On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 3:28 PM, Mike Spencer <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Sandwichman wrote:
>
> > Our current paradigm has exhausted itself.
>
> I'm trying for a better way to describe the thing that phrase is meant
> to describe.
>
> > I blame Pigou's Economics of Welfare for enshrining the myth that
> > externalities ("uncharged incidental disservices") were the typical
> > form of market failure.
>
> Your post to FW is the only Google hit on the phrase, "uncharged
> incidental disservices". And Wikipedia's article on Pigou [1] reads
> as if it has had pieces carelessly edited out.
>
> Try "incidental uncharged disservices" or just remove the quotation marks.
> I'm inclined to think that "our current paradigm" has been subverted
> by "gaming the system". Not that such a thing hasn't existed forever
> or at least for centuries. But the international system -- trade,
> finance, politics, "projecting national power" etc. taken together --
> now operates predominantly through giant bureaucracies that employ
> large numbers of people (and computers) to analyze the system itself.
> Face to face relationships and personal trust are still important at
> high levels of power -- witness, e.g., Bilderberg and interlocking
> directorships inter alia -- but nothing like the extent that it was so
> a century or so ago.
>
>
Yep. "Gaming the system" is a non-technical (but also non-specific) term for
what I'm talking about.
> If you look for instances, it's apparent that gaming the system is so
> commonplace that we hardly notice it as deviance.
>
> Today on Slash/Dot:
>
> According to a new survey of college admissions directors by
> Inside Higher Ed, the admissions strategy judged most important is
> the recruitment of more out-of-state and international students,
> who can pay significantly more at public institutions. Ten percent
> of those surveyed also reported admitting full-pay students with
> lower grades and test scores than other admitted applicants, and a
> majority of schools either use or plan to use controversial
> commission-paid agents to recruit foreign students
> (commission-based recruitment is barred in the U.S.). 'This isn't
> about globalization or increased educational diversity,' asserts
> USC's Jerome A. Lucido. 'They need the money.' So, should
> employees of a public university where the President's annual
> compensation exceeds $1 million receive a full state-funded
> pension for educating 16,000+ out-of-state students?"
>
>
> http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/09/23/1343214/your-state-university-doesnt-want-you
>
> (Where there are numerous links to relevant articles as well as
> some interesting user comments.
>
> The state university system, originating with a notion of serving the
> public welfare, has now become an industry, a highly bureaucratized
> system in its own right and a player in the arenas of other similarly
> bureaucratized systems -- state and federal politics, state finance,
> international academic publishing, organized fund-raising etc.
>
> If you google for the phrase "gaming the system", two entries turn up
> on Wikipedia: one defining the concept and another explaining at
> length how gaming the Wikipedia system itself is harmful, known
> methods for doing it and strong words about not doing it.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Gaming_the_system
>
> This is an enlightening read. "Don't dick around. Don't be a weasel.
> Play it straight."
>
> What would it take to implement a document like this for congress or
> parliament? For stock exchanges and other financial agoras? For (to
> return to the original subject line) departments of economics?
>
> Okay, weasels we've always had with us. My (admittedly somewhat
> blue-sky) notion here is that the developments in communications, IT,
> management systems, organizational methods and (probably) elements I
> haven't thought of have. so to speak, created handles (or weasel-holes
> of ingress?) for manipulating the system for gain.
>
> At this point, I think it may be commonplace to introduce some system,
> product or service that is putatively a good thing for the user or
> buyer but is structured beforehand explicitly to create an opportunity
> for later manipulation. It's not a new idea but I surmise that
> developments in technology and organization since WW II -- moreso
> since circa 1980 -- have made a pragmatic methodology of what was
> formerly at best a risky strategy.
>
>
> - Mike
>
> --
> Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
> /V\
> [email protected] /( )\
> http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
>
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--
Sandwichman
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