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>> So it's not correct to suggest that economics is just stories and we should ignore incentives and prices or anything argued using economic principals Straw

>> So it's not correct to suggest that economics is just stories and we should ignore incentives and prices or anything argued using economic principals Straw man argument. It's not correct to suggest that incentives, prices & economic principles capture sufficient information to give us rational cause to bestow absolute faith in them. >> the general principal holds that make something more expensive people consume less of it Again it's not an absolute, there comes a point where it no longer holds. E.g. if you price water, consumption surely drops until the point where there's only essential usage. Increase price all you want then because instead society will break, as in people will circumvent laws or agreed methods of exchange. >> What's the alternative? That we're more cautious about calling out the parts we're uncertain about.

bko 6y ago
You made the straw man argument by waving off all of economics with a hand wave > if you ignore that they're built on a metaphorical foundation of sand. And you're making another strawman by saying we need water regardless of the price. As though water is some substance belonging to one person and a fixed supply (no collection, desalination, etc) What part are you uncertain about in regards to focusing on my original argument that we should focus on revenue as opposed to idelogical arguments like such and such pays a rate of X and i don't like it
- CraigJPerry 6y ago
  >> You made the straw man argument by waving off all of economics with a hand wave Not the case at all. "it's also immeasurably a bit wrong" is not the same as "we should ignore [incentives and prices or anything argued using economic principals]". >> we need water regardless of the price That seems uncontraversial to me, you can't elect to stop consuming water for your crops, livestock or your personal use for example. >> water is some substance belonging to one person and a fixed supply Not fixed supply but restricted supply in some locations at some times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_conflict >> What part are you uncertain about This bit - "What you really want to look at is total revenue." You'd prefer we ignore the source of the revenue and focus on only the revenue. It's a convenient view for some idealogies but it's most likely to be a bad approach. Especially compared to one alternative which would be to do both - to continue to look at the source of the revenue AND optimise.

bko 6y ago

You made the straw man argument by waving off all of economics with a hand wave > if you ignore that they're built on a metaphorical foundation of sand. And you're making another strawman by saying we need water regardless of the price. As though water is some substance belonging to one person and a fixed supply (no collection, desalination, etc) What part are you uncertain about in regards to focusing on my original argument that we should focus on revenue as opposed to idelogical arguments like such and such pays a rate of X and i don't like it

CraigJPerry 6y ago
>> You made the straw man argument by waving off all of economics with a hand wave Not the case at all. "it's also immeasurably a bit wrong" is not the same as "we should ignore [incentives and prices or anything argued using economic principals]". >> we need water regardless of the price That seems uncontraversial to me, you can't elect to stop consuming water for your crops, livestock or your personal use for example. >> water is some substance belonging to one person and a fixed supply Not fixed supply but restricted supply in some locations at some times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_conflict >> What part are you uncertain about This bit - "What you really want to look at is total revenue." You'd prefer we ignore the source of the revenue and focus on only the revenue. It's a convenient view for some idealogies but it's most likely to be a bad approach. Especially compared to one alternative which would be to do both - to continue to look at the source of the revenue AND optimise.