Oceans Yet to Burn

collapsedsquid

So, recent news brings an interesting question to mind, would a total cessation of US-China trade be worse for the US than a single thermonuclear missile strike on the US mainland?

mitigatedchaos

Well, we’d have “less money”, but hiring would go through the roof, national sovereignty would increase, and less than one million people would die (probably - difficult to calculate secondary economic effects of what would be an across-the-board price increase), so…

invertedporcupine

I’m pretty sure that both the US and China are reliant on the other for things that they can’t actually replace autarchically even at much higher prices (e.g. certain rare earth metals for the US, a lot of IP for China). The adjustment would be pretty steep.

collapsedsquid

Think it’s the expertise that would be killer. I suspect are whole ranges of manufacturing activities that nobody in the US knows how to do anymore, could be decades before we can do them competently again.

You’s also have the problem of what this would to to southeast asia in general. We may not intend to cut off trade with the rest, but this is the sort of move that could lead to the entire region being cut off to US trade. I guess we didn’t really need computers anyways.

mitigatedchaos

The problem when they went to build a smartphone in the US was not “no Americans know how to build a smartphone”, it was “we lack a sufficiently large and redundant supply chain to respond quickly to unexpected issues, because there isn’t a sufficient density of smartphone component manufacturers.”

collapsedsquid

This isn’t just “we’re building a new product“ this is “We are taking over all production of all existing products.“ This is an orders-of-magnitude difference..

mitigatedchaos

Sure, but aside from the fact that there are still lots of countries that aren’t China (including Taiwan, which is not China China) to import from, I think the issue is less “lack of expertise” and inability to build computers, than it is the necessary volume of capital expenditures to build all the new plants and buy all the new robots necessary to fill those plants. And we still do a lot of manufacturing here. Manufacturing revenue in the US is up, it’s manufacturing employment that’s down.

I’m not sure it would even be all that much of an increase in price for consumers after the capital expenditures are complete. We’re probably already headed towards manufacture-on-demand programmable modular factories closer to the sites of sale, and this might just accelerate the trend.

the invisible fist politics

theunitofcaring

There are two different things that both get called “price gouging”

fnord888

They’re both characterized by a situation of sudden (and unpredicted) scarcity because of a breakdown in the usual supply chain that provides a good, and the price of that newly scarce good increasing dramatically.

One is where someone who already has a stock of the newly scarce good increases the price and reaps a windfall profit from the event. The other is where someone acts to increase the supply of the newly scarce good, and charges a price commensurate with the extraordinary measures required to do so (ordinary measures, by definition, no longer being adequate to provide a supply).

There are good reasons why we might want to treat these two cases differently, and yet I see very few people, on either side of the debate, willing to make the distinction.

theunitofcaring

In particular, if you put in tons of time and effort driving supplies to a disaster area from somewhere unaffected by the storm, you should be allowed to sell things for whatever price they sell at. Because getting more supplies to a disaster is good and if you’re not allowed to sell above a stupid definition of ‘at cost’ that doesn’t take into account ‘putting a thousand miles on my car’ or ‘losing my entire weekend’ or ‘the risk that I was wrong and this wouldn’t be needed’ then there will just be fewer supplies for disaster survivors.

And yes, the laws get used that way: After Katrina a guy heard that people needed generators, so he bought 19 of them in Kentucky, rented a U-Haul, and drove them to New Orleans. The police arrested him and confiscated the generators (which they did not distribute to disaster survivors). He intended to sell them at double the cost, and people were eager to buy them at that price. He served four months in our brutal inhumane prison system for ‘price gouging.’

mitigatedchaos

And yes, the laws get used that way: After Katrina a guy heard that people needed generators, so he bought 19 of them in Kentucky, rented a U-Haul, and drove them to New Orleans. The police arrested him and confiscated the generators (which they did not distribute to disaster survivors).

Yeah, this is what I’m worried about. The law will end up being written in a stupid way that makes the situation worse than not having a law.

Source: fnord888 the invisible fist the iron hand

ranma-official

mitigatedchaos

Putting in disaster gouging laws is not really the virtuous thing, because

Any cop you have out enforcing the anti-gouging law could instead be either pulling dudes out of flooded houses, trucking in water, handing out waters, or guarding supply points
It isn’t going to actually increase the amount of drinkable water entering the zone
Not every random trucking water in but charging for it is going to charge $42 a bottle. If someone charges some lesser amount, it may also still cover their fuel costs and time off work to get out there

This policy is more of a looking good than doing good thing. It lets the politicians get away without actually doing anything, spending any money, or successfully bringing more water into the zone. (It also costs resources to keep all these laws on the books.)

Having supply depots already nearby as part of a multi-layered civil defense system capable of responding to a broad range of emergencies is the actual virtuous policy, the tough one that we can’t actually have because reasons.

I know @collapsedsquid suggested that having supply depots would be defeated because tax breaks for the wealthy, but that isn’t the only factor.

Any money spent on civil defense depots with stockpiled water filters would also have to contend with complaints that it was depriving resources from any other groups - for instance, from education, healthcare, etc. It might even get accused of being racist for being connected to some distant probability-calculated need rather than the immediate needs of the local community. (Tho that last one can be reduced somewhat by giving the ¾ shelflife MREs over to homeless shelters.)

ranma-official

there are already cops who are protecting from vague looters rather than pulling dudes out of flooded houses, does that mean we need to abolish private property?

It isn’t going to actually increase the amount of drinkable water entering the zone

it will prevent the thing where people with spare cash go to a supermarket, buy out the entire stock of water, and then resell it at much higher prices after the disaster.

mitigatedchaos

Well, looting non-essential items will harm people afterwards, and there are reports of some people shooting. Though if I could allow people to loot water bottles from abandoned houses without all sorts of secondary consequences, I would.

What I’m thinking is that we won’t get a law that’s written intelligently, but one that also prohibits guys from buying out all the waters in a store in a neighboring county, putting it all in a pick-up truck, and driving it in to the disaster area to sell. And we should want someone to do that, even if it gets sold for $10 a bottle, since it increases the available water.

Venezuela, which is pretty messed up right now, keeps trying to legislate prices on things like bread, and it isn’t helping there.

Source: mitigatedchaos the invisible fist

afloweroutofstone

I once got into a long after-class argument with my econ professor about anti-gouging laws during disasters, and he genuinely told me that a superior option would be to drop massive amounts of cash over affected areas via helicopter (a literal helicopter drop) so that everyone could collect it and have the ability to purchase goods at their market value. I tried to point out that the lack of competition caused by a severe supply shock eliminates any upper constraint on prices, so a helicopter drop could just lead to local hyperinflation that would rapidly wipe out the money’s value, but he cut me off before I could get to it.

Pretty sure he had a PhD.

mitigatedchaos

Okay, but that spike is only temporary, depending on just how difficult it is to get out there and just how regularly the government does this. If there is suddenly $200,000 laying around for buying water, then someone will get a boat or a truck and bring water.

No, what you really have to worry about is that some guy with a gun will just take it all to himself.

afloweroutofstone

“Temporary” still matters, a lot, when we’re talking about access to water in a disaster zone.

mitigatedchaos

They might hold out for it, though, and if it became a common practice then dudes would line up with trucks full of waters along the storm boundary, excitedly waiting to go, driving down the price due to the expectation that the seller would make less money later for anyone that could afford to wait a little longer.

It just ignores that one dude with a gun can get all the money for himself, which is a frequent thing we see with economic thought ignoring the realities of force even while implicit force is, though useful, the basis by which property can even exist.

the invisible fist

ranma-official

afloweroutofstone

Pretty sure he had a PhD.

mitigatedchaos

No, what you really have to worry about is that some guy with a gun will just take it all to himself.

Source: afloweroutofstone the invisible fist

sadoeconomist

anunreliablesource

The article about “why we need price gouging in times of crisis”, is some odd shit. I can assure you that there is plenty of water to go round, even if it isn’t as much as normal. Many people did buy ahead of time, however when you get 28 inches of water in 3 hours instead of 3 days and you have to leave your home, you are not carrying the case of water. So kindly fuck off with you random garbage articles, I disconnect with most ancaps when it comes to compassion. Do I believe we need laws, nope, but I believe we need compassion, and Joe Blow selling water for $42 is anything but compassionate. This is the very reason a lot of people do not believe an anarchist, free market, voluntary society can work. I am watching my neighbors who have never flooded be plucked from their homes in boats, losing their entire life, and I got to read that fucking trash. Kindly fuck off. Want to show the world anarchy can work, do like the countless people out lending a hand, donate a case of water, come help me cook for the shelter, and STFU.

sadoeconomist

This is precisely when people attack the price system, though, because people have the moral intuition that someone selling at higher-than-normal prices is doing something wicked and must be responsible for the price being that high, when they aren’t at all. The authorities interfering to stop local prices from being allowed to rise during a crisis is exactly why famines happened historically, it’s something that turns a localized temporary disaster into something worse. Price ceilings always create shortages, and that’s precisely what you don’t want in an emergency situation.

The choice isn’t between the guy selling water bottles for $42 or him giving them away, it’s between letting him sell them for $42 or not having water bottles there at all. Yeah, he isn’t being altruistic, but his greed is actually leading him to contribute to disaster relief efforts by showing up with water instead of staying home. You’re not being compassionate to disaster victims by telling those people to stay home if they’re not going to help for free, you’re taking away their opportunity to buy water that they apparently need badly enough they’re willing to pay $42 for it. The greedy asshole who was induced to drive from several states away with a truck full of water bottles just to try to make a quick buck is possibly making the difference between life and death for some people in need, even if he doesn’t have an ounce of compassion. The moral intuition you’ve got about price-gougers is backwards - that’s the important insight those articles are spreading, and this is exactly the time to spread it. If anti-gouging laws get passed after this hurricane, those guys won’t risk jail time to show up for the next one, and there will be a shortage where people can’t find drinkable water at any price. Trying to prevent that is beneficial as well.

Compassion is great, but one of anarchy’s greatest strengths is that it doesn’t actually require compassion to work, that people without any compassion in their hearts are still led by greed to work for the benefit of others anyway. A system that only works when people are eager to sacrifice their self-interest to serve others doesn’t work at all.

mitigatedchaos

Okay, but “no price-gouging laws” isn’t incompatible with improved civil defense infrastructure, and calling it “anarchy” is stretching it. If the situation destabilized enough they’d call in the army, and there is still very much the risk of prosecution if you kill the man selling waters for $42 and take all of his waters, once the disaster clears.

Rebellion and break down in law & order in any area of the country undermines the authority of the state as the ruler and monopolizer of force and arbiter of law. Desperation is a key factor in breaking down law & order. Therefore, it would be prudent to create caches of limited, key supplies (such as clean water, water filters, and MREs) at various points in the country, cycling them out as donations to poverty organizations (or selling them) as they near expiration.

This serves both the internal (preventing looting, rioting, and loss of faith in the government) and external (decreasing the amount of death and dysfunction in the event of enemy attack) security primary functions of the state, and increases the scale of hazardous events required to bring down the government. Improvements in civil defense infrastructure also act as a multiplier on available military force as a credible threat for use in international politics.

Source: anunreliablesource evil statist politics the invisible fist the iron hand

I mean, it’s honestly kind of ridiculous to suggest that the proper answer to “too many Chinese buyers are holding empty apartments in our country as a store of value” is “remove the state’s monopoly on the enforcement of property laws” instead of the far less difficult and less likely to break every thing “change the laws so that so many housing units can be built that holding these empty apartment buildings is no longer economically sensible.”

The number of empty housing units acting as a real asset store of value for Chinese money fleeing capital restrictions is also probably quite small relative to the market size, much like those expensive apartments in London that people were complaining should be socialized, even though in practice it wouldn’t make much difference in the price.

politics the invisible fist

neoliberalism-nightly

theage.com.au

Up to half of Chinese buyers leave apartments vacant

A quarter of Chinese buying property overseas leave their apartments vacant and the majority pay for their purchase with cash, a survey of mainland Chinese customers by investment bank UBS shows.

Simon Johanson

argumate

the issue with loosening zoning regulations to encourage property development is that many people treat property as a safe haven asset and don’t care about actually living in it or even renting it out.

poipoipoi-2016

Build fast enough that they can’t make 5% real returns by leaving it empty though, and see what happens.

jaehaerys1

Without monopolized property rights enforcement by city planners preventing the full utilization of public land to organize communities in ways that are actually organic, emergent, and practical; these issues considered to be flaws of capitalism would be largely irrelevant.

Property rights are a social institution. They exist because a group of people/community mutually recognize and enforce it for each other’s benefit. If you have the building of some absentee speculator just sitting there for years unused while people struggle under a highly regulated housing market, that’s immoral. Many libertarians may turn a blind eye to that, but it should be criticized and opposed. And it certainly shouldn’t be considered the result of a free market.

Neighbors in historically decentralized communities have always taken common sense measures to ensure that mindless speculation and hoarding of land wouldn’t waste their local resources and artificially drive up rent and home ownership.

This exists because of monopolized property rights enforcement which, no surprise, exists largely to benefit crony big business at the expense of everyone else.

gcu-sovereign

/in my estimation, this is the furthest left I’ve seen jaehaerys1 go on a libertarian topic/

Although I have to wonder to what extent local and decentralized measures are necessary.

Japan has famously good land use policy, and to my knowledge, no problem with speculators acting as absentee landlords. But Japan even more famously has a falling population.

So I have to wonder at what point these local measures to increase land utilization would have to kick in even if you started reducing land use restrictions.

@voxette-vk

argumate

Part of the problem in this specific case is caused by economic extortion of the Chinese people by the state, and their attempts to evade this.

As long as something fucked up is happening in one part of the world, other parts of the world are going to end up compensating for it in one way or another.

shieldfoss

Abandoned homes are only a good investment if there’s a cheap way to prevent squatters from moving in and taking over, otherwise you lose all your money paying your guards.

In this specific instance, that would be “the police will do it for me for free.”

In the grand tradition of crony capitalism, they are wasting a public resource (police time) propping up their private capital.

argumate

These are mostly apartments, so it only takes a small number of people occupying the building and the possible presence of a caretaker to make squatters exceedingly unlikely.

shieldfoss

What’s the caretaker going to do if he finds squatters?

Because I believe he’ll first threaten to call, and then escalate to calling, the police.

oktavia-von-gwwcendorff

Actually if we take David Friedman’s rule on criminals having to compensate proportionally to the harm they cause (such as in the example of breaking and entering a cabin in the woods to recharge your cell phone to call 911), it would force equilibrium prices really damn quickly.

Someone squatting in someone else’s apartment is undoubtedly a violation of property rights, but the actual compensation for squatting an empty building might be really (surprisingly, so some) low.

If the squatters evacuate promptly once a paying tenant is found it’s definitely not the price of rent, because the building was not generating any revenue and thus the opportunity cost was zero. If they don’t cause any damage to the apartment the depreciation costs are negligible. It seems like it would mostly come down to utility bills, changing the locks twice (once to replace the original picked lock with one controlled by the tenants, once to replace that one with the landlord’s lock others don’t have keys to), rent for however long it takes for the squatters to move out once they’re informed that someone is actually going to live there (which could be just a few days), and whatever wear and tear has occurred.

Thus, if this were ancapistan, well-behaved squatters would be able to obtain housing for really cheap. This would quickly incentivize marginal apartment owners to find someone who pays actual rent, pushing prices down towards 100-friction% occupancy.

neoliberalism-nightly

I think you guys are overestimating how much the market is actually in equilibrium, the difference of the average cost of providing security in today’s society to occupied and unoccupied apartment buildings, and the marginal cost of finding a clean squatter and ensuring that they are actually like that vs Airbnb which you know are kind of banned everywhere in the developing world.

mitigatedchaos

Yeah, I agree with NN here.

Like, if you get a bad squatter that messes everything up, just how are you going to extract the value from them to fix things? If they had all sorts of money laying around they would not be squatters. If they could easily generate that money when ordered to do so they would probably not be squatters. If you have to throw them into a work camp to get that money, that’s really sketchy tbh and smells of slavery, and also it would probably depend on state subsidy.

“If only we didn’t have a monopoly on the enforcement of property rights” is a blatant overreaction to a situation that would be easily sorted out by just changing the zoning rules, and in London at least, Chinese value-holding housing stock is only a miniscule fraction of total housing stock.

Source: argumate the invisible fist

brazenautomaton

Anonymous asked:

Sometimes, 14-15 year olds have to take on adult responsibilities for their families. A hardship license would allow them to drive and take on a job.

thesymbolofpeace answered:

They shouldn’t have to work how is that not against child labor laws that’s a kid

guidancerune

problem: families dealing with poverty when their parents cant sustain the family on their own

stupid idiot solution: aid programs, base income, fair housing

smart brain genius solution: Child Labour 2: Electric Boogaloo

brazenautomaton

galaxy buddha brain solution: “they shouldn’t have to do this thing in order to solve their problem, so I will wisely prevent them from solving their problem at all, because the moment the problem leaves my vision cone I will forget about it entirely except for the vague sense I am a Good Person who does Good Things”

this is how you get california housing laws

mitigatedchaos

This is the real risk of the opposite approach. The family ends up at the whims of the state bureaucracy, which may be dysfunctional or even deliberately rendered dysfunctional by politicals.

So unless your ideology specifically includes, in its doctrines, that you must be constantly checking on the effectiveness of the state bureaucracy, not to cut it, but to make sure what you’re doing actually works and isn’t just something you thought might work, you have to be careful.

Source: thesymbolofpeace the invisible fist the iron hand