Merkins 2012

[Irreligious]

I'm still waiting for you to back up that baseless claim, ubs.

You ain't gotta like me, but it's wrong to tell lies about people. I think you know that.

So, you and I don't see eye-to-eye politically and/or on some other things. So what? I can see you perceiving me as a jerk or someone you'd rather not be bothered with because of it, but to throw out some bullshit, like you did about my alleged racism, demands some examples of where that's coming from.

[Victus]

ubs wrote

I think the entire argument is flawed by the use of GDP.

I have GDP per capita as one of the outcome measures, but the main one Phil and I are arguing over is 'quality of life' (as measured by the UN's human development index). This looks at things like health, education and income - Phil's contention being that economic freedom isn't (strongly) correlated with quality of life.

I just wanted Phil, or anyone else who's interested, to throw down their best guess at the strength of the associations between quality of life, government spending (which many here strongly support), and economic freedom (which many here are either skeptical or outright hostile towards). Having them state 'my world view predicts X' and then showing them the data would be illustrative, I think.

No takers yet, though.

ubs wrote

Your measure of productivity should exclude service. An economy based on blow jobs is not the same as an economy based on the construction of solar panels.

Both are economies where people are specializing in doing things for one another in exchange for money. If people want blowjobs more than they want solar panels, and the structure of the market reflects that, I don't consider that to be in any way 'worse' than an economy where everyone is in manufacturing. People are getting what they want out of the market, in any event.

Economic activity is economic activity, as far as I'm concerned.

[ubs]

Victus wrote

I have GDP per capita as one of the outcome measures, but the main one Phil and I are arguing over is 'quality of life' (as measured by the UN's human development index). This looks at things like health, education and income - Phil's contention being that economic freedom isn't (strongly) correlated with quality of life.

My measure of quality of life would include life expectancy, social mobility, suicide rate adjusted for latitude (so that you removed the seasonal depression bias) and innovation. I reject the education metric because we're moving away from the formal education paradigm to one where people achieve their own scholarship independently. You could measure social mobility by deviation of personal income from that of your parents. I have no idea how you would measure the level of innovation.

Victus wrote

I just wanted Phil, or anyone else who's interested, to throw down their best guess at the strength of the associations between quality of life, government spending (which many here strongly support), and economic freedom (which many here are either skeptical or outright hostile towards). Having them state 'my world view predicts X' and then showing them the data would be illustrative, I think.

No takers yet, though.

You and I agree too much on that point for me to give you a good run.

Victus wrote

Both are economies where people are specializing in doing things for one another in exchange for money. If people want blowjobs more than they want solar panels, and the structure of the market reflects that, I don't consider that to be in any way 'worse' than an economy where everyone is in manufacturing. People are getting what they want out of the market, in any event.

Economic activity is economic activity, as far as I'm concerned.

It really comes down to what you define as "Good." To me Good is living your life to maximum life expectancy (which necessitates a certain economic level) with maximum opportunity for self actualization.

Our life expectancy and level of freedom is a product of all the generation before us and how much in hard assets and valuable ideas that they left behind....on the shoulders of giants as they say.

If we were the descendants of an ancient blow job guild, it's unlikely that we would live to 40, cutting your life experiences in half.

Is your measure of Good really only the happiness of the moment? Like Huxley's soma.

[Irreligious]

You got nothing to back up that nasty assertion of yours, huh?

Just as I expected.

You don't have to answer this post, ubs, but just know that whatever respect you lost for me because of some perceived slight in the past is now mutual. Only, you now know exactly why I don't like you: You slandered me for no other reason than because you don't like me.

It's fine not to like me. I can weather that, but I don't like liars.

As far as I am concerned, you are a woman of little integrity, and I don't respect that.

[Victus]

ubs wrote

My measure of quality of life would include life expectancy, social mobility, suicide rate adjusted for latitude (so that you removed the seasonal depression bias) and innovation. I reject the education metric because we're moving away from the formal education paradigm to one where people achieve their own scholarship independently. You could measure social mobility by deviation of personal income from that of your parents. I have no idea how you would measure the level of innovation.

Probably with multi-national patent records (i.e., patents originating in one nation but recognized across others). The HDI has the advantage of being already compiled, of course. There are a few others I could plug into the data, but Phil seems content with the HDI (or the inequality-adjusted version, at least).

ubs wrote

You and I agree too much on that point for me to give you a good run.

Yeah, if you've read up on your economics, the findings are pretty obvious. On the other hand, someone who bases their policy preferences on their feelings might well not believe the data. The sizes of the effects were actually larger than I had expected.

ubs wrote

It really comes down to what you define as "Good." To me Good is living your life to maximum life expectancy (which necessitates a certain economic level) with maximum opportunity for self actualization.

That's probably about on par for most humans, yeah.

ubs wrote

Our life expectancy and level of freedom is a product of all the generation before us and how much in hard assets and valuable ideas that they left behind....on the shoulders of giants as they say.

Only to an extent. We could, for instance, implement some really stupid policies and lower our quality of life substantially. There are definitely long-run effects, but we still control present policy/actions.

ubs wrote

If we were the descendants of an ancient blow job guild, it's unlikely that we would live to 40, cutting your life experiences in half.

If we have the same preferences for blow jobs over long life that our fictional ancestors did, we wouldn't care.

ubs wrote

Is your measure of Good really only the happiness of the moment? Like Huxley's soma.

I try not to define what's 'good' for other people. I think that talking about 'quality of life' is worthwhile to the extent that there are a handful of factors that apply to almost all humans; we like to be not-poor, we like to be safe and healthy, etc. But there is a lot of variability in human preferences (what's horrible for some of us is desirable for others), so I try no to have an extensive list of outcomes that qualify as 'good'.

The closest heuristic I have is to say that it is Good when people's preferences are met. If that means they prefer blowjobs to immortality, then that's OK.

[lostsheep]

Victus wrote

I have GDP per capita as one of the outcome measures, but the main one Phil and I are arguing over is 'quality of life' (as measured by the UN's human development index). This looks at things like health, education and income - Phil's contention being that economic freedom isn't (strongly) correlated with quality of life.

I just wanted Phil, or anyone else who's interested, to throw down their best guess at the strength of the associations between quality of life, government spending (which many here strongly support), and economic freedom (which many here are either skeptical or outright hostile towards). Having them state 'my world view predicts X' and then showing them the data would be illustrative, I think.

No takers yet, though.






Both are economies where people are specializing in doing things for one another in exchange for money. If people want blowjobs more than they want solar panels, and the structure of the market reflects that, I don't consider that to be in any way 'worse' than an economy where everyone is in manufacturing. People are getting what they want out of the market, in any event.

Economic activity is economic activity, as far as I'm concerned.

If you are dirt poor what good is economic freedom? It is meaningless to the very poor. There is no freedom if you cannot earn a living which permits choices. Poor people do not have choices, or at least they have only a very few, equally bad choices. Those with greater wealth have many more choices and much greater freedom.

[Victus]

lostsheep wrote

If you are dirt poor what good is economic freedom?

My contention is that if you have economic freedom, you are very unlikely to be "dirt poor" in the first place. But since you feel so strongly about it, and since we have the data available to test your hypothesis, why don't you go ahead and predict the correlation coefficients for the associations between economic freedom, government spending, and quality of life (I also have GDP per capita and unemployment as available outcomes).

Victus, earlier wrote

I just wanted Phil, or anyone else who's interested, to throw down their best guess at the strength of the associations between quality of life, government spending (which many here strongly support), and economic freedom (which many here are either skeptical or outright hostile towards). Having them state 'my world view predicts X' and then showing them the data would be illustrative, I think.

No takers yet, though.

So, have at it then.

Edit: Here's mine.

Economic freedom will be strongly correlated with quality of life, adjusted for income inequality or not (r ~ .4). It will also be moderately associated with per capita GDP (r ~ .2) and modestly negatively associated with unemployment (r ~ -.1).

Government spending might be modestly positively associated with quality of life (r ~ .1 or ~.2), not associated with either GDP per capita or unemployment (r ~ 0.0).

[Davin]

Victus wrote

My contention is that if you have economic freedom, you are very unlikely to be "dirt poor" in the first place.

I would be very interested to see you support this.

[Victus]

Davin wrote

I would be very interested to see you support this.

And I would be very interested in seeing people's best guesses at the effect sizes so that they can't slither away from their positions without hitting a speed bump.

[Irreligious]

I would appreciate it if you didn't imply that posters who don't want to play your silly game are somehow trying to slither away from something.

[Victus]

Irreligious wrote

I would appreciate it if you didn't imply that posters who don't want to play your silly game are somehow trying to slither away from something.

That's what people usually do when confronted with a reality that that contradicts their cherished beliefs. I'm just asking people to specify their hypotheses ahead of time, so that we can get a clear picture of how our beliefs map onto reality.

[Irreligious]

Victus wrote

That's what people usually do when confronted with a reality that that contradicts their cherished beliefs. I'm just asking people to specify their hypotheses ahead of time, so that we can get a clear picture of how our beliefs map onto reality.

You're not confronting me with anything real. Do you honestly believe there is just one prescription for so-called economic freedom, whatever the hell that is?

[ubs]

lostsheep wrote

If you are dirt poor what good is economic freedom? It is meaningless to the very poor. There is no freedom if you cannot earn a living which permits choices. Poor people do not have choices, or at least they have only a very few, equally bad choices. Those with greater wealth have many more choices and much greater freedom.

Those unable to make decisions for themselves is not a situation that a pure capitalist society handles well, but that's already been conceded earlier in the thread.

I would argue that for the guy living in a shack that has all his faculties, a strict enforcement of property laws serves him more than it does a guy with the means to hire "Washington Men." Cities don't confiscate the houses of the powerful to build malls, and it isn't the super rich paying taxes.

Further, I think you would be hard pressed to identify a super wealthy individual that didn't depend on artificial barriers to entry created for his benefit by politicians and if that class was eliminated, the disparity between wealthy and poor was be narrowed considerably.

[ubs]

[ubs]

Davin wrote

I would be very interested to see you support this.

He did. Remember the Christmas post. Now, what have you got!