|
1. Because they lost the war and have no Marshall
plan.
2. Because of the Lotto
3. Because they figure they can beat the lazy
Americans Rock and Roll numbed Americans out of their jobs and that they are too
stupid to protest.
Ray
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2002 11:49
PM
Subject: Re: It doesn't bother me
either
Ray,
Why do all these great immigrants come
to the USA?
Harry
Ray wrote:
>
(REH)
> <<<<
> Maybe you mean to set a context for
what you are saying and if that is the
> case then I apologize but you
state things as if they are laws and they
> aren't.
>
>>>>
>
> Well, I've set a context for those one or
two games I've described so far.
> As for their being laws, I haven't
said that. Remember that I've said that
> games theory experiments are
repeateable, cross cultural and that they are
> saying something
valuable *only within the context of the experimental
> parameters*.
They're not valid otherwise.
As if refers to the tone of what you
state. I read it as very certain, almost
didactic. I do the same but I take credit for being
didactic about my own experience and history. We can
have parallels but we are each different.
>
(REH)
> <<<<
> As
for the Games? Game theorists set the rules for the game biasing
the
> outcome by the words they use for the rules. Math serves
to eliminate the
> ambiguity of reality. The problem with
ambiguity is that it is the root of
> creativity and change.
That is the flaw IMHO.
> >>>>
>
> Not at all.
The theorists set the parameters of the experiments. They don't
> know
the 'rules' and they don't set them. They are often surprised by the
>
results. In fact, most of those that are published in the literature
are
> surprises -- or else they wouldn't be worth
publishing.
Rule: Mathematics. A standard method or procedure for solving
a class of problems. American Heritage Dict.
Surprise has nothing to
do with it. They prescribe the rules of the game, not so for the
players. Everyone is surprised by who wins at football.
> (REH)
> <<<<
> I published Free
Rider Game studies on this list from George Mason
> University four
years ago that made the same points but asked embarrasing
> economic
questions. The answer was a deafening silence.
>
>>>>
>
> Intriguing! I think I was 'resting' from
FW list then -- as actors say --
> when I was setting up my business.
If you can fish these up from your
> archives and give me references
I'd be most interested.
I don't have the archive but it was Robert Sugden
writing. You might try the internet or George Mason University.
>
(REH)
> <<<<
> Game theory seems to be useful in
examining the structures of such things
> but it also is severely
limited in its Societal application thus far.
> Remember
Enron.
> >>>>
>
> Exactly what I've been
saying several times. The conditions have to be
> specified and the
parallels with real life clearly established. But games
> theory is
having many useful things to say about circumstances when the
> public
don't meekly do what the authorities (or the marketing departments
>
of corporations) expect them to do.
I agree as an approach
but not THE approach as many game theorists seem comfortable to assert as
well as doing such things as assigning their approach to Nuclear warfare
which effects us all. Such over specialization arrogantly
applied to the real world reminds me of the "scientific experiments" of Dr.
Mengele who took the Yellow Fever experiments of Walter Reed (who got Army
Privates to volunteer to be bitten by mosquitoes infected with Yellow
Fever,) to a new level. (Yes the same Walter Reed as in
the major Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.) Can you imagine the
uproar if they opened those Mengele experiments and then named a hospital
after him in Berlin?
Today's Game Scientists
make claims about cross cultural "truths" but the studies I have seen only
make very general statements about the culture of the people they use in
their experiments and nothing about their individuality except gender and a
general set of six "personality catagories" related to the way they chose to
play that day. Most of them are undergraduates who must
play the game in order to keep their scholarships or they get paid a
stipend. Most are also the results of years of computer
games with a separate ethos for games from their regular lives or at least
we would hope so. Look closely at these
"experiments". Labor is expensive and nailing down
its context is even more so. Most of these researchers are
academics with a $5,000 grant to play and publish. As we
say in the theater, "there's too little information here to put it on
stage." And yet they take such things to the Pentagon to be
played by Nuclear Submarines with real missiles on board. Nuts!
The public don't always fit comfortably
> into smooth
supply-and-demand curves so beloved of the neo-classical
> economists.
The public sometimes objects to being part of an aggregate. And
> it
is these exceptions which are happening increasingly in the
modern
> world and becoming critical in economic policy making.
Exceptions are the Grist in the Mill of Artistic Work.
Game theory is to human exploration as Reality TV is to Drama.
>
>
(REH)
> <<<<
> But the one area that is avoided at
all costs by the monetarists is the
> Free Rider phenomena in Public
Goods. All of the research that I've seen
> sounds like a machine
running out of gas.
> >>>>
>
> On the
contrary. It is the left-wingers who daren't tackle the free rider
>
problem of state welfare systems. The particular Public Goods game I
>
mentioned earlier clearly shows that if taxpayers don't have some form
of
> direct control over the withdrawal of welfare from known
malingerers then
> the whole system will inevitably be brought into
disrepute over the longer
> term. (This means we need local welfare
systems not distant, centralised
> ones.)
Nonsense. We are filled today with great immigrant
workers of every ILK including the new Artistic Director of the Metropolitan
Opera from the "welfare" system of Russia. They compete
well on any level with the Capitalist motivation and there are more of
them. You say the same yourself in your posts on
education. If you want to do a study about the success of
motivation in the Welfare system of the old Soviet Union compared to the
continual harrassment of welfare mothers by self-righteous politicians, case
workers and other incompetants, I would reluctantly believe that the Soviet
System worked better in solving the Free Rider problem. Not
distribution or factory upgrade. Americans were better
than that but Americans without the competition from the East are not doing
so well these days either.
> Politicians in England have been well aware of
this and every now and again
> government departments publish
telephone numbers for the public to
> confidentially report false
claimants.
You make my point. Your system can't handle motivation
except through harrassment and public spying.
But they don't
get much response.
> It's the same problem as the lack of witnesses
coming forward to the police
> in the case of many serious crimes --
people won't snitch to the
> authorities because they might be
involved in long and tedious procedures.
Yes, you turn your
population into snitches and no one wants to report anything.
Even the worst crimes. It is not only the pain of having to wait
around in the police station. Most of it is immoral and
works against the family and community networks. The police
retort is to call such networks Cronyism or they compare it to the
Mafia. Stupid is what I would call it. We are
doing it here in the name of keeping GWB in the White House through the "Wag
the Dog" tool of terrorism. Its real but its costs are
worse than its bite, thus far anyway. It is also a very
old tool used by politicians over here. So we are cynical about
its truth and just stay quiet.
> (This is
particularly tragic in the case of wife-beating which is far more
>
widespread in modern society than reported. Only a small proportion of
such
> crimes is reported to the authorities by friends and
neighbours. In
> medieval England, when small communities were the
norm, wife-beaters would
> be effectively shamed at charivari time or,
if this didn't work, punished
> by moots.)
How did we
get from Free Riders to Wife beaters? Surely you don't
think them equivalent. Meanwhile here is something
significant. Paul Krugman on Tax relief for the wealthy
and benefits for out of work employees. Connected in the
minds of the local right wing politicians. With both shouting
entitlement. It makes me sick and embarassed to be connected to
these poor babies. And yes, if you go to the Art then you
will find that it is drawn from life and not the reverse.
Ray Evans Harrell
February 19, 2002
Workers Held Hostage
By PAUL KRUGMAN
 oes life imitate art, or what? Last weekend's box
office was dominated by a movie in which Denzel Washington takes an
emergency room hostage to secure treatment for his dying son. Last week's
major political event, though it went largely unnoticed by the general
public, was also a hostage drama: House Republicans blocked vital aid to the
nation's most vulnerable workers, and have refused to release it unless they
secure passage of a dying stimulus plan. The plan, you won't be surprised to
learn, consists almost entirely of tax cuts for corporations and the
wealthy.
Here's how the blackmail scheme works. U.S. unemployment
insurance, unlike benefits in many other advanced countries, has a sharp
cutoff: 26 weeks and you're out. This cutoff can be rationalized as tough
love; arguably the American system, by giving workers no choice other than
to find new jobs, has helped prevent the emergence of a European-style class
of permanent unemployed. But it's a very harsh rule to impose during
recessions, when new jobs are simply not available.
And that's the
current situation. Last week 80,000 workers reached the end of their
benefits; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that two
million workers will have exhausted their insurance by
June.
Fortunately, in practice the rule is relaxed in hard times.
When recession strikes, Congress invariably acts to extend unemployment
benefits. During last fall's stimulus debate, everyone favored a 13-week
extension. True, both sides tried to tie that extension to other measures.
But everyone expected that in the end Congress would extend benefits
whatever the status of other stimulus proposals. Indeed, the Senate passed
an extension by unanimous voice vote.
But the hard men of the House
leadership refuse to allow a clean vote on unemployment benefits. Instead
they continue to insist that it's their way or no way: they won't allow a
vote on benefits extension except as part of a bill that mainly consists of
tax cuts for corporations and families in upper tax brackets, pretty much
identical to the failed stimulus bills of the fall. And they rammed that
bill through last Thursday.
Let's leave aside, for a moment, the
economic merits of those tax cuts. What's really striking about this tactic
is its sheer bloody-mindedness: the House leadership is willing to impose
pain on some of the most vulnerable people in the country, desperate
families whose breadwinners have been unable to find jobs, in order to push
a divisive, partisan agenda.
And for what it's worth, that agenda is
also bad economics. Last month the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office
reviewed a range of potential stimulus measures, including all the elements
in the latest House bill. Sure enough, the bill consists largely of the very
measures accelerated tax cuts for upper brackets, reductions in the
alternative minimum tax on corporations that the C.B.O. concluded would be
least effective.
What these proposed tax cuts have in common, of
course, is that they deliver not a penny of relief to the great majority of
American families.
But isn't the House leadership's behavior just
politics as usual? No, it isn't. Politics as usual is trying to attach
goodies for yourself to bills that provide goodies to other people. Everyone
does that. But extending unemployment insurance in a recession is so
standard and refusing to do so is so cruel that the House action takes the
tax-cut crusade to a whole new level of fanaticism.
Put it this way:
At first, ordinary workers were told that they would benefit directly from
lower taxes remember those "tax families"? Great effort was devoted to
obscuring the simple truth that last year's tax cut offered crumbs for
ordinary families, but huge breaks for the wealthy.
Then ordinary
workers were told that they should support bills like the two House stimulus
plans from the fall bills that offered retroactive tax cuts to corporations,
big tax breaks to families with high incomes, and nothing at all to
two-thirds of the population because those bills would create jobs. After
all, tax cuts are part of the war on terrorism, or something.
But
now tax-cut advocates have moved from promises to threats. Support tax cuts
for the elite, the House leadership says, or we'll cut off your unemployment
benefits.
So what's next? Support tax cuts or we'll break your legs?
******************************
Harry Pollard
Henry George School
of LA
Box 655
Tujunga CA 91042
Tel: (818)
352-4141
Fax: (818)
353-2242
*******************************
|
