Lurker > red sox 777

When leftists claim that our outcomes are shaped more by our circumstances than our choices, they are probably right. But that doesn't address the question of what the best policy is for the future, which is the most important question we have. We want a policy that makes everyone as well off as possible, not a policy that tries (and invariably fails) to reward people who are "deserving."

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Considering he basically didn't achieve anything......

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Rapid =/ unsustainable.

Pretty much every bubble in history can be traced back to some sort of central authority meddling in the free market.

I disagree. If you want to put it that way, every boom period in history can also be traced to the actions of some central authority. Rapid growth is and MUST be unsustainable in the SHORT RUN, but it is sustainable in the LONG RUN. Our economy grows by averaging out good times and bad, with booms taking us up further than drawdowns bring us down. That is the nature of capitalism.

Another way to think about it is that we are paying for long-term growth with short-term risk. You can't get something for nothing, and for something as great as long-term growth, we are paying the comparatively modest price of short-term risk. Government interference may of course make our overall EV worse, but it is not the main cause of recessions.

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Rapid growth is capitalism's fault. But no individual person's. Nor is it the government's.

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I see it as natural, as no one's fault. To get rapid growth, we need activities that naturally produce big recessions. The only way to make sure big recessions do not happen is to get rid of our periods of rapid growth.

The final trigger for any recessions may always be incompetence and greed- somewhere, whether it's Wall Street or Washington- but if you set up a chain of dominoes and leave them in a busy intersection, someone is going to tip them over. It's inevitable. The real root of this recession and every recessions is our system of capitalism, the system that has also produced all our wonderful growth that has made us the most prosperous country on earth.

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And the biggest telltale sign that this isn't a bubble is.......that people are talking about it! With real bubbles, you see people talking about how wonderful the asset is and how it will keep rising and rising. Not so here.

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Yeah, but they're the originator. To activate the magic of bubbles, you have to resell the thing several times over. The magic of bubbles is based on buying an asset in the belief that you can sell it to someone else for more, even if you think the asset isn't worth very much. The person you sell it to need not believe the asset is worth anything either, as long as he also believes he can find another buyer for it.

Right now, the government is originating these loans, and there's no market for resale because people neither think the loans are worth a lot nor think they can find another buyer. The government may run a small loss- but there's no speculation, no leverage, here.

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Not anymore, a couple years ago government took over the business of student loans entirely. If you want to borrow money for school now, in 90% of cases, you borrow directly from the government. No bank ever gets involved.

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There can't be a bailout/bubble in student loans because there are no buyers. Government originates, holds, and guarantees all the loans. To create a bubble, you need to find buyers to whom you can sell garbage. Perhaps there could be such a bubble in student loans in the future, but not now.

It might be more accurate to say that college tuition is a bubble.

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Parts of Oregon are that liberal, eh?

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In June, we added $60 billion in debt. That's $200 for every man, woman, and child in the country. If you are in (or, realistically, if you expect to spend most of your life in) the 50% that pays taxes, that's $400 for you. If you're in the top 10% (which pays 70% of taxes), that's $1400 for you. If you're in the top 1% (33% of taxes), that's about $7000 for you.

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So on a macro economic scale, if the cost of borrowing money is low, artificially low as in the case of the Fed keeping interest at or near 0, this causes unnatural borrowing?

Yes, but I dunno about the word unnatural. A low interest rate can't be any more unnatural than a high interest rate or any interest rate the Fed might set. You could say the fact that the Fed is setting an interest rate at all is unnatural, of course.

Where does all the money borrowed come from? It seems like a scarcity of borrowable money would result, especially considering how much money the government borrows.

Thin air. Or rather, money is debt. Money is someone else's promise to pay......in this case, in the future, with low interest. Practically, the Fed is doing all the lending these days.

It should be noted that the reason we have not experienced massive inflation yet, despite what the Fed has been doing, is that there has been a massive reduction in private sector lending, so that the total lending hasn't changed too much. A major reason the Fed has pursued its policy of expanding the money supply is to prevent the deflation that would occur with sudden, sharp, deleveraging in the private sector.

Also, what does unnaturally low interest rates do to investors and big businesses?

It makes them more willing to borrow money. Thus, they are more willing to invest it, creating jobs.

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Interest is the price of money. The more interest you have to pay to get money now, the more valuable the money is. So with low interest rates, money isn't very valuable because you don't have to give up very much to get it. So, you're more likely to borrow and then spend or invest it.

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No, they hated the rest of the Republican field. McCain was only better by comparison. It was obvious at that point that they favored Obama above all.

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The MSM never loved or hated McCain. They were pretty consistent in holding Obama >>>> McCain >>>> rest of the GOP field.

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Who are we to say IE isn't the best product? Remember the "best product" for any individual is the product that is best for him. And IE has one huge advantage over everything else- it's convenient. It's installed right on your new computer when you get it, and you've been using it for 15 years already so you know exactly how it works. It's the same reason people eat at McDonald's- because you know exactly what you're getting when you walk into a McDonald's anywhere in the world.

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The government restricts competition. This can be overt (say, if the government announces that only Southern California Edison may install electric lines in Los Angeles). Or it can be more indirect (for example, the government passes a 2000-page securities regulation act that de facto requires anyone in the business to spend millions on lawyers to help them comply with the law). In general, bigger companies are better able to cope with regulations, because they have advantages from the scale of their business that helps them handle large overhead expenses, and government regulations indeed produce large overhead expenses. But this is exactly what is bad for consumers, who are left with only a few, large, companies from which to choose.

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I don't quite follow. I was serious- the main reason we have too many prisoners is that we have too many criminal laws IMO. It's a value judgment, I don't think there's any logic or reasoning there.

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I thought you were for due process?

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Oh, we can go further with amnesty than that....I'm talking amnesty for prisoners. And yeah, CA is the biggest state and obviously that creates complexities, but that shouldn't necessarily lead to failure. The taxable wealth is there in spades, at the end of the day.

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So.....sounds like amnesty is the answer.

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It's unreasonable, since a employer is demanding information from a prospective employee's private life that has no bearing on the job.

If it has no bearing on the job, why is the employer asking it? Because the employer is being stupid? Well, that's probably true, but it's not the role of government to protect people from stupidity- because government tends to be more stupid than individuals.

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I've had success in getting normally fairly liberal fellow law students to see how stupid Dodd-Frank is. The main thing this law does is force anyone who wants to run a bank to hire an army of lawyers in order to help them comply with all the hundreds upon hundreds of pages of regulations. Ergo, the people who are helped the most by this law are big law firms. And also, the biggest of banks, because smaller banks can't afford to hire armies of lawyers.

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And if I were a CEO, what I would do instead of asking for social media info is simply to lower wages. The privacy to the employee is going to be worth more to them than the extra money I would be able to avoid paying them if I simply didn't ask for social media access.

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This is a bit of a tangent, but didn't you mention that they are still only offering minimum wage for this job? If it's impossible for them to fill the positions, shouldn't the logic of the free market dictate that they need to increase their offer?

Yes, that's what the farmers in Georgia did when they passed a tough law against hiring illegal immigrants in that state. Couldn't find legal American residents to work on those farms for minimum wage.

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My view is that the framers didn't mean to say, "as long as a militia is needed," but that "we are telling you that a militia is always needed, so you better always allow the means for it to exist."

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The company is pressuring you to give up privacy to get a job, which if unreasonable (which access to a Facebook account is) should be illegal, in my opinion.

What's unreasonable? Is it unreasonable for Google to keep trying to get me to sign up for Google Plus when I don't want one? Of course, if I were a CEO, I would make sure no one in my company was using such hiring practices. It's stupid, and a classic example of being penny wise and pound foolish.

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Ah, but the first amendment gives no rationale for why Congress may not do x, whereas the second amendment does. The difference suggests that perhaps the framers intended the second meaning of "shall." Darn it Obama, why can't you do anything funny like the last 2 presidents? You're also a top 2 law school graduate, you can tell us about the meaning of the word "is" too!

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Well, that depends on the meaning of the word "shall," does it not? If "shall not" means "Congress may not," then we may have something, but if "shall not" only means "Congress will not, because it's stupid," then we may not have anything. A very tricky word indeed, just like the word "is."

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Hmmm, at first glance I actually think you have that backwards.

Given that house edge exists, the longer you play and the more you bet, the more likely you are to lose. I've always argued that the smartest (although least entertaining to be sure) way to gamble in vegas would be to take ALL of your bankroll, bet it on a single hand of blackjack, and then walk away regardless of the outcome.

Strategically, that's right, though you wouldn't choose blackjack because blackjack has terrible odds if you're not allowed to split and double down (and since you're betting your whole bankroll, you can't do those things).

However, what I'm saying is also true. There's a difference between your expected loss and the probability of losing on any given trip. The probability of losing is easily changeable by the player. The way most players play, it's around 90%. With your strategy there, you can get it down to about 49% (betting banker on baccarat, you get paid 19 for 20 but you're more likely to win than lose). Anyone can make it lower than 1% simply by using the strategy of doubling your bet after every loss. But here's the thing......it has zero impact on your expected loss, which depends only on how much you bet times the house edge. And that's all the casino cares about.

If you make small bets, you'll be more likely to end up close to your expected loss. If you overbet your bankroll, you're likely to lose far more than your expected loss (like 20x more). You're also more likely to win big of course. And then people go home and think that they lost because the house always wins. No, 95% of their losses came because they overbet their bankroll and got unlucky.

Edit/short version: Your strategy is betting everyone on one hand is the best for minimizing expected loss if you are not counting cards. Expected loss is the only thing casinos care about, but players sometimes also care about the probability of ending up or down.

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Though the best response here is to walk away. If your company is so lame that you ask to see employees' social media pages, I don't want to work for you anyway.

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So every time someone adds someone else as a friend on FB, they are invading their privacy? They cannot even ASK to see it?

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It should all be reflected in the price. As in, without the EULA, prices would be higher.

I'm not sure what basic rights are being removed that you're talking about though. Those things you listed are not basic rights in the traditional sense of the term........

There are lots of kinds of property with conditions on them. Like any house with a covenant on it, for example. As for social media passwords, it seems horrible to me, but again there's no basic right here. The employer is saying, work for me and let me see your Facebook page and I'll pay you. Don't they have a right to ask to pay you to see your FB page, and don't you have the right to accept their offer? For tax payment shifting, it seems there's no difference than if the nominal price was changed, so it's nothing really.

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Yup, on another note.......I think statistically 90% of visitors to Vegas lose money. Why, when the house edge usually isn't all that high? The biggest reason is variance. People underestimate the variance and overbet their bankroll. Sit down to play blackjack at $10/hand, and you expect to lose $5/hour. But if you only brought $100, the probability of losing it all within the first hour is probably greater than 50%. That does NOT mean that the odds are changed by how much money you bring. But it does mean a lot of small losses are being averaged in with a few big wins. I think there would be a market for a casino game that worked differently, where most players won a small amount and a few players lost big.

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No, that's not where I am "getting confused". I know that corporations cannot compel the people who sign contracts with them to do whatever they want, and I know why, and the answer is "because law supersedes contracts", not because "the free market somehow".

It's because you won't sign a contract that compels you to do things you don't want to do. That is your protection. If you believe the law will protect you from contracts that are bad for you, think again! The law will protect you from a few kind of contracts.....for most of them, you're on your own. Know what you are signing.

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Transferability is a good thing. Property that can't be sold is.......meh.

But yeah, it'll be reflected in the price, you can't pull one over on the free market.

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The sad thing is this is the single place in the world I can think of where a monorail makes the most sense- everything is lined up on one street, but the distances are long for walking. And they screw it up.

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Also, on the Las Vegas Monorail: This could have been a huge success if they had run it down the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard, instead of Paradise Avenue where they have it. As it is, it was mostly empty. I'm sure it was cheaper to build on Paradise Ave., but this is the kind of thing where it's better to have a business with loads of customers in an expensive location than no customers in a cheap location.

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Also, I just got back from Vegas, so here's a report:

Palms: They had a VERY generous promotion, where if you signed up for a player's card for the first time, you could get either 50% of your table games loss, or 100% of your slot loss, for the first 24 hours rebated back to you in freeplay, up to $1,000. The only real caveat is that you only 30% back immediately, and you needed to return 2 more times in the future to redeem the rest- so maybe not so great if you're flying in from the East Coast, but very good if you're living in Socal.

The slot play offer is a better deal from a pure EV point of view, but slot machines are boring and I wanted a smaller but surer win rather than trying to go for a royal flush or nothing on video poker. So I played at a $25 double deck blackjack table (fairly good rules, house edge of only 0.4%), higher stakes than I'd normally play, and won $880 in 2 hours. Thanks for the promotion, Palms....I wouldn't have played at $25 if I didn't know I was getting 50% rebated on losses.

My estimate is that the value of the table games promotion (what you'd pay to have that offer) is probably north of $200. And the value of the slot promotion is probably above $500 (but with a lot more variance to play it the right way). So good luck to the Palms, but I'm skeptical that they'll actually make a profit from this promotion.

Riviera: Another VERY generous promotion. $1000 rebated on slot losses for the first day (ending at midnight, so don't sign up for a player's card at 11 PM). Half redeemed in freeplay immediately, half after a month. I lost $400 on video poker, then redeemed $200 in freeplay immediately, and got another $200 available in August. I know, not the best way to play it- I shouldn't quit until I've either made money or lost a full $1000, because it's not my money I'm losing- but I figured the chances of making a big enough comeback to stop playing were pretty low, and I had better things to do than spend hours more playing VP. Plus I wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of having $500 available next month, but not now.

The Riviera also has single deck blackjack with 3:2 payout. And for a $10 limit. I think they're really going after the gambler market, which is very nice for players, but I'm kind of skeptical it'll work because offering great deals to people who know what they're doing doesn't seem very profitable. They may have no choice though, given their bad location on the strip and ancient, dilapidated, hotel- gotta find a niche to survive.

Wynn: Very elegant place. On a saturday night at 9 PM, most of the blackjack tables were $25/hand and up, but I was able to find a couple at $15/hand. They did raise the limits to $25 a little after I started playing, but fortunately once you start playing you're grandfathered in for as long as you want to play. The rules were the standard you can find for reasonable limits (3:2 pay on blackjacks, 6 decks, hit 17, surrender available, resplit aces to 4 hands, double after split okay, 0.46% house edge).

MGM Grand: On Sunday night, most of the tables had the above "standard" rules for $10/hand. On Monday night, at around 7 PM it was the same, but by 11 PM or so everything had been raised to $25/hand- except for the trap games with horrible rules like 6:5 payout. I'm guessing this is what you saw on Memorial Day weekend, Smuffin- they had plenty of customers on a busy weekend so they decided to raise the limits. I did find the area with stand 17 games, but never for less than $25/hand. Maybe on a weekday morning? One complaint: I've been given rum coke after ordering normal coca-cola a full 3 times in this casino. Really? It's like they're trying to intoxicate me.

Tropicana: Very nice atmosphere, standard rules except you can't surrender.

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It's pretty incredible to me that California has such major budget issues when it has such a large tax base. This is a rich state, with loads of rich people and highly profitable businesses being taxed at a very high rate. And yet it has to resort to regressive taxes like charging $460 for running a red light, and still can't balance the budget. In New Hampshire, we have no income tax, no sales tax, and a lot of our most productive residents work in Massachusetts, but we do fine with the budget. We do have unpaid state representatives in NH, but I'm sure that's not where California is losing all that money.

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Let's put this another way.

Contracts in our legal system are 3-way agreements- between 2 parties and the government, which agrees to enforce the contract. Contracts in Smuffin's system are 2-way agreements between the 2 parties only. What are the benefits of these approaches? The primary benefit of having 3-way contracts is that both of the non-government parties can have greater confidence that the contract will be performed, because the 3rd party will enforce it. This leads to more contracts being made, more trade conducted, and greater efficiency.

It is true that you can easily have 3-way contracts without a nominal government. But I submit that the more powerful the 3rd party is, and thus, the more they are able to act as a good contract enforcer, the more they actually assume the power and role of a government.

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I submit that this proposed system is neither natural nor obvious, even if it were possible for it to work.

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There is a problem among libertarians, and that is that they claim their idea of private property is obvious, natural, and exists in a vaccum, but it is not and does not. One approach to property is to say that property is assigned according to law. But this requires a government for property to exist at all.

If you don't feel that law is a prerequisite for property to exist......who does the land of Israel belong to?

a. The Jews, because they hold it now.
b. The Palestinians, because they held it 60 years ago.
c. The British, because they conquered it from the Ottomans.
d. The Ottomans, because they ruled it before World War I.
e. The Palestinians, because they bought it from the Crusaders.
f. The Turks, because the Crusaders conquered it from them.
g. The Palestinians, because the Turks conquered it from the Arabs.
h. The Vatican, because the Crusaders conquered it righteously.
i. France, because most of the First Crusade came from France.
j. Russia, because the Crusaders swore to restore the land to the Byzantine Empire, which finds it closest analog today in Russia.
k. Greece, for the above and because the Byzantine Empire is closer to Greece.
l. The Vatican, because the Byzantine Empire is the Roman Empire, and the Vatican is the true heir to Rome being in Rome.
m. The Palestinians, because the Crusaders wrongly took it from them.
n. Iran, because Shiites are right.
o. The Palestinians, because Sunnis are right.
p. The above mentioned Christian countries, because the Muslims wrongly conquered it from the Eastern Roman Empire.
r. The Jews, because the Romans wrongly expelled them from the land.
s. Iran, because Persia ruled the land.
t. The Jews, because God gave them the land.
u. The descendants of the Canaanites, because they held the land before the Jews.
v. The Jews, because God promised the land to Abraham.

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It looks like because it's now a tax, the bill can be repealed with only a majority in the Senate, instead of 60 votes. And reading the opinion, the Court does give some limits on what can be considered a tax vs. what can be considered a penalty. Namely, something like a 90% marginal income tax rate on fat people would probably be construed as a penalty under this opinion.

So I guess, overall- not bad. The important thing is that the doctrine of virtually unlimited power under the Commerce Clause has been stopped again.

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Regressive taxes are the last resort of failed governments that spend more than they produce for their society. When you're trying to balance the budget on the backs of parking tickets issued to homeless people.....

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And next season I want to see the story of how Amon learned to energybend, except that he seems to have been written out of the story now in those last 10 minutes, so we probably won't see that.

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I don't think we're supposed to draw the conclusion that Amon was taking bending away with bloodbending. Makes much more sense that he learned energybending somewhere (found a lion turtle, perhaps?) and Korra just thought he was using bloodbending because she didn't know better.

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Goldman Sachs is advising that we short US stocks. Time to buy?

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Oh, treason is definitely the ultimate as far as severity of crimes go. But bribery isn't nearly as bad, and depending on what dereliction of duty means, it could fit with that.

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Well, the Constitution gives treason and bribery as examples of high crimes and misdemeanors. I dunno how dereliction of duty compares with those- seems it covers a pretty wide range of things.

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