1) The Traveler ie the book I was reading. Somebody suggested I read it years ago and I just got around to it. I stayed up til 4am last night finishing it after starting it on monday, so obviously it was worth a read. It closely relates to the recent NSA scandal and the overarching government surveillance that most people try to ignore.
2) My comments on Syria at the end of the post. Comparing political situations with economic situations doesnt entirely make sense, but at the same time ignoring their interweaving nature is folly. The entire global economic system often confuses me, and I do not think that is because I fail to understand some element of it, I believe it is because there are numerous elements of the system that simply contradict each other. Whether it is the exceedingly complex compliance landscape where only smaller players are ever convicted of crimes and the richest continue to leech off the system, or whether it is the idea that a company is allowed to simultaneously have different arms of a venture buying and repackaging garbage and selling it with false representations without later admitting any guilt, or the large bonuses paid out where risk paid off without any realization that two people betting on a coinflip one will lose and the other will win or whether it is simply the vast insider trading that goes on and on, I just do not think that system should be trusted with how to allocate capital. The main point being it is impossible to separate the political discourse from the economic reality. War is being funded, and even if political decisions are not always about money, the economic system encourages reckless behavior from politicians because their is no direct feedback regarding their actions. In fact given our two party system and the way political funding works what should be negative feedback becomes positive feedback because the system is rigged.
3) Below, which I had started to write about union labor. I was trying to think about things in terms of the recent Nobel laureate's death. ie http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/09/03/218526472/the-nobel-prizewinner-who-figured-out-how-to-deal-with-annoying-people . This article had a section about why companies exist and started with the claim that in a perfect free market there would be no businesses because every person would set their own labor price, and then went on to say as this Ronald Coase suggested that the transaction costs for such a situation were too high. Citing the fact that day to day fluctuations in labor costs would cause too many problems for the people trying to make these agreements. I was simultaneously trying to think about the corporation as a person ala citizens united and I was coming up with mind boggled as a magic 8 ball output. ... but I wrote the following earlier and Im just going to leave it here for the time being and go clear my head with a run.
'Cap'n... you know I'm not a pro-union guy. ' - Farva
So I'm going to take a step back.
The claim capitalists make is that capitalism efficiently allocates capital, which is funny. Not that it is entirely wrong, but the assumptions required for capitalism to function as argued are nowhere near the real world situation that using capitalism for how we make decisions is a shame. If everybody does not have perfect information, or if anybody is induced into making a decision against their long term best interest for the sake of short term then the system is not going to function as advertised.
This relates to unions in the scab vs union labor market. In the long term a scab will end up poorer and with less opportunity because they took a pay cut in an effort to employ themselves in the short term. Most wealthy elites will suggest that they can't pay their laborers more because it will cause the business to lose money, but often those same owners of industry then realize massive gains from their actions.
Richest man should be asked how much he would pay to prevent himself from doing necesary jobs,
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