Why? They generally have no clue about how useful their innovations are to ordinary people. (Remember my story about the professor who justified memory metal on the grounds that it could reveal fish had been defosted? Yeah.) They're going to be biased in favor of solvers of "difficult" problems which confer no benefit on anyone. Just a thought.
This isn't even a real problem, if you think about. I tried to go to blog I know about recently and I got a bunch of so-called "spam" (ads) instead of the blog content. So I checked it out and I was able to book a great vacation deal from a discount airliner. Hey, if you guys want to stop them from offering great vacation deals, go ahead. I personally like the savings.
Good point, good point. I'm glad the Greens are trying to prevent government contractors from extorting higher-than-market prices for their services. This must be why Greens are against laws "locking in" the government to union labor, right....RIGHT?
What stake do the "non-violent direct violence" Greens have in open source? I mean, they might be a significant part of whoever actually is supporting open source, but are they actually spearheading it themselves? Why? What does this have to do with dismantling capitalism with environmental rhetoric?
If you mean the date the wood used to make the frame was cut down, yes. These kinds of tests have already been done many times.
Really? They did a double blind experiment in which three or more teams of scientists who had no idea from what the sample was drawn and could not communicate with each other, all ran the tests and their answers all matched historical records to 5%?
Not that I don't trust you or anything, but can you give me a citation for when this test was performed?
Btw, I mention betting money because if you're not willing to bet your own money on a proposition, you probably don't seriously belief it yourself. Just a thought.
Regarding your last point: I agree, and I'm familiar with the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, but that's the point I was trying to make to them. They were saying that insurance is free money, but in reality, nothing's free money, because someone else has usually already bid up the price to account for future rents. Now obviously this isn't the case as information suddenly appears (like the first person to notice a 20 dollar bill on the ground), but that obviously doesn't apply here, as the information about the insurance market is very well-known!
Regarding your broader points about barriers of entry, I have to disagree. Lots of markets require a large capital investment and/or initial periods of losses to draw customers away from a company with an established reputation, but investors raise the funds to break into them all the time. No matter how large your company is, it's always tiny relative to the total economy's assets. If profit margins are higher, that - as per the EMH - quickly draws capital from everywhere. Wal-mart has huge assets. Microsoft has huge assets. Lots of oil companies have huge assets. Any one of them can become competitive in insurance markets. You don't need the possibility of any single person competing with established companies for markets to be competitive. Plus, there are dozens of micro-insurers that fit niche markets - like they could with the programmer market. (See A.M. Best's ratings.)
You know, I've actually thought about a semi-related issue for a long time: in football (either kind) or even basketball, when the other team has the ball and is trying to pass to player X, how come no one ever tries to reach their hand out and cover X's eyes to keep him from being able to see where he needs to go? A friend of mine used to do this in informal games and it's extremely effective. Is there a rule against this or something? Does it maybe risk a foul?
Huh? Your gun-to-the-head test is both trivial to perform and provides a readily-measurable result.
*long sigh*
If you were referring to the gun-to-the-head test as the "econometric model", you should quoted that part and then called it an econometric model. Read your post: you responded to the preference/constraint dichotomy and referred to it as an "econometric model". It's not. Ergo, you were being very sloppy, or really didn't know what you were talking about. I believe I erred in your favor, all things considered.
But even setting aside this asinine error of yours and granting that the whole time you *really did mean* (wink wink) to call the gun-to-the-head test and NOT the preference/constraint dichotomy an "econometric model", it still isn't something you can readily measure in a lab setting. Experimental ethics prohibit you from putting someone's life on the line like that, so no threat could be credible. Even if it could be credible, the results could never be evaluated by a peer-reviewed journal because of its violation of ethics. That's why it's a "thought experiment". You'll be sure to learn about those in your intro philosophy or physics classes in college. If you make it in, of course (and, no offense kid, I'm really not betting the farm on that one).
me: First of all, it doesn't make any good-bad distinction; that's a value judgment, which I specifically warned against using and avoided using in the analysis.
you: Which is one reason it is meaningless, as I pointed out in great detail. People are hard-wired to seek certain states and avoid others; certain value judgements are built in.
*longer sigh*
Obviously, I was talking about value judgments *about the patient*, not value judgments the patient makes.
Look, I really can't be bothered to respond to any of your drivel anymore. If you can't even get these basic concepts right, I hold out little hope for you even beginning to grasp the point I was trying to make. Just move on, and find something else you can maybe understand.
Regarding food, I think you refuted it yourself: "A similar argument works for many of the other products we get from agriculture." Actually, a similar argument works for every good. If the clothes supply gets cut off, people will be naked. If the electronics supply gets cut off, we'll go back to the stone age. If the oil supply gets cut off, we're screwed. Why not subsidize everything? Or better yet, why not just have the government provide everything? That will keep us safe and secure, right?
No, it won't. It's much safer to let the legions of clever entrepreneurs do their best to satisfy human desires. If a supply cutoff is expected, speculators bid up the price and buy food futures, mashing out any potential shortage. The only way to stop that is to impose price controls against these entrepreneurs, thereby discouraging them from preparing for these shortages and taking the huge risks to send blockade runners...
Oh, wait, they do impose price controls. Nevermind, you're right:-)
I use $1e9 (no leading zeros btw) because "billion" has different meanings in different parts of the world: I have to clarify it's nine zeros. Go look it up on Wikipedia, I'm not wasting any more time on this.
Now, corporations do generally make money on the research they do, or else corporations that engaged in it would get outcompeted by ones that didn't. Really.
And yes, research should return a profit by the method I described here:
If it doesn't, we were better off just sticking all research funds in an interest bearing account. Research should be for satisfying human problems, not mental masturbation for over-educated good-ol'-boys. If it's better than the alternatives, it will show a profit by my method (even if the actual organizations engaging in it do not make a profit through IP theft, etc.).
You need to remember: research has costs. And it's cost is not $1e9. Its cost is "the best alternative (known at the time) we could have taken with that $1e9". If the research is worse than the obvious alternatives *it was a waste*, no matter how many warm fuzzies you get from hearing about it.
Oh, *I* get it. For you to agree to my double-blind test, we "just have to" include some mechanism by which the scientists testing the sample can "make sure" they take the sample carefully and don't introduce their *own* contamination. So I guess to do that, we have to let them see the painting itself. And golly gee, if one of those scientists happens to recognize the painting and thereby help "massage" his test results, that's just a risk we'll have to take.
*banging head on keyboard*
The fact is, as you seem to agree, scientists can't reliably use carbon-or-whatever dating unless they already know the answer. That's not science; it's religion. If scientists have to be *given* the (unobtainable) knowledge that the sample is not contaminated, that's not a very reliable method, is it?
How about this: one team that's good at extracting samples (who won't introduce their own contamination) will extract the samples. They will, through an intermediary, give the sample to three separate teams of scientists, who must test the sample without communicating with anyone.
You really think they'll get the painting's date right within a margin of error? Name your margin and your wager, or admit you're wrong.
I am sorry, but I really do not care about you that much. While writing the previous post, I considered better options, but I really did not feel like writing them up.
Like hell you didn't! You had to construct an example to "prove" (hah!) me wrong. You picked that one. If you had a better one, you should have used it. You're just as careless creating examples as you are interpreting "positive function" to mean "positive slope function".
Heh. Now, there also exist regions where raising taxes lowers revenues. Of course, that is true also of Laffer's curve. That is pretty much irrelevant to anything, too.
Everybody agrees raising taxes can raise revenues. Laffer presented the obvious yet forgotten insight that raising taxes can also lower revenue. It's not irrelevant: it shows we need to keep in mind that taxing too high can defeat the purpose, something many on the left are unwilling to even consider. Laffer's insight is correct, and even your carefully constructed example validates it.
About the name I proposed for your theory: I thought that was your full name. Usually people who use hyphenated last names have a whole host of names part of their full names, and that includes the names of royalty (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha). Whatever reason you use a hyphenated last name, it's probably stupid. Just use your full name: Suarez-Alvarez de Lopez de Castillo de Gonzales de Madrid de Saxe-Coburg-Gotha de Rodriguez-San Felipe.
I hope I can find you on Google so I can link them to certain posts of yours. I also hope it doesn't cost you your job, although it probably will.
Okay, 100th time: I never claimed the math alone proves the idea. Of course you need to add economic postulates like no tax yields no revenue, full tax yields no revenue, and some tax gives positive revenue. However, no one is really stupid enough to dispute these assumptions. That' why I said you have to refute the math if you claim the Laffer Curve is "refuted". Get it now? If not, work it out tomorrow night after you get home from brick-laying.
Now, let's look at the example you constructed specifically to show a case where the Laffer theory would not hold up despite the validity of the math. Keep in mind, this is a case where you dug to the very depths of your intelligence, and came up with the best possible example. So it should be pretty devastating if I can show that Laffer's claim holds up even under your economic model, don't you agree.
In the example that you specifically constructed to show how I'm wrong and how bright you are, there still exist regions in which raising taxes causes revenues to decline!!! Oops. Back to the drawing board.
By the way, I'm not so sure about this whole idea that you're a math professor. Math professors don't make dumbass mistakes like interpreting "positive function" to mean "positive slope function" and then sticking their necks out on it. For this reason, I'd like to know where you're a math professor so I can tell your colleagues about what went on here. If on the other hand, you're been lying this whole time, quietly slipping out would be the bright thing to do, m'k?
One final mistake: I don't know why you called it the Suarez-Alvarez Theory. Shouldn't it be the Suarez-Alvarez de Lopez de Castillo de Gonzales de Madrid de Saxe-Coburg-Gotha de Rodriguez-San Felipe Theory or something? Just a suggestion.
Wow, you're too oblivious to even realize when you've been beaten. Let's go over this one more time.
I asked how they can calibrate radiodating.
You said it can be verified with things whose age we know.
I asked to test that out by seeing if scientists "get it right" when we know the answer i.e., that the dating method matches historical records.
You refused this simple, basic test on the grounds that contamination might throw off the answer.
I said if contamination invalidates the answer, how do they check the contamination of 65 million year old samples.
You said, well, even if it's contaminated, the average age is whatever the dating method gives, 50,000 years or whatever.
*burying face in hands*
This assumes the method is valid to begin with! But since you refuse simple double-blind calibrations of the method, we can't even validate it for young (under 500 year old) samples! How do we even know it's valid for anything? Oh, that's right. We assume it's right for the average material in the sample. What was I thinking?
Circular reasoning: justifying radiodating since its inception.
Responding to the general point you're making: It's a common for people to remark, "Well, no one can really know X." Now, if this means no one can know X with absolute certainty, it's probably true, but uninteresting. If it means no one can have any certainty about anything, it's false.
In a lot of what you were saying in your post, you mention the difficulties in tabulating the beneficiaries of all this. And it is difficult, you're right. But I'm not assuming, as you claim, perfect knowledge, just reasonable estimates. My examples no doubt heavily simplified things because, for example, amortized costs are a function of the number of buyers and thus the price you charge, making the calculation complicated. Also, you would have to calculate the value of doubling combat effectiveness against non-military uses of funds, and indeed it does get messy.
But even rough calculations are several orders of magnitude better than what you seem to want, which is "fund all basic research irrespective of alternatives or possible uses for it" (yes, I know that's a simplification). I agree that the fruits of basic research are better than the absence of the fruits of basic research. I do not agree that the fruits of basic research are necessarily better than what alternate uses of scarce resources would have yielded, which is a more difficult yet more important question.
Finding out that today's kinds of research are losing propositions in the aggregate does not mean we should fund no research, just that we should focus it more on existing problems, less risky venues, and sooner returns. I know you're probably livid at the idea of doing that to research, but it makes sense once you consider the very real costs of research. When I see a professor try to justify multi-million dollar research into something whose uses are limited to replacing already-cheap memory thermometers, I have to say... are we really researching to make people live longer, better lives, or to give over-educated people make-work jobs?
Parent is right, you don't need high technology to be competitive in global agricultural markets. Because of exchange rates, in most parts of Africa, they can produce more cotton, for example, per dollar input, than American farmers using complex machinery. The only reason we have so many American farmers when Africans can do it cheaper is because of big agricultural subsidies. If we would just end them, individual Africans (not corrupt dictators) would get a huge infusion of cash from their crops. (source: some game at libertyarcade.org, but I'm sure you can verify that elsewhere)
So why do we are we subsidizing Africans out of business, when they can compete perfectly fine on their own? Oh, that's right: because if we didn't subsidize American farmers, we'd run out of crops.::rolls eyes::
Ah, okay, cool, I gotcha, so we gotta make sure the samples are non-contaminated with anything to get radio-dating to work. So, hey, um, what method do they use to verify 65 million year old samples weren't similarly contaminated?
Yeah, that's what I thought. You're sure carbon dating works, just, you know, not enough to put your own, actual money on it.
Circular reasoning: justifying radio-dating since it was first invented.
I know, this is just dreaming, but it would be so cool if any time some ***hole tried to misuse some legal protection to screw Google over, Google would announce to the world:
"We are temporarily discontinuing Google search, mail, adwords, and all other features while [president of ***hole company suing Google] remains alive because we don't want to infringe on his rights."
Then, if that person happens to get shot, hey, they had nothing to do with it, they were just trying not to violate his rights!
That reminds me. If Germans adapt the English, as they like to do, and say "mail" in Gmail, but retain their pronunciation of the letter "g", that means they say "gay mail" when talking about Gmail.
I was claiming that the only thing you need to prove the existence of the Laffer Curve is some very fundamental mathematical theorems and some very trivial assumptions (if you credibly claim you'll take everything, you get nothing... no one has disputed that, here or elsewhere). Then, it's a straight shot to proof. Ergo, if you claim that the curve itself has been refuted, you're claiming that some fundamental mathematical theorems have been overturned (or, you're claiming something even stupider, but I err on the side of overestimating people). Understand now?
I don't know what's so hard for you to understand about "increase". Think about the function f(x)=x^2 defined on [-2,2]. At -2 it's 4 and at 2 it's 4. So I could say, on this bound, it starts a four, and decreases, and then reaches 4 again. That wouldn't mean I'm claiming that x^2 is strictly increasing, which is exactly how you interpreted me! Look at your post again:
"The fact that an increasing function which increases away from zero cannot go back to zero is a triviality once you have set up basic properties of inqualities,"
You thought the function was strictly increasing so it could not go back to zero! Yet that was obviously not what I said. I said in some region after 0, it increases, not that it always increases.
Space program proponents claim: the space program is/was a good idea, because it led to good thing X.
I claim: It does not suffice to show that Y led to good thing X, to prove that Y was a good idea. You must also show that X was better than what not-Y would have led to.
Example: I take $100 from you. I buy a candy bar. I give you the candy bar. I then claim that the Theft-Candy Program was a good idea because it led to you having a candy bar.
You respond: I could have gotten a candy bar for less than $100. Also, there were things I wanted more than a candy bar. If I had spent my own money on my own needs, I would be better off. Therefore, the $100 candy bar was a waste.
Space program proponents: Government takes ~$100e9 from the economy. It bankrolls a trip to the moon. It then notices that some of the things it made with the intent of getting to the mood happen to have uses outside of getting to the moon. It gives people these technologies to people. It then claims the space program was a good idea because it led to us having the technologies.
I respond: I could have gotten those technologies for less than $100e9. Also, there were more pressing needs at the time. If consumers had spend their own money on their own needs, money would have been invested in satisfying demands higher on consumers' priority lists, and they would be better off. Therefore, the $100e9 was a waste.
The only real difference is that people have a "hard time" imagining private industry investing that forgone income in technology, because of public goods' problems, shortsightedness, etc. But those are separate arguments, rarely discussed in the context of the space program. Space program proponents typically stop at "The space program produced good thing X. Ergo, it was better than all alternatives"... which is really a poor argument when you think about it. I didn't start this thread to deny other possible justifications, just to deny that that one is valid.
Let's go over your LCD example again. NASA saw the possibility of LCD technology. More than likely, so did many people not working for NASA. All of those people at the time ruled it out as not being cost effective for consumer and industrial purposes. But NASA wasn't satisfying specific consumer or industrial demands: its solitary goal was to get a man on the moon and get him back safely. That alters the equation. An LCD may be cost-effective for that specific goal. So it produced this thing, which at the time was probably not cost effective for actual other human desires. Had it not happened, those funds would be diverted to higher-ranked cost-effective consumer and industrial demands outside of getting to the moon. Because such funds would then be directly targeted at pressing human desires, rather than getting to the moon, it is very likely they would have yielded something better, as judged by the average person (i.e., the benchmark you used to justify the LCD in the first place).
Now, you do have a point that maybe NASA "saw the light" and "guessed right" that the LCD had more and better uses than entrepreneurs at the time judged. But, like I keep saying, "that's not enough". You have to show that the government's "guessing what satisfies human desires" is correct more often than private entrepreneurs "guessing what satisfies human desires" in the aggregate - i.e., that the Social Security Administration is more efficient than McDonald's. Showing that the government outguessed private industry one time doesn't prove much.
Since private industry directly targets human desires, while the space program was targeting getting to moon; and since private industry guesses consumer desires and cost-effectiveness generally better than the government, the diversion from private industry into a government program not specifically intended to develop better technology likely means we got something not as good as what we could have.
Now, agree or not, do you understand the point I'm trying to make?
Slashdot Mirror
Why? They generally have no clue about how useful their innovations are to ordinary people. (Remember my story about the professor who justified memory metal on the grounds that it could reveal fish had been defosted? Yeah.) They're going to be biased in favor of solvers of "difficult" problems which confer no benefit on anyone. Just a thought.
This isn't even a real problem, if you think about. I tried to go to blog I know about recently and I got a bunch of so-called "spam" (ads) instead of the blog content. So I checked it out and I was able to book a great vacation deal from a discount airliner. Hey, if you guys want to stop them from offering great vacation deals, go ahead. I personally like the savings.
Good point, good point. I'm glad the Greens are trying to prevent government contractors from extorting higher-than-market prices for their services. This must be why Greens are against laws "locking in" the government to union labor, right. ...RIGHT?
What stake do the "non-violent direct violence" Greens have in open source? I mean, they might be a significant part of whoever actually is supporting open source, but are they actually spearheading it themselves? Why? What does this have to do with dismantling capitalism with environmental rhetoric?
If you mean the date the wood used to make the frame was cut down, yes. These kinds of tests have already been done many times.
Really? They did a double blind experiment in which three or more teams of scientists who had no idea from what the sample was drawn and could not communicate with each other, all ran the tests and their answers all matched historical records to 5%?
Not that I don't trust you or anything, but can you give me a citation for when this test was performed?
Btw, I mention betting money because if you're not willing to bet your own money on a proposition, you probably don't seriously belief it yourself. Just a thought.
Not really. Not in either kinds of football, nor in basketball.
Good point, I don't think living organisms will require much upkeep.
Regarding your last point: I agree, and I'm familiar with the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, but that's the point I was trying to make to them. They were saying that insurance is free money, but in reality, nothing's free money, because someone else has usually already bid up the price to account for future rents. Now obviously this isn't the case as information suddenly appears (like the first person to notice a 20 dollar bill on the ground), but that obviously doesn't apply here, as the information about the insurance market is very well-known!
Regarding your broader points about barriers of entry, I have to disagree. Lots of markets require a large capital investment and/or initial periods of losses to draw customers away from a company with an established reputation, but investors raise the funds to break into them all the time. No matter how large your company is, it's always tiny relative to the total economy's assets. If profit margins are higher, that - as per the EMH - quickly draws capital from everywhere. Wal-mart has huge assets. Microsoft has huge assets. Lots of oil companies have huge assets. Any one of them can become competitive in insurance markets. You don't need the possibility of any single person competing with established companies for markets to be competitive. Plus, there are dozens of micro-insurers that fit niche markets - like they could with the programmer market. (See A.M. Best's ratings.)
You know, I've actually thought about a semi-related issue for a long time: in football (either kind) or even basketball, when the other team has the ball and is trying to pass to player X, how come no one ever tries to reach their hand out and cover X's eyes to keep him from being able to see where he needs to go? A friend of mine used to do this in informal games and it's extremely effective. Is there a rule against this or something? Does it maybe risk a foul?
Huh? Your gun-to-the-head test is both trivial to perform and provides a readily-measurable result.
*long sigh*
If you were referring to the gun-to-the-head test as the "econometric model", you should quoted that part and then called it an econometric model. Read your post: you responded to the preference/constraint dichotomy and referred to it as an "econometric model". It's not. Ergo, you were being very sloppy, or really didn't know what you were talking about. I believe I erred in your favor, all things considered.
But even setting aside this asinine error of yours and granting that the whole time you *really did mean* (wink wink) to call the gun-to-the-head test and NOT the preference/constraint dichotomy an "econometric model", it still isn't something you can readily measure in a lab setting. Experimental ethics prohibit you from putting someone's life on the line like that, so no threat could be credible. Even if it could be credible, the results could never be evaluated by a peer-reviewed journal because of its violation of ethics. That's why it's a "thought experiment". You'll be sure to learn about those in your intro philosophy or physics classes in college. If you make it in, of course (and, no offense kid, I'm really not betting the farm on that one).
me: First of all, it doesn't make any good-bad distinction; that's a value judgment, which I specifically warned against using and avoided using in the analysis.
you: Which is one reason it is meaningless, as I pointed out in great detail. People are hard-wired to seek certain states and avoid others; certain value judgements are built in.
*longer sigh*
Obviously, I was talking about value judgments *about the patient*, not value judgments the patient makes.
Look, I really can't be bothered to respond to any of your drivel anymore. If you can't even get these basic concepts right, I hold out little hope for you even beginning to grasp the point I was trying to make. Just move on, and find something else you can maybe understand.
No one's ever come up with a way to gauge humidity before. This'll surely be more cost effective than all current alternatives.
This is why you don't put your faith in freshmen (or 1/3 of the stuff in medical journals, but that's a separate issue).
I've never died from a cotton shortage.
:-)
Regarding food, I think you refuted it yourself: "A similar argument works for many of the other products we get from agriculture." Actually, a similar argument works for every good. If the clothes supply gets cut off, people will be naked. If the electronics supply gets cut off, we'll go back to the stone age. If the oil supply gets cut off, we're screwed. Why not subsidize everything? Or better yet, why not just have the government provide everything? That will keep us safe and secure, right?
No, it won't. It's much safer to let the legions of clever entrepreneurs do their best to satisfy human desires. If a supply cutoff is expected, speculators bid up the price and buy food futures, mashing out any potential shortage. The only way to stop that is to impose price controls against these entrepreneurs, thereby discouraging them from preparing for these shortages and taking the huge risks to send blockade runners...
Oh, wait, they do impose price controls. Nevermind, you're right
I use $1e9 (no leading zeros btw) because "billion" has different meanings in different parts of the world: I have to clarify it's nine zeros. Go look it up on Wikipedia, I'm not wasting any more time on this.
8 20378
Now, corporations do generally make money on the research they do, or else corporations that engaged in it would get outcompeted by ones that didn't. Really.
And yes, research should return a profit by the method I described here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165623&cid=13
If it doesn't, we were better off just sticking all research funds in an interest bearing account. Research should be for satisfying human problems, not mental masturbation for over-educated good-ol'-boys. If it's better than the alternatives, it will show a profit by my method (even if the actual organizations engaging in it do not make a profit through IP theft, etc.).
You need to remember: research has costs. And it's cost is not $1e9. Its cost is "the best alternative (known at the time) we could have taken with that $1e9". If the research is worse than the obvious alternatives *it was a waste*, no matter how many warm fuzzies you get from hearing about it.
Oh, *I* get it. For you to agree to my double-blind test, we "just have to" include some mechanism by which the scientists testing the sample can "make sure" they take the sample carefully and don't introduce their *own* contamination. So I guess to do that, we have to let them see the painting itself. And golly gee, if one of those scientists happens to recognize the painting and thereby help "massage" his test results, that's just a risk we'll have to take.
*banging head on keyboard*
The fact is, as you seem to agree, scientists can't reliably use carbon-or-whatever dating unless they already know the answer. That's not science; it's religion. If scientists have to be *given* the (unobtainable) knowledge that the sample is not contaminated, that's not a very reliable method, is it?
How about this: one team that's good at extracting samples (who won't introduce their own contamination) will extract the samples. They will, through an intermediary, give the sample to three separate teams of scientists, who must test the sample without communicating with anyone.
You really think they'll get the painting's date right within a margin of error? Name your margin and your wager, or admit you're wrong.
I am sorry, but I really do not care about you that much. While writing the previous post, I considered better options, but I really did not feel like writing them up.
Like hell you didn't! You had to construct an example to "prove" (hah!) me wrong. You picked that one. If you had a better one, you should have used it. You're just as careless creating examples as you are interpreting "positive function" to mean "positive slope function".
Heh. Now, there also exist regions where raising taxes lowers revenues. Of course, that is true also of Laffer's curve. That is pretty much irrelevant to anything, too.
Everybody agrees raising taxes can raise revenues. Laffer presented the obvious yet forgotten insight that raising taxes can also lower revenue. It's not irrelevant: it shows we need to keep in mind that taxing too high can defeat the purpose, something many on the left are unwilling to even consider. Laffer's insight is correct, and even your carefully constructed example validates it.
About the name I proposed for your theory: I thought that was your full name. Usually people who use hyphenated last names have a whole host of names part of their full names, and that includes the names of royalty (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha). Whatever reason you use a hyphenated last name, it's probably stupid. Just use your full name: Suarez-Alvarez de Lopez de Castillo de Gonzales de Madrid de Saxe-Coburg-Gotha de Rodriguez-San Felipe.
I hope I can find you on Google so I can link them to certain posts of yours. I also hope it doesn't cost you your job, although it probably will.
Okay, 100th time: I never claimed the math alone proves the idea. Of course you need to add economic postulates like no tax yields no revenue, full tax yields no revenue, and some tax gives positive revenue. However, no one is really stupid enough to dispute these assumptions. That' why I said you have to refute the math if you claim the Laffer Curve is "refuted". Get it now? If not, work it out tomorrow night after you get home from brick-laying.
Now, let's look at the example you constructed specifically to show a case where the Laffer theory would not hold up despite the validity of the math. Keep in mind, this is a case where you dug to the very depths of your intelligence, and came up with the best possible example. So it should be pretty devastating if I can show that Laffer's claim holds up even under your economic model, don't you agree.
In the example that you specifically constructed to show how I'm wrong and how bright you are, there still exist regions in which raising taxes causes revenues to decline!!! Oops. Back to the drawing board.
By the way, I'm not so sure about this whole idea that you're a math professor. Math professors don't make dumbass mistakes like interpreting "positive function" to mean "positive slope function" and then sticking their necks out on it. For this reason, I'd like to know where you're a math professor so I can tell your colleagues about what went on here. If on the other hand, you're been lying this whole time, quietly slipping out would be the bright thing to do, m'k?
One final mistake: I don't know why you called it the Suarez-Alvarez Theory. Shouldn't it be the Suarez-Alvarez de Lopez de Castillo de Gonzales de Madrid de Saxe-Coburg-Gotha de Rodriguez-San Felipe Theory or something? Just a suggestion.
Wow, you're too oblivious to even realize when you've been beaten. Let's go over this one more time.
I asked how they can calibrate radiodating.
You said it can be verified with things whose age we know.
I asked to test that out by seeing if scientists "get it right" when we know the answer i.e., that the dating method matches historical records.
You refused this simple, basic test on the grounds that contamination might throw off the answer.
I said if contamination invalidates the answer, how do they check the contamination of 65 million year old samples.
You said, well, even if it's contaminated, the average age is whatever the dating method gives, 50,000 years or whatever.
*burying face in hands*
This assumes the method is valid to begin with! But since you refuse simple double-blind calibrations of the method, we can't even validate it for young (under 500 year old) samples! How do we even know it's valid for anything? Oh, that's right. We assume it's right for the average material in the sample. What was I thinking?
Circular reasoning: justifying radiodating since its inception.
Responding to the general point you're making: It's a common for people to remark, "Well, no one can really know X." Now, if this means no one can know X with absolute certainty, it's probably true, but uninteresting. If it means no one can have any certainty about anything, it's false.
... are we really researching to make people live longer, better lives, or to give over-educated people make-work jobs?
In a lot of what you were saying in your post, you mention the difficulties in tabulating the beneficiaries of all this. And it is difficult, you're right. But I'm not assuming, as you claim, perfect knowledge, just reasonable estimates. My examples no doubt heavily simplified things because, for example, amortized costs are a function of the number of buyers and thus the price you charge, making the calculation complicated. Also, you would have to calculate the value of doubling combat effectiveness against non-military uses of funds, and indeed it does get messy.
But even rough calculations are several orders of magnitude better than what you seem to want, which is "fund all basic research irrespective of alternatives or possible uses for it" (yes, I know that's a simplification). I agree that the fruits of basic research are better than the absence of the fruits of basic research. I do not agree that the fruits of basic research are necessarily better than what alternate uses of scarce resources would have yielded, which is a more difficult yet more important question.
Finding out that today's kinds of research are losing propositions in the aggregate does not mean we should fund no research, just that we should focus it more on existing problems, less risky venues, and sooner returns. I know you're probably livid at the idea of doing that to research, but it makes sense once you consider the very real costs of research. When I see a professor try to justify multi-million dollar research into something whose uses are limited to replacing already-cheap memory thermometers, I have to say
Parent is right, you don't need high technology to be competitive in global agricultural markets. Because of exchange rates, in most parts of Africa, they can produce more cotton, for example, per dollar input, than American farmers using complex machinery. The only reason we have so many American farmers when Africans can do it cheaper is because of big agricultural subsidies. If we would just end them, individual Africans (not corrupt dictators) would get a huge infusion of cash from their crops. (source: some game at libertyarcade.org, but I'm sure you can verify that elsewhere)
::rolls eyes::
So why do we are we subsidizing Africans out of business, when they can compete perfectly fine on their own? Oh, that's right: because if we didn't subsidize American farmers, we'd run out of crops.
Ah, okay, cool, I gotcha, so we gotta make sure the samples are non-contaminated with anything to get radio-dating to work. So, hey, um, what method do they use to verify 65 million year old samples weren't similarly contaminated?
Yeah, that's what I thought. You're sure carbon dating works, just, you know, not enough to put your own, actual money on it.
Circular reasoning: justifying radio-dating since it was first invented.
I know, this is just dreaming, but it would be so cool if any time some ***hole tried to misuse some legal protection to screw Google over, Google would announce to the world:
"We are temporarily discontinuing Google search, mail, adwords, and all other features while [president of ***hole company suing Google] remains alive because we don't want to infringe on his rights."
Then, if that person happens to get shot, hey, they had nothing to do with it, they were just trying not to violate his rights!
That reminds me. If Germans adapt the English, as they like to do, and say "mail" in Gmail, but retain their pronunciation of the letter "g", that means they say "gay mail" when talking about Gmail.
|Insert joke here|
I was claiming that the only thing you need to prove the existence of the Laffer Curve is some very fundamental mathematical theorems and some very trivial assumptions (if you credibly claim you'll take everything, you get nothing... no one has disputed that, here or elsewhere). Then, it's a straight shot to proof. Ergo, if you claim that the curve itself has been refuted, you're claiming that some fundamental mathematical theorems have been overturned (or, you're claiming something even stupider, but I err on the side of overestimating people). Understand now?
8 06454
I don't know what's so hard for you to understand about "increase". Think about the function f(x)=x^2 defined on [-2,2]. At -2 it's 4 and at 2 it's 4. So I could say, on this bound, it starts a four, and decreases, and then reaches 4 again. That wouldn't mean I'm claiming that x^2 is strictly increasing, which is exactly how you interpreted me! Look at your post again:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165444&cid=13
"The fact that an increasing function which increases away from zero cannot go back to zero is a triviality once you have set up basic properties of inqualities,"
You thought the function was strictly increasing so it could not go back to zero! Yet that was obviously not what I said. I said in some region after 0, it increases, not that it always increases.
Comprende?
Space program proponents claim: the space program is/was a good idea, because it led to good thing X.
I claim: It does not suffice to show that Y led to good thing X, to prove that Y was a good idea. You must also show that X was better than what not-Y would have led to.
Example: I take $100 from you. I buy a candy bar. I give you the candy bar. I then claim that the Theft-Candy Program was a good idea because it led to you having a candy bar.
You respond: I could have gotten a candy bar for less than $100. Also, there were things I wanted more than a candy bar. If I had spent my own money on my own needs, I would be better off. Therefore, the $100 candy bar was a waste.
Space program proponents: Government takes ~$100e9 from the economy. It bankrolls a trip to the moon. It then notices that some of the things it made with the intent of getting to the mood happen to have uses outside of getting to the moon. It gives people these technologies to people. It then claims the space program was a good idea because it led to us having the technologies.
I respond: I could have gotten those technologies for less than $100e9. Also, there were more pressing needs at the time. If consumers had spend their own money on their own needs, money would have been invested in satisfying demands higher on consumers' priority lists, and they would be better off. Therefore, the $100e9 was a waste.
The only real difference is that people have a "hard time" imagining private industry investing that forgone income in technology, because of public goods' problems, shortsightedness, etc. But those are separate arguments, rarely discussed in the context of the space program. Space program proponents typically stop at "The space program produced good thing X. Ergo, it was better than all alternatives"... which is really a poor argument when you think about it. I didn't start this thread to deny other possible justifications, just to deny that that one is valid.
Let's go over your LCD example again. NASA saw the possibility of LCD technology. More than likely, so did many people not working for NASA. All of those people at the time ruled it out as not being cost effective for consumer and industrial purposes. But NASA wasn't satisfying specific consumer or industrial demands: its solitary goal was to get a man on the moon and get him back safely. That alters the equation. An LCD may be cost-effective for that specific goal. So it produced this thing, which at the time was probably not cost effective for actual other human desires. Had it not happened, those funds would be diverted to higher-ranked cost-effective consumer and industrial demands outside of getting to the moon. Because such funds would then be directly targeted at pressing human desires, rather than getting to the moon, it is very likely they would have yielded something better, as judged by the average person (i.e., the benchmark you used to justify the LCD in the first place).
Now, you do have a point that maybe NASA "saw the light" and "guessed right" that the LCD had more and better uses than entrepreneurs at the time judged. But, like I keep saying, "that's not enough". You have to show that the government's "guessing what satisfies human desires" is correct more often than private entrepreneurs "guessing what satisfies human desires" in the aggregate - i.e., that the Social Security Administration is more efficient than McDonald's. Showing that the government outguessed private industry one time doesn't prove much.
Since private industry directly targets human desires, while the space program was targeting getting to moon; and since private industry guesses consumer desires and cost-effectiveness generally better than the government, the diversion from private industry into a government program not specifically intended to develop better technology likely means we got something not as good as what we could have.
Now, agree or not, do you understand the point I'm trying to make?