Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived

A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?

Update: seemingly not

Update: Oh yeah!


Wednesday, March 14, 2012

 
Are we still doing this one?

This debate is pointless. The model of the General Theory is a rational expectations model, in which all expectations are borne out in equilibrium and in which all parties optimise intertemporally. Keynes didn't actually believe this was how the economy worked (hence Chapter 15) but his actual model was completely microfounded. He also has Chapter 19 (Changes in Money Wages) which demonstrates that the General Theory model does not depend on price rigidities and so there is no need to have a debate about "microfoundations" for them either.

In general, it is difficult to see why people would have got so excited about Keynes if all he had been saying is that sticky real wages can cause unemployment.

Quote of the day is Geoff Harcourt's: "The term 'price inflexibility' should be abandoned altogether. In [this model] we are in a world where firms can change prices as often and asquickly as they wish, and yet is utterly non-Walrasian. If there are also costs associated with adjusting prices these, interesting though they may be, are to be blunt, irrelevant to the Keynesian theory. It is a hard thing to have to say of thirty years of intellectual fireworks let off by some of the best minds of our profession".
2 comments this item posted by the management 3/14/2012 01:21:00 AM

Friday, March 09, 2012

 
On the "household finance analogy"?

Still thinking of talking points to shake people out of this way of thinking ... How many households do you know of where everybody works for the family company, which sells nearly all of its output to family members?

Update: And of course, where nearly all of the household debt is owed to family members.
1 comments this item posted by the management 3/09/2012 10:08:00 AM

Thursday, March 08, 2012

 
Sometimes, it really is political correctness gone bad

Annals of bad decision making by inexperienced promoters. My experience of both benefit gigs and The Green Party is that they tend to promote a slightly disassociative mental state in which people say and do things which they would immediately recognise as lunacy if they were thinking straight.
0 comments this item posted by the management 3/08/2012 07:22:00 AM
 
DVD bonus content

A pal of the blog emails, with regard to the David Graeber debt seminar at CT, and my part in it.

Graeber’s book is a masterful new look at the past that is
unfortunately extrapolated into a painfully inadequate explanation of
the present. Your account here strikes me as a mirror image: a
wonderful and witty picture of the essential dynamics of the present,
which suffers greatly from being extrapolated into a past essentially
different.

To start with, IIUC the idea that “the majority of debts are always
commercial” is utter tosh before the rise of capitalism. Merchants
were a tiny fraction of the population in Ancient Mesopotamia and
virtually all empires. The vast majority of the ancient population
was at one end or the other or farming, and this remained true pretty
much up until the modern era.

Second, there is a simple reason why merchants are excluded from these
universal jubilees: it’s only land-working debts that get resolved by
poor people getting sold into slavery. This was the underlying
situation that usually needed to get resolved, because eventually the
enslaved (or the about-to-be-enslaved) would start fleeing the land,
causing a food production crisis. And this is why “freed” is so
closely related to “freed from debt” – it means “freed from slavery.”
The most famous and recent version of this kind of system reboot was
that done by Solon, “the father of democracy,” called the
Seisachtheia, the shaking off of debts. Like the man’s moniker says,
it set the necessary foundations for democracy. And it was all about
the slaves. His famous reform not only returned their freedom and
land by repudiating those debts, he made contractual promises to be
someone’s slave illegal, which has remained a principle of free
contract and Western thinking ever since, although people now talk as
we got it from the air. He even promised to buy back Athenians who had
been previously sold into slavery abroad (some of which, the ancient
sources tell us, no longer spoke Athenian, they had been slaves so
long).

Thirdly, the idea that it you could game the system by which debts you
declared as personal and which debts you called commercial, while
crucial to understanding how any similar solution would game out
today, is a complete misunderstanding of how ancient societies work.
These were rigid class societies where everyone’s class was distinct
and visible. The only debts that mattered here were debts secured by
land or your person (or your families person). The only class of
people who contracted such debts were peasants. If you were an
aristocrat, you didn’t have this kind of debt – you extended it. That
was the whole point of it. The ancient jubilee, which happened in
such similar ways in so many places, was a big reorganization of the
food production game in favor of the vastly most numerous but least
powerful class, and against the least numerous but most powerful
class, because it was necessary for society’s survival. Commercial
debts were entirely outside this dynamic. Personal debts were
likewise outside this dynamic (except for personal in the sense of
having sold yourself into slavery.)

Your last paragraph, by contrast, is excellent. IMHO it’s a better
jumping off point for trying to use Graeber’s picture of the past to
illuminate the present than what he does. If anyone wants to use this
book to build on, they’d be much better off starting with the
suggestions in your final paragraph than his final chapter
3 comments this item posted by the management 3/08/2012 04:16:00 AM


This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?




Links:

Bitch : Lab
Aaronovitch Watch
Balkanalysis
Perfect.co.uk
Maxspeak
Brad Delong
The Robert Vienneau blog

Political and philosophical heroes

Subcomandante Marcos
Will Rogers
Boris Vian
The English Svejk

RSS Feed:
This seems to matter to a lot of people

If you liked this "Daniel Davies" website, you might be interested in

"Danux", the web developer
The martial artist (and fan of extremely annoying Flash intros) from Blackburn
The Welsh political journalist
A Scouse computer programmer who collects Soviet cameras
"Danimal", the heavy metal drummer
Canada's finest recorder of radio jingles
More of the same, at the Guardian
A tailor's in Lampeter where Jimmy Carter once bought a hat
An advertising man who has written a novel about dogging (I think we sometimes get each other's email)
An award-winning facilities manager in Dubai
The son of the guitarist from the Kinks Update: he is apparently "balls-out motherfucking shit-dicked exxxstatic" to be included on a Kerrang magazine giveaway CD of Iron Maiden covers, which is nice.
"Fritz Gretel" from the Ramones film "Rock 'n' Roll High School"
The former presenter of the leading politics talk radio show on the Isle of Man, now a business change manager in the Manx government secretary's office
An aquarium curator in Sussex who keeps on scoring home runs like this (this is the first stable link I've found, but he is constantly kicking ass in acquarial terms)

If you didn't like this "Daniel Davies" website, then don't give up on the Daniel Davies industry completely!

An American "Christian Political Analyst" who has the same name as me
A student at Patrick Henry College
these two might be the same guy ...
"Scatter", the deceased Liberian gangster
A naked man stuck in a chimney in Wigan
A thug in Barrow



This blog has been going downhill since ...

August 2002
September 2002
October 2002
November 2002
December 2002
January 2003
February 2003
March 2003
April 2003
May 2003
June 2003
July 2003
August 2003
September 2003
November 2003
December 2003
March 2004
April 2004
May 2004
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
October 2006
November 2006
December 2006
January 2007
February 2007
March 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
September 2007
October 2007
November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
August 2008
September 2008
October 2008
November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
February 2009
March 2009
April 2009
May 2009
June 2009
July 2009
August 2009
September 2009
October 2009
November 2009
December 2009
January 2010
February 2010
March 2010
April 2010
May 2010
June 2010
July 2010
August 2010
September 2010
October 2010
November 2010
December 2010
January 2011
February 2011
March 2011
April 2011
May 2011
June 2011
July 2011
August 2011
September 2011
October 2011
November 2011
December 2011
January 2012
February 2012
March 2012
April 2012
May 2012
June 2012
July 2012
August 2012
September 2012
October 2012
December 2012
February 2013
April 2013
June 2013
July 2013
August 2013
March 2014
April 2014
August 2014
October 2015
March 2023