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I'm not real clear on why a 1997 article from a routinely discredited right-wing think-tank on this issue is Hacker News....but since we seem to be playing "cit

by logjam 18y ago

I'm not real clear on why a 1997 article from a routinely discredited right-wing think-tank on this issue is Hacker News....but since we seem to be playing "cite old biased articles", here's the sordid history of how unregulated landlord greed drives out affordable housing: http://www.tenant.net/Community/history/hist-toc.html http://www.tenant.net/Community/history/hist-toc.html

jmtulloss 18y ago
Routinely discredited? Right-wing? Cato is clearly libertarian. I suppose that tends to the right, but it's not "right wing" in the traditional sense.
fallentimes 18y ago
socially liberal & fiscally conservative != right wing
- jhancock 18y ago
  you are correct sir, if you have two variables, you get a whole plane of possibilities, not just a line ;) I guess its too late to teach basic math to the masses though.
  - davidw 18y ago
    When the squares actually visit LineLand though, who do they hold their noses and vote for? My guess is that they generally vote Republican (like, for instance, Milton Friedman), or did at one time. Perhaps that's changing?
    - Prrometheus 18y ago
      Cato actually has done some studies on the libertarian vote. It went overwhelmingly for George Bush in 2000, but swung about 20 points democratic in 2004. I'm not sure that they've updated the study for 2008, but my gut (and surveys of self-identified well-known libertarians) tell me Obama won the vote. If you like market economics, don't care if your neighbor is gay, and don't feel like occupying countries on the other side of the world, there is really nobody pandering to you. You tend to move around. Edit: Here's the paper comparing the 2000 and 2004 elections that I mentioned http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6715 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6715 Kerry did 18% better than Gore among libertarian voters, despite not having a libertarian bone in his body. Bush won the demographic in both elections, but lost 13% between 2000 and 2004, for a 31 point net swing.
      - davidw 18y ago
        Interesting. It would be fun to have numbers for the past, too, to see how much 'bouncing around' there was, and what it could be correlated with.
        deleted 18y ago
        [deleted]
        Prrometheus 18y ago
        http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/html/pa580/pa580index.html http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/html/pa580/pa580index.html page 13 Keep in mind that these are "soft libertarians", people that consider themselves economically conservative and socially liberal, but don't necessarily go around trolling message boards with anarchist philosophy. 2004 seemed to be unusually bad for the republican percentage of the libertarian vote. The only worse year was 1992, when Ross Perot, Clinton, and Bush I all got a third (well, I think 2008 will be bad, too).
        dgordon 18y ago
        I don't see that "libertarian" entails "anarchist" or even "trolling message boards."
mmmurf 18y ago
Examples of how Cato has been discredited?
- mdasen 18y ago
  Cato tends to be a little simplistic in their models. For example, with immigration they say it has no ill effects. Well, in the long-run I'd probably agree with them (save for the fact that natural resources are being split among more people which I think would be made up for in other ways that they cite). In the short term, it takes time for economies to adapt to changing tastes, changing spending patterns, essentially the changing makeup of the marketplace. And that does cause friction in the short term. Likewise, as much as I defended the abolition of rent control in MA in my earlier comment, it caused a lot of short-term friction that was really chaotic. A better plan would have been to phase market rent in. Landlords had been under rent control for so long that when it was lifted, prices could double or triple. BAD! If you, however, say for the next 10 years you can raise prices by up to 15% per year and then in the 11th year you can charge whatever you want, you avoid the friction that occurs when sudden changes happen. I'm not someone who thinks we should defend dying industries or mess with pricing a lot, but market economies don't do well with instability. Instability randomly reallocates money from some to others. For example, if you lend me money at a 20-year fixed rate of 7%, the future could randomly reallocate money between us. If interest rates drop, you get lots of money. If interest rates rise, I save a lot of money. Heck, if inflation reaches 9%, you're loosing tons of money! Random reallocation is a bad thing and stability ensures that random reallocations are kept to a minimum. I dislike the American auto industry, but I'd like to see its death be a lot slower than those who are strictly libertarian. What do you do with a million workers? Well, plenty, but you don't do it fast. However, if the number is in the thousands of workers per year, its easier to find ways to employ them as new industries get created. Heck, even other companies might want to buy pieces of the American auto industry, but can't afford the whole thing. Honda and Toyota might see this as an opportunity to get a new plant or two. Tesla motors might be able to raise the capital in a few years to do more. But an all-at-once situation just creates friction and chaos. Maybe Cato is right and I'm wrong, but I appreciate stability. I appreciate knowing that everything isn't coming to an end even if I'm loosing out on 5% for that stability. Discredited (as the original author claimed) is harsh, but I think economics is a little more nuanced than any pure philosophy.
time_management 18y ago
I'm a liberal and don't fully agree with the argument that rent-control is necessarily and uniformly bad-- although New York's 1940s rent control system sucks-- but I thought it was a well-written and interesting article. I think economic articles on HN are fine, because economies are systems, and hackers have an innate interest in systems that are not always silicon-based.
- davidw 18y ago
  The problem is that economics turns into politics, and that attracts a wide range of people who are not hackers, and don't really care about it. And of course, yes, it's a system, but it's a big, hairy complex one that is also impossible to do repeatable experiments with in many situations. Even lots of good economics blogs, by real, serious, respectable economists are full of stuff like "my view is that... " or "I feel that ..." or "I think...". I'd really like pg to comment on this in a definitive way, though. I'll start posting my own economics articles if it's deemed to be ok, and we'll see what happens.
  - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
    I think that if it doesn't involve political parties or politicians, it might work. I mean, it's going to be hard to have a board about startups without talking about market theories, techniques of persuasion, economic trends, role of government in the creation of wealth, distribution of wealth, rational versus irrational buyers, etc. All of these are both economics and politics. We have to be able to talk theory, or the board is just going to be technical fluff, like who's got the best SCM system or what famous author X says about Facebook. I'm really interested in why things work (or don't).
    - davidw 18y ago
      I'd say if it's directly related to startups, it's probably ok. This article isn't about startups at all. Neither are most other economics articles. Some are, and the ones that are are pretty evident. Also, "technical fluff"? I enjoy articles like this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=413047 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=413047 And it doesn't seem like "fluff". Furthermore, it really wouldn't hurt if there were actually fewer articles.

by logjam 18y ago

jmtulloss 18y ago

Routinely discredited? Right-wing? Cato is clearly libertarian. I suppose that tends to the right, but it's not "right wing" in the traditional sense.

fallentimes 18y ago

socially liberal & fiscally conservative != right wing

jhancock 18y ago
you are correct sir, if you have two variables, you get a whole plane of possibilities, not just a line ;) I guess its too late to teach basic math to the masses though.
- davidw 18y ago
  When the squares actually visit LineLand though, who do they hold their noses and vote for? My guess is that they generally vote Republican (like, for instance, Milton Friedman), or did at one time. Perhaps that's changing?
  - Prrometheus 18y ago
    Cato actually has done some studies on the libertarian vote. It went overwhelmingly for George Bush in 2000, but swung about 20 points democratic in 2004. I'm not sure that they've updated the study for 2008, but my gut (and surveys of self-identified well-known libertarians) tell me Obama won the vote. If you like market economics, don't care if your neighbor is gay, and don't feel like occupying countries on the other side of the world, there is really nobody pandering to you. You tend to move around. Edit: Here's the paper comparing the 2000 and 2004 elections that I mentioned http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6715 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6715 Kerry did 18% better than Gore among libertarian voters, despite not having a libertarian bone in his body. Bush won the demographic in both elections, but lost 13% between 2000 and 2004, for a 31 point net swing.
    - davidw 18y ago
      Interesting. It would be fun to have numbers for the past, too, to see how much 'bouncing around' there was, and what it could be correlated with.
      - deleted 18y ago
        [deleted]
      - Prrometheus 18y ago
        http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/html/pa580/pa580index.html http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/html/pa580/pa580index.html page 13 Keep in mind that these are "soft libertarians", people that consider themselves economically conservative and socially liberal, but don't necessarily go around trolling message boards with anarchist philosophy. 2004 seemed to be unusually bad for the republican percentage of the libertarian vote. The only worse year was 1992, when Ross Perot, Clinton, and Bush I all got a third (well, I think 2008 will be bad, too).
        dgordon 18y ago
        I don't see that "libertarian" entails "anarchist" or even "trolling message boards."

mmmurf 18y ago

Examples of how Cato has been discredited?

mdasen 18y ago
Cato tends to be a little simplistic in their models. For example, with immigration they say it has no ill effects. Well, in the long-run I'd probably agree with them (save for the fact that natural resources are being split among more people which I think would be made up for in other ways that they cite). In the short term, it takes time for economies to adapt to changing tastes, changing spending patterns, essentially the changing makeup of the marketplace. And that does cause friction in the short term. Likewise, as much as I defended the abolition of rent control in MA in my earlier comment, it caused a lot of short-term friction that was really chaotic. A better plan would have been to phase market rent in. Landlords had been under rent control for so long that when it was lifted, prices could double or triple. BAD! If you, however, say for the next 10 years you can raise prices by up to 15% per year and then in the 11th year you can charge whatever you want, you avoid the friction that occurs when sudden changes happen. I'm not someone who thinks we should defend dying industries or mess with pricing a lot, but market economies don't do well with instability. Instability randomly reallocates money from some to others. For example, if you lend me money at a 20-year fixed rate of 7%, the future could randomly reallocate money between us. If interest rates drop, you get lots of money. If interest rates rise, I save a lot of money. Heck, if inflation reaches 9%, you're loosing tons of money! Random reallocation is a bad thing and stability ensures that random reallocations are kept to a minimum. I dislike the American auto industry, but I'd like to see its death be a lot slower than those who are strictly libertarian. What do you do with a million workers? Well, plenty, but you don't do it fast. However, if the number is in the thousands of workers per year, its easier to find ways to employ them as new industries get created. Heck, even other companies might want to buy pieces of the American auto industry, but can't afford the whole thing. Honda and Toyota might see this as an opportunity to get a new plant or two. Tesla motors might be able to raise the capital in a few years to do more. But an all-at-once situation just creates friction and chaos. Maybe Cato is right and I'm wrong, but I appreciate stability. I appreciate knowing that everything isn't coming to an end even if I'm loosing out on 5% for that stability. Discredited (as the original author claimed) is harsh, but I think economics is a little more nuanced than any pure philosophy.

time_management 18y ago

I'm a liberal and don't fully agree with the argument that rent-control is necessarily and uniformly bad-- although New York's 1940s rent control system sucks-- but I thought it was a well-written and interesting article. I think economic articles on HN are fine, because economies are systems, and hackers have an innate interest in systems that are not always silicon-based.

davidw 18y ago
The problem is that economics turns into politics, and that attracts a wide range of people who are not hackers, and don't really care about it. And of course, yes, it's a system, but it's a big, hairy complex one that is also impossible to do repeatable experiments with in many situations. Even lots of good economics blogs, by real, serious, respectable economists are full of stuff like "my view is that... " or "I feel that ..." or "I think...". I'd really like pg to comment on this in a definitive way, though. I'll start posting my own economics articles if it's deemed to be ok, and we'll see what happens.
- DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  I think that if it doesn't involve political parties or politicians, it might work. I mean, it's going to be hard to have a board about startups without talking about market theories, techniques of persuasion, economic trends, role of government in the creation of wealth, distribution of wealth, rational versus irrational buyers, etc. All of these are both economics and politics. We have to be able to talk theory, or the board is just going to be technical fluff, like who's got the best SCM system or what famous author X says about Facebook. I'm really interested in why things work (or don't).
  - davidw 18y ago
    I'd say if it's directly related to startups, it's probably ok. This article isn't about startups at all. Neither are most other economics articles. Some are, and the ones that are are pretty evident. Also, "technical fluff"? I enjoy articles like this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=413047 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=413047 And it doesn't seem like "fluff". Furthermore, it really wouldn't hurt if there were actually fewer articles.