Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True • Hacker News Board

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#211

Post by randyrand » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

bendbro wrote: post #209

randyrand wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Hmm maybe we should look into centrally planning other industries too.

I agree. We centrally plan the police, water, electricity, and roads. Health care should be no different.

I so no reason to stop there. What about other necessities such as the agriculture and food industry? The ISP business should be federally planned as well.

I'm even starting to think the electronics industry and software industries would benefit from being completely centrally planned.

History has shown that free markets fail to allocate well. And lots of socialist and communist countries have demonstrated that fully centrally planning an economy is possible and can be done well. Central planning rarely fails.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#212

Post by dangerlibrary » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 11:01 PM UTC

randyrand wrote: post #211

bendbro wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. We centrally plan the police, water, electricity, and roads. Health care should be no different.

I so no reason to stop there. What about other necessities such as the agriculture and food industry? The ISP business should be federally planned as well. I'm even starting to think the electronics industry and software industries would benefit from being completely centrally planned. History has shown that free markets fail to allocate well. And lots of socialist and communist countries have demonstrated that fully…

Both history and theory show that free markets do not allocate resources well when the basic assumptions underlying efficient markets don't hold.

In the presence of non-rational behavior - such the the type of decisions people tend to make when making what they believe to be life or death decisions with extremely imperfect (and asymmetric) information - markets do not efficiently allocate resources. Throw in the fact that the decisions are frequently framed in terms of probabilities and made under duress and you've got a whole mess of psychological problems as well, even if the economic assumptions did hold (they don't).

That doesn't speak to a need for centralized planning per se, but it does mean that markets won't do the job correctly on their own.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#213

Post by olifante » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 10:08 AM UTC

hkmurakami wrote: post #161

techonup wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This line of argument really needs to be toned down. While it's obviously true that papers like the WSJ, NYT, WashPo, etc. have influential partisan editorial boards, their newsrooms are filled with reporters and editors of various political leanings. More importantly, these reporters are among the best in the country and do their very best to find and report the truth in an unbiased fashion. That's what makes these…

Well even the Economist, which I consider to be the finest newspaper around (they call themselves a newspaper) and the closest thing to being unbiased, still has a subtle underlying predisposition likely at least somewhat influenced by its owners.

The Economist, unbiased? I let my one-year subscription expire due to their patronising tone and their not-so-hidden agenda of teaching the world to accept the gift of anglo-saxon supremacy.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#214

Post by bendbro » Fri, Apr 29, 2016, 3:15 AM UTC

randyrand wrote: post #211

bendbro wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. We centrally plan the police, water, electricity, and roads. Health care should be no different.

I so no reason to stop there. What about other necessities such as the agriculture and food industry? The ISP business should be federally planned as well. I'm even starting to think the electronics industry and software industries would benefit from being completely centrally planned. History has shown that free markets fail to allocate well. And lots of socialist and communist countries have demonstrated that fully…

The agriculture industry is already heavily subsidized to prevent food shortages.

But breaking away from the sarcasm, I agree that communism isn't useful. It's just there are already parts of the United States are mostly government controlled, so an argument that no parts should be falls flat on it's face.