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I think you're missing the point all together. The only reason a company can behave this way and retain the number of customers who would have otherwise moved e

by wallawe 12y ago

I think you're missing the point all together. The only reason a company can behave this way and retain the number of customers who would have otherwise moved elsewhere is because there isn't a free-market. The companies are run as oligopolies. It is government intervention and protection that has caused this problem in the first place which is what most people don't realize.

michaelfeathers 12y ago
Nope, I get it. What I'm saying is that a backdrop of consumer protection legislation can deal with the reality of this situation (which, sadly, doesn't look like it is going to be fixed any time soon), without being intrusive when the market is allowed to work. A company that presents only the choice of paying for service one doesn't want or being put into collections and having one's credit destroyed should be fined until it corrects its behavior or goes out of business.
warfangle 12y ago
(edited for source) There is no such thing as a free market: it is an idealistic theoretical construct. And even if it were real, it would only be efficient if P=NP[0]. 0. http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284 http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284
- pestilence123 12y ago
  That is complete nonsense. What's "efficient" supposed to mean, and how does it matter? Do you realize that markets are just people engaging in exchanges and agreements? What do you think you can calculate about people's behaviour?
- seanflyon 12y ago
  NP problems are still solvable, so if the problem of finding an efficient solution is NP then that means that it can be efficient.
- TelmoMenezes 12y ago
  Bitcoin is a free market. The theoretical limits on efficiency also apply to regulated markets. The question worth asking is, which one is more efficient?
  - saraid216 12y ago
    A currency is not a market. Unless the only thing that can be bought is Bitcoin. With Bitcoin. In which case, yes. You're right. It is a free market. And completely pointless.
- iand 12y ago
  This sounds like woo science. A link to a paper proving this assertion would be cool.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  "And even if it were real, it would only be efficient if P=NP." Because finding global optima is hard? I grant that, but: 1) things can be intractably hard even if P=NP - O(n^10000) is in P, and there are complexity classes strictly harder than P (e.g. EXPTIME)), and since there are innumerable moves anyone could take out into the future "optimal resource distribution" could plausibly fall in EXPTIME. 2) Regardless, any single entity determining optimal resource distribution also needs to solve the same problem. If you were saying something else, please clarify.
  - warfangle 12y ago
    My edit cited the paper in question, where the author shows how to use markets to solve NP-complete problems. Either markets are weak-form efficient and P=NP, or markets are not weak-form efficient and P≠NP.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      Ah. Cute, but doesn't look like something that can actually be applied to the real world.
      - warfangle 12y ago
        Kind of like theoretical free markets.
        dllthomas 12y ago
        Snarky. The difference is that you can have a model that is not precise and which still makes useful predictions. You can't have a proof that's not precise and still proves P=NP. Note that it is not "the existence of free markets" that is assumed and breaks things, but the existence of free markets with a particular formulation of a particular property. As strictly defined there, weak-form efficiency also allows seems to allow FTL communication.
- Strang 12y ago
  Your point is technically true, but you can consider it an idiom for either "maximally free market" or "sufficiently free market".
  - warfangle 12y ago
    Unfortunately, in a market where the number of choices available are limited by physical space (Do you know what it looks like when 15 different ISPs all run their own last-mile hardware? Would you like to live in a city where 8 different sewage disposal companies all run their own waste pipelines?), a sufficiently free market is practically impossible. In some cases, even a nebulously defined "sufficiently" free market is impossible.
- SilasX 12y ago
  The whole trick behind that paper is to take the definition of "market efficiency" to mean that all profit opportunities, even those requiring solving difficult computational problems, are identified immediately. Then, you encode NP-complete problems as exchange offerings, and the efficient trader would have to be an oracle for it. This is, obviously, not what most people have in mind by market efficiency, and simply means that the definition needs to be generalized to account for lags in pure inferential operations -- i.e. "all profit opportunities are exploited as soon as a real-world computation system could notice it". Still a strong claim, but not trivially refuted by turning exchanges into oracles by clever choice of exchange offers. Note: no one thinks all markets are efficient in the "EMH sense", only highly-liquid ones like electronic securities exchanges in developed countries. Also, it's different from the sense of Pareto-efficient that most political advocates of markets mean when advocating them.
mikeash 12y ago
You seem to be arguing that government intervention is what caused this mess, so more government intervention is not the answer. The trouble is that "government intervention" is such a general term that the statement is useless. It's barely one step better than "doing things caused this problem in the first place, so doing things is not the solution to it." There's good government intervention and bad government intervention. That bad government intervention caused the problem doesn't mean that good government intervention can't help.
- Kluny 12y ago
  > You seem to be arguing that government intervention is what caused this mess, so more government intervention is not the answer. People always say that, but I don't agree with it. Yes, the government caused the mess, but that doesn't mean they can't fix it. When I break someone's website with bad code, no one says "well, you caused this problem with code, more code is obviously not the answer so get the hell out." I iterate, fix the bugs and improve my solution. Why shouldn't government regulation get the same approach? read the rest of your comment... we're arguing the same side. Sorry. I'll let my comment stand though.
  - pestilence123 12y ago
    > Yes, the government caused the mess, but that doesn't mean they can't fix it. Well, if government intervention causes trouble for economies, shouldn't the government then stop intervening in them? Your proposed solution is for the government to intervene some more. A problem's cause cannot be its solution too.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Hey, there's no law that says any reply must be an argument against the comment it's replying to. At least, not until out-of-control government regulators mandate it.

by wallawe 12y ago

michaelfeathers 12y ago

Nope, I get it. What I'm saying is that a backdrop of consumer protection legislation can deal with the reality of this situation (which, sadly, doesn't look like it is going to be fixed any time soon), without being intrusive when the market is allowed to work. A company that presents only the choice of paying for service one doesn't want or being put into collections and having one's credit destroyed should be fined until it corrects its behavior or goes out of business.

warfangle 12y ago

(edited for source) There is no such thing as a free market: it is an idealistic theoretical construct. And even if it were real, it would only be efficient if P=NP[0]. 0. http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284 http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284

pestilence123 12y ago
That is complete nonsense. What's "efficient" supposed to mean, and how does it matter? Do you realize that markets are just people engaging in exchanges and agreements? What do you think you can calculate about people's behaviour?
seanflyon 12y ago
NP problems are still solvable, so if the problem of finding an efficient solution is NP then that means that it can be efficient.
TelmoMenezes 12y ago
Bitcoin is a free market. The theoretical limits on efficiency also apply to regulated markets. The question worth asking is, which one is more efficient?
- saraid216 12y ago
  A currency is not a market. Unless the only thing that can be bought is Bitcoin. With Bitcoin. In which case, yes. You're right. It is a free market. And completely pointless.
iand 12y ago
This sounds like woo science. A link to a paper proving this assertion would be cool.
dllthomas 12y ago
"And even if it were real, it would only be efficient if P=NP." Because finding global optima is hard? I grant that, but: 1) things can be intractably hard even if P=NP - O(n^10000) is in P, and there are complexity classes strictly harder than P (e.g. EXPTIME)), and since there are innumerable moves anyone could take out into the future "optimal resource distribution" could plausibly fall in EXPTIME. 2) Regardless, any single entity determining optimal resource distribution also needs to solve the same problem. If you were saying something else, please clarify.
- warfangle 12y ago
  My edit cited the paper in question, where the author shows how to use markets to solve NP-complete problems. Either markets are weak-form efficient and P=NP, or markets are not weak-form efficient and P≠NP.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    Ah. Cute, but doesn't look like something that can actually be applied to the real world.
    - warfangle 12y ago
      Kind of like theoretical free markets.
      - dllthomas 12y ago
        Snarky. The difference is that you can have a model that is not precise and which still makes useful predictions. You can't have a proof that's not precise and still proves P=NP. Note that it is not "the existence of free markets" that is assumed and breaks things, but the existence of free markets with a particular formulation of a particular property. As strictly defined there, weak-form efficiency also allows seems to allow FTL communication.
Strang 12y ago
Your point is technically true, but you can consider it an idiom for either "maximally free market" or "sufficiently free market".
- warfangle 12y ago
  Unfortunately, in a market where the number of choices available are limited by physical space (Do you know what it looks like when 15 different ISPs all run their own last-mile hardware? Would you like to live in a city where 8 different sewage disposal companies all run their own waste pipelines?), a sufficiently free market is practically impossible. In some cases, even a nebulously defined "sufficiently" free market is impossible.
SilasX 12y ago
The whole trick behind that paper is to take the definition of "market efficiency" to mean that all profit opportunities, even those requiring solving difficult computational problems, are identified immediately. Then, you encode NP-complete problems as exchange offerings, and the efficient trader would have to be an oracle for it. This is, obviously, not what most people have in mind by market efficiency, and simply means that the definition needs to be generalized to account for lags in pure inferential operations -- i.e. "all profit opportunities are exploited as soon as a real-world computation system could notice it". Still a strong claim, but not trivially refuted by turning exchanges into oracles by clever choice of exchange offers. Note: no one thinks all markets are efficient in the "EMH sense", only highly-liquid ones like electronic securities exchanges in developed countries. Also, it's different from the sense of Pareto-efficient that most political advocates of markets mean when advocating them.

mikeash 12y ago

You seem to be arguing that government intervention is what caused this mess, so more government intervention is not the answer. The trouble is that "government intervention" is such a general term that the statement is useless. It's barely one step better than "doing things caused this problem in the first place, so doing things is not the solution to it." There's good government intervention and bad government intervention. That bad government intervention caused the problem doesn't mean that good government intervention can't help.

Kluny 12y ago
> You seem to be arguing that government intervention is what caused this mess, so more government intervention is not the answer. People always say that, but I don't agree with it. Yes, the government caused the mess, but that doesn't mean they can't fix it. When I break someone's website with bad code, no one says "well, you caused this problem with code, more code is obviously not the answer so get the hell out." I iterate, fix the bugs and improve my solution. Why shouldn't government regulation get the same approach? read the rest of your comment... we're arguing the same side. Sorry. I'll let my comment stand though.
- pestilence123 12y ago
  > Yes, the government caused the mess, but that doesn't mean they can't fix it. Well, if government intervention causes trouble for economies, shouldn't the government then stop intervening in them? Your proposed solution is for the government to intervene some more. A problem's cause cannot be its solution too.
- mikeash 12y ago
  Hey, there's no law that says any reply must be an argument against the comment it's replying to. At least, not until out-of-control government regulators mandate it.