[Liamj]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Liamj', 'I')s war profiteering a market failure or just capitalism inevitably feeding off stupidity?

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Liamj', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Liamj', 'I')s war profiteering a market failure or just capitalism inevitably feeding off stupidity?

[MrBill]

Pay for performance metrics. Doctors and Pilots.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ut we still could be doing a lot better. Under the current medical system, doctors, nurses, lab technicians and hospital executives are not actually paid to come up with the right diagnosis. They are paid to perform tests and to do surgery and to dispense drugs.

There is no bonus for curing someone and no penalty for failing, except when the mistakes rise to the level of malpractice. So even though doctors can have the best intentions, they have little economic incentive to spend time double-checking their instincts, and hospitals have little incentive to give them the tools to do so.

"You get what you pay for," Mark B. McClellan, who runs Medicare and Medicaid, told me. "And we ought to be paying for better quality."

There are some bits of good news here. Dr. McClellan has set up small pay-for-performance programs in Medicare, and a few insurers are also experimenting. But it isn't nearly a big enough push. We just are not using the power of incentives to save lives. For a politician looking to make the often-bloodless debate over health care come alive, this is a huge opportunity.

Joseph Britto, a former intensive-care doctor, likes to compare medicine's attitude toward mistakes with the airline industry's. At the insistence of pilots, who have the ultimate incentive not to mess up, airlines have studied their errors and nearly eliminated crashes.

"Unlike pilots," Dr. Britto said, "doctors don't go down with their planes."

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Liamj', 'T')hats theres political corruption is i think beyond question, but to just blame politics isn't going to wash.
When private capital has systematically ensured that gaining its favour is essential to running (media concentration, ad budgets, direct mail & push polling...) for sheriff, never mind Rep or Pres., then priv.capital, and the assumptions/rhetoric that created same, have to carry some of the 'blame', if only for being a runaway system function with no effective feedback. I'm not saying all concentrations of private capital are bad, but if you don't know which of your dogs is killing all your sheep...

edit - thanks for the Mises link, fascinating to see them talking about stuff antiglobalista's have been arguing for, oh, maybe fifteen years.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'T')he problem is the state and its power to corrupt. You can fight corruption without harassing the Chinese guys trying to make some extra rice money.

[Liamj]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', '
')Or you may argue that most of forms of government past, present & future are at their heart organized cleptocracies to a greater or lesser degree, and that they are widely tolerated or even accepted as the alternatives of anarchy and disorganization are considered worse.

[Liamj]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'T')he problem with you antiglobalistas is that you don't know who your enemy is. It isn't "private capital." There are more capitalists hurt by Halliburton than there are who gain from it, and the same is true of media concentration, and sheriff elections. The problem is the state and its power to corrupt.

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Liamj', 'I') already said wasn't against priv. capital. Funny how the state is the corrupting power, when its business that has the shady money and gets to bank corruptions proceeds!

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Liamj', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', '
')Or you may argue that most of forms of government past, present & future are at their heart organized cleptocracies to a greater or lesser degree, and that they are widely tolerated or even accepted as the alternatives of anarchy and disorganization are considered worse.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'I') did not try to defend the actions of these groups, just to show that their understanding of economics and finance is/was useful in acheiving their goals, and the solution to our problems is also to use these tools not to forsake them for ignorance.

[Liamj]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'L')iam, I did not try to defend the actions of these groups, just to show that their understanding of economics and finance is/was useful in acheiving their goals, and the solution to our problems is also to use these tools not to forsake them for ignorance.

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Liamj', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'L')iam, I did not try to defend the actions of these groups, just to show that their understanding of economics and finance is/was useful in acheiving their goals, and the solution to our problems is also to use these tools not to forsake them for ignorance.

[Liamj]

Serious list Mr Bill, and on first reading i support all of its points (am most doubtful about requirement to meet existing pension liabilities); but i don't think they go far enough.
In my dreams the starting point is the creation of quantitative resource stocks and flows models which set human demands within the larger biospherical context and its demands.
The quantity of money then needs to reflect (be fully backed by) the actual resources available for use (without further drawing down natural capital or ecosystem services), not just promises to pay or force of arms. There may well need to be different types of money for diff resources (labour, energy, material), and demurrage may be wisest way to maintain the wealth of the most number of people. There are many other things i'd wish for, but they're all secondary to making our means of exchange reflect the real world.

Hence, I don't fiscal reform alone can do the job, we have to find ways to plug in the many externalised costs of business as usual. There are limits to how much we can take from ecosystem services, and we're ignoring them at our peril - the health of the merely human economy will matter not at all if rainfall continues to fall in temperate regions, if the fishing boats keep returning to port empty and if grain yeilds continue to decline. Mr Bill recognises this with good proposals on water pricing and carbon emissions, and if those were the only resources we were running short on, they might suffice.
On a happier note, i suspect many nationalist, green, social democrat, libertarian and conservative groups could support Mr Bills agenda. Might be interesting to paste it up via Simpol and see.

[katkinkate]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'I') don't know whether to laugh or to cry? I guess the less you understand finance & economics the better it is for me. Thanks.

Too bad that some of those issues you mentioned affect 5/6ths of the world's population and they are desperately poor for many reasons including their own and their own governments lack of understanding of finance & economics either.

You say you understand science? Then cost/benefit analysis should not be such a hard concept for you to grasp? I think the natural sciences, like biology follow the rules of supply & demand very closely when we talk about population expansion & contraction in response to environmental constraints? On the otherhand, economists use many of the same statistical tools and quantitative methods that engineers use to build 'real things'. As a matter of fact, the Black Scholes options pricing model was borrowed from the physics lab. It is just a variation of a dust particle
expansion model.

Oh well, sleep it off and come back when you're sober, so we can have a real conversation.

[jaws]

That's quite an elaborate list Mr. Bill, which is unfortunately its fatal flaw. You will never succeed at getting this implemented through the political process. Every item will be rephrased by politicians to serve their own interests. You will never succeed at so little as getting the voters to even learn the list, even less so support it politically. It has no chance.

That's the problem with nearly everyone who has a plan for all of society. They assume that getting their plan implemented by politicians is just a formality. All it takes is some activism and voila, the problem is solved. That's not reality however. Reality is that politicians work to serve themselves. They always have and always will. The less power they have, the less responsibility they've been handed, the better things will be. That is why economics has shown that the free market is the only social system that works.

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'T')hat's quite an elaborate list Mr. Bill, which is unfortunately its fatal flaw. You will never succeed at getting this implemented through the political process. Every item will be rephrased by politicians to serve their own interests. You will never succeed at so little as getting the voters to even learn the list, even less so support it politically. It has no chance.

That's the problem with nearly everyone who has a plan for all of society. They assume that getting their plan implemented by politicians is just a formality. All it takes is some activism and voila, the problem is solved. That's not reality however. Reality is that politicians work to serve themselves. They always have and always will. The less power they have, the less responsibility they've been handed, the better things will be. That is why economics has shown that the free market is the only social system that works.

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'N')ot fatally flawed at all. The confulence of events has just not nessecitated radical reform of the existing system. However, almost everyone of my points has been implemented somewhere and it works. As a matter of fact I was waiting for someone to say,hey, mate, we already have carbon taxes, we already tax vehicles by engine size, we already have road pricing schemes. They are all doable, and afterall this post started out to debunk the myth that economics is all smoke and mirrors.

[rogerhb]

I'm going to weigh in on Jaws' side for a change;

A problem with trying to manipulate behaviour using taxes is it leads to inflation among other things:-

1. those taxes end up getting spent somewhere buying something that would not normally have been bought, and also they get put in a common pot, so taxes on fuel don't all go on roads etc

2. as politicians notice that some is taxed and hence a revenue earner, they then don't want to stop it, eg smoking and drinking, the revenue is worth more to them than the problems they cause

3. you end up with industries that depend on the revenue from the taxes, and politicians don't want to stop those industries because they contribute to GDP etc

[Liamj]

O-k-a-y, leaving the limitations of taxation for a minute, what about Mr Bills other proposals?

Must budgets be balanced?
Must liabilities be fully funded? (might be conceiveable if we ditch current promises to pay and start anew )
Can corporations survive without tax breaks/royalty holidays/land gifts?
Should imports be levied at the same rates as local production?

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Liamj', 'O')-k-a-y, leaving the limitations of taxation for a minute, what about Mr Bills other proposals?

Must budgets be balanced?
Must liabilities be fully funded? (might be conceiveable if we ditch current promises to pay and start anew )