Re: quick question
Eubulides wrote: Right but the dictionary entry is saying 1873. I'm reading a review of Heckscher's book [it's Tuesday and I don't have a tv :-)] and I'm asking in an historiographical and nominalist sense... OED Online gives first date as 1838. But I can't find their bibliography of sources so I don't know what kind of asource they took the quote from. New Moral World 22 Dec. 142/2. I don't have the foggiest idea what the New Moral World was. For mercantile system the earliest source given, as Michael says, is Smith. Carrol
Reporters Without Borders: pro-USA
As has become obvious, the measures taken recently by the Cuban government to defend the revolution have become a 'cause celebre' for liberals worldwide. The other day I posted a response to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a group that had taken up this cause despite the fact that its corporate funders (CNN, Bloomberg et al) are among the world's biggest enemies of freedom of the press. The CPJ's model only takes into account the kind of repression visited on reporters in third world dictatorships typically. If CNN and the Murdoch press can swamp the TV's and newsstands of that same country drowning out the local competition, it would hardly raise an eyebrow in these quarters. You find the same exact mind-set at the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières--RSF), a group that seems inspired by Doctors Without Borders, which also got started in France. You'll recall that this group was very involved in pushing war against Yugoslavia and that its director Bernard Kouchner was rewarded with the post of colonial administrator in Kosovo. If you go to the Reporters Without Borders (http://www.rsf.org/), you'll discover a large graphic that announces that Cuba is The World's Biggest Prison, something that would be news to anybody who lives in the USA, where 2 million people are behind bars--a rate 6 to 10 times higher than any other industrialized nation. According to a report issued by the British government (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/), the USA has a prison population of 1,962,220 while Cuba's is about 33,000. This translates into 686 prisoners per 100,000 in the USA and 297 per 100,000 in Cuba. In keeping with a general softness on the world's biggest threat to democracy, RSF also includes a map of the world on their home page with colors ranging from pure as the driven snow white to shocking and sinful red, with various shadings of pink in the middle. White signifies a good situation, while red stands for a serious situation. It should come as no surprise that the USA is pure white, while Cuba is the purest red. Venezuela is another country singled out for repression against reporters by both the CPJ and RSF. Since they have no concept how privately owned media can represent as much of a threat to the free flow of information as government censorship, they take sides against Hugo Chavez who was the target of a general strike fomented by the ruling class and the newspapers and TV stations they own. Naomi Klein took them to task in a February 18, 2003 Guardian article: During the recent strike organised by the oil industry, the stations broadcast an average of 700 pro-strike advertisements every day. Chavez has decided to go after the TV stations in earnest, with an investigation into violations of broadcast standards and a new set of regulations. Don't be surprised if we start shutting down television stations, he said in January. The threat has sparked condemnations from the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders. And there is reason for concern: the media war in Venezuela is bloody, with attacks on both pro- and anti-Chavez media outlets. But attempts to regulate the media aren't an attack on press freedom, as CPJ claimed - quite the opposite. Venezuela's media, including state TV, needs controls to ensure balance. Some of Chavez's proposals overstep these bounds. But it is absurd to treat Chavez as the principal threat to a free press. That honour goes to the media owners. This has been lost on groups entrusted to defend press freedom, still stuck in a paradigm in which all journalists want to tell the truth and all threats come from nasty politicians and angry mobs. Every so often, the naked hostility of RSF to challenges against the free corporate media is bared. In their 2003 Annual Report, they fulminate against UN bids to address this problem: A new example of the spineless attitude of Western democracies towards authoritarian regimes are preparations for the UN World Summit on the Information Society. . .In fact, the idea of the information society summit quietly harks back to what was known in the 1970s and the 1980s as the New World Information Order, when a rag-bag alliance of communist regimes, African and Asian despots and Western Third-Worldist intellectuals used the presence of an African at the head of UNESCO to try to bring the flow of international news under the control of governments, officially (of course) for the benefit of the people. They said the world's news was dominated by the corporate media of the capitalist West and aimed to rein them in, leaving ordinary people in ignorance. It reeked of the old totalitarian notion of the supreme guide who knows better than you what's good for you. The whole repressive concept led the United States and Britain to withdraw from UNESCO. This was enough of a jolt to kill off the idea. Can't you see the bitter
Re: Market motivation
--- ravi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: andie nachgeborenen wrote: Is the sugfgestion that the sexual favors of young men are like toxic waste? Well, ladies, whaddya think? Are we that bad? waitaminit! are you calling yourself a young man? ;-) ;-) --ravi Who do you think you are, my teenage daughter, who announced the day before yesterday that her mother and I were incredibly OLLLD, like rilly _ancient_, and we were foolin ourselvesif we thought we didn't have a foot in the grave? I'll do as a young-enough man, unless you want a baby ;- I still have decided what I'm going to be when I grow up. jks __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com
Re: DU
Michael Pollak: And isn't the reason that DU munitions are so effective at penetrating armor (which is why the military is so loathe to give them up) because they ignite on contact -- thereby turning most of their mass into just this kind of dust? almost. typically, DU ammo is fired at such high velocities that upon impact with armor, both the projectile and the armor cladding become quite hot and almost fluid-like. the DU projectiles are believed to have a self-sharpening caharacteristic, in that as they bore through the pseudo-liquid armor, they shed (shear) material off themselves in just such a way as to maintain a sharp tip in front. this aids in further penetration. tests apprently showed a 10-20% improvement over tungsten ammo, which was the predecessor in the hardened ammo repertoire. by the time the DU projectile bores through the armor plating, a significant fraction (20 - 70%% or higher) of its mass can pop out the other side in the form of dust/vapor which is indeed highly combustible/exposive in air. the touted advantages of DU ammo by the military thus stem from three factors: the high mass density of DU (see physics links below) along with self-sharpening allows for higher penetration depths for a given firing speed. it has also been pointed out that these high density projectiles, due to their typical construction as long thin arrow shaped rods that gives them decreased air drag at a given firing speed, allow troops to fire from much farther away than with typical ammo. you can then understand the US mil's fondness for these weapons in terms of potential reduction in allied troop losses due to remaining large distance from the enemy. [ incidentally, uranium as projectile and uranium as nuclear material is not an accident. high density comes from such a high mass concentration in nuclear core. this also puts it near the nuclear stability limit, such that smacking it with an energetic neutron produces high energy fragments PLUS more neutrons, and hence chain reaction. ] some URL's i've collected: 1.) one stop shopping for anything you want to know about the radiological properties of uranium and relatives: http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/index.html http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/rup.html note in particular that depleted uranium actually increases in radioactivity over time, due to the complex web of nuclear reactions which can take place. 2.) a very interesting paper on DU: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0301059 which argues that these are next-generation nuclear weapons. the author makes a case that the relative advantages of DU over tungsten clad ammo in terms of penetration capability are not significant enough to explain US mil's fondness for these weapons. i'll probably write a summary of this paper at some point. 3.) re/ Eublides post yesterday on grid parallel computers, there is a large effort to simulate these high-velocity impacts of DU ammo using parallel systems: http://www.hpcmo.hpc.mil/Htdocs/UGC/UGC02/paper/tom_kendall_paper.pdf http://www.sv.vt.edu/research/batra-stevens/pent.html http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-3753128097370/ one example of the unity of weapons simulation and computational systems development. there is some debate over the actual mechanisms for self-sharpening, hence the effort at using parallel computer systems. 4.) physics of DU penetration abilities (and dust generation): http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0305120 http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/Depleted-Uranium.pdf (page 2) http://www.army-technology.com/contractors/ammunition/apfsds.htm http://authors.elsevier.com/SampleCopy/700/S0734-743X(99)00032-9 http://www.journal.dnd.ca/engraph/Vol4/no1/pdf/v4n1-p41-46_e.pdf 5.) other suspected uses of DU clad weapons: http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/pdfs/DU2102A3a.pdf http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/pdfs/DU2102A3b.pdf valuable in concert with reference in 2.) les schaffer
Transaction Costs (Re: Back to slavery)
--- Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dave S. asks why transactions costs are so important. transactions costs are only important if you're raised as the kind of NC economist with an extremely naive view of markets (i.e., a Walrasian). Jim ??!!! Huh? Wha? Where did that come from? So, are you saying that if we are Marxists or Institutionalists or Austrians or Post-Kenysians we can ignore the fact that transactions are costly, that relevant knowledge requires effort to acquire which imposes opportunity costs, etc? I have no idea what you are saying here, Jim, it can't be anything that dumb. Maybe you mean that these things are only surprising if you are an NCE. OK, I'll buy that. But transaction costs are incredinly important on all the other theories I mentioned, it's just that they don't pose a serious objection to those theories, right? jks __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com
Re: Reporters Without Borders: pro-USA
Emily Jacquard (from rsf in Canada) REporters without borders says that Cuba is the largest prison for journalists in the world Thank you for correcting me. You do in fact state this in fine print. In any case, this does not address the main point I was making, which is the threat posed to democracy by the corporate media. If the USA had the right to fund whoever it liked in Cuba, it would soon be able to exert the kind of influence it has in Venezuela. You campaign against reporters being tortured or locked up, but you don't seem at all bothered by the power of the US media to control information through the power of the dollar. As A.J. Liebling once said, Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. Until you liberals begin to understand and act on this, democracy will be far more threatened than it will be by the occasional government censor. Where do you people get your funding from, by the way? CPJ at least lists its corporate sponsors. With outfits like Hachette Inc. doing your public relations, I assume that your bills must be substantial. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Transaction Costs (Re: Back to slavery)
I wrote: transactions costs are only important if you're raised as the kind of NC economist with an extremely naive view of markets (i.e., a Walrasian). JKS writes: ??!!! Huh? Wha? Where did that come from? So, are you saying that if we are Marxists or Institutionalists or Austrians or Post-Kenysians we can ignore the fact that transactions are costly, that relevant knowledge requires effort to acquire which imposes opportunity costs, etc? I have no idea what you are saying here, Jim, it can't be anything that dumb. Maybe you mean that these things are only surprising if you are an NCE. that's what I was saying. OK, I'll buy that. But transaction costs are incredinly important on all the other theories I mentioned, it's just that they don't pose a serious objection to those theories, right? I wasn't saying that transactions costs were unimportant in practice and thus should be ignored. No way. After all, old Karlos didn't ignore them; nor did Joan Robinson do so. There are a lot of ideas that evoke all sorts of brouhaha nowadays (uncertainty, information costs, dynamics, time, non-neutral money, etc.) even though classical economists such as Adam Smith took them for granted. The reason why they attract attention is because the dominant school of economics starts with a vision of the world that ignored such realistic things since they start with an idealized model and try to figure out the world with it (rather than starting empirically). Transactions costs are an example of this kind of idea. Jim
Re: the next frontier of 'privatization'
Eubulides wrote: Computers do wondrous things, but computer science itself is largely a discipline of step-by-step progress as a steady stream of innovations in hardware, software and networking pile up. It is an engineering science whose frontiers are pushed ahead by people building new tools rendered in silicon and programming code rather than the breathtaking epiphanies and grand unifying theories of mathematics or physics. funny, that the article starts out on the right note (by pointing out that computer science is not much of a science) and then flip flops between acknowledging the accidental, incrimental and non-academic nature of computer technology (at least software/network part of it) and the urge to make grand pronouncements about the future. i am snipping all the amazing stuff about grid computing, to which my response is this: in the 80s and early 90s, all the hype surrounding computer science was artificial intelligence. impressive systems were demonstrated (expert systems were just the tip of the iceberg, a mere rough implementation) and various gurus of the future were proclaimed. the govt of japan, one is told, gambled its technological future to a fifth generation project. in the meantime, a mundane technology, the internet, based on the notion of the stupid network (http://www.isen.com/stupid.html), founded on pragmatic fairly non-theoretical principles, proved to be the revolution in computer technology in the 90s. of course computer science was above such mundane things (which perhaps explains the sparse contribution of bell labs, with its closed ivory tower attitude, to the emerging technology, despite sowing the seeds with unix back in the 60s). the hot topic in computer science during the 90s was quantum computing. it was going to revolutionize the science. the we had the replacement of technology with terminology: B2B, P2P, enterprise computing, extranet, web services, data mining, data warehousing, etc. somehow in the midst of all of this, actual progress is achieved! ;-) whether grid computing is fancy technology, fancy terminology, or something that will actually be a valuable new service on the net, i hope will be decided through its adoption, not through its proclamation! Computer scientists say the contribution of Dr. Foster and Dr. Kesselman to grid computing is roughly similar to that made by Tim Berners-Lee to the development of the Web. Mr. Berners-Lee, who is now the director of the World Wide Web Consortium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came up with the software standards for addressing, linking and sharing documents over the Web: U.R.L.'s (uniform resource locators), HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) and HTML (hypertext mark-up language). and one must remember that berners-lee was no computer scientist and should really be remembered mostly for being at the right place at the right time. the good thing about the evolution of the internet is that unless you are a techie, you see very few names associated with the evolution of the technology. the notion of hyperlinked distributed information predates berners-lee. even in his own time systems such as gopher and WAIS provided similar services. and nobody in the general public knows the names of the authors of these technologies (or might recognize, outside of marc andressen, names such as eric bina, people who actually wrote the code for mosaic, the browser that was key to the success of the web), leave alone the authors of such devices as the berkeley socket library that led to these applications. --ravi
Re: Back to slavery
Michael Perelman writes: Do lawyers really limit transactions costs. I thought that they maximized billable hours. If we didn't add value, why would we be hired? David Shemano
Re: Back to slavery
David Shemano wrote: If we didn't add value, why would we be hired? I think I answered that already. Mafia. Ken. -- ... the fear of facing the world, including its works of literature, without an intellectual narcotic at hand. -- Frederick Crews
Re: Back to slavery
Maybe it's like hiring marketing experts. It's profitable for an individual to hire a marketing expert to try to gain a larger market share even though their work seems totally unproductive (producing no value) from the perspective of society as a whole. That said, I don't think lawyers are totally unproductive; trashing lawyers is a major indoor sport in the US but ignores those who are the heroes of John Grisham books (while often forgetting the truly evil corporate lawyers). As long as there are laws and conflicts, people will need lawyers. On the other hand, lawyers often seem to create demand for each other: I need a lawyer because the other guy has one, so their efforts cancel out. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: David S. Shemano [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 9:45 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Back to slavery Michael Perelman writes: Do lawyers really limit transactions costs. I thought that they maximized billable hours. If we didn't add value, why would we be hired? David Shemano
Re: Back to slavery
--- David S. Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Michael Perelman writes: Do lawyers really limit transactions costs. I thought that they maximized billable hours. If we didn't add value, why would we be hired? David Shemano Well, cynically, lots of folks say we write the rules to ensure that we will be hired, that it's a huge device for extracting rent. I mean, for example, why should you need a lawyer for an uncontested divorce, hmm? Just f'instance. Now, at my firm, there's a reasonable amount of pressure to minimize billables on any matter. Of course you're supposed to meet your 2000 p.a., but we are very conscious about not overbilling the client. So much that there is a firm policy to actually bill the hrs you actually work, because lawyers here have a tendency to say, well, that should have only taken me 2 hrs, I worked inefficiently, I'll bill 'em for only 2. They have to tell you not to do that. If you bill 200 on a matter that the billing partner thinks should have taken fifty, there will be a discussion. This isn't to say that the incentive Michael talks about doesn't exist. Btw, David, are you a litigator or a transactional lawyer? jks __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com
lawyers!
[was: RE: [PEN-L] Back to slavery] I wrote: That said, I don't think lawyers are totally unproductive; trashing lawyers is a major indoor sport in the US but ignores those who are the heroes of John Grisham books (while often forgetting the truly evil corporate lawyers). As long as there are laws and conflicts, people will need lawyers. On the other hand, lawyers often seem to create demand for each other: I need a lawyer because the other guy has one, so their efforts cancel out. Sometimes I think that people hate lawyers for the same reason that the Russian peasants that populate statistics books hated doctors: the latter hated doctors because they're associated with disease, blaming the symptom for the cause. I should mention, BTW, that JKS is the type of lawyer who would be a hero in a John Grisham book. He's too modest to mention this. Jim
Re: Back to slavery
--- trashing lawyers is a major indoor sport in the US but ignores those who are the heroes of John Grisham books (while often forgetting the truly evil corporate lawyers). Like me? ;- As long as there are laws and conflicts, people will need lawyers. On the other hand, lawyers often seem to create demand for each other: I need a lawyer because the other guy has one, so their efforts cancel out. You know the lawyer's prayer: Lord, Stir up dissension amongst thy people! jks __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com
Re: Back to slavery
Jim wrote: That said, I don't think lawyers are totally unproductive; I agree. The collision of individual interests has to be resolved in some manner. No matter the system. There will be costs. The current system, commercially, is based on getting a commercial lawyer to check-off your deal. Otherwise, they, or their kin, will sue you latter to decrease the transaction cost of their own client. Why not? System allows it... but is it factored in anywhere? Any accountants out their? trashing lawyers is a major indoor sport in the US I disagree. Lawyers are just like economists... eggheads who some how control the political life of citizens. And don't talk in full language (Jim is obviously accepted). However, lawyers are just more sensitive to the criticism since they are on TV more. Perry Mason never did have a kindred soul from economics on TV. Your honor, I contend the witness inflated the GDP numbers to cover up the failure of the auto industry and the increase in transaction costs off shore! Gasp from court room On the other hand, lawyers often seem to create demand for each other: I need a lawyer because the other guy has one, so their efforts cancel out. They do not always cancel out. I would like to see some numbers on the actual costs after ruling. But those sorts of things, like data on security breaches, are not available... Ken. -- The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. -- Samuel Johnson
Re: Back to slavery
Ken writes: However, lawyers are just more sensitive to the criticism since they are on TV more. Perry Mason never did have a kindred soul from economics on TV. Your honor, I contend the witness inflated the GDP numbers to cover up the failure of the auto industry and the increase in transaction costs off shore! Gasp from court room I'm going to have nightmares about a TV show John Pareto, Economist. Of course, people would start complaining that there aren't enough ads to break up the tedium... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: 911 STUDY
Conspiracy is a loaded word and should be dropped from this discussion in order to keep clarity. After all, when a Girl Scout Troop holds a bake sale, a conspiracy can be said to have occured. I suggest the more operative words, plan and analysis be used. In the present instance, qualified, experienced pilots analysed what little information they have about the events of 911 -- they bounced their personal knowledge off reported facts. The events of 911 themselves were the result of a plan. By chucking the efforts of the pilots into the catch-all conspiracy bucket, the underlying issue gets pettifogged away.* Conspiracy theorists is heavy in intensional meaning and meager in extensional meaning, to use S. I. Hayakawa's phraseology. Much of what we know about the world -- from the existence of Pluto the planet to the personality of Pluto the dog -- has come from deductive reasoning. The case of 911 requires a great deal of deductive reasoning as well as the fitting together of known pieces of a broken mosaic. Whatever practical moves a citizen makes today hinges heavily on deductive reasoning. A corollary challenge is to keep the loaded words of the media (including email forums) from skewing the swing. Dan Scanlan * Mixed metaphor? Once you set sail in a metaphor you shouldn't swap horses until you at least get to the end of the sentence. The lack of information available regarding 9-11 creates fertile ground for conspiracy theories. That is because a coverup is itself a conspiracy and is also presumptive evidence that at least one prior conspiracy is being covered up. Hence the liberal use of disinformation to obstruct effective investigation of that which is being covered up. Shane Mage === Reads like and infinite regress problem common to conspiracy theories... Ian -- -- You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones we need to concentrate on. George W. Bush, Washington DC, March 2001 - END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Live music, comedy, call-in radio-oke Alternate Sundays, 6am GMT (10pm PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.oro.net/~dscanlan
another little bankruptcy
$20bn power firm failure David Teather in New York Wednesday July 16, 2003 The Guardian Eight of the 10 biggest bankruptcies in corporate history have happened in the past two and a half years, after US energy firm Mirant Corporation buckled under its debts late on Monday night. The filing piles further misery on lenders, shareholders and bondholders who have lost billions of dollars from the wave of corporate crashes since the boom years of the late 1990s. Barclays is listed in Mirant's bankruptcy petition as one of the company's lenders, and its exposure is put at $112m (£70m). Creditors have, on average, recovered less from the present spate of bankruptcies than at any other point in the past few decades. Mirant filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from its creditors a day before repayment was due on $1.1bn debt. According to court documents, it had $20.6bn in assets, $11.4bn in debt and $1.2bn in cash. The filing made it the 10th largest bankruptcy, defined by assets, according to rankings compiled by BankruptcyData.com. Mirant, like other energy firms, has struggled to stay afloat since confidence in the sector was hurt by the collapse of Enron which, combined with a long slump in prices, caused credit downgrades. The filing was made after a last-minute attempt to reach agreement with creditors to restructure its debt failed. The firm lost $2.4bn last year and investors' nerves were further rattled when an audit found $188m in overstated profits. Mirant was caught up in the widespread allegations of energy price manipulation that caused the Californian energy crisis three years ago. The scandal-hit telecoms firm WorldCom holds the unwelcome title of the biggest ever bankruptcy. It went under on July 21 last year, with assets of almost $104bn. The others in the top 10 that have crashed since the beginning of 2001 are Enron, insurer and home lender Conseco, telecommunications company Global Crossing, United Airlines, cable company Adelphia Communications, and the utility Pacific Gas and Electric.
Re: Back to slavery
Justin asks: This isn't to say that the incentive Michael talks about doesn't exist. Btw, David, are you a litigator or a transactional lawyer? I am a corporate bankruptcy lawyer, which is primarily transactional, but involves litigation in the sense that Bankruptcy Court approval is required for various transactions. David Shemano
Re: Back to slavery
Justin writes: This isn't to say that the incentive Michael talks about doesn't exist. Btw, David, are you a litigator or a transactional lawyer? I am corporate bankruptcy attorney, which is primarily transactional but involves litigation in that Bankruptcy Court approval is required for various transactions, and various constituencies attempt to protect rights. David Shemano
Re: Back to slavery
David Shemano wrote: I am corporate bankruptcy attorney, which is primarily transactional ... We need those a fair bit today, no? ... But, more respectfully, what is the value you provide outside the parametres for business collection upon failure (and how is that different than Repo Men)? Aren't bankruptcy lawyers merely administrators in a system? That is, no productive value? Merely moving money around, like a bank teller? Just asking for some personal reasons... Ken. -- Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation. -- Henry Kissinger
Re: Back to slavery
yeah, but all those economists became interesting by doing more than mere economics. (Of course, economics is interesting to economists. But since accounting is interesting to accountants, that hardly proves anything.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 11:17 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Back to slavery Jim, you might be wrong. We have a Nobelist in the dock right now? What about the Harvard-Russian scandal? One of our Chico students, Khoshigian (sp?) has been at the center of international intrigue. Ken Lay, for God's sake. I think that we need a cable channel for economics. On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 10:03:59AM -0700, Devine, James wrote: I'm going to have nightmares about a TV show John Pareto, Economist. Of course, people would start complaining that there aren't enough ads to break up the tedium... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bankruptcy
We have an expert on personal bankruptcy here, Robert Manning. David, you work at the corporate level. One question that intrigues me is the class nature of bankruptcy. PGE seems to be coming out of bankruptcy smelling like a rose. WorldCom and Enron seem to get quite lenient rulings lately. I confess that I am not an expert and would like to see such companies get spanked. Creditor, like the famous employees of Enron who could not dump their stock, don't seem to get much sympathy from the courts. Banks do. Then we have the stalled, punitive personal bankruptcy law that threatens common people, even though Burt Reynolds, the original poster boy for the law when it began, would still get to keep his estate under the law. Am I just a cockeyed commie to think this way? What am I missing. On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 10:46:48AM -0700, David S. Shemano wrote: I am a corporate bankruptcy lawyer, which is primarily transactional, but involves litigation in the sense that Bankruptcy Court approval is required for various transactions. David Shemano -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Back to slavery
RE Jim's: I'm going to have nightmares about a TV show John Pareto, Economist. I think the life (and economic theories) of Veblen would make a wonderful TV series. Perhaps David Duchovny could star in the series. Eric
Re: Back to slavery
Scott Nearing would make an excellent television show as well. He was an activist, kicked out of academia and the communist party. Lived a very interesting life. Did heavy physical labor until he was 99. Alexander Gershenkron lived a very interesting life, in the midst of the Soviet and Nazi uprisings. He was conservative, though. His grandson wrote his bio, Flyswater, as well as a bio of Moe Berg, major league catcher and CIA spy. On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 11:31:23AM -0700, Eric Nilsson wrote: RE Jim's: I'm going to have nightmares about a TV show John Pareto, Economist. I think the life (and economic theories) of Veblen would make a wonderful TV series. Perhaps David Duchovny could star in the series. Eric -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Bankruptcy
Michael Perelman writes: One question that intrigues me is the class nature of bankruptcy. PGE seems to be coming out of bankruptcy smelling like a rose. WorldCom and Enron seem to get quite lenient rulings lately. I confess that I am not an expert and would like to see such companies get spanked. The fundamental philosophical problem is, who is PGE, Worldcom, Enron? If the company is insolvent, the shareholders are out of the money and the company is now owned by the creditors. Therefore, if you spank the corporation (and not individuals who committed wrongdoing), you are effectively punishing the creditors, who are presumably innocent of any wrongdoing. Creditor, like the famous employees of Enron who could not dump their stock, don't seem to get much sympathy from the courts. Banks do. Banks are creditors, as are bondholders, trade vendors, employees, landlords, and tort creditors, and the law generally treats them pari passu. Generally, employees do receive symphathy from courts compared to banks and other institutional creditors. For instance, it is routine for unpaid wage claims to be paid very early in the case before other creditors. While it is justified as an attempt to maintain morale and retain the employees during the reorganization process, it does a reflect a general sense that the employees shouldn't get screwed while the big boys fight it out. There is a general conflict between secured creditors (usually banks) and unsecured creditors. The bank will often have a lien on all of the assets, so the unsecured creditors will attack the validity of the security interest in order to obtain repayment. The conflict manifests itself at a theoretical in the drafting of the Uniform Commercial Code, which was recently revised in a way that makes it much more easy to obtain and protect a security interest, to the consternation of unsecured creditors, David Shemano
Re: Bankruptcy
Michael writes: One question that intrigues me is the class nature of bankruptcy. PGE seems to be coming out of bankruptcy smelling like a rose. WorldCom and Enron seem to get quite lenient rulings lately. I confess that I am not an expert and would like to see such companies get spanked. David answers: The fundamental philosophical problem is, who is PGE, Worldcom, Enron? If the company is insolvent, the shareholders are out of the money and the company is now owned by the creditors. Therefore, if you spank the corporation (and not individuals who committed wrongdoing), you are effectively punishing the creditors, who are presumably innocent of any wrongdoing. -- weren't the bankers consciously taking a risk by lending to Enron? if they're automatically bailed out, doesn't that encourage moral hazard, i.e., a willingness to lend to similar miscreants? (It's amazing, by the way, how little economics books talk about bankruptcy.) Jim
Re: Back to slavery
Eric Nilsson wrote: RE Jim's: I'm going to have nightmares about a TV show John Pareto, Economist. I think the life (and economic theories) of Veblen would make a wonderful TV series. Perhaps David Duchovny could star in the series. One would want also to include his theories on education. After all, he wanted to give his book, _The Higher Learning in America_, the subtitle of A study in human depravity. His publisher wouldn't accept that subtitle, so he substituted A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Businessmen. Carrol Eric
Re: Bankruptcy
Jim Devine writes: weren't the bankers consciously taking a risk by lending to Enron? if they're automatically bailed out, doesn't that encourage moral hazard, i.e., a willingness to lend to similar miscreants? You are being loose in your language. Who is arguing that they should be bailed out? The risk the bankers took was that they would not get repaid.They simply want the value of Enron to be maximized so their repayment is maximized. It is a fundamental premise of the bankruptcy world that the going concern value of the corporation exceeds its liquidation value. Therefore, if Enron is permitted to stay in business, there is more value available to repay the debts owed to the banks and all other creditors. To the extent that the bankers knew about and facilitated the wrongdoing, they are being sued and their claims may be equitably subordinated under the Bankruptcy Code. I am sure they are arguing that they had no idea of the wrongdoing, etc. To minimize the risk of nonpayment, some of the banks insisted upon collateral. The argument has been made that secured lending does increase moral hazard by reducing oversight. However, collecting a debt through the collateral is expensive, frustrating and risky, and the existence of collateral, in my experience, rarely justifies or creates a care-free attitude to the loan. What secured lending does do is make lending available to higher credit risks, which is a different issue. David Shemano
Kindleberger
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-charles11jul1 1,1,7603654.story OBITUARIES Charles Kindleberger, 92; Author, MIT Economist Helped Design Marshall Plan From Times Staff and Wire Reports July 11, 2003/L.A. TIMES Charles P. Kindleberger, an economic historian and expert on international monetary affairs who also helped formulate the Marshall Plan for the rebuilding of Europe after World War II, has died. He was 92. Kindleberger, an emeritus professor of economics at MIT and a widely published author, died Monday of a stroke at a hospital in Cambridge, Mass. He was both an outstanding economic historian and a respected applied economist who made major contributions to the thinking on key issues for generations, John Williamson, an economist with the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for International Economics, told a reporter for Bloomberg News. In his influential career, Kindleberger wrote more than 30 books, including International Economics, a 1953 work that went through five editions during its more than two decades of use as a standard text in economics. A more recent book, Manias, Panics and Crashes, traced four centuries of boom-and-bust financial cycles, bringing to light a 1636 bubble in the market for Dutch tulips that sent investors offering land, houses, farm animals and gold in return for fancy tulip bulbs. A reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement in London wrote that Kindleberger is by far the most entertaining writer on financial history still at work today. He is also far and away the most erudite. Born in New York City, Kindleberger graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and earned his master's degree and doctorate from Columbia University. Before World War II, he worked as an economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York City. When the U.S. entered the war, he served in the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA. He later served in the 12th Army Group in Europe as an intelligence officer. In the early postwar years, he was a key advisor on German reparations, and served as chief of the committee that prepared cost estimates for the European Recovery Program, also known as the Marshall Plan. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which announced Kindleberger's death, cited an interview he once gave recounting his experience working on the Marshall Plan, named for Army Gen. George C. Marshall, the postwar secretary of State under President Truman. We were conscious of a great sense of excitement about the plan, Kindleberger said. Marshall himself was a great, great man - funny, odd, but great - Olympian in his moral quality. We'd stay up all night, night after night I had a tremendous sense of gratification for working so hard on it. Kindleberger joined the MIT faculty in 1948 as an associate professor of economics. He became a full professor three years later, and eventually held the Ford International Professor of Economics chair. He retired in 1976. Kindleberger served on President Johnson's Committee on International Monetary Arrangements in the 1960s. Also in the '60s, he helped develop economics programs and course offerings at five black colleges in Atlanta. He was a member of the United Negro College Fund and a trustee of Clark College in Atlanta. Kindleberger also held posts with the Bank of International Settlements in Switzerland and the board of governors of the American Economic Assn. He is survived by four children and five grandchildren. -- Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Back to slavery
Kenneth Campbell writes: But, more respectfully, what is the value you provide outside the parametres for business collection upon failure (and how is that different than Repo Men)? Aren't bankruptcy lawyers merely administrators in a system? That is, no productive value? Merely moving money around, like a bank teller? Generally, commercial lawyers add value in the following way: 1. I have an expertise in the Bankruptcy Code. Therefore, if you are engaged in a transaction affected by the Bankruptcy Code, hiring me is like hiring an accountant to do your taxes -- you can try and do it yourself, but the system is so complex that it is worth paying me X to ensure that you do not lose more than X. 2. Lawyers do stuff people do not want to do for various reasons. For instance, carefully drafting and reviewing documents. Therefore, hiring me is like hiring a gardener. You like your garden and nothing prevents you from doing your own gardening, but maybe you would rather spend your time doing something else. This is especially true for corporations, where the time of the decision makers, the people who negotiate the deal points, are too valuable to be involved in the mere documentation of agreements. 3. I have skills in negotiation and conflict resolution. A corporate reorganization has lots of moving parts and competing constituencies in situtations were time really is money. Bankruptcy lawyers are experienced in knowing when to settle and when to fight, and generally how to move things along. Therefore, hiring me is like putting oil in your car -- the oil does not mechanically contribute to the movement of the car, but it makes the process go smoother. In summary, we are productive in that we facilitate various ends: agreements, reorganization and liquidation of business entities, reallocation of resources, etc. To the extent those ends are good things to have, I guess we are productive, and to the extent they are not good things, I suppose we are not productive. David Shemano
Re: Bankruptcy
Well, the PGE bankruptcy is more complicated. The customers (rate payers) were denied participation by the bankruptcy judge. The company proposed a settlement which took care of the creditors but which would have screwed 5 million customers. The creditors liked it. So a huge and valuable asset -- the hydro electric system (using public water) would have passed to a new PGE subsidiary. To head off that transfer, which the judge and the creditors saw would take care of their interests, the CPUC proposed an alternative. The hydro would stay as a regulated utility asset -- absolutely essential for customer protection -- but PGE would get a huge financial settlement, to be paid over the next eleven years but the individual electric customers. The bankruptcy judge approved an expenditure of $20 odd million for PGE to hire its Wall St. financial advisor, and $20 odd million for the CPUC to pay for its Wall St. financial advisor-- but the public till now has not had 20 million or 1 million to hire financial advice. To argue that the CPUC is the customers' protector is disingenuous. Once the backruptcy judge got hold of this justice was to be ill served. Gene Coyle David S. Shemano wrote: Michael Perelman writes: One question that intrigues me is the class nature of bankruptcy. PGE seems to be coming out of bankruptcy smelling like a rose. WorldCom and Enron seem to get quite lenient rulings lately. I confess that I am not an expert and would like to see such companies get spanked. The fundamental philosophical problem is, who is PGE, Worldcom, Enron? If the company is insolvent, the shareholders are out of the money and the company is now owned by the creditors. Therefore, if you spank the corporation (and not individuals who committed wrongdoing), you are effectively punishing the creditors, who are presumably innocent of any wrongdoing. Creditor, like the famous employees of Enron who could not dump their stock, don't seem to get much sympathy from the courts. Banks do. Banks are creditors, as are bondholders, trade vendors, employees, landlords, and tort creditors, and the law generally treats them pari passu. Generally, employees do receive symphathy from courts compared to banks and other institutional creditors. For instance, it is routine for unpaid wage claims to be paid very early in the case before other creditors. While it is justified as an attempt to maintain morale and retain the employees during the reorganization process, it does a reflect a general sense that the employees shouldn't get screwed while the big boys fight it out. There is a general conflict between secured creditors (usually banks) and unsecured creditors. The bank will often have a lien on all of the assets, so the unsecured creditors will attack the validity of the security interest in order to obtain repayment. The conflict manifests itself at a theoretical in the drafting of the Uniform Commercial Code, which was recently revised in a way that makes it much more easy to obtain and protect a security interest, to the consternation of unsecured creditors, David Shemano
Re: Back to slavery
Those who object to economic planning on the grounds that the problem is solved by price movements can be answered by pointing out that there is planning within our economic system which is quite different from the individual planning mentioned above [individuals who exercise foresight and choice among alternatives -- mbs] and which is akin to what is normally called economic planning. I don't know. If you don't have exchange, there is some kind of very different world (inside the firm) where transactions are conducted, in contrast to markets. It's even more screwy if the manager is not the owner. I'd say the implications were potentially radical, but they didn't spin out that way as far as the profession is concerned. For obvious reasons. It's been a while since I read Lange/Taylor, but I'm reminded of their pricing scheme while reading about Federal gov contracting. The Feds have this body of regulations known as A-76 which are guidelines for organizing a market as a way of making decisions about contracts. It's basically unwieldy and not much used, but in a sense it's socialism in action. :-) mbs . . . This stuff isn't radical. It was developed by Coase, who's very much part of the Chicago school of laissez-faire economics. Jim
Re: Back to slavery
Max, who said the quote in the first paragraph? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Those who object to economic planning on the grounds that the problem is solved by price movements can be answered by pointing out that there is planning within our economic system which is quite different from the individual planning mentioned above [individuals who exercise foresight and choice among alternatives -- mbs] and which is akin to what is normally called economic planning. I don't know. If you don't have exchange, there is some kind of very different world (inside the firm) where transactions are conducted, in contrast to markets. It's even more screwy if the manager is not the owner. I'd say the implications were potentially radical, but they didn't spin out that way as far as the profession is concerned. For obvious reasons. It's been a while since I read Lange/Taylor, but I'm reminded of their pricing scheme while reading about Federal gov contracting. The Feds have this body of regulations known as A-76 which are guidelines for organizing a market as a way of making decisions about contracts. It's basically unwieldy and not much used, but in a sense it's socialism in action. :-) mbs . . . This stuff isn't radical. It was developed by Coase, who's very much part of the Chicago school of laissez-faire economics. Jim
Re: Bankruptcy
I very much admire the way you handle yourself here. We have had conservatives who have tried to convert us, usually in an antagonist way. Instead, you present your views and leave it there. Indeed, if I were facing bankruptcy, I would want to hire someone like you, although I could not afford your fees. On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 01:10:46PM -0700, David S. Shemano wrote: Michael Perelman writes: One question that intrigues me is the class nature of bankruptcy. PGE seems to be coming out of bankruptcy smelling like a rose. WorldCom and Enron seem to get quite lenient rulings lately. I confess that I am not an expert and would like to see such companies get spanked. The fundamental philosophical problem is, who is PGE, Worldcom, Enron? If the company is insolvent, the shareholders are out of the money and the company is now owned by the creditors. Therefore, if you spank the corporation (and not individuals who committed wrongdoing), you are effectively punishing the creditors, who are presumably innocent of any wrongdoing. Creditor, like the famous employees of Enron who could not dump their stock, don't seem to get much sympathy from the courts. Banks do. Banks are creditors, as are bondholders, trade vendors, employees, landlords, and tort creditors, and the law generally treats them pari passu. Generally, employees do receive symphathy from courts compared to banks and other institutional creditors. For instance, it is routine for unpaid wage claims to be paid very early in the case before other creditors. While it is justified as an attempt to maintain morale and retain the employees during the reorganization process, it does a reflect a general sense that the employees shouldn't get screwed while the big boys fight it out. There is a general conflict between secured creditors (usually banks) and unsecured creditors. The bank will often have a lien on all of the assets, so the unsecured creditors will attack the validity of the security interest in order to obtain repayment. The conflict manifests itself at a theoretical in the drafting of the Uniform Commercial Code, which was recently revised in a way that makes it much more easy to obtain and protect a security interest, to the consternation of unsecured creditors, David Shemano -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Bankruptcy
David talks like a lawyer, not a conservative. I'd say the same thing (if I knew as much about bankruptcy). But maybes ome would say we are all conservatives (institutionally) as well as parasites. ;- jks --- Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I very much admire the way you handle yourself here. We have had conservatives who have tried to convert us, usually in an antagonist way. Instead, you present your views and leave it there. Indeed, if I were facing bankruptcy, I would want to hire someone like you, although I could not afford your fees. On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 01:10:46PM -0700, David S. Shemano wrote: Michael Perelman writes: One question that intrigues me is the class nature of bankruptcy. PGE seems to be coming out of bankruptcy smelling like a rose. WorldCom and Enron seem to get quite lenient rulings lately. I confess that I am not an expert and would like to see such companies get spanked. The fundamental philosophical problem is, who is PGE, Worldcom, Enron? If the company is insolvent, the shareholders are out of the money and the company is now owned by the creditors. Therefore, if you spank the corporation (and not individuals who committed wrongdoing), you are effectively punishing the creditors, who are presumably innocent of any wrongdoing. Creditor, like the famous employees of Enron who could not dump their stock, don't seem to get much sympathy from the courts. Banks do. Banks are creditors, as are bondholders, trade vendors, employees, landlords, and tort creditors, and the law generally treats them pari passu. Generally, employees do receive symphathy from courts compared to banks and other institutional creditors. For instance, it is routine for unpaid wage claims to be paid very early in the case before other creditors. While it is justified as an attempt to maintain morale and retain the employees during the reorganization process, it does a reflect a general sense that the employees shouldn't get screwed while the big boys fight it out. There is a general conflict between secured creditors (usually banks) and unsecured creditors. The bank will often have a lien on all of the assets, so the unsecured creditors will attack the validity of the security interest in order to obtain repayment. The conflict manifests itself at a theoretical in the drafting of the Uniform Commercial Code, which was recently revised in a way that makes it much more easy to obtain and protect a security interest, to the consternation of unsecured creditors, David Shemano -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com
Re: Bankruptcy
Exactly. Why is it the responsibility of the rate payers to bail out the share holders? Are the corps. willing to lower rates when profits are flush? On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 03:36:52PM -0700, Eugene Coyle wrote: Well, the PGE bankruptcy is more complicated. The customers (rate payers) were denied participation by the bankruptcy judge. The company proposed a settlement which took care of the creditors but which would have screwed 5 million customers. The creditors liked it. So a huge and valuable asset -- the hydro electric system (using public water) would have passed to a new PGE subsidiary. To head off that transfer, which the judge and the creditors saw would take care of their interests, the CPUC proposed an alternative. The hydro would stay as a regulated utility asset -- absolutely essential for customer protection -- but PGE would get a huge financial settlement, to be paid over the next eleven years but the individual electric customers. The bankruptcy judge approved an expenditure of $20 odd million for PGE to hire its Wall St. financial advisor, and $20 odd million for the CPUC to pay for its Wall St. financial advisor-- but the public till now has not had 20 million or 1 million to hire financial advice. To argue that the CPUC is the customers' protector is disingenuous. Once the backruptcy judge got hold of this justice was to be ill served. Gene Coyle David S. Shemano wrote: Michael Perelman writes: One question that intrigues me is the class nature of bankruptcy. PGE seems to be coming out of bankruptcy smelling like a rose. WorldCom and Enron seem to get quite lenient rulings lately. I confess that I am not an expert and would like to see such companies get spanked. The fundamental philosophical problem is, who is PGE, Worldcom, Enron? If the company is insolvent, the shareholders are out of the money and the company is now owned by the creditors. Therefore, if you spank the corporation (and not individuals who committed wrongdoing), you are effectively punishing the creditors, who are presumably innocent of any wrongdoing. Creditor, like the famous employees of Enron who could not dump their stock, don't seem to get much sympathy from the courts. Banks do. Banks are creditors, as are bondholders, trade vendors, employees, landlords, and tort creditors, and the law generally treats them pari passu. Generally, employees do receive symphathy from courts compared to banks and other institutional creditors. For instance, it is routine for unpaid wage claims to be paid very early in the case before other creditors. While it is justified as an attempt to maintain morale and retain the employees during the reorganization process, it does a reflect a general sense that the employees shouldn't get screwed while the big boys fight it out. There is a general conflict between secured creditors (usually banks) and unsecured creditors. The bank will often have a lien on all of the assets, so the unsecured creditors will attack the validity of the security interest in order to obtain repayment. The conflict manifests itself at a theoretical in the drafting of the Uniform Commercial Code, which was recently revised in a way that makes it much more easy to obtain and protect a security interest, to the consternation of unsecured creditors, David Shemano -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Back to slavery
Coase, in The Nature of the Firm. (1937, Economica) -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Devine, James Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 6:51 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Back to slavery Max, who said the quote in the first paragraph? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Those who object to economic planning on the grounds that the problem is solved by price movements can be answered by pointing out that there is planning within our economic system which is quite different from the individual planning mentioned above [individuals who exercise foresight and choice among alternatives -- mbs] and which is akin to what is normally called economic planning. I don't know. If you don't have exchange, there is some kind of very different world (inside the firm) where transactions are conducted, in contrast to markets. It's even more screwy if the manager is not the owner. I'd say the implications were potentially radical, but they didn't spin out that way as far as the profession is concerned. For obvious reasons. It's been a while since I read Lange/Taylor, but I'm reminded of their pricing scheme while reading about Federal gov contracting. The Feds have this body of regulations known as A-76 which are guidelines for organizing a market as a way of making decisions about contracts. It's basically unwieldy and not much used, but in a sense it's socialism in action. :-) mbs . . . This stuff isn't radical. It was developed by Coase, who's very much part of the Chicago school of laissez-faire economics. Jim
Lawyers
One more thought on the value of lawyers. The following is from the Reason magazine interview of Coase: Reason: People are very excited that transactions are taking place much more efficiently than ever before through new electronic means and better communication systems. Are you excited about these trends? Coase: Yes, because I don't understand them. People talk about increases in improvements in technology, but just as important are improvements in the way in which people make contracts and deals. If you can lower the costs there, you can have more specialization and greater production. So that's what I'm interested in now. By improving the way the market works, you can produce immense benefits, not because it invents new technologies, but because it enables new technologies to be used. Without the ability to make efficient contracts, you can't use these new means. And a lot of effort is going, at the moment, into devising new ways of handling the problems, mainly by the lawyers. Reason: Some people would say that it's just paper transactions, that all the efforts of the lawyers are a waste, a mess, a scourge on society. You have a slightly different view. Coase: Lawyers do a lot of harm, but they also do an immense amount of good. And the good is that they are expert negotiators, and they know what is necessary in the law to enable deals to be made. Their activities are designed, in fact, to lower transaction costs. Some of them, we know, raise transaction costs. But by and large, they are engaged in lowering transaction costs. People talk about the information age and how large numbers of people are engaged in information activities. Well, gathering information is one of the difficulties when you're in a market. What is being produced, what are the prices of what is being offered? You've got to learn all these things. You can learn them now a good deal more easily than you could have done before; you don't have to search. If you've ever tried to buy anything, you know how much time goes into finding out what's available and all the alternatives. David Shemano
Re: Lawyers
The last time I heard a great deal of enthusiasm about transactions costs was during the dot.com boom period, when the Internet threatened to eliminate transactions costs. On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 07:14:31PM -0700, David S. Shemano wrote: One more thought on the value of lawyers. The following is from the Reason magazine interview of Coase: Reason: People are very excited that transactions are taking place much more efficiently than ever before through new electronic means and better communication systems. Are you excited about these trends? Coase: Yes, because I don't understand them. People talk about increases in improvements in technology, but just as important are improvements in the way in which people make contracts and deals. If you can lower the costs there, you can have more specialization and greater production. So that's what I'm interested in now. By improving the way the market works, you can produce immense benefits, not because it invents new technologies, but because it enables new technologies to be used. Without the ability to make efficient contracts, you can't use these new means. And a lot of effort is going, at the moment, into devising new ways of handling the problems, mainly by the lawyers. Reason: Some people would say that it's just paper transactions, that all the efforts of the lawyers are a waste, a mess, a scourge on society. You have a slightly different view. Coase: Lawyers do a lot of harm, but they also do an immense amount of good. And the good is that they are expert negotiators, and they know what is necessary in the law to enable deals to be made. Their activities are designed, in fact, to lower transaction costs. Some of them, we know, raise transaction costs. But by and large, they are engaged in lowering transaction costs. People talk about the information age and how large numbers of people are engaged in information activities. Well, gathering information is one of the difficulties when you're in a market. What is being produced, what are the prices of what is being offered? You've got to learn all these things. You can learn them now a good deal more easily than you could have done before; you don't have to search. If you've ever tried to buy anything, you know how much time goes into finding out what's available and all the alternatives. David Shemano -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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