Home Depot Is Hurt By Weak Housing Market (WSJ)
A rough quarter for Home Depot, as net income fell by 27 percent in the face of a weak housing market. Sort of takes the wind out of the bull argument, that when people aren’t spending their money on buying new homes, they’re spending their money on renovation, so Home Depot wins either way. Admission: we haven’t actually heard anyone say that specifically, as far as we can recall. The release is here, with more discussion on outlook.
Jury Convicts Five of Fraud In Gen Re, AIG Case (WSJ)
In case you missed it yesterday, the gov’t won five convictions in the multi-year case relating to General RE and AIG over fraudulent transactions. When the allegations first came to light, even Warren Buffett’s sterling superb reputation took some knocks in the media, and Hank Greenberg, who didn’t have any media love to begin with was totally trashed. He was an unindited co-conspirator in the case. Ominously, prosecutors say they plan to work up the latter. A couple of the execs face prison sentences of up to 230 years. Makes Jeff Skilling’s sentence seem pretty light, eh?
Food maker CEOs face House grilling (CNN)
We love the subtle pun in the headline, especially because this story has to do with the heads of companies involved in tainted beef. Anyway, we’re sure this hearing will get at least as much attention as the steroids one did.
Pfizer to End Lipitor Ads by Jarvik (NYT)
Apparently the creator of the Jarvik artificial heart didn’t have the chops to talk about heart-related matters on TV. After drawing fire for the ads, Pfizer has pulled the contested Lipitor ads featuring Robert Jarvik off the air. There’s lots that seems ridiculous to us about this one, but this may be the most ridiculous: “One television ad depicted Dr. Jarvik as an accomplished rower gliding across a mountain lake, but the ad used a body double for the doctor, who apparently does not row.” Yes, that’s apparently a slice of the scandal. So before you get on Lipitor for your cholesterol, be mindful of the fact that DR. JARVIK DOESN’T ROW! IT’S A BODY DOUBLE!
Novell Buys Virtualization Firm PlateSpin (Dealbook)
For $205 million… just think how much it would’ve been back last summer during the VMWare second coming.
Sarkozy attacks SocGen boss Bouton (Reuters)
We might be getting our Sarkozy stories mixed up, but apparently the French President was in a crowded room and put his hand on Bouton’s shoulder who turned around and lashed out at Sarkozy, prompting Sarkozy to call the guy a jerk. Or maybe this has something more to do with Jerome Kerviel. Something is getting lost in the translation. You can figure it out for yourself.
EA’s Dead Space Dismembers the Competition This Halloween
It’s not quite as big news as launching a takeover bid for TakeTwo, but yes, EA’s new game Dead Space will dismember the competition this Halloween.
Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC Reports Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2007 Results
Make of it what you will.
Did I see correctly on CNBC this moring that MBIA is only NOW going to cease insuring structured finance bonds, and only for 6 months?
Please tell me that I misread, and they are not that retarded…
Also:
- This tainted beef thing is bullsh!t on a few levels, lets discuss a few: 1) They recalled beef going back 2 years. Is every reporter missing something, but please, enlighten me, why the f&ck do we still have unused beef sitting around waiting to be consumed that was produced TWO years ago? 2)140tons (approx) was recalled, with zero proof that anyone has gotten ill, not even a stomach ache, from the beef produced by that firm. 3)this seems like a regulatory, oversight, and enforcement failure by the FDA, moreso than by the company, butt heaven forbid the government admit to its own incompetence.
- Pfizer thing is ridiculous, and starts a dangerous precedent. Are we now going to have every single commercial have disclosures built in, as if drug ads weren’t akward enough as it is? Will the new viagra ad be followed by the actor addressing the audience in a breaking down of the 4th wall, explaining that his cock is long and strong, but he uses a flacid body double in bed in the commercial? WTF?
They plan to “work up the latter”?
You should really read this stuff after you write it and before you post it. That’s called “proofing.”
Either prosecutors plan to work up a ladder or they plan to work up a lather. They already seem to have accomplished the latter.
Good points Anal. Have an ag trader sitting by me, he said yesterday that the recalled beef is already being spread (in the form of shit) on the wheat that is feeding the next load of tainted beef.
Re: drug ads
If this means I don’t have to see Jarvik and his awkward son running down a country lane fifteen times a night, I can’t say I oppose.
tainted or not, commodity beef is poison anyway
@ Analyst- it’s not bullshit, it’s completely vile and the company should most certainly be prosecuted for engaging in the practice of selling sick cows to school children. It doesn’t matter how many people have reported illness from the meat; McDonald’s meat might very well have shit in it but the human body is resilient in the short term- it’s the long term effects of putting hazardous materials in our bodies that can’t exactly be quantified.
Also, the FDA is only a regulatory party, but ultimately companies must be held accountable for their practices.
Which brings me to Pfizer and how ludicrous it is that we are arguing the merits of sick beef while making such a fuss about a man using a body double to row a skull. I’m all about protecting the idiot consumer who doesn’t know his hydrogenated corn “choco” from belgian chocolate- but this is using the utter idiocy of the average american as an excuse to make an unsuccessful thimble of a dent in Pfizer’s sales while championing it as a “win for the people”- and that’s why the NYT will never be more worthy of anything than lining a hampster cage.
2 year old beef is still in those frozen white castle burgers on the shelf at your local food emporium.
@girl Whom do you blame for the tainted beef, the monolines or the rating agencies? Or is it a conspiracy?
Either way thank G-d we have a benign and benevolent government to regulate us out of this mess and spend our tax dollars to sent checks to poor people so they can afford to eat Waygu chili until this whole toxic cow problem abates.
I am sometimes confused with some liberal logic.
On every issue, they claim that a certain set of people are ‘gullible’ – they get taken for a ride by mortage companies, drug companies – they cannot plan their retirement saving, they dont know keep themselves from eating unsaturated fat etc etc – and hence massive amounts of ‘govt intervention and regulation’ is required (govt expectedly run by a group of super-intelligent species just know better than the proles).
So if these people are dumb, then why do they as well as the ‘smart’ ones get 1 vote each? Shouldn’t the dumb ones get like 0.25 votes or something? After all – if these people get taken for a ride by ‘everyone’ and end up making the wrong choices, wont the politicians also do the same?
Also, the whole point of all this whole regulation thing is to keep stupid people from making mistakes. So these same stupid people can also make mistakes while voting. They why do we not ‘regulate’ their voting too?
Whenever I bring this up, liberals are up in arms shooting ‘unequal representation’ down as discriminatory. Which is when I point them back to the stuff above. Why then is controlling and regulating every other action of these supposedly ‘stupid’ people discriminatory?
Never got any answers.
wait, wait, wait!!!
You’re telling me Dr. Jarvik doesn’t row?
My world has been turnd on its head.
Next you’ll tell me Charlie do surf!
@ Girl
I’m not disagreeint with that point at all. It is disgusting and shameful that these companies did not have video surveilance in their slaughterhouse to ensure (or at least to deter) employees from unsafe (let alone illegal) practices. The reason I am suggesting more attention be paid to the legal/regulatory oversight aspect is that as part of the certification process to be part of the Federal school lunch program, the FDA (or whoever) should be checking to make sure that controls are in place to ensure, or at least to severely negatively incent the firm and/or its employees to act unethically/illegally.
Yes, the company sucked it up big time. But, the government can’t go on pretending that its word ensures consumer protection when it does not take simple steps to put any substance behind that guarantee.
@ Matt_m: I think you bring up an interesting question on the votes, and I’m not going to lie, I have often thought that would be a viable solution. Not all liberals are so one track minded…But I think there is a difference here between elements over which the consumer has control (making prescription drug decisions based on a commercial) and ones in which he doesn’t (ground beef served in school cafeterias). The idea here is that, yes, the government should more effectively manage the resources they use to keep their public schools running, but they should be more hands off on things like narketing of pills- particularly when no false claims were made pertaining to the pills effectiveness.
@ Analyst- Good point, agreed.
@ To the Hilt- wait and if i use Pantene my hair isn’t going to fly all around me in shiny sheets as i strut down 5th? my life is devoid of meaning
Sometimes people never get answers to really stupid questions.
@ to the Hilt
I’ve often wondered why we require people to pass exams in order to prove their competence at relatively simple, mindless tasks, like being a stock broker, driving a car, going to college, etc, etc.
Yet, strangely, on the issue of voting, which in order to do successfully, requires one to be educated and informed on a variety of subjects, there is no entrance exam. 18? Go ahead push the button monkey. In a union, heaven forbid you vote for a republican, those evil rich job-destroyers!
I submit, pending further research of the efficacy of such a proposal, that before being allowed to vote people need to demonstrate a very, very basic understanding of economics, politics, and a variety of other issues (we’re talking like econ 101 here, if that, just to clarify). Then, and only then should one be allowed to vote.
Bring on the backlash…
Matt_m – Voting is pretty regulated and there are all sorts of laws about what you can and can’t do when campaigning. So there’s that. Of course it’s elected officials who are making laws regulating their re-election campaigns so that’s a bit of an issue, but to say that no regulation exists is silly.
Also, the whole point of this regulation thing is to keep bad people from taking advantage of people with less information (“stupid people”). There’s also a power imbalance issue – all the people who eat beef may have just as much or more power in the aggregate as the beef producer (or whatever regulated industry you want to talk about), but they’re not negotiating across the table from the producer in the aggregate, they’re negotiating individually and individually it’s silly to expect them to be able to negotiate something like inspections of meat packing facilities.
I’d also be hesitant to make the logical jump from regulating commerce to regulating politics. There may be good reasons for regulating (or deregulating) each, but I’m not sure we can just say “regulate commerce for this reason so regulate politics in the same way.”
36th Chamber,
Politics is NOT regulated. The only aspect which is (unsuccessfully) regulated is campaign financing.
The spin / deceit / hypocrisy inherent in politics has NO parallels. The use of surrogates, smear campaigns, gender / racial / economic profiling, blatant populist promises with no realistic chance of ever getting implemented etc.
The process of politics seems desinged exclusively to obfuscate. You inspire (or spin, depending on how you see it) and try to get people to buy in. It is most definitely a more complicated decision process than the one required to understand that the rate on an ‘adjustable rate mortgage’ adjusts and housing prices not rise forever.
And regulation aside, I have a simple question. If a person cannot be trusted to decide whether he should eat fast food or not – know fully well that fast food is bad for health – then how can we expect the same person to actually make a conscious choice about governance of a whole country with significant impact on the lives of billions?
Seems highly illogical. If you need to told that hot coffee may be HOT, then you should not even have 1 vote to yourself!
And OT, DAMN the new DB login thing. Why are we auto logged off? This is not really a site with sensitive financial information. You key out a long post and then poof – it says unauthorized posting and doesn’t even give you back the post when you hit the back key!!!!!!!
Analyst – stupid dealbreaker comment system ate my response, but I think you’re basically in the same boat holmes was when he said four generations of morons is enough! The slope you’re sitting on is very slippery and for certain rights we care a lot more about slippery than about practical or what might be best. Interestingly, I’d have a lot less problem with something like compulsory military service than with a compulsory test. But that’s neither here nor there.
Who are those guys standing outside the Home Depot? Certainly not customers, clearly some of those illegal day laborers we love to hate but rely on so much. Funny place, millenium America.
Matt – 1. agree on the stupid DB login misery.
2. There’s a big difference between “hot coffee is hot” and “this coffee will give you third degree burns.” If I get hot coffee I expect it to be hot and I expect to get a pretty unpleasant burn if I spill it on myself but I don’t expect to get third degree burns. I think people quote that case as one of over-regulation but I think it’s more of a sound-bite than an actual example of over-regulation.
Didn’t the fast food people lose their suit? We do trust people to know that fast food is bad for them. Think of it as a tragedy of the commons issue – it costs every guy buying a big mac X amount of time to go check out whether it was properly cooked and how the cattle was raised and slaughtered and whether the guy in the kitchen washed his hands after hocking a loogie into the burger. In a cost/benefit analysis it’s just not worth it for the guy to do all that research (nevermind the issue of access), but when you start having an entire country wolfing down burgers then it starts to make more sense for some third party (theoretically independent) to come in and regulate the burger joints so that they don’t end up poisoning the populace.
3. Touche. And yes, politics is madness, but:
a. politics isn’t commerce. Freedom of speech as it applies to politics is one of the keys to our political system. So you run up against that if you start regulating what people can actually say with regard to politics. That’s why we regulate finance instead – if we can’t control what they say then we can at least control who gives money. Is this regulation very broken? Yes. See b.
b. this is a good example of the problem with having people regulate themselves (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? if you want to get all snotty and latin).
A lot of regulation is remedial and stupid but not all of it and the idea that the market will sort everything out with an optimal result for all sides is naive. There’s such a ludicrous inequality in bargaining power between the individual and even small companies (to say nothing of big companies) that I don’t think you can expect a market equillibrium in the econ 101 supply and demand curves match up nicely sense of things.
An interesting point on the side of people being stupid: people are incredibly bad at assessing risk to themselves. Som guy whose name I forget did some research on it. I do remember some examples though – people routinely want to run back into burning buildings for keep sakes or the family dog. After the (89?) earthquake in the bay area people did the same with wanting to go back into their house and wanting to drive across unstable bridges. There were more but it turns out that people actually are pretty dumb.
Two points, Dr. Jarvik is a creepy looking fellow and not only he can’t row, he’s not a licensed physician either. I’m glad he’s off the tv. I’m also sick of drug companies pushing drugs in every media outlet, but that’s another story.
Second point, the regulatory agencies (SEC, FDA, etc) are supposed to fail to prove the point that they are not needed. That could change next year, but I seriously doubt it.
“The Logic of Failure” by Doerner is a good book on the subject of risk and skill assessment. It’s probably close to 20 years old now.
–Schmooze
36th Chamber, Lets throw all your points together.
In a cost/benefit analysis it’s just not worth it for the guy to do all that research (nevermind the issue of access),
Just like an individual cannot research a presidential candidate exhaustively. And if you are talking access – then forget individuals – even large groups and organizations cannot get access to candidate histories (think presidential library papers and tax returns).
the idea that the market will sort everything out with an optimal result for all sides is naive.
And people will end up voting for an optimal candidate? You seriously think so? So GWB was an optimal result as per you (not once, TWICE). So all the rage is misplaced?
people are incredibly bad at assessing risk to themselves.
So people will be bad at assessing the risk of their chosen candidate on their life? So if some candidate eloquently claims that he will withdraw from a war immediately, people (given that their research capabilities are limited AND that they underestimate the risk to themselves) will potentially make a wrong choice – which might affect them negatively?
Every which way, you have never shown any difference between the complexities inherent a political choice and any other choice. If a person is deemed intellectually /temperamentally/resource-wise incapable of one – then the EXACT same applies to the other.
I am yet to hear anything cogent which says othewise.
36th Chamber said – “There’s such a ludicrous inequality in bargaining power between the individual and even small companies (to say nothing of big companies) that I don’t think you can expect a market equillibrium”
You SOOO need a lesson in economics as well as history my friend. That is straight out of some union’s flier. Bargaining power?
So if I follow your logic, then I believe GM is the super-dominant $1 trillion a year profit car manufacturer in the country (they started with like 85% or something marketshare, remember? They were BIG.)
And Microsoft should have enslaved all of us by now instead of shitting in its pants because of Google.
And US Steel should have wiped out all other steel plants instead of eking out a survival by paying off pols to enforce import levies.
And current SUV sales should be off the charts because the stupid consumers are being soooo manipulated by the greedy BIG auto companies.
I wont even trying arguing out a ‘competitve’ free market with you as evidently there is no point.
Did you know that Dr. Jarvik is married to Marilyn Vos Savant?
I shit you not.
@ Anal_yst
I’m not sure why you directed that comment towards me. But I’m with you on that test thing. It would be really simple. The question would be: Are you To The Hilt? If the answer is no, then you can’t vote. Done. Utopia ensues.
In all seriousness, you can’t take away the common man’s right to vote, even though it is sad that Joe Sixpack doesn’t get simple econ 101 concepts. That’s just not what this country is about.
@ 36th Chamber. You’re wrong re: 3a. Politics is absolutely commerce, and nothing more. Every person votes in his perceived (often incorrectly so) personal best interest, whether that best interest is lower capital gains or increased funding for welfare. Candidates sell the “issues” to voters. Markets evolve around Roe v. Wade, immigration, Iraq, etc, and if there is an issue to be championed, some asshole will step in to exploit the situation. It all gives me a headache.
I realized long before I was of voting age that elections were kind of like the super bowl is to girls. It’s all about the commercials.
PS – I’ve taken to writing posts in an open word doc, just to avoid potentially losing a post. DB needs to fix that problem.
PPS – If I hadn’t written this in word, I would have been effed.
@ To the Hilt
lost track of who I was @’ing
but, my suggestion is to just select all and copy my posts before hitting submit, just in case I’ve exceeded the mysterious allotted log-in time on the site (cntrl+A, cntrl+C, submit, F&CK!!!, back, login – sometimes twice – cntrl+v, submit, exhale)
that works too
correction: the super bowl is about Tom Brady
@ anal_yst
Winston Churchill was 100% correct when he said that the biggest argument against democracy was 5 minutes with the average voter.
Lest it be misconstrued, I am not against democracy here. Just pointing if a person is classified as ‘dumb and incapable of making basic decisions without the holding hand of someone more intelligent and superior,’ then that should apply to ALL basic to complex decisions that person makes.
@ 2:53
Agreed, and so was PT Barnum (attr) when he said, “No man has ever gone broke underestimating the intelligence of the American People”
(of course this also holds true for pretty much anyone, butt i digress)
Matt -
1. I think I mentioned that I don’t think you can compare politics and commerce. What I really meant was you can’t compare the regulation of politics with the regulation of commerce. You can’t regulate politics in the same way you can regulate commerce because of the constitution.
Also, the number of cheeseburgers I eat is much greater than the number of votes I get in a presidential election.
2. Maybe I misunderstood your argument. It seems like you’re arguing that because (i) regulation is in place to keep stupid people from making mistakes and (ii) voting is complex we should regulate the people who vote.
I am trying to point out that (at least in theory) the stupid people we are trying to protect are making mistakes because they do not have the resources, including information or the ability to access that information, necessary to make the “correct” decision. The purpose of the regulation is not to filter out who can get a mortgage but to put restrictions on who can give a mortgage and how they can do it. Even though I don’t think the commerce to politics comparison is a good one (yay constitutional restrictions on regulating political speech), even if it were you’ve got the comparison backward. The appropriate comparison is: people are dumb so we need to regulate companies because companies are big and complex and capable of many nefarious and underhanded things that the poor innocent consumer is not capable of discerning. In the same way, people are dumb so we need to regulate the politicians and political parties because politicians and political parties are big and complex and etc. Does that make sense?
3. I think the best argument against requiring a test is the slippery slope. A whole lot of standardized tests start looking an awful lot like proxies for whether or not you’re rich and white and, regardless of whether or not it’s true, that’s a place we should be pretty wary of going. You’ve also got this whole bill of rights issue when you want to start testing to see if someone can vote. There’s also the issue that, theoretically at least, all citizens should either have (i) graduated from high school where they received at least some learning or (ii) taken the citizenship test which proves they know something about our country. If you don’t think that people, at 18, have the appropriate skills necessary to vote then you can argue that it’s a breakdown in our education system (which I think is probably pretty broken, but that’s a discussion for another time).
4. Regarding the optimal candidate – I think people are upset about GWB for a lot of reasons including the increasingly polarized nature of our two-party political system, a perception among some democrats that the election was “rigged” by his brother Jeb, and allegations regarding voter fraud. I also think they just hate him in the same way that people hate hillary clinton. At any rate, I’m not really sure what GWB being the optimal candidate is other than that you’re arguing the market mechanism here is broken (presumably because people are too dumb to figure out what’s going on and so we should only let smart people vote). It seems like a response to this could be that if the market is broken it’s not on the demand side but it is, per your admission, on the supply side (a process designed to obfuscate) so we should be regulating the supply side.
5. Economics and history? What are those? Probably some black magic voodoo you whipped up to explain why you’re taking my right to welfare.
The point I’m trying to make is that an individual negotiating to buy a hamburger from McDonalds doesn’t have but jack and shit for bargaining power. You can take the burger and pay their price or you can leave. Any bargaining power you get rests solely in your ability to go buy a competitor’s product. McDonald’s does not care if you go buy your cheeseburger from burger king. As an individual you have zero ability to negotiate with them. It’s only in the aggregate that they care at all about what their customers do. GM and US Steel and Microsoft’s competitors aren’t negotiating with them, they are competing. There isn’t an issue with bargaining power because there’s no negotiation.
I think instead of calling me an idiot and suggesting I learn econ and history you should have said “but d00d, u no that big companies compete with each other so there’s no problem!” It’s still not an argument that directly addresses the imbalance between the individual and the corporation but it would have been a start.
To The Hilt – ok, but because of constitutional issues you still can’t regulate politics the same way you can regulate commerce.
@ 2:53 – he was also right when he said democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.
Seriously, Dr. Jarvik doesn’t row? Next you will tell me that, that was not Marky Marks real member in the last scene of Boogie Nights…..
36th Chamber sai “McDonald’s does not care if you go buy your cheeseburger from burger king. As an individual you have zero ability to negotiate with them. ”
Recommended reading: Adam Smith – Wealth of Nations (related concept: invisible hand driving the market)
36th Chamber also said “GM and US Steel and Microsoft’s competitors aren’t negotiating with them, they are competing. There isn’t an issue with bargaining power because there’s no negotiation. ”
Colloquial term: Voting with your wallet. Also, refer to Adam Smith above.
I sense some ECON 101 issues over here. I guess you think ‘macro’economics is all junk. All we should care about is single point interaction.
36th Chamber continued ” The purpose of the regulation is not to filter out who can get a mortgage ”
Are you actually serious here? The purpose of regulation is not to make sure that a deadbeat does not take out a loan he/she cannot afford? And that enforcing these regulations will prevent most of these deadbeats from taking out a mortgage?
To cut this short, I think a fundamental belief cannot be changed here. I DO NOT think people are stupid – they are highly Adam Smith-esque, they know what is best for them individually.
People know that unsaturated fats are bad for them. Yet they eat it for convenience / taste / economy.
All the people crying about ARMs now would have been laughing their way to the bank and buying bigger flat screen TVs and shinier rims for their cars had the market not turned on them (many actually also did). The only reason they are acting stupid not is because they lost money.
Similarly, the incentives are HIGHLY aligned at election time. Union people want less work, more benefits, higher paying secure jobs. Gay people want gay marriage. Tax payers want lower taxes. Non tax payers want even more from the tax-payers.
People are capable enough of making their own decisions (unless proven clinically retarded). Of course, elitist erudite liberals suffer from a tremendous case of delusional intellectual superiority which makes them underestimate everyone else’s capabilities and over-estimate their own. Which is probably why they go around defining everyone as minority, stupid, incapable, weak whaetever. They do not do it as an insult, but the implication is the same. Sometimes it might just be better to let people be.
“lot of standardized tests start looking an awful lot like proxies for whether or not you’re rich and white”
So if they ask you what a stop-sign means in a driving test – that is ‘rich and white’? Asking people to solve an equation in the SATs is something only ‘rich and white’ people can do?
I do not know if you even get the implied boatloads of racism in that statement of yours. You imply that standardized tests can somehow not be solved by ‘non-rich white’ folks. I find that highly offensive, all the more becuase I am not white and as of yet am not even rich.
Ok kiddies, back to my original comment about the BEEF…
…anyone read the follow-up piece in the WSJ today? Costco, BK, pretty much everyone they spoke to says the meat is fine, but it is the ethical issue that is more concern (which it in fact is, sick fucks over there). No one wants any easily-avoided risk of eating bad food, but my original point, to recall over a hundred thousand freakin tons of meat is the definition of a blanket solution. Hell, Costco hasn’t even destroyed the meat yet because they think its ridiculous (they who have ALOT more to loose if someone gets sick/dies from meat purchases there, than they do to gain by restocking it).
Argh, ridiculousness to say the least. Speakin of which, anyone ever been to Kobe Club?
matt m: you’re not white? bet yr not black either. I’m smelling asian here, which is almost white.
…. plus, everyone knows that standardized tests were just made for asians.
…. plus, everyone knows that standardized tests were just made for asians.
…cause they require lots of discipline and not creativity. Like parts of investment banking.
Sir Anal,
My wife visits a butcher ran by an old woman. She only talks to the woman of the house or the female buyer, men are basically told to go stand against a wall and wait for her staff to bring the meat, meanwhile she takes your wife shopping around the place for the best cuts on the fucking planet.
This is the home of multi inch steaks cut to order from only the best animals, killed on site. You can see what dinner is going to be if you want, and watch it happen if thats what makes you excited.
It doesn’t matter if I wanted to buy up the whole square mile and raze it, at any cost, that old biddy would tell me to shut up and go stand in line, like a good boy. No fucking joke. And Yes, I go get in line with the other men and wait for the best fucking steaks this side of the Mississippi, while my trophy wife goes meat shopping.
They have been in business for about 60 years or so, we usually have a cow at a time slaughtered and stored at the house then top off exotic steaks for special dinners. My point being, who here buys steaks at cosco? Wouldn’t it be expected that their steaks would probably suck?
Seriously…
@ 11:58
I echo your question, butt on many a 4th of July (and other bbq’ing/drinking holidays) i’ve had friends of lesser taste/panache/financial stability show up with freezer meat, much to my chagrin. Point is, it happens, not that I’m saying its a great idea.
1. Not only are you missing the thrust of my argument (which is absolutely not that there is some inherent difference in intelligence between people based on the color of their skin), but you’re then calling me a racist. It’s just asinine and it ignores the basic fact that standardized tests do tend to look like proxies for race and income. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, and I’m not saying there’s any inherent difference in intelligence between people based on race or income, but you just can’t determine someone’s access to basic constitutional rights based on a test that looks like a proxy for race.
2. Thanks for not addressing the constitutional argument. It seemed cogent and based on something we all like.
3. Maybe you should take some econ that goes beyond macro 101. Life isn’t a perfectly competitive utopia. There are all sorts of externalities that impact the effectiveness of a competitive market as a method of determining an optimal solution. When you vote with your wallet great, but if your only option is agreeing to their terms or walking and you’re voting Ford instead of GM or Coke instead of Pepsi then it’s not a whole hell of a lot of vote and it’s certainly not the kind of negotiation that econ 101 assumes is happening. Consumer products are, for the most part, oligopolies. I happen to like this because I want to know that if I go to the vending machine tomorrow on the other side of the country I can still get exactly the same bottle of pepsi, but I don’t delude myself into thinking that pepsi cares about what I as an individual do. They could care less if I vote with my wallet. Also, have you read the Wealth of Nations? Just curious.
4. I agree that people are, for the most part, pretty smart and that they should be held accountable for what they do. But, I also think that companies are pretty smart and should be held responsible for what they do. I also think that some people are bad and steal stuff. Same with companies. That’s why I like the rule of law. I think it should apply to companies too.
5. Yes, I was serious. The purpose of regulating the banks that lend money to people buying houses is to regulate the banks that lend people money to buy houses, not to make sure a dead beat doesn’t take out a loan. Um, duh? Anyway, there are separate laws that deal with fraud that apply to dead beats taking out a loan.
6. Can we stop with the incredulous “ZOMG PON1ES I can’t blv u think taht!” responses? Instead of “[inflammatory example]” how about “[hey, the purpose of regulating the mortgage industry may be to regulate the banks giving mortgages but shouldn’t we be equally concerned with dead beats?” Thanks.
7. Fucking DB comment system.
“standardized tests do tend to look like proxies for race and income”, “test that looks like a proxy for race”
but
“I’m not saying there’s any inherent difference in intelligence between people based on race”
——————
So lets take some examples of standardized tests. Lets say the test you take to get a license, or Series 7.
You have some material, and then are expected to answer some questions based on that material. So asking “What does an octagonal red traffic sign represent” or “What is the time value of an option at expiration” is a proxy for indentifying race.
Now given that the answer to the question was already provided for in the material, and given that you ‘claim’ that there is no difference intelligence between races – I am still trying to figure out HOW answers to these questions can be used to identify race. I mean seriously, you may be onto something here – something that even the Nazis couldn’t hit upon. Please do enlighten the rest of us.
As I said, arguing about the rest is pointless because my ‘regulating’ voting and politics question was rhetorical but evidently you even believe in regulating that (if you could).
I believe the ideal political system aligned with your beliefs would be one where people expressed their wishes and desires on a questionairre, which would then be analyzed/tallied by a group of regulators/super-intelligent beings, who would then match up the results with the policies and beliefs of the candidates and then declare the candidate with the highest match-rate the winner. There have existed / still exist versions of these systems in the world. Glad to know that you like them.
Two final things.
1) You want to regulate the hell out of stupid people, fine. But why should there not be any opt-out? If I want to kill myself eating saturated/unsaturated fat, why the fuck should some ‘regulator’ prevent me from doing that? I am really harming no one else!
2) Who ARE these regulators? Who selects them? Is there some IQ test required to get the job? Will that end up selecting people of a certain race/income profile? How will they be unbiased then? So to maintain equality should we also appoint some of the stupid people onto the regulatory board? But if we do so, what is the whole fucking point?????
I think your original question was “hey, someone provide me with an argument about why we shouldn’t regulate voting.” I said “here are a bunch of reasons including that standardized tests tend to look like proxies for race and you can’t use proxies for race when you’re dealing with a big important right like voting.”
I’m not sure how you interpreted this as me supporting some body of super smart folks sitting around with questionnaires or regulating the hell out of people. I do want some regulation of politics, just like I want some regulation of society generally. I like to call it “the rule of law.” Anyway, I think it’s fairly obvious that some regulation is necessary (if only to enforce property rights and stop people from voting 84 times).
The answer to how the questions look like a proxy for race is this: http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports-research/cb/testing-social-stratification
Look up series 7 data and see who passes and who fails and how well they do on it and I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts white and affluent means a higher passage rate than poor and not-white. It’s not about how someone answers each individual question it’s about who passes the test and who fails and how often they do it. And no, it’s still not a reflection on whether or not there’s some inherent difference in intelligence that’s based on skin color.
On a positive note I’ve been upgraded from a racist to a Nazi. Thanks.
Responding to your two final points:
1. You can opt out. Don’t sue. Look, I’m not saying that if you know what you’re doing you should be able to sue because transfats make you fat. If you knew what you were doing and went in with eyes wide open you should be held responsible (note earlier where I say “personal responsibility is awesome!”). It’s where you had no idea what was going on because you got scammed that I think someone needs to step in. Look at cigarettes – a company makes a ton of cash on a product that they’ve intentionally made addicting and know is very bad for you. The company has to have some responsibility for the people who were smoking before everyone found out cigarettes are bad for you, but I don’t think you can hold the company responsible for everyone smoking today now that we know cigarettes are bad for you. It’s their choice and I’ve got no problem with them making it. On the other hand, I’m also pretty happy with requiring cigarette companies to put warning labels on their products. I’m just not sure what’s so offensive about this result. It kind of seems like a happy medium to me.
2. That’s the question I was asking when I said who guards the guardians. It is a problem and it’s not one that we’ve solved. But, also see my post about Churchill – democracy is the worst form of government besides all the others. What we have isn’t ideal, but I still think it’s the best that’s out there right now. At least if we don’t like the people in power we can vote them out in a few years and if we don’t like laws we can vote for change.