OK, I'll try this once again, my bad. It is just a simple question. Lets start easy with this...


(5) Assuming wage costs of 1 toy/year, it costs 29 toys for an owner to draw to a toy-press (10 toys for the capital, 10 toys for the inputs and cost of sales, and 9 toys for wages). What's the minimum number of useful years for a toy-press to be a +EV draw. At that minimum, what is the expected value?

And just as a quick Sanity Check. Can you discern any difference between these four options? If so, what might it be?

WTF is drawing a toy press? When did this become an art project?

Determining when it is +EV depends on their time preferences, though. How many toys does it make a year?

facepalm.mov. Dude really, on 2+2? No wonder you keep dodging question #4.

I still have absolutely no idea what you want.

Are you saying that it costs 29 toys per year to operate the machine, and it produces 800 toys 25% of the time but fails to produce any toys 75% of the time?

If so, we can obviously compute the expected value, but I still don't see where there are choices to be made about how to produce things such that only one way yields an optimal solution for #2.

Not quite, but close. It takes 10 men, and 10 toys, to operate the capital for a year. The capital itself costs ten toys, and is defective 75% of the time. The details regarding the capital are exactly the same as tomdemaine's poast. The details of the 11's wealth distribution is exactly the same as tomdemaine's poast also (30 toys to the owner, two toys credit each). And the marginal utility of an extra toy is exactly the same as tomdemaine poast (zero).

Given the assumption that the brothers are all good capitalists, there is a maximal strategy... and this really isn't rocket science. And there is a less optimal strategy for the risk adverse too. Here... I'll give it all up...

Um, ok. Cool story. Now what?

How about figuring out what the elder brother's expected toys are under the both scenarios: the risk seeking option, and the risk adverse option.

As much as you want to claim that we just didn't understand you because you condensed things into "word problem" format, I'm pretty sure you're just really bad at writing clearly.

Anyway, what is your point? Why is this a convincing argument against capitalism and the wage system?

Its not. Its a Sanity Check. I'm not making any arguments. This thread doesn't really have anything to do with capitalism at all, for or against. It is simply about toy making, exploitation, expectation and variance, and how they intersect.

I've got five questions out there. Its really hard to move a discussion along if we don't ever close out old questions so we can open some new ones. I'm really just begging here, because otherwise I can't really make my points using the "maths". Can anyone tell me the answer to question #5. I need actual numbers to make my point.

y'all postin in a troll tread

OK, Ill try one last time...

Youz guyz are always insisting that I give my personal opinion on shiz, even when its completely off-topic, and even when I already have 1000x of times in the past. I mean, how many times do we need to go through this same exact meta-routine to realize that the nominal content of the discussion isn't the issue here?

OK, youz guyz keep asking me... here is what personally interests me: the meta-issue about why youz guyz act this way.

And I'm trying to have a discussion about these kinds of meta-issue in general here ITT. If you wanna understand what personally goes on in my HOMER HEAD, this is the thread to ask. But 2+2 isn't my personal blog (using the correct meaning of the word "blog"). So unless others are actually interested in having a real discussion, I'll stop beating a dead horse.

Of course, if it turns out that nobody actually cares about what I personally care about, as we've seen so far ITT... then I'll at least be able to linkee to this thread going forward when the trolls start up with their making everything so damn personal routine.
And this is the perfect example. Let's forget about tomdemaine's hypothetical for the time being and focus on this one particular example exclusively. If we can develop a meaningful discussion around this one little example, then we can go back to tomdemaine's hypothetical later.

Well, what's going on here, in the meta-conversation? Either these poasters literally don't understand that all questions are not created equal, or they are literally just being trolls. I can't really think of any other options here... but I would love to discuss other peoples opinions on this meta-issue.

What I mean by "all questions are not created equal" is simply this: Some questions, like "the winner of the 2010 Superbowl" have certain intrinsic properties, such as (a) its a matter of fact, and (b) its 100% certain that this info is on the interwebs. Other questions have different intrinsic properties. For example, the question "the winner of the 2013 superbowl", has the intrinsic properties that (b) it is unknowable being in the future, and (b) it is 100% certain any info found on the interwebs is only someone's opinion. So the meta-question here is this...

Do poasters like TomCollins, whickerda and pvn literally not understand that all questions are not created equal?

So basically 75% of the time he starts with 30 and ends up with 20.
25% of the time he starts with 30 and produces 800 toys the first year, which is enough to continue betting 29 toys for a payoff of 800 for the next 19 years. Expected # of toys at end=(.75)(20)+(.25)(801+.25*800*19)=whatever that is.

1165.25 toys

My past experience w/ injection molders [toy presses] is that the 75% downtime occurs within the calendar year at a 99.99999% probability, with the longest downtime being 30 days.

MD, Ima also assume that the operators are doing the repairs/maintenance to maintain the 25% uptime. Innovation over 20 years, developing timely repair/maintenance programs, training specialists[or the operators], costs toys off the profit margin, with the tradeoff being higher uptime [from 25% to 95% being a HUGE GAP],
however, we didn't factor that into the basic problem.

MD: Why are tomdemaine's questions to you Googleable, whereas your questions to him (which are apparently identical and just directed at a different party) not?

Ok very good. This is the kind of discussion I'm looking for. But I was thinking in a much more general case. But maybe I should back up and explain what I mean by "drawing to a toy-press", and a what I mean by a "general strategy".

The elder brother is the boss, there is no rule that says he has to buy a toy-press the very first year... perhaps if he is psychologically risk adverse, it might take him a couple of years to grow some eggs. And if he is clinically risk adverse, he doesn't have to buy a toy-press at all. He always has the option to just work for the prevailing wage, and guarantee his 50 toys.

But it does effect his expectation which year he picks. Assuming the prevailing wage, he is being offered +1967 the first year, +1867 the second year... +367 the 17th year. In year 18 he is being offered +267 and he no longer has the odds to draw to toy-presses anymore.

And remember, there is also no rule against buying more than one toy-press. This is the absolute nut case (which would require collusion on the brothers part, which we are not considering it ITT. I just thought youz guyz might be find it amazing)...

BECAUSE HE's an ANARCHIST, don't you know?

Thank you for asking. Sorry I was a dick above ITT!

Like I've blogged, the hypothetical's are the same. However our questions to each other were very different. And I want to repeat again, tomdemaine is one of my favorite poasters on this BBS, we do occasionally exchange PMs... and we were both just teasing each other with the thread titles.

He was asking me to look up things on Google for him, like who won the NFC in 1994. I was asking him if he can figure out the expectation of his own hypothetical. One is a question of historical fact, the other one is a matter of doing some calculations. All questions are not created equal.

I'm beginning to think that you are trolling. You seriously need to work on being coherent. The way that you post makes me think that you might be manic.

And I'm beginning to think you didn't major in math. The points were...

(1) We need to consider both optimal and risk aversion strategies
(2) The hypothetical is really an iterated type of game, not a one shot affair
(3) It's -EV to buy a toy-press after Y17
(4) Because of this iterated nature, the winning effect is logarithmic

Seriously, if you don't understand, let's work on helping me to explain it better. Coming into my OP and accusing me of "trolling" myself not only doesn't make any sense... its not helpful.

Look, in the OP, it says that the toy-press produces 800 toys when it works.

Later, your post says: "The first year, using their credit, they buy two toy-presses, and hire nine cousins at the prevailing wage. Both hit, and they end the year with 2 toy-presses and 61 toys (had 30, made 80, inputs -20, capital -20, wages -9)."

Where did 80 come from? As far as I can tell, you are just making typos and posing questions in a confusing way, then telling people they're stupid for not understanding.

Then, like, what's the point? Surely the ideas about expectation and exploitation should eventually lead to some kind of compelling argument in favour of your ideology. Otherwise it's really just a "cool story bro".

Adding to this, he hasn't actually said anything about exploitation in this thread yet.

They start the year with 30 toys. They borrow 19 more. They trade 20 of those toys for two brand new toy-presses, and 20 more for inputs. They hire nine cousins at one toy/year. They hit their 1/16 nut draw and the two machines each made 40 toys. They paid their 19 toy loan back, leaving them with 61 toys at the end of the year.

What I'm trying to do is actually set up mathematically the details of tomdemaine's hypothetical. And then we can explore different strategies that someone who wanted to trade variance -vs- expectation might use. The end purpose is to quantify what is actually happening when say, if a brother wanted X less risk, and another brother wanted Y more expectation, what would be a range of values that would result in a beneficial trade for both sides.

But to do that we need to get a whole lot of things established first. That's what I'm trying to do here is establish a foundation. A foundation we can use to build on to possibly get this work done.

And to do this I need some feedback. Did you or anyone else understand any of those four points I was tying to make? I can try again, its my bad! Not at all, I never mentioned any ideology. Math has no ideology. I'm discussing toy making, variance, risk, risk aversion, and mutually beneficial trades. And none of those things have ideologies either. And once we are done doing all the "maths" we might be ready to discuss exploitation from a position of better knowledge and insght.

Math does things backwards from politards... instead of starting at your conclusion, and reverse engineering your premises to ensure they work... you start with some premises (we call them axioms) and discover what conclusions (if any) you can reach from them. Then you can take those conclusions (if any) and use them to more intelligently discuss issues like "what is exploitation?".

So rather than just telling me how many toys the thing makes and how much it costs explicitly, you say that it makes 800 toys and pays for itself 60 times over in 20 years? Can you not see why this is horribly unclear?

You also said the costs were 25% rather than just explicitly saying what they were. Word problem or not, if you're doing a thought experiment why don't you just say what you mean instead of being obtuse?

And yes, we understand the 4 points, it's very trivial once we know what the hell you're asking.

I think it's awesome that you're trying to do this. Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't accomplish whatever you want despite you're handicapabilities.