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Please be aware that "market failure" is also a technical term in economics, relating to positive and negative externalities. Your use appears to be the (by now

by mbar84 6y ago

Please be aware that "market failure" is also a technical term in economics, relating to positive and negative externalities. Your use appears to be the (by now probably dominant) colloquial use. I personally would not use this term, just as I would not use e.g. "to beg the question". I wonder if this phenomenon has a name, along the lines of "euphemistic treadmill".

black_puppydog 6y ago
I use "market failure" colloquially I guess, yes. I use it to mean that despite demonstrated technological viability by multiple vendors, and despite the devices providing a solution to the issue of actual portability beyond closed rooms, the market has failed to make these devices accessible. IIRC one of the problems is that the benefit doesn't become obvious in "good" lighting conditions like a walmart building. In that way I'm putting much of the blame in this on the buying side of the market for making shallow, lazy buying decisions. But the producers are equally to blame here. Nobody made a serious first move, so no competition evolved, despite the availability of transflectives being technically governed by market forces.
- mbar84 6y ago
  I don't know enough to judge the root cause. My ideological priors would make me look to blame the government granted monopoly patents on the display tech.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    Then I'd suggest to use another term, e.g. just failure.
goodpoint 6y ago
"market failure" has various interpretations and objections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure The way black_puppydog used it fits the term quite well.
- mbar84 6y ago
  https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketfailure.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketfailure.asp > A market failure occurs whenever the individuals in a group end up worse off than if they had not acted in perfectly rational self-interest. Such a group either incurs too many costs or receives too few benefits. > Even though the concept seems simple, it can be misleading and easy to misidentify. > Contrary to what the name implies, market failure does not describe inherent imperfections in the market economy > Additionally, not every bad outcome from market activity counts as a market failure. As I say, I think he's using it in a very much more colloquial manner: "I don't like the outcome of the market process", which is fine.
psychometry 6y ago
Everyone who's tried to fight a war against language change has lost.
- mbar84 6y ago
  Very true and for different terms we all are on battlefields waging a war that we mostly are not even aware we're in. As part of the mob, we just steadily walk over the minority who coined the term and plow them ever deeper into the muddy ground. Such is life... and death. I still find it worthwhile to point out when somebody uses a jargon term from an academic discipline, so they maybe can leave the battlefield and its senseless slaughter and instead and chose some other formulation.
selfhoster11 6y ago
> I personally would not use this term, just as I would not use e.g. "to beg the question". I wonder if this phenomenon has a name, along the lines of "euphemistic treadmill". I intentionally use "beg the question" with the new meaning to do my part in cycling out the old meaning as quickly as possible. The "old" meaning is a waste of precious linguistic bandwidth, spent on a concept that is very rarely invoked (and could be just as easily invoked with something like "presupposes the facts", which is more intuitive). If language is dynamic, then braindead vestigials should be bulldozed out with prejudice, especially when they tie up prime real estate.
- balefrost 6y ago
  If you're after intuitive language, why not use "raises the question" or "leads to the question" instead?
- mbar84 6y ago
  If a term is overloaded, and if the purpose of language is to communicate, then I think the better approach is to drop the term as a lost cause and switch to alternatives for both uses, rather than fight and endless battle. For the two meanings I use "raises the question" and "circular reasoning" or "the conclusion was already part of your original assumption".

by mbar84 6y ago

black_puppydog 6y ago

I use "market failure" colloquially I guess, yes. I use it to mean that despite demonstrated technological viability by multiple vendors, and despite the devices providing a solution to the issue of actual portability beyond closed rooms, the market has failed to make these devices accessible. IIRC one of the problems is that the benefit doesn't become obvious in "good" lighting conditions like a walmart building. In that way I'm putting much of the blame in this on the buying side of the market for making shallow, lazy buying decisions. But the producers are equally to blame here. Nobody made a serious first move, so no competition evolved, despite the availability of transflectives being technically governed by market forces.

mbar84 6y ago
I don't know enough to judge the root cause. My ideological priors would make me look to blame the government granted monopoly patents on the display tech.
- emteycz 6y ago
  Then I'd suggest to use another term, e.g. just failure.

goodpoint 6y ago

"market failure" has various interpretations and objections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure The way black_puppydog used it fits the term quite well.

mbar84 6y ago
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketfailure.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketfailure.asp > A market failure occurs whenever the individuals in a group end up worse off than if they had not acted in perfectly rational self-interest. Such a group either incurs too many costs or receives too few benefits. > Even though the concept seems simple, it can be misleading and easy to misidentify. > Contrary to what the name implies, market failure does not describe inherent imperfections in the market economy > Additionally, not every bad outcome from market activity counts as a market failure. As I say, I think he's using it in a very much more colloquial manner: "I don't like the outcome of the market process", which is fine.

psychometry 6y ago

Everyone who's tried to fight a war against language change has lost.

mbar84 6y ago
Very true and for different terms we all are on battlefields waging a war that we mostly are not even aware we're in. As part of the mob, we just steadily walk over the minority who coined the term and plow them ever deeper into the muddy ground. Such is life... and death. I still find it worthwhile to point out when somebody uses a jargon term from an academic discipline, so they maybe can leave the battlefield and its senseless slaughter and instead and chose some other formulation.

selfhoster11 6y ago

> I personally would not use this term, just as I would not use e.g. "to beg the question". I wonder if this phenomenon has a name, along the lines of "euphemistic treadmill". I intentionally use "beg the question" with the new meaning to do my part in cycling out the old meaning as quickly as possible. The "old" meaning is a waste of precious linguistic bandwidth, spent on a concept that is very rarely invoked (and could be just as easily invoked with something like "presupposes the facts", which is more intuitive). If language is dynamic, then braindead vestigials should be bulldozed out with prejudice, especially when they tie up prime real estate.

balefrost 6y ago
If you're after intuitive language, why not use "raises the question" or "leads to the question" instead?
mbar84 6y ago
If a term is overloaded, and if the purpose of language is to communicate, then I think the better approach is to drop the term as a lost cause and switch to alternatives for both uses, rather than fight and endless battle. For the two meanings I use "raises the question" and "circular reasoning" or "the conclusion was already part of your original assumption".