I guess the real problem is that people place too high a value on security and too low a value on adversity.
What is the value of adversity at age 20 (when the memory will last a lifetime) vs adversity at 60 (when you hope you will last the rest of your lifetime).
I have a sure fire low risk easy way to double your money every year. And I will tell it to you for only $1,000. Drop it in my PayPal Account. Include your address and in 10 days you will be on the road to financial security. Send me the money in unmarked bills and I will tell you how to do even better. You CAN double every six months.
IPCC vs Reality
I thought the ONLY reason for these fees was to help the good running of the school (by reducing lateness).TallDave wrote:The situation of charging late fees at school/daycare is a perfect example; the point is not to reduce the number of late parents,
You are saying that for ideological reasons "to make sure late parents are not rewarded" you would impose these fees even if you knew beforehand (as in the example here) that they would increase the overall incidence of lateness.
Seems irrational to me! But then my point on this thread is that people are often irrational.
Tom
I think of capitalism as rather like biological natural selection. I have great admiration for its extraordinary achievements - but also am aware of all the problems:
parasitic behaviour
arms races
inappropriate use of common pool resources
unstable hunter/prey population cycles
Even if we assume (unrealistically) that people behave as rational agents, which is a difference from the biological case, these problems are not prevented. The more complex the system the more unable are individual agents to predict the overall consequences of their actions. Just as in biology local optimisation results in global problems.
Interestingly even if all agents have perfect information once the system becomes too large and complex to predict or analyse we are back to the biological case.
And unfettered free markets will inevitably (with modern tools) evolve complexity. So this is the case for regulation.
Those who see the free market is somehow "good" in itself are in my view mistaking a useful tool for a goal.
Best wishes, Tom
parasitic behaviour
arms races
inappropriate use of common pool resources
unstable hunter/prey population cycles
Even if we assume (unrealistically) that people behave as rational agents, which is a difference from the biological case, these problems are not prevented. The more complex the system the more unable are individual agents to predict the overall consequences of their actions. Just as in biology local optimisation results in global problems.
Interestingly even if all agents have perfect information once the system becomes too large and complex to predict or analyse we are back to the biological case.
And unfettered free markets will inevitably (with modern tools) evolve complexity. So this is the case for regulation.
Those who see the free market is somehow "good" in itself are in my view mistaking a useful tool for a goal.
Best wishes, Tom
Last edited by tomclarke on Wed Jun 10, 2009 10:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
The financial mess we are in is due to some very anti-capitalist things our government has done: The Community Reinvestment Act required banks to lend to people not based on their credit score but on their race and zip code. These were the original toxic mortgages that began to poison the whole CDO market. The second problem was ivory tower bean counters conned investment houses into adopting models of default that were based on datasets only going back 6 years, not back to the housing bubble of the late 80's (doesn't THIS sound familliar in an AGW debate eh?). Then banks just followed the governments lead and piled mortage after mortgage into CDOs.vankirkc wrote:There may be occasional swings of irrationality in one sector or another, but if capitalism were essentially irrational we'd all be communists instead because that would work better. Overall, markets are very rational. Oh, and btw: fear and greed are rational too.
What is the basis for your assertion that capitalism and markets are 'very rational'? I would think the last twenty years of deregulation in the capital markets would conclusively prove that when they are left to themselves they aren't rational at all. What was the rationale for bankrupting the entire world? On an individual level, perhaps it made sense for the traders at AIG who got bonuses from the risky trades, but surely you can't argue that it was rational for the rest of us?
Don't get me wrong, I'm a believer in capitalism, but I think it's a stretch to argue that it is 'essentially rational.' Rather, I would argue that it is an excellent way to harness greed and individual self interest in the service of efficiency. In this regard it's far superior to communism, which relies on individual altruism to function. But to function properly it needs to be constrained, just as individual actions are constrained by laws elsewhere in society (e.g. prohibitions on theft, arson, murder, rape, etc).
If there was ANY lack of regulation at fault, it was the government permitting uncovered options trading to take place on the CDO market. This allowed hedge fund managers to use their assets in other areas to make money tanking CDO values.
http://www.rightsidenews.com/2009060750 ... frica.html
June 7, 2009
by Willie Soon and Paul Driessen
Eco-Imperialism.com
Green, UN, rich nation and African elites impose deadly anti-development colonialism
Sub-Saharan Africa remains one of Earth’s most impoverished regions. Over 90% of its people still lack electricity, running water, proper sanitation and decent housing. Malaria, malnutrition, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and intestinal diseases kill millions every year. Life expectancy is appalling, and falling.
And yet UN officials, European politicians, environmentalist groups and even African authorities insist that global warming is the gravest threat facing the continent. They claim there is no longer any debate over human-caused global warming – but ignore thousands of scientists who say human CO2 emissions are not the primary cause of climate changes, there is no evidence that future warming will be catastrophic, and computer models do not provide valid projections or “scenarios” for the future.
[Global] Warming alarmists use the “specter of climate change” to justify inhumane policies and shift the blame for problems that could be solved with the very technologies they oppose.
Past colonialism sought to develop mining, forestry and agriculture, and bring better government and healthcare practices to Africa . Eco-colonialism keeps Africans “traditional” and “indigenous,” by insisting that modern technologies are harmful and not “sustainable” in Africa .
Abundant, reliable, affordable electricity could power homes, offices, factories, schools and hospitals, create jobs, bring clean running water, and generate health and prosperity. But Rainforest Action Network and other pressure groups oppose coal and natural gas electricity generation on the grounds of climate change, and hydroelectric and nuclear power for other ideological reasons. They promote wind turbines and solar panels that provide electricity unreliably and in amounts too small to meet any but the most rudimentary needs.
Biotechnology could produce bumper crops that overcome droughts, floods, insects, viruses, and even global warming and cooling. But Greenpeace and Sierra Club oppose this precision hybrid-making technology, and instead promote land and labor-intensive subsistence farming.
DDT and insecticides could slash malaria rates that Al Gore and other climate alarmists falsely claim are rising because of global warming. But Pesticide Action Network and other activists stridently oppose their use, and the European Parliament recently imposed new pesticide restrictions that will further restrict African access to life-saving chemicals.
Recent incidents dramatize how depraved and deadly global warming politics have become.
In Gambia , a UN-subsidized “national ministerial dialogue” promoted extremist views on “catastrophic climate change” and “sustainable development.” A Forestry and Environment department representative asserted that it would be “nearly impossible to adapt to … impacts such as the loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet … and [resultant] 5-15 meter sea level rise.”
There was no mention of the near-zero probability of such an event happening. Average annual temperatures in Antarctica hover around minus 50 Centigrade (-58 F), while average temperatures for the two-month summer in its Western Peninsula are barely four degrees above freezing.
Scary tales of runaway temperature spikes melting 200,000 cubic miles of peninsular ice might be expected from Al Gore and James Hansen. But when Gambian ministers engage in such unscrupulous propaganda, they further degrade the health and welfare of their people.
Cameroon hosted a “fact-finding” visit from seven senior British Members of Parliament, who declaimed that climate change is “a jinx that threatens humanity more than HIV/AIDS.” They were joined by Cameroon ’s Minister of Forestry and Wildlife in urging that forests be managed to increase absorption of planetary carbon dioxide and “reduce global warming.”
Few climate actions, however, come close to the travesty being played out in nearby Chad . There the government has banned the manufacture, importation and use of charcoal – the sole source of fuel for 99% of Chadians.
“Cooking is a fundamental necessity for every household,” its Environment Minister pronounced. But “with climate change every citizen must protect his environment.”
The edict has sent women and children scavenging for dead branches, cow dung, grass and anything else that burns. “People cannot cook,” said human rights activist Merlin Totinon Nguebetan. “Women giving birth cannot even find a bit of charcoal to heat water for washing,” said another.
The government admitted it had failed to prepare the public for its sudden decree, but announced no change in plans – saying only that scarce propane might be an alternative for some. When citizens protested, they were violently dispersed by police.
“We will not give up,” a women’s group leader said. “Better to die swiftly than continue dying slowly.”
So this is where radical climate change alarmism has taken us. When the health of Planet Earth is at stake, human life means little – even if the “disasters” are nothing more than worst-case scenarios conjured up by computer models, headline writers, Hollywood , and professional doomsayers like Gore, Hansen and NOAA alarmist-in-chief Susan Solomon.
“Every time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh , an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned,” British arch-environmentalist George Monbiot hectored readers of The Guardian, in a typically hysteria-laced column.
One has to wonder if he would apply the same standard to eco-colonialist executives who continue to perpetuate poverty, disease, malnutrition and death in the name of preventing “global warming disasters” that fewer and fewer respectable scientists still believe are caused by human greenhouse gas emissions.
As economist Indur Goklany and even the UN climate panel acknowledge, future generations will be far richer than today’s. Poor families today should not be asked to bear the burden for richer families tomorrow, especially to guard against speculative climate and sustainability “disasters” whose “solutions” are worse than the purported problems.
The United Nations, European Union and United States need to address Africa ’s real problems and replace lethal eco-colonialism with fact-based science and humane public policies. And African countries need to take command of their future.
Africa needs to curb corruption. Adopt property rights and free enterprise principles. Promote sustained development. Utilize disease-preventing insecticides and modern agricultural biotechnology.
Rely less on foreign aid that is shriveling in the global recession and often comes with conditions and prohibitions that keep communities and nations deprived of energy and mired in poverty. Work with companies that want to develop natural resources, to get help building hospitals, schools and large-scale power plants that provide dependable, affordable electricity.
In short, Africa needs to remember Milton Friedman’s sage advice: “Poor countries should not do what rich countries did once they became rich. They should do what rich countries did to become rich.”
______________
Soon is chief science adviser for the Science and Public Policy Institute and author of numerous papers on climate change. Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power Black Death.
June 7, 2009
by Willie Soon and Paul Driessen
Eco-Imperialism.com
Green, UN, rich nation and African elites impose deadly anti-development colonialism
Sub-Saharan Africa remains one of Earth’s most impoverished regions. Over 90% of its people still lack electricity, running water, proper sanitation and decent housing. Malaria, malnutrition, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and intestinal diseases kill millions every year. Life expectancy is appalling, and falling.
And yet UN officials, European politicians, environmentalist groups and even African authorities insist that global warming is the gravest threat facing the continent. They claim there is no longer any debate over human-caused global warming – but ignore thousands of scientists who say human CO2 emissions are not the primary cause of climate changes, there is no evidence that future warming will be catastrophic, and computer models do not provide valid projections or “scenarios” for the future.
[Global] Warming alarmists use the “specter of climate change” to justify inhumane policies and shift the blame for problems that could be solved with the very technologies they oppose.
Past colonialism sought to develop mining, forestry and agriculture, and bring better government and healthcare practices to Africa . Eco-colonialism keeps Africans “traditional” and “indigenous,” by insisting that modern technologies are harmful and not “sustainable” in Africa .
Abundant, reliable, affordable electricity could power homes, offices, factories, schools and hospitals, create jobs, bring clean running water, and generate health and prosperity. But Rainforest Action Network and other pressure groups oppose coal and natural gas electricity generation on the grounds of climate change, and hydroelectric and nuclear power for other ideological reasons. They promote wind turbines and solar panels that provide electricity unreliably and in amounts too small to meet any but the most rudimentary needs.
Biotechnology could produce bumper crops that overcome droughts, floods, insects, viruses, and even global warming and cooling. But Greenpeace and Sierra Club oppose this precision hybrid-making technology, and instead promote land and labor-intensive subsistence farming.
DDT and insecticides could slash malaria rates that Al Gore and other climate alarmists falsely claim are rising because of global warming. But Pesticide Action Network and other activists stridently oppose their use, and the European Parliament recently imposed new pesticide restrictions that will further restrict African access to life-saving chemicals.
Recent incidents dramatize how depraved and deadly global warming politics have become.
In Gambia , a UN-subsidized “national ministerial dialogue” promoted extremist views on “catastrophic climate change” and “sustainable development.” A Forestry and Environment department representative asserted that it would be “nearly impossible to adapt to … impacts such as the loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet … and [resultant] 5-15 meter sea level rise.”
There was no mention of the near-zero probability of such an event happening. Average annual temperatures in Antarctica hover around minus 50 Centigrade (-58 F), while average temperatures for the two-month summer in its Western Peninsula are barely four degrees above freezing.
Scary tales of runaway temperature spikes melting 200,000 cubic miles of peninsular ice might be expected from Al Gore and James Hansen. But when Gambian ministers engage in such unscrupulous propaganda, they further degrade the health and welfare of their people.
Cameroon hosted a “fact-finding” visit from seven senior British Members of Parliament, who declaimed that climate change is “a jinx that threatens humanity more than HIV/AIDS.” They were joined by Cameroon ’s Minister of Forestry and Wildlife in urging that forests be managed to increase absorption of planetary carbon dioxide and “reduce global warming.”
Few climate actions, however, come close to the travesty being played out in nearby Chad . There the government has banned the manufacture, importation and use of charcoal – the sole source of fuel for 99% of Chadians.
“Cooking is a fundamental necessity for every household,” its Environment Minister pronounced. But “with climate change every citizen must protect his environment.”
The edict has sent women and children scavenging for dead branches, cow dung, grass and anything else that burns. “People cannot cook,” said human rights activist Merlin Totinon Nguebetan. “Women giving birth cannot even find a bit of charcoal to heat water for washing,” said another.
The government admitted it had failed to prepare the public for its sudden decree, but announced no change in plans – saying only that scarce propane might be an alternative for some. When citizens protested, they were violently dispersed by police.
“We will not give up,” a women’s group leader said. “Better to die swiftly than continue dying slowly.”
So this is where radical climate change alarmism has taken us. When the health of Planet Earth is at stake, human life means little – even if the “disasters” are nothing more than worst-case scenarios conjured up by computer models, headline writers, Hollywood , and professional doomsayers like Gore, Hansen and NOAA alarmist-in-chief Susan Solomon.
“Every time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh , an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned,” British arch-environmentalist George Monbiot hectored readers of The Guardian, in a typically hysteria-laced column.
One has to wonder if he would apply the same standard to eco-colonialist executives who continue to perpetuate poverty, disease, malnutrition and death in the name of preventing “global warming disasters” that fewer and fewer respectable scientists still believe are caused by human greenhouse gas emissions.
As economist Indur Goklany and even the UN climate panel acknowledge, future generations will be far richer than today’s. Poor families today should not be asked to bear the burden for richer families tomorrow, especially to guard against speculative climate and sustainability “disasters” whose “solutions” are worse than the purported problems.
The United Nations, European Union and United States need to address Africa ’s real problems and replace lethal eco-colonialism with fact-based science and humane public policies. And African countries need to take command of their future.
Africa needs to curb corruption. Adopt property rights and free enterprise principles. Promote sustained development. Utilize disease-preventing insecticides and modern agricultural biotechnology.
Rely less on foreign aid that is shriveling in the global recession and often comes with conditions and prohibitions that keep communities and nations deprived of energy and mired in poverty. Work with companies that want to develop natural resources, to get help building hospitals, schools and large-scale power plants that provide dependable, affordable electricity.
In short, Africa needs to remember Milton Friedman’s sage advice: “Poor countries should not do what rich countries did once they became rich. They should do what rich countries did to become rich.”
______________
Soon is chief science adviser for the Science and Public Policy Institute and author of numerous papers on climate change. Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power Black Death.
Tom,
You really need to read "The Road to Serfdom" by Hayek.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/022632 ... 0226320553
He argues that because of the very complexity you point out that shackling markets is often counter productive. No team of bureaucrats is as smart as 300 million people making their own decisions. Or 6.7 billion.
You have to consider the purpose of the tool. Capitalism is a way to integrate local knowledge and the wisdom of crowds into the economic system. Can regulation do that? Maybe a few simple ones. When it reaches the point of many and complex entropy sets in.
Now it does have its defects. Inherent in human nature (mania) but over all it produces better results than any other economic system known to man.
When you try to kill off the bad features ("I made a deal with a crook" "everybody is doing it") you short circuit the necessary learning. So it is not only a production system. It is also an educational system: "If a deal looks too good to be true, it is". That kind of knowledge is only fully absorbed by suffering.
You really need to read "The Road to Serfdom" by Hayek.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/022632 ... 0226320553
He argues that because of the very complexity you point out that shackling markets is often counter productive. No team of bureaucrats is as smart as 300 million people making their own decisions. Or 6.7 billion.
You have to consider the purpose of the tool. Capitalism is a way to integrate local knowledge and the wisdom of crowds into the economic system. Can regulation do that? Maybe a few simple ones. When it reaches the point of many and complex entropy sets in.
Now it does have its defects. Inherent in human nature (mania) but over all it produces better results than any other economic system known to man.
When you try to kill off the bad features ("I made a deal with a crook" "everybody is doing it") you short circuit the necessary learning. So it is not only a production system. It is also an educational system: "If a deal looks too good to be true, it is". That kind of knowledge is only fully absorbed by suffering.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Yes, e.g. it would have specifically prevented AIG from investing in securities, so AIG would not have gone bankrupt. Fairly obvious. At the same time, it was argued "Well, we need really really big banks now that banks are investing, because really really big banks are safer." That turned out not to be true.So let me get this straight. Your argument is that this crash happened because Glass-Steagall (a regulatory constraint preventing banks from owning other kinds of financial companies) was removed, and that if it hadn't been we would have been okay?
Besides the obvious specific example above, it's pretty widely (albeit not universally) accepted as being true in a general sense as well.Putting aside the fact that this is wrong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Stea ... the_repeal
Because for all the cries of "regulate!" from people who claim "deregulation" is the problem, I am generally not hearing the one solution that would actually work: break up those mergers and make these companies small enough to fail without systemic risk. Mostly what I'm hearing about is wage controls, as though financial trader's pay was somehow the problem. Whatever these people think "deregulation" is supposed to be, it apparently isn't the dismantling of Glass-Steagal., if it were correct how would it support your assertion that a) the crash isn't a result of deregulation
But the really ironic thing is that the people who are crying for "disclosure" from the capital markets don't seem to realize it was government that created and hid the subprime crisis by not allowing banks to properly assess lending risks. It may seem terribly unfair that some people or certain ethnic neighborhoods can't get loans because they're poor credit risks, but when you tell lenders to lend to them anyway, and then repackage the loans through a quasi-governmental corporations like FNMA to further obscure the risks, it's pretty silly to then blame the banks who invested in the subprime loan packages when the loans turn to be much riskier than they thought.
Well, obviously you can set the price to encourage the behavior you want from your customers (they being rational actors and all). If you charge them five dollars for being four hours late picking their kids up, you've just made yourself a very cheap babysitter and you will enourage lateness. If you charge $100 for the first hour, $200 for the next, etc., you will reduce lateness because few people will want to pay $1000 for four hours babysitting. Furthermore, if it does happen, the people who are receiving the money will probably be more than happy to provide such a service at such a rate. Win-win.tomclarke wrote:I thought the ONLY reason for these fees was to help the good running of the school (by reducing lateness).TallDave wrote:The situation of charging late fees at school/daycare is a perfect example; the point is not to reduce the number of late parents,
Tom
A school's failure to understand the price/demand curve doesn't indict capitalism so much as it makes one want to avoid employing the educational services of such simpletons.
Huh? Is there some ideology that says we should reward violating social norms and creating expenses for others? That's not ideology, that's basic morality. And whether you increase or decrease lateness is up to you.You are saying that for ideological reasons "to make sure late parents are not rewarded" you would impose these fees even if you knew beforehand (as in the example here) that they would increase the overall incidence of lateness.
Simon -
Your arguments against regulation are incomplete. If the overall system is too complex the "wisdom of the crowd" cannot work. And while people need to take risks and learn if you have the wrong sort of system the risks are unknowable and no-one can learn.
My point is that the "regulation is bad, absolute market freedom ois good" like most absolute and simplsitic philosophies, leads to inevitable problems.
TANSTAAFL and
TANSS
"there ain't no simple solutions"
Your arguments against regulation are incomplete. If the overall system is too complex the "wisdom of the crowd" cannot work. And while people need to take risks and learn if you have the wrong sort of system the risks are unknowable and no-one can learn.
My point is that the "regulation is bad, absolute market freedom ois good" like most absolute and simplsitic philosophies, leads to inevitable problems.
TANSTAAFL and
TANSS
"there ain't no simple solutions"
The evidence says it works better than any available alternative.If the overall system is too complex the "wisdom of the crowd" cannot work.
It's not had to see why. You're distributing decision-making to millions or billions of processors with their own datasets rather than relying on one. Some of the hardest problems are solved this way in computing as well.
Heh, I love this graph.
Apparently the GISS data is doing an excellent job of measuring the spread of air conditioners.
Apparently the GISS data is doing an excellent job of measuring the spread of air conditioners.
Uh oh, this one hurts: strong negative cloud feedback.
I always expected they would find this. There have to be strong moderating feedbacks that kick in at both lower and higher temperatures or the Earth would have fallen/climbed to a different equilibirum sometime in its 4 billion years.
I always expected they would find this. There have to be strong moderating feedbacks that kick in at both lower and higher temperatures or the Earth would have fallen/climbed to a different equilibirum sometime in its 4 billion years.
-
ravingdave
- Posts: 650
- Joined: Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:41 am
I check in here occasionally. Yup. My argument all along. If Water Vapor was not a negative feedback system, we all would have been dead billions of years ago.TallDave wrote:Uh oh, this one hurts: strong negative cloud feedback.
I always expected they would find this. There have to be strong moderating feedbacks that kick in at both lower and higher temperatures or the Earth would have fallen/climbed to a different equilibirum sometime in its 4 billion years.
David