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Heaven forbid that someone complain that diabetes pump research is abysmally retarded due to government distortion of the free market. Heaven forbid that someon

by wissler 14y ago

Heaven forbid that someone complain that diabetes pump research is abysmally retarded due to government distortion of the free market. Heaven forbid that someone complain that longevity research is abysmally retarded due to the same thing. Etc. etc. People who whine that someone is noticing that things ought to be better than they are suffer from a total lack of vision.

confluence 14y ago
The sad thing is the free market is probably the main reason we have these distortions in the first place, but then again I digress (and I may just be wrong). The government is so easy to blame. It's almost too easy - like taking candy from a baby. What you state sounds like facile thinking mixed together with just the tiniest little bit of bullshit. > "If only, if only we got rid of those damn bureaucrats, we'd have free markets and lollipops for all!". But you know what the sad thing is, the truly sad thing? The people in the government have their own customers too, members of free market that elect them and pay for their service. Some more than others - it would seem. The real problem, it would appear, is that those in the government are too damn good at giving the free market exactly what it damn well wants - monopoly profits. Who exactly do you think paid for those restrictions? Think more carefully wissler. Your bias is showing. As is mine (or is it? I never quite know myself). > When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth. Steve Jobs - Interview in WIRED magazine (February 1996) - http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Quotes http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Quotes. Things are more than just black and white. The world is no place for idealists and ideologues with clear cut ideas, and simple thoughts. No, no, it's much too messy a place for that.
- lmm 14y ago
  >The sad thing is the free market is probably the main reason we have these distortions in the first place, but then again I digress (and I may just be wrong). Not the free market, but entrenched corporate interests. One of the most interesting results from economics in recent years is that in any field where the top four players have a combined marketshare of over 60%, they will act like a cartel. Free markets are good at solving many problems, but free doesn't mean unregulated; it takes serious government intervention to prevent monopolies taking over and maintain a free market in the economists' sense.
  - wissler 14y ago
    Every example of a harmful monopoly I know about had government backing in some form or another. In a true free market, no one can obtain a harmful monopoly, unless the vast majority of human beings want the harm, in which case I can't see any sense in interfering with their free choices. Who is a government bureaucrat to claim to know better than those who is supposed to be serving? (To be precise, I mean "harmful" not in the sense of criminal but in non-criminal senses; if we're talking about criminal harm then of course no free market would support that. What a free market might seem to support is e.g. someone who temporarily corners the market on some commodity, or who sells most of the oil).
    - lmm 14y ago
      >In a true free market, no one can obtain a harmful monopoly, unless the vast majority of human beings want the harm, in which case I can't see any sense in interfering with their free choices. This sounds incredibly naive. Look at the most basic monopolies 101 example, Standard Oil: they kept gas prices uncompetitively high, harming customers. When a competitor opened a gas station they'd temporarily lower prices in neighbouring standard oil stations (subsidised by profits from the rest of the country), until that competitor went out of business. You can argue that people should have paid more and bought from these competitors, but that undermines the whole economic argument for a free market (that it allows selfish actors who are interested only in their own profits to still allocate resources optimally). And no doubt you can pick some examples of standard oil being involved with government (any sufficiently large company in America does that one way or another), but there's no reason to believe they wouldn't have attained their monopoly position in a completely unregulated market.
- wissler 14y ago
  Different people mean different things by "free market." You mean "free for all", some kind of "law of the jungle" where people see what they can get even if it violates others. I mean rule of law, where that law is based on a precise idea of individual/natural rights, where no one is violated. (See "For Individual Rights" at Amazon.) "Things are more than just black and white. The world is no place for idealists and ideologues with clear cut ideas, and simple thoughts. No, no, it's much too messy a place for that." What you mean is that the world is no place for rational, principled people. And yes, I know you also mean it's not a place for irrational, dogmatic people. But your category includes both in a fallacious "package deal." Galileo might have agreed based on the consequences he received for finding rational truth, but that didn't change his mind. Yes, the world is mostly comprised of ignorance and barbarism, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to rectify the ignorance and barbarism and move toward a more civilized and prosperous form of society.
  - confluence 14y ago
    > What you mean is that the world is no place for rational, principled people. And yes, I know you also mean it's not a place for irrational, dogmatic people. But your category includes both in a fallacious "package deal." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox. Yes it includes both. The world isn't rational. It isn't fair. But neither is it completely random. Your writing against the government was very hedgehog like (one idea - clear cut - rational). The world is boundedly rational and it is not a place for both the rational or the irrational - extreme viewpoints do come as a package. I like being pragmatic, complex and contradictory. I also like being idealistic, simplistic and consistent. You'll notice that thinking along these lines (what some call "fox like") frees one up from past beliefs and allows one to flexibly make decisions under uncertainty whilst limiting bias. I could just as easily argue for your side as I could for mine. I'm the hedgehog and the fox.
    - wissler 14y ago
      Quoting from the link you gave: "foxes who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea (examples given include Herodotus, Aristotle, ...)" I don't think your interpretation of "rational" is making much sense if Aristotle isn't included. In any case, I'll classify myself if you don't mind, and I consider myself an Aristotelian and an empiricist not a Platonist, which seems to put me in the "fox" camp if indeed this fox/hedgehog thing has any kind of meaning at all.

by wissler 14y ago

confluence 14y ago

The sad thing is the free market is probably the main reason we have these distortions in the first place, but then again I digress (and I may just be wrong). The government is so easy to blame. It's almost too easy - like taking candy from a baby. What you state sounds like facile thinking mixed together with just the tiniest little bit of bullshit. > "If only, if only we got rid of those damn bureaucrats, we'd have free markets and lollipops for all!". But you know what the sad thing is, the truly sad thing? The people in the government have their own customers too, members of free market that elect them and pay for their service. Some more than others - it would seem. The real problem, it would appear, is that those in the government are too damn good at giving the free market exactly what it damn well wants - monopoly profits. Who exactly do you think paid for those restrictions? Think more carefully wissler. Your bias is showing. As is mine (or is it? I never quite know myself). > When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth. Steve Jobs - Interview in WIRED magazine (February 1996) - http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Quotes http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Quotes. Things are more than just black and white. The world is no place for idealists and ideologues with clear cut ideas, and simple thoughts. No, no, it's much too messy a place for that.

lmm 14y ago
>The sad thing is the free market is probably the main reason we have these distortions in the first place, but then again I digress (and I may just be wrong). Not the free market, but entrenched corporate interests. One of the most interesting results from economics in recent years is that in any field where the top four players have a combined marketshare of over 60%, they will act like a cartel. Free markets are good at solving many problems, but free doesn't mean unregulated; it takes serious government intervention to prevent monopolies taking over and maintain a free market in the economists' sense.
- wissler 14y ago
  Every example of a harmful monopoly I know about had government backing in some form or another. In a true free market, no one can obtain a harmful monopoly, unless the vast majority of human beings want the harm, in which case I can't see any sense in interfering with their free choices. Who is a government bureaucrat to claim to know better than those who is supposed to be serving? (To be precise, I mean "harmful" not in the sense of criminal but in non-criminal senses; if we're talking about criminal harm then of course no free market would support that. What a free market might seem to support is e.g. someone who temporarily corners the market on some commodity, or who sells most of the oil).
  - lmm 14y ago
    >In a true free market, no one can obtain a harmful monopoly, unless the vast majority of human beings want the harm, in which case I can't see any sense in interfering with their free choices. This sounds incredibly naive. Look at the most basic monopolies 101 example, Standard Oil: they kept gas prices uncompetitively high, harming customers. When a competitor opened a gas station they'd temporarily lower prices in neighbouring standard oil stations (subsidised by profits from the rest of the country), until that competitor went out of business. You can argue that people should have paid more and bought from these competitors, but that undermines the whole economic argument for a free market (that it allows selfish actors who are interested only in their own profits to still allocate resources optimally). And no doubt you can pick some examples of standard oil being involved with government (any sufficiently large company in America does that one way or another), but there's no reason to believe they wouldn't have attained their monopoly position in a completely unregulated market.
wissler 14y ago
Different people mean different things by "free market." You mean "free for all", some kind of "law of the jungle" where people see what they can get even if it violates others. I mean rule of law, where that law is based on a precise idea of individual/natural rights, where no one is violated. (See "For Individual Rights" at Amazon.) "Things are more than just black and white. The world is no place for idealists and ideologues with clear cut ideas, and simple thoughts. No, no, it's much too messy a place for that." What you mean is that the world is no place for rational, principled people. And yes, I know you also mean it's not a place for irrational, dogmatic people. But your category includes both in a fallacious "package deal." Galileo might have agreed based on the consequences he received for finding rational truth, but that didn't change his mind. Yes, the world is mostly comprised of ignorance and barbarism, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to rectify the ignorance and barbarism and move toward a more civilized and prosperous form of society.
- confluence 14y ago
  > What you mean is that the world is no place for rational, principled people. And yes, I know you also mean it's not a place for irrational, dogmatic people. But your category includes both in a fallacious "package deal." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox. Yes it includes both. The world isn't rational. It isn't fair. But neither is it completely random. Your writing against the government was very hedgehog like (one idea - clear cut - rational). The world is boundedly rational and it is not a place for both the rational or the irrational - extreme viewpoints do come as a package. I like being pragmatic, complex and contradictory. I also like being idealistic, simplistic and consistent. You'll notice that thinking along these lines (what some call "fox like") frees one up from past beliefs and allows one to flexibly make decisions under uncertainty whilst limiting bias. I could just as easily argue for your side as I could for mine. I'm the hedgehog and the fox.
  - wissler 14y ago
    Quoting from the link you gave: "foxes who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea (examples given include Herodotus, Aristotle, ...)" I don't think your interpretation of "rational" is making much sense if Aristotle isn't included. In any case, I'll classify myself if you don't mind, and I consider myself an Aristotelian and an empiricist not a Platonist, which seems to put me in the "fox" camp if indeed this fox/hedgehog thing has any kind of meaning at all.