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And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

shkspr.mobi

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Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#431

Post by Sha1rholder »

HappMacDonald wrote: post #420
Sha1rholder wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your pH example actually proves the opposite. pH 7 is not neutral because it happens to sit halfway between 0 and 14. pH is not inherently limited to that range at all. Sufficiently concentrated solutions can have pH values below 0 or above 14. A solution is called neutral when the activities of hydrogen ions and hydroxide ions are equal, which happens to correspond to about pH 7 at 25°C. Change the temperature and n…

I know it's off topic: but I am curious and this sounds both challenging to search for and likely to not get a straight answer from an LLM. Do you happen to know if this means that water may tip from neutral to slightly alkaline or acidic at different temperatures or pressures? I have always found it .. peculiar that water just so happens to (as you aptly put it) "have all the activities of hydrogen ions and hydroxid…

This isn't a difficult question. I'm sure LLM knows these things better than I do.

Water is H-O-H; H+ and OH- both come from water. If there are no impurities, then for every extra H+ there is an extra OH-, so it's not that they are "happen to be equal". They're born equal.

Changing the temperature does change the concentrations of these ions so pH does change by definition. But the water remains neutral, since the ratio of H⁺ to OH⁻ is still 1:1

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#432

Post by WalterBright »

rmunn wrote: post #426
WalterBright wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> selfish ambitions for power or money Free markets are designed around a selfish ambition for making money. You can only make money by pleasing your customers. And hence free markets are the greatest mechanism for prosperity. There's nothing wrong with making money that way.

But the example I gave was of politicians seeking power for the sake of making money. Which is entirely different from making it via the free market. I'm very much pro-free-markets, but I don't think that (for example) members of Congress should be exempted from the "no insider trading" rules. There have been multiple cases of politicians (from both major American parties — and I'm sure it happens in other countries…

I don't see seeking political power and using it as free market.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#433

Post by WalterBright »

nrr wrote: post #425
WalterBright wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Supply and demand aren't invariant under all conditions. I'm curious. When does it not apply?

I'll flip this around and instead elucidate when it does apply if that's alright. The supply and demand model only applies to analysis of microeconomic systems with perfect competition, namely of systems that lack monopoly and monopsony; that have perfect information; that lack an ability of a single economic actor to affect the price in the market; that lack externalities[0]; that lack transaction costs; that lack u…

> The supply and demand model only applies to analysis of microeconomic systems with perfect competition

I'm going to stop right there. Perfect competition is unnecessary. Part of perfect competition is perfect information.

No transactions have perfect information. There is always "risk" involved. And risk contributes to determining the price of something. Ever wonder why used cars lose a third of their value when you drive a new one off the lot? It's because of the risk that a person might be selling that almost-new car with a hidden expensive fault in it.

Also, risky investments come with higher returns. Safer investments come with lower returns. The lack of perfect information gets a dollar value for the amount of imperfection.

Risk is absolutely part of the free market, and absolutely a part of the Law of Supply and Demand.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#434

Post by [deleted] »

nrr wrote: post #425
WalterBright wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Supply and demand aren't invariant under all conditions. I'm curious. When does it not apply?

I'll flip this around and instead elucidate when it does apply if that's alright. The supply and demand model only applies to analysis of microeconomic systems with perfect competition, namely of systems that lack monopoly and monopsony; that have perfect information; that lack an ability of a single economic actor to affect the price in the market; that lack externalities[0]; that lack transaction costs; that lack u…

[deleted]

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#435

Post by [deleted] »

WalterBright wrote: post #433
nrr wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll flip this around and instead elucidate when it does apply if that's alright. The supply and demand model only applies to analysis of microeconomic systems with perfect competition, namely of systems that lack monopoly and monopsony; that have perfect information; that lack an ability of a single economic actor to affect the price in the market; that lack externalities[0]; that lack transaction costs; that lack u…

> The supply and demand model only applies to analysis of microeconomic systems with perfect competition I'm going to stop right there. Perfect competition is unnecessary. Part of perfect competition is perfect information. No transactions have perfect information. There is always "risk" involved. And risk contributes to determining the price of something. Ever wonder why used cars lose a third of their value when yo…

[deleted]

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#436

Post by nrr »

WalterBright wrote: post #433
nrr wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll flip this around and instead elucidate when it does apply if that's alright. The supply and demand model only applies to analysis of microeconomic systems with perfect competition, namely of systems that lack monopoly and monopsony; that have perfect information; that lack an ability of a single economic actor to affect the price in the market; that lack externalities[0]; that lack transaction costs; that lack u…

> The supply and demand model only applies to analysis of microeconomic systems with perfect competition I'm going to stop right there. Perfect competition is unnecessary. Part of perfect competition is perfect information. No transactions have perfect information. There is always "risk" involved. And risk contributes to determining the price of something. Ever wonder why used cars lose a third of their value when yo…

> I'm going to stop right there.

Um, OK.

> Perfect competition is unnecessary.

It is definitionally a precondition to applying the supply and demand model for analysis.

> Part of perfect competition is perfect information.

This is mostly correct. It's actually a biconditional: perfect competition iff perfect information.

> No transactions have perfect information.

This is correct.

> There is always "risk" involved. And risk contributes to determining the price of something.

Risk (due to Frank Knight, sometimes called Knightian risk) is a term of art that refers to known probability distributions of market outcomes. My professional training is literally to build pricing models against these.

> Ever wonder why used cars lose a third of their value when you drive a new one off the lot? It's because of the risk that a person might be selling that almost-new car with a hidden expensive fault in it.

No, I can't say I've ever wondered this; I've not been around a lot of new cars. (See also: the whole Mennonite thing.) I know that it's because of the term of art that we call uncertainty (again, due to Frank Knight, sometimes called Knightian uncertainty), which refers to those unknown probability distributions of outcomes that I listed as a precondition to applying this model for analysis. I can't price against those.

A used car market is what we call an Akerlof market, which is a market with a feedback system that has a whole lot of pathologies linked to information asymmetry. This also happens to be the textbook example of adverse selection, which is itself an example of how the supply and demand model fails to predict the market due to that information asymmetry.

> Risk is … absolutely a part …

This is correct with the words written here, but I'll caution that risk as a term of art has been misused.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#437

Post by Arodex »

internet_points wrote: post #414
Arodex wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cocaine does solve a societal problem: the cult of performance pushing people to their limits. Without cocaine, there would be more burnouts and depressions (right now; I am not talking about long-term). See also the role of "soma" in the novel Brave New World . People take cocaine voluntarily . It solves a problem for them, at one point at last (addiction is as much a psychological problem as a physiological one). I…

On a meta-level, this type of reasoning explains so much of what comes out of Silicon Valley.

I don't know why you say that. I gave an answer based on simple facts, that addiction specialists would agree with. I stripped any personal judgement to put myself in the shoes of cocaine addicts. It is not incompatible with the fact that I think cocaine, like any addictive substance, is a net negative, both for individuals and the society, and Brave New World is a dystopia that make my skin crawl and if we could get rid of cocaine it would be better.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#439

Post by WalterBright »

HappMacDonald wrote: post #422
WalterBright wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theft is not allowed in a free market.

Not allowing theft would be a form of regulation, though ;)

Theft is a criminal offense, which is different from regulation.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#440

Post by WalterBright »

jacquesm wrote: post #416
WalterBright wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last time you were forced to buy something you didn't want?

Today. I'm forced to buy and pay for Google's bundled AI crap even though I don't want it and never consented to it.

No you weren't. Did Google threaten you with imprisonment?
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