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You forgot to say “Amen” at the end of your gospel. I'm always baffled how seriously some people take that “market and incentives always lead to the greater go

You forgot to say “Amen” at the end of your gospel. I'm always baffled how seriously some people take that “market and incentives always lead to the greater good” religion despite plenty of empirical evidence against it. But hey, there are creationists out there too so it's not too surprising I guess.

Ajedi32 8mo ago
> “market and incentives always lead to the greater good” I never said anything of the sort, I'm just explaining basic economic facts. Feel free to pretend they aren't true if you wish, but if you do then for all our sakes please stay as far away from the levers of economic policy as possible.
- littlestymaar 8mo ago
  These aren't “basic economic facts”, these are basic pieces of economic liturgy, it's not grounded in any factual reality. It only works in microeconomics lalaland. In the real world, executives simply aren't being incentivized for all-or-nothing risk taking and the shareholders of public industrial companies don't want the executives to make gambles in an attempt to make a big payout, they want steady yields with limited risks. And the financial actors who would be ready to take this kind of “high risk high reward” bets aren't operating in these kinds of markets. Just look out of the window, semiconductor and electronics fabs aren't rushing to expand their capacity, they are very familiar with the issue of oversupply and are always very cautious before making capacity investment, because they know it could very well make them go under very quick should the market reverse. The more time passes, the more convinced I am that nothing did more damage to the broader public understanding of economic dynamics than the average Econ 101 class.
  - Ajedi32 8mo ago
    The real world is indeed more complicated, but not in a way which renders the basic rules of economics untrue. What you're doing is the economic equivalent of pointing at an airplane and saying "Look at that! And you really still believe gravity exists?!? What an idiot!" I'm just pointing out some simple facts which tell us the plane will eventually come back down.
    - littlestymaar 8mo ago
      Except the “rules” in question are more akin to “the earth is the center of the universe” than they are to gravity. There's a strong religious aspect to it that make it stick no matter how many empirical refutation have been made.

Ajedi32 8mo ago

> “market and incentives always lead to the greater good” I never said anything of the sort, I'm just explaining basic economic facts. Feel free to pretend they aren't true if you wish, but if you do then for all our sakes please stay as far away from the levers of economic policy as possible.

littlestymaar 8mo ago
These aren't “basic economic facts”, these are basic pieces of economic liturgy, it's not grounded in any factual reality. It only works in microeconomics lalaland. In the real world, executives simply aren't being incentivized for all-or-nothing risk taking and the shareholders of public industrial companies don't want the executives to make gambles in an attempt to make a big payout, they want steady yields with limited risks. And the financial actors who would be ready to take this kind of “high risk high reward” bets aren't operating in these kinds of markets. Just look out of the window, semiconductor and electronics fabs aren't rushing to expand their capacity, they are very familiar with the issue of oversupply and are always very cautious before making capacity investment, because they know it could very well make them go under very quick should the market reverse. The more time passes, the more convinced I am that nothing did more damage to the broader public understanding of economic dynamics than the average Econ 101 class.
- Ajedi32 8mo ago
  The real world is indeed more complicated, but not in a way which renders the basic rules of economics untrue. What you're doing is the economic equivalent of pointing at an airplane and saying "Look at that! And you really still believe gravity exists?!? What an idiot!" I'm just pointing out some simple facts which tell us the plane will eventually come back down.
  - littlestymaar 8mo ago
    Except the “rules” in question are more akin to “the earth is the center of the universe” than they are to gravity. There's a strong religious aspect to it that make it stick no matter how many empirical refutation have been made.