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Yes--Kilgore Trout is back again.
Mar. 2nd, 2009 06:04 pm
Currently at Toronto Pearson: -11.
I have decided that locking everything down here is preferable to blogspot--not that there will be any quantitative or qualitative difference in output--even though I will miss out on the contributions of random Mormon civil libertarians from the world wide internet.
I am back today because I have something important to tell you about the stock market.
As the markets have kept falling, I have been amused to think that there does not seem to be any difference in principle between investing in stocks and investing in baseball cards (which I dabbled in in my highschool years, just before the baseball-card bubble burst in the early '90s). The general discourse about stocks has their prices responding to various objective conditions, some of which apply to stocks generally, like GDP, unemployment, war, etc., and some of which apply to particular stocks, like profits, new products, competitors, etc. The general discourse about baseball cards also has (or used to have) their prices responding to various objective conditions, though only applying to the cards of particular players: stats, awards, Hall-of-Fame induction, etc. (I'm not sure what difference the difference makes.) But in both cases, as far as I can see, all that really matters is supply and demand--and of those two, what really matters is demand: if nobody wants a stock or a baseball card, it is worth precisely nothing, and all the objective conditions are irrelevant.
Of course, baseball cards don't pay dividends. On the other hand, there probably aren't any games you can play by arranging your stock certificates on the floor and throwing things on them. I'm not sure, but I bet stock certificates don't make as good of a clacking sound if you put them in the spokes of your bike, either.
As you can probably tell, I wrote the first paragraph somewhere else, and then as I was writing the middle of the second paragraph thought "ah, screw it" and for a couple of seconds considered posting it in a.g. instead. But, well, you know. I was looking at a.g. yesterday to see if there was a netscrape this February, because I wished to report that my favourite television program is now Midsomer Murders.
There is something else that I have been wanting to say for months about economics. It is about "the margin of error". I first became aware of the importance of the principle of the margin of error for economics when I was in the Parkdale Price Chopper and a panhandler was buying a few groceries and told the cashier to keep the change--a couple of bucks or whatever. For someone who has nothing and very uncertain prospects to leave money on the table seems paradoxical. One might be tempted to explain it by saying that the panhandler lives in a world of generosity. I don't think that's it. I think it's that the panhandler might make five bucks tomorrow, or he might make fifty bucks tomorrow, and next week he might get a job, and he might not, and he might freeze to death on the street tonight. What's the value of two bucks, relative to all that? Indeterminate. It's lost in the margin of error.
Hey, the strike is over. How about that. As of yesterday, I'm officially unemployed again. I still have eleven essays and nineteen one-page responses to mark. Hi ho.
I have decided that locking everything down here is preferable to blogspot--not that there will be any quantitative or qualitative difference in output--even though I will miss out on the contributions of random Mormon civil libertarians from the world wide internet.
I am back today because I have something important to tell you about the stock market.
As the markets have kept falling, I have been amused to think that there does not seem to be any difference in principle between investing in stocks and investing in baseball cards (which I dabbled in in my highschool years, just before the baseball-card bubble burst in the early '90s). The general discourse about stocks has their prices responding to various objective conditions, some of which apply to stocks generally, like GDP, unemployment, war, etc., and some of which apply to particular stocks, like profits, new products, competitors, etc. The general discourse about baseball cards also has (or used to have) their prices responding to various objective conditions, though only applying to the cards of particular players: stats, awards, Hall-of-Fame induction, etc. (I'm not sure what difference the difference makes.) But in both cases, as far as I can see, all that really matters is supply and demand--and of those two, what really matters is demand: if nobody wants a stock or a baseball card, it is worth precisely nothing, and all the objective conditions are irrelevant.
Of course, baseball cards don't pay dividends. On the other hand, there probably aren't any games you can play by arranging your stock certificates on the floor and throwing things on them. I'm not sure, but I bet stock certificates don't make as good of a clacking sound if you put them in the spokes of your bike, either.
As you can probably tell, I wrote the first paragraph somewhere else, and then as I was writing the middle of the second paragraph thought "ah, screw it" and for a couple of seconds considered posting it in a.g. instead. But, well, you know. I was looking at a.g. yesterday to see if there was a netscrape this February, because I wished to report that my favourite television program is now Midsomer Murders.
There is something else that I have been wanting to say for months about economics. It is about "the margin of error". I first became aware of the importance of the principle of the margin of error for economics when I was in the Parkdale Price Chopper and a panhandler was buying a few groceries and told the cashier to keep the change--a couple of bucks or whatever. For someone who has nothing and very uncertain prospects to leave money on the table seems paradoxical. One might be tempted to explain it by saying that the panhandler lives in a world of generosity. I don't think that's it. I think it's that the panhandler might make five bucks tomorrow, or he might make fifty bucks tomorrow, and next week he might get a job, and he might not, and he might freeze to death on the street tonight. What's the value of two bucks, relative to all that? Indeterminate. It's lost in the margin of error.
Hey, the strike is over. How about that. As of yesterday, I'm officially unemployed again. I still have eleven essays and nineteen one-page responses to mark. Hi ho.
