matgb: (Webstuff)Mat Bowles ([personal profile] matgb) wrote,
@ 2011-08-15 04:01 pm UTC
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Crossposts:http://matgb.livejournal.com/455139.html
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supergee: (sign)


[personal profile] supergee
2011-08-15 04:30 pm UTC (link)
Blogging Starkey. Thanx. Wotta maroon!

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frightened: Photo by Jason B (me clown wig, me in a clown wig)


[personal profile] frightened
2011-08-15 07:44 pm UTC (link)
Ugh, Starkey. I can't tell you how much I hated that fame-whore and his populist bullshit when I was doing a history degree.

I think one of my lecturers hated him more. She had a scathing article about him, Niall Ferguson and some other neo-colonialist asshole cut out and stuck on her office door.

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matgb: Artwork of 19th century upper class anarchist, text: MatGB (MatGB)


[personal profile] matgb
2011-08-15 07:54 pm UTC (link)
What always bothers me the most about him is the sheer historical illiteracy that he's prepared to spout to support a political point. If you're on t'telly as a historian, and it's not your period, asserting things as facts that are supposition, conjecture or just wrong is actively damaging. And the very idea that the riots recently are a sign of decline, given the history of disturbances in London, is simply false.

I have at least seen Ferguson admit something wasn't his field, even if he is a bit of a cock.

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daweaver:   (suileile)


[personal profile] daweaver
2011-08-15 08:27 pm UTC (link)

Is the Adam Smith Institute really addressing a straw man in its article? The spike in cereal prices towards the end of the last decade was attributed at the time to increased demand from biofuels, higher input costs from increased oil prices, and decreased supply from a prolonged drought in Australia.

Lower supply, higher demand, and increased fixed costs are part of conventional economic theory, and belongs to the depressingly small part of economics that actually has predictive power: when supply increased, and demand reduced, and fixed costs fell from late 2008, the price also fell. Then these reversals were themselves partly reversed, resulting in renewed inflation in the past twelve months.

Surely Occam's Razor requires the most simple explanation is to be preferred?

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matgb: Artwork of 19th century upper class anarchist, text: MatGB (MatGB)


[personal profile] matgb
2011-08-15 08:31 pm UTC (link)
I always dislike the razor, as the default answer is 'god did it', but while you're right, simple supply/demand explains things, that's not the perception of some campaigners.

There's a serious campaign led by some major players (and my brain has gone blank as to which charities it is) to outloaw speculation on commodities, and they're asserting as fact that speculation causes price rises.

The evidence points to supply and demand fluctuations being judges by traders to try and make money, but their work actually stops the fluctuations it would cause from being as high as you'd expect--fires in russia caused the futures market to peak prompting more US farmers to plant wheat that year, etc.

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