Newsgroup sci.econ 57887

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ssusin@emily11.Berkeley.EDU (Scott Susin) writes:
> Steinn Sigurdsson (steinn@sandy.ast.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
> : Steinn Sigurdsson  writes:
> : > ssusin@emily11.Berkeley.EDU (Scott Susin) writes:
> : > > Steinn Sigurdsson (steinn@sandy.ast.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
> : > > : 	BF		FF		FI
> : > > : 	p	q	p	q
> : > > 
> : > > : 1995    2	20	10	1	100
> : > > 
> : > > : 1996    2	15	11	5	170 <- WRONG: 102 is correct.
> : > I'd like to see that calculation explicitly.
> : Ah, I see, your index is  
> : Sum_i (New price_i * Old Quantity_i)/Sum_i (Old price_i*Old Quantity_i)
> Thanks for giving me the credit, but I didn't invent the concept
> of a price index.  _Everybody_ who's ever calculated one knows that
> the idea is to hold the quantity constant, and measure only the change
> in price.  Your method doesn't do this, and so it's _wrong_.  This is
> not a matter of opinion.   Most of you criticisms of the fish CPI rest
> on your confusion of prices and quantities and so they are wrong too.
No hold on a second here. I constructed my example
to hold the quantity constant - 20 or 21 units of
fish are sold each year, which is reasonable assuming
people eat roughly constant amounts and that the
supply is fixed by the catch effort, not variable, which
is a reasonable assumption. 
Thus what changes is the price, and if the people
measuring the price index of "fish" fail to
separate the "basic fish" from the "fancy fish"
they will see an apparent rise in the index of 70% or so,
because they will see constant sales of "fish units"
put people paying a higher price in the second year.
If they manage to distinguish the two different classes
of fish, they still see a rise in price, which does
not reflect a supply shortage - which what this sub-thread
was originally about, remember?
> : That does indeed give a 2% year-year increase in the CPI,
> : which is quite reasonable, and I would think the natural
> : response of FF price in response to sharply rising demand
> : is that it go up - where as your example assumed it went down
> : with rising demand...  Whence Econ 101 there?
> No.  My example assumed that people bought more and at the same
> time, the price went down.  This is consistent with the supply
> curve shifting out.  It is also consistent with both curves
> shifting at the same time.  In general, data about prices
> and quantities tells us _nothing_ about supply and 
> demand.  If you ever take econ 1, this question will be on
> the test.
I seriously doubt I'll be taking econ 1, I already have enough
letters after my name and prefer to get economic theory straight
from my colleagues. 
I'm puzzled at your assertion about the relationship between
prices and quantities - they assuredly tell us _something_ about
supply and demand (eg. the supply can not possibly have been
less than the quantity sold...  and last I checked, at fixed
supply and rising demand the usual response is for the price
to rise). 
Your constructed price examples, BTW, appeared nonsensical
and artificial for the purpose of showing a declining CPI
in the presence of increased sales of a value added product.
> : > My assumption was  FI = 100*(2*15+11*5)/(2*20+10*1)=170
> : > I assumed the price of fancy fish would rise a little
> : > due to increased demand, but that most of the
> : > price difference reflects labour intensive value
> : > added (ie BF and FF are the same raw fish, but FF
> : > has value added as it is, say spiced&ready; to cook,
> : > while BF is just a plain fillet).
> : > 
> : > > : 1997    2	10	12	11	178(since1996)
> : > > : 					304(since 1995)			
> 
> : 	With the (correct) CPI calculation the 1996-1997 
> : increase is now 6%, and 12% over 1995. Note the quantity
> : of raw material in demand is still not increasing.
> 
> : > > You really should understand the basics before you make esoteric
> : > > criticisms.  A price index holds the bundle of goods constant over
> : > > time.  This is the whole point.  Because you don't understand this,
> : > > your calculations are wrong.
> 
> : My apologies, I misunderstood your defined index. You are mistaken
> : if you believe there is unique definition of a price index,
> 
> There is more than one way, yes, but _all_ of them hold the 
> quantities constant between two years.  Your method doesn't do this,
> and so it is not a price index.
I did hold the quantity constant between the years! Add them
up (well, except for letting q slip one unit in the middle
year, that was an unnecessary refinement).
I think you misunderstand what the concept of an "index" is,
it is not unique to economics, nor is there a law of nature
as to how the indices are constructed. I can give you real
life examples if you want.
> : indeed there is continued dispute over just how to
> : allow for the change in composition of the value of
> : goods weighed in your typical index.
> : > > I've corrected your 1996 value.  You've calculated a 70% increase in
> : > > _expenditures_ on fish, but this is not the same as an increase in
> : > > price.  The increase in expenditures mostly occurred because quantity
> : > > increased.  The _price_ only rose 2%.
> : > Ah, the quantity in the above calculation actually
> : > _decreased_ from 1995 to 1996, there 21 units
> : > of "fish" sold in 1995, and 20 units in 1996.
> : > That was a deliberate assumption - and a realistic
> : > one. The mean retail cost of fish in this example
> : > increases sharply because of value added at the retail
> : > level, not because of a supply-demand response.
> In your example, the price index goes up because people have
> switched to something whose price was increasing.  It
> is irrelevant that they switched to something with more "value
> added" and a higher price.
No, it is not irrelevant, it is the whole point.
I think you've forgotten why this became a point of
debate in the first place.
> Suppose processed fish is more expensive, but its price is rising
> at a slower rate.  Then if people buy more processed fish and 
> less fresh fish, the CPI won't rise as fast.  In fact, 
> this is what has happened.  The price of fresh and frozen fish
> has risen much faster than the price of processed fish.
This is because there has been technological deflation
in processing cost, plus some gains from economy of scale.
The point remains, how finely do the people who construct
CPIs discern the differently handled, processed and marketed
products? If they fail to distinguish sub-categories of
products they will see spurious index inflation in certain
plausible scenarios.
> : > Since the basket or retail good used to calculate
> : > consumer price indices includes specifically
> : > processed, value added goods, not generally wholesale
> : > raw materials, some of the variation in the index
> : > must be due to this. 
> : > As it happens this actually happened with fish
> : > sold in the US over the period where you noted
> : > a CPI rise above inflation. They sold cod in both
> : > 1970 and 1995, but in 1995 the cod was more likely
> : > to be frozen, breaded and ready to nuke.
> : This point remains.
> And this made the CPI rise _less_ than it otherwise would have.
Ah, no, if the fancy fish had never taken off the CPI would
be constant. So the switch to a "fancier" retail product
drives a rise in the CPI which is unrelated to the cost of
the raw material, or the supply of the basic product.
Ergo you can't assert that simply because CPI for "fish"
rose more rapidly than the general CPI, that this implies
anything much about fish supplies.

jmc@Steam.stanford.edu (John McCarthy) wrote:
>When I was a boy in Los Angeles, Technocracy Inc. was active.
>1. Their doctrine was that engineers could and should seize power.
Always remember, engineers are the guys with vomit on their shirts at
the football games.
>2.They had cars with yin-yang symbols on the sides and loud speakers
>on the roofs.  This was so that in some unspecified emergency, they
>could drive their cars around the city and tell the citizens what to
>do.
There's still one of those signs on Highway 8, north of Hamilton, Ont.
>3. They had a maximal leader, and the movement collapsed when he died.
A maximal leader for a group dedicated to something as decentral as
electricity??
>4. They wanted to measure value in terms of energy,
>i.e. kilowatt-hours.  I remember one of them who came frequently to
>Caltech peddling magazines being pointed to the electric power socket
>and being invited to put in his finger and extract as many
>kilowatt-hours as he thought is magazine was worth.
A currency currency.  Cute.
>In their fixation with energy as the measure of value, they were
>precursors of the energy religion of today.  I don't think they
>imagined that there was a shortage, however, so they weren't quite as
>dumb.
They've got the same basic problem as the gold bugs: why fix the price
of _any_ commodity?  Anything artificial will have some relationship
to labour, so there's some reason to expect a bit of constancy over
any short to medium term; natural forces and commodities, by contrast,
are subject to human ingenuity.  They can change price by an order of
magnitude overnight.  Hell, if we suddenly figured out an industrial
use for iodine, gold would be a glut on the market because we'd it'd
be a byproduct of the seawater industry. Never, ever, a safe price to
control.
                                 -dlj.

snark@swcp.com (snark@swcp.com) writes:
> The December Scientific American has a brief note on plastic solar 
> cells (market name of the polymer:  Lumeloid).  In theory, it could 
> convert 75% of incident light into electricity (vs. 20 to 30% for 
> current cells).  The manufacturer claims that it will drop the cost per 
> watt to 50 cents (vs. $3 to $4).
I don't believe that. With a broadband spectrum like the solar
spectrum it is virtually impossible to get 75% conversion 
efficiencies. I certainly don't believe that is possible
with a single composition polymer - it would require a
multi-layer or complex structure.
It is conceivable the 75% efficiency quoted is the
conversion efficiency from some narrow band (standard) source,
it would not be the practical efficiency.
Physics Today a year or two ago had a good article on
basic limits in photoelectric conversion efficiency.

Mike Asher (masher@tusc.net) wrote:
: Yuri Kuchinsky  wrote:
: > How do you know this? The number of hungry people on the planet is now 
: > greater than ever!
: In Medieval times, 90+% of the population was chronically malnourished. 
This is a lot of nonsense. Were they malnourished at the harvest time? 
Were people in fertile agricultural areas malnourished?
But the biggest problem with this reasoning is the focus on medieval
times. This is rather naive. The course of human history consists of 99%
of the time living in hunter/gatherer tribal social organizations. The
medieval period is only a tiny portion of human history. Perhaps you
Libber types should not show your ignorance of basic anthropology so
obviously... 
Anyway, to come to the point, people in such tribal societies had plenty
of leisure time, and most of the time they had plenty to eat. (True, some 
of them suffered during some brief seasonal times of scarcity).
The work of Marvin Harris and of other Cultural Materialists clearly 
demonstrates that the modern/Libertarian idea of progress always making 
things better is completely bogus. Progress made the life of common people 
during the middle ages much worse than it was in tribal societies.
: A
: man was deemed well off if he ate meat once a week. 
And in India most people never eat meat and they are none the worse for it.
: Beer was widely consumed, by children and adults,
I supposed this is meant to indicate their poverty?
: as water was too
: dangerous to drink.  When you did drink river water, you were taught to
: "strain" it between your teeth to remove the larger creatures found
: naturally in it.
These are ridiculous anecdotes. Have you ever heard about wells?
Get informed, Mike!
Ecologically,
Yuri.
-- 
Yuri Kuchinsky          | "Where there is the Tree of Knowledge, there
------------------------| is always Paradise: so say the most ancient 
Toronto ... the Earth	| and the most modern serpents."  F. Nietzsche
-------- A WEBPAGE LIKE ANY OTHER: http://www.io.org/~yuku -----------

In article <56jt81$grf@cardinal1.Stanford.EDU>,
jgadams@leland.Stanford.EDU (Joseph G. Adams) writes:
>These statements more than anything else show that you are unaware of
>what's going on.  Right now, there is no "liberal" position on 
>censorship.  You're stuck in these outdated categories of liberal =
>anticensorship and conservative = procensorship.
I don't know why you say that there is no liberal position.  I'm a
*liberal* and my position is anticensorship.  Be that as it may, when it
comes to *snuff* movies, I'm for censorship and even more stringent
measures to deal with the "snuffers".  As I said in a prior post, there
are limits to what free expression should allow.  I don't recall your
having gone into the matter in depth.  Are you really for freedom to go on
a plane and *say* you have a bomb?  The old "shouting "fire" in a crowded
theater" is an example of the kind of censorship that I can live with.  Do
you believe that censorship, of all kinds, is too great an imposition on
your rights to free speech??
>You've failed to explain the examples I mentioned:
>
>1.  Feminist activists write and are largely instrumental in passing a
law
>that would punish the distribution of pornography.  A conservative
>federal judge tosses out the law on First Amendment grounds.
I don't know which feminist activists you are talking about nor do I know
with which party they are affiliated    You are talking about feminist
activists as a class.   How in the world you can define them as *liberals*
in favor of censorship.   Are you saying that *all* (or even *most*)
feminist activists are liberal democrats??   Are you saying that liberal
judges are in favor of abridgement of the First Amendment??
>2.  Leftist students and faculty support a speech code that would punish
>certain types of expression.  Conservative students sue and have the
>speech code removed on First Amendment grounds.
It's beyond me how you come up with who in these groups is from the left. 
You are resorting to the mantra of hate that as a tool that is becoming
dull with use.  It has become habit of the Rush Limpbowel enthusiasts just
to ridicule other people and assign attributes to the whole that *perhaps*
are assignable to one, two, or a few!
Frankly, I do not believe that you can statisically support your claims!!
What is this censorship that is sought?   Do you mean like standing
outside the dormitory window of a lone black student shouting demeaning
abuses and disturbing that student's peace.  Do you mean the burning of
crosses on the lawn of liberals like "Katholics", "Kikes" and "Koons"?  
Do you mean the painting of swastikas around the campus?   Just what are
these *certain* types of expression??  How far would you go??  Do you
really believe that abuse, in any form, should be allowed to be carried to
any extreme?  What are those extremes??
>Today, censorship is just as likely to be the efforts of misguided
>"liberal" people seeking to suppress what they see as harmful to
>women or minorities as it is conservative Christians trying to ban
>dirty books.  In fact, if you look at recent court cases, there's
>more of the former than the latter.  
As a group "misguided "liberal" people" are a *very* small misguided group
when it comes to censorship.  As I say, you paint with too broad a brush
and give no specifics.  
>If you haven't noticed this, you aren't paying attention.
I'm paying attention to you, Joey!  What makes you think I don't pay
attention to others???   You'd do best to side with the liberals when it
comes to censorship.  Most of the liberals are democrats, join with them
in your battle to insure the rights of free men and not just the rights of
those *men* who are free, white, and 21!!
"Jack"
John H. Fisher  -  TaxService@aol.com
Philadelphia, Pa. - Atlantic City, NJ - West Wildwood, NJ
Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise!!

In article ,
   jmc@Steam.stanford.edu (John McCarthy) wrote:
>Will Stewart is engaging in wishful thinking when he speaks 
of the
>Chinese increasing energy efficiency and
>
>     They will have reduced their energy costs.  If they 
need
>     more, then they can add renewable energy sources in 
order to
>     reduce pollution, CO2, and dependence on non-renewable
>     resources.
>
I'll add my $0.02 worth to this posting.  The assumption is 
made by the original poster that renewable energy sources 
are non-polluting.  This is almost certainly incorrect.  One 
or two of the South American countries (Brazil?) tried to 
use ethanol in a big way, and they used sugar cane 
fermentation to get the ethanol.  This process produced a 
*lot* of liquid waste, because fermentation only produces 
ethanol in the range of approximately 10%, with the rest 
being water (which has to be disposed of).  Thus, even 
though the ethanol is a "natural" product, too much natural 
waste water from this process is still a problem.

"D. Braun"  wrote for all to see:
>On 15 Nov 1996, Mike Asher wrote:
>
>> Yuri Kuchinsky  wrote:
>> > 
>> > : It would also be my guess that at the turn of the century there were
>> > : 800 million hungry out of a population of a billion.
>> > 
>> > How do you know this? The number of hungry people on the planet is now 
>> > greater than ever!
>> The FAO figures you quote indicate "malnourished" people.  FAO classifies
>> people with sufficient caloric intake, but with a diet 'insufficiently
>> varied' as malnourished as well.   Still a problem, of course, but please
>> define it properly.
>> 
>> In Medieval times, 90+% of the population was chronically malnourished.  A
>> man was deemed well off if he ate meat once a week.  Most children suffered
>> from rickets and other defiency conditions.  Many castles and manor homes
>> tossed trenchers (crusts of bread) and other dinner-table scraps to hungry
>> people who clustered outside, who fought bitterly for line rights.  Often,
>> a government official would, upon their yearly visit to a village, find
>> that starvation and disease had wiped out the entire populace sometime in
>> the past year, with none the wiser.
>> 
>> Beer was widely consumed, by children and adults, as water was too
>> dangerous to drink.  When you did drink river water, you were taught to
>> "strain" it between your teeth to remove the larger creatures found
>> naturally in it.
>> 
>> Even the wealthy had their problems.  Food poisoning was endemic, fruits
>> and vegetables were unknown out of season, seafood was impossible unless
>> you lived near the coast, and at thirty-five, you needed soft food as your
>> teeth had all rotted out...unless an abcessed tooth killed you, as was
>> quite common.
>> 
>> This is the true world of 'organic' farming, biomass power, and
>> deindustrialization many environmentalists would have us return to.  I'd
>> prefer to work out our problems and stay here.
>
>Mike, your description of medieval times was interesting, but does nothing
>to buttress your last paragraph. It is complete fabrication.
What was a complete fabrication?  His description of medieval life?
You are incorrect Mr. Braun.  I will give you some sources, that,
since you are posting from a major university, you will be able to
obtain at no great effort:
1. H.O. Lancaster, "Expectations of Life: A Study of the Demography,
Statistics, and History of World Mortality", New York: SPringer-Verlag
(1990).
2. R. Scholfield, D. Reher, and A. Bideau, "The Decline of Mortality
in Europe", Oxford, UK: The Clarendon Press (1991).
[edited]
Regards, Harold
----------
"Those disputing, contradicting, and confuting people are 
generally unfortunate in their affairs.  They get victory,
sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of 
more use to them."
	---Benjamin Franklin, in autobiography, 1771-90.

l.mcfadden@mail.utexas.edu (Loretta McFadden) wrote for all to see:
[edited]
>
>Well, I hope you like surprises, then, you've got more coming. I recommend
>browsing (make sure you've got alot of time on your hands, the
>bibliographies are very extensive) the USDA's National Agriculture Library
>collection called Alternative Farming Systems
>(http://www.nalusda.gov/answers/answers.html). Full of what you might call
>"agricultural doomsaying." I call it responsible acknowledgement of our
>failings, and, subsequently, responsibilities to try to mitigate the
>damage we've done to our world. 
The quoted URL is that of the National Agricultural Library.  This is
the page referred to, minus the graphics:
     Answers to Your Questions
     General Reference Services
     Find out how to obtain agriculture-related database searches and
information products including bibliographies, resource guides,
     and fact sheets. Access to experts and organizations is also
provided. 
     Information Centers (listed below)
     NAL has 10 subject specific information centers that provide
customized services to the agricultural community and others.
     Through the Internet, the centers provide access to digital
information including images, databases, software, patents,
     bibliographies, and resource guides. They also provide subject
matter expertise and perform extensive outreach and
     collaborative activities. 
1.  Agricultural Trade and Marketing Information Center (ATMIC)
2.  Alternative Farming Systems Information Center (AFSIC) 
3.  Animal Welfare Information Center (AWIC) 
4.  Aquaculture Information Center (AIC) 
5.  Biotechnology Information Center (BIC) 
6.  Food and Nutrition Information Center (FNIC) 
7.  Plant Genome Data and Information Center (PGDIC) 
8.  Rural Information Center (RIC) and RIC Health Service (RICHS) 
9.  Technology Transfer Information Center (TTIC) 
10. Water Quality Information Center (WQIC) 
I looked into each one of these, and found little if any "agricultural
doomsaying".  Each of the ten centers features as its primary
contribution a bibliography of books and papers covering its area of
concern.  Some of the these were informative, here is one from AFSIC,
picked at random, more or less:
TITLE:         The Basic Principles of Sustainable Agriculture    
           (also called  Alternative Agriculture and 
               LISA):  An Introduction for  Farmers,
               Environmentalists, the Public, and
               Policy-makers
AUTHOR:        Hudson, William J. and Jonathan Harsch
PUBLISHER:     Washington, DC:  U.S. Dept. of Agriculture,
               Cooperative Extension Service, February 1991.      
         32 p.
NAL NUMBER:    aS441.H82 1991
ANNOTATION:    A booklet that answers, in very general terms,
elementary questions about sustainable agriculture. 
Highlights beneficial aspects of 1985 and 1990 federal farm
legislation.  Includes some data on fertilizer and chemical
pesticide costs; comparative crop rotations and yields;
tillage systems; livestock needs; pest control; marketing and
economic aspects; how farmers should approach the transition from
conventional to sustainable agriculture.
Available from U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Cooperative
Extension Service, Room 3849 South Building, Washington, DC  20250.
I can't believe I actually spent several hours trying to locate a hint
of "doomday agriculture", but I did not find any.  If Ms. McFadden
could sharpen her pointers a little, maybe I could find the articles
she is referring to.
Regards, Harold
----
"But if, like a spendthrift, [the federal government] throws discretion 
to the winds and is willing to make no sacrifice at all in spending, if 
it extends its taxing to the limit of the people's power to pay and 
continues to pile up deficits, then it is on the road to bankruptcy."
          -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, campaign address, October 1932

http://www.cyberhole.com

masonc@ix.netcom.com (Mason A. Clark) wrote for all to see:
>On 15 Nov 1996 17:23:22 GMT, jmc@Steam.stanford.edu (John McCarthy) wrote:
[edited]
>  Here lies the most common fallacy in economics:  linearity.
>
>  Linearity is valid ONLY for short time intervals.   And time is of 
>  the essence, e.g. "the number of cars being made" is a time variable.
>
>  There are NO linear relationships in economics over long time intervals.
>
>   Classical and neo-classical economics are polluted with linearity 
>   assumptions.
I would have to disagree with you on this, as I see almost no
assumptions of linearity in economics.  One of the first things out of
the box is referred to as the "Law of Diminishing Returns".  
To quote from a current college beginning text, Chap 1, page 39,
"Economics", 6th edition "As any activity is extended, it eventually
becomes increasingly difficult to pursue the activity further".
In more advanced, mathmatically oriented courses, you are told that
"all economic functions are bounded by a strictly convex hull."
Regards, Harold
----
"But I am deeply convinced that any permanent, regular, administrative 
system whose aim will be to provide for the needs of the poor will breed 
more miseries than it can cure, will deprave the population that it wants
to help and comfort, will in time reduce the rich to being no more than 
the tenant-farmers of the poor, will dry up the source of savings, will 
stop the accumulation of capital, will retard the development of trade, 
will benumb human industry and activity"
          --Alexis de Tocqueville, Memoir on Pauperism , 1835

Mike Asher (masher@tusc.net) wrote:
: Bruce Scott TOK   wrote:
: > Mike Asher (masher@tusc.net) wrote:
: > 
: > : My source is "Energy Risk Assessment" Herbert Inhaber, 1983,  Gordon &
: > : Breach.  Solar power is rated far more dangerous than nuclear, and even
: > : more so than coal, with its deaths from lung disease and mining
: accidents.
: > 
: > This was for photovoltaic solar, right?  If so it doesn't surprise me.
: > 
: Yes, PV cells with ancillary collection via mirrors.  Unfortunately, as
: pie-in-the-sky as these types of power plants are, most other plans for
: solar generation are even worse.
I know... solar power satellites.
I went to several talks roughly 1978-82, and watched the presenters get
shriller at each one, telling us, "this is happening now, this is our
tomorrow", etc, etc.  An SF author (I think it was even G Harry Stine)
got wise, calling them "hell beamers" :-)
During the Cold War, such a project might have been impossible for
political reasons (remember, the Soviets in those days were calling the
then-planned shuttle an "ideal weapons platform", and visibly panicked
when someone suggested the shuttle could put a Salyut into its bay and
carry it back to the US :-)
Now, it is just too-obviously expensive.
--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
Remember John Hron:       http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hron-john/

John McCarthy (jmc@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
: In article <56f98q$4dfn@sat.ipp-garching.mpg.de> bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK ) writes:
:  
:  > John McCarthy (jmc@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
:  > : There is only one thing actually false in Ehrlich's story of the bet.
:  > : Having to pay more than $500 on a $1,000 futures contract is not "a
:  > : small sum" relative to the size of the contract.  The tale is fuzzy in
:  > : other ways than not mentioning how much Ehrlich had to pay.  Of
:  > : course, for a man who got a $350,000 prize for making repeated false
:  > : predictions, $500 is a small sum.  To mention only the false
:  > : prediction in _The Population Bomb_ is again fuzzing up matters.
:  > 
:  > It is, actually.  Futures contracts are dangerous if you don't know what
:  > you're doing, because you can end up losing (and being liable for) much
:  > more than the amount of the contract.  That 1000 above is probably
:  > margin on something worth more like 10,000.  I don't know if the usual
:  > margin is as high as 10-1, but for oil before the Gulf War, though, it
:  > was usually above 5-1 and was only lowered to about 3 or 4 to 1 (8,000
:  > per contract, price between 22 and 32, in the last two months of 1990)
:  > because of the volatility.
:  > 
:  > If Erlich had been _badly_ wrong, he could have lost several times more
:  > than he did.  If you bought call on Jan 91 oil at 25 dollars in Sep 90
:  > (before the doubling of the margin) and it had only dropped to 23, you
:  > would have lost half your contract.  That is miniscule compared to what
:  > actually happened to the price.  Most people lost everything and landed
:  > in debt.
:  
: Bruce Scott is confused.
: No margins were involved in the bet.  
: Ehrlich could not have lost more than $1,000.  If the price of the
: metals had gone to zero, $1,000 is what he would have lost.  Since the
: price only halved (in constant dollars), he only had to pay about
: $500.  Simon was the one with the unlimited risk.  If the price of
: metals had gone up by a factor of 10, he would have had to pay $9,000.
: If it had gone up by 100, he would have had to pay $99,000.
It is John McCarthy who doesn't know what he talking about.  What he
describes is a "call option", not a "futures contract", although he
indeed calls it a "futures contract", which is why I, not knowing the
story of the bet, assumed it was a "futures contract".
--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
Remember John Hron:       http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hron-john/

Mike Asher (masher@tusc.net) wrote:
: I'm sorry if the reality of the Middle Ages doesn't agree with your copy of
: Robin Hood, Dave.  Have you read any serious history of, say, the 15th
: century? 
You're wrong, Mike.  Here is the reference:
Clive Ponting, _A Green History of the World_, Chapter 6: "The Long
Struggle".  It is about the neck-and-neck struggle against starvation.
It is the (short term: a few 100 years) disappearance of this problem in
industrial countries that I thought you might be crowing.
: > .. Do you see that I am
: > reduced to asking rhetorical questions, becasue substantive debate with
: > you is apparently impossible?.
: Please, introduce a fact, or at least a logical construction.  Your
: incessant name-calling is starting to wear thin.  Even the radicals in this
: group manage civility; you, though, are an exception.
Done.
--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
Remember John Hron:       http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hron-john/

David Lloyd-Jones (dlj@inforamp.net) wrote:
: If the absolute numbers of
: hungry were increasing, the number of children per mother would not be
: dropping everywhere.
The relationship between these two variables as you indicate here is
hypothetical and problematic.
Yuri.
--
           **    Yuri Kuchinsky in Toronto   **
  -- a webpage like any other...  http://www.io.org/~yuku  --
Most of the evils of life arise from man's being 
unable to sit still in a room    ||    B. Pascal

Steinn Sigurdsson  wrote:
> 
> > The December Scientific American has a brief note on plastic solar 
> > cells (market name of the polymer:  Lumeloid).  In theory, it could 
> > convert 75% of incident light into electricity... 
> I don't believe that. With a broadband spectrum like the solar
> spectrum it is virtually impossible to get 75% conversion 
> efficiencies.....
> It is conceivable the 75% efficiency quoted is the
> conversion efficiency from some narrow band (standard) source,
> it would not be the practical efficiency.
> 
Steinn, you're obviously ignorant of the beauty of this approach.  They get
the 75% efficiency rating by fermenting beet sugar, burning the resultant
alchohol to provide heat, converting the heat into electricity, using the
electricity to power a monochromatic light source, which then shines on the
PV cell.   A wonderfully inventive low-tech, zero-emission solution to our
energy needs.
--
Mike Asher
masher@tusc.net
"A society that puts equality ahead of freedom will end up with neither
equality nor freedom."
Milton Friedman 

Mason A. Clark (masonc@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: On 15 Nov 1996 14:38:27 GMT, yuku@io.org (Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote:
: > Would you like to explain why your suspicion should be valid? It seems to 
: > me that for many thousands of years when the global population was stable, 
: > the ecological impact was also stable.
: > 
: Over what chosen time interval was the human population ever "stable"?
Over 99% of human history it was more or less stable.
: During recorded history
Don't be silly. This is only 1% of human history. Back to Historical 
Anthropology 101 with you...
: there were ecological impacts of population expansion,
: over-grazing, natural disasters (such as floods), and militaristic expansions led 
: by demagogues (Attilla?)  Humanity and stability don't go together.
Yuri.
--
           **    Yuri Kuchinsky in Toronto   **
  -- a webpage like any other...  http://www.io.org/~yuku  --
Most of the evils of life arise from man's being 
unable to sit still in a room    ||    B. Pascal

dlj@inforamp.net (David Lloyd-Jones) wrote:
> Hell, if we suddenly figured out an industrial
>use for iodine, gold would be a glut on the market because we'd it'd
>be a byproduct of the seawater industry. 
Iodine is mostly produced from underground brines, waste from
the oil industry, and from nitrates in Chile.  It is no longer
produced from seaweed, and there was never primary production from
plain seawater. At the current price of around $10/kg, it would be
difficult to extract it economically from seawater (where it occurs at
a concentration of 50 ppb.)
See http://minerals.er.usgs.gov:80/minerals/pubs/mcs/iodine.txt
for the current status of iodine production.  Current world
production is about 15 kilotonnes per year; the global reserve base is
nearly 10 megatonnes (not including seaweed or seawater), mostly
in Japan.
     Paul Dietz
     dietz@interaccess.com
     "If you think even briefly about what the Federal
      budget will look like in 20 years, you immediately
      realize that we are drifting inexorably toward a
      crisis"
        -- Paul Krugman, in the NY Times Book Review

As the happy (and quite healthy, I might add) owner of a rather large
solar array, I find this whole concept quite humorous. My most
"dangerous" ocurrence having happened when I was getting a good, early
morning start rewiring and I managed to give myself a rather thorough
sunburn...
	Now granted, I realize from scanning the thread (there's been way too
much for me to read it all) that the greater focus is on larger,
industrial-sized production and the dangers inherant therein, but one
must realize that there's danger in everything - be it falling off a
rooftop or scaffold while wiring a solar array or getting irradiated
while inspecting a nuclear reactor.
	What few people realize is something that we in the (leather) Lifestyle
have come to recognize as inherant in the world - it is coloquialized by
the term "Ulgol's Law" - which simply says that for anything you can
think of trying, someone somewhere is already doing or has already tried
it and, conversely, anything that you might be a proponent of, someone
somewhere is steadfastly against.
	I'll continue to be quite happy in my solar existance. I clean the
panels whenever the rains don't do if for me and in the meantime I'll
enjoy the benefits of a nearly effortless and endless supply of
virtually free electricity.
R. Shadowfax
-- 
Shadowfax Leathercraft
P.O. Box 10451
Sarasota, Florida 34278-0451  USA
Email:  Shadowfax@mindspring.com
Web:  http://magenta.com/shadowfax (under construction)
Please include Email address with all
snail-mail correspondence. Thank you.

David Lloyd-Jones (dlj@inforamp.net) wrote:
: bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK ) wrote:
: >Labor cost has also dropped significantly in both the US and UK, due to
: >erosion of social protection.  At least that is true for people who
: >produce things.  I don't know about the service industry, but the
: >anecdotal bits I hear from the US are not inspiring of hope.
:  
: Here I stand corrected, and it's a fun example: America does not have
: a population crisis in anybody's books.  The white working class,
: whose incomes were dropping in real terms for the decade ending second
: quarter '96, are not even breeding at replacement rates.
Nice to see you admit that you trolled.  Anyway, the US labor force is
in fact expanding... birthrate plus immigration is over replacement, and
birth rate alone (last I looked it was 1.9/couple) is pretty close by
itself.  Don't forget what demographic momentum will do with a birthrate
close to 2.0/couple.
Your focus on the white working class may be of some interest.
Elaboration is welcome.
--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
Remember John Hron:       http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hron-john/

John McCarthy (jmc@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
: The absolute number of malnourished people is down slightly - from 800
: million to 700 million.  The objective is to bring it down to 400
: million by 2015.
: 	      This week an expected 100 heads of state and
:      government gather in Rome for the U.N. Food and Agriculture
:      Organisation's (FAO) World Food Summit to pledge to reduce
:      the number of under-nourished to 400 million by 2015.
:  
: 	      They will agree that the world, with some 800
:      million people lacking enough food to meet their basic
:      nutritional needs, must act to increase production
:      significantly.
: The source on which I read it was down slightly is not in accordance
: with the above extract from a news story about the Rome food meeting
: going on at present.
What was the source?
--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
Remember John Hron:       http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hron-john/

Mason A. Clark (masonc@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: On 15 Nov 1996 17:23:22 GMT, jmc@Steam.stanford.edu (John McCarthy) wrote:
: > The amount of steel required to make cars is indeed linear in the
: > number of cars being made.  Linear relationships dominate the economy,
: > except in a few areas like semiconductor memory which are dominated by
: > capital costs and design costs.
: > 
:   Here lies the most common fallacy in economics:  linearity.
:   Linearity is valid ONLY for short time intervals.   And time is of 
:   the essence, e.g. "the number of cars being made" is a time variable.
:   There are NO linear relationships in economics over long time intervals.
:    Classical and neo-classical economics are polluted with linearity 
:    assumptions.
:     Pollyanna environmentalists are linearity ideologues.  Oh, oh, now I've
:     insulted someone.  Sorry, my control system is non-linear today.
No, you've tagged the wrong side.  We are overshoot and crash
specialists.  Decidedly nonlinear.  Simple models which assume that all
forcing is linear (or at most quadratic) and dissipative is the sort of
garbage I am criticising.
Convince me you know what these things mean if you want to go any
further.  These are precise terms.
--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
Remember John Hron:       http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hron-john/

Kiwiboy (being a name that sounds like the Chinese Gooseberry Fanclub 
mascot) wrote:
> AUSTRALIA AND THE USA BLOW GOATS AND SLEEP WITH UNDERAGE KIDS-(MAINLY
> THEIR KIDS)
> MOVE TO NZ THE LAND OF THE FREE- WHERE WE DONT BLOW GOATS OR ROOT WEE
> KIDS
Someone's full of bile today. Someone who probably lives on the "of *course* 
first cousin marriages are alright, hyuk hyuk hyuk" Green Isle, New Zealand, 
someone who hasn't figured out how to use the Shift key or Caps Lock 
function yet, someone who probably likes those amusing little ball 
scratching machismo stimulating beer ads, with such witty and spectacularly 
egalitarian lines as "it's a hard road findin' the right woman, MAITE" and a 
fascination with weekend binging that is unrivalled by most societies. 
Of course, you do have that point about goats. Sheep are so much more 
civilized in the bedroom. 
Just my "wee" opinion, you megalomaniacal darling, you. 
Somnambulist
huantzin.goh@stonebow.otago.ac.nz

David Lloyd-Jones (dlj@inforamp.net) wrote:
: bg364@torfree.net (Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote:
: >People who deny the reality of overpopulation also prevent any action that
: >may address this problem. Thus they are responsible to a certain degree,
: >some more than others. McCarthy not to the same degree as the Pope who is
: >perhaps the biggest criminal. 
:  
: Population is under control. 
No, it's not. The population is increasing catastrophically in precisely 
the poorest countries in the world. Look for more genocide and forced 
migrations to the rich countries where the incidence of racism is likely 
to increase accordingly. Case in point: France and Le Pen. Also the rise 
of nativism in California.
Also look for increased totalitarianism in global politics -- courtesy of
fake-Libertarianism. 
: The relative birth rate has been
: delining since 1969-70,
This is statistical trickery.
: and the absolute number of births has been
: declining since 1986 or so. 
Incorrect. I heard that the net global population increase last year was
the greatest ever. 
: The number of new mothers will start to
: decline in the next five years, and the total number of possible
: mothers a few years after that.   
*If* some positive changes are happening -- you have to thank people like
Paul Ehrlich, a great benefactor of humanity. People like DLJ and other
(fake)-Libertarians are the people who did their best to counteract any
positive endeavor in this area. Rwanda, and now Zaire, are attributable 
to their efforts in no small measure.
Ecologically,
Yuri.
-- 
Yuri Kuchinsky          | "Where there is the Tree of Knowledge, there
------------------------| is always Paradise: so say the most ancient 
Toronto ... the Earth	| and the most modern serpents."  F. Nietzsche
-------- A WEBPAGE LIKE ANY OTHER: http://www.io.org/~yuku -----------

In article <56kset$oh8@library.airnews.net>, liberty@airmail.net (LQuest)
writes:
>taxservice@aol.com wrote:
>
>[snips of old stuff]
>
>>Coming from nerdom, listening to moralists, watching the activites and
>>monies spent by various non-profits and their endorsements of the
>>republican party, it seems to me naive of anyone not to realize where
the
>>greatest strength and hopes of the censors lie.
>
>Jack, 
>
>Please correct me if i am wrong but your pejorative use of the word
>"moralists" above seems to imply you feel "moralists" are categorically
bad.
>Is this true?
>
>More to the point, since the core issue in tax policy is a moral one, I
>respectfully ask you to honestly answer this question:  "Do human beings
NEED
>any kind of moral code in order to survive AND prosper?"  If so, why?  If
>not,
>why not?
>
>[many snips]
>
>
The perjorative comes from a so called moralist group called the "moral
majority", a term made popular by a conglamerate of what, in my opinion,
are moral degenerates.
Regarding your question about our need of humans for a moral code,
Obviously not!  It is a consensus by which moral codes evolve. We all came
up from junglesque beginnings and decided that survival depended on the
rules governing behavior.  There has always been an element that was able
to survive and prosper, at least 'til their demise.  We became civilized
and made efforts to control man's quest to survive, and prosper, at the
expense of his fellow man.  We have come to realize that we may not be the
fittest, but in numbers we outnumber those who survive because of their
fitness.  Strength is tempered by the wisdom of those who have lived long
enough to realize that that strength, to which you refer, is not eternal. 
"Jack"
John H. Fisher  -  TaxService@aol.com
Philadelphia, Pa. - Atlantic City, NJ - West Wildwood, NJ
Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise!!

Michael Turton (mturton@stsvr.showtower.com.tw) wrote:
: In article <56da4v$omm@usenet.Hydro.ON.CA>,
:    Dwight Zerkee  wrote:
: >Most technologies are in widespread use as they are the most efficient 
: compromise
: >available at the time. If oil becomes too expensive due to decreasing supply, 
: some other
: >energy source will become the most efficient compromise (cost vs. energy 
: content).
: >Until that happens, there is no economic incentive for firms, individuals, 
: etc. to 
: >invest money in making the alternative technology more efficient in its use 
: of that
: >energy source.
: >
: >dz.
: 	Unfortunately, there is no support from the history of technology
: for this point of view.  
I'm hardly an energy historian, but I would think that the move in Britain
to coal from wood a few centuries back, and whale oil to crude oil in the
century, would be examples.
One of these days, I'd like to read "The Doomsday Myth : 10,000 Years of 
Economic Crises," S. Charles Maurice and Charles W. Smithson, Hoover
Institution Press, 1984. They apparently go through a number of such
episodes.
  .---.   Bill Goffe                                 bgoffe@whale.st.usm.edu
 (    |   Dept. of Econ. and International Business   office: (601) 266-4484
  )__*|   University of Southern Mississippi             fax: (601) 266-4920
    (_|   Southern Station, Box 5072
          Hattiesburg, MS 39406-5072

masonc@ix.netcom.com (Mason A. Clark) wrote for all to see:
>On 15 Nov 1996 14:38:27 GMT, yuku@io.org (Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote:
>
>> Would you like to explain why your suspicion should be valid? It seems to 
>> me that for many thousands of years when the global population was stable, 
>> the ecological impact was also stable.
>> 
>Over what chosen time interval was the human population ever "stable"?
>
>During recorded history there were ecological impacts of population expansion,
>over-grazing, natural disasters (such as floods), and militaristic expansions led 
>by demagogues (Attilla?)  Humanity and stability don't go together.
>
>The more it changes the more it stays the same.
I am not sure what you mean.  Much as I dislike agreeing with Yuri (he
says so much I guess he must be right occasionally, like a busted
analog clock), but, taking world population as a whole the human
population was very stable up until about 6000 BC.  Introduction of
agriculture, you know.
It grew slowly but steadily until about 1400, when it started to
increase drastically.  There was another spurt at 1800 - 1900.
Interestingly enough though, and contrary to popluar mythology, the
majority of humans who have ever lived are dead.  Estimates are from
77 to 80 billion people have lived on Earth, including today's
population.  See "Popultaion Studies", edited by K. Kammeyer, CHicago,
Rand Mcnalley, 1975.  which contains an article entitled "How Many
People Have Ever Lived on Earth?", by Anabelle Desmond.
Regards, Harold
----
"In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those 
who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it."
	---Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, pt. 2, 
	ch. 5 (1840).

In article <01bbd3e5$52a77ba0$89d0d6cc@masher>, "Mike Asher"  says:
>Steinn, you're obviously ignorant of the beauty of this approach.  They get
>the 75% efficiency rating by fermenting beet sugar, burning the resultant
>alchohol to provide heat, converting the heat into electricity, using the
>electricity to power a monochromatic light source, which then shines on the
>PV cell.   A wonderfully inventive low-tech, zero-emission solution to our
>energy needs.
>
>--
>Mike Asher
>masher@tusc.net
>
>"A society that puts equality ahead of freedom will end up with neither
>equality nor freedom."
>Milton Friedman 
>
Who said that Rube Goldberg is dead?

Rod Adams wrote:
> William, do you really expect that cleaning
> solar cells will be a lucrative profession that attracts the most
> careful individuals provided with the latest and greatest in safety
> equipment?
If this is your only "energy" cost, yes. The only concession I'll make
is that the initial manufacturing/installation costs of solar panels is
not cost effective if you only account for the direct costs of nuclear
and coal. If you take into account the cost of the wars we wage, the
cost of nuclear waste disposal, the cost of security, etc. etc. I can
easily see us paying $20/hour to these solar panel cleaners and still
coming out ahead.
> William, you are dead wrong on this comment.  The amount of concrete
> needed to build a containment vessel is well documented, but even if
> it were not, you could do a rough calculation based on the size
> of the building and the thickness of the walls.
> 
> If you even attempted to run the numbers, you would find that even a
> thin layer of concrete spread over 75 acres (Solar 1) uses
> more concrete than a typical 1000 MW nuclear power plant containment
> building.  Solar 1, however, only generates about 50 MW peak power.
Why do you insist on developing Solar 1 plants? Solar one is a poorly
engineered solar plant. If you had solar cells on rooftops rather than
on dedicated land, you would already have the structural support. And
don't give me this BS about rooftops not being able to sustain such
loads.
> Again, there are numbers that refute your claim.  If you put all of
> the high level nuclear waste produced in US nuclear plants over their
> entire operating lives into approved storage containers and lined the
> containers up on a football field, you would not completely cover
> the field. (The containers are about 15 feet tall.)
Boy, I'd sure love to work at that facility.
> That material, as well as most other material often referred to as
> nuclear waste, is also just as recycleable as the cadmium needed
> in the batteries of your solar system.
> You also stated that no matter how you generate electricity, you still
> need to store it.  That is false, my friend.  
Looking back on what I stated, you are right, I am wrong. Nonetheless,
the peak load hours are during the summer, right smack in the middle of
the day, when the sun is at its peak. You will have storage
requirements, but cadmium is not necessary, because even the load
levelers used today in other countries run off lead-acid batteries just
fine.
If all the nuclear waste is recyclable as you claim it is, why the hell
are we burying it in the ground in sealed containers. That sounds more
like a land fill than a recycling plant.
William

Mike Asher wrote:
> 
> Hehehe.  Are you serious with this argument?  First of all, the total area
> of every rooftop in the country is certainly a "vast collection area".
> Secondly, falls are already the second leading cause of accidental death in
> the US.   Even if "trained individuals" did perform the cleaning, it is
> these same individuals that die by the thousands every year from falling
> off roofs.  Also, to think that most homeowners will pay someone to come
> out weekly or monthly and clean their collectors is ludicrous-- most people
> will do it themselves.
I am serious with this argument. Moreover, if you'll re-read what I
orignially wrote, I stated that rooftops do not constitute a vast
collection area "DEDICATED" to energy collection.
Why do you find it so outrageous that homeowners would be willing to
pay for someone to clean solar arrays? I won't disagree that the
initial cost of manufacturing and putting up solar cells is currently
too
costly to be a feasible replacement for coal or nuclear- that is if you
only consider the direct costs of coal and nuclear and assume that
you're
paying for the solar array coverage area. However, once up and
running, the only maintancence comes down to cleaning the arrays, and I
would argue that that is far cheaper than the price of energy today.
Suppose it was mandatory that you allow energy companies to put solar
cells on your rooftop. These companies wouldn't have to compensate you
for doing so, and the startup cost would then be considerably cheaper.
Your energy costs would come primarily from cleaning the solar arrays. 
> > The containment system for a nuclear plant uses far
> > more concrete than any equivalent-power producing solar array.
> 
> Wrong.  A 1000 megawatt nuclear reactor requires approximately 4000 tons of
> concrete.  We've never been able to build a 1000 megawatt solar plant but
> the ten megawatt plant "Solar One" required almost 20,000 tons of concrete.
>  Five times as much material, for 1/100 the power output....and Solar One
> is only online during the _daytime_.   I will add that, during its short
> period of operation, Solar One managed to catch fire and burn, seriously
> injuring two workers.   So, in a couple of years of operation, a 10 MW
> solar plant managed to cause more human injury than decades of operation by
> over 100 domestic nuclear reactors.  But solar power *is* safe, because we
> think it to be so.
Look, I'm not saying that Solar One is a well-engineered solar plant. If
you put solar arrays  on rooftops, the structural support is already
there.
You're comparing a system that's been around for some time (nuclear)
with a beaurcratic prototype of a system that hasn't even been adopted
in
this country. There are better ways to go about solar energy collection
than Solar One.
William

bg364@torfree.net (Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote:
>David Lloyd-Jones (dlj@inforamp.net) wrote:
>: The relative birth rate has been
>: delining since 1969-70,
>
>This is statistical trickery.
Nope.  It's a plain fact.
>: and the absolute number of births has been
>: declining since 1986 or so. 
>
>Incorrect. I heard that the net global population increase last year was
>the greatest ever. 
The two are not contradictory: there are now more old folk than ever
before.  Total increase will stay flat for the next few years, because
declines in births will continue for a while to be matched by declines
in deaths from increases in life expectancy among the very old.
>: The number of new mothers will start to
>: decline in the next five years, and the total number of possible
>: mothers a few years after that.   
>
>*If* some positive changes are happening -- you have to thank people like
>Paul Ehrlich, a great benefactor of humanity. People like DLJ and other
>(fake)-Libertarians are the people who did their best to counteract any
>positive endeavor in this area. Rwanda, and now Zaire, are attributable 
>to their efforts in no small measure.
I doubt that Paul Ehrlich has ever been in Zaire inhis life, and he
has certainly had nothing to do with the drop in birth rate there.
The main things causing the deline in birth rates are the decline in
death rates and the increase in television, cosmetics, and variety in
clothing, all of which make people aware of and desirous of modern
styles of life.
                                         -dlj.

brshears@whale.st.usm.edu (Harold Brashears) wrote:
>I am not sure what you mean.  Much as I dislike agreeing with Yuri (he
>says so much I guess he must be right occasionally, like a busted
>analog clock), but, taking world population as a whole the human
>population was very stable up until about 6000 BC.  Introduction of
>agriculture, you know.
The way I look at it, this was the information revolution.  People
started categorizing stuff: animals by which ones were tame enough to
keep, which ones you should kill before they killed you or got away;
plants by which ones would grown if you planted them.  Arithmetic: how
much seed will give us how much food, leaves how much that it's safe
to eat now?
The agricultural revolution, because it is more knowledge intensive
than steam and electric power, ships, trade, or war, is the _last_ of
all things to develop.  It's happening now, made possible by electron
microspcopy and molecular biology, satellite land surveys and
hydrology, derivatives-based pricing, and so on.  
This is why the most advanced countries have agricultural surpluses,
and import their manufactured goods from less advanced countries.
                                  -dlj.

bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK ) wrote:
>Nice to see you admit that you trolled.  Anyway, the US labor force is
>in fact expanding... birthrate plus immigration is over replacement, and
>birth rate alone (last I looked it was 1.9/couple) is pretty close by
>itself.  Don't forget what demographic momentum will do with a birthrate
>close to 2.0/couple.
2.0 is nowhere near replacement, and 1.9 is nowhere near 2.0 when the
younger women are having fewer children at each age than the older
women did.  
Demographic momentum?  I think this is an illusion.  There is no such
thing.  There are events in demographics which seem predictable
because they are the outcomes of things which happened long before.
The number of new mothers will start to decline right about now
because the number of new children started declining ten years ago.
This is not a matter of "momentum."  It's more like a Mafia
acquaintance of mine in Philadelphia who makes his living betting on
the plays, shots, and games on the TV in the corner of the bar: the
guys he bets with don't realise that the games are replays.
>Your focus on the white working class may be of some interest.
>Elaboration is welcome.
What's to elaborate?  Bubba is an ignorant, lazy, and culturally
backward fool.  So his income declines.  What else would you expect?
The most important part of this is probably the cultural part:
Bubba-culture blames stuff on black people and welfare bums.  Dolt
Bubba votes Republican, which is like the cattle licking the farmer's
hand as they climb into the truck to the meat packer's.  Trent Lott,
feed lot, all the same damn thing.
If they had the mother wit to get together with the blacks and vote in
a working class Senate, the whole joint would be a little healthier.
The rich folks might even be able to walk the streets at night. 
                                 -dlj.

John McCarthy (jmc@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
: In article <56fkpe$5omj@sat.ipp-garching.mpg.de> bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK ) writes:
:  > 
:  > John McCarthy (jmc@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
:  > 
:  > : One consequence of the economists' disdain for technology, more
:  > : broadly a disdain for specifics, is that it is apparently impossible
:  > : to get input-output matrices for the American economy these days.  If
:  > : someone knows where they might be available, please let me know.
:  > 
:  > Are you really assuming the relationship between them is linear??
:  > 
:  > As you well know, if it is not, then you cannot define a matrix except
:  > for infinitesimal departures from equilibrium.  I think we are very
:  > definitely in the "non-LTE" state.  How about you?
: The amount of steel required to make cars is indeed linear in the
: number of cars being made.  Linear relationships dominate the economy,
: except in a few areas like semiconductor memory which are dominated by
: capital costs and design costs.
So Professor McCarthy thinks the economy has a dominantly linear
response to forcing.  I'll file this for future reference.  If you think
the first sentence here is a mis-characterisation of your position,
please clarify.
I'd like to see anybody endure the intellectual contortions required to
explain that the world fishing system is linear.  Same for oil.
--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
Remember John Hron:       http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hron-john/

David Lloyd-Jones (dlj@inforamp.net) wrote:
: bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK ) wrote:
: >Perhaps, then, you can offer a principled discussion of the scientific
: >literature on ozone and the effect on it of CFCs.
:  
: Scott seems to think this is a witty remark to make about wolves and
: caribou.  Go figger.
:  
: I am not up to date on the latest ozone-CFC findins: there seems to be
: some feeling around that the Treaty of Montreal was overkill, and that
: the ozone hole may be a result of natural volcanism.
This is long-since debunked.  Read the FAQ.  My point was to respond to
the claim that all this environment warning is all pollyanna crap with
no science.  Say that about Ozone and you're talking nonsense.
[rest tossed]
--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
Remember John Hron:       http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hron-john/

Scott Susin (ssusin@emily11.Berkeley.EDU) wrote:
: Mason A. Clark (masonc@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: :    Classical and neo-classical economics are polluted with linearity 
: :    assumptions.
: This simply isn't so.  A more usual assumption is diminishing marginal
: returns, which is often justified as the result of some factor being
: in fixed supply, like land.  I think you'd like it.
Most resources are not fixed.  Land is one of the few that is.  Land
multiplied by natural productivity is decidedly not.
--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
Remember John Hron:       http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hron-john/

Have 2 related web pages on the subject of Productivity, and invite you to
look at them, and offer constructive comments as to other data that might
be included, errors and omissions. I don't claim to be an expert on this,
although several economists have passed judgment. Here are the pages:
1. Stagnation of Family Incomes:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3795/family.htm
2. Lousy Productivity Rates:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3795/product.htm
Thanking you in advance, and if you would respond by email it would be
appreciated.
-- 
Michael Hodges
mwhodges@msn.com
The Grandfather Economic Report - home page:
An economic challenge for our youth compared to prior generations:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3795/hodges.htm
An Education System Shortchanging Our Youth:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3795/education.htm

Bruce Scott includes:
McCarthy:
: The amount of steel required to make cars is indeed linear in the
: number of cars being made.  Linear relationships dominate the economy,
: except in a few areas like semiconductor memory which are dominated by
: capital costs and design costs.
     So Professor McCarthy thinks the economy has a dominantly
     linear response to forcing.  I'll file this for future
     reference.  If you think the first sentence here is a
     mis-characterisation of your position, please clarify.
Yes, it is a mischaracterization.  Scott seems to be confusing the
linear relation between the number of cars and the amount of steel
required with an assertion that the response of the industrial system
over time to some forcing term (of unspecified character is linear).  
     I'd like to see anybody endure the intellectual contortions
     required to explain that the world fishing system is linear.
     Same for oil.
There are some linear relationships in the fishing system and in the
oil system.  One relates the fish caught to the number of boats
fishing.  This relation holds if there are not too many boats.
Another relates the oil found to the number of feet of drilling.  This
relation is also of limited validity.
Linear relations of limited validity are still important.  Because
they make things easier they should be used to the extent of their
validity.
-- 
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
During the last years of the Second Millenium, the Earthmen complained
a lot.

The source from which I read that the number of undernourished was
down from 800 million to 400 million was an article primarily about
fishing from the same Rome meeting.  It is interesting to compare the
news stories from that meeting, because each news source has its own
agenda.
-- 
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
During the last years of the Second Millenium, the Earthmen complained
a lot.

In article <56kscv$5eb0@sat.ipp-garching.mpg.de> bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK ) writes:
 > 
 > John McCarthy (jmc@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
 > : In article <56f98q$4dfn@sat.ipp-garching.mpg.de> bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK ) writes:
 > :  
 > :  > John McCarthy (jmc@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
 > :  > : There is only one thing actually false in Ehrlich's story of the bet.
 > :  > : Having to pay more than $500 on a $1,000 futures contract is not "a
 > :  > : small sum" relative to the size of the contract.  The tale is fuzzy in
 > :  > : other ways than not mentioning how much Ehrlich had to pay.  Of
 > :  > : course, for a man who got a $350,000 prize for making repeated false
 > :  > : predictions, $500 is a small sum.  To mention only the false
 > :  > : prediction in _The Population Bomb_ is again fuzzing up matters.
 > :  > 
 > :  > It is, actually.  Futures contracts are dangerous if you don't know what
 > :  > you're doing, because you can end up losing (and being liable for) much
 > :  > more than the amount of the contract.  That 1000 above is probably
 > :  > margin on something worth more like 10,000.  I don't know if the usual
 > :  > margin is as high as 10-1, but for oil before the Gulf War, though, it
 > :  > was usually above 5-1 and was only lowered to about 3 or 4 to 1 (8,000
 > :  > per contract, price between 22 and 32, in the last two months of 1990)
 > :  > because of the volatility.
 > :  > 
 > :  > If Erlich had been _badly_ wrong, he could have lost several times more
 > :  > than he did.  If you bought call on Jan 91 oil at 25 dollars in Sep 90
 > :  > (before the doubling of the margin) and it had only dropped to 23, you
 > :  > would have lost half your contract.  That is miniscule compared to what
 > :  > actually happened to the price.  Most people lost everything and landed
 > :  > in debt.
 > :  
 > : Bruce Scott is confused.
 > 
 > : No margins were involved in the bet.  
 > 
 > : Ehrlich could not have lost more than $1,000.  If the price of the
 > : metals had gone to zero, $1,000 is what he would have lost.  Since the
 > : price only halved (in constant dollars), he only had to pay about
 > : $500.  Simon was the one with the unlimited risk.  If the price of
 > : metals had gone up by a factor of 10, he would have had to pay $9,000.
 > : If it had gone up by 100, he would have had to pay $99,000.
 > 
 > It is John McCarthy who doesn't know what he talking about.  What he
 > describes is a "call option", not a "futures contract", although he
 > indeed calls it a "futures contract", which is why I, not knowing the
 > story of the bet, assumed it was a "futures contract".
I just looked up "futures contract" in the on-line Encyclopedia
Britannica as it refers to the commodities market.  As far as I can
see, my original usage was correct and Bruce Scott's vehement
correction was mistaken.
-- 
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
During the last years of the Second Millenium, the Earthmen complained
a lot.

Steinn Sigurdsson (steinn@sandy.ast.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
: ssusin@emily11.Berkeley.EDU (Scott Susin) writes:
: > Steinn Sigurdsson (steinn@sandy.ast.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
: > : Steinn Sigurdsson  writes:
: > : > ssusin@emily11.Berkeley.EDU (Scott Susin) writes:
: > : > > Steinn Sigurdsson (steinn@sandy.ast.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
: > : > > : 	BF		FF		FI
: > : > > : 	p	q	p	q
: > : > > 
: > : > > : 1995    2	20	10	1	100
: > : > > 
: > : > > : 1996    2	15	11	5	170 <- WRONG: 102 is correct.
: > : > I'd like to see that calculation explicitly.
: > : Ah, I see, your index is  
: > : Sum_i (New price_i * Old Quantity_i)/Sum_i (Old price_i*Old Quantity_i)
: > Thanks for giving me the credit, but I didn't invent the concept
: > of a price index.  _Everybody_ who's ever calculated one knows that
: > the idea is to hold the quantity constant, and measure only the change
: > in price.  Your method doesn't do this, and so it's _wrong_.  This is
: > not a matter of opinion.   Most of you criticisms of the fish CPI rest
: > on your confusion of prices and quantities and so they are wrong too.
: No hold on a second here. I constructed my example
: to hold the quantity constant - 20 or 21 units of
: fish are sold each year, which is reasonable assuming
: people eat roughly constant amounts and that the
: supply is fixed by the catch effort, not variable, which
: is a reasonable assumption. 
20 isn't 21.  You are backtracking with increasingly implausible
explanations of what you were trying to do.  A price index
holds the bundle of goods constant.  That is, the vector of 
quantities, not the sum of the quantities.  
Consider how absurd your "method" would be if applied to the whole CPI,
which includes not only fish, but also cars.  We can't sum fish and
cars, as you'd like to, since the units aren't the same.  By the same
reasoning, if we could sum them, as you do, then the units must be the
same, and there is no reason to have an index.
Also, you've once again demonstrated that you don't know 
what economists mean by "supply."
: Thus what changes is the price, and if the people
: measuring the price index of "fish" fail to
: separate the "basic fish" from the "fancy fish"
: they will see an apparent rise in the index of 70% or so,
: because they will see constant sales of "fish units"
: put people paying a higher price in the second year.
Now you claim that you knew that your example merely _demonstrates
an error_.  Fine, I agree.  
I even agree that there are goods (like VCRs), where the BLS
may make such errors.  However, I don't agree that the BLS 
ever makes such errors in the fish index.  It's not hard 
to tell cod from haddock from fish sticks.  You accuse
the BLS of being unable to do this, which is absurd.
: If they manage to distinguish the two different classes
: of fish, they still see a rise in price, which does
: not reflect a supply shortage - which what this sub-thread
: was originally about, remember?
A rise in price can be due to a decrease in supply or an increase
in demand.  I've never asserted otherwise.
Frankly, although it an understanding of supply and
demand would shed a lot of light on the proper interpretation
of the rise in the price of fish, it's too simple a model
and it won't tell you the whole story.
: > : That does indeed give a 2% year-year increase in the CPI,
: > : which is quite reasonable, and I would think the natural
: > : response of FF price in response to sharply rising demand
: > : is that it go up - where as your example assumed it went down
: > : with rising demand...  Whence Econ 101 there?
: > No.  My example assumed that people bought more and at the same
: > time, the price went down.  This is consistent with the supply
: > curve shifting out.  It is also consistent with both curves
: > shifting at the same time.  In general, data about prices
: > and quantities tells us _nothing_ about supply and 
: > demand.  If you ever take econ 1, this question will be on
: > the test.
: I seriously doubt I'll be taking econ 1, I already have enough
: letters after my name and prefer to get economic theory straight
: from my colleagues. 
: I'm puzzled at your assertion about the relationship between
: prices and quantities - they assuredly tell us _something_ about
: supply and demand (eg. the supply can not possibly have been
: less than the quantity sold...  and last I checked, at fixed
: supply and rising demand the usual response is for the price
: to rise). 
Ask your collegues to explain to you the difference between
"the quantity sold increased" and "demand increased."
The latter refers to a shift in the curve, and the former
merely describes two points that may or may not be on the 
same curve.
: Your constructed price examples, BTW, appeared nonsensical
: and artificial for the purpose of showing a declining CPI
: in the presence of increased sales of a value added product.
To you perhaps, but my example is in line with the facts.
You assert that there has been a shift to expensive, processed
fish.  This may be so.  But if so, it caused the fish CPI to
rise _less_ then otherwise.  That's because processed fish,
although more expensive, has not been rising in price as
fast as fresh fish.
: > : > My assumption was  FI = 100*(2*15+11*5)/(2*20+10*1)=170
: > : > I assumed the price of fancy fish would rise a little
: > : > due to increased demand, but that most of the
: > : > price difference reflects labour intensive value
: > : > added (ie BF and FF are the same raw fish, but FF
: > : > has value added as it is, say spiced&ready; to cook,
: > : > while BF is just a plain fillet).
: > : > 
: > : > > : 1997    2	10	12	11	178(since1996)
: > : > > : 					304(since 1995)			
: > 
: > : 	With the (correct) CPI calculation the 1996-1997 
: > : increase is now 6%, and 12% over 1995. Note the quantity
: > : of raw material in demand is still not increasing.
: > 
: > : > > You really should understand the basics before you make esoteric
: > : > > criticisms.  A price index holds the bundle of goods constant over
: > : > > time.  This is the whole point.  Because you don't understand this,
: > : > > your calculations are wrong.
: > 
: > : My apologies, I misunderstood your defined index. You are mistaken
: > : if you believe there is unique definition of a price index,
: > 
: > There is more than one way, yes, but _all_ of them hold the 
: > quantities constant between two years.  Your method doesn't do this,
: > and so it is not a price index.
: I did hold the quantity constant between the years! Add them
: up (well, except for letting q slip one unit in the middle
: year, that was an unnecessary refinement).
: I think you misunderstand what the concept of an "index" is,
: it is not unique to economics, nor is there a law of nature
: as to how the indices are constructed. I can give you real
: life examples if you want.
If you were merely trying to show how to calculate the average price of
fish per pound, regardless of what types of fish were bought, then you
hardly needed such an elaborate example.  And this would not be an
index, BTW, since the units would be meaningful.
: > : indeed there is continued dispute over just how to
: > : allow for the change in composition of the value of
: > : goods weighed in your typical index.
: > : > > I've corrected your 1996 value.  You've calculated a 70% increase in
: > : > > _expenditures_ on fish, but this is not the same as an increase in
: > : > > price.  The increase in expenditures mostly occurred because quantity
: > : > > increased.  The _price_ only rose 2%.
: > : > Ah, the quantity in the above calculation actually
: > : > _decreased_ from 1995 to 1996, there 21 units
: > : > of "fish" sold in 1995, and 20 units in 1996.
: > : > That was a deliberate assumption - and a realistic
: > : > one. The mean retail cost of fish in this example
: > : > increases sharply because of value added at the retail
: > : > level, not because of a supply-demand response.
: > In your example, the price index goes up because people have
: > switched to something whose price was increasing.  It
: > is irrelevant that they switched to something with more "value
: > added" and a higher price.
: No, it is not irrelevant, it is the whole point.
: I think you've forgotten why this became a point of
: debate in the first place.
: > Suppose processed fish is more expensive, but its price is rising
: > at a slower rate.  Then if people buy more processed fish and 
: > less fresh fish, the CPI won't rise as fast.  In fact, 
: > this is what has happened.  The price of fresh and frozen fish
: > has risen much faster than the price of processed fish.
: This is because there has been technological deflation
: in processing cost, plus some gains from economy of scale.
: The point remains, how finely do the people who construct
: CPIs discern the differently handled, processed and marketed
: products? If they fail to distinguish sub-categories of
: products they will see spurious index inflation in certain
: plausible scenarios.
:  
: > : > Since the basket or retail good used to calculate
: > : > consumer price indices includes specifically
: > : > processed, value added goods, not generally wholesale
: > : > raw materials, some of the variation in the index
: > : > must be due to this. 
: > : > As it happens this actually happened with fish
: > : > sold in the US over the period where you noted
: > : > a CPI rise above inflation. They sold cod in both
: > : > 1970 and 1995, but in 1995 the cod was more likely
: > : > to be frozen, breaded and ready to nuke.
: > : This point remains.
: > And this made the CPI rise _less_ than it otherwise would have.
: Ah, no, if the fancy fish had never taken off the CPI would
: be constant. So the switch to a "fancier" retail product
: drives a rise in the CPI which is unrelated to the cost of
: the raw material, or the supply of the basic product.
: Ergo you can't assert that simply because CPI for "fish"
: rose more rapidly than the general CPI, that this implies
: anything much about fish supplies.
--
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Scott Susin                                   "Time makes more converts than   
Department of Economics                        Reason"                      
U.C. Berkeley                                  Thomas Paine, _Common_Sense_