I would term the “one more time” the marginal external cost of engineers. Hopefully, by reacting I can make them face this cost – and then I will experience the optimal amount of annoying engineer banter 😉

Hehehehe. I am sure we all have subjects where we refuse to listen to reason.

I won’t go that far – I just suspect that there has been a misrepresentation of some economic concepts at some point, and that this has led to confusion. This is, of course, very common – and I am undoubtedly guilty of it myself 🙁

@Kimble

Indeed.

The engineer call. I don’t think engineers are intrinsically bad – their discipline is pretty cool. However, if I have to hear that economic variable X just follows Brownian motion “so model it like that you moron” one more time I suspect a great fury will over take me, and the engineer population will decline by one.

Good one NotPC! You go tell one of the fathers of liberalism that he’s an idiot for not realising that Opportunity Cost is a silly idea.

I see this everywhere: people denigrating economics and economists for “believing” things that are “obviously” false. I mean, opportunity cost; wheres the cost? There is no cost because it is imaginary, LDO!

Many times this sort of thing is followed by an admission that the person only did Econ101, but dropped it because the things being taught were so obvious or so stupid. Usually they are engineers. Goddam I am sick of engineers.

That piece on OC was right up there with the Vatican decrying the Nobel prize for medicine going to an IVF researcher because it doesn’t align with there religious beliefs. Admittedly the Vatican isn’t quite as dogmatic as those Rand worshipers.

Indeed. However, I guess that comes under one of the “strong assumptions” I mentioned earlier.

The main thing for me here is that these concepts are still important to keep in mind – as they provide the framework we reach our conclusions from.

@Bez

I agree that these concepts are used in a dodgy manner all the time. However, that doesn’t make the concept dodgy – it makes the person making the implicit assumption about how to value elements of the concept dodgy.

I wouldn’t say that enforcing property rights in itself solves all ills – there are transaction costs from contracting after all, and the “fair” initial endowment of property is a matter for debate.

I would say that these concepts are a legitimate device for framing issues – which allows us to transparently include our own value judgments and evidence and therefore reach a conclusion. A conclusion that can be discussed and compared in a coherent fashion with people who believe in different value judgments and have different/additional sets of evidence.

Bez

I’m imagining PC’s reckoning that a world of perfect property rights, perfectly enforceable, strong tort, would mean that externality ceases to be a relevant category: if I’ve imposed an externality on you, then I have to pay you through tort.