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Americans must think markets are like Gods. If we could previously say, "Kill 'em all and let God sort them out." Now we can say, "Starve them all and let marke

Americans must think markets are like Gods. If we could previously say, "Kill 'em all and let God sort them out." Now we can say, "Starve them all and let markets sort them out." The only difference is in who we outsource our morality to. Either way we, as mere mortals, are not responsble for determining morality. Or quite literally in this case, who gets to live and who gets to die. The markets will fix it. Believe in the markets. They are our saviours and they are a fickle beast that we mere mortals cannot understand. Their actions are mysterious and their outcomes capricious, but we must believe because they are the one true God.

conanbatt 8y ago
MArkets are people. When you make your rhetoric on markets what you are actually raging against is the desire of human beings: that is what you despise.
- andyjsong 8y ago
  Don't hate the player, hate the game.
  - salawat 8y ago
    That's a copout if I've ever heard one. A few years ago, there was a game some adolescents would play where they would run up to an unsuspecting person person and bludgeon them as hard as possible to knock them out. There have been variants of the same pattern of behavior except involving strikes to other areas. It is absolutely justifiable to hate a person for engaging in a game that involves inflicting harm on others. This attitude to hate the game rather than those forcing it on everyone else just seeks to divest blame from the actors that perpetuate the malignant activity, to an assumption that "the game" is some mysterious standalone force that subverts the will of the participants and justifies their innocence. In short, "the devil made me do it" is not an excuse for poor moral choices. Lets take it even further. I have a game. I'm going to get all the lifesaving equipment I can, and open a facility. This facility is going to specialize in a particular type of highly asymmetric transactions, and I'm going to do everything I can to inflict the greatest financial harm I can, because gee, the way we keep score mandates I do so to keep the game going. It's a hard realization to come to, but as human beings and individuals, our collective behavior is dependent and a composition our individual choices. And for a not insignificant portion of our population, we have succeeded in allowing it to scrape together a world around itself where maybe it takes a week to explain the technicalities, but it doesn't take a layman more than an a 15 minutes to come to the conclusion there is something seriously wrong. This is one of those cases where rationalization has been left unchecked or unquestioned for far too long. To wrap around to the true meaning underlying your aphorism, which is diluted without context: Don't hate the market participants for participating in the market; but feel free to call out the hypocrisy of dealing in grievous financial harm in trade for necessary care. If you can't question or shame the actions of the ones perpetuating the status quo, you'll never change a blessed thing. Mrs. Bloom in Accounting is still a part of it. Even if she'd rather not think about it.
    - mrguyorama 8y ago
      I agree with most of your post but do you have any evidence that "the knockout game" was an actual thing and not just a few unconnected instances played up with scaremongering?
  - threatofrain 8y ago
    If someone hates both, and that includes you, do you hate back or hate the game that made them hate you? Seems like too much given to a silly one-liner for movies.
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  Markets, such as they are currently implemented in the US, empirically give health care providers all the leverage. You can blame "human beings" for the fact that they then abuse this power -- or you can do what nearly every other developed country in the world has done and fix the problem by taking (some of) it away.
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    Your analysis is not a market criticism or advocacy, is that the stacks are in favor of one against the other, and you wished the stacks were in your favor instead. Thats what all players want. How they go about getting their advantages is the market.
    - EliRivers 8y ago
      Thats what all players want. That's not true. There are people who advocate for other systems, and there are people who actually find more satisfaction in everyone getting a good deal rather than themselves getting everything and screwing everyone else over.
      - conanbatt 8y ago
        That other system always screws someone, and its never them.
        EliRivers 8y ago
        I believe you have been tricked by survivor bias. There is a great deal of evidence of against what you say. Your statements are absolutist; I believe you are speaking from ideology.
- EliRivers 8y ago
  "Markets are people". That's quite a statement. On the face of it, it's clearly not literally true, and neither is it true that markets are "the desire of human beings", although that's certainly a little closer. So what exactly are you saying? The fundamentalist wing of the market religion does an awful lot of damage. It's quite possible to dislike how markets can be gamed, captured, distorted, abused, twisted and made to serve rich individuals without despising humans.
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    A market is by definition a group of agents buying and selling from each other. Agent a formal word that eventually boils down to "person". Unless the lizard people have taken over.
    - EliRivers 8y ago
      So markets aren't people, and they aren't people's desire. "Market" barely qualifies as a noun; market is the actions of a group of buyers and sellers. A long way from the sensationalist original statement.
      - conanbatt 8y ago
        Nonsense. You'll have to find another argument to fix the cognitive dissonance of the statements "I want the best for people" and "Markets(people trading with each other) are evil"
candiodari 8y ago
You know, can you just stop it with the superiority complex ? I'm European and I travel to the US on a very regular basis. European healthcare is mostly market based, and where it's not it has exactly the problem economics predict: rationing. And rationed health care is quite simply worse than expensive health care. "Markets" simply means that mostly people can take care of each other. For the most part, that's true, and has many very positive sides.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  "And rationed health care is quite simply worse than expensive health care" Not true. With rationed care you can still buy additional services if you want to whereas with expensive care like in the US even the simplest problem can cost you a lot of money or bankrupt you and there is not much you can do other than hope (pray?) for the best.
  - masonic 8y ago
    With rationed care you can still buy additional services if you want No, that's not truly rationed, then -- that's variable pricing. If food/fuel/etc is rationed, that's all you get without venturing into a black market, if one is available.
- dbbk 8y ago
  If you find the 'rationing' of the public health system an issue just buy private insurance? It's the best of both worlds.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    I think you'll find in much of Europe that's not possible, or only provided on the condition that you use the (rationed) public system first. Ironically does tend to be possible if you're NOT a citizen of the EU, in many places. I guess this is similar to Obamacare (not very sure though). I hear you don't get to have an insurance independent of Obamacare. But the "integration" if you will is further along in Europe.
viggity 8y ago
markets are not infallible. They're not perfect either. But in the long run, they produce much better results than command and control

conanbatt 8y ago

MArkets are people. When you make your rhetoric on markets what you are actually raging against is the desire of human beings: that is what you despise.

andyjsong 8y ago
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
- salawat 8y ago
  That's a copout if I've ever heard one. A few years ago, there was a game some adolescents would play where they would run up to an unsuspecting person person and bludgeon them as hard as possible to knock them out. There have been variants of the same pattern of behavior except involving strikes to other areas. It is absolutely justifiable to hate a person for engaging in a game that involves inflicting harm on others. This attitude to hate the game rather than those forcing it on everyone else just seeks to divest blame from the actors that perpetuate the malignant activity, to an assumption that "the game" is some mysterious standalone force that subverts the will of the participants and justifies their innocence. In short, "the devil made me do it" is not an excuse for poor moral choices. Lets take it even further. I have a game. I'm going to get all the lifesaving equipment I can, and open a facility. This facility is going to specialize in a particular type of highly asymmetric transactions, and I'm going to do everything I can to inflict the greatest financial harm I can, because gee, the way we keep score mandates I do so to keep the game going. It's a hard realization to come to, but as human beings and individuals, our collective behavior is dependent and a composition our individual choices. And for a not insignificant portion of our population, we have succeeded in allowing it to scrape together a world around itself where maybe it takes a week to explain the technicalities, but it doesn't take a layman more than an a 15 minutes to come to the conclusion there is something seriously wrong. This is one of those cases where rationalization has been left unchecked or unquestioned for far too long. To wrap around to the true meaning underlying your aphorism, which is diluted without context: Don't hate the market participants for participating in the market; but feel free to call out the hypocrisy of dealing in grievous financial harm in trade for necessary care. If you can't question or shame the actions of the ones perpetuating the status quo, you'll never change a blessed thing. Mrs. Bloom in Accounting is still a part of it. Even if she'd rather not think about it.
  - mrguyorama 8y ago
    I agree with most of your post but do you have any evidence that "the knockout game" was an actual thing and not just a few unconnected instances played up with scaremongering?
- threatofrain 8y ago
  If someone hates both, and that includes you, do you hate back or hate the game that made them hate you? Seems like too much given to a silly one-liner for movies.
jjoonathan 8y ago
Markets, such as they are currently implemented in the US, empirically give health care providers all the leverage. You can blame "human beings" for the fact that they then abuse this power -- or you can do what nearly every other developed country in the world has done and fix the problem by taking (some of) it away.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  Your analysis is not a market criticism or advocacy, is that the stacks are in favor of one against the other, and you wished the stacks were in your favor instead. Thats what all players want. How they go about getting their advantages is the market.
  - EliRivers 8y ago
    Thats what all players want. That's not true. There are people who advocate for other systems, and there are people who actually find more satisfaction in everyone getting a good deal rather than themselves getting everything and screwing everyone else over.
    - conanbatt 8y ago
      That other system always screws someone, and its never them.
      - EliRivers 8y ago
        I believe you have been tricked by survivor bias. There is a great deal of evidence of against what you say. Your statements are absolutist; I believe you are speaking from ideology.
EliRivers 8y ago
"Markets are people". That's quite a statement. On the face of it, it's clearly not literally true, and neither is it true that markets are "the desire of human beings", although that's certainly a little closer. So what exactly are you saying? The fundamentalist wing of the market religion does an awful lot of damage. It's quite possible to dislike how markets can be gamed, captured, distorted, abused, twisted and made to serve rich individuals without despising humans.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  A market is by definition a group of agents buying and selling from each other. Agent a formal word that eventually boils down to "person". Unless the lizard people have taken over.
  - EliRivers 8y ago
    So markets aren't people, and they aren't people's desire. "Market" barely qualifies as a noun; market is the actions of a group of buyers and sellers. A long way from the sensationalist original statement.
    - conanbatt 8y ago
      Nonsense. You'll have to find another argument to fix the cognitive dissonance of the statements "I want the best for people" and "Markets(people trading with each other) are evil"

candiodari 8y ago

You know, can you just stop it with the superiority complex ? I'm European and I travel to the US on a very regular basis. European healthcare is mostly market based, and where it's not it has exactly the problem economics predict: rationing. And rationed health care is quite simply worse than expensive health care. "Markets" simply means that mostly people can take care of each other. For the most part, that's true, and has many very positive sides.

maxxxxx 8y ago
"And rationed health care is quite simply worse than expensive health care" Not true. With rationed care you can still buy additional services if you want to whereas with expensive care like in the US even the simplest problem can cost you a lot of money or bankrupt you and there is not much you can do other than hope (pray?) for the best.
- masonic 8y ago
  With rationed care you can still buy additional services if you want No, that's not truly rationed, then -- that's variable pricing. If food/fuel/etc is rationed, that's all you get without venturing into a black market, if one is available.
dbbk 8y ago
If you find the 'rationing' of the public health system an issue just buy private insurance? It's the best of both worlds.
- candiodari 8y ago
  I think you'll find in much of Europe that's not possible, or only provided on the condition that you use the (rationed) public system first. Ironically does tend to be possible if you're NOT a citizen of the EU, in many places. I guess this is similar to Obamacare (not very sure though). I hear you don't get to have an insurance independent of Obamacare. But the "integration" if you will is further along in Europe.

viggity 8y ago

markets are not infallible. They're not perfect either. But in the long run, they produce much better results than command and control