全 51 件のコメント

[–]PopularWarfareSalamancan Economist 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

The NAP is bad philosophy.

To celebrate my courageous action I am awarding myself the Bad Economics Award For Bravery.

[–]wshanahana slightly less shitty libertarian 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

It leads to absurd conclusions when taken to its logical ends. For example, Rothbard defending parents letting children starve to death in The Ethics of Liberty.

[–]Post_CapitalistI am the hypothetical can opener AMA 0ポイント1ポイント  (4子コメント)

Any other communists on this sub?

[–]probablyaname 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Not a communists, not really anyways, but I am sympathetic to some of the ideals of communism, and I really like Marx as a sociologists (and, don't hang me, thinks he points to some inherent contradictions within capitalism, contradictions that everyone after Marx went about trying to solve, and is one of first people who understood capitalism is much as social system as it is an economic). I don't, however, believe in some kind of classless utopia at the end of the dialectic chain of civilizations.

[–]ocamlmycamli <3 central planning 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

I spent tonight convincing a bunch of democratic socialists that "market design is all about building alternatives to the capitalist system." Does that count?

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

Before I saw the light aka took macro and micro 101.

[–]wshanahana slightly less shitty libertarian 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

rumor has it wumbo is a raging communist.

[–]Kai_Daigoji 0ポイント1ポイント  (16子コメント)

A thought I had the other day: what do people here think about some sort of externality tax on guns? Basically viewing mass shootings etc. as a negative externality.

I can see multiple ways you'd implement it. A tax on bullets, making gun manufacturers legally liable for gun violence and letting law suits and punitive damages do the work of a tax, a straight up gun tax, etc.

Anyways, thoughts?

[–]joeyaa 0ポイント1ポイント  (14子コメント)

There isn't a clear connection between private gun ownership and the gun homicide rate worldwide (let alone overall homicide).

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/firearmhomicide2.jpg

Within the USA, state by state there does seem to some relationship between gun homicide rate and gun ownership. But really this is a loaded statistic. Here is a regression for overall homicide rate and gun ownership instead:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2FYyqhgE7zs/UNIV3WDVKTI/AAAAAAAAA2M/gZ6FcAtBNpM/s1600/Gun+Ownership+Versus+Homicide+Rates+by+State.PNG

Before a tax on an externality is discussed, first it should be clear that there is actually an externality in the first place.

TLDR: Guns don't kill people, people kill people and all of that.

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 0ポイント1ポイント  (10子コメント)

Uh...I'm noticing the presence of Honduras as an outlier in your regression set. Which makes me think things like income and political institutions are massive omitted variables. You get the expected effect when you restrict this to OECD or more generally rich countries.

[–]joeyaa 0ポイント1ポイント  (8子コメント)

Why isn't the one one clear outlier (USA) taken out in these sets? Why is the first link randomly a link to gun deaths which is wildly different from gun homicides? Why are we even talking about gun homicides in the first place rather than overall homicides? This is the precise type of data manipulation that really has me scratching my head when one side claims badstatistics.

Edit: On gun deaths: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/upshot/gun-deaths-are-mostly-suicides.html?_r=0

I really fail to see how this isn't even worse statistical analysis than looking at overall worldwide numbers in combination with looking at homicide rate by state within the USA and their levels of gun ownership. Edit: If this rebuttal gets a bunch of upvotes I'll actually have lost faith in this subreddit because it is just clearly bad and biased analysis. I don't claim that my analysis is flawless but at least it isn't super obviously biased.

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 0ポイント1ポイント  (7子コメント)

In the first link, the US is pretty much on the trendline. It's an outlier because of how far right and up it is, but it's not too far from trend. On the gun deaths vs. homicides, I'm not sure why suicides are somehow no longer relevant (talking about gun control more generally, not simply the Pigovian tax proposal). And I'm not sure how comparing the US to other rich/OECD countries is "clearly bad and biased analysis" while comparing it to every nation on earth, mostly poor third world nations with shoddy rule of law, isn't.

[–]joeyaa 0ポイント1ポイント  (6子コメント)

The first link doesn't even look at the right statistic and once I saw that I immediately stopped looking at it. The large majority of gun deaths are suicide when we were talking about homicide.

It was the second link that the USA appears to be the only outlier. Without it, is there any correlation? Doesn't seem like it. And still we should be looking at overall homicide rather than gun homicide.

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 0ポイント1ポイント  (5子コメント)

On the gun deaths vs. homicides, I'm not sure why suicides are somehow no longer relevant (talking about gun control more generally, not simply the Pigovian tax proposal). And I'm not sure how comparing the US to other rich/OECD countries is "clearly bad and biased analysis" while comparing it to every nation on earth, mostly poor third world nations with shoddy rule of law, isn't.

[–]joeyaa 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

Also way to completely ignore my second and primary point: homicide rate within the USA seems to be completely uncorrelated with gun ownership levels. That is a far better analysis than anything you've brought up so far. I was expecting /badecon to tell me how instead of looking at just these numbers I should have run a regression on multiple variables at once within the USA such as population density or urban vs rural areas or income inequality and then that would show me why I was wrong. But no, instead of a step forward the response I got is taking several steps backward.

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

That's because my point of contention (and presumably laboreconomist3's directing you to /r/badstats) wasn't necessarily based on your interstate comparisons but on your comparing the US with Honduras and Cote d'Ivoire for your "Internationally there's no link" argument. The former is iffy, but the latter is horrendous.

[–]joeyaa -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

How is the former more "iffy" than any of the numbers you've brought up? These numbers seem quite compelling to me in fact.

[–]joeyaa -1ポイント0ポイント  (1子コメント)

We are talking about a tax on externalities. If a person decides to kill themselves I am not sure how other gun owners should be responsible for paying for that (relatively small) external cost. Plus a lot of people hold the view that folks should have the right to kill themselves anyway. Certainly you see how this topic is a heck of a lot different than the very clear cost to society if guns increase the murder rate.

Edit: Moreover, that is its own topic entirely and we should be looking up overall suicide rate by country and gun ownership by rich country using this logic - something tells me that those numbers are not going to be too compelling either (Korea, Japan).

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

On the gun deaths vs. homicides, I'm not sure why suicides are somehow no longer relevant (talking about gun control more generally, not simply the Pigovian tax proposal).

Emphasis added. And most support for legal suicides is for physician-assisted euthanasia for terminally ill patients of sound mind. Of the suicides allowed by guns (or jumping, or pills, or whatever), most of them are impulse decisions that are deeply regretted by those with the fortune to survive.

[–]historymaking101 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Pretty damn clear correlation.

[–]laboreconomist3favorite words: labor, unemployment, trade 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

/r/badstats is that way.

N.B. I plan on giving a less snarky reply tomorrow.

[–]joeyaa 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

I hope you include some of those "good stats" in that reply. Hopefully it doesn't involve picking enough random sets of places to eventually hit one that tells the story you want to tell. :)

Edit: also a subtle thing in my post is that I am not claiming that these stats tell a clear story, that guns definitely don't cause more homicides. Rather, that someone should actually demonstrate in a reasonable way (there are plenty of unreasonable ones out there already) that there is a connection in the numbers because at a glance there certainly doesn't seem to be one.

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Comparing the US to other OECD countries or other rich countries (i.e. a more apples-to-apples comparison) reveals a much more damning link. Not exactly picking random sets.

[–]MrTossPotMore of a sellout than Mankiw 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

My first thought that gun damage is usually very high to a small number of people, unlike pollution which is a little bad to everyone over time. So what would the mechanism be to counter the externally to gun violence victims.

Then i remembered, this is a primarily US based thread therefore this will never happen so who cares.

[–]wshanahana slightly less shitty libertarian 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

I just got a job doing market research. I'm really excited.

[–]Kelsig 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Does anyone know of where I can read about the (social?) economics of replica fashion? I buy tons of fake shit, and have never felt too bad if it came from China. Krugman's op-ed about sweatshops is really all I know, and even that is kinda irrelevant.

[–]infiniteinvestments 4ポイント5ポイント  (2子コメント)

So, Bernie Sanders lied (or at least misled) about African American and Latino American youth unemployment rates. Sanders stated that the unemployment rate among African and Latino American youth was 51% & 36% respectively. The true figures, according to the Department of Labor Statistics, are 21% and 13% respectively. The 51% & 36% figures referenced underemployment rates.

He also stated that 27 million Americans live in poverty when the true figure is somewhere around 43-44 million people.

[–]Kelsig 6ポイント7ポイント  (1子コメント)

Sounds like a verbal typo to me

[–]DwhyDx 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

I've seen a lot of dislike for bernie sanders here, and I was hoping someone could point out what parts of his policies are good and bad economics, or point me to where someone already has. What him and his supporters seem to be promising seems to good to be true, and he comes of as a populist to me. Also, every time someone asks him how he's going to get things done he just repeats the tired platitude of "we need to come together."

[–]historymaking101 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Just finished Reamde. Who else here has read it? What did you think?

[–]Baratheon_EconomistEverything is endogenous 2ポイント3ポイント  (9子コメント)

How come, whenever /u/Integralds posts music it's crappy. Why not something good like this or this or this.

[–]infiniteinvestments 3ポイント4ポイント  (2子コメント)

I listened to Rammstein... when I was 13-15. I try listening to them now but their music makes adult me nauseous. Limp Bizkit too!

[–]Baratheon_EconomistEverything is endogenous 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

when I was 13-15

I hated Rammstein at that aged, but I was much less psychologically balanced than I am now. The aggressive and sadistic tendencies of many of their songs are cathartic in many ways, I find.

Limp Bizkit too!

The worst part about this is that it didn't make you nauseous while you were 13-15. Not immediately vomiting in the presence of such filth should really be high treason, punishable by flogging until death.

[–]infiniteinvestments 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Hey man... I did it all for the nookie, come on.

[–]IntegraldsI am the rep agent AMA 4ポイント5ポイント  (4子コメント)

Someone's not getting a job at Integral, Say_Wot_Again, and Associates.

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

We need to fix that name. Too Northeastern law firm, not enough California tech startup.

[–]LordBufo 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

Integain.ly

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Needs more SWA. Maybe Intewot.io? But thanks; you've got this on the right track now.

[–]Baratheon_EconomistEverything is endogenous 8ポイント9ポイント  (0子コメント)

and Associates.

And just who are these "associates", hmm? The Bilderberg Group? Freemasons? I'm onto you.

Fucking econometricksters.

[–]infiniteinvestments 4ポイント5ポイント  (4子コメント)

Democratic presidential debate winners and losers? Thoughts?

[–]historymaking101 8ポイント9ポイント  (0子コメント)

Hillary, at least here at BadEcon, she seems to be the resounding top choice now.

[–]Webby911 10ポイント11ポイント  (2子コメント)

Webb

He said he killed a guy with a grenade

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

You just like him because of your name.

[–]Webby911 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Okay true but also the grenade story

[–]CatFortuneにゃんぱす! | Only understands simple explanations 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

Recently I asked a question about the relationship between video game companies and "content creators." Now I'm curious about the relationship between those companies and their consumers.

Someone made the good observation that gamers are a populist bunch — at least on the Internet — and tend to become outraged at companies for perceived overreaches of their market power. Some targets of this outrage include preorder bonus, timed exclusivity, season passes, and microtransactions. I was curious whether you think these outrages are justified, or if they're just trying to cover greater costs of modern gaming without upping the basic price, like I suspect.

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

I think the outrage is generally unjustified. AAA title games are incredibly capital intensive. Total cost can easily exceed $100,000,000 (with several notable games spending that much on development alone). Without raising prices of the base game, the backlash of which i can only imagine, publishers have to find alternative ways to realize profits. Things like preorder bonuses, time exclusivity and DLC allow are simply a way to keep the cost down while still remaining profitable. Furthermore, dlc provides consumers with new content (often comparable to the original game in size) at a fraction of price of a new game.

I mean what is the real difference between an "expansion pack" and DLC? Almost nothing, except now i don't have to drive my lazy ass to the store where some Best Buy asshole tries to up sell me monster cables and warranties.

[–]mobysniperProponent of Geckonomics 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Well, let's think about consumption of video games, and consumption of media in general. Think of the movies. How do you value a movie? Obviously taste in movies is a really subjective thing (yes, there are "good" and "bad" movies in general, but that's beside the point). You might pay $8, an amount I just made up, in order to see "The Martian" and love it so much that you'd have been willing to pay more. But then, you might pay $8 to see a different movie and feel like you've wasted your money. Depending upon how risk-averse you are, the risk of seeing a movie that you will not like and "wasting your money" may be so great at a price higher than $8 that you just won't go see the movie at all. That's probably part of the reason why movie tickets themselves are relatively inexpensive, and why movie theater concessions are relatively expensive (also, movie theater concessions are like a miniature monopoly - they don't let you bring food in).

With video games, you have a similar case. Now, I have no idea whether the standard price for a game came to be $60 (as a primarily PC player, I usually don't pay that much), but it has been there and stayed there for quite a while now. $60 sounds like a lot of money; I could buy over a week's worth of meals for that much. But the problem for game developers is that they have the same problem that filmmakers have: taste in video games is largely subjective, and risk-averse gamers will just avoid purchasing a game at a high price if they suspect that it won't be worth their money. I, myself, have experienced both games that I would have paid over $60 for and games that I regretted spending $60 on.

So what happens if they raise the price even higher? Even if it would be necessary to recoup the costs of development, I think that game companies fear backlash and risk-averse gamers avoiding the game until the price drops. So how do they get convince risk-averse people to buy their game at $60? With pre-order bonuses. In a similar vein, they ensure that people buy their DLC through season passes. Timed exclusivity is explained by the developer thinking that partnering with a console company will give them better publicity and sales than if they marketed the game by themselves for all platforms. And microtransactions are the same sort of idea. Look at MGSV, which cost $80 million to make (apparently), and has yet to make a profit, the last I read. People were outraged by the inclusion of microtransactions in the game, but it's likely an effort by Konami to ensure that the game is actually profitable.

As a guy who plays video games, yeah, I dislike microtransactions and all of that. There are plenty of legitimate complaints that gamers have about these practices. Their implementation doesn't always go smoothly, either, and that's the fault of the developer. But, looking from the perspective of a business trying to make money, these actions do make sense.

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

I think they're trying to cover the greater cost of modern game making, but I also think some of the outrages can be justified.

Arkham Knight came out not long ago, people preordered and it ran like complete garbage on PC for a lot of people. I would say outrage is justified when you get a product that isn't what was advertised or doesn't work at all.

With micro-transactions, the chief complaint I see is when you can "pay to win". I don't see a lot of people upset if the in game purchases are of cosmetic nature (skins for characters or gun camos etc). But if the player can purchase something that gives them an advantage over other players in game (I pay .99 for a gun in call of duty that is OP) I can see why people would be upset.