I would not be in a state of mourning if they were dismantled or checked in influence.

They're up in arms over here in the UK at the moment because the new Business Secretary (who is also Member of Parliament for my constituency, funnily enough) is introducing rules that would require at least 50pc of unionised workers take part in voting for a strike before the result can be considered legitimate.

He's also making it so, in emergency services, 40pc of the 50pc minimum requirement must vote for action before it can be taken. Unions are all like "muh industrial action".

Fuckers.

I'm not really sure what you want to do here. So should the US continue maintenance on highways/railroads, let them become more decrepit yet usable, or just shut them down period?

I don't have any strong opinions, to be honest. If you're willing to hamstring the labour unions of these construction workers and completely overhaul the welfare system you could probably have infrastructure on par with Hong Kong.

That's what I favour, from a hypothetical point of view, but if you're looking for a realistic answer I don't have it. If the whole of the US were to become like Texas in the slimming down of unions, maybe some environmental regulations and entitlements then you could see a nationwide improvement in quality without the fairly radical policies I'd otherwise desire.

Well, most of the infrastructure in terms of highways and railroads in the US has now switched to maintenance rather than construction.

Even so, infrastructure can only survive for so long.

Plus, I think wages and unionisation among construction workers is the same for maintenance workers since a lot of the former are employed for the latter.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on May 13, 2015, 12:25:16 PM

America should have crappy infrastructure.

And this kids is why idiots are dangerous

I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's a statement of fact, not of value. Which you really should've gleaned from the rest of the post. The point is that America's crappy infrastructure is not an anomaly; it should be that way because of inflated construction costs.

It would be weird if infrastructure were good.

New Scientist

Giant magnetic spirals in the sky could explain why there is something rather than nothing in the universe, according to an analysis of data from NASA's Fermi space telescope.

Our best theories of physics imply we shouldn't be here. The Big Bang ought to have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter particles, which would almost immediately annihilate each other, leaving nothing but light.

So the reality that we are here – and there seems to be very little antimatter around – is one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in physics.

Monopole monopoly

In 2001, Tanmay Vachaspati from Arizona State University offered a purely theoretical solution. Even if matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts, he suggested that as they annihilated each other, they would have briefly created monopoles and antimonopolesMovie Camera – hypothetical particles with just one magnetic pole, north or south.

As the monopoles and antimonopoles in turn annihilated each other, they would produce matter and antimatter. But because of a quirk in nature called CP violation, that process would be biased towards matter, leaving the matter-filled world we see today.

If that happened, Vachaspati showed that there should be a sign of it today: twisted magnetic fields permeating the universe – a fossil of the magnetic monopoles that briefly dominated. And he showed they should look like left-handed screws rather than right-handed screws.

So Vachaspati and his colleagues went looking for them in data from NASA's Fermi Gamma ray Space Telescope. As gamma rays shoot through the cosmos, they should be bent by any magnetic field they pass through, so if there are helical magnetic fields permeating the universe, that should leave a visible mark on those gamma rays.

All of a twist

Lo and behold, that's just what they found – well, maybe. "What we found is consistent with them all being left-handed," says Vachaspati. "But we can't be sure." He says there's less than a one per cent chance that what they see in the Fermi data happened by chance. "That's being conservative," he says.

They also found that the twists in the field are a bit bigger than they predicted. "So there is some mystery there," says Vachaspati. He says more data from Fermi, which is expected this year, will help narrow down the odds.

Nicole Bell from the University of Melbourne in Australia warns that magnetic fields could have been caused in other ways, including from inflation. What's more, for CP-violation to provide enough matter in the universe you usually need "new physics" – stuff beyond the standard model of particle physics – which hasn't been confirmed experimentally yet. "But it is a very interesting idea," she says.

Duisenberg School of Finance

We exploit the introduction of free banking laws in US states during the 1837-1863 period to examine the impact of removing barriers to bank entry on bank competition and economic growth. As governments were not concerned about systemic stability in this period, we are able to isolate the effects of bank competition from those of state implicit guarantees.

We find that the introduction of free banking laws stimulated the creation of new banks and led to more bank failures. Our empirical evidence indicates that states adopting free banking laws experienced an increase in output per capita compared to the states that retained state bank chartering policies.

We argue that the fiercer bank competition following the introduction of free banking laws might have spurred economic growth by (1) increasing the money stock and the availability of credit; (2) leading to efficiency gains in the banking market. Our findings suggest that the more frequent bank failures occurring in a competitive banking market do not harm long-run economic growth in a system without public safety nets.

I don't know whether I support this or not.

which is to see David's lineage eventually culminating in Jesus.

I'm sure you understand that it's incredibly difficult for an atheist like me to understand why an omnipotent deity would act in such a manner.

Not to mention, I feel the Humean criticisms apply here: why Yahweh? Why not Allah? What legitimacy do metaphysical conclusions about the nature of God have in light of the empirical considerations? How do you know it wasn't, as Hume put it, an "infant Deity", or a collection of Deities as a group of ship-builders would construct a carrack?

What empirical basis do you have?

I'll try not to spam this thread with Cameron Watt videos...

Oh God his videos make me fucking cringe.

I wouldn't go insofar as to say this represents the views of Verbatim, but his somewhat socialist/communist ideas and talk of theory set me off. The following formulation is my own, but it's certainly not original to me; I have seen it espoused in various forms beforehand.

So, why is the market most efficient? As opposed to some sort of central planner (which it looks like Verbatim would prefer) which is omniscient and benevolent.

Socialists tend to argue that a thing's value is derived from its labour, and thus W=APL. Or, that real wages ought to equal the average product of labour. Or, essentially, labour divided equally. It underlies most charges of exploitation under capitalism, and can be seen creeping into criticisms of the supply-demand price mechanism.

However, even if you assume a benevolent social planner with complete information you still end up with:
W=MPL (real wages = marginal product of labour).
R=MPK (real interest rates = marginal product of capital).
MU1/MU2=MC1/MC2 (marginal utility = marginal cost).

A market in Walrasian equilibrium is simply much more efficient, even when you have a social planner involved. Even if you desired a certain level of equality in your society, the social planner would simply tinker with the capital stock and let the market reach Pareto efficiency by itself, not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Most socialists see a divergence between P and MSC (or the price and marginal social cost, implying a negative distortion), however the solution to this is not to do away with the supply-demand price mechanism. The solution is to tweak the price mechanism, probably with a tax, to make sure P=MSC.

Accordingly, you end up with MU1/MU2 = P1/P2 = MC1/MC2, which means the economy has a fully equalising utility-cost ratio as well as the so despised price mechanism.

So yeah, socialism doesn't have theory on its side.

I'd love to make pencils. I'd love to do productive work, and I would do it for free.

Which is completely unrealistic; you saw all of the labour, places, infrastructure and capital that it required for the production of a pencil. You could make a pencil for free if you had all of the parts required, if you so desired, but you're still totally ignoring the majority of the distribution system/

I don't think anyone can really take issue with that, at least in theory.

Most economists do, quite easily. Money is a medium of exchange, it allows you to receive bread in the capacity to purchase it if you so desire. Paying people in goods for their labour is the mark of a dying economy that no longer has an effective medium of exchange, which is a necessity for all economies which suffer from scarcity.

The underlying problem with this should be tautological, but... perhaps not to a capitalist.

Why should you pay less for the same product in an area where it is more scarce? It doesn't properly represent the supply of that product, and would lead to its inefficient allocation. It's what happens when you subsidise the consumption of water for farmers in California: artificial scarcity, because the allocative mechanism is no longer there.

I can tell you don't live here.

. . . Okay? I don't see what that has to do with anything.

America should have crappy infrastructure.

Development costs are insane compared to other developed countries. You can have cheaper infrastructure, but only if you're willing to slim down unions, cut environmental legislation and roll-back entitlements.

Also, I favour incentivising the private sector to contribute.

Also, David Cameron last Friday:

You said he was happy right? I'm sure religion his working for him than. Some people it won't be enough.

You're thinking too much about it if you think there's more than that.

This is a place for discussion, for people who want to discuss relevant information and ideas. If you don't think there's a discussion to be had, you're welcome to not participate.