Posts by Rachel Prosser
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Now let's say the scenario is different. Let's say you come upon a whole briefcase, containing the same folder, plus many identifying features that tell you it belongs to, let's say, Kevin Taylor, (Key's Press Secretary). Do you still say "score!" and gleefully release it yourself, or do you return it to its perturbed owner?
You write a West Wing episode about it.
Vinick gave Santos the briefcase I think (not sure TV ever showed that...and after the 3rd or 4th episode in a row on a DVD box set my memory fades).
Alan Alda rocks, even as a fake republican. I think my whole conception of what war is is based on MASH.
Alda apparently had a clause in his contract which insisted there would be time inside the OR in every episode.
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Hell yes. I found myself leaving work early in the mornings just so I could stop off on the bridge and watch the wildlife. I saw a shag eat an entire flounder in one mouthful. That's worth a month of cycling in my book.
Which sums up why a van shuttle option completely misses the point about why people want to cycle the Harbour Bridge.
The joy of the journey is what I remember from riding the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Getting there under your own steam is infinitely preferable than being shut in a shuttle-bus.
Cyclists are not chickens, and getting to the other side is not the main point. It is the joy of being out there, over the harbour, seeing the view and feeling the achievement of having made it up one side of the bridge, so you can gently coast down the other.
There is no fun in a shuttle bus. It's a shame that there isn't a pedestrian option too. I'd definitely walk the bridge when up in Auckland, just for the sake of having done it, if there were a well-designed clip-on and something of a view.
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I'd not realised Ormerod had released a new book. He'd developed some initial theoretical thinking about non-linear market dynamics in an earlier book, did he elaborate these further in this book?
He did, I can't quote details because it was a few months back that I read it, and had borrowed it from the library.
The idea of perfect markets, even if they did exist (presumably for commodities like energy), is over played in areas where it doesn't readily apply.
Haven't time to reason this one out. Of the top of my head:
The logic that markets are best rests on the mathematical calculation that, assuming a linear supply curve, and a linear demand curve, perfect competition maximises "utility" overall (usually measured in dollar terms) and has the least deadweight loss.
It looks very pretty and compelling on a graph, but rests upon some assumptions, that don't always hold.
For example, It assumes that everyone judges utility the same way (or they can be compared) and that demand and supply curves are continuous rather than stepped.
The 5 preconditions for perfect markets (as memorised for an exam in my not-very-recent past:)
- unlimited number of suppliers
- unlimited number of buyers
- perfect information
- homogeneous product
- and one other (anyone?)I'm not arguing that we're better to go for central planning for everything (more deadweight loss there!) But I agree that a market model isn't the answer for everything.
In particular - I think in some areas people are, or should be motivated by a culture of public service, more than money. Economics doesn't always account well for the great human virtues: thinks like service, vocations, honour, integrity, loyalty, other than by calling them irrational (or rational only if they maximise something).
Human beings can be wonderfully and nobly irrational sometimes. That said, I am a firm believer in the benefits of the scientific method, analysis, reasoning and logic.
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Everything is a distortion. Only believers in the doctrine of the Perfect Market think otherwise.
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I've never quite got round to having this argument with someone who cares, but it has always struck me that the free market naturally tends toward monopoly and price fixing, rather than introducing competition, reducing prices etc.
I've had a debate about perfect competition with an economist friend, and recently read "Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics" by Paul Ormerod - an excellent read, which really nails the reason I gave up on Economics after Stage 2.
I was fed up with "assuming all things were equal" or homogenous, when they almost never were. People measure "utility" in different ways (think brownie-point scores in a relationship!)
Ormerod used the example of John Nash, who when testing a theory, found that even mathematician/economists responding to the incentives did not act in the rational way, concluded that the users of the system were irrational rather than the model was at fault.
In the book (my imperfect recall of it anyway) Ormerod looks at the theory of perfect competition, and rival theories. He says that Economic Textbooks present the demand and supply curves as economic fact, rather than as the theory that won in the early part of last century.
In reality, they are seldom smooth, and equilibrium is not necessarily reached swiftly. A striking example I recall was that markets almost never reach equilibrium, and that the time a particular market would take to get there was around 200 years (or a similarly large figure).
Most markets are, by definition, imperfect (there are 5 criteria, and as I recall from ECON 101 or 204, only the midwest wheat markets are likely to meet them - those were pre organic/GM days!)
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<quote>Everything is a distortion. Only believers in the doctrine of the Perfect Market think otherwise.<quote>
<quote>I've never quite got round to having this argument with someone who cares, but it has always struck me that the free market naturally tends toward monopoly and price fixing, rather than introducing competition, reducing prices etc.<quote>
I've had a debate about perfect competition with an economist friend, and recently read "Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics" by Paul Ormerod - an excellent read, which really nails the reason I gave up on Economics after Stage 2.
I was fed up with "assuming all things were equal" or homogenous, when they almost never were. People measure "utility" in different ways (think brownie-point scores in a relationship!)
Ormerod used the example of John Nash, who when testing a theory, found that even mathematician/economists responding to the incentives did not act in the rational way, concluded that the users of the system were irrational rather than the model was at fault.
In the book (my imperfect recall of it anyway) Ormerod looks at the theory of perfect competition, and rival theories. He says that Economic Textbooks present the demand and supply curves as economic fact, rather than as the theory that won in the early part of last century.
In reality, they are seldom smooth, and equilibrium is not necessarily reached swiftly. A striking example I recall was that markets almost never reach equilibrium, and that the time a particular market would take to get there was around 200 years (or a similarly large figure).
Most markets are, by definition, imperfect (there are 5 criteria, and as I recall from ECON 101 or 204, only the midwest wheat markets are likely to meet them - those were pre organic/GM days!)
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This involves extensive community consultation.”
I am curious about the fact that Palmer emphasises the fact that the value of a journalist/editor is because the project has extensive community consultation.
Leaving aside Cate Brett's merits (which I have no strong view on), I thought the emphasis in the press release was interesting.
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I'm printing T-shirts with the phrase: If only all our crises were like All Blacks crises.
I'll take one
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can the All Blacks blanking the Springboks in South Africa
Does this mean the All Blacks quaxed the Springboks?
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Muphry's Law
Hee
Reminds me of the the discussion over at Freakonomics when Muphry's law struck Stephen Dubner.
He called out the Economist for writing Cornish Pasty not Pastry (Pastys are something different in the USA).
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Not to tempt fate, but does this Olympics feel like it's going to be another Barcelona - of Glorious Fourths, but not many actual medals?
I do like the look of Mark Todd and Gandalf for 2012 though