A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on.
To be clear, the sandpit is for regular commenters to pursue points that distract from regular discussion, including conspiracy-theoretic takes on the issues at hand. It’s not meant as a forum for visiting conspiracy theorists, or trolls posing as such.
John Quiggin 
TTR,
You ask: “Where is your evidence that this ISN’T the case?”
See: https://johnquiggin.com/2020/09/07/sandpit-162/comment-page-1/#comment-227653
I don’t need to – YOU (not me) are the one making a claim: “I know for an absolute fact that they are. Its totally proven that they are.” So, TTR, where’s your proof/evidence? – put up, or shut up.
Crikey,
I enjoyed the video – very droll.
No he wasn’t funny at all Geoff. No humour there. He’s just an idiot as you are. You all laugh at each others jokes but not one of you has any comic talent in reality.
“Where is your evidence that this ISN’T the case?”
Yes I asked it and you haven’t got any evidence have you? So try again and keep trying until you find something. You cretin.
“I don’t need to – YOU (not me) are the one making a clam”
How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not interested in your ignorant Popper epistemological incompetence.
Now have you got any evidence or not? You don’t do you? You pretty much admitted that you don’t HAVE any evidence. Am you willing to admit that you don’t have any evidence whatsoever. Because we have to put this failed philosopher behind us.
So here we go again. Your claim that you don’t have any evidence and you don’t think you need to have any evidence.
So why are you arguing you goose? You know you’ve got nothing and you’ve admitted it.
See you are faith-based and superstitious Geoff. You think that because of Popper you can be ignorant, by your own admission, have no clue, no interest in finding anything out, no brain, unwilling to think, nothing at all.
And yet your claim is that you know something about the subject. See in my world we don’t find things out by recourse to faith. You say you have no evidence. I believe you. Why are you arguing?
Don’t hang around waiting for that honorary degree in philosophy to show up in the mail champ. Its not coming.
Modern Constitutional Monarchy The Role of Modern Monetary Theory and Modern Military Theory
It goes without saying that Constitutional Monarchies are viewed by a huge portion of the world’s population as reasonable civilized forms of goverment.
Is it reasonable to give these old institutions that have evolved out of absolute dictatorships such a pass?
These forms of government might be quite an improvement over the absolute dictatorships that they once were, but that is comparing the new standard against an extremely low bar.
Why has this form of government, which even in its constitutional form, is obviously an insult to the intleegence of an enlightened person, continued to maintain a presence on the surface of planet earth?
Is the answer because Constitutional Monarchies work? Do they work for everyone by avoiding the percieved pitfalls of Stalinism, or Castroism? Or is it because the example of hiarchy is an important value to maintian in an Empire? It appears to me that in an age in which the pervailing narrative is that the nations of the west are Meritocracies that maintaining institutions from the ancient past might be counterproductive. Why should someone who was born with a silver spoon get special previliges?
Is what they recieve for their “official” duties a proper deal?
What factor about this arraingment am I missing? Is there something that almost everyone is missing?
Yes I employed cllick bait.
why do these droobs insist on being obnoxious?
honestly, scathingly accurate assertion/response is much more effective.
sheesh.
off topic:
karlie rove said perfection is not possible,
there was no mention of the fact that competence is.
May what is important here is that the epistemology is wrong and obviously so. They have this completely superstitious view of things that they can classify their own propositions as not being propositions. Then they can say that you are the proposer. Then they attach obligations on your proposal that cannot possibly be satisfied. This is voodoo or at the very least failed epistemology. Its so wrong and so obviously wrong that it amounts to people spitting at you. Its a spoilt brat who reckons he gets to play tennis without worrying about the net. Its adapted from Popperian stupidity but its a much worse set of poses than Popper would ever dream of.
When you get this sort of idiocy and arrogance, you just have to keep the abuse up until such time as they stop playing silly-buggers, and are willing to try and reason the problem through in good faith. Popper wasn’t even very bright really. But flawed as he was, I am sure that he would be mortified by the ignorant posing that goes on in his name.
If the one-sided epistemological pretence is over we can say that we must start from the start. We are dealing with a virus. And this is a corona virus. Some viruses are so severe in what they do, its hard to say what minor factors “Help”, if you will still be dead in the final analysis. So perhaps you will still be dead from rabies no matter how much vitamin D you have. Now we don’t KNOW that. But no-one ought to be willing to go without the three shot vaccine schedule if they are bitten by a rabid animal.
My best guess is that vitamin D ‘HELPS’ with rabies. But you’d never know it because you’ll likely die within 3 months just the same. Thats a guess. Because rabies gets into your brain and then entices your brain to destroy other organs in your body.
This is my way of introducing the idea that vitamin D3 helps with EVERY KNOWN VIRUS. Its a virus we are dealing with and in all history we have not found a virus wherein D3 doesn’t help to some extent. We don’t have a proposer and a null hypothesis. Thats nonsense. Thats voodoo and superstition and outrageous irrationality. We only have competing hypotheses. Multiple hypotheses competing in parallel. It has to be that way because in any scientific enquiry we have to assume that there is someone out there who doesn’t know the truth.
So I propose that vitamin D3 helps with ALL viruses, and someone else might propose that there is some viruses that vitamin D3 DOESN’T help with. And the other fellow might go further and propose that with many viruses D3 will hurt the situation, and in the case of SOME viruses vitamin D3 it will help and yet with other viruses the effect of vitamin D3 will be pretty neutral.
(My position is that extra D3 helps with all viruses, seeing that the modern humans D3 levels are presumably be much lower than the levels they evolved under.)
Then when we have brought various proposals to the table, its time to bring up this or that data, and the data becomes EVIDENCE through a process of human reason.
But if you get hereditary spongers and spoilt brats adopting the “null hypothesis” scam format, you can never get that far. The faux-Popperian is like the worst girlfriend you ever had, folding her arms and demanding requests that can never satisfy her, but offering nothing in return.
“Ernestine, Of course, I don’t dislike the Hildenbrand, Sonnenschein, Mantel, Debreu literature. I did my Ph.D. in macroeconomics when the sentiment was that macroeconomic relationships should be derived from microeconomics. This literature showed that was impossible. ”
Not buying this Harry. The literature never dealt fully with the fractional reserve banking menace. Its banking and finance, and most particularly fractional reserve finance, that puts a fluttering curtain between micro and macro. You are taking fractional reserve usury for granted, but all human beings have an obligation to stamp it out everywhere. Mostly I’m a “live and yet live fellow” when it comes to other communities. But fractional reserve banking has to be chased down and eliminated everywhere it can be found.
“It then makes sense for the firm to restrict its demand for labour to take advantage of that power. If you set a minimum wage at some socially desired level then the firm’s monopoly power vanishes and the firm will employ more than it otherwise would.”
Harry means Monopsony power. Buying power. And what Harry is saying here is broadly true. But its based pretty much directly on Frank Knights models. While they work after a fashion we can do better. Harry’s basically correct idea … no problems with what he is saying. But we need to go further here. We need to dig deeper.
We hear a lot about the DIALECTIC and we hear this from very strong intellects. But from my enquiries into epistemology I would say any talk of a “dialectic” ought to raise alarm bells. Not putting down Hegel or Marx here, but talk of a dialectic tends to push us back into bad bipolar mental habits. The reduction to absurdity of the these bad mental habits surfaced with the construct of the “null hypothesis” which has allowed all kinds of mischief.
Contrast that to Thomas Aquinas. A gentleman so ridiculously intelligent we really didn’t deserve him. His methodology was more a trialectic. He would come in from three angles …… The philosopher (Aristotle) What the bible said … And church tradition … then he would apply his best judgement to this trialectic. And his conclusive remarks were amazingly useful regardless of your view of the validity of the three angles. You might say .. Aristotle? Come now. He was weak on oligarchy. You might say the bible …. Ho ho. Oppress me not with that horrific superstition. You might say Church Tradition?? The Catholic Church? Abuse me not with these celibate crazies.
But just the fact that we are coming from three angles. To me thats a bit of a breakthrough. I prefer five angles.
When it comes to Labour economics I would try and find the best proponents coming from different angles.
I would go with Frank Knight. I would go with William Hutt (Hutts scrupulous a priori reasoning is something to behold). I would go with negotiations theory. With the Austrian School even separate from Hutt. With radical marxist theorists specialising only in labour economics (modern marxist social theories need to be ripped up and blown out of a canon) ……
But I think the Nitzan/Bichler research project needs to be in any analysis from here on in. Their research project is like a BETTER-MARXISM.
To jump ahead my preliminary conclusions from the way Nitzan Bichler modifies our fantastically powerful economics paternity goes like this:
1. Finance should be governmental. But in accordance to strict requirements that rule out political favouritism or patronage.
2. We really only want three layers of management. Worker/supervisor/owner-boss. But since this is unrealistic we probably have to put up with four layers of management to take advantage of economies of scale. After three layers we probably need to bring in numerical handicaps. For four and five levels of management we need powerful unions, a pretty good minimum wage, and a number of safeguards.
3. Probably for the 2 and 3 level business we should be less severe. That should probably be a more purist Hutt/Austrian School scenario ….. IF AND ONLY IF …. the Participation income is fully in place.
In this way the participation income aka Andrew Yangs UBI … actually enhances labour market competition. The fellow with the Participation income may move to the countryside to cut costs. But since he won’t die he can pick and choose and play one three-layer employer against another.
Praise the Lord. Labour competition at last. After all this time. A fully functioning free market for labour. You are not free to choose your employer if the eviction notice has been sent and fridge is empty. Done right with a commitment towards surplus budgets always, we can recruit a lot more human power than ever before. Go the debt route and we are moonwalking out the door backwards right away.
In terms of Hutts fantastic reasoning …… without the Nitzan/Bichler research thesis, and negotiations theory ….. Hutt alone is poor advice. We have been barely unaware of how dysfunctional and sinister our big businesses really are.
Try to Remember, please nothing more from you. Even in the sandpit, the rules about insulting other commenters are clear.
isn’t there a really old song
that has the line…..
“I was a young and a callow fellow”
alright JQ, i’ll stop.
it’s like picking bits off the edge of a reasonable size scab when a child.
My hometown has about 25 new confirmed COVID-19 cases every week per 100k inhabitants at the moment. Not good. My only hope is that extensive testing and tracing now limits the number of undiscovered cases. If old estimates of a 5-10 multiplier still apply, even a constant R of 1 would mean that 2-4 % of the population could still get infected over the next 20 weeks. On a personal level, since my social environment includes an unusual high number of people with above average infection and mortality risk, odds are I probably know someone who will die in that scenario.
At the beginning of the crisis I thought that statistically there would be a least one in my circle who will die from COVID, and a number who will have a long convalescence. And statistically my chances weren’t that good either.
However the lockdown managed to stop the disease in its tracks
Amazingly our region (NSW) is now COVID free and providing basic rules are adhered to, should remain so. There is a lot of testing going on but no positive results.
Those protesting about an apparent loss of liberty really have no case.
As one person said, “Your parents, or grandparents, battled through the Great Depression and WW2. And you can’t stay at home for six weeks?”
“Those protesting about an apparent loss of liberty really have no case.” – akarog
100% correct.
I have written in the past aabout new values that need to be embraced by humanity to replace older values if humanity is going to survive.
One of those values is sychronization. If humnaity is going to operate in a more sychronized manner a lot more emphasis is going to have to be placed upon home economics in the education system, in every country on the planet.
And this change ties in wiht anohter change. If air travel is reduced 95% and the cruiseline industry is reduced 95% and other structural changes are made that increase umemployment. I think that there is something that will be needed to be done if greater sychronization is to be achieved. All governments are going to need to have neighborhood watchdog officials. These people will not be full fledged police officers. They will be social workers trained in the peacful resolution of disputes.
Their primary mission will be to inspect people’s kitchens to ensure that the population in their district is adhering to rules about maintaining a environmentally sustainable diet. Yes this sucks. This is INSANE.
But this policy will be required because from 1990 to 2020 humanity acted in a completely insance and irresponsible manner. These officials will also be responsible for insuring compliance with all other government directives concering behavior when not on the job by the residents in their districts.
They will not have the power to arrest people. They will have the power to issue tickets and to summon people to court. Of course they would have the common law power to make a citizens arrest in an emergency situation if the think that they can do so safely. They will not be armed with lethal weapons.
Potential weapons would be pepper spray, tasers, or other specially designed weapons that could cause pain but would be very unlikely to cause a lasting injury.
Their patrols will be conducted on bicycles and foot. The officials will also be auxilliary emgergency medical personal and fire personnel. They will also first aid kits and small fire extinguishers on their bikes and respond to emgergency calls from district residents injured in accidents, or to emergency calls about fires. Being trained negotiators they will also respond to family disputes in their district that have neighbors have been reported because of a fear that the dispute is becoming dangerous. In addition if their districts are plagued by organized crime they will offer to mediate or arbitrate gang disputes with the same sort of confendiality that a US government appointed defence lawyer would operate under.
The follwoing linked story is not very believable. More specifically the purpose of the mission that these 4 anti Chinese CIA agents were supposedly on seems completely unbelievable. So why is this ferry tail being told? Why is it being told now?
How can confederate americans who are actually conterfit americans be descibed as Patriotic?
A real American would not be caught dead being involved in a miliitary operation so far from the USA, even one that attempted to prevent the Chinese from expanding their influence in the south China Sea.
It is not by accident that it is called the China Sea.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/the-cia-sent-a-team-of-four-operators-on-a-spy-mission-targeting-china-none-came-back-090041816.html