Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Flat Earth theory:
I've never had trouble believing the earth is flat, for a sufficently flexible definition of flat.
I live in places like Delaware and Indiana. In Delaware the highest point, Mount Cuba, towers 600 ft about sea level.
But I noticed earlier today (in the the sense of yesterday, since it's 4:20 am)
that somebody has written a book about the flat earth, and it's #3 on amazon, having displaced freakonomics. (see baude, cowan.)
And then Volokh (who sent me some nice mail today) points out Justice Kennedy is reading the flat earth book too.
By flat, the author means 'global', or 'connected.'
And this ties right in to one of my long-standing rants.
Liberals, ranging from Marxists to Galbraithians, like to tease conservatives,
because the microeconomic model of neoclassical economics doesn't completely map reality.
I have two standard comebacks to that:
First, we aren't classical economists, we are austrians.
Space and time and drunkness prohibits a complete explnation of austrian models at this time; look it up.
2nd, it, the neoclassical was never intended to fully capture the territory; it is a model which is useful because it oversimplifies things.
The neoclassical model posits perfect competition, zero information costs, zero transaction costs, and um some fourth factor, maybe geography.
The austrian model, on the other hand, is all about information costs, is aware that transaction costs are non-zero, that transactions take place in real space, and that there are a finite number of competitors.
What flat earth theory shows is that the real world is coming to resemble the neoclassical model more and more.
Information is not free, but we have google.
Geography separates buyers from sellers, but we have ebay and ups.
Given google and ebay, buyers and sellers can find 100s of players for fungible goods, and are not stuck with monopoly or monosopy.
The neoclassical model is a like a map which doesn't show topography, because it's a road map, and is trying to keep it simple.
If the world is becoming flatter, a non-topographical map is now a better model of the real world.
So if, for example, you are a graduate student, and your professors, 93% registered democrats, go on and on about market failure and monopoloistic exploitation,
remember they are dinosaurs, that they will become extinct, replaced by a new generation with a different world-view. Ok that was it. Off to bed now.
I've never had trouble believing the earth is flat, for a sufficently flexible definition of flat.
I live in places like Delaware and Indiana. In Delaware the highest point, Mount Cuba, towers 600 ft about sea level.
But I noticed earlier today (in the the sense of yesterday, since it's 4:20 am)
that somebody has written a book about the flat earth, and it's #3 on amazon, having displaced freakonomics. (see baude, cowan.)
And then Volokh (who sent me some nice mail today) points out Justice Kennedy is reading the flat earth book too.
By flat, the author means 'global', or 'connected.'
And this ties right in to one of my long-standing rants.
Liberals, ranging from Marxists to Galbraithians, like to tease conservatives,
because the microeconomic model of neoclassical economics doesn't completely map reality.
I have two standard comebacks to that:
First, we aren't classical economists, we are austrians.
Space and time and drunkness prohibits a complete explnation of austrian models at this time; look it up.
2nd, it, the neoclassical was never intended to fully capture the territory; it is a model which is useful because it oversimplifies things.
The neoclassical model posits perfect competition, zero information costs, zero transaction costs, and um some fourth factor, maybe geography.
The austrian model, on the other hand, is all about information costs, is aware that transaction costs are non-zero, that transactions take place in real space, and that there are a finite number of competitors.
What flat earth theory shows is that the real world is coming to resemble the neoclassical model more and more.
Information is not free, but we have google.
Geography separates buyers from sellers, but we have ebay and ups.
Given google and ebay, buyers and sellers can find 100s of players for fungible goods, and are not stuck with monopoly or monosopy.
The neoclassical model is a like a map which doesn't show topography, because it's a road map, and is trying to keep it simple.
If the world is becoming flatter, a non-topographical map is now a better model of the real world.
So if, for example, you are a graduate student, and your professors, 93% registered democrats, go on and on about market failure and monopoloistic exploitation,
remember they are dinosaurs, that they will become extinct, replaced by a new generation with a different world-view. Ok that was it. Off to bed now.
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