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A New Way to Learn Economics (newyorker.com)
John Cassidy, writing for The New Yorker: With the new school year starting, there is good news for incoming students of economics -- and anybody else who wants to learn about issues like inequality, globalization, and the most efficient ways to tackle climate change. A group of economists from both sides of the Atlantic, part of a project called CORE Econ, has put together a new introductory economics curriculum, one that is modern, comprehensive, and freely available online. In this country, many colleges encourage Econ 101 students to buy (or rent) expensive textbooks, which can cost up to three hundred dollars, or even more for some hardcover editions. The project is a collaborative effort that emerged after the world financial crisis of 2008-9, and the ensuing Great Recession, when many students (and teachers) complained that existing textbooks didn't do a good job of explaining what was happening. In many countries, groups of students demanded an overhaul in how economics was taught, with less emphasis on free-market doctrines and more emphasis on real-world problems.
I always thought the best way to learn econ was countless hours of Dopewars.
"...who wants to learn about issues like inequality, globalization, and the most efficient ways to tackle climate change..."
That's not a list of economics subjects, that's a political agenda.
-Styopa
[Golf clap].
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The very fact that the first line of this article reads like the beginning of a manifesto for far left causes was the first warning sign. The fact that this tripe goes out of it's way to mention Marxist economics pretty much closes the case. Given the fact that Marxism is probably the worst way to run an economy and society that the human species has yet come up with.
Perhaps most damning is the very fact they spend more time in this article talking about how they're going to influence people than the pros and cons of this new teaching methodology. Good ideas don't need PR nearly as much as starting with your best ideas first than prove that they work with imperial evidence.
I'll just stick with playing this for my kids every Christmas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I would say indoctrination in the sense that economics is supposed to be about understanding how the economy works. Free market simply references the market forces of supply and demand, how they impact prices, and things that may (or may not) cause them to change, and why. Issues like inequality and climate change, while related to economics, are orthogonal issues. It sounds like they're trying to change a subject that focuses on a mixture of mathematics, politics, and psychology to that of a humanities class.
They do have a point about not adequately explaining the cause of the great recession, but that is a failure on the part of whoever is teaching the macroeconomics courses at the schools in question, and not necessarily the study of economics as a whole. One of the major failures of colleges these days is that while they are good at giving you knowledge, they totally fail at teaching you how to think. Muddying these two topics would only make that worse, as it teaches against examining topics from an "all other things being equal" perspective, which it just so happens is critical to economics.
Science isn't leftwing or rightwing. Science supports a lot of things, but one of the things science does, is force people to prove their points. The process of Politics is a separate process. Science should be left to scientists, not politicians. I'm sick of people selectively remembering "science" when it is politically expedient.
Case in point, all the left wing loons that are blaming two hurricanes on Trump's election and global warming. Where were they the last 10 years or so, when hurricanes were practically none existent, where they citing the lack of hurricanes on Global Cooling?
And I don't see any Coastal Elitists volunteering for living in 3rd world conditions to lower their own carbon footprint. They want their coal fired electricity to power their Teslas, releasing more carbon than if they drove a SUV (exaggeration to make a point) . http://shrinkthatfootprint.com...
Science shows what is, not what ought to be. It shows what is possible, not what is capable.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Power always concentrates, whether it be in your government or in corporations. Or in that group of parents whose kids get special consideration in return for their generous giving.
Free market forces help spread this power, but when that fails (and it sometimes does), regulations seek to fill the gap. So do regulations which provide checks and balances within the structures of government.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Just flip a coin. No matter what position you want to take in economics some "expert" can be found to validate it.
What a bunch of drivel. We need more emphasis on free-market doctrines and how/why the system we have currently isn't. The more we try to add Marxist ideology to today's society, the more problems we introduce.
Allow me to point out some of the issues that make show how problematic the free-market ideology really is.
I'm not touting marxism, I'm just pointing out that capitalism isn't good everywhere like you seem to think it is.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
From the Article:
" In many countries, groups of students demanded an overhaul in how economics was taught, with less emphasis on free-market doctrines and more emphasis on real-world problems." Read: Karl Marx good, Adam Smith Bad
To the contrary. For some reason, right-wingers never actually read Adam Smith; they just heard somewhere that he talked about the invisible hand, and they fail to pay attention to all of the many, many parts of Wealth of Nations in which he discusses ways that unregulated free markets fail without government intervention, and that some things can't possibly function well in the free market, so they need to be run by the government for the sake of the greater good.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
can't be taught it. If you haven't learned fundamental things like "there's no free lunch" by the time you turn 15, you're hopeless.
In a true "free market" everything is free and equally available to all participants at equal cost: most importantly knowledge.
False. This assumption assumes that all goods are of equal value and availability and cost the same to make everywhere. Hurricane Irma proved this to be false where normally supplied goods were simply not available. Free Markets allow for price changes to compensate people for supplying goods in short supply that are harder to get during certain circumstances. While we all hate gouging, price freezes keeps additional supply from entering that market, because the cost to bring those goods in isn't rewarded with higher prices. Which leads invariably to ... no supplies at all. (I will give a good example)
profit derived from trade available to merchants and so on is wholly due to the lack of a free market: where both products and information are not available to all participants.
Again, this is patently false. Profit is derived from providing a product or service as a price someone is willing to pay, sufficient to cover the cost of doing business with extra left over. (example following)
Hurricane is bearing down on Florida, government declares "No Price Gouging" (subjective term) and Cases of bottled water sell for the same price as the day before, and pretty soon, all supplies are gone. People buying WAY more water than they need (irrational), and others not able to get any water at any price. The price doesn't matter to those that don't have any water, or the people who have more than they need. Because "No Price Gouging" is the law, nobody is able to take a truck from Atlanta or New Orleans, fill it up with Cases of water and drive to Miami and sell water, because ... there is no "profit" in it at the "No Price Gouging" price (whatever that is)
In a free market, prices adjust to the market conditions. As supplies become rare, the price goes up, as supply is returned because there is higher profits, the price drops back to normal. The information doesn't change, what does change is irrational behavior (I'm buying 199 cases because!!!!) becomes more reasoned (I can't afford $40 case x 199 cases) and others who wanted water can now get the water they need. In the No Price Gouging world, there were no limits placed and plenty of people did without bottled water.
Yes, raw economics is void of any compassion. It is also without any passion. It just is. It accounts for pure rationality when that is the case, and pure irrationality when that is the case (see Dutch Tulip case) Eventually equilibrium happens.
The fact is, we don't live is a economically free environment, we already have plenty of interference and controls placed. And it is never enough. My last example is in regard for the case of Net Neutrality, instead of fixing the problem (government interference in free market, via Franchise agreements) we add in more government controls which won't do what proponents think it will do, and cause more issues than it actually solves. The real solution is to build out last mile in such a way that the free market offers people the services they want, at whatever price the market will bear. I want municipal owned infrastructure, but be able to order the services I want from the vendor of my choice, rather than have my only option be Comcast with Net Neutrality.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
"If you're not paying for the service, you're not the customer, you're the product."
Makes you wonder who the customer of this textbook actually is, doesn't it?
If you will allow me a small rebuttal.
* The 2008 collapse: according to the free-market ideology, we should have allowed all the banks to fail. The fallout from this would have been an actual depression.
-- Citation needed. If we bring back the risk to banking institutions and allow them to actually work in a free market, you won't have the huge bubbles that we do now. The collapse in 2008 was brought about because people like Maxine Watters and Al Franklin thought it best to remove the risk to banks to provide very risky home loans to people who should have never obtained them.
* Healthcare: according to the free-market ideology, if you don't like what they are charging for medications or surgeries, you just don't buy it. This has resulted in the untimely death of sick people.
-- Odd that the portions of healthcare that are only free market are far cheaper than the government regulated side. (laser eye surgery) The notion that the free market can't work in healthcare is to be blind to how it actually does work.
* Disaster events: according to the free-market ideology, we shouldn't help those who are now homeless because they did not pay for the proper insurance.
-- Yes, because the free market doesn't allow for charity?!? WTF.
* The prison system: according to the free-market ideology, private prisons should be attempting to maximize the number of inmates by any means. This results in a higher prison population with longer sentences. This is actually happening.
-- This is the one argument I will give you credit for. It really has become much like the fire departments of old. Where they would start fires just to respond to them to make money. I suspect the answer here is more of a change in attitude towards things like illicit drugs and such. Being a libertarian, I do find a need for a small government, and this is one area where I depart ways with my AnCap brethren.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
The people writing a textbook based on idiotic Marxist dogma?
Look, they may lean left, they may even believe in Social Justice, but there is no "Marxist dogma" about globalization and climate change. If you click on the link, and skim the book, you can see that their views are more in line with Thomas Piketty than Karl Marx. Calling them "Marxists" makes about as much sense as calling Milton Friedman a Nazi (yes, people have done that too).
While I agree that Marxism does not work, neither does the free market. The test of any economic system if it meets the needs of its people. Marxism or at least the communist versions of Marxism failed. Under these systems there were shortages of basic goods such as food and clothes.
Under the U.S. system, while we have plenty of food and clothes many people struggle to make ends meet. Our health care system is a failure with millions of people uninsured and many people with insurance who cannot afford medical care because of deductibles or copays. College is also unaffordable for many. So while we have plenty of food and clothes, many people cannot afford to meet their basic needs, especially when it comes to health care and education.
The systems that seem to work best are the hybrid systems that combine the free market and socialism, such as the Scandinavian. They use the free market where appropriate and they use socialism where appropriate thereby meeting the needs of all or almost all of their citizens.
Marxism has failed every real world test it's been put to.
Reverse of no true Scotsman: if it didn't fail, it's not true Marxism. :)
The Scandinavian socialist countries (Denmark, Sweden, etc.) seem to be doing quite well for themselves. And there are plenty of capitalist countries where you wouldn't want to live there unless you were among the ruling elite.
Point being, there's isn't some straight and narrow path where one little misstep leads to disaster. Some countries have high taxes and do reasonably well while other countries have low taxes and do reasonably well.
That's not to say that good government doesn't matter: it does - a lot. But it's not a simple black and white matter of communism versus capitalism.
* The 2008 collapse: according to the free-market ideology, we should have allowed all the banks to fail. The fallout from this would have been an actual depression.
So, instead of a year or three of depression and then a return to a healthier market, we get close to a decade (and still counting) of bitter recession. Plus, we are still set to repeat the collapse again and again, just in different industries/financial institutions as little of real relevance has changed because they weren't forced to and instead got bailouts at taxpayer expense.
* Healthcare: according to the free-market ideology, if you don't like what they are charging for medications or surgeries, you just don't buy it. This has resulted in the untimely death of sick people.
This is where in the past private charity stepped in, but those have mostly been replaced by government programs that are horribly inefficient, often fail to provide adequate care, and hold back medical care advances with government red tape.
* Disaster events: according to the free-market ideology, we shouldn't help those who are now homeless because they did not pay for the proper insurance.
Yeah, it was terrible in Houston with all those people who brought boats from across the US demanding cash payments up front and abandoning those who couldn't pay to die...oh, wait....
* The prison system: according to the free-market ideology, private prisons should be attempting to maximize the number of inmates by any means. This results in a higher prison population with longer sentences. This is actually happening.
Yeah, those roving bands of private-prison guards snatching people off the street and throwing them in prison must stop...oh, wait....
I'm not touting marxism, I'm just pointing out that capitalism isn't good everywhere like you seem to think it is.
You're confusing and/or conflating capitalism with crony corruption, which is not unique to capitalism at all. Any sufficiently-large government based on any of the major ideologies (socialism, communism, fascism, capitalism) fall victim to the same corruption and 'good old boy'-ism. It's just that at least with capitalism, there probably aren't automated machine gun turrets, concrete walls, moats, and barbed wire to prevent leaving.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
In a true "free market" everything is free and equally available to all participants at equal cost: most importantly knowledge.
False. This assumption assumes that all goods are of equal value and availability and cost the same to make everywhere.
There are a number of conditions required by perfect competition. I don't think you've said quite what you meant to say there.
rather than have my only option be Comcast with Net Neutrality.
Net neutrality has nothing to do with broadband competition.
the problem (government interference in free market
The real solution is to build out last mile in such a way that the free market offers people the services they want, at whatever price the market will bear. I want municipal owned infrastructure
Yeah, me too. I'm a bit of a socialist, so it makes sense. What schizophrenic crack pipe did you pick up on your way home from the Church of the Free Market?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
inequality
There is an ongoing debate in macroeconomics about the role of inequality. Does inequality impact growth, and if so negatively or positively? How do we measure inequality, and more generally distribution of resources? How do economic systems, and specific policy choices, influence the distribution of income and resources?
These are fundamental aspects of economic study.
globalization
Again...what is "globalization?" How do we measure it? How has it benefited or harmed different countries and different segments of society within countries? How do we measure that? Why have these effects been visited on these particular groups? Can we build quantitative models around these ideas? Do those models have predictive power? How can we measure their predictive power? How can we establish confidence in model outputs?
Especially given that there are conflicting viewpoints across the political spectrum, it's hard to see an inherent political aim in discussing this important contemporary economic movement (e.g. there are right-wing populists and left-wing populists who write that they oppose globalization, and right- and left-wing thinkers who favor globalization, in both cases often for different reasons).
climate change
How do different climate outlooks effect economic prospects? How does the existence of these outlooks effect economic behavior of individuals, firms, and nations? How do we measure climate risk? What are the economic effects of potential mitigation efforts? What level of risk should motivate what degree of mitigation cost, given various estimates of uncertainty? How can these ideas be placed in a quantitative framework? How can model output be assessed given the scale and ongoing nature of the topic? Are there past climatic events with known economic impacts? How do we measure those impacts? How do they compare to current data? And on and on.
It only takes a moment's reflection to note the importance of these questions, and their relevance to the study of economics. That's probably why there are economists from all over the world, and from all over the political spectrum, who spend their academic (or corporate) lives on just these ideas.
.: Semper Absurda
Capitalism might have its flaws, but it best mirrors human nature. We're imperfect as well. It harnesses our flaws to motivate people. It corrects surplus and scarcity based on our flaws. Nothing can ever be perfect. But at least, it has a feedback mechanism that works with our imperfections. It's the basis for barter and trade and pretty much every market that's ever existed. Even in socialist experiments, market based economies sprout up underground. It's the natural order of things. The premise always is some people value something more than others and are willing to trade something of value to the other person to get it.
Socialist economies assume they can social engineer people and foist on them what some entity believes is best for them. It believes that human nature can be ignored and ideals can rule. That's why such systems keep failing. They're not based in reality.
Marxism is more specific than 'Socialist'. If 'The means of production' are in private hands, it's not Marxist.
The scandinavian countries are, generally speaking 'capitalist welfare states'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
LOLwut? These were bought-and-paid-for politicians doing what their masters wanted, which was a bailout at taxpayer expense and with little change to how they do business, which was enabled by the same corrupt politicians to begin with.
It used to be that churches, benevolent organizations, and private charities filled the role of healthcare safety net before the massive expansion of government entitlement programs as regular people could afford to give to charities because they were not being taxed to the edge of insolvency to pay for bloated, corrupt, and hugely wasteful government entitlement programs and the massive bureaucracy that goes hand-in hand with them.
People voluntarily & freely gave of their money, time, and resources. It was the most "free market" possible.
People give more when they aren't forced under threat of deadly force or imprisonment as government "charity" is.
The basic idea of privatization is sound from an economic standpoint, the problem is with trying to implement such a system within a bloated, corrupt government that has grown far too large & powerful as the US government has.
I wrote what I meant. Crony corruption occurs in every form of government. There is 'crony-capitalism', 'crony-communism', 'crony-socialism', etc etc etc. As I stated in my previous post, it occurs when any government becomes too large & powerful. It is not endemic to capitalism, it is endemic to governments which have grown too large & powerful. "Free market" or not is irrelevant.
Well, not too long ago East Germany had this little tourist attraction called the "Berlin Wall". Maybe you've heard of it? I don't recall East Germany building it while they were a capitalist nation.
Selective memory, much?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
There is an ongoing debate in macroeconomics about the role of inequality.
It's not much of a debate......some economists wish they could prove inequality hurts economic growth, but they've been unsuccessful. If inequality does have an impact on economic growth, it's small enough that it's really hard to measure (getting lost in the noise).
Besides, if you want to research those things, get a PhD. Economics 101 should be teaching the basics, the well-established aspects of economics.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
They did specifically mention inequality, which all flavors of socialism and communism claim to solve (which is false; all they do replace the meritocracy of capitalism with a political caste system that offers almost no chance for ordinary people to move up within.) This is also ignoring the fact that having equality is actually impossible to begin with.
Also (and I'm not sure if they mentioned this) anybody who subscribes to the idea of socioeconomic classes of rich, middle, and poor, is buying into a concept popular among communists who want to drive a wedge between people so they can have their glorious revolutions (which only end poorly for those who they claim to represent) under the farce concept called class warfare.
You are making the common mistake of believing that the goal of Marxism is the betterment of humanity.
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You are promulgating a lie. "Perfect information" is a straw man created by some enemies of capitalism in order to discredit capitalism. FWIW information is also a product, which can be charged for.
Any claim that some system of human affairs is perfect is untrue. Knowledgeable and honest adherents of Capitalism do not claim that Capitalism is perfect. Capitalists acknowledge the necessity of a court system to handle disputes, that alone shows that they understand that Capitalism isn't perfect.
First, a lesson in English grammar and logic: in any statement like the above made without any qualifiers, the qualifiers "all" and "always" are presumed. Thus your statement reads in full "All companies always lie and cheat all their customers." This is obviously false, and a little thought reveals that if it were close to true civilization would be impossible.
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The Scandinavian socialist countries (Denmark, Sweden, etc.) seem to be doing quite well for themselves. And there are plenty of capitalist countries where you wouldn't want to live there unless you were among the ruling elite.
This is false (or at least misleading) because those countries are capitalist in every sense of the word. For that sentence to make sense, you have to understand the difference between free market, welfare, and socialism.
Capitalism first and foremost means that the means of production is owned by private individuals, and they are sold on a free market.
Free market means that when you trade something, its price is determined by the forces of supply and demand, as opposed to a governing entity requiring otherwise. There are many schools of thought on just how unencumbered a market can to still be considered free, as even things like price ceilings or wage floors can still be considered free market, but that is another topic that is highly debatable with many valid arguments on all sides.
Welfare means that a governing entity is paying money to a private party on your behalf so that you can obtain something. For example in food stamps, the government is giving the merchant money so that they give you food.
Socialism means that the means of production (i.e. factories, farms, infrastructure) is owned by the government, and the people who do the producing (i.e. workers) are also employed by the government, and the government sets prices. This is also called a planned economy. If you look up the definition of socialism, you'll see exactly this, though it may also say that the means of production is communally owned, which in practice when a community sets rules and laws, the community is in fact a government.
Now, back to Scandinavian countries: They are, in fact, capitalist, with a strong welfare component, which again fits within capitalism without being socialism at all. However, just like all western countries, they do have a few socialized (read: government owned) industries. Examples include road construction, water utilities, power utilities, trash collection, etc. In some western countries (namely England) the health care industry is also government owned. In others, the health care system is still privatized but is entirely welfare driven (Australia for example.)
Taking the example of Sweden, you are not talking about a static social system. Sweden had one of the world's freest economies for a long time; it prospered and became relatively rich.
Then Sweden voted to become socialist. The work ethic continued for a while (after all, when it's as cold as Sweden is, it's pretty obvious that if you don't produce, you die) but eventually the corrosive effects of socialism weakened that, and the economic drain on previously great companies caused them to become unprofitable or to move out of Sweden or be bought out. It got so bad that by about 1980 the most profitable economic entity in Sweden was the pop group ABBA.
More recently, some in Sweden have seen the error of its ways, and some reforms have been instituted that are helping Sweden start to trend back to prosperity. Dishonest or ignorant people will continue to claim that this improvement is due to socialism. Not even close to true.
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They did specifically mention inequality
Adam Smith also mentioned inequality. So does that make him a Marxist as well?
Karl Marx advocated government ownership of the means of production, take by force from the capitalists, without compensation. Please follow the link in TFA to the textbook, and see if you can find even a single passage that advocates anything even remotely comparable.
You can also find physicists that will say _anything_, even ones who have made otherwise good contributions. Take Nikola Tesla for example.
That aside, economics is actually whats called a soft science, but it's by far not alone in having that title, mainly because economic theories rely heavily on another well known soft science: Psychology. In fact, all social sciences are soft sciences, because people are highly unpredictable animals.
Pretty much the only hard natural sciences are all of the physics and chemistry disciplines, with biology *somewhat* being a hard science, but equally a soft one at the same time (look at the controversy over what diet is the best diet, for example.)
The combination of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland is about 80% of the population of Venezuela. Venezuela depends on the combination of a relatively small population and the export (to capitalistic nations) of natural resources to fund the social programs.
Would you like to explain the difference in economic success?
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This is an interesting point, how does it actually work? Who creates demand and supply in the healthcare "market"? How many demand side actors in this market are actually able to come to a reasonably informed decision regarding their needs or form an opinion regarding the quality of the products and services offered by suppliers? Have you ever noticed the difference between say cars or health, where in the former if you are not satisfied with supply or can't afford any of the offerings, you can decide to not buy a car, where in some instances of the latter you'll die if you can't afford what supply can offer or is simply crap? Furthermore, supply side actors can actually create demand, not in the marketing sense by advertising, by making you sick.
To make a long story short: Healthcare is nothing like other markets and shouldn't be a market at all.
I feel so sig.
the gap between rich and poor is extreme
Uhhh, what? The Nordic countries are at the very top when it comes to equality and the smallest gap between rich and poor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And in regards to debt, would you care to find the numbers for the US? Hint: It's not very small at all.
Eat the rich.
Adam Smith even came up with the idea of unconditional basic income, which is like kryptonite to modern day libertarians.
Eat the rich.
Capitalism and socialism are not binary, it's not like a society chooses between them. It's a continuum. Also, it's not unidimensional, there are many other possibilities and qualifiers to which you could "slide" the description of a society.
In full capitalism, there would be *no* state regulation of anything. *No* state-provided services. *No* minimum society support network for those in need (either by the sin of being poor, or after being hit by a natural disaster). That has also failed miserably.
"They do have a point about not adequately explaining the cause of the great recession, but that is a failure on the part of whoever is teaching the macroeconomics courses at the schools in question, and not necessarily the study of economics as a whole."
The failures to explain are many fold but the biggest is the lack of regulation that allowed the banks to create many layers of imaginary macro-instruments overlay on the underlying mortgages, made those banks the sole or primary clients of the firms who were responsible for rating those instruments allowing them to get and continue to get top grade ratings as sound investments, and to disregard reality as those instruments began to fail because they were making such massive profits.
The psychological principal at the heart of capitalist and free market doctrine is critical to understanding the conflict of interest at the heart of all of this. The core of capitalism is greed. People are in fact innately greedy which is why capitalism is so successful vs other systems. But an unregulated greed based system fails on multiple levels because anyone who stands to profit for lose profit as a consequence of the regulation, even indirectly, has a conflict of interest.
Additionally, there is a belief that value is purely perception and you can create potentially unlimited value by increasing perception in the free market system. This isn't true. You can create price inflation which allows you to dillute value and siphon off the overflow but this is like filling half empty bottles of booze with water at a bar, a real economy sits beneath the products and services. There is a sweet spot sought in capitalism where you've watered down the booze some but people are still willing to purchase it. Perhaps you even sell the undilluted stuff at a premium above the watered down booze. You gain greater profits and people consume your product happily so you've created value. What is ignored is that this is another sort of pyramid scheme. You end up purchasing less alcohol so the actual producer of the underlying good has less pressure to produce and reduces production. The alcohol producer eventually raises prices, you pass that increase to the patrons and your watered down drinks now cost as much as the full strength drinks used to cost. Congrats, you've successfully found a way to get the market to bear the increase. But you've reduced overall production of the actual tangible good the currency is meant to represent, because consumers must purchase more drinks to get the same result you've increased the amount consumers must spend on alcohol vs other goods and services that drive the production of actual tangible underlying value. The consumers get fresh paychecks periodically so you create the illusion this isn't a pyramid by looking at your bar in isolation, but across the board others are dilluting the valuation of underlying goods and services as well and there is only so much in those fresh consumer paychecks. Just like bundling a large number of bad investments pretending they become more stable because of 'diversification' is faulty logic, the aggregate of these value dilluting ventures is not to create value but to create a pyramid and at some point there isn't enough new tangible underlying value being produced to sustain it.
The system does not encourage self-regulating away abuse but working around perceived problems, when awareness of pyramids spread enough they simply made the pyramids more complicated to avoid the perception rather than focus on building real value. Just like pyramids turned into MLM schemes. The success of capitalism is to recognize the link between perception and value and greed as the fundamental and unavoidable motivator and to harness both of these. The flaw is to pretend that perceived value is all that exists, this is a flawed model and on macro scale over time the flaws eventually clash with reality. The other flaw is that due to the first flaw and greed motivation self-regulation does not correct issues but only serves to
...it's a game. It always has been, always will be. Most it is common sense math. If you want to get more advanced, read about Economic Game Theory. There are winners and losers. It's not a non-zero sum game. The winners are the ones who know best how to play the game to their advantage much like the old game of Monopoly. If you don't try to win, you're guaranteed to lose.
Life has always been a game of competition. Competition for resources, competition for mates and now with free market economics, it's competition for resources in the form of monetary value. Same as it always was.
We'll make great pets
If you take a look at what monopolies do exist in capitalist areas, you will find they are nearly all created by regulation and not prevented by it. You should reconsider your analysis; perhaps the remaining exploitation can be removed by reducing regulation.
To make a long story short: Healthcare is nothing like other markets and shouldn't be a market at all.
Your argument at face value would apply to many things like food, water, housing, electricity, etc. But in reality "healthcare" is a very broad term... Tylenol for a headache is not an essential need that you'll die without. In most respects healthcare is just like every other market, especially in broad strokes. For instance if we make it easier for doctors to get into business by creating more medical schools and allowing more visas for foreign doctors, doctor salaries will fall. Healthcare is enough of a market that you can predict that.
But, please consider that when power concentrates, such as when those rich kids get special consideration, that power will seek to modify the regulations. In that way, you may hope that the regulations will seek to fill the gap, but they will very often seek with serendipity to preserve or even increase the gap. A regulation to "protect the public", often does little more than keep someone from starting a business. A $200 fee to purchase a "business license" (which does what, exactly?), is a mere nuisance to a monied interest, but is a brick wall to a homeless man seeking to sell his handmade artwork.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Anyone commenting here on the value of this book actually reading it ? I've read through the first four chapters, and have an old MA in political economics. I'm finding this to be excellent, and a decent intro to general economics. Excellent work.
Sorry no. The successive right-wing governments here have tried that, and it's made the situation worse, in every case.
Eat the rich.