40 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2023
    1. Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/lV19ytGBEe2ynWMu34UKUg

      This depreciation is done at the lowest level of exchange and caused the system to collapse rather quickly. What level is our current exchange done at such that the inequalities are pushed up multiple levels making the system seem more stable? How is instability introduced? How could it be minimized?

      Our current system is valued both by time and skill (using the measure of payment per hour).

      Compare this with salespeople who are paid on commission rather than on an hourly basis. They are then using their skill of sales ability and balancing time (and levels of chance) to create their outcomes, but at the same time, some of their work is built on the platform that sales management or the company provides. Who builds this and how do they get paid for it? Who provides sales leads? How is this calculated into the system costs?

      How do these ideas fit into the Bullshit Jobs thesis?

  2. Apr 2022
    1. As a general rule, if your call is to dismantle institutions without a plan for what is supposed to take their place, you can safely assume the default setting is “the market will take care of it.”
  3. Dec 2021
  4. Mar 2021
  5. Feb 2021
    1. 21st Century Economics (USA)

      Economic Theory of a Market Economy, Characteristics, Pros, and Cons

      Americans and the World believe or want to believe that the United States is built upon a Market Economy.

      Historical context validates a classic Market Economy theory as directed by our Founding Fathers and Constitution. We clearly do not have a pure Market Economy today (2021).

      • To Big to Fail - (Bailouts)
      • Farm Subsidies
      • Political Influence (money, lobbying, tenure)
      • Government Agencies
      • Military/Industrial Complex
      • Federal Reserve (Central Banking)
      • Social Security
      • Medicare
      • Other

      Most Americans lump (through education) the concept of economics and government together, into 3 basic categories; Capitalism, Socialism and Communism.

      The U.S. is a Capitalist Nation with a corresponding market economy.

      Is this statement Fact or Hypothesis ?

      Can we still rely on textbook economic models in the 21st Century?

  6. Nov 2020
  7. Oct 2020
    1. Anomie (/ˈænəˌmi/) is a "condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals".[1] It is the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community, e.g., under unruly scenarios resulting in fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values.

      I can't help but see this definition and think it needs to be applied to economics immediately. In particular I can think of a few quick examples of economic anomie which are artificially covering up a free market and causing issues within individual communities.

      College Textbooks: Here publishers are marketing to professors who assign particular textbooks and subverting students which are the actual market and consumers of those textbooks. This causes an inflated market and has allowed textbook prices to spiral out of control.

      The American Health Care Market In this example, the health care providers (doctors, hospitals, etc.) have been segmented away from their consumers (patients) by intermediary insurance companies which are driving the market to their own good rather than a free-er set of smaller (and importantly local) markets that would be composed of just the sellers and the buyers. As a result, the consumer of health care has no ability to put a particular price on what they're receiving (and typically they rarely ever ask, even more so when they have insurance). This type of economic anomie is causing terrific havoc within the area.

      (Aside: while the majority of health care markets is very small in size (by distance), I will submit that the advent of medical tourism does a bit to widen potential markets, but this segment of the market is tiny and very privileged in comparison.)

    1. But that state of consciousness that permits the growth of liberalism seems to stabilize in the way one would expect at the end of history if it is underwritten by the abundance of a modern free market economy.

      Writers spend an awful lot of time focused too carefully on the free market economy, but don't acknowledge a lot of the major benefits of the non-free market parts which are undertaken and executed often by governments and regulatory environments. (Hacker & Pierson, 2016)

  8. Sep 2020
  9. Aug 2020
  10. Jul 2020
  11. Jun 2020
  12. Apr 2020
  13. Sep 2016
    1. frame the purposes and value of education in purely economic terms

      Sign of the times? One part is about economics as the discipline of decision-making. Economists often claim that their work is about any risk/benefit analysis and isn’t purely about money. But the whole thing is still about “resources” or “exchange value”, in one way or another. So, it could be undue influence from this way of thinking. A second part is that, as this piece made clear at the onset, “education is big business”. In some ways, “education” is mostly a term for a sector or market. Schooling, Higher Education, Teaching, and Learning are all related. Corporate training may not belong to the same sector even though many of the aforementioned EdTech players bet big on this. So there’s a logic to focus on the money involved in “education”. Has little to do with learning experiences, but it’s an entrenched system.

      Finally, there’s something about efficiency, regardless of effectiveness. It’s somewhat related to economics, but it’s often at a much shallower level. The kind of “your tax dollars at work” thinking which is so common in the United States. “It’s the economy, silly!”

  14. Jul 2016
    1. The locals refer to Tepito as the Barrio Bravo, the fierce neighborhood, for its reputation of criminality involving counterfeit goods, robbery, and drug selling.
  15. Apr 2015
    1. There are several other important considerations related to LEB. First, there is a risk of capture of legislation by the domestic industry. Once an inefficient industry comes to rely on LEB for survival, the Ukrainian parliament might find it difficult to rescind the ban in the future. Second, LEB and other similar measures underscore that the Ukrainian parliament finds it acceptable to intervene in functioning of the markets based on empirically dubious rationale. The parliament substitutes the market by deciding how resources should be allocated. In doing so, the parliament teaches the businesses and the industry that they should compete through lobbying in the parliament, financial and informational, rather than through innovation and efficiency improvement in the market place.