Comments by "Cyberfunk" (@cyberfunk3793) on "A Different Bias"
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@joansparky4439 "My original trade is physics."
I'm not so sure, you don't write like someone with higher education. Otherwise you could be an academic without much experiece of the private sector so confused about what it is really like. Afaik in physics the terminology is even more strict and well edfined than in social sciences so I don't really buy the idea that in physics terminology would be borrowed and fluid instead of exact and precise.
Business school in my case means school of economics and business administration a.k.a university where people study that exact thing, theories related to economics for example. Economics isn't my major though but I did get enough of it to know the basics.
"Just for fun - would you agree that single party rule could be called a 'political monopoly'?"
Sure but there are probably better fitting words to describe these things that already exist like fascism, autocarcy, kleptocracy etc.
Yes I disagree that the political system would be decisive in what the economic system is like. You could say that under dictatorship and 1-party rule monopolies and lack of competition would be more likely outcome, but the political system isn't the only decisive factor. It depends on the exact situation and other factors like amount of corruption in the country. So in 1 place there is the dictator that divides the economy among their family and close circle kind of like nepotism, where no real competition is possible and everyone needs to bribe that one dicator to keep their assets. There could be another dictator that lets the economy sort itself out, allows robust competition to take place and doesn't favor people they know personally. So the risk of bad economic outcomes rises with certain systems with lots of corruption. When the power is concentrated and the system is authoritarian this type of economy would be more likely than when the power is distributed among a larger pool of representatives, there exists good checks and balances and where the politicians are regularly flushed every 4 years for example.
That is what most western nations have: although there is lots of lobbying and even corruption sometimes, usually the press is fairly free to report on problems etc. so there is limit to what type of cartels can typically develop and politicians on average don't dare to be blatantly corrupt as they would be risking actual penalties from it. So we have the occasional cartels and scandals, but most of the economy still with lots of true competition and a free press investigating politicians freely to discover problems they could report to the voters.
"Very naive view.. but anyhow; so licenses, patents, IP, copyrights, tariffs, etc. per your view do not interfere with the supply & demand dynamic on markets at all?"
I think that is what you actually are: naive. You sound like a socialist that has read about things for years while never doing it themself. I ran a company for over a decade and spent a long time investing after that and seeing how much competition there actually was: many companies even in the same sectors, too many to form a cartel and able to maintain it for long term. Patents are needed to incentivize ideas and if we didn't have those then we had a much higher risk of never having competition when a big player would simply copy any new idea and nobody would ever be able to compete. Tarfis limit global trade, but the blocks like EU and US are internally already large enough for robust competition without even having any trade outside. There would not be monopolies everywhere in US just because it stopped trading with everyone else. Who is enforcing those trade and other rules? Ultimately the voters and professional officials. Voters select their representatives that define those rules into law and usually unelected professionals like competition watchdogs have the task of monitoring the competition and a seperate branch like the judicial system does the abjudication.
"Which means you have no idea what the book is about. It's no wonder, "
I couldn't really care less. The first author is from a firm known for insider trading and neither seem to have real wolrd experience outside of trading and investing. They are no authorities on if capitalism is dead or not. They are simply writing books to earn money and making titles that catch the interest of possible readers.
"That's a pretty arrogant mindset to start with and explains your unawareness."
No not really, if we went by ancient texts we could justify total failures like socialism just by quoting Marx. I have no interest in old texts when I can see the world today directly. I don't need to study someones guess 200 years ago and learn in how many ways they were wrong, because wrong is what they usually are on pretty much everything like Marx. I had my own company in another sector than finance and saw the competition for long enough to know it is there before investing aftwerwards. I don't need some corrupt traders from SAC that never did anything else than finance tell me that capitalism is dead because they like to sell books to people in the capitalist marketplace. Are you perhaps a socialist that never worked in the private sector? Have you run a company that employed any people? Have you ever been employed yourself outside of academia or are you someone that mostly studies and does research, reads about 200 year old theories but never goes out to the real world to see for it themselves and test their theories out?
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@joansparky4439 English is my 3rd language and I'm not talking about language skills, I'm talking about how educated people typically write compared to people that get their education on Youtube. There is a difference that is often noticable.
"Where do you think it leads to if economic participants can compete among equals and the wealth of the population raises because of that?"
It leads to a wealtheir populus like you said said.
"You think such a population will be politically apathetic (which the place is that defines and enforces the rules that govern them)?"
Nope
Corruption, hm?
"corruption .. dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery"
Yes the amount of corruption as factor for the possibility of unfair competition forming.
"What is the basic goal of corruption?"
Self benefit obviously.
"What is regular flushing good for if the rules that those politicians put into law either by accident or on purpose lack checks & balances"
They generally don't and if they do, the voters have only themselves to blame for that. If the politicians don't do a good job in doing the tasks you consider important, you obviously should not vote for those politicians in the future.
" lobbying politicians to do this or that?"
Again up to the voters. If the voters are dim enough to fall for the lobbying, they get the reps they deserve.
" Do a thought experiment please: imagine a field of entrepreneurs (no large companies) only and one or a few have an idea and commercialize it and have it patent-protected.. "
It leads to other people seeing the success and starting to also innovate in the hope of gaining financial success in other fields. How about you do a thought experiment: you are an inventor in CCCP that never gets any real personal benefit from your ideas. Would you stay in CCCP or go to capitalist economy with patent protections where you can personally benefit? In a society without patents, no individual has true incentive to spend time thinking about great ideas unless they are already paid to do that for a billion dollar company. If all the people see other people never benefitting from their ideas, why would anyone waste their time on that?
what do you think does this cause over a couple of cycles? You think it possible that those first few lucky ones could become big companies (because they got a temporary monopoly) that the other small entrepreneurs would need protection from all of a sudden? Isn't that a bit insane?
You are strugling to make some point here. It's obviously not insane for a company to benefit from good ideas, without that success there would be no incentive to innovate like I just described.
"They don't say that capitalism is dead."
Well that it kind of implies if you name a book the myth of capitalism, that it wouldn't actually exist.
"Capitalism is well and alive"
I agree.
"(except for the competitive market thing).. "
It's alive and kicking also in many if not most places. Dying in China probably though.
"what they bemoan is that (hidden) corruption is destroying the competitive landscape and destroying the vitality and efficiency that competing entrepreneurs bring"
There has always been corruption and always will. I don't see that is has become worse in the recent decades, more likely getting better nowadays with better legislation to address it. If they want to whine about corruption, perhaps they should name their book that instead of the myth of capitalism then.
"They bemoan that the poorer get poorer while only a few get ever more richer and powerful. And the culprit they see is mostly the obvious 'regulatory capture'.
Yet in reality global poverty has halved in a few decades, so seems they don't have a clue.
"I got my own business and test my theories.. no employees yet though.. but we'll see."
Well I suggest you spend more time on your business to get real info on the private sector rather than spend time reading books about the past. If your business is anything like a usual small business, you won't have much time or energy to read books anyway for a few years no matter how much you would enjoy that.
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@joansparky4439 "So the 'political monopoly' has got a problem there, because 'the people' want to partake in the decisions that govern them.. thus your alternative is naive and falls flat on its face when examined closely."
So people caring about their business is a problem now?? What are you even trying to say? There is no political monopoly, people are free to vote for anyone they like and are free to form their own parties at will and take part in elections themselves if they like also. If you don't like the way people vote, that doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the system.
"I deal with people that seem smart, but when pressed their theories fall apart and the conclusion they come to mirrors what I already knew. Maybe it rubs off in some way?"
I think your theories are falling apart and sound more like conspiracies theory than fact.
"Define 'unfair' please."
As in not fair, some of the bidders are excluded for no justified reason, someone gets a tip on what the bid is now, a group of companies colluding to divide contracts etc.
"Which means it goes at the cost of others, yes?"
Obviously, that is why we try to avoid corruption.
"So you blame it on the voters when politicians make mistakes?"
Of course, they are ultimately in charge of selecting the reps. When an employee makes a mistake, the ultimately responsible one is the CEO who is in the chain of command that hired them. The same goes for our society: when elections are fair, the buck stops with the voters.
"And you also blame it on the voters when they fall for snake oil sales man?"
Of course. If you are dense enough to fall for him, you get exactly what you deserve.
"I mean, think it through.. the goal of ruthless politicians is to trick voters into giving them the power to create rules that benefit a few at the cost of the rest, so those politicians got enough to retire on. How can you blame laymen to fall for something like this, especially if the sale pitch is reasonable?"
It would be childish to blame anyone else and the idea you are pushing is incredibly naive. Do you really expect anyone to act in some other way than to be solely motivated by their own personal self-interest? If that is what you expect, you should grow up and start observing the real world.
"The damage has been done at that point.
How do you want to punish those politicians please?"
Most damage can be reversed and the obvious way to punish them is to not vote for them the next time when they are asking you to. Being more considerate with your vote in the future and vote for people that have a better track record of fulfilling their promises and being trustworthy. All this is so self-evident I don't understand why it needs to be explained to you like you were 5-years-old.
"They get to sit on the boards of directors or some other cozy position and will be taken care of for life."
Most politicians aren't in political office for only 1 term. If there is clear collusion between a retiring politician and a private sector company, than that is obviously a crime that can be investigated. If someone got directly promised a position based on one way they vote for, that is obviously same as giving a bribe. This obviously happens, it is unavoidable in any political system and the mitigation again is electing better politicians and investigating such corruption when it arises.
"The feedback loop you pin your hopes on DOES NOT EXIST."
Because you say so? Arguments by assertion are kind of boring.
"You really are naive."
You are the one living in la la land expecting that a random person you don't know might not act in their self-interest. You are sounding more like a socialist that doesn't account for human nature and would expect people to behave well just because of some ideology.
"There is that arrogance again.. that superiority born out of ignorance and knowing a bit on a subject that makes you a poster child for the Dunning-Kruger effect."
Dunning-Kruger as in studied the topic 15 years, don't know the things people learn the first weeks in an actual academic setting and have trouble hacking it in the private sector?
"So our societies made no progress before patents came along?
Strawman. The fact that having patents give more incentive to spend time on ideas doesn't mean nobody invented anything before. in CCCP they invented lots of stuff also, just not nearly as much as in the west.
"Interesting historical literacy that you show there."
Because of your strawman?
"Also, please define 'benefit from'.
If you are an inventor and come up with an improvement.. what you make will be rare at fist and thus fetch a price that is above its cost - which should cover your R&D cost."
Are you a child? if there is no patents, anyone can nowadays copy your invention immediately and larger companies would outcompete you with their production and marketing capacity before you could recoup anything. It can take years to cover R&D and you will never have a competitive advantage for that time without a patent against bigger players.
"So you need to be able to control the supply, which means you need to keep competition from doing what you are doing.
This is what patents are for and have been all along."
Obviously, that is the whole point of a patent: Giving the person with the idea temporary protection against the competition so they and others see it benefits them to come up with new ideas. Without that benefit, less would bother and innovation would stall.
"You naturally don't see it this way due to your economic education."
I obviously do, it's 101-level stuff that anyone with half a brain would figure out so I'm really not believing the physics education anymore.
"Let me ask you this then - what do you think does a free market lead to:
a) economic profits for all (revenue > cost)
b) zero / normal profits for all (revenue ~ cost)
c) economic loss for all (revenue < cost"
Your question is malformed as the options are not jointly exhaustive. How about instead of these pointless questions and thought experiments you try to actually formulate an argument once?
"It's the kind of corruption that (IMHO) isn't labelled corruption and can't be labeled as such, as it isn't really.. the very thing you have such a hard time to grasp."
I have a hard time grasping that you have a different definition of corruption than anyone else?
"Because it benefits one personally"
Heureka, you finally figured it out.
"Do we even live on the same planet mate?"
I don't know, you sound like you are high on something and can't even track what you self are saying. You haven't been able to make any arguments, just ask pointless questions all the time thinking you are Socrates.
"LOL, you're funny. Try 'global inequality over time' as a search term."
What is funny are people that claim they studies something related to economics for 15 years but don't even know the difference between inequality and poverty and can't use 30 seconds to check actual facts.
'According to World Bank data, in 1990 there were 2.00 billion people living in poverty, and in 2019 that had fallen to 0.648 billion. The average fall over the 29 years in between is: (2.00 billion – 0.648 billion)/29 = 46.6 million.'
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