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Quotebag #99
“Students of economics learn that the formal usage of the concepts ‘inefficiency’, ‘deadweight loss’, and ‘distortion’ in normative public finance refer to a theoretical setting where a private economy is in competitive equilibrium and a government can use lump-sum taxes to modify the endowments of individuals.”—Yves Smith “I know, for instance, that sales suck dick…
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In a market economy…
…one puts one’s best foot forward.
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Quotebag #98
“It’s the mind- and body-numbing tasks, the tasks that make no use of my particular mental or physical capacities, that require incentive. (That incentive might be as simple as the understanding that somebody’s got to do it and as long as the crappy work is fairly distributed I’m willing to do my part.)”—Yalt “I have…
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I’m an anti-anti-intellectual
Hit on the head again by blogspot.com’s 4KB comment limit. In reply to J. R. Pitt’s Random Ramblings #5 … Is it weird that I’m honestly disturbed by the way anarchists of all sorts tend to disregard the academics and intellectuals? Usually they do so on the basis that intellectuals are “elitist” or that they…
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Definition of market
unperson asks: What is your definition of the market? There’s more than one definition, because the word can be used as different parts of speech. Used as a verb (most important usage IMHO): Shameless self-promotion. “In the market economy you have to market yourself.” Used as a noun: A setting in which marketing takes place,…
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Quotebag #97
“Heritage has an ‘economic freedom index.’ ‘Freedom’ has a specialized meaning to Heritage — financial regulation and regulation to protect workers’ health and safety tends to be treated as a decline in freedom.”—Bill Black (h/t Yves Smith) “The Firm’s succinct relationship motto: Capitalism is a sufficient (though not necessary) condition to destroy liberal political freedom.”—dL…
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That which is for sale is that which is not free
In Why buy the cow if the milk is free? at #WeTheData, UnboundID asks and answers: What would make data sharing acceptable to consumers? Being asked what you’d be willing to share Being given meaningful value for the use of the data A guarantee that the data will be kept secure The ability to update…
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Is there an emerging geopolitical alignment?
L’affaire Snowden has become a sort of Rorschach test for nation states, as have several recent international incidents. The Russia vs. Georgia spat back in the Bush years comes to mind. It’s almost as if you could take a map of the world and color the countries based on reactions to events. Maybe I’m overfitting…
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Quotebag #96
“Are digital commons and urban commons doomed to feed the hand that bites them?”—Tom Slee “There is nothing occurring anywhere on the planet which reasonably justifies the existence of the CIA, the FBI or the NSA. The degree to which someone disagrees with this assertion is the degree to which that person can be relied…
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In pursuit of a nonbusiness model
Any nonbusiness model. A single example of a noncommercial (but also nongovernmental) operating model in the context of any plausibly economic activity in any social setting. Perhaps there is not and never will be and even maybe never can be such an example; demonstrating yet again why nature abhors an anagora. Tom Slee, in Open…