4 ms·

Capitalism is just a tool. When local government and charities are setting up emergency heated spaces[0] because people can't afford to heat their homes at tim

by Jochim 4y ago

Capitalism is just a tool. When local government and charities are setting up emergency heated spaces[0] because people can't afford to heat their homes at time when profits have tripled for some energy companies then that tool needs adjusting. [0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/councils-plan-food-bank-style-warm-banks-help-residents-survive/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/councils-...

djbebs 4y ago
That adjustments cause massive negative impacts is just an unfortunate side effect, right?
- JellyBeanThief 4y ago
  Someone wake me up when y'all specify exactly what these adjustments are, what these predicted impacts are, how those impacts were predicted, how the actual impacts were measured, and how they lined up with or differed from the predictions. I don't come here for vapid rhetoric games.
  - nyokodo 4y ago
    > Someone wake me up when y'all specify exactly what these adjustments are > I don't come here for vapid rhetoric games. One of the principle problems that markets solve is the calculation problem. Billions of people with their subjective and time sensitive needs are making economic decisions and trade offs for themselves, their families, and companies based on their past, present, and predicted future. There is an incredibly complicated dance of price discovery and resource allocation going on constantly. It’s extremely challenging to predict what’s going to happen even at a high level very far in the future due to the vast quantity of inscrutable information. Central planners or regulators who seek to intervene in the market cannot hope to aggregate enough information quickly enough that they can understand in order to intervene without practically assuring negative consequences. The bigger the intervention the worse the consequences tend to be. Intervening in energy markets is going to have big bad consequences. What the consequences are specifically I don’t know but being sure there will be consequences is anything but a vapid rhetorical game.
    - JellyBeanThief 4y ago
      > It’s extremely challenging to predict what’s going to happen even at a high level ... Central planners or regulators who seek to intervene in the market cannot hope to aggregate enough information I can get a text message from my bank within minutes of making a purchase on my debit card at the drugstore. And I know that drugstore's inventory system updates in real time too. Meanwhile, Amazon is building grocery stores that eliminate the need for checkout because their inventory updates at the very moment the consumer picks up the item. It looks to me like we have all the technology we need to gather and aggregate mind-boggling quantities of information, so unless you have more detail about those challenges, I find the claim they're insurmountable to have the same weight as the claim last century that people could never walk on the moon. You do also say that the information is inscrutable. I take that to mean that even if we have the information, we either can't process it fast enough or we don't know how to process it at all. But I'm looking at the history of science and the pace of progress in technology--both theory and practice--and I have to wonder how long that's going to be true. Or, put another way, why should we expect it to be fruitless to explore the application of machine learning to an entire economy? Why does it need to be something sacred that we never question and never dare to answer?
      - MichaelZuo 4y ago
        Your forgetting that the complexity of calculation increases exponentially. Let's say the entire world economy is only 1000x the size of Amazon. The actual problem is not 1000xAmazon but Amazon^1000.
        JellyBeanThief 4y ago
        Now we're getting somewhere. Since we're talking about specific mathematical operations, that suggests you have a formal mathematical expression of the problem, and an algorithm to solve it, so that we can prove how its time complexity grows. I would like to see the formal description of the problem and the algorithm.
        4y ago
mwint 4y ago
Because people in communist countries never get cold?
- Jochim 4y ago
  I'm not really sure what communism has to do with regulation to prevent market failures within a capitalist economy but feel free to explain thanks.
  - mwint 4y ago
    Any time someone is “adjusting” capitalism, the result tends to look a lot like communism.
    - mcv 4y ago
      It really doesn't.
  - qeternity 4y ago
    Love it or hate it, this is the market doing its job…this is not a failure. There is a limited resource, and markets are allocating it to those who want it.
anm89 4y ago
I could start a charity tomorrow with zero donors and then complain that it's unfair that I don't have money to pay heating bills. If these charities can't keep their lights and heat on then its because people don't find the cause worth donating too. Why aren't you paying their bills? You must not care about the needy at all. Zero idea what any of this has to do with companies who develop energy resources. The energy doesn't magically come into existence because someone with a sob story wants it.
- Jochim 4y ago
  You've entirely misunderstood the post. It's not charities that are struggling, it's individuals whose bills have tripled in the last year. The disconnect between energy bills being so high that a non-trivial number of people are now unable to heat their homes through winter with the elderly among them at genuine risk of dying from the weather. At the same time many of these energy providers are reporting that their profits have doubled or tripled. At this point there is clear harm being done to a large section of society by these companies and the question is what we should do about it.

by Jochim 4y ago

djbebs 4y ago

That adjustments cause massive negative impacts is just an unfortunate side effect, right?

JellyBeanThief 4y ago
Someone wake me up when y'all specify exactly what these adjustments are, what these predicted impacts are, how those impacts were predicted, how the actual impacts were measured, and how they lined up with or differed from the predictions. I don't come here for vapid rhetoric games.
- nyokodo 4y ago
  > Someone wake me up when y'all specify exactly what these adjustments are > I don't come here for vapid rhetoric games. One of the principle problems that markets solve is the calculation problem. Billions of people with their subjective and time sensitive needs are making economic decisions and trade offs for themselves, their families, and companies based on their past, present, and predicted future. There is an incredibly complicated dance of price discovery and resource allocation going on constantly. It’s extremely challenging to predict what’s going to happen even at a high level very far in the future due to the vast quantity of inscrutable information. Central planners or regulators who seek to intervene in the market cannot hope to aggregate enough information quickly enough that they can understand in order to intervene without practically assuring negative consequences. The bigger the intervention the worse the consequences tend to be. Intervening in energy markets is going to have big bad consequences. What the consequences are specifically I don’t know but being sure there will be consequences is anything but a vapid rhetorical game.
  - JellyBeanThief 4y ago
    > It’s extremely challenging to predict what’s going to happen even at a high level ... Central planners or regulators who seek to intervene in the market cannot hope to aggregate enough information I can get a text message from my bank within minutes of making a purchase on my debit card at the drugstore. And I know that drugstore's inventory system updates in real time too. Meanwhile, Amazon is building grocery stores that eliminate the need for checkout because their inventory updates at the very moment the consumer picks up the item. It looks to me like we have all the technology we need to gather and aggregate mind-boggling quantities of information, so unless you have more detail about those challenges, I find the claim they're insurmountable to have the same weight as the claim last century that people could never walk on the moon. You do also say that the information is inscrutable. I take that to mean that even if we have the information, we either can't process it fast enough or we don't know how to process it at all. But I'm looking at the history of science and the pace of progress in technology--both theory and practice--and I have to wonder how long that's going to be true. Or, put another way, why should we expect it to be fruitless to explore the application of machine learning to an entire economy? Why does it need to be something sacred that we never question and never dare to answer?
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      Your forgetting that the complexity of calculation increases exponentially. Let's say the entire world economy is only 1000x the size of Amazon. The actual problem is not 1000xAmazon but Amazon^1000.
      - JellyBeanThief 4y ago
        Now we're getting somewhere. Since we're talking about specific mathematical operations, that suggests you have a formal mathematical expression of the problem, and an algorithm to solve it, so that we can prove how its time complexity grows. I would like to see the formal description of the problem and the algorithm.
        4y ago

mwint 4y ago

Because people in communist countries never get cold?

Jochim 4y ago
I'm not really sure what communism has to do with regulation to prevent market failures within a capitalist economy but feel free to explain thanks.
- mwint 4y ago
  Any time someone is “adjusting” capitalism, the result tends to look a lot like communism.
  - mcv 4y ago
    It really doesn't.
- qeternity 4y ago
  Love it or hate it, this is the market doing its job…this is not a failure. There is a limited resource, and markets are allocating it to those who want it.

anm89 4y ago

I could start a charity tomorrow with zero donors and then complain that it's unfair that I don't have money to pay heating bills. If these charities can't keep their lights and heat on then its because people don't find the cause worth donating too. Why aren't you paying their bills? You must not care about the needy at all. Zero idea what any of this has to do with companies who develop energy resources. The energy doesn't magically come into existence because someone with a sob story wants it.

Jochim 4y ago
You've entirely misunderstood the post. It's not charities that are struggling, it's individuals whose bills have tripled in the last year. The disconnect between energy bills being so high that a non-trivial number of people are now unable to heat their homes through winter with the elderly among them at genuine risk of dying from the weather. At the same time many of these energy providers are reporting that their profits have doubled or tripled. At this point there is clear harm being done to a large section of society by these companies and the question is what we should do about it.