@cshentrup @jwmason railroads do have positive externalies for sure! they also have high fixed costs, low marginal costs, the ability to discharge debts and continue to operate after bankruptcy. if econ 101 style compete-to-marginal-cost dynamics hold, only the bankrupt survive. it's difficult to bring in new capital to expand or even maintain. if mkt power is tolerated to prevent that outcome, then pricing is largely discretionary, how do we distinguish covering fixed costs from profiteering?
@cshentrup @jwmason read the piece! whole industries, like railroads then, airlines now, pervasively have this characteristic, in practice as well as in theory. we invented "intellectual property" to address this problem, but then no market can tell us whether restrictions are too strong or too weak. high fixed costs / low marginal costs (all the above) are just one example of where market power is in some sense necessary. market power can also arise where, you might imagine, it should not be.
"how businesses set prices is a legitimate question, both as an object of inquiry and target for policy…there is a wide range over which prices are, in an economic sense, indeterminate. Depending on competitive conditions and the strategic choices of firms, prices can be persistently too high or too low relative to costs. This indeterminacy means that pricing decisions are, at least potentially, a political question. "
a tour de force by @jwmason https://jwmason.org/slackwire/in-praise-of-profiteering/
@isomorphismes we'd all love to see the plan.
@SteveRoth (i think i read singularity sky, i think on krugman's recommendation, but i don't remember it all that well.)
@SteveRoth just that if his experience is representative, supply curves might shift left or up as well in our brave new ozempia, if we're collectively less enthusiastic to do our work.
praying for statesmanship.
@SteveRoth there might be supply side effects as well! https://wandering.shop/@cstross/111209884417910524
@phillmv (i wish assasination were outside of norms. the US under Obama and Trump had a massive assassination program in the Middle East. Biden, at least, has dramatically scaled that back. Putin uses assasination routinely, it’s a core part of his approach to discouraging rivals or those who would spread dangerous (to him) information. maybe we maintain a conceit the norm isn’t accepted. maybe assasination by nonstate actors is outside of norms, like smoker-mom saying don’t smoke.)
@phillmv i guess i’d add again, success at what? in the US the far right is succeeding at polarizing the country, sure. and a tragedy is that by breaking bonds of communal affection, the far-right’s Schmittian friend-enemy division can come to seem like hard-nose realism and win elections. that’s Israel’s last few decades. then what? the bonds of communal affection are still frayed, there is still conflict and repression. 1/
@phillmv is there an “after the revolution” when the genocide is complete and the friends, now with no enemy, live happily ever after? i don’t think so. have there been any examples? this is a politics that depends upon enemies, and has to manufacture new ones. but more usually there is no vanquishing even to hope for that. there is just endless conflict. only Gerry Adams political role did any good. the diaspora of the suppression you think you’ve completed lies in wait. 2/
@phillmv ironically, if there is any hope of a constructive result to terrorism it’s that people desire its end, and that creates impetus for hammering out a political solution that might otherwise be too contentious. if hamas were to offer now to revise its charter and declare its desire for a binational settlement (and its willingness to ultimately cede governance to others), perhaps a pause might be taken at this precipice. 3/
@phillmv creating a darkest hour only for a dawn is very rare i think and hard when the darkness is terrorism though. you have to have truly demonized those you terrorize by the time you are murdering their children. how does one make peace with demons? nevertheless there are the occasional Arafats or Adams, and even more occasionally also a counterpart not so embittered (or cynically reliant on their enemy to remain enemy for their own political legitimacy) that a dawn may come. 4/
@phillmv i think such events are far too rare to rehabilitate the tactic. it is nearly always a catastrophe for all concerned, except perhaps political insiders who gain power and entrench their positions from conflict. (and of course war profiteers.) but for every mass constituency in all of the rival groups, adoption of the tactic brings only catastrophe.
maybe for some groups, there would be catastrophe anyway, so you can say misery loves company. /fin
liberation is a child’s delusion. we all must live our lives restrained, trapped, bound to those motherfuckers, other people with their messy wants that become unjust claims against us we must constantly exhaustingly negotiate and renegotiate. the terms of our mutual bondage can be fair or much less than fair, for sure, and we should strive for equal dignity. but bound we shall all remain, until the only liberation vouchsafed for us, from our stupid mortal coils.
i feel like we’re all passengers on a plane, and we know the pilot has set the autopilot to controlled flight into terrain. we are all chatting animatedly about it, debating it somehow, but of course the cockpit door is locked and no one tries to breach it.
they are annular but not annual.
@ZaneSelvans we'll the solar anti-energy!
@paninid indeed. it's remarkable how openly tendentious so many have become.
i really hope that we all retain the capacity luxuriate in our absurd domestic squabbles over the coming days and weeks.
On the one hand, ethnic cleansing is a terrible practice.
On the other, rarely has a leader made so plain (whether sincerely or as excuse) that another polity's civilians must suffer and die for a cause the foreign leader supports, whatever the views and preferences of the people doomed to suffer.
Which is also disagreeable. I don't know which is worse.
cf https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/rafah-border-gaza-egypt-israel-1.6994234
Text: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called for access through Rafah in a speech on Thursday. He also pushed back against letting in large numbers of Palestinians. "The threat there is significant because it means the liquidation of this [Palestinian] cause," el- Sisi said. "It's important for its people to stay steadfast and exist on its land."
@SteveRoth thanks! a simple answer to a simple question!