The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

Post by jessriedel » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

ucaetano wrote: post #138

jessriedel wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic rents benefit owners of entrenched corporations, but they don't make them more efficient . They also don't explain why US corporate practices make foreign companies more efficient when they are exported. And you haven't addressed the difference in public service efficiency since 10% in scale is not nearly large enough to explain order-unity inefficiencies in the US public sector. (And in absolute terms the U…

> Economic rents benefit owners of entrenched corporations, but they don't make them more efficient. Efficient at extracting rents and higher profits, yes. > And you haven't addressed the difference in public service efficiency since 10% in scale is not nearly large enough to explain order-unity inefficiencies in the US public sector. (And in absolute terms the US is larger, anyways.) Wait, you do know how good socia…

Post by ucaetano » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 8:40 PM UTC

ska wrote: post #170

ucaetano wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You literally said: "Almost nothing is a free market". > in fact a huge fraction of the US economy is very much not free market Indeed, many industries depend on highly limited resources, such as land, natural resources and so on.

You literally said: "Almost nothing is a free market". Yes I did, in a broader context, which it is commonly assumed the reader is following. The things distorting these markets in the US are typically nothing as simple as land, natural resources, etc... more they are policy decisions and politics. Suggesting otherwise is facile. That really is the last I'll say on the issue.

Post by lend000 » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 8:57 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #168

ClayShentrup wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Condorcet was assumed to be the gold standard for a long time, but then in the year 2000, Warren Smith's Bayesian Regret figures showed that actually Score Voting (aka Range Voting) was better with any mixture of strategic or honest voters. http://scorevoting.net/BayRegsFig.html Approval Voting is extremely competitive in terms of performance, and _dead simple_. There is actually a theorem that Approval Voting will a…

> Condorcet was assumed to be the gold standard for a long time, but then in the year 2000, Warren Smith's Bayesian Regret figures showed that actually Score Voting (aka Range Voting) was better with any mixture of strategic or honest voters. What such simulations consistently miss is the information problem facing range voting (approval voting has a similar problem; preference systems don't entirely lack information…

Post by philwelch » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 1:24 AM UTC

pcollins123 wrote: post #176

philwelch wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even that was close, and the Republican candidate was a child molester on top of being an incompetent wingnut. It takes a LOT to sway American voters.

> Even that was close, and the Republican candidate was _accused of molesting children_. There, fixed that for you. Look, I'm very progressive, but we need to firmly stand behind "innocent until proven guilty" especially when it is so easy to create a slander campaign against a political opponent. And, yes, even the democrats are capable of that.

Post by ska » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 4:29 AM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #169

ska wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, it my be pushing it a little bit - but the point is that the US economy is chock full of things like the healthcare system. You can’t easily argue that these are just outliers and the “real” economy is extremely free market. They are, in fact, completely normal parts of how the economy works. Arguing the converse would be precisely the no true Scotsman fallacy.

Who's arguing that the American economy is exceptionally free market? It's certainly not centrally controlled as much as in other places, but I'm not sure "free market" is any more accurate. Large sectors (probably even a majority) of the economy is heavily regulated, monopolistic, monopsonistic, oligopolistic, etc. The original point, that it's not fair to blame the free market for the dysfunction in the American he…