tfl: The Flatiron Life

For the last few days I have been setting up and primming a new blog. This one is dedicated to my journey in learning German and I am calling it ‘Lass uns Gehen’ (Let’s Go). I am writing there only in German. I am hoping German speakers of all levels might stumble upon it and point out where I mess up and give me more examples. I am also going to give the URL to my former teachers and see if they can correct me.

At first I was not sure if it was going to be effective. But over just the last few days, I feel what I know and am learning being reinforced by using it in different ways.

My hope is to one day be able to write everything I post here over there. However, my vocabulary is still very very low and my grammar is not very well developed. Unless you want to have much much simpler posts over here. I have not formally learned future or passive, and writing about things happing in the future in an agent-less way is what I am all about.

I thought my new job parsing out the details of variable annuity prospectuses involved reading some arbitrary categorization until I read Justice Kennedy’s opinion on school segregation. Maybe in context it makes a little more sense.

…until I am not associated with these people. Gott sei Dank!

The confluence of Jacob’s shocking admission that he is, at heart, an Anarchist (I really thought it was a typo at first.), the latest episode of EconTalk and pregnancy hormones sent the Tomaw household into high turmoil last night. Is government necessary? What exactly is a Right?

Fortunately, after apologies and concessions were made, the argument resulted in clarity. Pending further research, I am now willing to label my political philosophy Consequentialist Libertarian. Any suggested reading material would be greatly appreciated, although I’ve got most of the Economists covered.

Geeze-o-Pete! If our house sometimes bulges at the seams trying to contain two different views on Libertarianism, how do James Carville and Mary Matalin ever make it work?

This just in!  Reduced supply and increasing demand leads to higher prices. Higher prices lead to a search for alternatives.

Tuna populations are on the decline and there is international agreement to reduce catches of the tasty sea chickens. Demand continues to be strong, so prices are on the move up. In japan sushi chefs are experimenting with new types of sushi as tuna prices rise. They are looking into raw deer and horse. They are even borrowing some of our blasphemous American sushi recipes.

“It’s like America running out of steak,” said Tadashi Yamagata, vice chairman of Japan’s national union of sushi chefs. “Sushi without tuna just would not be sushi.”

Why don’t we run out of steak but do fish? Think about who owns the fish and who owns the cows? Grandpa Miller and thousands of other people own the cows and the land they live on. Most of the fish we desire the most live in waters owned in common. Common ownership only leads to tragedy. What is the solution? I will let Murry Rothbard deliver it from a letter in 1953:

… Private individuals and firms should definitely be able to own parts of the sea for fishing purposes. The present communism in the sea has led, inevitably, to progressive extermination of the fisheries, since it is to everyone’s interest to grab as many fish as he can before the other fellow does, and to no one’s interest to preserve the fishery resource. The problem would be solved if, on the first-ownership-to-first-user principle, parts of the sea could be owned by private enterprise.

The city of Såo Paulo has banned advertising. In a market-share game, this is supposedly the best of all possible worlds! The game looks like this, with the fractions representing the portion of the market that each firm gets under the über simplifying assumption that there are only two firms:

Under normal circumstances, both firms will advertise, each maintaining its share of the market by continually one-upping the other in spending on advertising; but when that option is removed, each firm retains its portion of the market because all are equally unable to advertise and all firms save money by not paying for advertising. Double bonus!

But what if you’re not in a market-share game? What if, rather than trying to take a larger slice of pie, you’re just trying to make a pie? And what if you have a slice of advertising pie? What then?

It is hardly a stretch of the imagination to see that the supposed aesthetic benefit (take a look) is unlikely to outweigh the stifling effects of the ban.

On Monday night I stumbled across ABC’s show Ex-Wives Club just in time to watch Marla Maples, Shar Jackson, and Angie Everhart (I have no idea who Angie Everhart’s ex-husband is.) empower a divorcee to drill holes into her ex-husband’s boat, pour gasoline all over it, give it a good shove into the middle of a lake and blow it to bits. I’m not really familiar with the premise of the show, but my inner rational being immediately screamed out, “Don’t do it! Sell the boat!” Wouldn’t it be much more cathartic for her to unburden herself of the adultery boat in exchange for some coinage?

Then I remembered my Game Theory Professor saying that divorce is a Prisoners’ Dilemma. Having never experienced divorce, I didn’t quite follow the reasoning at the time, but now I think this is what it looks like:

There are items in any given marriage, which are clearly valued more by one party than by the other. For example, if Jacob and I got divorced, I would be lying if I said that I valued his bike as much as he does. While the bike would have some value for me, I would likely be willing to sell it for a much lower price than he would. If we both “play nice” we each ask for and receive the things we value the most and this gives us each the highest utility. However, there is no incentive for me to stick to this plan when I can “play mean” and ask for all of the things that I value most plus some of the things that he values most, sweetening the deal for me just a little. He has the same incentive; we both “play mean” and he and I both end up with some of the things we value a lot; we each lose some of the things we value a lot to the other party; and we each get some things that we value little, if at all. Life would have been great if we could have co-operated, but that’s just not a credible strategy. I know there are probably things that both parties value equally, and I’m not sure how those fit into the model, but the point is that divorce is not a successful way to move goods from lower to higher valued uses. Not to mention we’ve probably executed this exchange via lots of legal fees.

Hence, one of us is left with a boat that we’re willing to send to the middle of a lake and incinerate.

I wish I thought inspiration would strike often enough for me to make this a weekly feature, but I just don’t think I’m smart enough for that. However, today’s posts are dedicated to applications of Game Theory I have witnessed over the course of the week.

Jos at 17wks

Originally uploaded by flatiron32

Here is my frighteningly white, enormous pregnant belly seventeen weeks into the ordeal. I have a feeling I blew that title a little early, but it’s the first thing that sprang to mind when I saw the photo.

I have wanted tfl to grow for a long time. However I have not had the time I would have liked to really nurture it. A few weeks ago I finally pestered Joscelynn enough to join me and I think it has done a lot of great things for the site. Most people agree she is a better blogger than I.

Now the next step. Jos told me last night that she wishes there were more participation from our readers. I have being trying to find ways to do this for a while. I think if there is more interaction with our current readers, the site will look (and be) more alive and more new readers will join in. To this end I have added a widget on the right rail to advertise the recent comments. I encourage you to subscribe to the comments feed to see what everyone is saying in your aggregator, but this is a nice way to see how people are reacting when you check out a new post.

I think we have a good mix of topics here. However to be more focused and more regular, perhaps we need to specialize. I think a healthy mix of personal information along with our take on politics, economics, and philosophy. (BTW, our take is they are inseparable and pretty much indistinguishable.) Do you think this is the right direction? Is there something more you would like to see?

Finally, if you want a voice to react to something on or off tfl. Anything really. Email us or leave a comment. We would love to have guest writers and even full compatriots someday.