patrick.net

John Bailo says

This is what Holden Caulfield would have said in 1989.

More like Tony Montana in 1983.

leoj707 says

Honest Abe says

I formally declare the myth of debunking the selfmade man myth is debunked.

I don't think that anecdotal fallacies can debunk anything.

I don't think Abe was using an anecdote. He was using some counter-examples, which is perfectly valid. However, this counter-examples don't represent the ruling 0.1% class. The counter-examples are inventors, not capital, and by that I mean

- venture capitalists
- speculators
- brokers
- financial product "developers"
- executives including CEOs
- lobbyists

I would say that all of the examples were workers, i.e. producers of wealth, rather than people who controlled funding, distribution, or a scarce resource (typically a public resource or one that is artificially scarce like land or diamonds).

The best thing about our economy is that inventors and real innovators -- and I say real because that term is often co-op'd by charlatan -- can still make it big. Of course, they don't make it 0.1% big. Even the best inventions don't make their inventors into billionaires.

So I would say that the noble success stories do not reflect the parasites that the 99% are upset with. They are entirely different groups.

I don't mind reducing regulation to help the small guy. There's a theory that states regulations actually help large corporations by eliminating competition from smaller firms that can't absorb the cost of regulation. And to a large extent, that is true.

However, "regulation" is just another word for "law". Don't you hate all those copyright/trademark regulations, those regulations preventing you from making "unauthorized" withdraws from banks, regulations preventing you from taking your next door neighbor's shinny things?

However, I would rather replace the existing regulations, which are simply micromanagement attempts, with smaller and simpler laws that address the fundamental problems rather than the symptoms. If a bill has a thousand tiny rules, big corporations will have the time and money to find loopholes. If a bill is short, simple, and to the cause of the problem, then big corporations can't avoid it.

The best example I can give is changing the capital gains tax to be: max(0.0, 1.00 - 0.01 * m) where m is the number of months an equity/property is held. This would eliminate all bubbles, micro-trading, and speculation as it would be impossible to profit from them. At the same time, it would greatly encourage real investment by making it tax free. And in doing so, it would greatly increase the stability and productivity of the economy.

And the reason it works is that it addresses the root cause of the problem. The problem is that short-term zero sum games dominate our financial markets. The solution is therefore to eliminate the very motivation for short-term zero sum games without harming long-term, positive sum games.

leoj707 says

John Bailo says

This is what Holden Caulfield would have said in 1989.

More like Tony Montana in 1983.

I thought the reference was obvious, but evidently not everyone got it, which surprises me because it's such a long quote that it goes a little too far for what I was using it for.