Remember those oil rigs that President Obama assured us really do not cause spills? Well another one just exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion of the rig 80 miles off the Louisiana coast further undermines Obama’s insistence on lifting the long moratorium on drilling off our East Coast.
The platform is owner by Mariner Energy of Houston. The rig was not producing oil or gas at the time but it is unclear if there was a spill with this explosion. However, there are reports of a spreading oil spill around the rig. Other reports state that there were four or five active wells on the rig. Update: There are conflicting reports on the sighting of a spill from the explosion.
The Administration is committed to opening up the coast to drilling — even arguing for weeks that the oil from the BP spill had mysteriously disappeared until outside groups pointing to a huge 22-mile-long oil plume under the water.
Despite the President’s assurances, there have been other leaks at rigs — an inconvenient fact for the Administration.
Source: Miami Herald
Slart:
I read your dissertation. In any event it would be complicated but not impossible but that is only one small function, how do you account for the changes that occur in other areas of the body due to increased or decreased fluid volume? It starts getting complicated.
Slarti,
Nice flag you got there.
Byron,
How’s that (il)logic working out for you?
Byron posted:
Did either of those occur a mile deep in the ocean, near a large commercial fishing area, involve the use of over a million gallons of dispersant, occur within a couple hundred miles of 40% of the country’s wetlands or occur near a densely populated coastline? The point is that it is a very complex system and just because it has similarities to another event in some ways doesn’t mean that the differences won’t result in a greater impact. Also, the implication of your support of both of these is that we have enough information and understanding of the effects of the Deepwater Horizon spill on the environment and the economy of the gulf in order to make judgements about it, but we don’t have the information and understanding of the market (which I believe is a simpler system and certainly is a system we have more information about) that we need in order to intelligently intervene. This seems like a contradiction to me.
The fact that a certain type of intervention doesn’t work is not an argument against a different kind of intervention. Nor was I saying that slowing growth prevents boom and bust cycles, rather I was saying that there are trade-offs inherent in policy – preventing the boom and bust cycle would probably slow growth somewhat in a tradeoff that I think most people would gladly make (mostly, I want to make those kind of choices knowing what the tradeoffs are ahead of time – I have faith that if we knew we were about to shoot ourselves in the foot, we wouldn’t do it). Meanwhile the implicit subsidy of ‘too big to fail’ which allows people to make huge gambles without paying for it when they lose doesn’t just encourage the boom and bust cycle, it guarantees it. What evidence do you have that busts are necessary to re-allocate resources properly – busts seem to me to be a large inefficiency in the system (in addition to being undesirable) and I’m not going to accept that they are necessary unless you have good evidence that they are.
No, the market is a complex system of feedback loops, feedforward pathways, and other interactions, but to imply that it is too complex to understand flies in the face of the spirt of scientific inquiry and is just plain wrong – just look at any automated trading program to see that a model can produce a useful understanding of the market.
You kind of stepped in it here – true, if I couldn’t give a good answer here it would be a devastating argument but on the other hand, if I can answer a reasonable question about the system I wrote my thesis on, you’ve handed me a strong argument in my favor… Which do you think will happen next?
First I need to note that urine never flows into the kidney (sorry about the nitpick, but I’ve been trained to treat this subject very meticulously). To begin with, most of us are controlling the urine output of our kidneys on a regular basis with diuretics like caffeine or alcohol (you could even say that we can decrease urine output by reducing our intake of liquids or vice versa). There are several ways to control urine output in the kidney (this gets rapidly technical when you start talking about the concentrations of various solutes, so I’ll just stick with liquid volume in this discussion). As filtration rate (the rate at which fluid is passes from the blood into the nephron in the glomerulus) depends on blood pressure, the crudest way to effect changes in urine output would be to raise or lower blood pressure – not exactly fine control, but it would get the job done. The filtration rate can also be controlled by dilating or contracting the afferent arteriole (the blood supply of the glomerulus) – the body secretes a vasoconstrictor to do this as a part of the tubuloglomerular feedback mechanism, so this could be done via the direct application of vasoconstrictors or vasodilators, or by effecting changes in the natural regulatory mechanism (diabetics frequently take drugs which disable this mechanism entirely). Caffeine acts (in part) by increasing the filtration rate. At the other end of things, the collecting duct can be made water permeable (allow water to be reabsorbed into the body) by the secretion of antidiuretic hormone so the output can be increased by blocking secretion of ADH (you can try it at home with a bottle of wine ;-)). Besides alcohol and caffeine there are 8 other classes of diuretics each of which affects urine output through a different mechanism.
Now, I didn’t go through all of that just to bore everyone (and I apologize for that) but instead to give an example of the kind of understanding that comes from modeling complex systems. I am confident that, given a reasonable amount of time, I could come up with an extension of my model to investigate any of those classes of diuretics.
There are many people smarter than me that are studying the market (and the economy in general) and the scientific method is just as good of an approach to modeling the economy as it is to modeling the kidney. Models can be developed which capture various aspects of the economy’s behavior and can be validated against the enormous amount of data we have from the past – if it doesn’t show, for instance, why the interventions of the FED had the effects that they did (assuming that the model was trying to predict such things), then it’s back to the drawing board… There is nothing that makes me suspect that the understanding of economics via mathematics is any less accessible than I know the understanding of biology via mathematics to be. The really neat thing (yeah, I’m letting my nerd flag fly) is that if the same mathematics describes two systems, then they exhibit similar behavior. If a system is composed of certain types of feedbacks and feedforwards then it will behave in a certain way regardless of whether the system is biological, an electronic device, or the US economy.
FFN,
They do. It’s http://www.gravatar.com. Even if you set up a proper WordPress account, these are the people who manage the icons. To my knowledge, they don’t track usage other than display linked to e-mail.
BIL,
I have no idea. I don’t leave my email address on the site, but it is required to comment so I put in a dummy email address, usually different every time. One day, I put in the address nothing@nothing.com and this icon showed up. So there must be some kind of email => icon mapping in WordPress that determines what icon to show for a particular comment (and furthermore WordPress, must not not validate whether this email is used by others, or if a person is logged in in order to use the icon).
FFN,
Good video, er, audio.
BTW, I’ve been meaning to ask you, is that Edward Elric in your icon? He certainly looks like the Full Metal Alchemist but so many manga and anime characters look similar . . .
Byron,
There’s a very important distinction between nature and the markets. We get to make up the rules about how markets function.
The only true free market is a chimp not beating a smaller chimp in exchange for something the smaller chimp has. You seem to define free markets as “markets free from government interference that I don’t like.”
Elaine,
Correction … it began as a two week stint but was cut back to one week due to insurance costs.
The woman also spent time in jail when the teachers went on strike, were ordered back to work and refused to go. The School Board and republican political administration sent a bunch of them to jail for disobeying the court order. (Rhodes, the guy also responsible for the Kent State Massacre, was governor at the time)
She was quite a woman.
Byron,
You can disagree about your logic being broken all you like.
It’s still broken, I’ve proven it and you’ve done nothing to disprove it more substantial than “nanny nanny boo boo”.
This lesson isn’t primarily for you but rather to show other readers what is wrong with your way of thinking. I think you’ve proven a fine example though of what’s wrong with free market capitalism. It caters to ego, greed and their interaction with delusions of superiority some have to nature and other people.
As to Watts, man, you really missed the point if you think that what he was saying is about economics. He was talking about man’s relation to nature and how it’s ego (personality) that creates the illusion that we are separate from nature (one of your assertions – that man is separate from environment) – period. To think he was talking about economics is a truly epic mental failure and a supreme attempt at rationalization without comprehension. Fine projection in the psychological sense too.
As to the tire deal? Who said keeping rail down was due to just one cause? Not me. Multiple bad actors can want the same thing. To whit, Hearst and his lumber interests and DuPont and their nylon interests and their roll in criminalizing marijuana. That had multiple causes, none of which were the medicinal or entertainment value of the plant (except racial motivations for at the time it was used for entertainment mostly by minorities), and multiple bad actors angling for a profit motive behind it.
Be as wrong as you like. Teaching can utilize negative examples. That you missed the lesson is your loss. But you have demonstrable logical errors in your thought process. Simply saying you don’t doesn’t make them go away.
Elaine:
“Unfortunately, the new focus on standardized testing/prepping kids for tests in recent years has been destructive to our educational system.”
Oh boy … if I got started on that one, I’d never stop. My mother-in-law was voted state teacher of the year several times. She was superb and the experiences she gave her 4th graders stayed with them all their lives. (one of many examples … They spent two weeks every fall at a “living history” site dressed in bonnets and suspenders, writing on slate boards, pumping water and carrying fire wood to their one room schoolhouse. They got to the school early and boarded buses for the 1 hour ride to the site and then 1 hour home again arriving at dinner time for 2 weeks. The kids and their parents loved it year after year. There was always a fight at the end of the third grade year by the parents wanting their child placed in her class.) Standardized testing put an end to all that. There was simply not enough time in the day to do both.
Byron,
In my own little town there is no public transportation and one has to drive several miles to the first public transportation stop and parking is limited.
When I visit D.C, New York, Chicago, or Philadelphia (four places I visit at least twice a year each), I always use Public Transportation.
Elaine:
“Unfortunately, the new focus on standardized testing/prepping kids for tests in recent years has been destructive to our educational system.”
My wife says the same thing.
Buddha:
I disagree that my logic is broken. And anyway you can use “logic” to prove just about anything. It doesn’t mean you are right.
The video you posted had Alan Watts talking about people not being smart enough to control nature. Seems to me you can use nature as an analogy to markets. Both highly sophisticated systems with multiple variables and inputs.
Byron,
I’d prefer to travel by train than plane–unfortunately, our country hasn’t invested in a high-speed rail system. China certainly has.
The per pupil expenditure varies greatly from community to community.
**********
Byron & Buddha,
There are plenty of quality public schools in this country–and plenty of qualified and committed teachers. Unfortunately, the new focus on standardized testing/prepping kids for tests in recent years has been destructive to our educational system. It’s the reason I decided to retire early.
Buddha:
the real reason is Mr. Ford and Mr. Goodyear made a deal with the government to be able to sell more cars and tires. I would imagine a market left alone would have kept trains and used trucks for short hauls and cars would have been unnecessary in urban areas.
“There’s a huge difference in quality of education between suburban Connecticut and inner-city Chicago.”
And why is that?
You still haven’t addressed you multiple logical errors either, Byron. You can try distraction all you like, but your logics are still broken.
Byron I think it depends on where you live how much you use public transportation.
“I might point out that public transportation doesn’t work very well because no one really uses it, most drive cars to work.”
And why would this be? It couldn’t be 60 years of the oil industry bribing their way into getting transportation infrastructure to be designed to maximize the use of their product, could it? We once had a viable rail system and many cities had viable light rail systems, but those didn’t sell enough gasoline being more efficient on a pound per mile transported basis and using the cheaper diesel or electric drive systems.
On education, the proper metric isn’t just cost per student, but cost per student indexed against final skill set and performance. The problem with American public education is primarily inequity in spending, not average spending. There’s a huge difference in quality of education between suburban Connecticut and inner-city Chicago. But one need not dumb down the entire labor base to enslave them, only most of it.
Buddha:
I might point out that public transportation doesn’t work very well because no one really uses it, most drive cars to work.
Public schools are well public. The average per pupil expenditure is $10,000. In England it is around 5,000 lbs and in Germany it is about 5,000 euros. Approximately the same cost.
“WIESBADEN – The public sector spent an average of Euro 5,000 per pupil at public schools in 2007. These data have currently become available at the Federal Statistical Office. While the total of Euro 5,400 was spent per pupil at schools of general education, the expenditure at vocational schools per pupil amounted to Euro 3,600. The expenditure per pupil included personnel costs, current expenditure on material and equipment and investment expenditure at public schools.”