Economists who defend disaster profiteers are wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: Economists who defend disaster profiteers are wrong

#341

Post by specialist » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #16

alexmingoia wrote: post #4

Increased production doesn’t occur because the economics don’t work, it doesn’t occur because there’s just no way to physically ramp up production that fast. That’s not really a critique of the economics. If production could be increased that fast the manufacturers would. An important point the article didn’t address is that high prices direct resources to more important uses. If prices are very high then hospitals m…

I was able to get kleenex and paper towels saturday because the grocery store is now limiting people to one purchase per day. I am sure there are people who need more than that, and any system of rationing should allow for exceptions. But when people insist that a "free" market is inherently correct, it's no different from insisting that your OS scheduler is perfect even though some processes never get to run https:/…

Capitalism is just an algorithm, heuristic. Game theory shows a mix of strategies works pretty good. Just tweak the proportional mix of strategies as necessary.

Open markets only span something like 1/3rd of our economy. (Most other trades are intra organizational, government appropriations, etc.)

We're geeks, right? Obsessed with optimization, right?

So it seems crazy to me that so many will only consider Freedom Markets™ while dismissing every other possible strategy.

As seen in this very thread, the meme of Freedom Markets™ is so engrained that even the critics only argue in those terms, rather than having an affirmative agenda based on alternatives.

Re: Economists who defend disaster profiteers are wrong

#342

Post by Miner49er » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:10 PM UTC

Kaiyou wrote: post #337

kaitai wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. The flaws of that system are becoming clearer and clearer, not that you'd see it from the responses you're getting. "If people can't pay for housing, they deserve to be homeless! If people can't pay for healthcare, they deserve to be sick and die! Without a profit motive, we cannot do anything for our fellow man! It would be immoral to serve without profit, or to look for the greater profit to society!" Housing…

If you can't pay, you don't deserve to get things for free. What's so difficult about this concept? Maybe someone else is incentivized to pay for you. But if there isn't, you do not actually deserve anything costing money, without being able to pay that money. Morality has nothing to do with it.

> If you can't pay, you don't deserve to get things for free.

There's a lot of problems with this concept.

We don't live in a meritocracy. Having money doesn't mean your life is more valuable then someone else's. A kid born to a billionaire has access to extreme wealth (and therefore economic power) without proving any merit for it. Humanity has tried monarchism already, and we've decided it's not the best way to run things. People shouldn't be given power just cause they are related to the last guy who had it.

Hell, even if we did live in a meritocracy, is it moral to let people die because they lost the genetic roll of the dice? Somebody born with a disability should just die since they have less economic worth?

Re: Economists who defend disaster profiteers are wrong

#343

Post by missedthecue » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #328

Kaiyou wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, individuals may make mistakes, but it's nothing to the insanity a mass of people is capable of. (Source: Mass Psychology, by Gustave LeBon) Distributing wealth is self-destructive behavior. Generally, you want wealth in capable hands, who can use this wealth to create more wealth. You don't just want to piss it away.

The idea that wealth inequality is just due to it going to "capable hands" is a hell of an unsupported assertion. "Pissing it away" is also known as buying things, which drives economic growth. The poor spend every penny they make, and this is generally considered good for the economy.

Investment drives growth, not consumption.

Re: Economists who defend disaster profiteers are wrong

#344

Post by intorio » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #197

arcticbull wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point isn't for "first responders" to be paying for masks out of their own pockets, it's for the healthcare system (i.e. ultimately insurance companies) to pay higher prices so that more masks are made available to first responders, either by stimulating new production or reallocating existing masks. Yeah, that's grotesque. Everyone who works on the front lines of providing care to COVID patients is a first res…

No, the White House didn’t ‘dissolve’ its pandemic response office. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/16/no-white-...

Your evidence of this is an opinion article by a republican political adviser. Please forgive me if I wait for the congressional investigation to look at it.

Re: Economists who defend disaster profiteers are wrong

#345

Post by Kaiyou » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:15 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #330

Kaiyou wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Willingness to spend reflects how important it is for you. Ability to spend puts a cap on that to incentivize people to create more wealth. People with the ability to create wealth are more important to a society than people without this ability. Thus, it follows that people with more money are more important.

How do you measure how much someone creates wealth? If I give a wealthy person $100, and a poor person $100... the poor person will spend it, the rich person generally will not. This plays out in economic stimulus studies time and again.

By his ability to earn money, generally speaking. It's not a perfect translation, but it's the method we currently have.

Saving money is better than wasting it away on booze or whatever else the poor person would want to spend it on. Spending money on things you do not need or are expecting a return on is pissing money away.

How you spend money makes a big difference.

Re: Economists who defend disaster profiteers are wrong

#346

Post by danans » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:15 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #190

danans wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And many modern economists endorse a minimum wage, as eugenicists did then, but with even less regard for the harm it causes. You are comparing the moral stance of supporting eugenics with the moral stance of supporting a minimum wage? Are those just the first two random moral stances taken by economists that you recall, or are you trying to color the perception the latter with the true horror of the former?

Eugenics had wide scientific support; it wasn't a horror when they proposed it. A seriously high minimum wage ($100,000/year for example; no other policy changes) would probably lead to a period of horror and mass unemployment. Possibly famine, I don't know what would happen if it no longer made economic sense to employ people to transport food around. Maybe they are already high earners, what do I know. A minimum wa…

> Eugenics had wide scientific support; it wasn't a horror when they proposed it.

But it is a horror now that we've seen a few genocides, which is why it shouldn't be compared to something of a completely different kind, like the minimum wage.

Instead, compare it to wars - which are far closer in terms of the harms they cause - and have also received moral support from economists.

> A seriously high minimum wage ($100,000/year for example; no other policy changes) would probably lead to a period of horror and mass unemployment.

This is reductio ad absurdum, since the min wage wouldn't go that high without major structural and contextual changes in the society and economy.

In the case of eugenics, we don't need to conjure such wild hypotheses about what would happen, because we've repeatedly seen what happens when that idea is carried to it's extreme by governments.

Re: Economists who defend disaster profiteers are wrong

#347

Post by Kaiyou » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #328

Kaiyou wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, individuals may make mistakes, but it's nothing to the insanity a mass of people is capable of. (Source: Mass Psychology, by Gustave LeBon) Distributing wealth is self-destructive behavior. Generally, you want wealth in capable hands, who can use this wealth to create more wealth. You don't just want to piss it away.

The idea that wealth inequality is just due to it going to "capable hands" is a hell of an unsupported assertion. "Pissing it away" is also known as buying things, which drives economic growth. The poor spend every penny they make, and this is generally considered good for the economy.

Buying stuff doesn't facilitate growth. Look at all the toilet paper people buy recently. Where's your growth?

Re: Economists who defend disaster profiteers are wrong

#348

Post by emodendroket » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

Symmetry wrote: post #323

Price controls might work within the US but we can't enforce them internationally and they've already been a big problem for US firms making purchases abroad where they're competing with others willing to bid up the prices of masks. https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2020/03/30/i-spent...

In that care it seems like international coordination is called for

Re: Economists who defend disaster profiteers are wrong

#349

Post by fatbird » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

CryptoPunk wrote: post #152

SftwrSvior81 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> high prices direct resources to more important uses I don't think that that is always true. High prices will redirect scarce resources to those who have the means and desire to pay for them. That doesn't necessarily mean that those uses are more important, regardless of how one defines what it means for the resource usage to be important.

It doesn't map to desire perfectly, but it does generally. If anyone truly needs a mask, (e.g. a delivery driver delivering packages to customers, a doctor, a nurse), that represents an economic need for whatever service they provide. Their employer will be able to charge a high price for their service, and afford to pay a high price for PPE for them. Even when the mapping is imperfect, the fact that the rich guy was…

it increases the reward for being wealthy, which promotes more productive behaviour from society at large.

It encourages rent-seeking behaviour, which is not necessarily productive, and in times of crisis, demonstrably not so.

Re: Economists who defend disaster profiteers are wrong

#350

Post by qnsi » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

patmcc wrote: post #15

It's very interesting to me that (nearly) everyone agrees that reselling disaster supplies like masks, hand sanitizer, etc. for a large profit is terrible, but somehow selling literal essentials like food, housing, and healthcare for profit is just fine.

Economists dont agree with you.

https://www.econlib.org/archives/2017/09/a_poll_of_econo.htm...