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New sticky thread. (self.badeconomics)

wumbotarian"My name is Prescott: look upon my models and despair."[M] が 投稿 - stickied post

I'm making a new sticky because the old one has 200+ comments and a new one won't drop for 2 days. Post stuff here.

I don't think this violates my RI mandate.

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トップ新着論争中古い順Q&A

[–]Tiakoneo-mercantilist 18ポイント19ポイント  (7子コメント)

Oxi!

No matter what you think of the vote, it will be great for macro economists. Never a better time to get views on a blog post or to submit some freelance analysis.

[–]SubotanEcon-senpai~~ 15ポイント16ポイント  (5子コメント)

The conspiracists never seem to come to the realization that economists profit from economic crisis not from being in the pocket of the Central Banksters but from new opportunities to write papers.

Seriously tho, this is a complete fucking disaster, both from an economic and a political (pro-European) point of view. It's the worst setback for Europe since the War.

[–]haalidoodiThe Magic Aggregate Demand Fairy 12ポイント13ポイント  (0子コメント)

Honestly, I'm just fine with sitting back and eating my popcorn at this point. All sympathy I had for Greeks disappeared a long time ago. Why can't they be like us Poles? It's simple: you be a good little pet to Germany, and in return you get hundreds of billions of euros and no complaints!

[–]Tiakoneo-mercantilist 5ポイント6ポイント  (3子コメント)

I don't see it triggering Grexit unless Greece itself decides to leave. The troika knows that Greece leaving will just give ammunition to UK Euroskeptics, and the UK leaving is actually feasible.

My own view is that austerity measures transformed a financial crisis into an economic one, and increasingly in the last two years into a humanitarian one. I kind of agree with Krugman that slashing pensions again isn't a real solution.

I am not an economist though!

[–]MildlyEoghanDon't Prax Me, Bro! 7ポイント8ポイント  (2子コメント)

I don't see it triggering Grexit unless Greece itself decides to leave.

The ECB's refusal to keep Greek banks liquid will drive them out of the Euro if the creditors don't get what they want.

[–]Tiakoneo-mercantilist 5ポイント6ポイント  (1子コメント)

Which might be for the best, but I don't see this being the last word. I mean, it's the EU. It's a political matter.

[–]wumbotarian"My name is Prescott: look upon my models and despair."[S] 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Long-run, I think Greece would be better off having independent monetary policy.

Greece could've weathered their rough austerity (if not completely, then better than the 25% unemployment they have) if they had expansionary monetary policy to offset it.

[–]MildlyEoghanDon't Prax Me, Bro! 9ポイント10ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yep, the economists I follow on Twitter are having a field day ripping into the Eurogroup.

[–]Oediumpareto efficiency is possible if we just kill the right people 10ポイント11ポイント  (1子コメント)

Fun fact: The last United Auto Workers negotiations finalized were secret to non-negotiators until it was put to vote, a vote that was exclusively up or down and non-amenamble.

[–]CutOffUrJohnson 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

TIL the auto industry collapsed and that the union can sue employees for lost profits.

[–]besttrousers"Then again, I have pegged you for a Neoclassical/Austrian." 10ポイント11ポイント  (3子コメント)

I've just declared myself God-Emperor for life. I don't think this violates my RI mandate.

[–]wumbotarian"My name is Prescott: look upon my models and despair."[S] 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

Okay, I laughed out loud at this one.

[–]Escape1991 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Probably sooner. The sooner he is emperor the sooner R1 is more effectively administered. His demand curve for R1 is shifting right, watch out.

[–]devinejohSecretary of the Bitcoin Treasury 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Not if I have anything to say about it.

[–]usrname42There is no God but Keynes, and Krugman is his prophet 8ポイント9ポイント  (7子コメント)

Do you think we should start doing daily threads now? We seem to get enough comments.

[–]wumbotarian"My name is Prescott: look upon my models and despair."[S] 5ポイント6ポイント  (6子コメント)

Not daily, but I think every two or three days. I'll talk with the other mods.

[–]say_wot_againI guess I mod /r/goodeconomics now? 2ポイント3ポイント  (5子コメント)

The Tuesday midweek thread already exists, so maybe a Friday Sunday Tuesday rotation? Lower frequency during the week under the theory that we occasionally go to work.

[–]wumbotarian"My name is Prescott: look upon my models and despair."[S] 4ポイント5ポイント  (4子コメント)

Yeah, Tuesday thread exists, but the Friday->Tuesday thread gets filled up quickly.

So Tues/Fri/Sun sounds good.

[–]say_wot_againI guess I mod /r/goodeconomics now? 8ポイント9ポイント  (3子コメント)

Pssh economists. Don't you know this infinite growth is unsustainable because the earth reddit is finite!

[–]praxeologist4lyfeJoan Robinson did nothing wrong. 8ポイント9ポイント  (0子コメント)

Let's make a wager. Pick any 5 comments made by Integralds and I bet their karma will increase in 10 days' time (if reddit is finite, we should expect his karma score to go down as he makes more comments). Winner gets a basket of commodities.

[–]besttrousers"Then again, I have pegged you for a Neoclassical/Austrian." 5ポイント6ポイント  (1子コメント)

That's why we need a Basic Sticky Thread.

[–]say_wot_againI guess I mod /r/goodeconomics now? 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

When you're a basic bitch like me, EVERY thread is a basic thread!

[–]SoyElGoddamnBatmanI don't really know anything, honestly 6ポイント7ポイント  (9子コメント)

Thanks, buddy.

I have a question for everyone who has been answering all my economics questions in the discussion threads:

Am I being annoying or parasitic? I have a few questions lined up, but I would hate to be a bother unintentionally. On the one hand, you're doing work informing me about things I could google (albeit with difficulty). On the other, you might feel you're sharing your knowledge and making the world a more intelligent place — and it's appreciated. I could see it going either way.

So let me know if I'm annoying you with my dumb questions, and I'll stop.

[–]wumbotarian"My name is Prescott: look upon my models and despair."[S] 6ポイント7ポイント  (1子コメント)

I learned probably half as much on reddit as I did in my electives.

This came from being A) boneheaded in my beliefs and being presented with stuff to the contrary and B) asking questions.

Keep asking questions dude. I, at the very least, will try and help you learn as well. You aren't annoying or parasitic. It doesn't help the field of economics to push away those asking questions.

[–]SoyElGoddamnBatmanI don't really know anything, honestly 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Thanks man. ❤️

[–]haalidoodiThe Magic Aggregate Demand Fairy 5ポイント6ポイント  (2子コメント)

We're not /r/badphilosophy, we're a learning sub as well as a badacademics sub. I for one have been fine with your presence as well as that of any other less economically knowledgeable person, so long as you don't act like a brat.

[–]SoyElGoddamnBatmanI don't really know anything, honestly 4ポイント5ポイント  (1子コメント)

Thanks, buddy.

I enjoyed your labor union discussion in the child comments to my other question, even though I didn't comment or anything. I followed a friend's lead and thought unions were the bee's knees. I'm even a lapsed member of the IWW technically.

[–]haalidoodiOn second thought, let's not go to r/econ. It is a silly place. 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Sometimes I feel like the only positive contribution to this sub is my rants on industrial relations, haha. Glad somebody liked it, I guess. Unions aren't so bad, it's just a matter of getting the legal environment in shape. I'd love for us to eventually have a more European system here, but I can't imagine that happening anytime in the next century.

[–]centurion44Milton spoke to me from a burning treasury note 5ポイント6ポイント  (1子コメント)

No, most of us just like discussion and dank memes. Questions, discussion points, just general talks are quite enjoyable. So you do you.

[–]SoyElGoddamnBatmanI don't really know anything, honestly 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

I sincerely thought someone might take an issue, which is why I asked and tried dig any bad will up to the surface now before someone's like fuck off. But I'm glad it seems everyone enjoys the free exchange of knowledge as much as I do. It's great because /r/badeconomics is my favorite sub now for this reason.

[–]MoneyChurchShitposting is always and everywhere a karmic phenomenon 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

I like answering questions! As I see it, if I can't clearly explain a concept, then I can't really say I understand it. Explaining concepts forces me to work through them until I clearly understand what I know and don't.

[–]besttrousers"Then again, I have pegged you for a Neoclassical/Austrian." 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

Nah, I think you're getting the balance just right.

[–]ivansmlhotshot with a theory 5ポイント6ポイント  (11子コメント)

Because watching the Greek debacle unfold is rather depressing, here's something more wonkish I've been meaning to ask - does anyone here have an opinion on Cambridge Capital Controversy? While some heterodox critics claim it presents a proof of logical inconsistency in the core of neoclassical theory, I still don't get what the big deal was.

The issue is basically that one can construct counterexamples where some nice properties of Solow model wrt. capital no longer hold (for example, higher interest rate associated with more, not less capital in the economy). So what? One can also construct examples where the demand curve slopes upwards, but that doesn't mean we should throw all the Marshallian supply/demand diagrams out, right?

More info on the controversy itself can be found e.g. in this JEP paper by Cohen & Harcourt, although I like this alternative treatment more: (source)

So basically, some old-school neo-classical dudes came up with the idea of a production function to describe a firm's output in terms of the firm's labour and capital inputs. Pretty cool, right? You could do all kinds of s**t with it - Hicks-neutrality, Harrod-neutrality, Solow-neutrality - all kinds of cool, elegant stuff! So we were pursuing this research programme, going along with the flow, acting cool and all that, and then Piero f**king Sraffa and Joan "Marx was right" Robinson come along and spoil the party.

"How the bloody hell are you going to measure this capital thing-a-me-bob?"

"What the f**k are you talking about?"

"Don't start mate. I said how you gonna add the cranes to the hammers, mates? It's apples and oranges, mate. Apples and f**king oranges."

"f**k off you limey asshole"

"You what, mate? You starting? You f**king starting?"

(Fighting ensues between the Cambridge Ameribros and Cambridge Britbros)

[–]say_wot_againI guess I mod /r/goodeconomics now? 4ポイント5ポイント  (4子コメント)

My uninformed understanding is that it proved, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the standard Cobb Douglas Y = AKalpha L1-alpha production function and its variants (like the one with effective labor, Y = AKalpha (EL) 1-alpha ) were necessarily wrong, as capital cannot be sensibly agglomerated as if it were homogeneous (measurements are circular since they rely on the rate of return, which the amount of capital is supposed to determine, and there are theoretical situations where which of two methods of production are preferred switches based on the interest rate in weird ways, so "capital intensity" isn't really a thing). The Post Keynesians at Cambridge University believed this to be a massive blow to the neoclassical paradigm, while the neoclassicals at MIT believed that the ideas of homogeneous capital and capital intensity, while technically wrong, were good enough approximations of reality to be useful, a la utility maximization. I don't know whether the neoclassicals are right about the empirics, although my biases lead me to believe them.

[–]praxeologist4lyfeJoan Robinson did nothing wrong. 3ポイント4ポイント  (3子コメント)

while the neoclassicals at MIT believed that the ideas of homogeneous capital and capital intensity, while technically wrong, were good enough approximations of reality to be useful, a la utility maximization.

I'm tempted to call this a hint of instrumentalism, i.e., the approximation is useful for the task at hand, fitting data, but not useful for actually understanding economic phenomena. But this is just a vague critique of mine that I stole after reading a few books on economic methodology. I can probably see how K is perhaps an ordinal measure of how much capital of what quality each country has in relation others. Is this a good way to think about it?

Still, this brings a bigger question to me:

Have the PKs or anyone else given a useful alternative to capital homogenization in their models?

[–]complexsystemsMWG is my homeboy 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

It is trivial to develop models that utilize multiple types of capital and put them into generalized production functions. I.e. instead of F(K,L) have F(K_1,K_2,...,K_N,L) for some N > 1. The issue is generally from a pure theoretical point of view without imposing structure on those production functions we might not get a lot out of them, or often it might just be "more of the same." I.e. the usual equation of marginal products to marginal costs.

The austrians make the same critique, which is that different types of capital "flow at different rates." It might take longer to make a car than a computer, basically, including all the annoying inputs into them. And our economic analysis has to be cognizant of this reality. On some level modern econ does. A common dynamic optimization problem from my core macro sequence was solving problems where it took multiple time periods for new capital to be built. We just need to build models were people need multiple different capital types in such a dynamic problem and to do analysis over how shocks impact things (actually an interesting paper, I would think). So all the building blocks are there, I'm just not sure how often they're used.

The aggregate production function came out as a critique of the status quo around when Solow was writing. At the time many growth papers used Leontief production technologies where labor and capital had to be used in fixed proportion. Solow was simply trying to say through his aggregate production function, "but wait, we know firms can actually develop multiple production processes that accomplish this task by trading off between various types of inputs." Since it provided a lot of nice properties, people kept using it as a decent approximation.

[–]IntegraldsI am the rep agent AMA 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Interestingly, the Cobb-Douglas production function is what pops out when you aggregate a bunch of Leontief production functions together. One of two nice examples in macro where the micro properties and macro properties of a model differ dramatically. (The other is Hansen's indivisible labor aggregation result.)

[–]ivansmlhotshot with a theory 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

I'm tempted to call this a hint of instrumentalism

Yes, but isn't most economics instrumentalist? There are no strictly competitive markets, no literal utility functions, no reason labor could be aggregated into single "hours worked" number... but we still use those concepts as approximations (and of course so do heterodox economists, though maybe with different concepts).

So if the whole point of some critique such as CCC is to shove down some kind of abstract "gotcha" revelation down the readers throat (and from what little I've read, that's exactly the point), I don't find that useful or interesting.

[–]IntegraldsI am the rep agent AMA 3ポイント4ポイント  (3子コメント)

I think it's a shame that nobody does capital theory anymore.

Moll, Midrigan, Banerjee, Yu, and Buera are trying to bring it back to macro, but to date their papers haven't gotten much traction.

It's also sort of a shame that Cambridge, US won, because we need to talk more about measurement issues, not less.

[–]besttrousers"Then again, I have pegged you for a Neoclassical/Austrian." 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

It's also sort of a shame that Cambridge, US won, because we need to talk more about measurement issues, not less.

Oh shit, /u/integralds has gone heterodox!

[–]IntegraldsI am the rep agent AMA 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

I think we're raising a generation of macroeconomists who don't have enough respect for measurement, which in turn leads directly to the "mathiness" problems that P. Romer has identified.

So I'll go heterodox this once, when it suits my agenda. :)

[–]ivansmlhotshot with a theory 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

I've seen some of Moll's papers, interesting stuff, although IIRC it had homogeneous capital, only its distribution across firms mattered for aggregate productivity due to frictions at the firm level, which is bit different from the "old" capital theory.

[–]praxeologist4lyfeJoan Robinson did nothing wrong. 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

My flair says it all. QED.

Edit: On a serious note, anyone who wants an intro to post-keynesian macro in terms that mainstreamers could actually understand (i.e., equations and citations from the mainstream lit), I uploaded a good JEL paper here.

[–]besttrousers 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

I've never understood the link between:

  1. Capital is heterogenous
  2. ???
  3. My policy preferences are correct

That the heterodox-bros try to pull off.

[–]complexsystemsMWG is my homeboy 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

This is badecon because WE DON'T NEED NO CENTRAL PLANNERS HERE.

[–]NewmanTheScofflawDingo ate my textbook 3ポイント4ポイント  (9子コメント)

Taking a my first computer science class, in Python. How do you prepare for the class in terms of studying and taking notes, seems foreign to me.

[–]___OccamsChainsaw___Garrett 4 Fed Gov. 4ポイント5ポイント  (5子コメント)

My experience with CPSC classes (which might not be transferable considering I loath programming with a revulsion usually reserved for people who like the movie Primer) is that you have to learn by doing. Sitting down with the script editor for an hour is better than a whole day spent memorizing syntax.

[–]a_s_h_e_nA stable currency, like bitcoin 2ポイント3ポイント  (4子コメント)

Primer fanboys act like it's the best time travel movie ever, I'll never get it.

[–]___OccamsChainsaw___Garrett 4 Fed Gov. 2ポイント3ポイント  (3子コメント)

Like, I appreciate that the film doesn't dumb itself down with respect to it being hard sci-fi, but the plot did not need to be as unclear as it was. And the characters are the most aggressively boring white-bread white-collar personalityless uncultured narrative-dialogue-delivery-vehicles I've ever seen (i.e., what you get when you let an engineering type write fiction).

[–]LegSpinner 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yep, I sort of gave up on the movie because it stopped being fun. I'd rather watch Timecop, to be honest.

[–]besttrousers"Then again, I have pegged you for a Neoclassical/Austrian." 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

(i.e., what you get when you let an engineering type write fiction).

Doesn't that have a good pedigree (see Asimov, Clark)?

I really like Primer, but I first saw it in 2006 (eg before it was cool). I can see how there are a bunch of obnoxious Primer fanboys after the xkcd shout outs.

What I really like about it is that everything in it makes sense one you get past the circularity. I hate when it gets compared to, say Donnie Darko, which just throws a bunch of random things together, waggles it's fingers, and say "Wooo, mysterious.".

[–]___OccamsChainsaw___Garrett 4 Fed Gov. 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

I've not read either. Science fiction isn't my jam (in literature at least), but if the book 2001 is anything like the film, I could levy the same criticism at it that I do at Primer with regard to the characters (excepting the HAL)--they have no character, which very well might be deliberate in the case of 2001 but is clearly just poor writing when it comes to Primer.

I'm actually more forgiving of something like Donnie Darko (which, to be clear, isn't a terribly good movie either) because despite the internal inconsistencies the characters and cinematography are still interesting to watch. Neither film really says anything important but Donnie Darko at least says nothing in an absorbing way.

What ticks me off the most about it is Primer could've easily been a movie I really liked, had the two leads been given a modicum of character, the cinematography been more interesting and the narrative not as needlessly convoluted. It could've been a hard sci-fi exploration of contemporary consumer culture and how, having by accident made the most important technological breakthrough in the species' history, two educated but still culturally-illiterate engineers use their invention for nothing of even the slightest of import, instead opting for lowbrow personal gain. But it decided to be a puzzle box instead.

The line "I'm still full from that burger I had later today" will always be brilliant though.

[–]say_wot_againI guess I mod /r/goodeconomics now? 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Ooh fun! I always felt that more than taking notes, it's really helpful to try to reimplement any code examples or exercises yourself to understand how they work. Also, if you get stuck or need to look up a bit of syntax, get in the habit of Googling your problems. Even if they have a course reader, learning how to effectively Google your coding problems will save you lots of time in the long run.

[–]Durpel 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

if youre taking a cs 101 course you'll mostly just go over standard library (printline etc) stuff and the very beginning object orientation, so unless youre totally computer illiterate you dont need to prepare. cs is a lot like math in that reading and taking notes arent great substitutes for actually writing programs. just write code and youll figure it out

[–]dirtfer 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

I never really took notes on most things, the best way to study is to do some programming in your free time.

[–]bananameltdown 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Anyone have an insight on the Chinese markets, specifically the government interventions in the Stock Market?

Besides the however many bln RMB in stock they're about to buy, securities companies have been ordered to buy stocks totalling 15% of their registered capital (I think), this week's IPOs are cancelled, and insurance companies have been told to increase their stock holdings. The stated goal as I understand is to get prices up to last week's 5 day average. My wife is a bit of an insider to the situation and believes they should have let the market fix itself, but that now the interventions have made that impossible.

There's also a video going around of the CSRC's chairman's, Xiao Gang, job interview. In it he is saying that when he went to university he really wanted to study Chinese philosophy, but his entrance scores were too low. The only program he could get accepted to was finance, and he had know idea what finance was. It is not really helping investor confidence.

[–]Meta-Cognition"Neoclassical Bernankean shill" 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Out of interest, what's the general opinion of Lawrence White, both here and among the wider profession?

[–]lorentz65DEMAND FOR THE DEMAND GOD! 1ポイント2ポイント  (8子コメント)

Tomorrow I start my diff eq summer course. Anyone got any suggestions or anything?

[–]p0m"I had a (Keynesian, I guess) economics professor" 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

If you're brushed up on your integral calculus (integration by parts, basic integration rules, etc) and don't make many silly math errors, diff eq isn't actually that scary.

[–]wumbotarian"My name is Prescott: look upon my models and despair."[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

Brush up on integrals. Learn to recognize integrals and their associated general solutions.

Diff Eq was one of my favorite math courses. Unfortunately I still don't get systems of differential equations but Laplace transforms were fun

[–]say_wot_againI guess I mod /r/goodeconomics now? 4ポイント5ポイント  (1子コメント)

Learn to recognize integrals

It'd be easier if he started his posts with "Economist here!"

[–]commentsrusBring maymayday back! 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Howdy!

[–]Ponderay 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

It's usually a really computational class so make sure to do a ton of problems. You're also going to feel like you got tricked into taking a physics class.

[–]lorentz65DEMAND FOR THE DEMAND GOD! 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

I'm a physics, econ double ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).

[–]Ponderay 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

You should love the class then. I never could really get into physics for whatever reason. I always liked the proof based math classes better.

[–]lorentz65DEMAND FOR THE DEMAND GOD! 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Physics math shits all over proof form all the time. The amount of times 'good enough' happens in my physics classes is occasionally worrying.

[–]wumbotarian"My name is Prescott: look upon my models and despair."[S] 2ポイント3ポイント  (12子コメント)

Okay, so another "why is Sanders doing what he's doing?"

Bernie said he'll raise taxes on corporations and high income earners. Okay, run of the mill left-wing populism. But the reason why was:

And yes, those folks and large corporations will have to pay under a Sanders administration more in taxes so that we can use that revenue to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, create the jobs we need, make sure that every kid who has the ability is able to get a college education in America because public colleges and public universities will be tuition-free," he said.

I don't get why he has Stephanie Kelton as his adviser if he thinks that we need tax revenue to pay for things. MMT specifically says you don't need tax revenue.

Furthermore, here's a funny bit:

Asked about the type of people who would make up his cabinet, Sanders ticked off the names of three liberal economists: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz and former Bill Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich.

Stiglitz and Reich are no surprise, but I think Bernie only knows what Krugman does because of his NYT blog/columns. I doubt Krugman would work for a guy who is so vehemently anti-trade. 90s Krugman would put Bernie in his place on trade - I'm not sure what 2000s Krugman would do, but I'll bet on Kruggers not working for Bernie.

I don't understand why the protectionism social policy in Civ V gives you extra happiness.

Protectionism no giod p. It should make people worse off. I don't get why it isn't "free trade".

I should make a mod that just renames that. Also I want a mod that allows me to make canals. That probably already exists.

[–]besttrousers"Then again, I have pegged you for a Neoclassical/Austrian." 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

Stiglitz, Krugman and Reich would actually disagree with each other in fairly interesting ways. It'd be interesting to see what policies could get a 2/3 major from that group.

[–]alexhoyerhoard plywood now for our ANCAP overlords 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Even more than Krugman taking down Bernie on trade, I would love to see Stiglitz take Reich to task on capital taxes.

[–]haalidoodiOn second thought, let's not go to r/econ. It is a silly place. 2ポイント3ポイント  (5子コメント)

I don't understand why the protectionism social policy in Civ V gives you extra happiness.

The entire commerce tree is a lot better than people think it is, especially if you start inland. Shame it seems to get so much hate. Though I gotta admit, that policy also confused me as well. Could it be referring to the mercantilist policies that pervaded Europe during Renaissance times?

Games are weird, aren't they? In Victoria II, the industrial era Paradox game, I have yet to see a profitable steel mill, even though a ton of other industries need it (I did see a good explanation in a comic recently, though). That game is one giant advertisement for extreme Keynesian theory, really: just tax the shit out of everybody, subsidize every factory in your nation and suddenly you're the bestest in the world!

[–]wumbotarian"My name is Prescott: look upon my models and despair."[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (4子コメント)

Shame it seems to get so much hate.

It does? I mean, the landsknechts suck (they could replace that with a decreased gold cost to buying units) but I use the commerce tree even if I'm not in land. Exploration is crap in comparison I think.

Could it be referring to the mercantilist policies that pervaded Europe during Renaissance times?

This is my best bet. It still doesn't make sense.

[–]haalidoodiOn second thought, let's not go to r/econ. It is a silly place. 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

The consensus on /r/civ is that it's the worst of the trees, which I suppose makes sense on higher difficulties when you absolutely have to prioritize rationalism (not to mention that the current meta seems to be combining tradition and liberty at the beginning). As for protectionism, I don't think that names of policies and their effects correlate that well overall, they needed to add in something strong to finish what was a weak tree without it and just combined it with a prominent feature of economics of the time.

[–]wumbotarian"My name is Prescott: look upon my models and despair."[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

I need to look at the different strategies. Right now, I just pick stuff I think is interesting and I don't really have an "end game" strategy in mind.

Liberty/tradition seems like a good mix, just so you can expand your empire a fuck ton.

That being said, I like having shit tons of gold sitting around so when I need/want to wage war I can easily handle a large army.

[–]haalidoodiOn second thought, let's not go to r/econ. It is a silly place. 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

To be honest, Paradox games killed Civ for me. Ever since I got into Vicky, trying to play Civ just seems so...simple, really dumbed down. And after the disappointment that was Beyond Earth (little more than a heavily modded version of Civ V, IMO), I've gotten off of it completely.

Love the music though, I still keep a lot of it on my Youtube favorites. Civ V has some of the best game music I've heard in nearly a decade.

[–]wumbotarian"My name is Prescott: look upon my models and despair."[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

There was a free weekend for Beyond Earth. I played for like 3 hours and stopped. It was terrible.

Interestingly, I play with all the sound off because I don't like any of it. I listen to music on youtube while I play.

I don't know Victorian nor Paradox games.

[–]___OccamsChainsaw___Garrett 4 Fed Gov. 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

I don't understand why the protectionism social policy in Civ V gives you extra happiness.

I don't understand why hospitals provide extra food. Wait a minute...

[–]wumbotarian"My name is Prescott: look upon my models and despair."[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

I never thought of it as "food" but "ability to sustain a population."

Medicine and hospitals definitely do that.

[–]___OccamsChainsaw___Garrett 4 Fed Gov. 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

My explanation is better.

[–]Ponderay 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Maybe protectionism means less worry about certain classes of job which leads to less stress. It's not an absurd way to model given how many Americans say they want it.

[–]urnbabyurnNeoPanglossian 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Anyone use Moblab (http://www.moblab.com) in classes?

[–]praxeologist4lyfeJoan Robinson did nothing wrong. 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

/r/goodeconomics needs traffic in its Q&A thread!

[–]prillin101 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Is Greek defaulting and leaving the Eurozone the best path for them?

[–]devinejohSecretary of the Bitcoin Treasury 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

If anyone hasn't read Romero dellaires account on the rewandan genocide, shake hands with the devil, I suggest you give it a read, really shows where the incentives for humanitarian intervention and chapter 6/7 missions come from. The movie is pretty good as well.

I guess the word "mandate" got me thinking.