Holy hell this is a shit list. Let me fix it for you:

Good:
- Iceland
- Switzerland
- Finland
- Norway
- Estonia.
- Netherlands.
- Denmark

Okay:
- Czech Republic. 
- Austria.
- Germany.
- United Kingdom.

Bad:
- Poland.
- Spain.
- Portugal.
- France.
- Sweden. 

Shit:
- Ukraine.
- Italy.

Just fucking awful:
- Greece.
- Russia.
- Remove kebab.

Unless I've missed one, it's been a while since we had a book thread. So, let's fucking have one. Here's a quiz, you cunts:

- Favourite fiction genre?
- Favourite non-fiction topic?
- What're you reading at the moment?
- What's on your bookshelf that you're yet to read?
- What's on your wishlist?

My answers:
- Fantasy.
- Econ.
- Greg Ip's Little Book of Economics and GRRM's A Feast for Crows.

Stuff on my bookshelf I'm yet to read:
- Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts.
- Logic by Wilfred Hodges.
- A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.
- Ideas have Consequences by Richard M. Weaver.
- House of Debt by Mian and Sufi.
- Hume's Enquiries by David Hume.
- Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom.
- Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg.
- Boom and Bust Banking by David Beckworth.
- The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer.
- The Science of Evil by Simon Baron-Cohen.
- The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis by Ben Bernanke.
- Sense and Goodness Without God by Richard Carrier.
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.
- Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman.
- And of course A Dance with Dragons by GRRM.

My wishlist:
- Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell.
- Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era by Thomas Barrat.
- Caesar by Adrian Goldsworthy.
- Recessions and Depressions by Todd Knoop.
- Monetary Theory and Policy from Hume and Smith to Wicksell: Money, Credit, and the Economy by Arie Arnon.
- This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Reinhart and Rogoff.
- A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 by Milton Friedman.

Probably Dark Souls for me.

Although I did really enjoy Oblivion, too.

Good job, man, I'm happy for you.

You got any ideas where you're going to take it from there? A doctorate, maybe, or are you just going to jump into the labour market?

I will end you.

What do you guys think about bloodmagic and the acquisition of supernatural resources like Fire Priests, Wargs and Wildfire? Could it work within the parameters of the game? Or should we adhere strictly to realism?

I was thinking about utilizing Melisandre for something, but if you guys think that's unfair I'll totally reject the idea.

I think the mods would definitely have to have final say on players' and other mods' decisions, to make sure whatever supernatural element isn't OP.

Do I start out with that or not?

It'll take a moderate amount of time to raise such substantial numbers (especially in the North, where it also depends on the season). Given we're in the Summer, currently, a year (page) would be a reasonable enough time to raise 45,000 levies.

Noted. I will only post dank memes from here on out.

Good.

Keep doing that, and you'll be drowning in pussy.

Just like me.

The term "neoclassical" is heavily politicised and usually thrown around synonymously with neoliberal, but this really does a disservice to the school. Neoclassical micro served as the underpinning of Keynesian macro, but what I'm interested in today in neoclassical macro. It's something of a specific interest of mine, and I consider my view of the economy to be (very) broadly neoclassical.

Now, neoclassical usually refers to a "school" of thought in microeconomics; when it comes to macro people tend to use the phrase New Classical, which tried to depose the neoclassical-Keynesian synthesis as the dominant macro position. However, I'm going to be using neoclassical to discuss the "non-Keynesian" macro school in general, since it'll be easier for my to differentiate the various strands.

New Classical macro made a lot of assumptions for its models. It assumed that money was super-neutral, and thus could have no effect on the business cycle and not cause recessions; it made a number of other assumptions like homo economicus, the profit-maximising firm, rational expectations and incomplete information. However, it turned out that models based on such assumptions had very low explanatory power.

The New Classical school was originally rather novel, as it provided some of the best empirical analysis and combined a model of market-clearing equilibrium with rational expectations. However, the New Keynesians rolled up, using microfoundations to demonstrate that the market doesn't clear as the New Classicals suggested, and incorporated rational expectations into their models.

Neoclassical macro then developed Real Business Cycle Theory, which like New Classical macro claims that recessions are actually efficient market responses given the structure of the market. This essentially means that things like taxation and regulation are the drivers of the business cycle, which monetary policy having little-to-no effect. The real innovation that RBCT made over NCM was to change certain the assumption of incomplete information to full information, and add a function for productivity shocks.

Now, of course, the idea that monetary policy is neutral always and everywhere is a bit of a non-starter. If you ask what would happen if the money supply suddenly dropped by 90pc tomorrow, I don't think even the most ardent RBC theorist would claim that the market could clear in such a situation, simply because the physical denominations of money would make the payment of debt/wages impossible.

Which is where we reach the most important part. The New Neoclassical Synthesis. Now, to me, this offers the greatest explanation of the economy we see today. The evidence would suggest that RBCT can account for fluctuations in myriad economic variables over the medium-run, but it falls down during the short-run. It is fairly clear that nominal wage and price stickiness (where each have trouble falling in nominal value, thus leading to unemployment and other issues) is an issue, and dominates the business cycle in the short-run.

So, essentially, we have a model which states that in the short-run the business cycle is dominating by monetarist/New Keynesian claims of aggregate demand deficits due to monetary disequilibria (or some other hypothesis, although I find the monetary explanations the most satisfying) whereas the medium run is dominated by a Real Business Cycle (which sometimes has influence over the short-run, but not to the same extent as monetarist/NK explanations).

And essentially what this illuminates is that the job of the central bank is to make sure neoclassical macro is true, since it becomes true once complete nominal stability is obtained.

so i was just wondering about your priorities, i guess

I took the question as being consequentially focused.

Polar bears don't give a fuck if we're saving them for selfish motivations. Well, they probably don't care at all, but you know what I mean.

Since Meta's list was crap, I thought I'd make my own:

Not really; he asks how we benefited the planet. Your list is just a list of the benefits we have created for ourselves.

yeah but meta we wouldnt have to save sharks from dying if people never started hunting them

Don't care.

He asked for positive examples, not an analysis on how they balance out on net.

Tell me something, what have human beings done that actually benefit this planet

Certain animals used in agriculture have significantly better qualities of life and higher populations due to farming.

We designated 120 million acres as "critical habitat" thus protecting a significant amount of land in the northern Alaskan coastal waters, thus helping polar bears avoid becoming technically endangered.

In 2010, UNESCO certified Hawaii’s Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument as a World Heritage Site.

191 nations agreed to set aside 17 percent of the planet's land surface and 10 percent of the ocean as protected biodiversity sites during the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity summit.

We're researching numerous ways to help induce biodegradability in plastic, and specifically the city of Agra banned polythene bags from shops, using the bags instead in material to help pave roads.

The Maldives set aside 22,400,000 acres as sanctuary for sharks in the Indian Ocean and is setting a precedent in the region with a move to ban trade in shark fins.

Either become the ruler of a desolate, dying world, or renew the cycle that is sustaining the last vestiges of humanity and let it happen again.

And anybody who doesn't choose the first option is a stupid fucking pussy faggot.

Kanye West: narcissist of the year