> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of John Williams > Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2008 12:40 PM > To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion > Subject: Re: Financial institution fallout > > On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 9:51 PM, Dan M <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I saw an interesting article from the bastion of free enterprise > > publication, the WSJ, at > > > > http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122852289752684407.html > > > > Thus, the funds managers who > > were prudent ether were converted or lost their jobs. > > Not all of them. Some people and fund managers made money betting > against the insanity. And it only takes a few. That is how markets > evolve. Survival of the fittest. It just may take longer than we like > for the fittest to win out.
This is very nice theory if and only if you don't do statistical analysis and don't believe in positive feedback cycles, don't care what happens to billions of people over decades, etc. Here is where you differ with 96% of people. Most people don't worry about the purity of the economic system. They worry about their lives and the lives of the other people in the nation and the world. Whenever I tried to engage you in empirically based discussions (which have to include discussions of techniques because techniques are the key to good experimentation and modeling and are thus essential to developing any theory), you fell back on libertarian polemics. For example, when you put forth a libertarian understanding of the Great Depression, I wanted to discuss historical numbers, techniques, etc....the sort of thing any experimentalist would want to discuss in evaluating the theory. You considered this changing the subject. You also have stated that the burden of proof does not fall equally on every viewpoint, but falls solely on those that differ with you. This technique has a long bad history, recently used by the creationist but also used by astrologers, reflexologists, etc. Everything that you write is written as if it comes from a position that Objectivism is a priori correct. You may not have read much Rand, but your arguments parallel hers. Perhaps you read her followers, peers, or those who came before her. This post sounds like it could have been written by one of the Social Darwinists of the roaring 20s. So, in yet another futile attempt to engage in a discussion of economics on an empirical instead of philosophical basis, let me make one general, well accepted statement about economics and see if you accept it. During downturns where what looked like safe investments turned out to be very risky, people and institutions become loath to loan money to any but those that pose the least investment risk. (e.g. after 1 AAA rated firm went bankrupt and a number more were saved only by government bailout, people turn a jaundiced eye to any loan that is AAA rated or worse and tend to seek safer havens than AAA bonds). Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
