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Atlas Shrugged: Why is this so bad?

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Posts

  • NartwakNartwak Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    That site is hilarious.

    Of course it is, it's the fucking Heritage Foundation. :lol:

    Nartwak on
  • celandinecelandine Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    I'd be the world's oddest conservative -- never put myself in that box -- but yeah, Eisenhower over Reagan any day.

    Reagan sounded good on econ -- and he was quoting a few good guys -- but you lose all your libertarian cred when you just turn around and spend like the dickens on war and prisons. Also the war crimes. He seemed to be of the philosophy of "Everything's okay so long as there are guns!"

    celandine on
    I write about math here:
    http://numberblog.wordpress.com/
  • nexuscrawlernexuscrawler Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    yeah health care is a huge anchor around US businesses necks

    if you were against the GM bailouts wanna guess one of the big reasons it happened

    HEALTH INSURANCE

    nexuscrawler on
  • celandinecelandine Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    I never know whether people are aware that there's another solution to health care, or whether they just don't like it.

    celandine on
    I write about math here:
    http://numberblog.wordpress.com/
  • Dark_SideDark_Side Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    celandine wrote: »
    I'd be the world's oddest conservative -- never put myself in that box -- but yeah, Eisenhower over Reagan any day.

    Reagan sounded good on econ -- and he was quoting a few good guys -- but you lose all your libertarian cred when you just turn around and spend like the dickens on war and prisons. Also the war crimes. He seemed to be of the philosophy of "Everything's okay so long as there are guns!"

    Reagan sounded good on econ? Really? I mean he was the guy who brought about that ridiculous scam called "trickle down economics". I have a hard time seeing Reagan as anything other than an affable old fool doing favors for his republican buddies.

    Dark_Side on
  • DeebaserDeebaser on my way to work in a suit and a tie Ahhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    celandine wrote: »
    I never know whether people are aware that there's another solution to health care, or whether they just don't like it.

    Please share.

    Deebaser on
  • CorehealerCorehealer The Apothecary The softer edge of the universe.Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Dear god is this thread alive again? I thought we all already came to the conclusion that Atlas Shrugged is dirt and Ayn Rand's selfish philosophy is stupid. Doesn't even sound like we are talking about her book anymore, just what's wrong with America (again).

    Stop resuscitating it and make new threads.

    Corehealer on
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  • templewulftemplewulf The Team Chump USARegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    yeah health care is a huge anchor around US businesses necks

    if you were against the GM bailouts wanna guess one of the big reasons it happened

    HEALTH INSURANCE

    Cars almost seemed ancillary to their lending and retirement operations.

    templewulf on
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  • celandinecelandine Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Deebaser wrote: »
    celandine wrote: »
    I never know whether people are aware that there's another solution to health care, or whether they just don't like it.

    Please share.

    Friedman in 2001: http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/7298

    Goldhill in 2009, with almost the same argument: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/7617/

    This is roughly how I see the whole health care issue. I'm not sure, but I suspect that most people debate health care as universal health care vs. status quo, without even having heard of this third way.

    celandine on
    I write about math here:
    http://numberblog.wordpress.com/
  • templewulftemplewulf The Team Chump USARegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    celandine wrote: »
    Deebaser wrote: »
    celandine wrote: »
    I never know whether people are aware that there's another solution to health care, or whether they just don't like it.

    Please share.

    Friedman in 2001: http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/7298

    Goldhill in 2009, with almost the same argument: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/7617/

    This is roughly how I see the whole health care issue. I'm not sure, but I suspect that most people debate health care as universal health care vs. status quo, without even having heard of this third way.

    Reading through Goldhill's article, I see a lot of ideas I like, but I don't think that patients are ultimately qualified to rate their medical care. In so many surveys, we see that patient satisfaction has as much to do with TV access and private rooms (both big cost increases) than the quality of their health care providers.

    One reform that I think would solve a lot of the perverse incentive issues is bundled charges. If I pay $X for a surgery, and the doctor fucks up, I already paid my $X. Everything related to that incident is just billed to the hospital who won't be happy with my doctor. That ought to solve the "wah, wah, tort!" problem without any further intervention.

    templewulf on
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  • celandinecelandine Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Well, that's where you and I differ.

    The current system involves perverse incentives causing hospitals, doctors, and patients to make bad choices for everyone's health, with everyone's money. I'd rather take the risk that some people might make "bad" choices for their own health, with their own money.

    celandine on
    I write about math here:
    http://numberblog.wordpress.com/
  • DeebaserDeebaser on my way to work in a suit and a tie Ahhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    But that's silly. Doctor's and hospitals have an enormous information advantage and also have you by the balls. Sure there are incentives to perform more bullshit procedures now, but that incentive doesn't disappear when you're wallet raping your patients directly instead of "the system".

    I don't know about you, but if my doc finds a lump on me I don't want to have to worry that my doctor is scaring the shit out of me to upsell me some services so I don't go shopping around.

    Deebaser on
  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    The information-advantage thing is true in pretty much every profession. There are lots of ways to mitigate it, like by not giving doctors, personally, a cut of however many services they sell.

    @celandine - do you read a blogger called Scott Sumner, by any chance?

    ronya on
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  • templewulftemplewulf The Team Chump USARegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    celandine wrote: »
    Well, that's where you and I differ.

    The current system involves perverse incentives causing hospitals, doctors, and patients to make bad choices for everyone's health, with everyone's money. I'd rather take the risk that some people might make "bad" choices for their own health, with their own money.

    Unfortunately, it's never as clean as that. Who are these "some people"? Are they the patients? Doctors? Working in health care information, my experience is that patients mostly just do whatever their doctors suggest.

    Assuming you're knowledgeable enough to navigate an unscrupulous doctor's suggestions (which is untrue for most people), you still can't shield yourself from societal costs that end up in places like the ER and will come out of your taxes anyway.

    templewulf on
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  • JuliusJulius Captain of Serenity on my shipRegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Deebaser wrote: »
    But that's silly. Doctor's and hospitals have an enormous information advantage and also have you by the balls. Sure there are incentives to perform more bullshit procedures now, but that incentive doesn't disappear when you're wallet raping your patients directly instead of "the system".

    I don't know about you, but if my doc finds a lump on me I don't want to have to worry that my doctor is scaring the shit out of me to upsell me some services so I don't go shopping around.

    Your fault for not educating yourself enough to correctly diagnose yourself.

    Julius on
  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    (lighting the Atomic Ross signal...)

    A combination of means-testing and compulsory savings accounts solves the ER funding problem somewhat.

    ronya on
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  • LoklarLoklar Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Julius wrote: »
    Deebaser wrote: »
    But that's silly. Doctor's and hospitals have an enormous information advantage and also have you by the balls. Sure there are incentives to perform more bullshit procedures now, but that incentive doesn't disappear when you're wallet raping your patients directly instead of "the system".

    I don't know about you, but if my doc finds a lump on me I don't want to have to worry that my doctor is scaring the shit out of me to upsell me some services so I don't go shopping around.

    Your fault for not educating yourself enough to correctly diagnose yourself.

    It's a little disingenuous to suggest that every single person needs to know about medicine for the force of individual-choice to take effect.

    I hope that sentence made sense... let me explain.

    People tend to talk about things that are affecting their lives, and they tend to become interested and research those things. If someone gets cancer, they'll probably tell their friends and family and google "cancer". Where they will find some information that empowers them.

    Sometimes people have a friend who survived/died of the same problem. Or a journalist will write an article on how it went good/bad at a certain hospital. Some of the information will be wrong, but that's life.

    As royna said, the information problem exists with any industry. Somehow morons get their cars fixed and they don't often get ripped off. Or if they do get ripped off, it tends to only happen once. (Or they are rich and don't care).

    Loklar on
  • LoklarLoklar Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    ronya wrote: »
    (lighting the Atomic Ross signal...)

    A combination of means-testing and compulsory savings accounts solves the ER funding problem somewhat.

    I like this plan.

    Combine it with hospital records being easily available to all (after it's anonymatized).

    Loklar on
  • templewulftemplewulf The Team Chump USARegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Loklar wrote: »
    Sometimes people have a friend who survived/died of the same problem. Or a journalist will write an article on how it went good/bad at a certain hospital. Some of the information will be wrong, but that's life.

    Which would be fine if the product you're researching is a new Mexican restaurant. If it's your long-term health, I'd rather not be the first dude to die in order to shift the market away from bad actors.

    templewulf on
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  • celandinecelandine Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    ronya wrote: »
    The information-advantage thing is true in pretty much every profession. There are lots of ways to mitigate it, like by not giving doctors, personally, a cut of however many services they sell.

    @celandine - do you read a blogger called Scott Sumner, by any chance?

    I have sometimes. (I've scaled way back on the econ-blog universe... huge time sink.)

    Patients aren't experts in medicine and they shouldn't have to be. But then again, consumers buy stocks without being financial experts, buy cars without knowing engineering... when we're not knowledgeable, we pay someone to advise us. Sometimes it's an individual advisor (like a stockbroker or an accountant) and sometimes it's a rating system (like Moody's or Consumer Reports.) In an world with competitive medicine, there would be a medical advice business, and some people with MD's would be doing it.

    Right now, patients do what their doctors suggest because it's free for them. Relevant anecdote: my sister's GP keeps ordering ridiculous tests that do nothing but scare the family half to death. She had to get an EKG for a heart murmur (which turned out to be benign, as many heart murmurs are, especially when they don't cause any pain or difficulty.) If there's the remotest possibility that an X-ray or a blood test could be ordered, the doctor will ask for them. This is tremendously expensive and my family wouldn't dream of paying it out of pocket (my mom used to be a nurse and has a good idea of what's an emergency and what isn't.) But, incentives being what they are, we just go along with everything... and so it goes.

    celandine on
    I write about math here:
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  • LoklarLoklar Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    templewulf wrote: »
    Loklar wrote: »
    Sometimes people have a friend who survived/died of the same problem. Or a journalist will write an article on how it went good/bad at a certain hospital. Some of the information will be wrong, but that's life.

    Which would be fine if the product you're researching is a new Mexican restaurant. If it's your long-term health, I'd rather not be the first dude to die in order to shift the market away from bad actors.

    What system would solve that?

    By far most people aren't going to die of something never-seen before. And if it's that new you might not make it no matter what.

    Loklar on
  • DeebaserDeebaser on my way to work in a suit and a tie Ahhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    ronya wrote: »
    The information-advantage thing is true in pretty much every profession. There are lots of ways to mitigate it, like by not giving doctors, personally, a cut of however many services they sell.

    Yes, but in the medicine it's more likely to be a life and death situation than with a plumber.

    Deebaser on
  • templewulftemplewulf The Team Chump USARegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    celandine wrote: »
    ronya wrote: »
    The information-advantage thing is true in pretty much every profession. There are lots of ways to mitigate it, like by not giving doctors, personally, a cut of however many services they sell.

    @celandine - do you read a blogger called Scott Sumner, by any chance?

    Right now, patients do what their doctors suggest because it's free for them.

    Being entirely removed from price can do that, but a.) where is your insurance, because holy shit I wish everything we ordered was free for us, and b.) even if they were paying 100% of the cost, they still wouldn't be knowledgeable enough to disagree with their doctor. Google does not count as a medical adviser.

    Here's what I think are the steps to reducing over-utilization by physicians:
    1. Simplify and subsidize medical education such that doctors no longer need to recover an investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars in education. This will require us to live in an alternate universe without the AMA, but I can live with that.
    2. Set up a system in which doctors are paid salaries, rather than cost-per-service. This solves the perverse incentive problem for the doctors, but medical facilities may still pressure doctors to over-utilize for their employer's benefit. I don't know how to remove employer pressure from this equation.
    3. Bundling charges in such a way that additional infections acquired at the hospital are not billed to the patient will incentivize medical facilities to solve problems, rather than prolong hospital stays.
    4. Remove medical insurance companies from the process. This is something which the Goldhill article got correct, but I think universal coverage is better than letting individuals fend for themselves with a patchwork of means testing on top.
    5. If you go the universal, single-payer route, you can dramatically reduce the paperwork involved in medical procedures. You have no idea how much of my day is consumed by the minutiae of claims and statements.

    I also feel a vague, liberal antipathy toward pharmaceutical companies who spend more on marketing than research, and who gussy up old products in new packaging to continue charging outrageous prices, but I don't have a clear answer to that problem.

    templewulf on
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  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Deebaser wrote: »
    ronya wrote: »
    The information-advantage thing is true in pretty much every profession. There are lots of ways to mitigate it, like by not giving doctors, personally, a cut of however many services they sell.

    Yes, but in the medicine it's more likely to be a life and death situation than with a plumber.

    Hospital management that answers to a health ministry instead still has to deal with the same information-advantage problem.

    The benefit is that it is likely to be more sane about evaluating quality of life improvements; the drawback is being more removed from the treatment than the patient.

    ronya on
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  • Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Could somebody at least try to bring health care debate back to the premise of the book?

    Santa Claustrophobia on
  • nexuscrawlernexuscrawler Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    templewulf wrote: »
    yeah health care is a huge anchor around US businesses necks

    if you were against the GM bailouts wanna guess one of the big reasons it happened

    HEALTH INSURANCE

    Cars almost seemed ancillary to their lending and retirement operations.

    it's a sad case really. The car companies are not perfect but how the system works really fucked them. i mean you have one of the backbones of American industry and a huge cause of the rise of the midwestern middle class. They did try to do well by their employees and got utterly fucked because our social system blows.

    nexuscrawler on
  • setrajonassetrajonas Registered User regular
    edited October 2010
    Sorry to resurrect this thread, but this is too good not to post.
    http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/10/01/what-i-think-about-atlas-shrugged/

    setrajonas on
  • SchrodingerSchrodinger Registered User regular
    edited October 2010
    Is anyone else amused by the fact that the recent salmonella/egg scare all started in the town of Galt, Iowa?

    Schrodinger on
  • ElitistbElitistb Registered User regular
    edited October 2010
    Loklar wrote: »
    As royna said, the information problem exists with any industry. Somehow morons get their cars fixed and they don't often get ripped off. Or if they do get ripped off, it tends to only happen once. (Or they are rich and don't care).

    Bwuh? People get ripped off by car repairs all the time, and usually repeatedly. And don't even get started on the car sales industry.

    Elitistb on
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  • SchrodingerSchrodinger Registered User regular
    edited October 2010
    Elitistb wrote: »
    Loklar wrote: »
    As royna said, the information problem exists with any industry. Somehow morons get their cars fixed and they don't often get ripped off. Or if they do get ripped off, it tends to only happen once. (Or they are rich and don't care).

    Bwuh? People get ripped off by car repairs all the time, and usually repeatedly. And don't even get started on the car sales industry.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiCAJ8ULnaI

    Three Years Later:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf6KY6rrqYU

    Schrodinger on
  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited October 2010
    I should add that the context was me replying to Deebaser's argument that information advantage makes a incentive-based system unworkable, which isn't the case.

    Asymmetric information is the one market failure that - to be glib - it seems conservatives never grasp and liberals grasp and then overextend.

    ronya on
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  • N1tSt4lkerN1tSt4lker Registered User regular
    edited October 2010
    Sociopathic idealized nerds collapse society because they don’t get enough hugs.

    This should really be in the title of the thread now. Really.

    N1tSt4lker on
  • FartacusFartacus __BANNED USERS regular
    edited October 2010
    ronya wrote: »
    I should add that the context was me replying to Deebaser's argument that information advantage makes a incentive-based system unworkable, which isn't the case.

    Asymmetric information is the one market failure that - to be glib - it seems conservatives never grasp and liberals grasp and then overextend.

    Do they really overextend it?

    I mean, let's look at a relatively unregulated market that's theoretically about health -- the homeopathic/naturopathic/supplement industry.

    There is no dearth of hard science that shows that this entire multibillion dollar industry is nothing but snake oil and lies, and in fact may be in many cases dangerous to your health (and at best may prevent you from seeking care that will actually help you), and yet it's also wildly successful and growing!

    And this is when there actually is a government agency devoted to correcting for asymmetric information that oversees a bunch of competing products, and says "hey these things work and they're also pretty safe." And people fucking ignore it and go buy water with water in it to cure their IBS.

    We can look at dozens of industries and see the practice of deliberate creation of controversy. Be it naturopathy, or the energy industry and global warming, or agribusiness and HFCS -- it's very easy to make fact look like opinion, and to drown out the truth with money.

    Yeah, if you get rid of government agencies to correct for asymmetrical information, some people will go to third-party advisory services but many will not and call my a liberal faggot but I'm not OK with chalking up people suffering and dying to "they deserved it" because they didn't subscribe to Consumer Reports Pharmaceutical Edition!

    The reality is that we tried to let the market sort these things out -- that was the default state for all of these industries. And it horrendously failed and in each instance caused public outrage that resulted in the establishment of government oversight.

    Asymmetric information is a huge, real problem. For fuck's sake, people are nearly 50% more likely to believe in global warming in summer than in winter. People are fucking dumb but despite that I have some fucking compassion for them and would hope they don't needlessly suffer.

    Fartacus on
  • FartacusFartacus __BANNED USERS regular
    edited October 2010
    It goes so much deeper than mere asymmetry of information -- it goes right down to how the human brain is built. We're not equipped for modern society, as individuals. We only cope with it through organized social institutions.

    Human beings are horrendous at discerning causality in the modern environment. That's how industries like naturopathy thrive -- by preying on people's terrifically awful capacities for inductive reasoning. I took echinacea and I got better faster! Well, maybe I didn't, because I can't actually remember how long I'm usually sick for, and I don't know what type of virus I actually had, and I can't know how long it would have lasted if I hadn't taken it, and the last time I had a cold I lived in a different part of the country and had a different job and ate different food, but no this shit totally works.

    I mean for fuck's sake, remember the TOMATOES ARE POSION crisis of a few years ago with the salmonella outbreak. We spent months trying to figure out what was actually making people sick until the CDC ultimately decided it was raw jalapeno and serrano peppers. Probably. And this is thanks to trained epidemiologists who spend their lives documenting this shit. It took them months, and they still weren't certain.

    How the fuck is any normal person supposed to make any kind of educated decision about food safety? Most serious foodborne illness takes days before it hits you anyway, so one person can never realistically know what made them sick -- only by comparing hundreds or thousands of cases can you find out (a problem of collective action...if only we had something that made that possible...)!

    And fuck, we can even show that this is the case by pointing out that states with awesome epidemiology/public health information infrastructure, like Minnesota, have way lower rates of morbidity and mortality from foodborne illness than states that have shitty infrastructure, like Kentucky or Texas.

    Asymmetric information is but a small part of the broader problem that individual human beings are poorly equipped to understand and live in the modern world without substantial institutional support.

    It's literally a matter of life and death.

    Fartacus on
  • Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited October 2010
    What the hell just happened?

    Santa Claustrophobia on
  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited October 2010
    That isn't asymmetric information; most of the peddlers of homeopathy seem to believe their own ideas. The information here seems, um, symmetrical: both buyer and seller are stupid. Asymmetric information has a specific meaning; it doesn't just refer to blanket people defrauding stupid people (although that may be a subset).

    You can spot instances of asymmetric information easily: both customers and "good" sellers will support some kind of regulation, either by private signaling or through lobbying for state regulation, since they will stand to gain. But customers of homeopathic services don't seem to endorse prohibiting it.

    Again, this isn't asymmetric information, it's just stupid people. And for that, it comes down to whether you think states have a legitimate role in preventing people from doing foolhardy things to themselves, and how good the state's judgment and ability to resist regulatory capture will be.

    ronya on
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  • FartacusFartacus __BANNED USERS regular
    edited October 2010
    This (my previous posts) underlines the problem with Objectivism, and along with it Austrian economics and the entire libertarian frame of mind.

    You cannot realistically figure out what will happen by sitting in an armchair and trying to deduce out reality.

    Yeah, in theory it's perfectly logically valid to say that if you let the market drive meat safety, you'd have independent oversight agencies, and people would make educated decisions, because INCENTIVES and blah blah blah.

    But in reality, this never happens! Because the argument isn't logically sound. That is to say, you're not making any errors in your computation, but you're using the wrong goddamned formula. The real world is always fantastically more complex, and deduction has the nasty side effect of focusing people on their existing biases and beliefs -- concentrating them like a laser beam on their own bullshit little predispositions and never challenging them. Pure deduction is a sure way to end up a myopic son of a bitch who's really good at rationalizing self-serving positions and never thinking you're wrong and never being surprised by reality, because you ignore it.

    "It's also the foundation of libertarian thought," or, "Mises, you colostomy-dick motherfucker."

    Yeah, unions should theoretically result in some unemployment because they hold wages to an artificial floor and exclude people from certain jobs on the basis of licensing and other regulatory forms of limiting labor competition within a field.

    But in the real world, no one gives a fuck, because unemployment is far higher today (even when we're not in a recession) than it ever was at the peak of unionization, and we had the nice benefits back then of increasing wages and benefits and safe workplaces and reasonable hours.

    Libertarianism is a philosophy built on ignoring data, ignoring reality, ignoring truth. It's a philosophy that is (and I say this not as an insult or with malice) built for and by entitled white people to justify their privilege, which they can only do by turning inward on their biases and unchallenged preconceptions with "logic" and extrapolating out to the entire world. It's bullshit and it's never done anything but crush the poor, the oppressed, the most vulnerable among us. There is no socially-acceptable worldview more reprehensible or harmful today.

    Fartacus on
  • SkyGheNeSkyGheNe Registered User regular
    edited October 2010
    If anything, organizations like the FDA either do not have enough power, or are at the mercy of those they are supposed to be regulating.

    For christ's sake, Lysol was originally considered safe as a vaginal cleanser until real tests were actually done.

    Seriously, it's hard enough to regulate with an industry dedicated to it, but to suggest that we can really trust companies to avoid killing us in the dumbest of ways after implementing predatory advertising is going a little too far.

    In this day and age - information manipulation is all too easy. Billions go into controlling it through advertising, social media, and campaigns so don't be surprised if something kills you before you can "educate" yourself.

    SkyGheNe on
  • FartacusFartacus __BANNED USERS regular
    edited October 2010
    ronya wrote: »
    That isn't asymmetric information; most of the peddlers of homeopathy seem to believe their own ideas. The information here seems, um, symmetrical: both buyer and seller are stupid. Asymmetric information has a specific meaning; it doesn't just refer to blanket people defrauding stupid people (although that may be a subset).

    I'm not sure why you linked the principal-agent problem as the definition for information asymmetry, since they're not the same thing. Yes, it's one of the (most common) places where people look at asymmetrical information, but it's not the same thing. I've always been taught that, strictly speaking, asymmetrical information is literally when one party has significantly more information than another.

    Which I would argue is the case with naturopathy/supplements. I think the "well, the sellers are stupid too" is a total cop-out, and a white lie that makes the fact that we allow an entire fraudulent industry to exist easier to swallow. We've passed the stage where these are mom-and-pop companies of people who took too much LSD in the '60s selling crystals and herbs out of a storefront -- many of these are large corporations, especially in the supplement industry (which you'll remember was part of my post). I don't think anyone selling eXtenze really thinks it will make anyone's dick bigger, nor do I think anyone selling Centrum Silver really thinks it will demonstrably improve anyone's health, nor do I think anyone selling vitamin C really thinks it will prevent you from getting sick on an airplane.

    But, you're right, there is more at play than asymmetry of information -- I said as much in my follow-up post. The human brain itself is fundamentally a flawed device that struggles to impute causality in our modern, highly complex world. For fuck's sake, our neural architecture is built such that, by default, we tend to believe that inanimate objects have intentionality and agency. We're really bad at this shit. It's only recently that over-assuming causality and intentionality has become something that might actually hurt us -- as hunter-gatherers, that was the safe side to err on. It isn't anymore.
    You can spot instances of asymmetric information easily: both customers and "good" sellers will support some kind of regulation, either by private signaling or through lobbying for state regulation, since they will stand to gain. But customers of homeopathic services don't seem to endorse prohibiting it.

    Wait, why would they? I've never understood that asymmetric necessarily means that it's bad for the party with more information. I think car mechanics would beg to differ. I mean, you're right that the party with more information has an incentive to manipulate what the party with less information believes, and to make them feel like they have good information, but I'm not sure why asymmetry necessarily would result in both parties wanting more regulation.
    Again, this isn't asymmetric information, it's just stupid people. And for that, it comes down to whether you think states have a legitimate role in preventing people from doing foolhardy things to themselves, and how good the state's judgment and ability to resist regulatory capture will be.

    Is it just stupidity though? I mean, on the one hand, yes it sort of is, but on the other -- it's not necessarily a matter of IQ. We're not built to understand this shit -- it has to be trained. People have a naturally really poor understanding of things like statistics, risk, empiricism, causality, and so on. I'm not comfortable with a regulatory regime of "hey if you're born lucky enough to become rich and educated then you can benefit from your superior decision-making skills, and fuck everyone else. They deserve their needless suffering because they're 'stupid.'"

    Fartacus on
  • JacobkoshJacobkosh Gamble a stamp. I can show you how to be a real man!Moderator mod
    edited October 2010
    Guys, this thread is a year old and has long since veered far off its original purpose. I think it's time to lock the door and turn out the lights.

    That said, there seems to be an interesting discussion going on so if one of you would like to pick it up in a new thread you have my blessing.

    Jacobkosh on
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