Update: Thanks to the journalistic skills of Kimble and StephenR we know this chart is a hoax, it has however sparked some amusing comments on the IQ/party matches for NZ:)
While procrastinating doing work on the weekend I found this little stunner
Would be interesting to see a similar exercise for the 08 election
Agnitio
A few weeks ago a fellow named Jeffrey Doyle posted a “history of economic thought” type comment/post on the blog, which can be found here.
Beyond this he also added one additional criticism of “neo-classical economics” – the focus on “monetary flows” instead of energy. Of course, as a criticism of economic science this is a misnomer – economic science is the study of scarcity, and “monetary flows” are merely a convientent way of representing this scarcity. Using energy as a representation should – if the models are sufficiently specified – provide the same results. Now, in when applying models there may be substantial differences, given what is implicitly assumed to be useful or not in different models – while this argument is important for application it is not something I can argue about, as I do not have the scarce intellectual talent to go around and apply a new set of assumptions to an underlying framework of scarcity.
However, my impression is that Dr Doyle is not criticising the individualistic methodological process in economics – he is attacking the “economic unit” used when we study scarcity, something that is constantly occurring and is a healthy part of any discipline.
However much I was looking forward to launching my own incredibly risky finance company, I’m glad that the RBNZ and Treasury have tidied up what was a terrible decision by the government to extend deposit protection to finance companies at no charge.
Details here (ht: Migeul Sanchez). News coverage here
I particularly like the quote in the stuff article from an anonymous commentator
“The two-year deposit guarantee announced by the Government on Sunday was a “free lunch for [finance company] gluttons”
While I prefer the term economic opportunist to glutton:) I thin it sums up the situation before the rule change quite nicely.
Now that I think about it, 3% off the 30% return I’m promising may not actually be that bad given how risky our investments will be, we just need to work out how to get a BBB- credit rating….
Agnitio
Brilliant video, I love that Alec Baldwin has reinvented himself as a comedian:)
http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/reliable-investments/698621/
Agnitio
That is the topic of my Dom Post article this week.
Over at Econlog Bryan Caplan asks a good question – he asks why economists who often rail against the free market will also often state that they strongly support civil liberties. Fundamentally he is asking, why do these people not support freedom to trade but do support freedom of expression.
Now I agree with Dr Caplan that economists should use the same tools to discuss civil issues as they do trade issues – any limits on civil liberties should be the result of externalities, asymmetric information on the value or relevance of ideas, or the undue power of an idea which in turn reduces social welfare (in the same way that in trade, people will rally against externalities, asymmetric information, and undue market power).
However, this does not suddenly imply that I am a stanch supporter of a completely free market – in the same way that I am not a stanch support of blanket calls to remove regulations that reduce civil liberties. Ultimately, in both cases there are trade-offs, and our ultimate goal is to maximise social welfare.
Lets discuss the “social-democrat economist’s bias” a bit more below the flap: