Posts by Paul Williams
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Ormerod looks at the theory of perfect competition, and rival theories. He says that Economic Textbooks present the demand and supply curves as economic fact, rather than as the theory that won in the early part of last century.
Rachel, thanks for the heads-up. I'd not realised Ormerod had released a new book. He'd developed some initial theoretical thinking about non-linear market dynamics in an earlier book, did he elaborate these further in this book?
The idea of perfect markets, even if they did exist (presumably for commodities like energy), is over played in areas where it doesn't readily apply.
In my own area, education, there's a significant push for more market mechanisms to improve particularly allocative efficiency. In aspects of the broad market, it makes genuine sense as a strategy to redress provider-capture and historical advantages around capital formation, but it other parts of the market, it simply does not. For instance, where there's low levels of user demand and/or thin labour markets or high entry costs (often associated with the costs of capital e.g. dentistry).
Nevertheless, the crudeness of approach generally doesn't acknowledge the imperfections of the markets and simply adopts settings that assume perfection... I think, often, the market approach is prefered because it (a) has lots of adherants and (b) is simple. The complexity of alternatives is a put off.
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For a while a recorder was my gift of choice for kids. Fortunately noone was unkind enough to return the 'favour' when I had my own.
I'm sure you're a nice person paula, but you'd be off my party list if you bought my kids a recorder; the recorder to be the lowest form of instrumentation, below even the xylophone. There's no sound, none, that can be generated from a recorder that remotely approximates music. They. Is. Evil.
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paper of (sketchy) record, The Sun, hired trucks to parade signs around both London and Sydney reading "GB: 19, AUS: 14. WHERE THE BLOODY HELL WERE YOU?
That'll go down like a cup of cold sick, as they say here. Aussies died in the arse, as they say here. Apparently, that tourism campaign was a disaster too... oddly, this hasn't been reported anywhere I've seen... yet!
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The problem with PPPs is that it is absolutely in the interest of the private partner to load all the risk onto the government, and obscure the arrangement behind confidentiality.
Oddly, the Sydney Cross City Tunnel did some but not all of this - the risk didn't ultimately rest with the public when it failed but much of the detail was not known until it failed. Key, however, said he'll guarantee a rate of return which effectively means National intends to privatise profits and socalise loses; how nice of him.
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Caleb, excellent, thanks for the links. Monbiot's argument is consistent with most of the Australian commentary also.
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But I’ve never seen him being called hard-working before.
That's what I'm told by people I know who work inside Parliament but I can't claim personal experience LB. My reading of his contributions, in various forms, suggests he was however an empiricist (at least in his work in justice related issues).
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Act would be better for a few more idealists.
As opposed to the tragic bunch of malcontents they've currently got you mean... I don't know that they need more ideals, they're not currently very pragmatic, or at least that's not obvious when the answer to every policy question appears to be to adopt a flat tax.
There's space for idealists in Parliament but they're of the Nandor variety; hard-working empiricists, navigating political divisions for something sustainable rather than the Stephen Franks variety who aspire to a pulpit for the fullscale public conversion (and yes I know that Franks has left Act, but that's just pragmatics not politics).
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right side of my bullshit allergy
Hope you're stocked up on antihysterics then, 'cause the season's starting...
if Chris Trotter really wants to get into a blog-feud
It could simply be that he's wrongly assessed that he needs a blog-feud to kick-start his blog; God knows the blogosphere needs more polemicists!
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I think it's inaccurate to describe the Greens as "hard-out lefty", single-dimension left/right paradigm isn't a great fit for Green politics, you really need to include the liberal/authoritarian dimensions as well.
Fair point. Thanks.
Paul,
When I'm incorrect, I convert fairly quickly when presented with facts... :)
Me too, but each time I realise I'm wrong about one thing, I'm less certain about the next... there's a wonderful quality to the certainty I once had, but it's gone, gone, gone...
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Yes, unseemly - unseemly to have converted so far and so quickly. Not however, unseemly that he might have a view different from mine, your's or even his employer's.