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Jamie Dimon gets it right consistently, otherwise he would fail.
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Apr 30, 2014 07:39
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Bleu posted:Have you even heard the term 'too big to fail'? Perhaps, and I'm just spitballing here, the hyper-rich are winning because the game is rigged, and not because they're really good players. Rich people aren't just stupid about everything besides business - which they are, because they subsist entirely on a diet of Maria Bartiromo and the WSJ. They gently caress up what they're supposedly good at all the time. In fact, I'd say that as far as reallocating capital to efficiently drive economic growth goes, they frequently and inexplicably suck rear end! Or just abuse their position to commit outright fraud, like rigging the LIBOR rate whenever they found they've made a bad interest rate swap so they can get paid anyway and gently caress over the municipalities, pension funds, businesses, etc that thought they were hedging their risk rather than playing three-card monte. But maybe pretending to be a banker while actually just robbing people can be folded into the definition of being wateroverfire posted:the people who understand how things actually work and have the drive and know how to leverage that understanding.
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Apr 30, 2014 07:46
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wateroverfire posted:What would you say being an excellent salesman requires? A "business person" doesn't understand economics just because he takes part in economic transactions. That's like saying the guy running a newspaper kiosk understands monetary policy because he handles money a lot. Your vaunted businessmen are nothing but cogs in the economic machine like the rest of us. They're slightly bigger cogs, but they're still just cogs. Lots of people can use a computer without really understanding how it works just like how a person can buy a candy bar without having to comprehend fractional reserve banking. The economy is a very large and complicated thing. The people who spend time studying that thing in the aggregate are going to have a better picture of it as a whole than people who don't. Sometimes this means, unfortunately, the internet leftist revolutionary does in fact have a better handle on economic concepts than a Fortune 500 CEO.
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Apr 30, 2014 07:51
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I think the study of society and the people in it should be based on a scientific evaluation of potential theories, which can be tested, rather than on the intuition of individuals, which you sort according to how much you like/dislike them. Maybe that's just me though. Believe it or not 'successful businessmen' are hairless apes like the rest of us, prone to judgements that can be easily biased by their already existing beliefs and interests. rudatron fucked around with this message at 08:14 on Apr 30, 2014 |
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Apr 30, 2014 08:11
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rudatron posted:I think the study of society and the people in it should be based on a scientific evaluation of potential theories, which can be tested, rather than on the intuition of individuals, which you sort according to how much you like/dislike them. Does this excuse their anti-social behaviors? Or their hiding behind "Job Creators" and other mythical justifications for said behaviors?
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Apr 30, 2014 13:43
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wateroverfire posted:They're not the smartest people or the most intellectual, necessarily. They're the people who understand how things actually work and have the drive and know how to leverage that understanding. That's the point. They're the people you'd want leading a revolution, only irony of ironies they can do so well under capitalism that none of them would bother. They have the largest bootstraps. Jesus you're ridiculous.
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Apr 30, 2014 14:00
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They are the people that have the most drive to make money or simply come from a family with money, neither one seems attributes that are useful for the situation. Although it does remind me of that Mr.Show skit. I mean who gives a poo poo about what Einstein thought anyway. He might just be parodying the guy from the skit.
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Apr 30, 2014 14:11
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Claverjoe posted:The ability to sell a product. Now understanding of that product is a separate question, i.e. does an airplane salesman understand Bernoulli's principle? However, aircraft engineers will understand Bernoulli's principle, and indeed will understand a great deal about how the world works. Then they hijack the aeroplane and fly it into a building.
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Apr 30, 2014 14:34
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rockopete posted:I'm not trying to be snarky here. To start any sort of business or group endeavor as an individual, you do have to be sort of self delusional in that you can't look at the statistics for startup success/failure and go by that--if you did, you would walk away, because 90% of startups fail. So these people are critical to ensuring innovation and competition within a free or mixed market economy. But I would not look to them for an accurate assessment of macro-scale issues in a society as a whole, or for anything requiring a lot of historical context, etc. Put crudely, they are doers, not observers or analysts. And this is where I think American popular culture, for lack of a better word, goes too far--it tends to lionize the entrepreneur, and free enterprise in general, as the default solution to any and all problems. I don't disagree with a lot of that. A lot of business leaders are also keen observers, of course, and some will have a better grasp on macro issues than anyone here because of their position in their industry and access to information and informed perspectives not easily available to the public. In general they're people who are really good at navigating the waters they need to sail and understanding the issues that are most pertinent to their enterprises. I think the lefty D&D posters here tend to go too far in the other direction, thinking that because they read some articles someone else wrote or took an elective in grad school they're qualified to, for instance, solve "the india situation". Or that having a tenuous kind of sort of grasp of macro (no who am I kidding it's a mix of pop economics and badly read Marxism) qualifies them to diagnose and treat the world's problems as perceived by them. That perspective of "doers" is extremely valuable and necessary for putting things into context. Take the statistic you quoted above. One interpretation is that you have to be self delusional to start a business having heard of that statistic, but that is absurdly defeatist. Another interpretation is that it's not a very useful piece of information because business isn't a lottery in which you buy your ticket and take your 10% odds of success. You'd be a whole lot better off basing your decisions on the specifics of your project and your personal circumstances (and trying to limit your self delusion as much as possible, because wishful thinking is a great way to fail). Owlbot and his social mobility statistics are another example. He notes that people in the bottom quintile only have a 6% chance of ending up in the top quintile, and concludes the system isn't fair. But why is going from the bottom to the top in one generation a reasonable thing to expect people to do? The most common way to build wealth is over generations. It sucks to be the first generation in that cycle but it sucked for everyone. rudatron posted:I think the study of society and the people in it should be based on a scientific evaluation of potential theories, which can be tested, rather than on the intuition of individuals, which you sort according to how much you like/dislike them. Said the Marxist?
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Apr 30, 2014 14:34
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Ardennes posted:Although it does remind me of that Mr.Show skit. I mean who gives a poo poo about what Einstein thought anyway. Do you mean to compare frustrated internet revolutionaries one upping each other in the I-hate-capitalism-more-than-you game to Einstein?
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Apr 30, 2014 14:42
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wateroverfire posted:Do you mean to compare frustrated internet revolutionaries one upping each other in the I-hate-capitalism-more-than-you game to Einstein? What does this make you exactly? The man speaking truth to goondom? Do you fancy yourself some sort of 'cop on the beat' keeping all these moon-eyed idealists in check with your hard truths? Instead of making arguments you should just switch to posting huge strings of  it's basically the same effect.
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Apr 30, 2014 14:45
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wateroverfire posted:
Well, thing is, most of the posters here actually *are* better-informed that most public pundits and talking heads, and certainly more informed than average for the population, partly because the mass news media in this country is really bad and partly because they're interested in issues and follow them and seek out information on their own about those issues, which puts them far ahead of the average American. Most people generally don't know poo poo about politics or political issues, and that sadly includes most of the people who are paid to pontificate on such things (Friedman, Carlson, Coulter, Hannity, O'Reilly, George Will, etc.) With a couple of rare exceptions like Paul Krugman who actually are qualified to pontificate on their fields, most of the public discourse in this country is shockingly awfully bad, incomplete at best and at its worst pugnaciously ignorant. Being a standard deviation or so above the mean in terms of political knowledge -- which most regular posters of this forum probably are, just by virtue of not watching Fox News if nothing else -- probably does mean you're significantly more qualified to discuss and analyze politics than, well, most of the people who get paid to do so on national television. As to business owners . . . hell, I know plenty of small business owners. They're not stupid by any means but all the ones I've met who are successful know their own business really well and . . . not much else, because they don't have time for seeking out information on topics outside their business! So my guess would be that a randomly selected poster here probably is more likely to be knowledgeable about a given political issue than a randomly selected "business owner," just because the people here follow the issues on their own, and most people (including most "business owners") don't. Now if the question were "who is more likely to understand the wheat market, a wheat farmer or a SA forum poster" then yeah the wheat farmer would probably be more likely to have a clue. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Apr 30, 2014 |
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Apr 30, 2014 14:55
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wateroverfire posted:Owlbot and his social mobility statistics are another example. He notes that people in the bottom quintile only have a 6% chance of ending up in the top quintile, and concludes the system isn't fair. But why is going from the bottom to the top in one generation a reasonable thing to expect people to do? The most common way to build wealth is over generations. It sucks to be the first generation in that cycle but it sucked for everyone.
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Apr 30, 2014 15:00
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^Yeah I would imagine business owners would be very knowledgeable about their product, their target segment, their industry, and their books. I would not expect a fabric distributor to have a deep understanding about the Libor scandal.
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Apr 30, 2014 15:01
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I, for one, am glad to see wateroverfire fighting the good fight he fights in every thread, especially calling out posters on being badly read Marxist/pop Econ bros in a thread supposedly about an Econ book he doesn't appear to be reading. Also glad to see our bud asdf32 come into another thread where people are discussing a text and ask worthless questions over and over while refusing to read anything for himself.
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Apr 30, 2014 15:02
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menino posted:^Yeah I would imagine business owners would be very knowledgeable about their product, their target segment, their industry, and their books. I would not expect a fabric distributor to have a deep understanding about the Libor scandal. Yeah, exactly. And if you wanted the answer to a question about, say, boat building, would you ask a boat hobbyist forum or just a random member of your local chamber of commerce? Presuming you didn't luck out and find the owner of a boat company, you'd just get blank stares from the chamber of commerce members, but the boat hobbyist forum would probably have something intelligent to say. This forum is full of people who follow politics as a hobby, just like a boat building forum is full of boat hobbyists. That doesn't mean we have all the answers or even that everyone here isn't horribly wrong, but it does mean there's a higher level of political knowledge here than there is most places.
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Apr 30, 2014 15:05
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Before we slap each others' backs for being erudite, I'd say that there's breadth of knowledge here but no real depth? I can say for example that there's no real understanding of finance or investing here - I remember a 100 page thread about shenanigans in the commodities markets where people were spouting off about derivatives without really understanding what they were. Also, you shouldn't conflate being up-to-date with current affairs with being knowledgeable about politics etc. Heck, this thread is a good example of it. I think most people responding haven't actually read Piketty's book and are just going off mass media coverage on it. shrike82 fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Apr 30, 2014 |
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Apr 30, 2014 15:18
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shrike82 posted:Before we slap each others' backs for being erudite, I'd say that there's breadth of knowledge here but no real depth? Well, again, keep in mind I'm just saying we're better than average. The average is still shockingly, embarrassingly bad. But as a point of comparison, during the Trayvon Martin debate, I read several threads here that were hundreds of pages long. There was a lot of idiocy but overall the discussion of what exactly Florida's "Stand your Ground" law contained, what the recent legal changes had been, and how those changes did or didn't actually relate to the case, was far more intelligent and detailed than anything I saw in the media, especially the televised media (which is where most people get their news). There's still plenty of room for horrible ignorance, bias, etc., around here, but we're still above average, if only because the average in question is somewhere south of "profoundly ignorant." shrike82 posted:
Hey, for a lot of us I think it's still on backorder! But yeah, that's a good point. But the other night I had the "privilege" of watching Fox News' coverage of Piketty; it was just fearmongering and ranting about the crazy french socialist who wants an 80% tax on income. Here at least most people in the thread appear to have read reviews written by actual economists, and we have at least some participants who are actively working their way through the actual text. So overall we're above average, especially when you remember the average contains millions of people (many of them "business owners") who are likely still at the "Piketty Who?" stage. To be clear I'm not saying discussion around here is perfect or anything, just that we can occasionally find our own rear end in a top hat if we use both hands and a set of written directions, which puts us far ahead of the general standard. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Apr 30, 2014 |
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Apr 30, 2014 15:24
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menino posted:Instead of making arguments you should just switch to posting huge strings of If he was making arguments there wouldn't be a problem.
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Apr 30, 2014 15:28
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wateroverfire posted:Do you mean to compare frustrated internet revolutionaries one upping each other in the I-hate-capitalism-more-than-you game to Einstein? The point of the skit was that appeals to authority via wealth were a fallacy. Anyway to be honest, if you think internet Marxists are wrong then proven them wrong, and if you can't then I don't think appealing to Warren Buffet is going to save you. As far as investing, no D&D is not the ultimate brain trust on everything, but there is a whole other investing thread in another subforum for that.
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Apr 30, 2014 15:39
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Well, again, keep in mind I'm just saying we're better than average. The average is still shockingly, embarrassingly bad. But as a point of comparison, during the Trayvon Martin debate, I read several threads here that were hundreds of pages long. There was a lot of idiocy but overall the discussion of what exactly Florida's "Stand your Ground" law contained, what the recent legal changes had been, and how those changes did or didn't actually relate to the case, was far more intelligent and detailed than anything I saw in the media, especially the televised media (which is where most people get their news). It'd be more meaningful to compare D&D readers with the Daily Show viewing demographic, setting aside the overlap. Fox News is such a low threshold. Another test of understanding over news retention would be to have posters articulate to a stranger why we should transition from capitalism to socialism. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of purported socialists fail to do anything more sophisticated than "capitalism is bad because..." or facile statements like "people would be more equal under socialism". Ardennes posted:As far as investing, no D&D is not the ultimate brain trust on everything, but there is a whole other investing thread in another subforum for that. I'm talking less about personal investing and more about criticisms of capitalism related to finance or the capital markets.
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Apr 30, 2014 15:46
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shrike82 posted:Before we slap each others' backs for being erudite, I'd say that there's breadth of knowledge here but no real depth? I would say that for the most part this is accurate, but occasionally you find posters who know their poo poo posting about their poo poo. For example, some people who are (I think) real economists sometimes post in the Marx thread. The climate change thread has at least one scientist, some other guy involved in academia organizing around climate stuff (sogol is his name I think), and even the token climate denier is better informed than the ones I see elsewhere. I've frequently learned more about current events in the middle east by reading the thread here than I have from reading the papers I have subscriptions to. So overall while the discussion is usually hobbyist level there are pockets of depth. IIRC you or someone else said you were going to make a thread about finance, and I think you've posted before that you're involved in that professionally so it could be cool/helpful. As far as the topic of this thread's concerned, I'm only like 150 pgs into the book, but I'll probably try to do an effortpost detailing the relation between Pikettey and Marx. Seems like it's brought up or asked about frequently enough to warrant going through, and since I'm not an actual economist but some dude who read Capital that's probably all I can add to the discussion. E: posting on an iPad is hard Debunk fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Apr 30, 2014 |
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Apr 30, 2014 15:54
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shrike82 posted:I'm talking less about personal investing and more about criticisms of capitalism related to finance or the capital markets. Granted, at that point, sparks are likely going to fly because are going to be fundamental differences in opinion on economics besides a discussion of the financial system itself. As far as depth, it depends on what you are asking for since there in fact quite a few knowledgeable people around here. It isn't universal, but we are talking about an internet forum here.
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Apr 30, 2014 16:00
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shrike82 posted:It'd be more meaningful to compare D&D readers with the Daily Show viewing demographic, setting aside the overlap. Fox News is such a low threshold. You seem very eager to prove a point here, but I don't know what it could be.
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Apr 30, 2014 16:01
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shrike82 posted:Before we slap each others' backs for being erudite, I'd say that there's breadth of knowledge here but no real depth? And there are people who have knowledge of finance (or claim it and seem to check out) that blame CRA/Freddie/Fannie for the financial crisis.
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Apr 30, 2014 16:16
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archangelwar posted:And there are people who have knowledge of finance (or claim it and seem to check out) that blame CRA/Freddie/Fannie for the financial crisis. There are people that work for Freddie/Fannie that blame the CRA for the financial crisis. To be fair I think a lot of people in finance have to make themselves believe they weren't responsible for the massive amount of misery they caused and deep down they know and just don't want to admit it. Eggplant Squire fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Apr 30, 2014 |
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Apr 30, 2014 17:00
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Hey guys Donald Sterling is worth like $2billion he must be way better at understanding how the world works than all of us combined - A literal thing that wateroverfire believes
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Apr 30, 2014 17:03
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wateroverfire posted:Owlbot and his social mobility statistics are another example. He notes that people in the bottom quintile only have a 6% chance of ending up in the top quintile, and concludes the system isn't fair. But why is going from the bottom to the top in one generation a reasonable thing to expect people to do? The most common way to build wealth is over generations. It sucks to be the first generation in that cycle but it sucked for everyone. Wait I thought you said getting into the top quintile means I understand the world better than the meat-head plebs and internet Marxists. Now you're telling me it means I started off with undeserved inherited wealth that gave me a leg up? Your arguments of convenience are amaaaaazing. "Suck it libs, your criticisms of the rich are invalid because they know how things work. That's why they're rich and you're living in mom's basement  ""Then why is economic mobility so low?" "Oh feh it's unrealistic to expect to get wealthy with talent and hard work! You've got to have loaded parents that can set you up real nice." VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Apr 30, 2014 |
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Apr 30, 2014 17:58
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:To be clear I'm not saying discussion around here is perfect or anything, just that we can occasionally find our own rear end in a top hat if we use both hands and a set of written directions, which puts us far ahead of the general standard. If we just look for our heads we'll mostly get there eventually. I agree with Shrike82 that there's breadth but not depth here on a lot of topics. Or maybe more accurately, awareness without understanding or deep consideration or often appreciation of context (to be fair, for sure, that hardly makes D&D unique and maybe it's better here than elsewhere). Especially when the discussions touch on economics and the topics are complex and contentious. FWIW I'm also reading the book. =)
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Apr 30, 2014 19:31
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wateroverfire posted:Or maybe more accurately, awareness without understanding or deep consideration or often appreciation of context (to be fair, for sure, that hardly makes D&D unique and maybe it's better here than elsewhere). Especially when the discussions touch on economics and the topics are complex and contentious. If you are aware of this supposed deficit, why don't you challenge anyone on it or make any worthwhile points? If you're right, it should be a easy slam dunk to teach those dull leftists a lesson they would never forget.
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Apr 30, 2014 20:27
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Ardennes posted:If you are aware of this supposed deficit, why don't you challenge anyone on it or make any worthwhile points? If you're right, it should be a easy slam dunk to teach those dull leftists a lesson they would never forget. Well what do you think all these debates are? Basically each side trying to do exactly that.
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Apr 30, 2014 20:37
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asdf32 posted:Well what do you think all these debates are? Basically each side trying to do exactly that. Yeah, and in the end, in this thread at least I don't see a lot of strong points from him to be honest. Otherwise, it seems just random trash talk and sour grapes.
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Apr 30, 2014 20:43
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wateroverfire posted:If we just look for our heads we'll mostly get there eventually. I think the discussions here contain breadth and depth. They are not just surface level musings about various topics, and the posters are NOT just random internet revolutionaries. See? Stupid baseless declarative statements for all.
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Apr 30, 2014 21:47
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Indulge me in a query. Would you say that frustrated leftist internet revolutionaries or people who believe the business world is a meritocracy are better at understanding the world as it is?
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Apr 30, 2014 21:47
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Ardennes posted:They are the people that have the most drive to make money or simply come from a family with money, neither one seems attributes that are useful for the situation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF8wLg5Asgo If everyone just quoted this every time wateroverfire made a post it would save a lot of time.
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Apr 30, 2014 21:52
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There's a really good thread in the school forums you guys could probably ask your questions in: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3433130
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Apr 30, 2014 22:04
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wateroverfire posted:If you're asking the question "into whose pockets did those productivity gains go" part of the answer is they went to 3rd world workers, partly they were competed away in the form of lower prices, partly they went to US workers and partly they went to capital. Question: Do you feel that the distribution of those productivity gains was just?
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Apr 30, 2014 22:12
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down with slavery posted:Question: Do you feel that the distribution of those productivity gains was just? Relative to the value they created for the firm?
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Apr 30, 2014 22:22
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I don't understand how you can have captain of industry cock rammed down your throat so far you think they're particularly intelligent, well informed or deserving of success relative to everyone else. Just a cursory look around the business world makes it obvious that these people fail and are wrong as often as, say, liberal arts academics, to use an example I have a feeling wateroverfire is confident in making GBS threads all over. Like holy poo poo I was sympathetic to him at first but this has gone to self-parody levels
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Apr 30, 2014 22:29
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wateroverfire posted:They're not the smartest people or the most intellectual, necessarily. They're the people who understand how things actually work and have the drive and know how to leverage that understanding. That's the point. They're the people you'd want leading a revolution, only irony of ironies they can do so well under capitalism that none of them would bother. Just going to point out that any sort of statement along the lines of "the wealthy are successful because (insert way that they are better)" is literally equivalent to "white men are superior to minorities/women." You can't imply the existence of a meritocracy (with respect to wealth) without also implying that some demographics are superior to others.
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Apr 30, 2014 22:40
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