rules..."
Well, yeah... all markets have rules, but free markets have rules agreeable to each party in a trade, and no one loses when a trade is agreed upon. Coerced markets (every other form of economic organization has a winner and a loser in every trade- and sometimes- usually- it actually has 2 losers (the people trading) and one winner (the thief stealing "taxes" and profiting from contributing nothing but bureaucracy and interference.
"We"? Dictating a worse life for some people isn't within anyone's authority. You don't get to choose the winners and losers according to your preferences and whims.
"The people whose lives would become worse naturally don’t want that to happen. So we have stalemate."
Well, DUH! A stalemate is usually what happens when you are threatening to harm someone who has gumption enough to say "No, I don't think so!" Good for them, and I hope they shoot you if you continue to insist on molesting them.
So, this is what passes for "socioeconomics"? If this is the sort of people telling themselves (and the gullible) that they are the ones who should be making the rules everyone else will have to live or die by, then it's no wonder things are so messed up.
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Kent,
ReplyDeleteI normally gauge how much credibility to give someone on how well that person wields the tool of language. (I shouldn't, I know, but I do.) In Badtux's posts you won't find misspelled words, run-on sentences, or comma splice problems. But in spite of almost perfect grammar, his words are like fingernails on a chalkboard.
"Who speaks reason to his fellow men bestows it upon them. Who mouths inanity disorders thought for all who listen."
---Richard Mitchell, Less Than Words Can Say
"Neither can his mind be thought to be in tune, whose words do jarre; Nor his reason in frame, whose sentence is preposterous"
---Ben Johnson, Discoveries, 1641
Dave
So his flawless writing skills allow the frighteningly wrong ideas to be seen in stark clarity, without distraction.
DeleteA free market only means that a person is free to do business as they wish as long as they do not violate the rights of others. We do not have a free market system in America because of how corporations can influence (buy) legislators to pass laws that benefit the corporations.
ReplyDelete"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." (Adam Smith) But the socialist-commies hate that "regard to their own interest" part and want to change human nature by laws (or executive orders).
Of course, there is no true communism and never has been. Work according to your ability and take according to your need? How'd that work out for the Russian and Chinese communist leaders? Did they eat and live in housing like the peasants among them or did they have the best of everything their nation could provide. Communism, as practiced, merely replaced the old aristocracy with the new aristocracy. Such is human nature.
""Even token-trained cellular automata ('capitalism') needs someone to set up the rules that the components operate by or the individual nodes have no way of knowing whether they are producing desired outcomes or not."
ReplyDeleteThat's got to be one of the stupidest sentences I've ever read, and that's sayin' something. Yeah, there's an easy way to know that---if someone buys something, especially a second time, then it was a desired outcome. Period. There is no other meaning of "desired." That's been the scam for 5,000 years---everyone's looking for some other referent of "desired," and there simply isn't one. What a numbskull.
Kent, you've got it all exactly right. I'd say "IMO," except that facts aren't subject to opinion.