Immigration and multiculturalism news

[Bassoe]

Don't waste your time in fruitless delusions of how things could have been different. Just stay focused on the future. Win.

Plus, we've already got a thread for "if historic civilizations could've seen modernity, how'd they have reacted differently" and it isn't this one.

 

[Abhorsen]

Lmao yes it is, it is THE fundamental problem economics seeks to understand.

This shows more problems with your claims of deep knowledge of economics. A fundamental problem is vastly different than a Fundamental Theorem. Patterns is basically what math studies. But no one says "Patterns are a fundamental theorem of Math". No, we say stuff like "Every integer greater than one has a unique prime factorization" is the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic. Note that there's actually a claim there. It's not something like "Primes are important." Any economist or mathematician would know this.

A theorem is not a problem. It's not a concept. It's not even a theory. It's the result of a mathematical proof, and it is TRUE in the same way that a triangle has three sides.

You could maybe claim that "Scaricity implies that all economic games are zero sum", but that's wrong and roundly rejected by economists the world over. But at least you'd be at the level of conjecture (by which I mean the term for an unproven, maybe true maybe not, possible theorem, not the usual meaning of the term). But you don't meet that level if you just say "Scarcity is an interesting problem."

No I think I've expressed the very simple point clearly and you just want it to not be true so will continuing arguing until the cows come home.

A very simply wrong point. A point that economists widely disagree with, as I showed above.

 

[King Arts]

You're either expressing all of this very poorly, or you're focusing on only one aspect of things. Bringing up 'zero sum' really does not do you any favors, because while we live in a zero sum physical universe, we absolutely do not live in a zero sum economic system.

I'm still not sure what you're trying to get at.

But we do. Unless you are saying it’s possible for all humans to enjoy the lifestyle of an oil sheik?

 

[LordsFire]

But we do. Unless you are saying it’s possible for all humans to enjoy the lifestyle of an oil sheik?

That question is a poor example, but I'll answer it anyways:

Yes.

Take an Oil Sheikh from the 1960's, when the oil boom just got going. Compare them to an upper middle class American right now, and there won't be all that much difference in creature comforts.

Compare an oil sheikh from the 90's and onward, and you'd need to go to the top 1% of Americans to be able to compete.

However, if we avoid a social and economic collapse, and especially if we can also throw off the ball-and-chain of socialism, maybe in another 40-60 years your average middle class person in a modern nation will be living much like an oil sheikh does now. I'd expect it to take longer than that, probably another hundred years or more, but it's far from impossible.

There's finite material wealth in the universe, but the ability to access and effectively utilize that wealth is growing over time with technology and population.

Not everybody can live like the richest man in the world, because by definition there's only one richest man in the world, there's only 1000 '1000 richest men in the world,' etc. But zero-sum thinking encourages the idea that there must be winners and losers, when in fact everyone can come out ahead in a healthy economy.

Did the rest of the world become poorer because we bought oil from Oil Sheikhs?

Not remotely, on the contrary the purchase of cheap oil in vast quantities has been critical to the prosperity of the modern world. Just about everybody came out ahead on that exchange.

Did some people come out more ahead than other people?

Absolutely, that oil sheikh is richer than the millions of people who put gas in their cars, bough plastics made from petroleum products, etc, but he did not gain that wealth at their expense.

Both benefited.

Can an argument be made that if it wasn't for crippling bureaucratic nonsense from the greens, America could have used its own oil reserves to fuel our economy instead, and thus America would have been even wealthier than otherwise?

That is absolutely possible, and I think the EPA should be just about abolished and most Federal Bureaucracy voided in order to see if that's true or not.

But the problem there isn't that we traded with other countries for oil, it's a political problem, not an economic one, and trading with other countries for oil was better than not having any at all due to internal political stupidity.


Resources in this universe are finite (scarcity), but as our ability to make effective use of them grows, that scarcity becomes less sharp, and everybody can come out ahead. Can, not will. Humans rarely live up to ideals.

 

[King Arts]

That question is a poor example, but I'll answer it anyways:

Yes.

Take an Oil Sheikh from the 1960's, when the oil boom just got going. Compare them to an upper middle class American right now, and there won't be all that much difference in creature comforts.

Compare an oil sheikh from the 90's and onward, and you'd need to go to the top 1% of Americans to be able to compete.

However, if we avoid a social and economic collapse, and especially if we can also throw off the ball-and-chain of socialism, maybe in another 40-60 years your average middle class person in a modern nation will be living much like an oil sheikh does now. I'd expect it to take longer than that, probably another hundred years or more, but it's far from impossible.

There's finite material wealth in the universe, but the ability to access and effectively utilize that wealth is growing over time with technology and population.

Not everybody can live like the richest man in the world, because by definition there's only one richest man in the world, there's only 1000 '1000 richest men in the world,' etc. But zero-sum thinking encourages the idea that there must be winners and losers, when in fact everyone can come out ahead in a healthy economy.

Did the rest of the world become poorer because we bought oil from Oil Sheikhs?

Not remotely, on the contrary the purchase of cheap oil in vast quantities has been critical to the prosperity of the modern world. Just about everybody came out ahead on that exchange.

Did some people come out more ahead than other people?

Absolutely, that oil sheikh is richer than the millions of people who put gas in their cars, bough plastics made from petroleum products, etc, but he did not gain that wealth at their expense.

Both benefited.

Can an argument be made that if it wasn't for crippling bureaucratic nonsense from the greens, America could have used its own oil reserves to fuel our economy instead, and thus America would have been even wealthier than otherwise?

That is absolutely possible, and I think the EPA should be just about abolished and most Federal Bureaucracy voided in order to see if that's true or not.

But the problem there isn't that we traded with other countries for oil, it's a political problem, not an economic one, and trading with other countries for oil was better than not having any at all due to internal political stupidity.


Resources in this universe are finite (scarcity), but as our ability to make effective use of them grows, that scarcity becomes less sharp, and everybody can come out ahead. Can, not will. Humans rarely live up to ideals.

So scarcity is not a fallacy only a certain number of people right now can live like a modern oil sheik in giant palaces and have tons of servants deal with their every whim.

As for advancing technology that’s a future thing sure maybe in the future we will have replicators like in Star Trek and robots so we can all have every whim catered to. But we are talking about now. Not everyone can have a palace with servants to clean and care for it. It doesn’t mean the palace owner oppressed or stole from others to get it. But it is zero sum because not everyone can have it.

 

[Skitzyfrenic]

If it were zero sum, it would never get any better.

There would be no growth, no increase in wealth, no improvement in the quality of life.

Given that there have been huge increases in wealth and massive improvements in the quality of people's lives, it's pretty obviously not zero sum.

 

[King Arts]

If it were zero sum, it would never get any better.

There would be no growth, no increase in wealth, no improvement in the quality of life.

Given that there have been huge increases in wealth and massive improvements in the quality of people's lives, it's pretty obviously not zero sum.

It practically is zero sum though because while access to resources CAN be increased it isn’t always. Yes there will be 1000 resources instead of 100 like in the past. But there are still only 1000.
Zero sum means that there is a finite limit and that limit is not enough to give everyone everything they want.

 

[Abhorsen]

As for advancing technology that’s a future thing sure maybe in the future we will have replicators like in Star Trek and robots so we can all have every whim catered to. But we are talking about now. Not everyone can have a palace with servants to clean and care for it. It doesn’t mean the palace owner oppressed or stole from others to get it. But it is zero sum because not everyone can have it.

It's still not zero sum. First, because an economy has production. When stuff is produced/made, the total amount of wealth in the world goes up. Quite simply, the pie grows. We know this because world GDP is positive. If it was truly a zero sum game, the world GDP would have to be zero.

Second, because of subjective value. Different people value the same thing differently. So a trade between two people can benefit both, as they value what they receive more than what they gave up.

Yes, you can kinda turn economics into a zero sum game through redistribution, but only if you halt any further production. Production that constantly happens. And even then, it's likely a negatively valued game, not zero valued.

It practically is zero sum though because while access to resources CAN be increased it isn’t always. Yes there will be 1000 resources instead of 100 like in the past. But there are still only 1000.
Zero sum means that there is a finite limit and that limit is not enough to give everyone everything they want.

This is the wrong definition. Games with a finite limit can be positive sum. For example, a game where we flip a coin, and heads, a dollar appears from nowhere into your pocket, and tails, a dollar appears in my pocket, is a positive valued game. There's still limited resources (you can't get more than a dollar), but it is positive valued, as one of us is better off than before we played the game, and the other is no better or worse than before. A zero sum game isn't about limits, it's about how everything good that happens to one person must come at the equal expense of another. So you see that limit? If that limit isn't zero, then it's not a zero sum game.

For example, two companies bidding for a contract, and the one that's better suited gets the contract and turns a profit? Not a zero sum game between the two of them, because one benefited, while the other was only slightly harmed. No, opportunity cost doesn't actually count for this sort of calculation.

Also, resource access has consistently been expanded at an exponential rate over the last 200 years. Look at world GDP.

 

[LordsFire]

It practically is zero sum though because while access to resources CAN be increased it isn’t always. Yes there will be 1000 resources instead of 100 like in the past. But there are still only 1000.
Zero sum means that there is a finite limit and that limit is not enough to give everyone everything they want.

No, you are conflating scarcity with zero sum.

Scarcity in economics means 'there are limits.' It doesn't mean 'those limits never change.'

Zero sum means 'No one can gain without taking away from someone else.'

One of these is absolutely the case, the other absolutely is not.

 

[mrttao]

I outright stated the Fundamental Theorem of Economics as it was told to me, and every other student in the world, my first year of econ classes, the scarcity problem. There are finite resources in the world and humans have infinite wants. This causes people to have to ration via devices like currency and thus results in winners and losers.

You were taught false communist propaganda in your economics university class.

In reality, the vast vast vast majority of resources actually needed by humans are MANUFACTED by humans.

This is why we do not have 10,000 humans globally living as hunter gatherer tribes.
We grow food.
We desalinate water
We build shelter instead of finding natural caves
We build irrigation
We build sewage systems and treatment plants
We produce electricity. with vastly different levels of efficiency. up to nuclear power at the top.
And then there is all this space we can colonize to further expand our resources produced

A zero sum for wealth would be if cavemen could beat up other cavemen and take their shit. and that would result in some cavemen being homeless and starving and the winning cavemen magically shitting out a modern mansion with electricity and running water powered by the anguish of the starving

 

[Poe]

You were taught false communist propaganda in your economics university class.

Nah, I'm likely the only person alive who went to college left leaning and left a free market capitalist. This was almost entirely due to an econ professor I had back to back to back who was insistent on dunking on communists. Economics is the science of scarcity, I'm not going to continue arguing with anyone about this because it's ridiculous and is akin to arguing with people calling me wrong for saying classical mechanics is the study of motion. It's just wrong and if everyone here agrees with it it says more about the people here than anything else.

In reality, the vast vast vast majority of resources actually needed by humans are MANUFACTED by humans.

From inputs the source of which eventually are not humans. You can not make a microchip without silicon.

This is why we do not have 10,000 humans globally living as hunter gatherer tribes.
We grow food.
We desalinate water
We build shelter instead of finding natural caves
We build irrigation
We build sewage systems and treatment plants
We produce electricity. with vastly different levels of efficiency. up to nuclear power at the top.
And then there is all this space we can colonize to further expand our resources produced

A zero sum for wealth would be if cavemen could beat up other cavemen and take their shit. and that would result in some cavemen being homeless and starving and the winning cavemen magically shitting out a modern mansion with electricity and running water powered by the anguish of the starving

No one has argued people don't have breakthroughs that lead to more efficiency. Look, people here got super triggered because a group of us dared to question unrestricted free trade as a platonic good (that globalization is the communist propaganda here, not arguing against it btw) and my point was that there isn't any scientific backing for claiming it is good. Yes it can benefit in certain capacities and industries but the most successful nations in the world right now, and historically, all regulated and restricted certain aspects of their economy and thus my point that it takes some warless, nationless, utopia to be as efficient as its proponents claim holds and that's not really something you can debate without appealing to ideology (because, again, there are no historical examples of purely free trade based societies working out in the long run.)

Also, just hitting this one last time, the idea that there aren't winners and losers in the economy is wrong because it's pretty central to the arguments in favor of capitalism on top of everything else I've said. Capital flows into the hands of those most able to utilize it etc. But I'm not looking to continue this argument, it's already a huge derail and I've said all I care to here. I was once a full blown lolbert and you aren't going to convince me to become one again nor while I convince anyone with that mindset that a globalized world based on purely free trade isn't possible. So best to just agree to disagree and save myself the keystrokes.

 

[mrttao]

Nah, I'm likely the only person alive who went to college left leaning and left a free market capitalist.

Irrelevant. It does not matter what you are.
You said you were taught "X" and I am telling you that "X" is communist propaganda instead of reality.
You being taught X does not mean you are a communist.
I also was taught communist propaganda in school, yet I loathe communists and I am not one myself.

If you happen to actually believe X... that still does not necessarily make you a communist. Just someone who fell for a specific bit of communist propaganda. But communism is more than just the 1 single factoid... err... falseoid

From inputs the source of which eventually are not humans. You can not make a microchip without silicon.

Raw unprocessed silicon is not scarce.
Not only earth, and certainly not outside of earth.
At no point ever during microchip production was there a case of "what if we run out of sand to refine into microchips"
Microchip availability is only limited by how many humans produce. not by how much silicon there is on earth

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

Japan is finding out just how useful these enterprising young engineers and scientists are.

 

[strunkenwhite]

More, you can even use the example I gave on a single person vs the rest of the world angle, which is why we don't all do subsidence farming anymore. The examples don't have to be countries. Comparative advantage works for any two groups of people, or even a person and everyone else.

Your idea that someone needs to lose somewhere is simply wrong. There's even experimental evidence that proves you wrong: the world's GDP. It's gone up a lot. Literally over team we have all become more productive. That can't happen if money is a zero sum game, as GDP is actually mathematically equivalent to Net Income. Usually, this is done on a per nation basis as Net National Income (each equal to that nation's GDP), but every nations' can be summed up into a world Net Income, which is greater than 0.

This directly contradicts the idea that the economy is a zero sum game. If it were, the Net Income would need to be zero, as any earning by someone would have to come out of someone else's pocket were this a zero sum game. But that isn't true: the Net Income is positive, wildly positive. So we know that economics isn't a zero sum game. And note that this is Real income, which adjusts for inflation as well.

Why is this the case? Because of subjective value: people can value the same item differently, which allows for mutually beneficial trade.

You go too far here. Taking for the sake of argument that all trade is zero sum (which I disagree with), that wouldn't make income zero because individuals would still produce value by their own hands to trade around.

 

[Abhorsen]

Let's compare a chess tournament to a chess cash game (like you'd see on the street).

In a tournament, the first so many places earn cash, everyone else earns nothing. In a chess cash game, you gamble, either earning the bet amount or losing it. Both of these have limited resources, but only one is a zero sum game, the cash game. For the tournament, there are only winners and those that didn't earn money. Even if you spread the tournament winnings around equally, there might not be enough money for everyone to afford food with, but that's still a positive sum game.

Economics is the science of scarcity, I'm not going to continue arguing with anyone about this because it's ridiculous and is akin to arguing with people calling me wrong for saying classical mechanics is the study of motion. It's just wrong and if everyone here agrees with it it says more about the people here than anything else.

You can call it the science of scarcity and you'd be right. You can't say that the fundamental theorem of economics is scarcity though. That would be like saying that motion is the fundamental theorem of classical mechanics. It's simply the wrong term entirely.

No one here is disputing that things are scarce and that economics is the study of scarcity. We are all disputing your conclusion that scarcity means a zero sum game. That, and only that, is wrong and socialist propaganda.

In short: Scarcity is the central focus of economics: we all agree on this.

Scarcity implies winners and losers: We disagree, and there's a ton of theoretical and experimental evidence you are wrong.

No one has argued people don't have breakthroughs that lead to more efficiency. Look, people here got super triggered because a group of us dared to question unrestricted free trade as a platonic good (that globalization is the communist propaganda here, not arguing against it btw) and my point was that there isn't any scientific backing for claiming it is good.

There very much is scientific backing for trade. Literally the beginning to Macroeconomics is all about free trade, and comparative advantage being awesome, with the theoretical backing. Later on, studies gave an experimental backing to it.

The issues with free trade are not economic ones, but about people lying and power.

Also, just hitting this one last time, the idea that there aren't winners and losers in the economy is wrong because it's pretty central to the arguments in favor of capitalism on top of everything else I've said. Capital flows into the hands of those most able to utilize it etc.

This doesn't follow. Your argument doesn't back up your statement.

 

[SoliFortissimi]

carcity implies winners and losers: We disagree, and there's a ton of theoretical and experimental evidence you are wrong.

Here's where the problem is. These gentlemen want it to be a zero sum game.

 

[mrttao]

Here's where the problem is. These gentlemen want it to be a zero sum game.

True. they don't want to produce more resourcces. they get off on the idea of making others suffer for their own benefit.
They are not happy living better than a medieval king. they are willing to sacrifice some of their happiness if it means sacrificing all of the happiness of others.

 

[SoliFortissimi]

True. they don't want to produce more resourcces. they get off on the idea of making others suffer for their own benefit.
They are not happy living better than a medieval king. they are willing to sacrifice some of their happiness if it means sacrificing all of the happiness of others.

Bro, you know I'm including you anti-trade guys in this, right? I'm on record stating that you guys are literally just preaching Stalinism with different labels.

 

[strunkenwhite]

Here's where the problem is. These gentlemen want it to be a zero sum game.

Not quite. What they want is to squeeze as hard as they possibly can. Even if it leads to diminishing returns. Even if it leads to negative returns for the system, as long as they personally profit one (1) penny from it.

There may be some madmen who want a zero sum game for ideological or pathological reasons, but the vast majority are simply addicted to number going up.

 

[Zachowon]

Japan is finding out just how useful these enterprising young engineers and scientists are.

Japan has like a 90% rate of getting charges taken and people put in jail.
He won't be released