ancap

Um...how many stories in the media, from the front page of the NYTimes to top-grossing movies, are about the incompetence & evils of governments & members of ruling classes?

I don't have a copy of today's NYT so I'll leave it to someone else to perform the exercise. But it's besides the point. You're asking the wrong question. Again speaking generally, when the media criticizes the "incompetence & evils of governments" it is in effort to elevate or promote some other government party, or to promote their alternative program or policy, not to fundamentally alter the system of government itself. When they criticize a member of the ruling class it frequently is part of a coordinated PR campaign organized by another member of the ruling class.

Anyone part of the media who veers too off course the path of allowable opinion is quickly reigned in or let go.

I find this definition interesting because it seems to me there’s a very prevalent portrayal in media pointing towards the opposite, that is that humans left alone (read, without some powerful/wealthy authority) will unravel into the most depraved state imaginable.

That's not surprising as the media, speaking generally, is a class which aligns itself closely with the ruling class and is incentivized to maintain the status quo.

Compared to today? In the past century hundreds of millions of people have been slaughtered by states. Compare that with any "private sector" killing, now or in "early civilization" and the mounds of bodies are non-existent by comparison.

I think there's some confusion here because often when talking about "flat" or "stagnant" wages people are referring to the idea that inflation outpaces wage increases (which is wrong, and the point I was addressing). But even taking into account how you're referring to "flat" wages, the logic is still wrong. If we take a worker today who earns the same wage, in inflation adjusted dollars, as a worker in, say, 1985, today's worker has a hugely increased standard of living, better healthcare, longer life expectancy, etc.

That's because wages aren't flat. All of the studies which claim wages are flat make one or more methodological errors. The errors primarily being 1) using different price deflators when calculating price inflation vs wage inflation and 2) not including the value of benefits in their calculation of wages. Studies which avoid those methodological errors have shown that wages have kept pace with inflation.

Actually, it doesn't make sense even if everyone is not playing fair. Self-harm is self-harm. What kind of negotiating is that? "If you shoot a hole in your boat I'll shoot one in mine!"

Economic ignorance abounds in these comments. Tariffs are more accurately termed a punitive tax on consumers. A country enacting reciprocal tariffs is like shooting a hole in your boat to get back at your neighbor who shot a hole in their own boat. It makes no sense.

Even absent government regulation, I still don't see consumers being terribly concerned about the source of their apple. Why? Because the quality of it is reflected by the reputation of the seller. But even if I were to concede the argument for the particular case of food, that does not mean that knowledge of provenance is a prerequisite for a free market.

You need the other things to move away from the necessity of government regulation

I guess this is the crux of the matter. You are suggesting that transparency must pre-exist a free market, I am suggesting that a free market pre-exists transparency, and when necessary transparency will be demanded by the consumers.

...That's transparency

The criteria you specify for transparency is subjective and I don't agree that all of those criteria are strictly necessary. Specifically, I don't agree that knowledge of "provenance, relative supply and transport/marketing cost" is required of a buyer at all in a free market, though they may personally have an interest in those things. I would venture that most consumers know and care very little about those things.

If you don't have that, a free market can't work well.

which is why it's fundamental for a free market

What's important is the principle of subjective value--that the buyer and the seller value what they are getting more than what they are giving up--and that can happen without the various criteria of transparency you outline. Certainly there are cases where market actors will demand some of those (and many cases they will not), but I wouldn't state it's a foundational requirement the market must be built upon.

I disagree. I think in a lot of cases buyers should or would demand transparency (ie. has this house ever been flooded?), but I don't think it's a strict requirement in the broad sense you may be implying.

Transparency can be subjective. For example, a person sells 100 shares of ACME stock to a savvy buyer. A short time later the stock triples in value, and the seller sues the buyer because they were not "completely transparent" about their knowledge that the stock would rise.

Of course, in all of this I am not talking about deliberate fraud which would be strictly forbidden in a free market.

So I suppose in your mind that whatever a company wants to do is fine, and that's your prerogative.

Non sequitur and a red herring.

To believe otherwise is to believe that a person does not have personal agency, and that a person is not in charge of themselves.

Non sequitur. Someone owning data about you has nothing to do with denying someone's "personal agency". Quite the opposite. I would suggest someone recording the actions you make is a testament to the principle of personal agency. You can own yourself and your choices all day long, but you don't control the consequences of those actions. Furthermore, if you're saying someone cannot record things that they observe, you are denying them their personal agency. (As an aside, I find your appeal to "personal agency" curious given your previous assertion that people are irrational, implying the foolishness of such a principle).

But in the real world, that's simply not true. And in the real world

In the real world there are a myriad of legal jurisdictions, with a myriad of laws whose principles and motives often are contradictory. I am not arguing from the perspective of the status quo. Individuals can also demonstrate cognitive dissonance.

Please answer the following questions:

1) If I observe you walking down the street and I see you wearing a pair of Adidas athletic shoes, and I make a mental note to myself "s73v3r_ wears Adidas athletic shoes", do you own my thought?

1a) If yes to #1 how do you justify owning a stranger's thoughts?

2) If I write down the thought in my notepad, do you own the entry in my notepad?

2a) If yes to #2 how do you justify owning an entry in a stranger's notepad who expended their labor creating?

If you answered no to #1 and yes to #2 then you have a contradiction you need to account for (data is data whether it is in memory or persisted). If you answered no to #1 and no to #2 then you have established the principle that you do not own data about you. If you answered yes to #1 and yes to #2 then it would be good for you to at least be explicit so those who are following the argument understand your premise.

They do not act perfectly rational.

I suppose you have your own definition for "perfectly rational" that you're standing by, and that's fine. But I fail to see the point. How is that relevant to this thread?

I originally posted that people wouldn't use these web services if they didn't receive some benefit from it, and you've done nothing more than present red herrings.

Yes, they did. My social security number, my address history, my employment history, all my data.

I can write down in my notepad right now:

  s73v3r_ - thumb sucker

Sure people are rational, even though you as an external actor may not agree with their motives. Even a schizophrenic is rational given what they have to work with.

I'm not sure what perfect information has to do with anything. It's impossible that perfect information could ever exist.

Yes it does.

While you've presented a compelling counter-argument, I'm still not convinced.

And when did I agree to Equifax's terms?

You didn't need to because they never stored "your data".

I find the term "your data" bothersome. Just because there is a piece of data out there that pertains to you it doesn't make it "your data". Some will contend that the data is only gathered through a violation of your privacy, but I don't agree--in most cases, particularly the big tech companies who clearly spell out in their ToS, privacy policy, etc. what data they're gathering.

First, do you or anyone you know directly or indirectly profit from these types of services?

Of course. No one would be using them if they weren't better off from using them.

No, I'm equating one statement of economic nonsense with another statement of economic nonsense. It was a reductio ad absurdum. Unless there are severe external market constraints pushing down the demand of labor, an employer would never be able to "exploit the basic human need for food and shelter".

That's just wrong and demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of basic economics.

If labor were much cheaper, I personally might be willing to hire a maid, a gardener, a masseuse, a cook, etc. Similarly a retail business might hire more cashiers, or have more staff on the floor to answer customers questions and help them find things. A gas station might provide a full service experience for their customers. You could do this analysis for virtually any type of business and given cheaper labor they would hire more people.

Why is this so? Because the demand for labor, like goods, is infinite.

I'm not sure what's so hard to believe about that. It's not even a controversial statement. Are you suggesting that if labor were cheaper the market would not consume more of it?

Few things hurt the poor, in particular unskilled minorities, like minimum wage. Those people are effectively outlawed from the labor market because their marginal productivity doesn't make the cut. This is why there is often exceptions in minimum wage laws when it comes to hiring youth and the disabled. This is also why you've seen labor unions lobbying for a $15/hr minimum wage, with exemptions for those in the union.

No one who is employed is paid "the true value of their labor". Every exchange, whether it's dollars for a good or dollars for labor, happens because of the subjective value the exchange provides to the exchangers.

Business owners exploit the basic human need for food and shelter to underpay low-skill workers.

You could equally (and wrongly) say that workers exploit businesses basic need for labor. It's economic nonsense.

The people in power do everything they can to keep wages down.

Wages are set by the market through supply and demand

What does "deserving" have anything to do with it? That's entirely subjective. If Sam gave his wealth to a plumber, the plumber wouldn't have been any more "deserving". If he gave it to a hospital, the hospital wouldn't be any more "deserving". No one "deserves" wealth.

I am often left wondering why people seem so concerned about income inequality, and when asking those who are concerned sadly the response tends to be indignant. With that said I was quite interested that your linked article might explain why inequality should be a concern from an economic standpoint. Unfortunately, the "savings glut" argument is quite week.

To summarize, a "savings glut", they claim, is what happens when wealthy people do not spend their money, causing an increase in bank deposits, causing a drop in interest rates, causing the central bank to have less leverage in managing the economy. While in a sans-central bank economy interest rates may work that way, the world's economies are managed by central banks who, more or less, determine what the interest rates will be. That is to say, current record-low interest rates have very little to do with savings from the wealthy, and are mostly tied to the tens of trillions of dollars injected into the economy in recent years by the central banks.

"Dry wall contractor" is a pretty generic job title. "Uber driver" is very specific including the "location" where the driver is working. To make the analogy fair you'd have to do have a "Dry wall contractor for Boeing" or similar.

https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/es/07...

http://www.nber.org/papers/w13953.pdf

http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1246.pdf

The last one they muddy the waters quite a big where they talk about a "net decoupling" and "gross decoupling". The first they use the same deflator and the second they use a different deflator. Using different deflators for wages and productivity means you're comparing apples to oranges.

Economists Donald Boudreaux and Liya Plagashvili discuss the topic in greater detail in this WSG op-ed https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-boudreaux-and-liya-palag...

Unfortunately, this is because accounting for Asians contradicts the desired political narrative.

These "wage decoupling" studies generally make two methodological mistakes.

1) They do not include fringe benefits in their calculation of wages 2) They use one inflation measure to adjust for cost changes in productivity over time and a different inflation measure to adjust for cost changes in wages over time.

Doing a quick search over their methodology [1], to their credit, I believe EPI avoids mistake #1, but it appears they make mistake #2.

Studies which include the complete value of benefits in their calculation of wages and use the same method to deflate both wages and productivity show that there is no "wage decoupling" from productivity.

[1] http://www.epi.org/data/methodology/

Not sure about the thai tiger sanctuary but the referenced Lion's Gate Sanctuary was a 501(c)(3) according to page 3 of http://www.elbertcounty-co.gov/docs/SU-16-0019%20LIONS%20GAT...