What exactly is implied by the claim that prices incorporate all information? How strong a claim is strong efficiency? More specifically, are price signals a form of lossless compression? In other words, is there a way to derive its input data from its output data? If so, I’m waiting to see a step-by-step method for doing so. If not, I’m anticipating possible excuses. Perhaps prices incorporate all information which is relevant to allocation. My own speculation is that strong efficiency might be a property of a perfectly transparent economy—but would also be redundant information under such conditions. More important to me than whether prices incorporate all information is whether there are more direct ways to uncloak information about economic production and distribution, and of course strategy. I can accept that this is an asymptotic goal, like the frictionless plane or perpetual motion. I have a harder time accepting that a free market (or even a freed market) would be the best of all possible worlds. I have a really hard time being expected to take it on faith that prices are all the information I need in order to make fully-informed economic decisions. If that is the implication of the theory, then it is entirely fitting that market advocates are called “market fundamentalists,” and it shouldn’t be intended as a compliment.
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Quotebag #53
“I am optimistic that in 100 years the world will find a new economic system. I am optimistic that this system wont resemble capitalism or socialism at all.”—Rohit
“While technology offers solutions to resource problems in theory, in practice it also favors greater stratification of wealth and power. If recent trends continue we may be faced with a future of corporate neofeudalism (privatized governance).”—Poor Richard
“Scarcity pricing tickets to an expert’s panel on a new beginning for communism takes chutzpah.”—Jack Crow
“Businesses, especially big ones, aren’t any more efficient or competent than government just because they have to pursue a profit margin. What gives the impression that they are is just that their decisions are made behind closed doors without them being subject to public scrutiny and complaining.”—Eric B.
“Instead of ‘the dismal science,’ economics might be referred to as ‘the dismal religion.’”—Buffalo14
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It’s. Not. Personal.
One of the emotional blocks to acceptance of the market paradigm is difficulty in viewing economic outcomes as impersonal. If, while “living off the land,” or otherwise not engaging in “trade,” I die prematurely because of failure in the struggle against Nature, I can at least find some comfort in the fact that It’s Not Personal. (I’m not one of those people who personify nature.) Just an example of, as Forrest Gump would say, “Shit Happens,” (or on broadcast TV, “It Happens”). Personal failure to carve out a niche, to support myself, to live at least a little bit on my terms—those kinds of thing I tend to take personally. And I am probably not justified in doing so, assuming that economics is an “emergent phenomenon” rather than (as is more comfortable for me to believe) a technology of social control. If aggregate demand is an aggregate of the demands of flesh-and-blood human beings, then if the Invisible Hand says my contributions are worth (say) seven USD per hour, that is the verdict not just of some metaphoric hand, but of my fellow humans. Gee, thankx a lot, jerks. But seriously, folkx, (hint hint to Crafters of Economic Policy) dialing down the frustration level of everyday life from, say, 99% to 90% could turn a lot of us relatively apolitical. It would be great public relations. Either this is outside the ability of the Crafters of Economic Policy (perhaps as a result of the Second Law of Thermodynamics) or they’ve already made their gated comminity arrangements for when the shit hits the fan. For now (if only for my emotional self-preservation) I remain an anagorist.
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Quotebag #52
“Ronald Reagan was an asshole, and it’s high time liberals stopped trying quixotically to score cleverness points by declaring him a better asshole than the assholes the Republicans are now.”—Dale Carrico
“Our problem is not that we don’t have enough stuff — it’s that we don’t have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.”—Douglas Rushkoff
“Having a cell phone and laptop doesn’t magically pay my rent or give me meaningful decision-making power in my workplace. Power relationships count regardless of the shiny toys involved. I want more than improvement in material conditions. I want genuine liberation.”—Summerspeaker
“An English friend of mine once said, when he encountered the annual cost of attending a US uni, ‘Thank god I didn’t have to mortgage my future just to have one’. Those happy days are now, apparently, over.”—Priyanka Nandy
“You add new lanes, even MORE people will drive, putting us right back at square one! Instead of throwing tons of money at a short-term solution, why not spend it on improving bus and rail service and encouraging carpooling? Oh, and get more highway patrol officers to crack down on these violent drivers who pose safety threats to the rest of us.”—Jean-Paul Wong
“So there’ll be a lot less paid work available, and a lot of stuff we’re still paying for will be either free or very cheap. But if you put it all together in the form of a Venn diagram, to what extent will the receipt of income from the remaining paid work overlap with the need to expend money for the remaining goods and services with a money price?”—Kevin Carson
“We need to address the core facts: these corporations, even if they were unable to compete in the electoral arena, would still remain control of society.”—AnonOps Communications
“Party conferences are irrelevant. The private sector runs the world. Let’s start sending thousands of press to their meetings.”—Kate B
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New opinion survey instrument and political spectrum/landscape tabulator in beta testing
As promised the Lee Ideology Sorter (with the new designation “Agnostic Ideology Sorter”) is ready to accept your opinions. At this early stage, it’s not set up for much more than that, but it’s a start. The more people participate in this, the more interesting and perhaps even informative the results will be.
You are invited to try it out:
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If you were an inanimate object, what would you be and why?
God.
If one must be an inanimate object, one may as well be an inanimate object of worship.
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In the market economy, you have to market yourself.
It looks like the Invisible Hand is picking the winners and losers, and entrepreneurship is a requirement for not being a loser, at least according to marginalist dogma. I wonder whether the free-market anticapitalists are OK with this, assuming of course it’s true, as it sure seems to be.
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Precarity explained
Andrew Robinson’s The Precariat and the Cuts is long article, but very readable, and explains the precarity phenomenon from the angle of economic history, local development strategies, credit as means of social control, included and excluded populations—a very comprehensive treatment of the subject.
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Name someone who has significantly influenced the way you see the world.
Robert Anton Wilson. His writings have taught me how to have a sense of humor about things like anarcho-capitalists (even though he probably was one) and more importantly, introduced me to the notion of zeteticism, or “model agnosticism.”
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Ron Paul is not a libertarian
At best, he’s five parts libertarian and twenty three parts Bircher.