It's clear I know nothing about economics. - Page 9

cwtnospam · 02-14-2009, 10:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aehurst


	Agree with all on the bonus thing.... I'd show them the door for even suggesting they thought they had earned one.

Claiming that they have done something worthy of a bonus is fraud, so I can't understand why they aren't arrested.

Woodsman · 02-15-2009, 04:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aehurst


	Of course. We established earlier in this thread that only individuals can think. That would extend to only individuals can care, too. Corporations are not individuals.

Yes they are, Just not human individuals. They fulfill the criteria for life-forms, do they not? Namely self-preservation and replication. In fact, for animal life, since they're motile. They have an energy budget, respond to stimuli, evade danger and predate on other life-forms. Darn things are always reproducing, too (covers the children's eyes). In place of DNA they use Excel: their behaviour is coded in business plans. An algorithm is an algorithm is an algorithm, who cares whether it's a Turing machine, a complex molecule or a ring-binder with a logo? It's not even a counter-argument that they are composed of human individuals as well as their coding (the people are like messenger molecules); for we ourselves are emergent properties of bacteria.

tw · 02-15-2009, 04:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Woodsman


	Yes they are, Just not human individuals. They fulfill the criteria for life-forms, do they not? Namely self-preservation and replication. In fact, for animal life, since they're motile. They have an energy budget, respond to stimuli, evade danger and predate on other life-forms. Darn things are always reproducing, too (covers the children's eyes). In place of DNA they use Excel: their behaviour is coded in business plans. An algorithm is an algorithm is an algorithm, who cares whether it's a Turing machine, a complex molecule or a ring-binder with a logo? It's not even a counter-argument that they are composed of human individuals as well as their coding (the people are like messenger molecules); for we ourselves are emergent properties of bacteria.

well, it that's the case, then it's clear from this economic crisis that these corporate beasts are a danger to their own survival. I suggest we set up a corporate preservation range (somewhere in Africa maybe) where they can run free in a controlled economic environment. or maybe we should just cull the herd - sell licenses for hunting corporations and knock down the population to a manageable and safe size. they're easy to catch, really; set out some electronic transfers as bait and hide behind a hedge fund until they show up, then blammo.

aehurst · 02-15-2009, 07:44 AM

If you want to get rid of a species around here, you just spread the word... "They taste good in gumbo and they're out of season."

cwtnospam · 02-15-2009, 10:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tw


	... or maybe we should just cull the herd ...

The only solution that would end up creating plenty of good jobs. Unfortunately, their urge for self preservation has effectively rendered our one tool for doing that (Antitrust) effectively moot.

NovaScotian · 02-15-2009, 11:47 AM

The problem with culling is that it will be quite a while before new entities spring up to replace the jobs lost. I think there are going to be a number of failures, and I hope that includes several of the bandits, but it will happen too slowly for the millions now out of a job.

cwtnospam · 02-15-2009, 01:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NovaScotian


	The problem with culling is that it will be quite a while before new entities spring up to replace the jobs lost. I think there are going to be a number of failures, and I hope that includes several of the bandits, but it will happen too slowly for the millions now out of a job.

Not really. Remember that we're not talking about shooting the company! Breaking a company up into several smaller pieces causes each of them to immediately need more managers and more hourly workers too! You also end up with multiple CEOs and boards of directors, although of smaller companies and with smaller pay. This means more people with money to spend while fewer people have so much money that they can't spend it all! It's a huge win for the economy.

The irony is that companies sell buyouts/mergers as being necessary for "efficiency" as if a more efficient company is good for the economy. It's really only good for that company's bottom line, hurting employees through layoffs and customers by limiting their choices without lowering prices. If anything, prices go up due to lower competition.

ArcticStones · 02-15-2009, 04:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cwtnospam


	Unfortunately, their urge for self preservation has effectively rendered our one tool for doing that (Antitrust) effectively moot.

Does the USA still have an antitrust law?

I cannot recall reading a single story from this millennium about the US Department of Justice bringing an antitrust case before the courts. Any examples to the contrary?

NovaScotian · 02-15-2009, 04:34 PM

U.S. vs Microsoft (concerning bundling of Explorer with Windows)

ArcticStones · 02-15-2009, 04:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NovaScotian


	U.S. vs Microsoft (concerning bundling of Explorer with Windows)

Ah, yes, I remember that. For some reason I didn’t think of it as Antitrust, but obviously it was.

Any cases of the authorities splitting or threatening to split companies, or the like?

NovaScotian · 02-15-2009, 04:49 PM

Not recent, but of course there was the whole AT&T breakup some years ago. For a complete listing see this link

aehurst · 02-15-2009, 05:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NovaScotian


	Not recent, but of course there was the whole AT&T breakup some years ago. For a complete listing see this link

Ah, yes. The big AT&T breakup into smaller phone companies. After a few years with the immediate past administration, they bought them back in this area at least. The old AT&T became SW Bell, which was bought back by AT&T last year.

Still competition for phone service, but AT&T is now in the digital TV delivery business, too, along with wireless, land lines and DSL. The beast is back but not quite the monopoly they once were.

And Verizon just bought Alltel... and the consolidations continue. Suspect without intervention, AT&T will eventually own it all again.

cwtnospam · 02-15-2009, 06:17 PM

AT&T and Microsoft were from the latter part of the 20th century, and in this century they both became moot. Microsoft was let off the hook, and AT&T has been allowed to begin the process of reconstituting itself, although I believe it was SBC that bought AT&T, not the reverse.

I don't believe there is a single case this century, yet. That's got to be a significant part of our troubles.

aehurst · 02-15-2009, 07:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cwtnospam


	AT&T ....., although I believe it was SBC that bought AT&T, not the reverse.

Guess it depends on how you look at it.... I used to make the check out (bill pay actually) to SBC for the phone, but now it goes to AT&T. My email still has SBCGlobal, but all communication is now on the AT&TYahoo! page and the charges come on my AT&T bill.

eValuone · 02-16-2009, 08:33 AM

All,

I have been trying and trying to find an analogue of our thread here which can explain how this thread has unearthed so many paradoxes.

A key one is "negation is subjective." But that one didn't go anywhere.

But it is important! Why? We talk economically about breaking corporations up. Splitting. Division. Etc. All of those are some form of 'recursive' subtraction. If negation IS subjective, then we have some serious issues if we assume negation is only 'objective.'

Classicists tend to use classical theories to speak about topics like economics. For example, most of us use Newtonian ontological notions to speak in common English.

Too, a huge mistake classicists make is to linguistically follow J. C. Maxwell's thermodynamics. But that is an error, also. Maxwell treated all of reality as though it were 'positive entropy.' Worse, his 'positive entropy' had a single gradient: positive (ultimate heat death of all; Prigogine and Stengers invalidated Maxwell in 1970s and 1980s).

Most classical physicists and scientists today treat all energy as though it were posentropic. Another error. New physics tells us about other classes of entropy: negative, and zero, and mixtures of those with positive.

(Antitrust) Splitting and dividing and adding and subtracting...standard logical ideas in classic thought simply do not work in those classes of entropy as they do in positive entropy.

There are analogues of various classes of entropy in all of our discussions of economics in this thread. But we are (appear to be) treating them as one class: positive.

As long as we do that, we will just keep emitting a Babel of paradoxes.

Please do not take what I have written above as a negative. It is intended as a positive across a large set of classes of entropy.

Respectfully,

eValuone.

cwtnospam · 02-16-2009, 09:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aehurst


	Guess it depends on how you look at it....

Not really:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0.../sbc_att2.html
Keeping the AT&T name was just a marketing ploy.

NovaScotian · 02-16-2009, 09:56 AM

Translation: Entropy is a calculable measure of disorder. Maxwell believed that entropy always increased in physical processes; that these processes always became disorderly (think herding cats), but that their history could be calculated by reversing time in the equations describing them. Prigogine showed (and won a Nobel prize for) that there are certain dissipative structures (the weather, e.g.) for which this cannot be true, and further that there exist self-organizing structures for which entropy flux is not always positive.

If I may, eValuone's point, as I see it, is that in this thread we have all assumed that the economy cannot fix itself, that it will not recover without massive intervention, but that this may not be true at all --

cwtnospam · 02-16-2009, 10:07 AM

My assumption is that the economy could fix itself if it were not for interference by entities larger than most governments: corporations. Massive intervention is necessary to mitigate the damage these organizations have done and continue to do. We need to break them apart because we can't intervene forever. Eventually, even our intervention will become a problem for the system.

aehurst · 02-16-2009, 10:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cwtnospam


	Not really: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0.../sbc_att2.html Keeping the AT&T name was just a marketing ploy.

I stand corrected.

AT&T bought Southwestern Bell (my provider), and SBC, a former baby bell, bought AT&T. In any case, I think that's what happened.

eValuone · 02-16-2009, 11:35 AM

All,

My point is more about how we think about economics (and other intellectual pursuits).

For example, if we see a human body or a corporation as a machine...yet neither is a machine...rather as some have suggested...evolutionary entities with emergent properties.

If we try to fix an emergent system using machine tools...

Or if we try to fix a machine using emergent memes...

Both in a sense are like looking at Earth as though its flat. Or totally stopped and not changing.

Emergence depends upon two additional entropic notions: negative entropy (Schrodinger), and zero-integer entropies (bosonic reality). Positive entropy by itself is incapable of creation and its inverse (which Prigogine and Stengers showed, i.e., two positive entropy gradients one dissapative and other productive, latter essence of Schrodinger's "life itself").

If we are having trouble understanding economics, perhaps our problem is HOW we think about problems in reality.

Thank you for your patience,

eValuone.

02-15-2009, 11:47 AM	#166
NovaScotian League Commissioner Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Halifax, Canada Posts: 5,156	The problem with culling is that it will be quite a while before new entities spring up to replace the jobs lost. I think there are going to be a number of failures, and I hope that includes several of the bandits, but it will happen too slowly for the millions now out of a job. __________________ 17" MBP, OS X; 27" iMac, both OS X 10.10.x (latest)

02-15-2009, 04:34 PM	#169
NovaScotian League Commissioner Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Halifax, Canada Posts: 5,156	U.S. vs Microsoft (concerning bundling of Explorer with Windows) __________________ 17" MBP, OS X; 27" iMac, both OS X 10.10.x (latest)

02-15-2009, 04:49 PM	#171
NovaScotian League Commissioner Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Halifax, Canada Posts: 5,156	Not recent, but of course there was the whole AT&T breakup some years ago. For a complete listing see this link __________________ 17" MBP, OS X; 27" iMac, both OS X 10.10.x (latest)

02-16-2009, 09:56 AM	#177
NovaScotian League Commissioner Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Halifax, Canada Posts: 5,156	Translation: Entropy is a calculable measure of disorder. Maxwell believed that entropy always increased in physical processes; that these processes always became disorderly (think herding cats), but that their history could be calculated by reversing time in the equations describing them. Prigogine showed (and won a Nobel prize for) that there are certain dissipative structures (the weather, e.g.) for which this cannot be true, and further that there exist self-organizing structures for which entropy flux is not always positive. If I may, eValuone's point, as I see it, is that in this thread we have all assumed that the economy cannot fix itself, that it will not recover without massive intervention, but that this may not be true at all -- __________________ 17" MBP, OS X; 27" iMac, both OS X 10.10.x (latest)

02-15-2009, 07:44 AM	#164
aehurst MVP Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Sherwood, Arkansas, USA Posts: 1,320	If you want to get rid of a species around here, you just spread the word... "They taste good in gumbo and they're out of season."

02-15-2009, 06:17 PM	#173
cwtnospam League Commissioner Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 8,475	AT&T and Microsoft were from the latter part of the 20th century, and in this century they both became moot. Microsoft was let off the hook, and AT&T has been allowed to begin the process of reconstituting itself, although I believe it was SBC that bought AT&T, not the reverse. I don't believe there is a single case this century, yet. That's got to be a significant part of our troubles.

02-16-2009, 08:33 AM	#175
eValuone Triple-A Player Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 90	All, I have been trying and trying to find an analogue of our thread here which can explain how this thread has unearthed so many paradoxes. A key one is "negation is subjective." But that one didn't go anywhere. But it is important! Why? We talk economically about breaking corporations up. Splitting. Division. Etc. All of those are some form of 'recursive' subtraction. If negation IS subjective, then we have some serious issues if we assume negation is only 'objective.' Classicists tend to use classical theories to speak about topics like economics. For example, most of us use Newtonian ontological notions to speak in common English. Too, a huge mistake classicists make is to linguistically follow J. C. Maxwell's thermodynamics. But that is an error, also. Maxwell treated all of reality as though it were 'positive entropy.' Worse, his 'positive entropy' had a single gradient: positive (ultimate heat death of all; Prigogine and Stengers invalidated Maxwell in 1970s and 1980s). Most classical physicists and scientists today treat all energy as though it were posentropic. Another error. New physics tells us about other classes of entropy: negative, and zero, and mixtures of those with positive. (Antitrust) Splitting and dividing and adding and subtracting...standard logical ideas in classic thought simply do not work in those classes of entropy as they do in positive entropy. There are analogues of various classes of entropy in all of our discussions of economics in this thread. But we are (appear to be) treating them as one class: positive. As long as we do that, we will just keep emitting a Babel of paradoxes. Please do not take what I have written above as a negative. It is intended as a positive across a large set of classes of entropy. Respectfully, eValuone.

02-16-2009, 10:07 AM	#178
cwtnospam League Commissioner Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 8,475	My assumption is that the economy could fix itself if it were not for interference by entities larger than most governments: corporations. Massive intervention is necessary to mitigate the damage these organizations have done and continue to do. We need to break them apart because we can't intervene forever. Eventually, even our intervention will become a problem for the system.

02-16-2009, 11:35 AM	#180
eValuone Triple-A Player Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 90	All, My point is more about how we think about economics (and other intellectual pursuits). For example, if we see a human body or a corporation as a machine...yet neither is a machine...rather as some have suggested...evolutionary entities with emergent properties. If we try to fix an emergent system using machine tools... Or if we try to fix a machine using emergent memes... Both in a sense are like looking at Earth as though its flat. Or totally stopped and not changing. Emergence depends upon two additional entropic notions: negative entropy (Schrodinger), and zero-integer entropies (bosonic reality). Positive entropy by itself is incapable of creation and its inverse (which Prigogine and Stengers showed, i.e., two positive entropy gradients one dissapative and other productive, latter essence of Schrodinger's "life itself"). If we are having trouble understanding economics, perhaps our problem is HOW we think about problems in reality. Thank you for your patience, eValuone.