ControlsFreak
No bio...
User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
The relative cost
What happens to the actual cost?
original point of the analogy "McDonald's" actually represents real child porn here, which is legally incapable of lowering its "cost/price" (in terms of risk etc.) on its own initiative
This is not true. There are a whole host of things that can be done. Not least of which is to frustrate legal sanctions through the difficulty of distinguishing real from fake.
Who claimed this? I didn't.
To me, you seemed to be claiming it. In any case I'm glad we agree then.
Making up a position that I never claimed and then seeing that I don't claim it does not imply that we agree.
ControlsFreak
6mo ago
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
What happens to the "actual" (that is, nominal/explicit) cost/price of something in the case of 5000000000% inflation?
I mean, if you want to posit a completely different scenario than one where the cost of a substitute good is decreased, we could ask that question and try to find an answer. There may or may not be one, and it may be either direction or zero, but it's not going to be relevant for the question at hand. IN THIS DISCUSSION, we're talking about a scenario where the cost of a substitute good is decreased. What happens to the actual cost of the good?
There is a very basic, very clear economics answer to this question, squarely within the domain of proper economic scholarship. Why are you simply avoiding addressing the relevant question?
The PROTECT Act of 2003
Sure. You're proposing that we institute a new policy regime, which likely would have impacts to the viability of such things.
Well I'm afraid you may have to restate your position then.
You can reread my comments if you'd like. Right now, I'm just trying to get a simple economics answer to a simple economics question. You confused yourself by going off on some random tangent about some random claim that you made up and which I never made.
ControlsFreak
6mo ago
Yup. You said that costs sometimes matter. Just inform your patients.
ControlsFreak
7mo ago
I would love to see a Twitter-style poll with the following options:
A) Keep Jones Act, don't implement Trump tariffs
B) Keep Jones Act, implement Trump tariffs
C) Repeal Jones Act, don't implement Trump tariffs
D) Repeal Jones Act, implement Trump tariffs
I'd love to see not only percentages, but some mental models from the people in different categories. This in inspired by seeing both Zvi's latest on the Jones Act and MR linking one estimate related to possible Trump tariffs.
Zvi doesn't sum it up super nicely, but estimates I see of the value of repealing the Jones Act are \approx 3% reduction in cost of goods (just due to the flagging effect) and a claim that a plausible OOM estimate is \approx 3% GDP increase (I lost the thread the other day on how to put approximately signs in without strikeout). The randomly-linked twitter post estimates price increases due to tariffs mostly around 2-3%, with some specific sectors rising up to 13%.
I suspect that most people just don't mentally look at economic estimates and compare them to each other, but I don't know what else goes on in their heads. If they're trying to justify one or the other position, how do they go about it? Is it at all plausible if we apply their justification to the other question?
Finally, heresthetics. Could an 'omnibus' option (D) bill be pushed, saying, "That old, bad, just banning stuff style protectionism clearly failed; we shot ourselves in the foot and didn't even manage to actually protect an industry in the process. Instead, tariffs will be the way; at the very least, taxes are slightly more pleasing to the economist than specific bans, as they still allow price signals to work somewhat and inspire new solutions, while at least collecting some revenue for a debt-strapped gov't"? Obviously, people would horrifically oppose it, but what would they say when they oppose it? What would the reasoning be? How would that reasoning come across to the people who would respond with a different choice from the list?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Why do you refuse to admit that the absolute is not as relevant as the relative?
Because I have a point about absolute that we can't get to, because you keep avoiding acknowledging basic economic facts.
I've already admitted the absolute value doesn't change many times
Have you acknowledged that it either doesn't change or goes down? In fact, it almost always goes down. Just admit this painfully obviously true tiny little fact about economics, and we can move on.
ControlsFreak
6mo ago
You don't know in advance of the visit, but you know before you take other actions. At that point, inform your patient.
PATIENTS CANNOT MAKE DECISIONS BASED OFF OF PRICES.
This is definitely a lie.
Purdue Pharma, held by the Sackler family, made billions from sales of Oxycontin, and so was a major force behind the opioid epidemic.
I have yet to see a single proponent of drug legalization (with the underlying reasoning being that if drugs were legal and produced to pharmaceutical standards, then no one would ever use them dangerously) write a single piece, in any venue, arguing that this claim is simply not true. One would think that if they really believed in their professed position, they would be screaming from the rooftops that the Sackler family should be absolutely praised for flooding the market with carefully crafted, pharmaceutical quality drugs, because the only logical conclusion is that this action necessarily saved lives by giving consumers a choice to use a well-regulated product rather than possibly tainted cartel dope.
Can anyone link me to even one such argument? It can be from the weirdest economist that you can dig out of the George Mason basement; it can be the weirdest communist stoner with a cushy lefty sinecure; I don't care. I just want even one that actually embraces the premises of the legalization movement and actually applies them to the case of the Sackler family, concluding that everyone else has gotten it wrong, and that we must necessarily view their actions as an unalloyed good for the world.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Whelp, if child porn is magically immune to economics, then we're probably not going to get very far. This is a very common failure mode for people; it happens a lot in drug prohibition discussions, too. (It does undercut your claim that we can analyze the outcome through first-order substitute goods/relative price analysis, though.)
In any event, I think we're pretty much done here. We've found the root of the disagreement. You think CP is immune to economics; I don't. There's probably not much more to say. I mean, I suppose I could say that I think I'm right. Lots of academic economists have very successfully applied traditional economic principles to a variety of black market goods, things that don't have a Black Market Goods Inc. engaging in free market competition. I find those works often persuasive.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
If Trump had paid Daniels directly, out of either campaign or personal funds, that would likely have been legal. If Cohen made the payment and Trump reimbursed Cohen out of campaign funds that also might have been legal (it converts Cohen's campaign contribution into an operation expense).
Hilarious, especially because this story keeps changing, depending on where we are in the argument. Most people used to say that if Trump reimbursed Cohen out of campaign funds, that would have been illegal use of campaign funds. The FEC says that there is an "irrespective" test, and so if Trump would have wanted to keep Daniels quiet irrespective of the election (quite plausibly), one would even say that it would be illegal for him to pay her from campaign funds. How do you see significant daylight between "Trump pays Daniels directly out of his personal funds," and, "Trump pays Daniels indirectly out of his personal funds," for purposes of campaign finance law? Statutory cites would be ideal, but even an FEC interpretation would be interesting.
Like, surely there are plenty of hypos here where you would agree. Trump doesn't have his wallet on him, so Cohen buys him lunch, then Trump pays him back later out of his personal funds. Surely, you would agree that this is not a campaign finance charge, yes? What then converts it into a campaign finance charge? Suppose Trump/Cohen were at a vendor, planning to complete a sale of a bunch of red TRUMP 2024 yard signs that Trump plans to distribute. Trump's plan is to pay for this from his personal funds, but he forgot his wallet, so Cohen pays for it, and Trump pays him back when they get back to his house. We have Supreme Court precedent that Trump is allowed to pay for election-related things from his personal funds. The FEC says very little about this, because they basically don't touch expenditures of personal funds by candidates. They have plenty to say about things like extending credit when you're paying it back via campaign funds (or a PAC), because that is directly about the use of campaign funds (or PAC funds). This is about personal funds.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
the real extra "cost" of child porn above eroticized content of fictional children like lolicon is actually its illegality/extra taboo/difficulty to access, which no creator of child porn can simply alter or abolish in order to try to "compete" with substitutes (like a producer of normal goods might simply lower actual prices).
Lots of academic economists have very successfully applied traditional economic principles to a variety of black market goods, things that don't have a Black Market Goods Inc. engaging in free market competition. I find those works often persuasive.
If it were simply a matter of actually lowering actual prices (which it's not because in reality both almost all lolicon and all real child porn are already distributed entirely for free)
Costs to consumers are not identical to a dollar figure charged.
there are many standard economic analyses of illegal goods like drugs, illegal guns, etc., but unfortunately those fall apart in the case of child porn as it's a purely non-physical good.
And apparently, all non-physical goods are now immune to economic analysis. Wow.
The part where the real thing changes its absolute cost/price ... in response to any of this doesn't happen ..., because that cost/price is imposed by policy...
Yeah, costs that are attempted to be imposed by policy are not magically immune from affecting the cost borne by different parties in different ways when markets shift. It's this type of reasoning that makes people think, "Just put a price cap/floor on it! That'll fix everything by... fixing the price... imposing it by policy. Supply and demand won't matter anymore, and there will be no adjustment in the market!" It doesn't work like this, here or with any other black market good.
the root of our disagreement is not that I believe that anything is immune from economic analysis
Then why have you again provided another attemped reason for why it's immune from economic analysis?
ControlsFreak
6mo ago
I'll take your silence to be an admission that you can inform your patient before you take other actions.
You can provide your patient the information that you have, as we have discussed over and over again.
Now what part of that changes by forcing a doctor into the process? Does the doctor come to your house and give you your pill, so you don't take the wrong dose? Does he monitor you 24/7 so that you don't take specific different medications at the same time? That might seem wild, but does he at least come twice a day to make sure you are taking it correctly so that it will treat your underlying disease?
EDIT: Wasn't looking for it, but Zvi's most recent had this and this. Interesting, to say the least.
ControlsFreak
10mo ago
when they are incorrect
This simply pushes the problem to the question of, "When are they correct/incorrect?" The silly version of this is that my driver's license has height on it. Suppose that for Person A, there was a genuine flubbing, a fat fingering. Their height was listed wrong. Presumably, they could request to have it changed on the document. On the other hand, Person B thinks that he's gotta be 6' tall for the dating apps, which in the future year of verified identity for everything, actually take in your driver's license information and use that in the algorithm. So, Person B waltzes into the DMV and says, "Well, obviously, you have a general process for updating these documents, so you need to list me as 6' tall." What should the government do when ye olde yardstick begs to differ?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Nobody is arguing
The argument is, instead, that adding a regulation increases the chance that we will slide down that slippery slope.
This is a vastly better argument, but one that wouldn't allow us to then simply reject any continued discussion, just because we've 'declared' slippery slope and observed that we're epsilon on it. For example, one might ask about the underlying reason for why it increases the chance that we will slide down it? The answer could take many forms, which may be more or less convincing for whether it does, indeed, increase the chance. See here for some examples, and feel free to click through for any specific sub-topics.
Section 5.4.1, "sensitive security parameters in persistent storage shall be stored securely by the device," seems a bit more likely to be a costly provision, and IMO one that misunderstands how hardware security works (there is no such thing as robust security against an attacker with physical access).
IMO, it shows that you misunderstand how these things work. They're not saying "secure against a nation state decapping your chip". They actually refer to ways that persistent storage can be generally regarded as secure, even if you can imagine an extreme case. To be honest, this is a clear sign that you've drunk the tech press kool aid and are pretty out in whacko land from where most serious tech experts are on this issue. Like, they literally tell you what standards are acceptable; it doesn't make any sense to concoct an argument for why it's AKSHUALLY impossible to satisfy the requirement.
And then there's perplexing stuff like 5.6.4 "where a debug interface is physically accessible, it shall be disabled in software.". Does this mean if you sell a color-changing light bulb, and the bulb has a usbc port, you're not allowed to expose logs across the network and instead have to expose them only over the usbc port?
H-what? What are you even talking about? This doesn't even make any sense. The standard problem here is that lots of devices have debug interfaces that are supposed to only be used by the manufacturer (you would know this if you read the definitions section), yet many products are getting shipped in a state where anyone can just plug in and do whatever they want to the device. This is just saying to not be a retard and shut it off if it's not meant to be used by the user.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
they also tend to incorporate a policy-oriented lens such as public choice theory....
When analyzing things like how policy is made, sure. We're asking questions about prices/quantities, given some results of those things. This is a commonly done thing for many black-market goods.
you can't apply the same economic analyses that you would apply to physical goods to non-physical goods, which is absolutely true. You wouldn't download an illegal silencer.
Correct-ish. You do actually apply the same economic analysis. There are just some quantities in there that are different (MC=0 is the main one). Economists didn't just quit and go home ("Guess we can't perform economic analysis anymore") after the digital revolution happened. They analyzed the new situations, using pretty much the same tools.
I don't actually think there are any good economic analyses of them (that I'm aware of) because in most cases just learning about them (by observing their circulation in action)
That would be econometric (which, frankly, doesn't even require physical possession, if you design your study well). We can still apply basic economic theory to make predictions without observing literal child porn. You were trying to do this at one point, too... before you decided that CP was immune to economics.
If you can find me the work of an economist, sociologist, or some other academic who has actually personally violated child porn law
Not needed; as above. I'm not going to go look for it now, because it's not worth it for an economics-denier (you'll find some reason to deny it), but on related scores, I'm 100% confident that I've seen economic analysis (and econometric analysis) of illegal drugs and guns, without any academic personally violating gun/drug laws. There is zero reason, in principle, why an academic could not for example partner up with NCMEC to get access to decent-quality data without personally violating any laws.
I simply pointed out which form of economic analysis is applicable
No, you just baldly asserted that one thing (that you like) is applicable, but literally the rest of economics is magically inapplicable. You have not reasoned for it.
Anyway you are back to being obtuse, intentionally ignoring the main thrusts of my argument while snarking at snippets taken out of context to imply they express something that they don't. You do realize that this behavior is just making it more and more transparent that you don't have much of a real point and just want to argue to argue, right?
ControlsFreak
6mo ago
We have already agreed that you have pieces of information that can be useful. It was very long ago at this point. Just give them the information that you have.
On the other bit, you're going to have to give me a reason why you can't inform your patient before you take other actions, because so far, a lot of your stated reasons for things have been somewhere between bizarre and bollocks, so I'm definitely not going to accept a completely unstated reason.
ControlsFreak
11mo ago
On the topic of a small number of relatively 'known' people being involved in an outsized portion of the crime problem
or
AI is sometimes allowed to say things that are otherwise not allowed to be said, so long as they make sure to say that it's definitely not racist
Machine Learning Can Predict Shooting Victimization Well Enough to Help Prevent It is the name of the paper. They took arrest/victimization records in Chicago and tried to predict who was likely to be shot in the next 18 months. 644,000 people in the data; of the top 500 with the highest predicted risk, almost 13% were shot. That's the top line. 13% accuracy might not seem like much, but they claim that the rate is 128 times higher than that of the average Chicagoan. For context, that's 64 shooting victims over an 18mo period. I don't know what the total 'shot but maybe didn't die' rate is, but Chicago has in the ballpark of 600 homicides (by all means) each year.
This is not about who did the shooting; it's about who was shot. The implicit argument is that most shooting victims are close enough to the criminal world. Even if they were just purely victims before, it is at their doorstep. Plausibly, if a little old lady just happens to live in a really terrible neighborhood and had to report being the victim of various prior crimes, this could indicate that she is also at risk of getting shot, too.
They definitely go out of their way to say that, yes, Black males are more likely to have prior data in the system, but that the system still predicts with similar accuracy across demographics.
I don't know how practical these sorts of things will be to actually use for any purpose, but this paper dropping is definitely adding some fuel for the folks who think that a variety of criminal problems are mostly concentrated within a relatively small subset that could, at least in theory, be somewhat identified.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
That is a gross mischaracterization of what I said. I didn't claim that it exists. I said that I wasn't going to look, which implies that I don't actually know whether it exists. Then, I gave reasons why I wasn't going to look for your specific demand, one that involves an academic breaking the law, for two reasons. 1) I've 100% seen economic analysis done on other illegal products without breaking the law (which should be sufficient, but doesn't meet your stupid criteria), and 2) Your stupid criteria is stupid, because in principle, there is no reason why such work could be done without breaking the law. But you have this stupid criteria that they must break the law, so there would be no point in me wasting time finding something, anyway (because you would reject it, since they didn't break the law).
Feel free to come back in the future anytime you want to have non-stupid criteria and actually discuss economics of child porn rather than just baldly asserting that economics magically doesn't apply unless an academic broke the law.
ControlsFreak
6mo ago
You don't need to hire a consultant to inform your patient about the charge that you will be billing their insurance or the negotiated rate. Apples/oranges/whole wheat pasta is another bizarre thing that appears to have no relevance to the question at hand. You have the information we've been talking about. You can just inform your patient. You can do it before you take further action that would generate such a charge. It would be unethical to do otherwise.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
You might have missed the line about mistaking methodological constraints for a metaphysical theory. That's pretty darn close to the central claim of most atheists, especially the ones 'round the internets who would be most apt for not-kid-gloves treatment.
a lot of old-school atheists got really uncomfortable about "atheism+" or "New Atheism", and those are the steps that really defined the transition. I could also argue that this confuses correlation and causation if 2010s atheism was really just a corpse piloted by SJWs.
But that's kind of the whole point. They created the corpse! They knew what they were doing when they killed it. But like any social fad, they shrugged it off, thinking that nothing could possibly go wrong. Only after they saw the fruits of their labor did they start feeling uncomfortable about the whole thing. Let's put it this way, I've seen arguments that Christianity is to blame for wokeness, and some of those arguments are actually not all that bad. But if you look at, like, a random Protestant 'barely believer' church that is now headed toward wokeness, you probably wouldn't say that they caused the rise of wokeness. You certainly wouldn't use that in particular to claim that Christianity in general caused the rise of wokeness. But you might say something like, "Look at these churches who have basically abandoned any real faith, are honestly basically agnostic already, don't even really believe in any sort of real morality. Those choices have left a corpse of a church which was just too vulnerable to 'woke mind virus'." In a sense, those choices caused wokeness to rise up in those churches rather than in others. In the same sense, that's what a lot of the 2010s atheism did to large portions of the masses.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Your suggestion to just get information from the NCMEC is hopelessly naive too. Are you going to ask the National Center Against the Exploitation of Illegal and Harmful Drugs for objective data to analyze that market next too?
The only two options are, "Believe everything said by one of the organizations," or, "Don't even bother trying." Brilliant. If only we had the ability to work to acquire a source of data and then not be stupid about how we analyze it...
If I'm an economist and tell people I'm researching the economics of heroin or something the response will probably be something like "Heh, cool. Drugs are fun." If I tell them I'm researching child pornography, that immediately shifts the whole mood in the room.
Sure, this would be relevant for whether someone actually has done econometrics. Not at all relevant for whether basic economic reasoning is applicable to the product. You had started off trying to apply basic economic reasoning to the product, before changing course and deciding that all economic reasoning is inapplicable (except the one you did).
That you refuse to acknowledge it at all
Try again, maybe? I mean, I've ignored a lot of the total garbage you've been spewing; maybe I missed a nice, defensible motte in your comments.
I accept your admitted inability to refute my central point
You're funny. Please, try to state your central point. It would be nice if your central point didn't include, "...and therefore, child porn is immune to economics."
ControlsFreak
6mo ago
Patients want to know what they will pay
You're ignoring what I've written time and time again. I am asking you to simply inform your patient about the charge you are going to submit to their insurance and the negotiated rate. That is information that can be useful. You are correct that it is not an exact description of exactly what they will pay out of pocket. There are also deductibles, co-insurance, out-of-pocket max, etc. That's not to do with you; that's why you're not telling them those other things. You're telling them the information that you have - the charge that you are going to submit to their insurance and the negotiated rate. You have this information. You can tell them. Just tell them.
ControlsFreak
9mo ago
Last week, this comment spurred a few subthreads about electronic and/or digital and/or online voting (depending on what one wants from it). I felt like the dominant view was that it was a terrible idea, hopelessly insecure, and perhaps even a bridge too far for one being able to think that an election is legitimate.
Today, I saw this article, saying that Kamala Harris' name was left off of some Montana ballots, causing them to shut things down until they could fix the problem. As I started reading, I casually wondered, "Shut what down? Just the ballot-printing process? Why is the headline saying 'voting system'?" Then I read the article and learned for the first time that Montana has an "electronic absentee voter system" that allows, for example, "Max Himsl, a Montana voter living in the UK," (who reported the issue) to "fill out his ballot online".
Whelp, I guess it's arrived. Is it a stupid, terrible idea? Is it hopelessly insecure? Has it delegitimized Montana's election? It is something that nobody's doing, nobody would do, nobody would be stupid enough to do, and it's a good thing that it's happening now?
Having not personally looked into the technicals of the system at all yet (obviously, having only just heard about it five minutes ago) and having said that I thought that a lot depended on technical specifics, I have little idea about how to feel other than that it seems obviously impossible for online voting to seriously maintain secrecy in voting, which I do care about. Of course, almost any system that allows for absentee voting seriously struggles on this point (as was pointed out by one of those international pro-democracy organizations that I quoted long ago), though I think that most people are somewhat willing to give up a little bit of this if it's a small number of absentee votes.
You already agreed that it can have value. Just give them the information that you have. You're out of excuses.
More options
Context Copy link