Curt Doolittle

Theme: Incentives

  • ECONOMICS OF FEMALE REJECTION The emotional cost of rejecting someone an attempt

    ECONOMICS OF FEMALE REJECTION

    The emotional cost of rejecting someone an attempt at seduction is higher than the emotional cost of rejecting someone for attempting to obtain attention by gifts. The first is a rejection of the individual, the second a rejection of the individual that is attributable to the thing.

    LOL. Women are fascinating creatures.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-09 03:27:00 UTC

  • Has Anyone Benefited Tangibly From Answering On Quora, And If So By What Terms Were These Benefits?

    I think this is an interesting question.  
    1) Entertainment of yourself and others.
    2) Promotion of yourself, others, or certain ideas.
    3) Assistance of others (which is theoretically the purpose)
    4) Experimentation and refinement of your arguments.

    (1) is obvious but isn’t very valuable to anyone.
    (2) is probably a misuse (free riding) and tedious.
    (3) is the target idea but the question is what percentage of answers meet this criteria (not many).
    (4) is the scientific approach to debate structures.

    Personally, how I benefit from Quora is that it provides a large body of questions that are asked by people who are curious, and arguments by a large numbrer of people with erroneous knowledge, and as such, it’s a great place to learn how to talk or write about a subject if you don’t really understand how ‘ordinary people’ think of a topic.  The fact that answers are often bad, is actually useful because it provides insight into why people arrive at poor conclusions.  Because it is one thing to state a solution, and another to provide a route to it, that corrects the erroneous assumptions of others.

    https://www.quora.com/Has-anyone-benefited-tangibly-from-answering-on-Quora-and-if-so-by-what-terms-were-these-benefits

  • What Is The Best Way To Learn Monetary Policy?

    I will give you a little help. There is nothing much to it.

    It is cursory in textbooks for a reason. It’s just no more complicated than maintaing a supply of money that’s high enough that interests rates are low enough, the people spend to consume and spend to invest. And not too high that you cause inflation and destroy everyone’s savings.  That’s it.  That’s all there is.  Lastly, it certainly appears that no matter what governments’ do, when you add money to an economy, you distort the information carried to everyone in the data we call prices. This distortion of information appears to exacerbate the boom and bust cycle. So no matter what you do there are consequences either way.

    The complicated part of monetary policy is that money moves through the economy through a very flexible and very complex network, and every single person in that network has some incentive or other.

    So what there is to understand about monetary policy, isn’t the monetary policy itself, which is really quite simple. It’s how money moves through the network of central banks, investment manks, common banks, investors, business, and consumers. 

    If you start with the treasury issuing notes, and follow the money through to the consumer, then back into the banking system, you will understand it. You will only really understand it though, when you understand human nature pretty objectively.

    If you can overlook the ideology the best book that you will find is Rothbard’s The Mystery of Banking.  That’s how it works.

    Monetary policy is not a problem of macro.  Macro is very simple.  The problem is the multiplicity of routes that money moves through an economy, and the various incentives people have, when all of them possess only fragmentary information and understanding of the entire process. 

    The truth is that we are still in the process of discovering how that process works. Very few people know. And when people think they know, in the end it turns out that they’re often wrong.

    Most of the nonsense you see on television or read in the news is just that.  If you read Mandelbrot, you’ll understand that most activity is noise, not signal, and almost all noise is speculation as changes in the discount rate propagate through the economy.  If you study economics long enough, or read Taleb for that matter, you’ll realize it’s a lot of noise.  Almost all economic activity is a function of demographics, property rights, and education – all of which are amplified by credit.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-learn-monetary-policy

  • If You Have Multiple Ideas As Solution To A Specific Problem, How Do You Analyse And Evaluate Them To Identify The Best One For Execution?

    The one that is easiest to sell to a market easiest to extract profits from.

    It’s not rocket science.

    DO NOT SPREAD YOURSELF THIN.

    https://www.quora.com/If-you-have-multiple-ideas-as-solution-to-a-specific-problem-how-do-you-analyse-and-evaluate-them-to-identify-the-best-one-for-execution

  • COMPETITION AS VIRTUE The only moral duty I can be sure of, is to produce goods

    COMPETITION AS VIRTUE

    The only moral duty I can be sure of, is to produce goods and services for the market, that are free from involuntary transfer, and to do so at a profit.

    It’s the only empirical test that my ideas are proven beneficial to, and by, my fellow man.

    Everything else is fantasy. 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-20 08:55:00 UTC

  • On Rent Seeking

    RENT SEEKING In public choice theory as well as in economics, rent-seeking means seeking to increase one’s share of existing wealth without creating new wealth. Simple Version: “Corruption from outside the government inside of inside the government.”

    NOUN 1. the fact or practice of manipulating public policy or economic conditions as a strategy for increasing profits. “cronyism and rent-seeking have become an integral part of the way our biggest companies do business”

    ADJECTIVE 1. engaging in or involving the manipulation of public policy or economic conditions as a strategy for increasing profits. “rent-seeking lobbyists” Rent-seeking results in reduced economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, reduced wealth-creation, lost government revenue, heightened income inequality, and potential national decline. [I]n its original sense, rent seeking is the act of gaining partial ownership of land in order to gain control of a part of its production. In government it is the act of gaining privileges, redistribution or partial monopolies. In its broadest sense it is the act of obtaining some sort if claim on the productivity of others rather than producing something ones self, or through voluntary exchange. We all seek rents. We all seek opportunity for benefitting from either the actions of our organizations, the actions of others, or the grant of state state monopolies. Women seek mates as monetary rents and men to ease the burden of childrearing. We all seek rents. We could argue that rent seeking is the primary incentive for cooperation. Because so few of us are productive enough through direct exchange of our efforts. The only rent thats totally moral is interest. Interest is free of involuntary transfer. Interest, in the sense that we rent money to others, contrary to our superstitions, is moral. Now, It is possible to seek rents via interest. Either through usury or through leveraging the state’s fiat money. One can collect interest on production. On can collect interest on consumption. Neither of these things is necessary. Both are voluntary. Neither produce negative externalities. They create whole sequences of positive externalities. But collecting interest on externalities is immoral if it creates externalities that produce involuntary transfers. Rothbards ghetto ethics actually encourage involuntary transfers. Under the false presumption that the market will solve the problem through competition. But Since all things being equal, profit from externalities is greater than the same loan without externalities, just the opposite is true. The market will encourage externalities. Also, ghetto ethics assume that judges will not hold people accountable for those externalities and require restitution of them. But they have and will. Because it is consistent with the ethics of property to do so.

  • RENT SEEKING In its original sense, rent seeking is the act of gaining partial o

    RENT SEEKING

    In its original sense, rent seeking is the act of gaining partial ownership of land in order to gain control of a part of its production.

    In government it is the act of gaining privileges, redistribution or partial monopolies.

    In its broadest sense it is the act of obtaining some sort if claim on the productivity of others rather than producing something ones self, or through voluntary exchange.

    We all seek rents. We all seek opportunity for benefitting from either the actions of our organizations, the actions of others, or the grant of state state monopolies. Women seek mates as monetary rents and men to ease the burden of childrearing. We all seek rents. We could argue that rent seeking is the primary incentive for cooperation. Because so few of us are productive enough through direct exchange of our efforts.

    The only rent thats totally moral is interest. Interest is free of involuntary transfer.

    Interest, in the sense that we rent money to others, contrary to our superstitions, is moral.

    Now, It is possible to seek rents via interest. Either through usury or through leveraging the state’s fiat money.

    One can collect interest on production. On can collect interest on consumption. Neither of these things is necessary. Both are voluntary. Neither produce negative externalities. They create whole sequences of positive externalities.

    But collecting interest on externalities is immoral if it creates externalities that produce involuntary transfers.

    Rothbards ghetto ethics actually encourage involuntary transfers. Under the false presumption that the market will solve the problem through competition. But Since all things being equal, profit from externalities is greater than the same loan without externalities, just the opposite is true. The market will encourage externalities.

    Also, ghetto ethics assume that judges will not hold people accountable for those externalities and require restitution of them. But they have and will. Because it is consistent with the ethics of property to do so.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-24 11:56:00 UTC

  • ARE OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP? And an aside on the morality of business

    http://www.quora.com/Entrepreneurship/What-is-the-most-effective-yet-efficient-way-to-get-rich-2/answer/Reem-Yared/comment/1778627?srid=u4Qv&share=1WHERE ARE OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP?

    And an aside on the morality of business.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-22 00:37:00 UTC

  • “The rich have a moral duty and obligation to help ‘the poor’ ‘better’ themselve

    “The rich have a moral duty and obligation to help ‘the poor’ ‘better’ themselves whether the poor want the help or not.”

    Um. Redistribution isn’t bettering anyone. “Better” is a description of behavior, not state.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-16 13:45:00 UTC

  • QUOTE THAT WILL RING TRUE FOR EVERY MICROSOFT PARTNER IN THE WORLD “Its latest r

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f8630150-656d-11e2-8b03-00144feab49a.htmlA QUOTE THAT WILL RING TRUE FOR EVERY MICROSOFT PARTNER IN THE WORLD

    “Its latest round … shows an attempt by Microsoft to defend its castle. Like a feudal lord, it once milked a peaceful populace, collecting generous taxes from the industry that laboured to keep the Windows economy going. The farmers never starved, but it was Microsoft that grew fat.” – FT.COM

    I TRIED TO BUY MICROSOFT PARTNERS IN 2006-2007 AND LOOKED AT 200 OF THEM.

    I knew what would happen to the industry. I knew the change in the customer. I wanted to provide an alternative to Avanade for the marketing customer. But I couldn’t find more than single digits out of the lot who made more than six percent net, and had any scale. Why? Because Microsoft impoverished its community. They played begging small vendors for freebies they were successful enough to make requests. Then they repeated the game with someone else.

    The only way to defeat that tactic was not to depend upon them at all. To build your own (expensive) sales force.

    And what kind of partnership is that?

    It isn’t one. It’s feudalism.

    Bill understood the value of vendors. That’s when it was good to be a Partner. THe company is a ‘Rent Seeking” machine. And has been now for the better part of a decade.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-27 19:04:00 UTC