[bigqueue_qlewis]

You might be having more fun than you really should…..I was cut off at the knees tonight on my way home….drooling over the idea of getting a class on Game Theory, only too be cut off at the Cambridge Capital Controversy……I thought I had not burned my MP3 CD properly…..I kept looking for the missing files!

Well…..I suppose with all the stupid questions I ask, you might be doing yourself a favor by “slowing me down”……smart move.

-Quentin

[bigqueue_qlewis]

I see that I have answered my own question about the term market equilibrium…..I tend to think of it as the place all forces match…..which is sort of the definition set-up by Investopedia, except that it seems to define it as a particular point that is “reached” and I question how a systems with so many interrelated variable will ever just “get” to a point…..so to me this is a bit theoretical. To me, like with an electronic circuit, unless the systems is unstable, then the circuit is always in equilibrium…..perhaps just transferring charge (current/voltage) from node to node, but in a way totally related to the conditions in the circuit. In a “stable” circuit, the “future” state is known (and can be predicted) given the current state and the parameters in the circuit itself.

http://www.investopedia.com/video/play/what-economic-equilibrium/
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economic-equilibrium.asp
Perhaps economics needs a bit more of an equivalent set of “components” similar to electronics with capacitors, inductors and resistors.

My mapping might be something like this:
ELECTRONICS ECONOMICS
———– ———
VOLTAGE ==> Savings / Deposits (potential energy)
CURRENT ==> Spending (money flow)
POWER (IxE) ==> WORK? (force through a distance….production?)
RESISTOR ==> ???
CAPACITOR ==> VALUE ACCUMULATION PROCESS
INDUCTOR ==> Spending Modulator (resists and demands….wants constant)
TRANSISTOR ==> (tough one) FORCE MILTIPLIER OF SOME SORT

You get the picture…..

Sorry for going way off the rails…..I will just “shut up” and keep listening to the lessons. They are fascinating and very helpful to my appreciating how things work in this complex thing we call the economy. (though like weather, the “full story” is not yet understood though we at least know a hurricane exists before it come at off from out to sea)

[bigqueue_qlewis]

I might be miss characterizing how knowledge in economics is found and then used….but it seems to me that people “witness” economic activity and “interpret” patterns of activity. These humans (call them economists in this case) will describe these patterns and with logic, work to find descriptions for what they noticed going on…..creating simple stories that show their idea in motion. At the same time, other economists work to come up with other situations to both support and tear down this economist’s theory by opening up and at times narrowing down the “test case”.

When all is said and done and the theory is proven (to that point) to be solid, it is incorporated into a “school of economics” where people try to perhaps boil it down to a mathematical representation so it can be used more generally and faster.

I assume all these “theories” / explanations are tested against many inputs to see how they respond…….then I assume the entire model (now implementing this new find) goes through the same “testng”.

Here is an example of one of the “tests” I refer to……this is in the electronics domain, but I think you can see the kind of “mental explanation” followed my math description I refer to above in this. (and the step function test for stability should also be very applicable to economics)\

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/electrical-engineering/ee-circuit-analysis-topic/ee-natural-and-forced-response/v/ee-rc-step-response-intuition

Is this way of thinking too far off the plantation?

[bigqueue_qlewis]

Going further off the deep end, I just wanted to speak further about where my line of questions come from. I am an Electrical Engineer, and we all need to realize that things in the world are seen through our own lens…..and to me, the economy can be viewed like a very complex electronic circuit. (and one that we did not design and that we use and so need to better understand through analysis)

I think the weather is another such system that we humans clearly have many models of, that look at many inputs (wind speed, pressures, temperatures, etc…) and attempt to predict weather. We can see that our abilities to predict weather are ever increasing, but far from complete…..and I think the global weather system is far less complex than the global economic system. Why you ask….well, I think the weather is let’s say three or four dimensional, and the economy more because of the more individual nature of humans. (but trust me, I know not enough of either to even make that more than just a WAG)

So like the electronic circuit, I wonder if people (deep thinkers with heavy computer power) are working to try and understand economic stability. In circuit design, you attempt to characterize all the “poles and zeros” in the systems in order to try and understand system stability and transfer response.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole%E2%80%93zero_plot

I am thinking an economic system can be analyzed similarly, and so we would at least more easily understand the sort of things that would be “shocks to the system” (Step function input changes…eg: military/trade war or sudden exploratory finds) and how they might play out.

My general theory is that our world exists as a multidimensional Fractal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set
https://georgemdallas.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/what-are-fractals-and-why-should-i-care/
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/371438.Chaos_and_Fractals

I need to learn more about this myself…..but are there any economists who think of their field this way?

[bigqueue_qlewis]

I am no clairvoyant, but I surely do not believe that the USA will break apart because of a default…..it has happened before and we are still here. But the main question is what will the country do to get back to solvent, and that is something that SHOULD scare everyone because they will clearly have to find ways to scrape wealth from the citizens.

How is the question, and that is our task to divine so that we might step aside and be spared. BTW: This strong desire will more likely cause a strengthening of the central powers as people quake in fear and look there for a savior. (but they needed to look to the past for the easy solutions are all back in time…..at that point there will only be difficult and unpleasant solutions….and you don’t want to be rolled over)

We need to be invested in some form of productive capacity that will not be taken from us.

[bigqueue_qlewis]

I just loaded the APP and there is something grossly wrong with how fonts are presented on my Samsung SIII phone. I have no issues with any other APP…so something is odd with this one. I can’t see the text at all….it makes it totally useless to me.

[bigqueue_qlewis]

What is your name? Quentin Lewis

How do you describe yourself ideologically? I started out as a supporter of Ronald Reagan, so I suppose you might say I was conservative, and I was driven by his “Government isn’t the solution, Government is the problem” message: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XObcP69dhCg
So I call myself a libertarian, though I am no fan of parties, and so have kept my distance from even our own organization.

How did you first hear about Tom Woods?
I had loved the message of Ron Paul, and I think I met Tom at one of the Liberty Forum events in NH where he was signing books. I came to love podcasts many years ago, and eventually sucked up one of his for my long drive to work…..I was hooked! Bob Murphy came along into my life though those podcasts.

Facebook and Twitter profiles?
https://www.facebook.com/bigqueue

Other Fun facts about you?
N/A

Courses your looking forward too?
I love courses of economics…..I try to figure out our future and how to negotiate it, so learning all I can in this area is actually fun!

Below is

[bigqueue_qlewis]

I did a little google search and found this article that does not directly go to answer your question, but is clear that overall death rates went down……

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/great-depression-had-little-effect-on-death-rates-46713514/

[bigqueue_qlewis]

Dr. Murphy,

I was going through your answer above and found I had no access to this link you gave:
http://consultingbyrpm.com/uploads/HPBRW.pdf

I receive this response:

404 Not Found

nginx

PS: I am currently enjoying your video on banking and balance sheets at 2X speed….I hate accounting, but this makes it at least entertaining to me….so I love it!

[bigqueue_qlewis]

Hi Patterico,

I may be the one who has this “twisted”, but the way I hear the story is that the amount of money I make is related to (directly proportional to) the value of the good or service I produced with my hour of labor. In the future, that same amount of good will be worth less because of increases in “leverage” gained by technology….so if rather than money, I were able to take the actual good (now represented by money) I made today into the future, it would naturally be worth less because the amount of labor to create it then would be less.

-Quentin

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