Free Enterprise market

Free Enterprise market 

Much of economics is based on the assumption that the systems that they are analyzing are a coordinated set of "Free Enterprise Markets" with entities who are guided by "Rational Actor Theory". This entry attempts to clarify my thoughts about the Assumptions and Conclusions of this situation.

Free Enterprise market. (competitive model),

• [T]he flows of services that would be offered and purchased and the prices that would be paid for them if each individual in the market offered or purchased services at the going prices as if his decisions had no influence over them, and
• [T]he going prices were such that the amounts of services which were available equalled the total amounts which other individuals were willing to purchase, with no imposed restrictions on supply or demand.

Rational Actor

Results.

First Optimality Theorem:

• If a competitive equilibrium exists at all, and if all commodities relevant to costs or utilities are in fact priced in the market, then the equilibrium is necessarily [Pareto] optimal in the following precise sense: 'There is no other allocation of resources to services which will make all participants in the market better off'

Second Optimality Theorem:

• If there are no increasing returns in production, and if certain other minor conditions are satisfied, then every optimal state is a competitive equilibrium corresponding to some initial distribution of purchasing power

See:

Kenneth Arrow’s seminal article on the economics of medical care (pdf)

JSTOR: Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Summer, 1977), pp. 317-344 (http://www.jstor.org/pss/2264946)

Philosophy(1)

Philosophy (Main theories) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Branches of philosophy

• Ethics, or "moral philosophy", is concerned primarily with the question of the best way to live, and secondarily, concerning the question of whether this question can be answered. The main branches of ethics are meta-ethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Meta-ethics concerns the nature of ethical thought, such as the origins of the words good and bad, and origins of other comparative words of various ethical systems, whether there are absolute ethical truths, and how such truths could be known. Normative ethics are more concerned with the questions of how one ought to act, and what the right course of action is. This is where most ethical theories are generated.^[7] Lastly, applied ethics go beyond theory and step into real world ethical practice, such as questions of whether or not abortion is correct.^[8] Ethics is also associated with the idea of morality, and the two are often interchangeable.
• Political philosophy is the study of government and the relationship of individuals (or families and clans) to communities including the state. It includes questions about justice, law, property, and the rights and obligations of the citizen. Politics and ethics are traditionally inter-linked subjects, as both discuss the question of what is good and how people should live.

• 2.2 Modern ethics
  • 2.2.1 Consequentialism -Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill- the consequences of a particular action form the basis for any valid moral judgment about that action (John Rawls)
    
  • 2.2.2 Deontology - Immanuel Kant - determines goodness or rightness from examining acts, rather than third-party consequences of the act as in consequentialism, or the intentions of the person doing the act as in virtue ethics.
  
  
• 2.3 Postmodern ethics

• 4 Main theories
  • 4.1 Realism and nominalism
  • 4.2 Rationalism and empiricism
  • 4.3 Skepticism
  • 4.4 Idealism
  • 4.5 Pragmatism
  • 4.6 Phenomenology
  • 4.7 Existentialism
  • 4.8 Structuralism and post-structuralism
  • 4.9 The analytic tradition
• 5 Moral and political philosophy
  • 5.1 Human nature and political legitimacy
  • 5.2 Consequentialism, deontology, and the aretaic turn

Kenneth Arrow Was Here (Editorial) HealthCare (4)

June 9, 2011, 5:34 pm

Kenneth Arrow Was Here

Some readers ask why my argument that relatively centralized systems work better for health care  (nyt) than the “free market” isn’t an argument for government ownership of everything.

The answer is that health care is different: it’s a sector in which basically every market failure you can think of takes place. And we’ve known that since Kenneth Arrow’s classic analysis (nyt) half a century ago.
It’s shocking, though not surprising, that we keep having to relearn this basic point.

  See:  

• The Economist’s “Democracy in America” blog has a very good illustration of the reasons our privatized, market-based system is so much more expensive, for no better results, than everyone else’s
• Kenneth Arrow’s seminal article on the economics of medical care (pdf), 
• Toward a 21st-Century Health Care System: Recommendations for Health Care Reform, Kenneth Arrow, PhD ..., April 7, 2009
• Krugman: Why markets can’t cure healthcare, , July 25, 2009

Also see: 

• In defense of Canada -- Comparison with US HealthCare
•  Paul Ryan Budget Would Make Big Changes in Medicare, March 29, 2012
• HealthCare Aug 9, 2007
• HealthCareUS Dec 8, 2008
• HealthCareUS-3 May 13, 2009

Budget fy2012

There are a number of proposed budgets for fy2012. This post attempts to list them:

• Rand Paul's budget bill (PDF) , 
• A detailed {critical} look at the Rand Paul spending bill (Washington Examiner)

• Paul Ryan's Budget -- The Republican "Roadmap Plan" (NewsWeek) 

• Spending Reduction Act of 2011 reduces federal spending by $2.5 trillion over ten years
• The People's Budget, Congressional Progressive Caucus
• Congressional Progressive Caucus People's Budget beats Ryan's corporatist budget by a long shot 

also see:

• Ideological Budget 2/20/2001
• Republican Budgets 1/26/2011

Inequality

I have noted a few books, sites, and results that seem to be related to the Stanford course: 

Books

• An excerpt from Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer - And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson (Simon & Schuster, 2011).
  
  
•  The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and
  Why Liberals Should Too -- James Galbraith (Author)
   
• The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger [Paperback]
  Kate Pickett (Author), Richard Wilkinson (Author)   

Graphs, and Sites

What Americans think about income inequality in one graph -- If Americans don't think that there is a wide spread in the income distribution, then they probably will  not vote to change it.

Mahalanobis -- The incomes of the top 3% are distributed according to Pareto's law, (20/80 law) where as the lowest 97% are distributed according to the distribution of energy in gas, e.g. Boltzmann-Gibbs. (Original article, " Why it is hard to share the wealth, 12 March 2005" New Scientist) -- I think that this means 2 things:

• There is a difference between the way income is distributed amoung the rich and the poor, at somewhere around the 3% point. e.g. Adjusted Gross income of ~ $100,000
• The poor's income is distributed randomly e.g. as though in any interchange where as the rich'd income is distributed as though in an interchange the richer one was the more benefit one got from the interchange.

And here is one of the papers "Pareto's Law of Income Distribution: Evidence for Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States" --  that shows that the Incomes of the countries are roughly Power Law distributed.

The Gini as a "function" of Democratic score, I realize that this is just one plot, but it sure does NOT indicate a strong correlation...

Libertarian Party 2010 Platform

    Libertarian Party 2010 Platform Strongly Edited, Mike Liveright

1.0    Personal Liberty -- Individuals should be free to make choices for themselves
1.1    Expression and Communication -- We support full freedom of expression and oppose government censorship
1.2    Personal Privacy -- the rights recognized by the Fourth Amendment to be secure in our persons,
homes, and property.
1.3    Personal Relationships -- Sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity should have no impact on the government's treatment of individuals
1.4    Abortion --we believe that government should be kept out of the matter
1.5    Crime and Justice -- Criminal laws should be limited to violation of the rights of others through force or fraud, or deliberate actions that place others involuntarily at significant risk of harm
1.6    Self-Defense -- The only legitimate use of force is in defense of individual rights — life, liberty, and justly acquired property — against aggression.

2.0    Economic Liberty -- Each person has the right to offer goods and services to others on the free market.
2.1    Property and Contract -- Property rights are entitled to the same protection as all other human rights.
2.2    Environment --  environmental advocates and social pressure are the most effective means of changing public behavior.
2.3    Energy and Resources -- We oppose all government control of energy pricing, allocation, and production.
2.4    Government Finance and Spending -- We call for the repeal of the income tax,  We support the passage of a "Balanced Budget Amendment" to the U.S. Constitution, provided that the budget is balanced exclusively by cutting expenditures, and not by raising taxes.
2.5    Money and Financial Markets -- We favor free-market banking, with unrestricted competition among banks and depository institutions of all types.
2.6    Monopolies and Corporations -- We defend the right of individuals to form corporations, cooperatives and other types of companies based on voluntary association.
2.7    Labor Markets -- We support repeal of all laws which impede the ability of any person to find employment.
2.8    Education -- is best provided by the free market
2.9    Health Care -- We favor restoring and reviving a free market health care system
2.10    Retirement and Income Security -- Retirement planning is the responsibility of the individual

3.0    Securing Liberty -- The protection of individual rights is the only proper purpose of government
3.1    National Defense -- We support the maintenance of a sufficient military to defend the United States against aggression.

3.2    Internal Security and Individual Rights -- The defense of the country requires that we have adequate intelligence to detect and to counter threats to domestic security. This requirement must not take priority over maintaining the civil liberties of our citizens.
3.3    International Affairs -- Our foreign policy should emphasize defense against attack from abroad and enhance the likelihood of peace by avoiding foreign entanglements.
3.4    Free Trade and Migration -- We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade.  Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders.
3.5    Rights and Discrimination -- Government should not deny or abridge any individual's rights based on sex, wealth, race, color, creed, age, national origin, personal habits, political preference or sexual orientation. 
3.6    Representative Government -- We support electoral systems that are more representative of the electorate at the federal, state and local levels.   
3.7    Self-Determination -- Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of individual liberty, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to agree to such new governance as to them shall seem most likely to protect their liberty.

10 Question Political test

There are a number of Quizs (Tests) that show a person, or other's leanings these are available at links/quiz . The simplest one is that by the Libertarian party, Political Position Quiz (10 questions)

Personal Issues 

• Government should not censor speech, press, media, or internet.  
• Military service should be voluntary. There should be no draft.
• There should be no laws regarding sex for consenting adults. 
• Repeal laws prohibiting adult possession and use of drugs.
• There should be no National ID card.  

Economic Issues 

• End "corporate welfare." No government handouts to business. 
• End government barriers to international free trade.
• Let people control their own retirement; privatize Social Security.
• Replace government welfare with private charity   
• Cut taxes and government spending by 50% or more.

Libertarian (5,5)

Liberal (5,0)

Conservative (0,5)

Statest (0,0)

Justice is served, but more so after lunch: how food-breaks sway the decisions of judges

Discovery Discussion

{The original article} shows that the odds that prisoners will be successfully paroled start off fairly high at around 65% and quickly plummet to nothing over a few hours (although, see footnote). After the judges have returned from their breaks, the odds abruptly climb back up to 65%, before resuming their downward slide. A prisoner’s fate could hinge upon the point in the day when their case is heard. 

• Extraneous factors in judicial decisions (abstract). PNAS (Danziger, Leva and Avnaim-Pesso. 2011.)
• Supporting evidence 

AT&T case

In the case of AT& T Mobility v. Concepcion the Supreme Court decided that:

"California state contract law, which deems class-action waivers in arbitration agreements unenforceable when certain criteria are met, is preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act because it stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress".
      (Also see: iApp OyezToday)

The decision seems important as "This holding leaves the states with no clear way to ban contracts that insulate companies from liability through class proceeding waivers" as well as it may be a continuation of a trend where the Court decides for Business and against the Individual, I wanted to collect the various materials on this case.

• SCOTUSblog: Docket No. 09-893,   Argument Nov 9, 2010  (Audio), Opinion Apr 27, 2011 (Analysis), Vote 5-4
• Supreme Court Says Business Favorable Arbitration Clauses Can Block Class Action Lawsuits (TechDirt)
• AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion: The Corporate Court Does it Again (Huffing post)
• New SCOTUScast: AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion [Audio] (Federalist Society) 
• The Latest SCOTUS Assault: Lochner’s Back (AT&T vs. Concepcion) (attemptor) 
• Corporatism (Hoarding, Profiteering, AT&T, SCOTUS)

Note: I may also want to look at: American Electric Power Co., Inc. v. Connecticut, Whether federal law allows states and private parties to sue utilities for contributing to global warming.

Ideological Budget

It seems to many people that the House Budget cuts are Justified on the basis of trying to balence the budget, but are specifically motivated by a Conservative ideology.I think it would ber interesting to see what a similar Budget cut that was motivated by a Liberial ideology would be, so I am opening up this Blog comment area for those people who would like to identify programs, and their costs, that Liberals would cut  and Conservatives would prefer to retain.

As a starter I'd suggest eliminating the "Abstinence Only" programs, that would save ~$100m/year

Any other thoughts?

See other articles on Ideological Budgeting:

• GOP deficit-reduction hype used in ideological "values" war?  (Angry Bear)
• Republican governors strike at heart of Democratic Party (Politico)
• But keep your hands off the Defense Department’s budget to sponsor Nascar racers. (New York Times)
   

Republican Budgets (After STOT 2011)

Republican

• Tea Party Budget -- r Rand Paul wants to slash $500 billion in fiscal year 2011, which only has eight remaining months. Bachmann lists more than $400 billion in cuts.
• Rand Paul's budget bill (PDF) 
• A detailed look at the Rand Paul spending bill (Washington Examiner)
• Paul Rayan's Budget -- The Republican "Roadmap Plan" -- would  zero out the deficit, balance the budget by 2063, and reduce Medicare's expected share of the economy in 2080 from a projected 14.3 percent of GDP to a mere 4 percent (NewsWeek) 
• Spending Reduction Act of 2011 reduces federal spending by $2.5 trillion over ten years

Government Funding Deadlines

• March 2011 -- The Senate voted, 82-14, Tuesday to end debate on a continuing resolution to fund the government  By Erik Wasson - 12/21/10 
• April - May 2010 -- The U.S. Treasury on Wednesday pushed back its estimate for when the government might hit the $14.294 trillion limiy
• Timetable of the Federal Budget Process (PDF)
• Feb -- President submits budget
• April -- House/Senate applove the budget
• May -- Appropriations bills considered
• June -- House completes action.
• October -- New Fiscal year starts.

Also See: Republican Government (12/30/2010)

Side Note: Arizona Bill Would Let State Nullify Federal Laws At Will 02/04/2011
Side Note: 20 top State of the Union speeches of the past century would look like as Word Clouds

Republican Government

Now that they are Governing?

• 01/29/2010 -- Republicans scramble for credit on the economy 
• 12/29/2010 -- [N]ew nuclear plants depends now, as always, on federal subsidies -- will Reps subsidize them?
• 12/29/2010 -- Could End Lame Duck Sessions
• 12/29/2010 -- Dismantling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac isn't so urgent after all
• 12/28/2010 -- Rule Changes Pave the Way For Major Deficit-Increasing Tax Cuts, Despite Anti-Deficit Rhetoric

It does not Compute? 

• Cutting non-security discretionary funds by $100 billion means a 21%
  annual reduction in the part of the budget that includes funding for
  education, health and human services and housing and urban
  development
• 10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan -- ThinkProgress »
   

Economic charts/graphs and discussions

Economic charts/graphs and discussions 12/22/2010
(Previous 12/07/2009)

• MetricMash -- Dynamic graphs of US economic data, state unemployment rates & historical charts --  historical charts enabling insightful analysis of US economic data including national and state unemployment rates

•  The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (thru 2006)

Factoids

 Factoids (Truths that may be contested)

Social Security originally covered most Americans -- NYT, P. Krugman 12/10/2010

Economic notes

     "Economics Offers Tactics, Not Strategy - NYTimes.com" -- Interesting distinction...
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/economics-offers-tactics-not-strategy/

     "Comics for Economics"
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/comic-for-economics/

     'As noted in our news article, corporate profits reached a record last quarter, at least in nominal terms"
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/visualizing-booming-profits/

     "The Other Taxes: Who Pays Them?" According to this, excluding redistribution paybacks, we seem to have a sort of flat tax now.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/the-other-taxes-who-pays-them/

Gaming the Vote

I have been taking a course on Choice/Voting theory, Arrow's theory, etc. and ran into this book, Gaming the Vote,  discussing the benefits of Range Voting, e.g. each Voter gives each, or some of the, candidate{s} a "value", say from 0 to 5, and the winning candidate is the one with the largest total . The author indicates that this is a better voting system (at least statistically) than the others, though it does require that each voter be able to not only rank, e.g. a > b > c...  the candidates, but also given them relative ratings.e.g.  a = 5, b= 4, c=0

• Note: as is pointed out, this does not disprove Arrow's theorem, and  of course in some cases may be worse than others, but the author suggests that this system generates choices that minimize the "Bayes Dissatisfaction" and is relatively resistant to strategic voting manipulation.

This system was, the author says, discussed by: Warren D, Smith, during the 1990's, and his papers are at Temple University in {Works} the following are the ones that I think may be most interesting to me :

• 56. TITLE: Range Voting pdf
  
  • Center for Range Voting
• 79. TITLE: The voting impossibilities of Arrow and of Gibbard & Satterthwaite.pdf
• 81. TITLE: Direct Democracy.pdf
 

My edit of the Wikipedia article is as follows 

Range voting (also called ratings summation, average voting, cardinal ratings, score voting, 0–99 voting, the score system, or the point system) is a voting sym for one-seat elections under which voters score, e.g 1-5, 0-99, etc. each candidate, the scores are added up, and the candidate with the highest score wins. “Gaming the Vote”  suggests that Range voting leads to the minimum Bayes dissatisfaction of all the voting systems analyzed. Range voting satisfies:

• monotonicity criterion,
• favorite betrayal criterion,
• participation criterion,
• consistency criterion
• independence of irrelevant alternatives,  (See WIKI IIA)
• Note: Range Voting does NOT satisfy the IIA condition as expressed by Arrow, who specifically rejects Cardinal ordering in this criteria, but it does satisfy the other condition  
• "If A is preferred to B out of the choice set {A,B}, then introducing a third alternative X, thus expanding the choice set to {A,B,X}, must not make B preferable to A."
• resolvability criterion,
• reversal symmetry.
• It is immune to cloning, except for the obvious specific case in which a candidate with clones ties, instead of achieving a unique win. 

It dies not satisfy:

• not satisfy either the Condorcet criterion (i.e. is not a Condorcet method) or the Condorcet loser criterion, although with all-strategic voters and perfect information the Condorcet winner is a Nash equilibrium.[7]
• not satisfy the majority criterion, but it satisfies a weakened form of it: a majority can force their choice to win, although they might not exercise that capability.
• not satisfy the later-no-harm criterion, meaning that giving a positive rating to a less preferred candidate can cause a more preferred candidate to lose.
• not regarded as a counter-example to Arrow's theorem is that it is a cardinal voting system, while the "universality" criterion of Arrow's theorem effectively restricts that result to ordinal voting systems.

Note: I expect to add more links to Wikipedia discussions of various topics, but just wanted to point to the Smith papers now.

Voting System evaluation

A voting system contains rules for valid voting, and how votes are counted and aggregated to yield a final result. The study of formally defined voting systems is called voting theory,

With majority rule, those who are unfamiliar with voting theory are often surprised that another voting system exists, each of which has some undesirable features, or that "majority rule" systems can produce results not supported by a majority.

economy and budget Nov, 2010

June 22-23, 2010 -- Federal Reserve Banks ... 
submitted projections for output growth, unemployment, and inflation for the years 2010 to 2012 and over the longer run. Economic projections of Federal Reserve Governors and Reserve Bank presidents, June 2010
Percent

Variable	Central tendency1				Range2
	2010	2011	2012	Longer run	2010	2011	2012	Longer run
Change in real GDP	3.0 to 3.5	3.5 to 4.2	3.5 to 4.5	2.5 to 2.8	2.9 to 3.8	2.9 to 4.5	2.8 to 5.0	2.4 to 3.0
April projection	3.2 to 3.7	3.4 to 4.5	3.5 to 4.5	2.5 to 2.8	2.7 to 4.0	3.0 to 4.6	2.8 to 5.0	2.4 to 3.0
Unemployment rate	9.2 to 9.5	8.3 to 8.7	7.1 to 7.5	5.0 to 5.3	9.0 to 9.9	7.6 to 8.9	6.8 to 7.9	5.0 to 6.3
April projection	9.1 to 9.5	8.1 to 8.5	6.6 to 7.5	5.0 to 5.3	8.6 to 9.7	7.2 to 8.7	6.4 to 7.7	5.0 to 6.3
PCE inflation	1.0 to 1.1	1.1 to 1.6	1.0 to 1.7	1.7 to 2.0	0.9 to 1.8	0.8 to 2.4	0.5 to 2.2	1.5 to 2.0
April projection	1.2 to 1.5	1.1 to 1.9	1.2 to 2.0	1.7 to 2.0	1.1 to 2.0	0.9 to 2.4	0.7 to 2.2	1.5 to 2.0
Core PCE inflation3	0.8 to 1.0	0.9 to 1.3	1.0 to 1.5		0.7 to 1.5	0.6 to 2.4	0.4 to 2.2
April projection	0.9 to 1.2	1.0 to 1.5	1.2 to 1.6		0.7 to 1.6	0.6 to 2.4	0.6 to 2.2

August 21, 2010  Economic Projections in CBO's Budget Update


Fy 2009 -- United States federal budget, Wikipedia
The U.S. budget situation has deteriorated significantly since 2001, when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecast average annual surpluses of approximately $850 billion from 2009-2012. The average deficit forecast in each of those years as of June 2009 was approximately $1,215 billion. The New York Times analyzed this roughly $2 trillion "swing," separating the causes into four major categories along with their share:

• Recessions or the business cycle (37%);
• Policies enacted by President Bush (33%);
• Policies enacted by President Bush and supported or extended by President Obama (20%); and
• New policies from President Obama (10%).

(Log Scale) Long-term real growth in US GDP 1871-2009 by Catherine on November 4, 2010
Log scale version of yesterday’s Real Growth of US GDP graph.

• Annualized Real Stocks Price Growth    1.95%
• Annualized Real GDP Growth                  3.47%

Law-268

The following are some articles that I though might be interested for the Law-268 class that I am taking at Stanford. (mllive)

Week 2 -- Constitutional Interpretation

• The perils of constitution-worship also [blog] -- One of the guiding principles of the tea-party movement is based on a myth (Economist  Sep 23rd 2010 ) 

 Week ? -- Election law

• 
  

Hints

Google Reader

• Next: Shift-A (Mark all read), Shift-N (Next Folder), Shift-O (Open)
  

14th ammendment

Amendment XIV, Section 1, Clause 1:

• All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

In Wong Kim Ark (169 U.S. 649 (1898)) the Supreme Court held that under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a man born within the United States to foreigners (in that case, Chinese citizens) who have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States and are carrying on business in the United States^[10] and who were not employed in a diplomatic or other official capacity by a foreign power, was a citizen of the United States. (Wiki)

Alternatives to Birthright Citizenship by Will Wilkinson on August 10, 2010

Birthright Citizenship Act of 2009 - Amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to consider a person born in the United States "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States for citizenship at birth purposes if the person is born in the United States of parents, one of whom is:

1. a U.S. citizen or national;
2. a lawful permanent resident alien whose residence is in the United States; or
3. an alien performing active service in the U.S. Armed Forces.

References

• Wikipeda

Free Enterprise fundamentalists

The Free Enterprise fundamentalists theorize that:

The Free Enterprise system optimizes a society's economic welfare and therefore any other economic system is sub-optimal and is less beneficial.

=====

I believe that there are a number of questions:


1) Which type of Free Enterprise system?

• Fe.0 - Anarchy - There is no government involvement in the economic system, i.e. no protection for private property or against violence with respect to property
  
  
  
• Fe.1 - Libertarian - The Government manages a court system that adjudicates contracts and natural law protection against theft and a legal enforcement system that enforces the judgements of the court.
  
  
• Fe.2 - Communal - The Government provides the "Essential" common services, e.g. Defense, Police, Fire, Local roads, And??? (Note: Services that can be reasonably provided by private agencies, either by voluntary individual funding with some regulation or subsidies will generally be reserved for Fe.3+?)
  
  
• Fe.3 - Regulatory - The Government passes laws that are meant to express the costs of dis-economies, market failures, and common understandings, and these are also judged and enforced.
  
  
• Fe.4 - Re-Distributional - The Government determines that the poorer are not getting essential services or their "fair" share of the GDP and thus Taxes the richer to either provide the services or income to the poorer
  
  
• Fe.5 - Planned - The Government determines future costs and benefits and Taxes and Subsidizes to decrease or increase activity in coordination with these determinations.

• Fe.6 - Socialist - The Government owns and runs the major industries.
  
  
• Fe.7 - Communist - The Government owns and runs the businesses and directs the employment of the citizens.
  

2) What is the definition of society's economic welfare?

1. GDP
2. Maximum median income/wealth
3. Maximum lower 1/10 income/wealth
   
4. Jobs -- NO
5. Size of Government -- NO

and of course what time period should be considered, tomorrow, 10 years, a generation


3) What other assumptions are required to prove the theory?

1. Homo Economist
1. Full information
2. Rational consideration of present value
3. etc?
2. Static, Monotonic, ?Gaussian? Supply and Demand functions
3. Lack of Chaotic system
4. Lack of monopolies and irrational nations
   

=====

Open Questions

1. Are there significant benefits to having small, diverse companies rather than large mega companies that man be balanced against some synergy?
   
   
2. Are there significant benefits to having continuing existence on companies that may be balanced against increased efficiency of newer companies

=====

Problems

1. Failure to "clear" labor market
   
   
2. Instability of markets and general economy
   
   
3. Lack of "sharing" of productivity growth, Income spread and median income does not increase
   
   
4. Dis-economies, Elimination of Commons
   
   
5. Insufficient investment and concern in the future

=====

Possible causes

1. Black swan
   
   
2. Fooled by Randomness
   
   
3. Missing and asymmetric information
   
   
4. Behavioral economics
1. Excessive value for present
   
   
5. Arrows impossibility theory
   

=====

Political Urban Legends

There are a number of political statements, Urban Legends, that are believed that seem to be unsupported by any facts.

Conservative Canards

The Chinese are drilling in the gulf of Mexico (PolitiFact 2010)

• GOP claim about Chinese oil drilling off Cuba is untrue and (Mother Jones 2008)
• Cheney Admits Mistake in Claim of China Drilling Near Florida
  

Liberal Lies

___________________________

Also see:

• About political urban legends

Contribute any others that you run across

Subscription benefits

Many WEB sites and News sources are trying to find out how to balance the material that they should offer free and that which they should only offer to their subscribers.

My standard suggestion is that anyone should be able to link to your information, and add direct comments, but a subscriber should also be able to:

1) Go directly to the information without going through an Ad Wall.

2) Access past issues table of contents, their front page...

3) Search past articles by tag, Keyword...

4) Link their blog to any article with a headline of their choosing, with popularity ordering,, etc.

5) More TBD.

Paradoxes

The 20-th century was the "No you Can't" century in which there were a number of Paradoxes that were discovered that "proved" that not all things were possible.

Physics

. Relativity -- Large Physics

1. No material particle can be accelerated to the speed of light.
2. The Speed of light is a constant and is not observed to be changed no matter the speed of the observer.
3. There is no absolute space frame, e.g. one can not determine if one is stationary relative to any absolute space.

. Quantum Mechanics -- Small Physics

1. Many measurements are intermingled in that one can not measure both with infinite accuracy, e.g. Position and Momentum.
2. The state of a system often is indeterminate, with no hidden values, and only exists when an observation collapses the state.
3. Small particles (or waves) sometimes seem to be Particles, when their position is measures, and Waves when their path is measured.

Arrow's impossibility theorem (for voting) -- There is no voting system that is a fair way of determining group Public Good from individual preferences if the system is meant to satisfy: "

1. unrestricted domain, -- It should yield a unique and complete ranking of societal choices for any set of individual voter preferences.
2. non-dictatorship, -- It cannot simply mimic the preferences of a single voter.
3. independence of irrelevant alternatives -- Changes in individuals' rankings of irrelevant alternatives (ones outside the subset) should have no impact on the societal ranking of the relevant subset.
4. Pareto efficiency, -- If every individual prefers a certain option to another, then so must the resulting societal preference order. (note: monotonicity, non-imposition, and independence of irrelevant alternatives together imply Pareto efficiency)

Practical Paradoxes

the following seem to be paradoxes, but are not proven.

. Democratic Trilemma -- Fishkin -- No democratic system seems to satisfy the following three objectives.

1. Participation -- All qualified members of the society shall participate in the determination of the policies of the society.
2. Equality -- They shall be equally deterministic of the policies.
3. Deliberation -- They shall spend sufficient time to thoughtfully evaluate the values and implications of their decisions.

Competitive Democracy

I am taking a course in Models of Democracy and leading the session on Competitive Democracy. As part of this I wrote a set of Class notes via Google Docs, and posted it on the web. The problem is that they generate a long URL, so I thought it would help to put it in this Blog post to make it easy to get to. The notes are linked to the title of this post and also from the following:

Competitive Democracy Notes

Also see:

• Schumpeter: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy From WikiSummary

• "Schumpeter's Leadership Democracy" Mackie, Gerry, 2004. -- Joseph Schumpeter's theory of democracy is set forth, and criticized as both insufficiently normative and ultimately incoherent. {TBD}
  

Wingnuts

Wingnuts

A new book "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America (Paperback) ~ John Avlon (Author)", describes the ideas and people that the author feels are "A wingnut is someone on the far-right or far-left wing of the political spectrum – professional partisans, unhinged activists, and paranoid conspiracy theorists". As this may be a subjective evalution, I am looking into a more objective measure of these catagories.

• Wingnut Idea: An idea that is supported/believed by 5 to 15% of the population. (Note: I define an idea that is supported by less than 5% as just crazy and by over 15% as just unpopular or not)
  
  
• Group Wingnut Idea: A Wingnut idea that is supported/believed by twice the percent of a specific group. (note: If the group is small, e.g. 1/nn-th of the overall population, then the percent should "nn" times as large.
  
  
• Wingnut: A person who supports/believes 50% of the wingnet ideas.
  
  
• Group (partisan) Wingnet: A person who supports/believes 50% of the wingnet ideas of one specific group.

{TBD}