Weekend Open Thread

To understand why Thatcher did what she is alleged to have done (close down industry), you have to understand her relationship with the economic theories of Hyak.
Hyak was a former socialist who had been brought up to believe what he was taught – that socialism will increase the wealth and wellbeing of working people. Yet his experience told him otherwise – that socialism had the opposite effect to the one intended, and that it was free market capitalism which, he believed, was the provider of this missing prosperity.
Thatcher saw the industrial landscape of 1979 and saw that it was not only inefficient, but that in order to sell products globally, it needed injections of taxpayer capital on a continual basis. It was clear to Thatcher, that most of Briitish industry was not creating wealth – it consumed it.
Some people have blamed unions for this sorry state of British industry, but we cannot criticise unions and at the same time let the management off. British management of the time was terrible – I mean absolutely and completely incompetent. We had one of the greatest motorcycle industries in the world, but when faced with the challenges from Japan, management smuggly believed that their customers would never buy “that sort of bike.”
So, Thatcher realised that the situation was unsustainable (much as I have come to hate that phrase). If people had jobs from it, the inevitable conclusion from her economic theories, was that these workers would see their standards of living decline relative to the rest of the world. Indeed, as competitors grew more productive, it would take ever larger slices of taxpayer funds to keep up – something that was also illegal under the proposed EU mastricht treaty.
She also saw a similar situation with the financial sector – a system so archaic, so stitched up by a closed shop of old boys, that it had to change, just as industry had to change. This created the biggest expansion economic activity I think this country had ever seen. But it is important to understand that Thatcher was not favouring one sector over another – she threw both open to free markets, and the one thrived where the other did not.
Many have blamed the present economic crisis on Thatchers reforms. But this is to misunderstand the difference between free markets in the Hyakian sense, and what actually took place under later goverments. Hyak and Thatcher would not have countenanced the removal of moral hazard by government guarantees, nor the distorting of investment decisions by artificially lowering interest rates. Both of these government interferences lead to excessive speculation and risk taking, and result in asset bubbles, such as the dot com boom, then the banking boom (and bust).
Most of these market distortions began under Clinton/Greenspan, then Bush/Greenspan and Blair and Brown.

_Jim
Fasinating Application!!
Technical support can be obtained by:-
Email: support@ansofttech.com
Please include a description of the problem, a contact person, and a phone number and time that you can be contacted.
This thread may help
http://www.edaboard.com/thread161044.html

_jim
http://www.edaboard.com/thread161044.html
Technical support can be obtained by:-
Email: support@ansofttech.com
Please include a description of the problem, a contact person, and a phone number and time that you can be contacted.

The socialist state of Maryland is preparing to tax “rain”. Not kidding. The tax will be based on satellite images of “impervious surfaces” leading to water-runoff.
Look out Californy, we can out-communize even you.

davidmhoffer says:
April 13, 2013 at 10:10 pm
….
Thanks for taking the time out to respond David, it helps a lot. 🙂
Mark

Some thoughts on the new system of getting comments through.
Although the application of the system is new to WUWT, from what I understand the system itself is not, being a feature of WordPress, so I don’t know if this is the final version or it is subject to further tweaking.
I am not alone, judging from comments, in finding stuff not auto listed.
The first point, is that it is not possible to know if that means a comment is subject to moderation or has been dumped entirely – at least for me, since I have not seen anything flagged as such.
This means that unlike prior, when there may have been a considerable time between posting and listing and that was understood, the poster is in a limbo, not knowing whether to alert – or try to – a moderator or not.
Which brings me to my second point, which is that in notifying a moderator, if that does not appear the status of that is in itself unknown, and, if it does appear, because the moderator has no need to be aware of what goes through automatically, it is impossible to know if it will be read. In effect, either way, there is no knowledge that the moderator – and therefore site – can be communicated with.
A third point is that when – if – retrieved, this will inevitably be some time, perhaps considerable, after it was posted, and to a much greater degree than in the in the previous set-up, because of the listing by individual auto comment rather than in a block when moderated, and the presumably reduced requirement for moderators to deal with things on such a frequent basis, will appear some way back in the thread. And so will likely to be “lost” even if found to a greater degree than previously.
Fourthly, the temperament and caprices of The Algorithmic are not easily discerned, and so to placate and supplicate it is beyond my capability.
From my experience, everything disdained by The Algorithmic, except one, has been subsequently listed, with, I suspect – because I cannot imagine the nature of the offense to a human – the missing one devoured by the Algorithmic and any remains buried at the back of its cave.
So, to the practical implications and some suggestions.
It seems to me that the moderators, to pick up comments that have been unreasonably savaged and disposed of by the Algorithmic, can only know of this through a notification which on the balance of probabilities will appear automatically (or could be similarly savaged). So to know of this, they would have to read all the comments, placing them in the same situation as previously, albeit with a less stringent time frame.
It is possible that The Algorithmic, being newly introduced to this eco-system, might be trying to impress by being over zealous, or it might just be lashing out because it can. So perhaps it can be tamed and trained to an acceptable behavior. But no matter how docile and attentive, the above must remain to some degree.
IF commentators cannot be given notice that something has gone to the bin and for what reason, is it a possible solution – from a posters point of view – that ALL comments are auto posted, and then mods remove those deemed offensive when they check. If moderators have to read every comment anyway to see if there is notification of a problem, there is no practical difference for them. It may be less onerous in that what might be a transgression to The Algorithmic is clearly not for a human, and it can be passed by without notice or action. In other words the number that need deleting may be less than those that need to be found and checked.
Whilst this might seem like open season on decency and relevance, if The Algorithmic can be persuaded to auto list, say, all those deemed inoffensive to its current mores and in addition all those submitted by posters who have established a “reputation” with it through previous posts including those it has rejected but have subsequently been listed by a human controller, whilst delivering a smack to the Algorithmic, the risk seems very low.
Hopefully something can be worked out. It is amazing how quickly an adjustment in expectations occurs, quite apart from the reality of getting things posted. When most go through immediately, not doing so is very disconcerting.
I hope this in itself can escape the attention of The Algorithmic which cannot be expected to view such comments benignly.

_Jim
That looks…AWESOME

If you can overtax that system you are a god among men:)