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I agree with much of this and I'll add one of my biggest stressors - opaque pricing. One of the biggest "innovations" in the US in the last decade or so seems t

I agree with much of this and I'll add one of my biggest stressors - opaque pricing. One of the biggest "innovations" in the US in the last decade or so seems to be to add as many hidden fees as possible to every service imaginable. Obviously it's hardly a new idea; I'm sure that human nature being what it is, they had to deal with it in Mesopotamia. But it makes budgeting very difficult; I suppose it's like living in a corrupt country; you just have to add an overhead for bribes as part of day-to-day living. Perhaps it isn't "like" living in a corrupt country; perhaps it just is living in a corrupt country.

phkahler 2y ago
>> I'll add one of my biggest stressors - opaque pricing. Economic "models" make assumptions like markets being efficient. Meanwhile in the business classes next door they teach how to avoid competition because it's a race to the bottom. They all learn the prisoners dilemma as an example because it's how you need to think to avoid overt collusion. I'd like an economic model as powerful as the laws of thermodynamics, where everything is included if not explicitly. But I haven't seen one.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Economic "models" make assumptions like markets being efficient No? You’re thinking of a specific class of models. Generally speaking, prescriptive economics is about characterising what an efficient market would look like and then identifying why reality is not that. (And whether that deviance is good or bad.) This article could be seen doing that. It seems like domains should be closed to $2, given an efficient market. But they’re nine going on twelve.
  - pydry 2y ago
    Most of the assumptions made in economic models conceal sources of profit. They dont appear to be there to simplify complexity because they simulate situations that have never and will never be approximated (never been perfect competition or information, never will be). It's unlike, say, physics in this respect.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > Most of the assumptions made in economic models conceal sources of profit This is wildly inaccurate. A huge amount of economics is focussed on profit. For obvious reasons. > never been perfect competition or information, never will be Frictionless surfaces are mostly a fiction, too. That doesn’t mean calculating the expected outcome in a frictionless condition is useless. If the deviance is more than you’d expect from friction, that’s informative. Unlike physics, a lot of people think their undergrad 101 course plus skimming the Economist an economist themselves makes. It’s a common hubris, albeit one unusually common in tech. (Disclaimer: I’m not an economist. But I know the boundaries of my circle of competence in this.)
      - pydry 2y ago
        >This is wildly inaccurate. A huge amount of economics is focussed on profit. For obvious reasons. As an example there are countless studies looking at the relationship between the minimum wage and employment and off the top of my head I can think of maybe 2 off the top of my head that measure the relationship between the minimum wage and profit. For obvious reasons. The same reasons. It's not a great way to get ahead in your scientific profession to point out things which make the people with the money and the power uncomfortable - Galileo discovered that one.
- specialist 2y ago
  Yup. > Economic "models" make assumptions like markets being efficient. Open markets require rules and referees. Freedom Markets™ advocates eliminate rules and refs. Because "regulations discourages free enterprise". The final result are closed markets. "free market" is doublespeak for winner-takes-all, anti-competition, pro-monopolies, plantation class, and neoliberalism.
- chaorace 2y ago
  > Economic "models" make assumptions like markets being efficient. Meanwhile in the business classes next door they teach how to avoid competition because it's a race to the bottom You've more-or-less verbatim described the impetus behind the modern development of behavioral economics. That older sort of classical theory which you describe -- the one which frames the world in terms of "rational economic agents" -- has been out of vogue for nearly two decades now. Sure, you can still find the idea taught in classes... but professors now treat the classical ideas more like a simplified foundation rather than gospel -- much like a physics professor teaches Newtonian Physics before moving on to Relativity. > I'd like an economic model as powerful as the laws of thermodynamics, where everything is included if not explicitly. But I haven't seen one. ... and this is where you diverge in thinking from the new-school behavioral economists. According to the new-school, economics is a social science, a thing of statistical measurements and probabilities. Most modern economists would probably be inclined to chide you and say that attempting to characterize economics in terms of hard laws would be the same as disregarding the human element -- a reversion to the classical idea of "rational economic agents".
  - TSP00N3 2y ago
    Good read (or in my case listen on Audible) on behavioral economics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misbehaving:_The_Making_of_Behavioral_Economics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misbehaving:_The_Making_of_B...
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Somewhat. Some of the science behind behavioral economics relates to the fact that there are actually rationales behind certain preferences that aren't strictly about expected value. The utility of money is not a linear function. Etc. People also don't understand statistics well as a whole, to be sure. But behavioral economics is also not purely about people being irrational.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Yeah, "the free market" tends to have cheerleaders with contradictory premises for how it will work. For example: 1. "With perfect price/deal information, this math shows economic actors will be super duper efficient." 2. "Since people have the freedom to make secret deals for hidden prices, this prevents cartels by allowing defection." Unfortunately it feels like rather than addressing the contradiction, they prefer to quietly march under the same banner and in the end we get neither benefit.
- mr_toad 2y ago
  > Economic "models" make assumptions like markets being efficient. There’s probably more ink devoted to the study of market failures in economic literature than perfect markets. Nobody is getting tenure by developing models of perfect markets.
ChainOfFools 2y ago
This seems to be rooted in a generalized problem which I'll hastily call the conscious abuse of polite understanding, or abuse of economic consensus. Another possible rubric for this, a bit more sensationalized, would be "destructive precision". A simple example would be the hollowing-out of conventional terms everyone believes they hold the same settled definition of, such as "a flight." Instead of transacting according to what consensus suggests "a flight" meant a decade or two ago, when most would have expected this term to have thoroughly matured to the point of semantic stability, instead delivering against the most contextually minimized, stripped down interpretation of the term possible that still qualifies as valid, and attaching fees to all of the other attendant associations of value that used to be included in the scope of general consensus of the term.
- SI_Rob 2y ago
  So, a pricing exploit based on arbitrage between the rigorous description (and enforcement) of payment for a service in one direction, and the comparatively un-policed description of the service delivered, in the other? Perhaps the lawyering class wants everyone to either suffer under their miserable penchant for overweening semantic nitpicking, or suffer it along with them.
  - ChainOfFools 2y ago
    A description versus price equation, where there's a lot of variables on one side and only one on the other, does seem to be the model. I guess I would add that it may only be a Salient as it is with respect to certain things like flights, because there are a couple of outstanding counter examples like cell phones and and automobiles which seem to exhibit the exact opposite trend. A deeper analysis might reveal that there is a cycle at at work here, wherein the initial novelty of a prodict or service which is destined to become a commodity, means there is not yet a strong set of expectations about what the service or product is "supposed" to provide. distinction in the market has to come from adding context to that essentially commodity utility. But later on some consumers begin to recognize that some of the additional context may not be strictly necessary or offer a value to them and would prefer compartmentalization of the core product as distinct from its value-added variants. When flights were a comparative novelty, or at least a novelty in different market segments at different times, distinction between products was through different levels and configurations of service or features rather than price. This may still be the phase of the product cycle that cell phones (setting aside the fairly stable tiers of product within that category) are in. It's harder to make as direct across the comparison with cars as they are older than both air travel and mobile phones, and because of all the regulation that enforces standardization of non-optional features related to safety.
euroderf 2y ago
The EU fixed it for airline tickets. It's not rocket surgery.
chasebank 2y ago
Recently, I've seen this bleed into our local housing rental market. They'll advertise some amount for the house, then will say the attached garage is extra per month, and moving most if not all utilities to tenant responsibility.

phkahler 2y ago

>> I'll add one of my biggest stressors - opaque pricing. Economic "models" make assumptions like markets being efficient. Meanwhile in the business classes next door they teach how to avoid competition because it's a race to the bottom. They all learn the prisoners dilemma as an example because it's how you need to think to avoid overt collusion. I'd like an economic model as powerful as the laws of thermodynamics, where everything is included if not explicitly. But I haven't seen one.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Economic "models" make assumptions like markets being efficient No? You’re thinking of a specific class of models. Generally speaking, prescriptive economics is about characterising what an efficient market would look like and then identifying why reality is not that. (And whether that deviance is good or bad.) This article could be seen doing that. It seems like domains should be closed to $2, given an efficient market. But they’re nine going on twelve.
- pydry 2y ago
  Most of the assumptions made in economic models conceal sources of profit. They dont appear to be there to simplify complexity because they simulate situations that have never and will never be approximated (never been perfect competition or information, never will be). It's unlike, say, physics in this respect.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Most of the assumptions made in economic models conceal sources of profit This is wildly inaccurate. A huge amount of economics is focussed on profit. For obvious reasons. > never been perfect competition or information, never will be Frictionless surfaces are mostly a fiction, too. That doesn’t mean calculating the expected outcome in a frictionless condition is useless. If the deviance is more than you’d expect from friction, that’s informative. Unlike physics, a lot of people think their undergrad 101 course plus skimming the Economist an economist themselves makes. It’s a common hubris, albeit one unusually common in tech. (Disclaimer: I’m not an economist. But I know the boundaries of my circle of competence in this.)
    - pydry 2y ago
      >This is wildly inaccurate. A huge amount of economics is focussed on profit. For obvious reasons. As an example there are countless studies looking at the relationship between the minimum wage and employment and off the top of my head I can think of maybe 2 off the top of my head that measure the relationship between the minimum wage and profit. For obvious reasons. The same reasons. It's not a great way to get ahead in your scientific profession to point out things which make the people with the money and the power uncomfortable - Galileo discovered that one.
specialist 2y ago
Yup. > Economic "models" make assumptions like markets being efficient. Open markets require rules and referees. Freedom Markets™ advocates eliminate rules and refs. Because "regulations discourages free enterprise". The final result are closed markets. "free market" is doublespeak for winner-takes-all, anti-competition, pro-monopolies, plantation class, and neoliberalism.
chaorace 2y ago
> Economic "models" make assumptions like markets being efficient. Meanwhile in the business classes next door they teach how to avoid competition because it's a race to the bottom You've more-or-less verbatim described the impetus behind the modern development of behavioral economics. That older sort of classical theory which you describe -- the one which frames the world in terms of "rational economic agents" -- has been out of vogue for nearly two decades now. Sure, you can still find the idea taught in classes... but professors now treat the classical ideas more like a simplified foundation rather than gospel -- much like a physics professor teaches Newtonian Physics before moving on to Relativity. > I'd like an economic model as powerful as the laws of thermodynamics, where everything is included if not explicitly. But I haven't seen one. ... and this is where you diverge in thinking from the new-school behavioral economists. According to the new-school, economics is a social science, a thing of statistical measurements and probabilities. Most modern economists would probably be inclined to chide you and say that attempting to characterize economics in terms of hard laws would be the same as disregarding the human element -- a reversion to the classical idea of "rational economic agents".
- TSP00N3 2y ago
  Good read (or in my case listen on Audible) on behavioral economics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misbehaving:_The_Making_of_Behavioral_Economics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misbehaving:_The_Making_of_B...
- ghaff 2y ago
  Somewhat. Some of the science behind behavioral economics relates to the fact that there are actually rationales behind certain preferences that aren't strictly about expected value. The utility of money is not a linear function. Etc. People also don't understand statistics well as a whole, to be sure. But behavioral economics is also not purely about people being irrational.
Terr_ 2y ago
Yeah, "the free market" tends to have cheerleaders with contradictory premises for how it will work. For example: 1. "With perfect price/deal information, this math shows economic actors will be super duper efficient." 2. "Since people have the freedom to make secret deals for hidden prices, this prevents cartels by allowing defection." Unfortunately it feels like rather than addressing the contradiction, they prefer to quietly march under the same banner and in the end we get neither benefit.
mr_toad 2y ago
> Economic "models" make assumptions like markets being efficient. There’s probably more ink devoted to the study of market failures in economic literature than perfect markets. Nobody is getting tenure by developing models of perfect markets.

ChainOfFools 2y ago

This seems to be rooted in a generalized problem which I'll hastily call the conscious abuse of polite understanding, or abuse of economic consensus. Another possible rubric for this, a bit more sensationalized, would be "destructive precision". A simple example would be the hollowing-out of conventional terms everyone believes they hold the same settled definition of, such as "a flight." Instead of transacting according to what consensus suggests "a flight" meant a decade or two ago, when most would have expected this term to have thoroughly matured to the point of semantic stability, instead delivering against the most contextually minimized, stripped down interpretation of the term possible that still qualifies as valid, and attaching fees to all of the other attendant associations of value that used to be included in the scope of general consensus of the term.

SI_Rob 2y ago
So, a pricing exploit based on arbitrage between the rigorous description (and enforcement) of payment for a service in one direction, and the comparatively un-policed description of the service delivered, in the other? Perhaps the lawyering class wants everyone to either suffer under their miserable penchant for overweening semantic nitpicking, or suffer it along with them.
- ChainOfFools 2y ago
  A description versus price equation, where there's a lot of variables on one side and only one on the other, does seem to be the model. I guess I would add that it may only be a Salient as it is with respect to certain things like flights, because there are a couple of outstanding counter examples like cell phones and and automobiles which seem to exhibit the exact opposite trend. A deeper analysis might reveal that there is a cycle at at work here, wherein the initial novelty of a prodict or service which is destined to become a commodity, means there is not yet a strong set of expectations about what the service or product is "supposed" to provide. distinction in the market has to come from adding context to that essentially commodity utility. But later on some consumers begin to recognize that some of the additional context may not be strictly necessary or offer a value to them and would prefer compartmentalization of the core product as distinct from its value-added variants. When flights were a comparative novelty, or at least a novelty in different market segments at different times, distinction between products was through different levels and configurations of service or features rather than price. This may still be the phase of the product cycle that cell phones (setting aside the fairly stable tiers of product within that category) are in. It's harder to make as direct across the comparison with cars as they are older than both air travel and mobile phones, and because of all the regulation that enforces standardization of non-optional features related to safety.

euroderf 2y ago

The EU fixed it for airline tickets. It's not rocket surgery.

chasebank 2y ago

Recently, I've seen this bleed into our local housing rental market. They'll advertise some amount for the house, then will say the attached garage is extra per month, and moving most if not all utilities to tenant responsibility.