[QUOTE=ToothSayer;52774729]You realize that this is precisely what happened in communist Russia and China, right? High IQs, a life studying the subject matter, mean nothing compared to success in the free market.

There is an analogy from this to heads up poker computers that derive their strategies from playing billions of hands and adjusting according to their results. They beat most experts. HOWEVER they sometimes make mistakes that are UNQUESTIONABLE. Because even billions of hands are not always enough. I have argued with programmers to add in some instructions to prevent this and they turn into Toothsayers

I'm the opposite of a purist in simulation code. In fact the first bots that cracked online poker profitably did so by avoiding the dopey CS purist route, and coded human wisdom instead - if this then do that.

I do not believe that the free market is untweakable. I think it's very tweakable, and I think part of the reason it has the nice outcomes it has is because we've learned to tweak it well. We have training wheels and referees and crash barriers on our free market.

I'm all in favor of tweaking it further. I just object to dopey bureaucrats doing it, and thinking they can.

Unbelievable. I can understand almost laughing, I can not understand not feeling really ****ty about feeling that way and not viewing it is something to seriously work on.

Your lack of perspective and gratitude is a major life leak. Not in some sort of moral universe way (I mean, I think so, but who cares what I think), but in say a never-getting-exercise way. Showing gratitude for the good things in your life has a proven effect on happiness, comparing yourself only to those next to you or higher up on the ladder will make you feel bad. Trying to fix this way of thinking will make you a significantly happier person.

These types only destroy wealth for themselves. They create it for others. They are good for the economy with their excessive consumption. For the general economy they are a huge plus as they fuel it by keeping their money in motion. Eventually all of this money with filter to smarter operators who will build businesses and grow jobs and the economy even more.

I like how you conveniently left out the part about how bureaucrats are also often business people who have their fair share of life experiences.

You're pretty much at rock bottom when it comes to your understanding of this stuff. You're the same person who it took pages and pages to explain that informed consent is a necessary component for mutually beneficial exchange.

But without fail, you walk away from what could have been a productive conversation, and choose to bloviate about how you won, and then write 2,000 word manifesto about something completely irrelevant. Keep up the good work.

the level of arrogance is astonishing here. do you have any clue how complex markets and the economy are? thats why the free market is the best method, it works on collective intelligence. you really want to play god with an insanely complicated system and then expect to actually make things better? so far we have a track record of disastrous genocide

here's some questions for the anti capitalists. why does communism always result in a genocidal failure? what is happening now in venezuela? i don't have a crystal ball so there must be some reason that i already know the anti capitalists will never answer the questions or come up with an embarrassingly stupid response

also nobody works for a poor person. how is a poor person going to write a paycheck and who's the idiot working for two weeks for some poor person with the promise they will eventually get paid? the capital and wealth of "rich people" creates an economy where even poor people have air conditioning, smart phones, a flat screen tv, and a rampant obesity problem. if you want to go on a witch hunt for some undeserving rich person, maybe have a look in the mirror. youre likely either a bitter and resentful loser or have the ignorance and empathy of the little girl that wants to take home every single dog they see on the street. neither are flattering qualities for an "adult"

the problem we have in politics today is the left can't separate how you treat children vs adults. a child with problems is in fact a victim. there are adult victims but more often than not in the first world, they aren't victims and they are the solution to their own problems. the government isn't and can't be your mommy. its going to fail miserably in taking care of you and take down the rest of society in the process. the left is so concerned with taking care of people through the government while lefty policies have destroyed the family unit, which actually works and is actually important. we have a generation of adults that grew up in a broken home and still think like children. they want the government to be their parents and take care of them and fix every single little problem. shelter them from any adversity or fix every imperfection in the world. cry and moan that they don't have what they believe they are entitled to.

theres a generation of people that focus on criticizing and blaming the most prosperous system in the history of the human race instead of focusing on getting their own act together. and what solutions do they offer? they revert back to genocidal failures their grandparents saw first hand. its absolutely pathetic

From what I have seen our current participation rate is above any year between '48-until about '80, but it went down after '00 and has been coming down since '08. It is hard to say the reason for this is computers since there are so many other factors that go into this number: the strength of the overall economy, incentives not to work, society pressures, more or less women wanting to be stay at home moms, etc.

juan,
I think it's a case of the US being exceedingly efficient. A poster earlier mentioned that the US has lower social mobility overall than some countries as measured by gross percentages. But I think it's just been extremely good at what it does over the last xxx years such that society is already stratified somewhat by behavior and intelligence. The cream has risen to the top, the whey to the middle, the solid and gunk are down the bottom. And since intelligence and productive behavioral traits are somewhat genetically heritable, it's gg. The proof that it's still a robust meritocracy is how well Asians do imo, with language and cultural and wealth disadvantages, yet crushing the dominant culture in a generation.
You must have me confused with someone else. That would explain a lot. I only have one account on here. Also, the last sentence seems false to me. Often not necessary.

I unequivically state that you don't have a clue regarding processor technology.

Remember that some of the people you are arguing against believe that rich people hurt the economy because they don't spend enough of their income. Be careful flying over their heads.

I think it's really tough to say anything intelligent or certain in this area. Free markets are complex ecologies, and it's extremely difficult to tease out how ecologies work. Much of it is probably beyond human minds.

I can certainly see how having a mix of free stupid spenders and careful savers leads to a richer ecology. The super rich are definitely a huge positive to the ecosystem - they create side effects and perform large scale experiments and create selection biases on scales not otherwise possible. That's one reason why it's so stupid to limit earning potential.

We're left with vague certainties - the system can be underheated or overheated, and it can have fairly discernible fail points. It can be encouraged here and there toward certain outcomes. Tweaking it beyond that is folly. And restricting the system by making it move in a thick regulatory/bureaucratic syrup is bad overall.

Death Tax in the USA

Federal death tax (estate tax in more polite company) is at 40% for estates > $1,000,000. Dependending on what state the estate is domiciled in, it can be more than 40%.

DS and friends seem to be ignoring this fact.

Fwiw, I'm not an anti-capitalist, but consider myself a realist. The biggest 'too big to fail' is the middle class, ainec. The middle class is endangered and that isn't good. Even if it turns out that there will be an equal number of similar paying jobs to replace the ones lost the transition period will be long. If it's long enough to diminish purchasing power for even a few years the result won't be good. Tax base shrunk while there's a need for increased social services.

The WEF is worried about populist political movements, bad for business don't you know. But you're right, socialism/communism doesn't work very well either. And that is the reason that I see no way out.

The past 20 years have seen an enormous, exponentially increasing capital and knowledge drain to China. They've duplicated US capital, stolen know-how, cheated at free trade on a massive scale which has damaged the US economy, and been able to use almost unlimited, intelligent, near slave labor as a carrot to the greedy.

The capitalist US has survived this whole process very well. It's actually quite remarkable. Had that wealth and the easy fruits of decades of hard creative labor not been needlessly drained out of the US, the US lower and middle classes would be in an incredible state.
The WEF are powerful people trying to avoid censure from bullying bigots (the left). When academia and the media hate something, and vilify anyone who doesn't attack their chosen Emmanuel Goldstein, practical people do what is practical.

Has Trump been bad for business? The markets have ripped since he got elected, one of the longest and smoothest bulls in history. People who do business and bet on business don't think he is.

Processor technologies and solid state electronics are actually the field of my expertise and employment.

You're probably posting on something i designed 3 to 4 years ago.

But go ahead, explain solid state physics to me and how that will provide an abundance of employment.

Well let's start with the assumption that boxers won't be influenced by changes in the marginal tax rate for the elite performers at the end of their careers. Maybe you disagree but that's the premise. The money exists whether it's in his pockets, in the governments pockets, in a billionaire investors pockets... it's just a claim cheque to the wealth that already exists and was monetized from the last boxing event.

When you value mayweathers consumption and it's impact on the economy you can't be counting the value of all the labor that went into buying a 5th Ferrari. The people who are put to work to manufacture/market it are not benefiting in proportion to their wages. They're benefiting some marginal amount in proportion to the extent to which they prefer an extra X hours of labor to pursuing some other opportunity and/or leisure. We can't directly measure how much, but if we were actually interested we could use peoples choices to reveal their preferences and come up with a reasonable estimate. Each cog in the wheel that fuels that consumption has similar properties, where some fraction is passed down in benefits, and some fraction is pure cost.

Meanwhile the end product, the ferrari, is then consumed by mayweather as he drives it around, let's it sit in his garage, etc. Now he hasn't consumed it all since i assume he's not driving them into a wall for funsies, so again, it's only a fraction of the fraction that's actually a complete loss.

But the end result is still less than when we started. The question is then, is the amount of wealth that can be attributed purely to cost justifiable to give him that tiny amount of pleasure he gets from having his 5th ferrari? How does that compare to the alternatives (ie: in the hands of wealthy investors, government coffers, spread out over a larger number of people, etc)?

I was half exaggerating about bureaucrats, then someone comes in and lays out the archetype. lol.

This is a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees. It's classic bureaucrat stupid. It goes like this:

1. Take a system that's mostly beyond human analysis and running quite nicely, but with obvious flaws (which are actually unavoidable, but the clear intelligent thinker doesn't realize that).
2. Think: "I'd like this outcome instead"
3. Analyze one isolated part of the system to prove your tweak is good/desirable
4. Tweak the entire system based on that analysis
5. Be surprised when it has major unintended side effects

It's hilarious. In terms of your post, you only have to look at how wealthy America, buying up their consumerist ****, has pushed forward various technologies, to see how this "unjustifiable" luxury consumption in fact has enormous positive side effects that far outweigh your perceived cost or superior allocation when you analyze it in isolated minutia.
You're too stupid to analyze this ****. Just accept it and move on. You'll analyze the parameters you narrow it down to, think you have something figured out, but you'll miss the effect of an effect that you couldn't possibly foresee or realize.

But "smart" minds cannot let go of their models. Everything is amenable to their learned analysis.

Not according to enough of the workers who put Trump over the top.

yeah the great part about the system is the mobility. smart and hard working people succeed. at the very bottom of the socio economic pool are people that are actually mentally and physically disabled along with broken people. a bad childhood can break a person. you cant pour money on these problems and fix them. its not possible to replace a functional two parent family, for example. addiction centers have a very low success rate. the correlation between the opiate crisis and unemployed working aged men is remarkable. giving these people money doesnt fix anything, a job is a much better cure. who creates and provides jobs?

the weird part is that all these experts at god-level in social engineering always conflate money with "success". by now everyone has seen the studies showing happiness leveling off after you make 70k. read up on how things turn out for lottery winners. your personal character flaws and within your social circle grow, not shrink. its often a total disaster. if you don't self destruct, theres often bitter and resentful losers who used to be your friends and family turning on you. lottery winners lives fall apart remarkably often

if you want to chase riches, go for it. you have the freedom to do so and society will actually benefit from your effort...while many will decide you exploited and oppressed in order to succeed. those bitter and resentful people will then demonstrate their moral ******ation and cry about how you're not willing to give away the money you earned to the (not disabled) losers at the bottom (money doesnt fix broken losers). this is their concern instead of allowing successful people investing or spending that capital within a system where people that actually participate in a game where people simultaneously compete and cooperate to make mutually beneficial exchanges. the competition part rewards efficiency, productivity, and innovation. the result of that is even the "victims" at the bottom of the pool have smart phones and obesity issues.... and more job opportunities

You're saying this as if it's necessary to be perfectly precise in your measurement to be confident in the net impact.

I'm not claiming my analysis is anything close to complete but you're not actually concerned with the complexity of the analysis or a realistic assessment of the unintended consequences.

All you're concerned with is your religious convictions for the free market - that it can't be interrupted under any circumstances.

You're just not being honest with yourself because your entire life is built on the premise that the free market always produces the best possible outcome, even though there are almost no economists who feel that way, and no modern country operates like that. But of course you're the humble one.

A perfect example of this kind of thinking was President Clintons yacht tax. Lets stick it to the rich with an obscene tax on their yachts because it will help all of us normals who don't have yachts!

Well, it didn't quite work out that way Boat builders, marinas, yacht maintenance personal etc. were getting hurt and lots of these blue collar workers were losing their jobs due to "sticking it to yacht owners". The tax was later rescinded as this ridiculous first level thinking didn't work out how the bureaucrats had hoped. The left never seems to consider the law of unintended consequences when they never seem to look past level one.

Mayweather doesn't have to justify his consumption spending whatsoever for the fight itself to have massive value to society as a whole. Millions of people voluntarily spent money to watch the fight, and derived excess value from that consumption. Millions more watched the fight for free or enjoyed the hubbub surrounding the fight before and after. One of the most entertaining and anticipated sports events in history, gifted to us for our enjoyment. So we've established the first-order act of wealth creation (the fight) was hugely beneficial for society. Your assertion is that the money earned by Mayweather to be used as consumption spending, the second-order effect of the fight, should instead be taken and spent by the government. Let's examine the counterarguments:

a) People who earn large amounts of money generally do it by creating huge amounts of value, thus we should let them keep their wealth and continue to create huge amounts of value with it. With businesspeople running capital-intensive businesses, the logic is clear: let them continue to grow their capital efficiently and create value for the economy. With Mayweather it may be less clear, because he seemingly doesn't need hundreds of millions in order to put on a good fight, but Mayweather has used his money to build a custom gym in his own house, and he reportedly spends $2-3mm just on a single training camp, to pay for coaches, trainers, and sparring partners, so that he can be as dominant, and entertaining, as possible. Being able to retain his wealth has allowed Mayweather and other boxers to train and perform at a much higher level than they otherwise could have, for the enjoyment of the public.

b) Knowing that they will be taxed massively, value creators may decide not to engage in value-creating activities only to see the majority of their labour's fruits seized by the government. You would say that value-creators like Mayweather would engage in the activity anyway... but this is absolutely not true. This hugely value-creating fight was entirely fueled by the large paydays connected with it. If you don't understand this, you don't follow boxing. Mayweather could have continued to fight ad infinitum for $10-20mm per fight, but chose to retire in 2015. It was a $150mm+ payday that brought him out of retirement. His contender fought in a sport he's never competed in professionally, with a near certain chance of being embarrassed, and a decent chance of being seriously injured, for his ~$50-75mm payday. If you took away 90% of their windfall, Mayweather definitely wouldn't have fought and there's a decent chance McGregor may not have either.

You play with fire when you start taxing large fortunes. There's no clear, fair way to do it, and more likely than not it's going to destroy value, not prevent the destruction of value. You want to tax fortunes because you think the second-order consumption spending isn't optimal, but a) shows that it most likely is, most of the time, and b) suggests that by tinkering with the second-order effects you jeopardize the massive first-order value creation that occurred in the first place, of which the entrepreneur/investor/boxer's payday was only a small fraction; the consumers, service partners, employees, landlords, and numerous other beneficiaries all get a piece, and remember, the government gets in there too by collecting massive taxes on all that first-order value creation. For an entrepreneur to earn a few billion there's a good chance as much as a trillion dollars of value was created and divided up. Successful societies don't trip up this amazing value-creation machine.

Is finding examples of bad policy really a strong argument? Do you think i'd be arguing for a steep and sudden increase in luxury in taxes for one specific industry? The concept of incremental change is an important part of any tax plan to minimize frictional costs.

i'll give you an exercise to help you understand the idiotic arrogance of messing with an insanely complex system

ignore all market data and figure out the market value of a 2010 fully loaded honda civic with 75,000 miles on it. with out using market data you would have to formulate an insanely complicated formula to determine how much someone will reasonably pay for it... and you are going to be way off. or you could observe the used car market and let the collective intelligence give you a shockingly accurate estimate within 10 minutes. thats a pretty sweet deal instead of coming up with some sort of life expectancy and depreciation chart for each part of the car and then calculating how much people are willing to pay for transportation and looking at all their different options.

in formulating and then doing the work required to determine the value of the car AND getting a hilariously wrong answer, you are demonstrating what a disaster all these comically stupid economic and social engineering theories are

Well? Those left wing bureaucrats in the Clinton administration thought it was a good idea You know the ones you want making even more similar types of decisions. I would prefer the free market to work it out.