4 ms·

Wow! By that tortured reasoning, everyone in the world is paid enough! Every single possession that anyone ever purchases is good enough! Everybody's partner

by xiaoma 16y ago

Wow! By that tortured reasoning, everyone in the world is paid enough! Every single possession that anyone ever purchases is good enough! Everybody's partner is good enough! Every choice is good enough! As long as we're fully omniscient, there are no costs in making changes and we're all perfectly rational, then all of existence is good enough! (if not, then by definition, we would choose the alternative of suicide)

CWuestefeld 16y ago
As long as we're fully omniscient, This is not a requirement. In fact, that's the beauty of what the market does for you. All you need to know is your own utility function (and you are likely not even aware of that, it comes automatically), and the price (i.e., salary and other compensation). Friedrich Hayek won a Nobel Prize for demonstrating how pricing in a market distributes information, communicating the priorities and substitutability for everyone. there are no costs in making changes Of course there are costs in making changes. How could there not be? Surely you're not suggesting some magical world where everything is always magically altered to the optimum. Any time anyone is confronted with a choice, part of the decision making process is to consider the costs of changing. If that costs exceeds the benefits from the change, then you won't do it. So I don't see what you're trying to say in this phrase. we're all perfectly rational The rationality of actors is, admittedly, a matter of some controversy in modern economics. We know, for example, that people are systematically bad at handling values of extremely large or small scale, like the actual risks from terrorism -- we've badly overreacted to something that overall poses vanishingly small risk. However, in this particular discussion -- a person's benefits from their employment, fully considering their job satisfaction -- then I don't think that anyone is in a position to debate. There is absolutely no way that anyone can second-guess another person's utility function (that is, their values and preferences, and how much a given thing improves their quality of life). We simply cannot know what is happening in another person's mind. Indeed, we frequently don't truthfully know our own motivations. Yet it's still clear that these preferences do exist, and that we take action on them. When talking about something this micro, we have no choice but to rely on a person's observed behavior. (For much better discussion of this, see Mises' Human Action). good enough! Well, yeah. As an alternative to sarcasm, perhaps you could articulate an alternative explanation to my own. The only other that I can see is a Platonic top-down control, with a group of blessed decision-makers deciding what the relative values of everything ought to be. But there, you've still got the problems of omniscience, as well as forcing all participants to adhere to the same set of values, rather than allowing each of us to make our own choices.
- xiaoma 16y ago
  Okay. The minimal, no sarcasm response is this: Ripping words out of a conversation and trying to formally apply them against your understanding of economics is a bad idea. The word "enough" carries connotations that economics can't fully model. Your argument leads directly to the conclusion that every black share-cropper's job in the 19th century was "good enough" because if it weren't their best option, they'd have done something else. Here's a more detailed response: Switching costs matter greatly because it's possible that someone may feel that job B doesn't pay enough to compensate them for the unpleasantness involved, but job B is what they put 6 years of schooling into and they don't have the skills or qualifications for the more desirable job A. Knowledge of how events will unfold, prescience, would be guarantee that one won't end up in job B after years of mistaken belief of being on track A. Prudence is some protection, but some people will still be unlucky. Omniscience is the only absolute safeguard against making an unwise purchase. Many, many people buy defective goods every day. In the long term, those who do honest business should have an advantage, but the dishonest aren't all weeded out. In addition, it's possible to pursue an item (or a job) that isn't objectively flawed, but simply has no value to oneself. Without full self-knowledge, this can't be avoided completely. A person might believe a job that they are doing is a good deal when in fact, it is not. Radium jewelry painting was an extreme example. And the gigantic elephant in the room that you were clearly trying to avoid was social good. Just because someone is willing to provide something for X amount of money doesn't mean that X amount of money is all it's worth to society. A cursory reading of economics would show that education is one such good. The return on an educated populace is so great that it's worth subsidizing. And that's exactly what this discussion is about. In the US, the pay for educators is low for the amount of schooling required, and the educators themselves are usually not drawn from the strongest of their classes. In many other countries, teaching is a highly competitive, highly paid, high prestige position. FYI I have worked in education, both in the US and in east Asia. The difference is vast.
  - tokenadult 16y ago
    I have worked in education, both in the US and in east Asia. The difference is vast. What are the most crucial differences that United States policy-makers should be aware of as they try to improve education in the United States? (For that matter, what should east Asian policy-makers learn from the United States?) I like the books by Liping Ma http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics-Understanding/dp/0805829091 http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematic... and James Stigler and James Hiebert http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-Classroom/dp/ http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-Class... as examples of what the United States could learn from the practices of other countries, but perhaps you have other suggestions for readers here.

by xiaoma 16y ago

CWuestefeld 16y ago

As long as we're fully omniscient, This is not a requirement. In fact, that's the beauty of what the market does for you. All you need to know is your own utility function (and you are likely not even aware of that, it comes automatically), and the price (i.e., salary and other compensation). Friedrich Hayek won a Nobel Prize for demonstrating how pricing in a market distributes information, communicating the priorities and substitutability for everyone. there are no costs in making changes Of course there are costs in making changes. How could there not be? Surely you're not suggesting some magical world where everything is always magically altered to the optimum. Any time anyone is confronted with a choice, part of the decision making process is to consider the costs of changing. If that costs exceeds the benefits from the change, then you won't do it. So I don't see what you're trying to say in this phrase. we're all perfectly rational The rationality of actors is, admittedly, a matter of some controversy in modern economics. We know, for example, that people are systematically bad at handling values of extremely large or small scale, like the actual risks from terrorism -- we've badly overreacted to something that overall poses vanishingly small risk. However, in this particular discussion -- a person's benefits from their employment, fully considering their job satisfaction -- then I don't think that anyone is in a position to debate. There is absolutely no way that anyone can second-guess another person's utility function (that is, their values and preferences, and how much a given thing improves their quality of life). We simply cannot know what is happening in another person's mind. Indeed, we frequently don't truthfully know our own motivations. Yet it's still clear that these preferences do exist, and that we take action on them. When talking about something this micro, we have no choice but to rely on a person's observed behavior. (For much better discussion of this, see Mises' Human Action). good enough! Well, yeah. As an alternative to sarcasm, perhaps you could articulate an alternative explanation to my own. The only other that I can see is a Platonic top-down control, with a group of blessed decision-makers deciding what the relative values of everything ought to be. But there, you've still got the problems of omniscience, as well as forcing all participants to adhere to the same set of values, rather than allowing each of us to make our own choices.

xiaoma 16y ago
Okay. The minimal, no sarcasm response is this: Ripping words out of a conversation and trying to formally apply them against your understanding of economics is a bad idea. The word "enough" carries connotations that economics can't fully model. Your argument leads directly to the conclusion that every black share-cropper's job in the 19th century was "good enough" because if it weren't their best option, they'd have done something else. Here's a more detailed response: Switching costs matter greatly because it's possible that someone may feel that job B doesn't pay enough to compensate them for the unpleasantness involved, but job B is what they put 6 years of schooling into and they don't have the skills or qualifications for the more desirable job A. Knowledge of how events will unfold, prescience, would be guarantee that one won't end up in job B after years of mistaken belief of being on track A. Prudence is some protection, but some people will still be unlucky. Omniscience is the only absolute safeguard against making an unwise purchase. Many, many people buy defective goods every day. In the long term, those who do honest business should have an advantage, but the dishonest aren't all weeded out. In addition, it's possible to pursue an item (or a job) that isn't objectively flawed, but simply has no value to oneself. Without full self-knowledge, this can't be avoided completely. A person might believe a job that they are doing is a good deal when in fact, it is not. Radium jewelry painting was an extreme example. And the gigantic elephant in the room that you were clearly trying to avoid was social good. Just because someone is willing to provide something for X amount of money doesn't mean that X amount of money is all it's worth to society. A cursory reading of economics would show that education is one such good. The return on an educated populace is so great that it's worth subsidizing. And that's exactly what this discussion is about. In the US, the pay for educators is low for the amount of schooling required, and the educators themselves are usually not drawn from the strongest of their classes. In many other countries, teaching is a highly competitive, highly paid, high prestige position. FYI I have worked in education, both in the US and in east Asia. The difference is vast.
- tokenadult 16y ago
  I have worked in education, both in the US and in east Asia. The difference is vast. What are the most crucial differences that United States policy-makers should be aware of as they try to improve education in the United States? (For that matter, what should east Asian policy-makers learn from the United States?) I like the books by Liping Ma http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics-Understanding/dp/0805829091 http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematic... and James Stigler and James Hiebert http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-Classroom/dp/ http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-Class... as examples of what the United States could learn from the practices of other countries, but perhaps you have other suggestions for readers here.