HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: distribution of wealth
Date: 12 Apr 92 23:52:14 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <1992Apr10.231836.7367@waikato.ac.nz> hgm@waikato.ac.nz writes:
>The way I envisage it being done indivisibility is not a problem as long as you
>can measure how much someone controls. We have fishing quotas. We don't divide
>the fish up and say this fish is part of this quota. 
>
>The right to pollute is one of the rights associated with the environment which
>has economic value and therefore should be assigned equally to everyone. A
>volume of any pollutant equal to the highest amount of pollution any sector of
>the community believes can acceptably be released into the particular
>environmental sink is defined. Everyone is given the right to a share of this,

Not so easy to determine, and subject to change, ain't it?

>equivalent to the amount divided by the total population. An agency, initially
>probably the government, leases these shares to the highest bidder and pays the

Rent or sale? As Ralph Nader likes to point out, here in the US the public
has essentially sold the airwaves for pocket change.

>proceeds, after deducting administration costs, equally to everyone. We all get
>a dividend from the resources so will all have enough money to lease the right
>to use our share if we so choose. If we believe the level of pollution is too
>high we can lease our share and not use it or we can form, with others, an
>organisation to which we contribute only part of the proceeds of our share and
>this organisaton can lease rights to pollute to the value of our contributions.
>In this way we can reduce the level of pollution without giving up our whole
>share. If we lease our right to pollute to an industrial firm they will pass
>the cost of this back in prices but if we buy less than others of their product
>we will have a net gain. Those who use more of the products of polluting
>industries will pay more and be net losers. 

>The New Right are heavily into this kind of right to pollute but they are going
>to sell the rights to the highest bidder and then allow them to sell them. This
>will increase the tendency of the market to make the rich richer and the poor
>poorer. The land enclosures in UK were the final alienation of the rights of
>the masses to a meagre portion of the land resource. Property rights in other
>resources will be the second enclosure if they are not distributed equally to
>all.

It seems as if we are in the latter stages of an enclosure movement that has
gone on longer than anyone would have envisioned. First common land, then
rights to hunt and fish, and now even body parts and the air and oceans
themselves have been turned into commodities available to those with 
capital, and forcibly grabbed from those without. 


>
>Helen Marsh


-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu
From: thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank)
Subject: Re: R&D (was railroads)
Reply-To: thf2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1992 22:34:44 GMT

In article <1992Mar31.213910.6352@watson.ibm.com> platt@watson.ibm.com (Daniel E. Platt) writes:
>This wasn't my charge... at least, not so simply put.  What I said
>was that management was being discouraged in part because of the
>tendency for R & D to make a company look like a good takeover
>target.
>

Is the argument that too little R&D is being done by corporations because
investors are "too myopic"?  If so, one could make a fortune by being less
myopic than the market and buying stocks of firms that have high R&D, if
indeed the market systematically undervalues such firms.


-- 
Ted Frank          + "He wanted to be the car rather than the thimble or the
1307 E 60 St, #109 +  hat."  -- District attorney explaining Marc Cienkowski's
U o' C Law Skool   +  murder with bow and arrow of Michael Klucznik in
Chi, IL 60637      +  Doylestown Borough, PA over a game of Monopoly.
From: drg@bubba.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R Guilderson)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: Wage Slavery
Date: 16 Apr 92 22:07:18 GMT
Organization: Bull World Wide Information Systems, Billerica MA USA

In article <46611@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:

   (God went on in life to become a very dull, proper, middle-class
    member of the communist party,but that's another story).  

Cripes, no wonder life sucks.
Newsgroups: sci.econ
From: met@cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu
Subject: Mutual Fund Data
Reply-To: met@cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu
Organization: Computer Center, CUNY Graduate School, New York NY 10036
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 20:44:55 GMT

Hi! Does anyone know any publication (journals, tapes, etc.)
which contains mutual fund data?
Thanks,
From: nelson_p@APOLLO.HP.COM
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: re  "Government is not the solution, government is the problem!"
Date: 8 Apr 92 14:27:19 GMT


 
From: ipser@solomon.technet.sg (Ed Ipser)
  

>  "Reagan Was Right: Government Is the Problem"
>  by Charlton Heston

>  [   ...   ]

>  Of course, government is the problem. The armies of bureaucrats
>  proliferating like gerbils, scurrying like lemmings in pursuit of the
>  ever-expanding federal agenda testify to that amply. Tom Jefferson, the
>  only genius we ever had, said that government is best which governs
>  least. I am amazed you Democrats are still comfortable with Mr. Jefferson
>  as your designated logo.


   This is ridiculous, and only illustrates the extent to which
   romantic emotionalism allows libertarians and their ilk to
   substitute simplistic slogans for reason.

   It also illustrates a blind spot for libertarians which I've
   noted before:  CULTURE.

   People in medieval times used to believe that maggots sprang 
   to life spontaneously on rotting meat (autogenesis).   It took
   early scientists careful experiments to convince themselves
   and others that, in fact, flies laid eggs in the meat and the
   the maggots arose from the eggs.   Libertarians, apparently,
   still believe in autogenesis.

   Government is merely the end result of a *process*.  The sorts of
   things we expect from government, the powers we give to government
   and the way we choose our leaders are SOCIAL and CULTURAL phenomena.
   They are, in a very real sense, a product of a FREE MARKET in ideas
   (or perhaps memes).  

   People are free to vote for whomever they choose.  In the last election
   the libertarian candidate was on the ballot in 49 states.   Moreover
   people are free to enter the process at any point -- there is no
   requirement that our participation be limited to Primary and Election
   day  --  we can start new parties or participate more actively in 
   existing ones; we can contribute money and time to candidates of our
   choosing, we can write letters-to-the-editor, get up on soapboxes
   in the middle of town, and so forth.   Sure, maybe the incumbents 
   have certain advantages, but they are NOTHING compared to the advantages
   the "incumbents" in Eastern Europe had up until they were turned out
   of office 2 years ago.

   If Mr Heston (and Mr. Ipser) don't like they way things turned out 
   they should direct their complaints to where they belong: their
   fellow citizens.    


---peter
From: kent@phoenix.ocf.llnl.gov (Kent J Crispin)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: Libertarians, slaves and company towns
Date: 6 Apr 92 22:10:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: lll-wink.121899
Organization: Lawrence Livermore Nat'l Lab.

In article <46060@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor
yodaiken) writes: 
>>No, that is a contract entered into under duress. 
>
>So, if I sign a contract with the bank under the pressure of paying my rent, 
>I can just break it later 'cause it was made under duress?
>Sounds like a great system.  Sign me up.  
> 

You can do better than that, victor.  

"Duress" implies a tangible, serious threat, not an inconvenience.  High
probability of starvation is a serious threat.  You impulsively jump off
a cruise ship in the middle of the Atlantic.  I offer to throw you a
life preserver, if you agree to pay me 95% of your salary for the rest
of your life.  That's a contract made under duress, and would not be
valid in court.  It doesn't matter that I didn't push you in, or that
you made a stupid, life threatening mistake in the first place.  You are
under duress even if it was your own action that put you there.  The 
important criteria is the seriousness of the consequences.  And of course
evaluation of the seriousness of the consequences is exactly where the
crux of the legal issues lies.

>yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu

Kent


--
Kent Crispin				"No need to get excited",
kent@ocfmail.ocf.llnl.gov		the thief he kindly spoke....
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	<Standard disclaimer>
Newsgroups: sci.econ
From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: Libertarianism and Government
Date: 13 Apr 92 15:10:03 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <JACKSON.92Apr13062554@kaos.stsci.edu> jackson@kaos.stsci.edu (Bob Jackson) writes:
>Communalism ~= Micro-Fascism


Argument by misdefinition seems to be your stock in trade.


-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu

Newsgroups: sci.econ
From: david.lloyd-jones@rose.uucp (david lloyd-jones)
Subject: Confronting the Defic
Organization: Rose Media Inc, Toronto, Ontario.
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 11:00:41 GMT
X-Gated-By: Usenet <==> RoseMail Gateway (v1.2)


Date Entered: 04-10-92 08:08
Commenting on message by: ipser@solomon.technet.sg (Ed Ipser)
IP>Subject: Re: Confronting the Deficit/Debt Boogyman

IP>The only true test of value is what the asset will fetch on the open
IP>market.

The economists' fallacy stated bald.  Thank you, Ed, for getting it
wrong so tersely.

"What it will fetch on the open market" is the test of the *price*.

                                             -dlj.
---
   SLMR 2.0   "Daddy, what does 'Formatting Drive C:' mean??"
   RM 1.60: Usenet: Rose Media - Hamilton (416) 575-5363
From: drg@bubba.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R Guilderson)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: The future
Date: 17 Apr 92 15:58:07 GMT
	<1992Mar24.225033.17743@clipper.ingr.com>
	<1992Mar25.185947.11369@cs.rochester.edu>
Organization: Bull World Wide Information Systems, Billerica MA USA

In article <1992Mar25.185947.11369@cs.rochester.edu> fulk@cs.rochester.edu (Mark Fulk) writes:

   I think the heroic thing is the work of scientists and engineers.  While
   Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller, et al, chased money around, Steinmetz,
   Phillips, DeForest, Bell, Vail, and so forth actually built something.
   Their work depended more on Faraday, Maxwell, Newton and Galileo than on
   the money boys.

I won't take a position on who or what is heroic but consider that
without capital, scientists and engineers would have an awfully tough
time advancing the state of technology.  It seems kind of strange to
berate capitalists and praise technologists when they worked hand in
hand to produce the results.

   18th century England: Mercantilist government (remember, Smith published
   Wealth of Nations in 1787).  The growth of industry is accompanied by
   harsh labor conditions...

   19th-20th century USA: Officially capitalist.  The growth of industry
   is again accompanied by harsh working conditions...

   Soviet Union under Stalin: Officially communist.  The growth of industry
   is again accompanied by harsh working conditions...

Fade into the future....

20th-21st century WORLD: Officially confused.  The growth of industry
is accompanied by harsh working conditions...

   "Can you believe they actually worked 40 hour weeks?!!!"

A little exageration there but it's not hard to imagine the present
era being characterized by Frank Perdue's chicken processors.
Meanwhile, the true state of affairs is a completely different
reality.
Xref: sparky sci.econ:3547 talk.politics.theory:1966
From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo)
Newsgroups: sci.econ,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Is voting in the rational self-interest?
Date: 6 Apr 92 07:56:36 GMT
Article-I.D.: techbook.1992Apr6.075636.29356
Organization: TECHbooks of Beaverton Oregon - Public Access Unix

>szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) writes:

>>Low voter turnouts in national elections are a sign of maturity and 
>>rationality in the citizen body.  In new democracies, where these 
>>lessons have not been learned and politics is immature, voter turnouts
>>tend to be high. 

In article <1992Apr02.060751.12963@edsi.plexus.COM> dgh@edsi.plexus.COM (David Hall) writes:

>'voter maturity' (whatever that is supposed to mean),

All I mean by maturity is the experience of the citizens,
the political process, etc. with the democratic system of politics.

>The current low turnout in the US is
>clearly more related to voter apathy than to actual rational
>deliberation about the effectivenss of voting in a large representative
>democracy.

>....with apathy, voters feel they have NO effect, and thus their conclusion
>is not some carefully reasoned rational choice, but in fact an emotional
>response to the difficulties of effecting change in a large,
>heterogeneous society...

The difference between "statistically insignificant effect" and "no effect"
is relevant only to philosophy, not to practical decision making. 
Non-voters are "satisficing", that is finding a near-optimal solution 
with a reasonably small amount of thought.  When it comes to voting
in large elections, apathy is a satisfactory choice.  There are more 
important things to think about: for example choices of career, purchases, 
investments, etc. over which the decision maker has a significant influence 
in the outcome.

In passing, I suggest that opinion polls are far more efficient
than voting, and in practice have a greater influence than voting. 
I understand that non-voters do not differ from voters in discernable 
ideology, eg liberal/conservative, free market/socialist, religion, etc., 
so that the ideological outcome of low-voter elections is not signficantly 
different from high-turnout elections (if anybody has contradictory evidence 
on this last point I'd be interested in seeing it).

It was suggested that the government might pay people to vote, 
providing an incentive.  The market has come up with similar 
solutions to find out (and track) customer preferences, from Arbitron
ratings to swapping mailing lists.  Such information gathereing is often 
tied to incentives such as frequent-flyer programs.  

An incentive presupposes that voting is the best way to make national 
decisions, and that more voters are better than fewer.  The former is
only true under some circumstances, IMHO, for example voting for
representatives.  The latter I find no evidence for.  Voting incentives
do not increase the influence of the voter, nor do they increase the 
incentive for the voter to gather information relevent to the vote.


-- 
szabo@techbook.COM  Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 644-8135 (1200/2400, N81)
From: kent@phoenix.ocf.llnl.gov (Kent J Crispin)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: Confronting the Deficit/Debt Boogyman
Date: 17 Apr 92 01:16:57 GMT
Article-I.D.: lll-wink.122783
Organization: Lawrence Livermore Nat'l Lab.

In article <9204150053.AA04630@xuucp.ch.apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@APOLLO.HP.COM writes:
> On a personal note it pisses me off because I manage my money in
> a conservative and responsible manner -- Except for my mortgage
> I have no debt and haven't had any in years.  I save up and pay
> cash for everything I buy.   

Whether to use debt or equity to finance some purchase is a complex
decision, and the choice frequently isn't decidable because it depends
on knowledge of the future.  You are clearly making your decisions
using a consistent personal preference, not economic analysis.  What you are
saying is that you are pissed off because others don't share your 
preferences.

> But companies and property values
> are expiring all around me.  If my property value drops by
> $30K then I'm that much poorer just as surely as if the IRS
> took it or I was held up at gunpoint.

Nah.  I've been robbed at gunpoint three times, and it ain't the same at
all, believe me.  Suppose your property value dropped to $0.  How would
you be worse off? You still have a house a king of 400 years ago would
envy.  Is your sense of value completely tied to those numbers with that
funny $ in front of them?


>  But in this case it's
> the stupidity, mismanagement, heavy debts and recklessness
> of computer companies and banks in my area who are to blame,
> coupled with debt-laden consumers who had insufficient savings
> to ride out a layoff or recession.  (in my neighborhood there
> are couples who make >$100K who don't have enough net savings
> to make a month's mortgage payment!)  What I don't like is
> that in this environment fiscally responsible people can
> get dragged down by all the others.

You can get dragged down in lots of ways -- life is inherently insecure.
You do what you can, of course...but laying out all this blame!  Remember
the story about the ants and the grashopper?

>---peter

Kent

--
Kent Crispin				"No need to get excited",
kent@ocfmail.ocf.llnl.gov		the thief he kindly spoke....
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	<Standard disclaimer>
From: drg@bubba.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R Guilderson)
Newsgroups: sci.econ,talk.politics.misc,alt.individualism
Subject: Re: Libertarians, slaves and company towns
Date: 7 Apr 92 17:17:10 GMT
	<121899@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <46160@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Organization: Bull World Wide Information Systems, Billerica MA USA

In article <46160@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:

   "Too many cases of brie, obviously you weren't under duress, into the 
   libertopian, well we can't call it a "jail" 'cause only states have jails,
   so we'll call it a "penal enterprise".

This is a perfect example of why the Libertarian Party should consider
changing its name to something else.  While libertarians might espouse
ideas like the above,  Libertarians have explicitly stated that
government would exist to take care of just these types of problems.

Too many idiots are confusing Libertarians with libertarians.
From: jim@netlink.cts.com (Jim Bowery)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: distribution of wealth
Date: 15 Apr 92 17:45:59 GMT
Organization: NetLink Online Communications, San Diego CA


 
hgm@waikato.ac.nz writes:
>I can see nothing about the market itself that makes it promote inequality. 
I
>have accepted what I have heard or read economists saying 'that the market
>delivers to each in proportion to their assets'. That seems intuitively 
likely 
>to me. No proof at the moment, do you dispute this or can you prove it?
 
The proof exists in the net present value formula for asset valuation:
 
AssetValue = Integral  Risk(t)*Profit(t)/(DiscountRate+1)**t  dt
 
        where   Profit(t) is the profit stream at some point in time 
                Risk(t) is the probability of realizing that Profit
                DiscountRate is the zero-risk rate of return on money
                        typically linked to government debt instruments
 
Since risk is already discounted in the Risk(t) term, the DiscountRate
has no purpose other than to account for the rate of return that
society is expected to provide to the mere posession of wealth.
 
Different accountants will use different definitions of what the
DiscountRate should be, but it always comes back to the same thing:
 
What is the rate of return you can expect for merely being wealthy?
 
I'll post a white paper on a net asset tax system which can replace 
the current tax system in a revenue neutral manner by merely taxing net 
assets, (in excess of the levels of wealth typically protected by 
personal bankruptcy) at a rate equal to the rate of interest on the 
national debt (a good measure of DiscountRate).  
 
The NAT also has the added benefit over other "flat tax" systems in 
that it is inherently progressive, doesn't require a zillion "exceptions"
to the "no deductions" rule, automatically balances the budget and 
fulfills Perot's desire to take taxing authority away from Congress 
by fixing it in the Constitution.
 
Call me at 619/295-8868 if you want to help promote the NAT.

--                    
INTERNET:  jim@netlink.cts.com (Jim Bowery)
UUCP:   ...!nosc!ryptyde!netlink!jim
NetLink Online Communications * Public Access in San Diego, CA (619) 435-6181
From: jamie@ftp.com (Jamie O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: Wage Slavery (Was: BIG LIE about the market)
Date: 15 Apr 92 13:15:06 GMT
Organization: FTP Software, Inc., Wakefield, MA
Nntp-Software: PC/TCP NNTP

Ronda Hauben writes:

 >In Civil War in France he studied what had happened with the 
 >Paris Commune and why it had been defeated.

While this is true you need to realize that Marx wrote alot into his
interpretation of the Paris Commune.  Marxists were a tiny portion 
of the Paris Commune and had little effect on it.  Marx needed an
example of communism to support his idea and so he used the Paris
Commune to do that.

For an interesting interpretation of Marxism's future I suggest you
read the latest issue of the Whole Earth Review.  If you would like
more specifics on the article, then please mail me an I will pass
them on.

jamie
--
Jamie O'Keefe		FTP Software, Inc.	Technical Support
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Date: Mon,  6 Apr 1992 16:43:29 -0400 
From: Ashish Arora <ashish+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Small Communities (Re: Wage..  

Excerpts From Captions of netnews.sci.econ:
 6-Apr-92  Small Communities (Re: Wage..  Paul Barton-Davis@cs.was (3348)   
[..]

>On the other hand, one also needs to be careful not to pay too much
>attention to the 19th century US examples that collapsed due to their
>inherent own design (such as zero-birth rates). One can get better
>examples by looking at the parallel but non-intentional communities of
>the Amish and Mennonite communities, particularly those around the
>Lancaster County, PA region. Although their particular mode of social
>organization is complicated by (1) religious belief and (2) US federal
>and state government interference, these communities are doing well in
>most senses. They are not "marxist", "socialist" or "communist" in the
>sense of having explicitly adopted these -ism's as working strategies.
>Nevertheless, they do manage to demonstrate both some of the strengths
>and some of the weaknesses of these -ism's in a way that economics
>never does.

A very interesting post.  At the very least this appears to give lie to
the oft seen assertions about "human nature".  Typically such assertions
take selfishness (or self seeking behaviour) as a enduring (and
unchanging) characteristic of human nature.  (I might add, that in my
own work, I too assume that all agents are self seeking.  The point
under contention is the extent to which this is true of the real world.)

Incidently, one could read Mao's attempt during the Cultural Revolution
as an attempt to develop the cultural attitudes, -isms if you will, that
would be necessary to sustain a "communist" organisation of production
and distribution.  

cheers
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Ashish Arora
(412)-268-2191