Doug Davis wrote:So generally I either pay attention to BBC, Guardian or Spiegel. I also tend to enjoy some of the Atlantic and Al Jazeera America, depending on the story. But for most economic news I read either The Economist or Bloomberg Business News.
I think we agree about the reporting on economics. The thing is it's bad for all of science too. The vast majority of reporters have no STEM training and they are credulous, left-wing parrots for the most part.
The key is making an effort to read many different point of views. But it is difficult finding serious right of center reporting these days. Even the Economist has drifted left over the past several years, so it really isn't fulfilling that role anymore. And Bloomberg has it's own integrity issues.
Doug Davis wrote:Here are two awesome and excellent stories about reporting economic news and why its so messed up. They are actually really good reads. The Business Week article is how the West has gone about systematically destroying economic facts, on purpose in order to obscure what the market is doing ie the mortgage crisis and the financial meltdown.
Harvard MagazineBusiness Week
I'll check out these articles when I get a chance. Thanks.
But I'll just note up front that market distortions caused by the government did much to set the stage for the mortgage backed securities crisis and is now likely 'polishing' economic reports for agenda driven reasons.
Doug Davis wrote:I was at one time as well. Until I acknowledged the fact that business will do ANYTHING in order to pursue profit. And there's nothing wrong with that. But they simply dont have a self-regulating emergency stop measure, as some like to imagine. Nor does the market "punish" bad business in the way others would like us to believe.
Which is how we ended up with Clean Rivers Act. Because without government interference and regulation the rivers, just like the Cuyahoga, were going to keep catching on fire from chemicals.
This is a classic Tragedy of the Commons scenario. Though I'm not sure that I'm *that* Libertarian, the Libertarian response would be to assign 'ownership' to the river to someone.
But if you've been paying attention, there are clear signs that our government isn't exactly 'self regulating' either. Any human institution will run of the rails if there are few restraints on it's power. I'll never understand this assumption of government benevolence. Maybe folks just assume that government power will only ever be used on the 'other' side, e.g. the lying liars and haters. This is just a return to a form of tribalism under the color of democracy.
Those same clean water regulations are now used against farmers building farm retaining ponds and a big reason we end up with $1 billion bridge projects that should cost a fraction of that.
Doug Davis wrote:We can see the same happening in California right now in terms of the conflict between cities needing water for drinking and corporate agribusiness sucking the rivers dry to feed the farms.
California stopped developing new water projects decades ago. And most of the water projects developed before were planned to support agriculture. This is hard to believe for some urbanites, but rural people are still people, and urbanites still have to eat. It's the cities in California wanting to change the deal, not the farms.
This is really another case of Tragedy of the Commons. If folks had to pay market rates for their water, then there would not have to be government enforced rationing. Cities would not grow as fast, and farms might switch to less water intensive agriculture.
Doug Davis wrote:Are there exceptions to this? Of course, which is how we end up with companies like Costco who pay far above minimum wage, or other companies that practice sustainable business policies whether its retail, manufacturing or agribusiness. They have committed to trying to seek profit while minimizing impact, but companies like that are the exception to the rule rather than being the norm.
The thing is though, government mandated virtue is not really virtuous. WalMart and Family Dollar do more for low income people than Costco. Forcing them to operate the same way would leave some under served markets, both for low income consumers and entry level employees.