Feb
8th
Mon
8th
Feb
4th
Thu
4th
Feb
3rd
Wed
3rd
Race to the Checkout Line
Competition really can make everything better. Consider this article by Greg Beato:
Unless you’re comfortably wealthy, pathologically thin, or both, you probably go to the grocery store at least once every couple of weeks. When you go, there’s one factor that most determines the your experience there, and it’s not fluctuations in the price of ground coffee, the number of Ben & Jerry’s flavors on hand, or how gripping the National Enquirer cover stories are that week. It’s how smoothly you move through the check-out line. A country cannot be great without great grocery store baggers - their speed, courtesy, and ability to keep our spaghetti sauce from crushing our hot dog buns is crucial to maintaining public morale.
Source: www.outloudopinion.com
Jan
25th
Mon
25th
Vast Dairy Conspiracy
I find this message about rBST rather odd. I can only conclude there is a vast dairy conspiracy afoot.
Jan
20th
Wed
20th
Following All Regulations
I cite as a sort of an addendum to a previous article I wrote on the subject, something Samuel Edward Konkin, III (SEK3) wrote:
If all regulations passed in any country you wish to name were completely obeyed, let alone enforced, we would all be dead.Consider a particularly pathological case in the United States of America. If you charge a price for your product higher than your competitors, this is taken as evidence under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act that you have a monopoly and charges may be brought against you. The same problem arises if you charge the same; that is considered evidence of a cartel and you and your competitors can all be fined. Finally, if you charge less than your competitors, you are violating the “Fair Trade” laws in most states and can be arrested and fined. It is impossible to obey all the regulations.
Source: The Agorist Primer, p. 39
I heard a joke along these lines from a Mises conference. I’m sorry, I don’t remember who originally told it. The joke goes like this:
There were three soviet prisoners comparing stories about why they were in prison. The first one said he was in prison because he was late to work. He was accused of being lazy. The second said he in prison for the same thing, only it was because he was early to work. He was accused of being too competitive. The third prisoner was always on time to work. He was accused of having an American watch.
It’s kind-of sad because these Soviet vs. American jokes are dated and don’t make much sense anymore.
Jan
19th
Tue
19th
My Great-Uncle Alfred
I have a fictitious great-uncle Alfred. Everything he says is to be taken with a grain of salt. He is a huge curmudgeon and ultra-contrarian. If you tell him the sky is blue, he will tell you it’s not really blue because yadda-yadda-yadda. His reasoning is deeply flawed because he is senile. But he doesn’t know his flaws. He just knows he’s always right. Most of the time he’s not. But sometimes, he says things that are profound and actually do follow logically. After all, a stopped clock is right twice a day (unless it’s military, then it’s only right once a day).
A contrarian is a person with a preference for taking a position opposed to that of the majority view prevalent in the group of which they are a part. Both Alfred and I are contrarians. But Alfred is a total nut who can’t be taken seriously and doesn’t care anyway. I, on the other hand, do care. I want to be taken seriously and it bothers me to be ignored, unlike Alfred.
So if you tell Alfred he is sitting inside a motor vehicle, he will tell you there is no such thing as an “inside” to a motor vehicle. The concept of “inside” is define in topological terms to him. In topology, an object cannot have an “inside” if it also has a hole. Alfred is technically correct from the standpoint of this very specific area of mathematics concerned with spatial properties. But normal people do not think in those terms. Alfred doesn’t comprehend the normal terms. He just assumes everybody knows what the heck he’s talking about. He is only interested in being contarian and you’re supposed to know that if you’re talking to him. Alfred probably should be confined to a rubber room because although topology is an important area of study within mathematics, it is not something we apply in day-to-day life. He wouldn’t be inside the rubber room anyway, so he’d probably be fine with that situation.
For instance, if I say I don’t trust government, isn’t that exactly how Alfred would say it? So maybe I can word it better. If I word it in such a way that it is atypical of Alfred but still gets the same point across, my idea will be more convincing.
Instead of saying I don’t trust the government, maybe I could assert that government doesn’t seem to act in the best interest of most people. That is a more reasonable assertion. And it’s also very atypical of something Alfred would say.
Alfred is also very set in his ways. He learned one way to think about things and applies that way to all new situations.
Me: Have you ever heard of a “collar” trade in the stock market? It’s a risk management strategy that combines a covered call and a protective put.
Alfred: They’re nuts! That reminds me of portfolio insurance back in the 80’s or credit default swaps in the 2000’s. The problem with using these schemes is that if everybody does it, there’s not enough liquidity in a crisis to protect everyone’s asses when everything unwinds at once.
Maybe Alfred is right about that. But then again, maybe the markets figure out a way to address the lack of liquidity for massive collar trades. I’m not saying there wouldn’t be new problems as result of solving lack of liquidity. But the specific problem Alfred cites isn’t necessarily how it will go down just because that’s what happened in the past.
Alfred thinks in absolute terms. He is fine with his totalogy and this makes him frustrating to talk to. Unfortunately, it is all too easy for me to sound like Alfred. Even when I go to the trouble of carefully wording my assertions (something I don’t always do), other people immediately hear Alfred anyway.
Besides, cermudgeons who end up being right only become bigger cermudgeons.
