How could I?

No, there are very weak assumptions made about the properties of preferences and then they just do the work in abstract to arrive at the functional form of the solution.

From there you can evaluate how different parameter values change the solution.

The solutions are a useful starting point, though, or the can be. Many of the assumptions about preferences are reasonable-ish, so you can at least have a baseline solution. Then you can think about how changes to the initial assumptions might shift the solution.

There's a bit of a throwing out the baby with the bathwater thing going on.

There is a lot of emphasis on solving the solvable mathematical models, which isn't particularly important. It's worth going over, because there are definitely things to be learned from those solutions. They have real implications.

Rather than stop there, though, is would be more valuable to then explore what happens when the assumptions that led to those solutions are relaxed. This is also done in PhD programs, but it's less emphasized.

I’ve never seen “desperate” used as a verb. Well done.

I hadn’t thought about this relationship before, but it makes some intuitive sense.

Cantillon Effects incentivize trying to get access to money nearer where it entered the system. That’s not going to be at the point of sale for a normal business, since customers are the kind of normal people who get the money last.

So, you need bureaucrats and managers to secure access to money from the financial system or government programs, before it’s been devalued.

I definitely want to push back on this idea. Resource allocation is a central part of economics and it only has mathematical solutions when you pretend to know things that are not only impossible to know, but also likely diverge from reality.

i.e. preferences are unknowable and don’t necessarily conform to the assumptions that make micro models solvable.

That’s right, but the only shared value we need is not violating what are normally referred to as private property rights.

Someone is violently coexisting to enable that lifestyle, though. I don't generally blame the recipients of welfare programs for taking the money, but the state took it from someone else in a non-peaceful manner. Absent that, the lifestyle wouldn't be feasible and we don't have to worry about people aspiring to it.

It's like a lot of the stuff Trump's doing: if it works out as advertised, it might be fine (or better), but if all we get are the tariffs, it will be bad.

It's pretty interesting that none of the leaders of any of those other countries were treated as though they were destroying civilization, considering they all have higher tariffs than the US.

I think "rights" is sort of the wrong concept. It's hard to get there without running afoul of the Naturalistic Fallacy.

It makes more sense to ground it in something people desire, like peaceful coexistence. People who don't value that and won't follow those rules can find somewhere else to live.

Yes. The state has no legitimate claim on a portion of transactions between consenting adults.

I need to just leave my team's tab open. It's too easy for me to get distracted and forget to set my lineup.

Of course not, it's just an occasionally useful expression. All models are wrong, but some models are useful.

On private property, I think the Hoppean view is the most sophisticated secular view. In brief, this view is that something like Lockean homesteading and property rights are the only system consistent with non-violent dispute resolution.

That makes this a consequentialist view: private property "rights" are what peaceful people must logically support. "Rights" then is more of a shorthand for a covenant between people who share a desired end (non-violent dispute resolution).

I had to do a couple of significant rebalances on this one today.

@denlillaapan, what’s the most interesting target number and date for this?

You’re arguing with a CCP chat bot.

Great example of “two things can be true…”

This “probe” is really lame and Ja is a giant idiot.

But how else can they virtue signal about how seriously they take gun violence?