Sadly, No!

I’m not an economist. I’ve taken a grand total of four economics classes in my life. But lordy, lordy, I don’t need extensive training to know how insanely wrong this is:

Say Yes to Price Fixing

By John E. Tamny

The U.S. Justice Department recently fined British Airways (BA) and Korean Air $300 million apiece after they acknowledged price fixing on international flights. With rising fuel prices cutting into their profit margins, the airlines admitted to collusion with rivals over cargo rates and fuel surcharges.

As it turns out, the cooperation of both airlines saved each from fines double or triple the recorded amount. Perhaps relieved by the relatively small number, BA CEO Willie Walsh strongly denounced his firm’s conduct, saying, “Any anti-competitive behavior is to be condemned at British Airways or at other companies.”

But was their behavior anti-competitive?

The answer to that is, “Yes. Yes it was.” When two or more firms stop pricing their services competitively and start negotiating prices together, that is by definition anti-competitive. Because, y’see, they’re not really competing. They’re taking away consumers’ possibility to get cheaper flights with another service. Hence, it’s anti-competitive.

Just last week Southwest Airlines announced fare increases of as much as $10 each way due to rising fuel costs. The Associated Press account of Southwest’s decision noted that, “It was the low-cost carrier’s fourth fare increase this year, and other airlines quickly followed suit (emphasis mine).”

Southwest’s successful maneuver to increase fares raises the question of whether BA and Korean Air did anything different from Southwest. The latter merely used a press release to get its competitors to fall in line in terms of pricing, while the former entities simply got together and agreed on price changes.

You can’t be serious.

Southwest’s decision to raise fares is due to rising fuel costs. Amazingly, when fuel prices go up, airlines across the board will also raise their fare prices. Shocking, I know. Remember those supply-demand graphs you drew in Econ 101? This is where they’ll come in handy, Cheech:

Now, despite the fact that airlines in a competitive market will raise their prices in response to fuel costs, they are actually still competing with each other to deliver their services at the lowest cost possible. No firm is going to look at what Southwest did and go “HOLY CRAP!! THEY RAISED THEIR PRICES!! WE GOTTA RAISE ‘EM TOO OR NO ONE WILL USE OUR SERVICE!!” The only way that firms will intentionally raise prices more than they have to is if they’re not competing- in other words, if they’re colluding to keep prices higher than they normally would be.

God, this shouldn’t be difficult to understand.

Rather than anti-competitive behavior, it could just as easily be said that price-fixing is merely a harsh euphemism for competition.

Except that, you know, the point is they’re not competing. We’ve been over this about a trillion times already.

Wait, what’s that you say? You want to see Brad’s favorite handy-dandy illustration again?

Read the rest of this entry »

Oh goody:

 
De Grey’s overarching metaphor is that the body is like a machine that, if properly maintained, can be kept running forever (p. 21).

“we have hundred-year-old cars and (in Europe anyway!) thousand-year-old buildings still functioning as well as when they were built–despite the fact that they were not designed to last even a fraction of that length of time…the precedent of cars and houses gives cause for cautious optimism that aging can be postponed indefinitely by sufficiently thorough and frequent maintenance.”

However, maintenance of a car or a building often consists of replacement of components at a macro level. You replace whole tires and lightbulbs. You rip out a transmission or a kitchen and put in a new one.

What de Grey is talking about for humans is not macro replacement–giving you new organs or giving your cardiovascular system the equivalent of a transmission overhaul. Instead, he is talking about maintenance at a molecular level. For a car, it would be like having nanobots that repair corroded parts by reversing rust molecule by molecule. For a house, it would be like having shingles that when damaged by wind or wear are able to grow back to their original shape.

And how can we achieve this miraculous future where nobody ever gets old? By paying poor people to undergo dangerous, experimental medical treatments, of course! No, really:

As an economist, I immediately think in terms of paying people to undergo risky therapies. For better or worse, this might appeal more to people who are very poor–perhaps even people living in other countries. However, those citizens who are squeamish about de Grey’s proposal to expose more people to harm now in order to reduce harm to others in the near future probably would not feel any less squeamish just because those who undergo the experiments are well paid.

Well that’s nifty, in’it?

“Sorry we made you grow a second head out of your left knee, Amadou, but at least my wrinkles have vanished!”

UPDATE: Oh my stars and garters, this comment is precious:

The conquering of physical aging, which is simly THE greatest disease of mankind, is inevitable.

Right now, wise and profound minds tell us that the coming of death makes life precious. That’s true, but only because for the time being we are FORCED into accepting it; if we do not take up the concept that death’s inevitability makes life precious for now, then we go insane. (I consider the relatively high levels of apathy and nihilsm present in our current society to be a form of insanity.) […]

Once upon a time, only the gods could fly. Now mankind flies. Next to come is immortality.

Uh, yeah, by my calculations, most of the gods didn’t have quite so many white stains on their pants.

The Democrats are completely useless. I’m getting tempted to join the Republican party with the hopes of making them lefties. That’s how desperate I am, peeps. That is des-prett.

Above: Passed Cornyn resolution to censure MoveOn.org

Gavin adds: Whereas, on the other hand, last week we found ourselves confronted with this:

Above: President meets with low-grade right-wing Internet yahoos

UPDATE: OK, so I’m still extraordinarily mad about what the Democrats did today.

Bush and the GOP have done some things to tick off its base over the past few years- I’m thinking mostly immigration reform, the Dubai ports deal, Harriet Miers, etc. But not once have they held a vote in the Senate where half of them essentially called their base voters crazy assholes. That is what you guys did today. The includes you, Jim Webb.

I don’t know what to do about this. The people that a lot of us supported, voted for and sent money to have just given us the finger. Naderism clearly doesn’t work, but we need to find a mechanism to hold these people accountable. Because they clearly don’t have the principles to do it themselves.

UPDATE II: As I’ve said before, Gravel ’08. He may be semi-insane, but he accurately captures my emotional state when I watch the Democrats in “action.”

My friend Liz has created a new blog where she writes love and hate letters for people who cannot write them on their own due to either emotional repression or inadequate wordsmith capabilities. Essentially, people who have very strong feelings about certain topics, but don’t quite know how to put them into words, write to her and ask her to compose letters on their behalf. Her latest masterwork was written for a waitress who was foolish enough to wear her boyfriend’s gag gift of George W. Bush underwear to work. Sample:

I recently had a tragic underwear malfunction which is changing my opinion of Bizniz Intimates. I don’t know if you were asleep at the wheel, or if you intentionally pimped out inferior undergarments to the public, but the fact remains: the elastic in that thong was woefully inadequate.

I am referring to model #867114R, which is a thong with a picture of George W. Bush making a monkey face, saying, “Give Me Your Banana.” My boyfriend purchased said thong from your store as a gag gift to me. In the box? Hilarious. In the bedroom? A little unnerving, perhaps, but still funny. On the floor of my place of employment? Disastrous.

I work as a waitress at a German restaurant. On Friday night, in the middle of happy hour, I was bustling over to my table, arms balancing a tray of massive steins, when I felt the faintest slip of fabric. Little did I know that I was facing a total elastic shutdown. Before I realized what was happening, George Bush was around my ankles, and I was lying bare-assed on the floor covered in ten pints of beer.

Teh awesome.

Please send her your letter ideas and/or web traffic. Just click teh link, peeps.

Matt Barber is a Concerned Woman for America, and he has good news for you about homosexuality.

Above (r): Barber

…wait, that didn’t sound right. Let’s try that again.

Matt Barber is a member of Concerned Women for America, and he has good news for you about homosexuality.

….still not right.

Matt Barber is a member of Concerned Women for America, and he’s going to make up some fatuous shit about homosexuality in order to justify his own peculiar obsession with other people’s sex lives. See for yourselves:

Groundbreaking study affirms “gays” can change

September 19, 2007

Ask any one of the untold thousands of men and women who have left the homosexual lifestyle, and they’ll say, “Tell us something we didn’t already know.”

Really, Matt? Untold thousands? Would you have any idea how we could get in touch with, say, one thousand of these ex-gays? Because it doesn’t seem like Exodus International, the folks behind this study, are going to be of much use in helping us verify this claim. Maybe a phone tree, or a list of email addresses, or something? Please, feel free to forward it on to us if you ever find it.

Nonetheless, psychologists Mark A. Yarhouse and Stanton L. Jones may have just hammered the final nail in the mythical “born ‘gay’ and stuck that way,” coffin.

In a first of its kind, comprehensive study, Yarhouse and Jones determined over a four year period that men and women suffering from unwanted same-sex attractions can re-“orient” themselves through Christian counseling and/or reparative therapy to their natural and God-given heterosexual state.

Wow! This IS news! They have found a method for turning gay people into straight people! This must be something new and revolutionary, because everything that’s been tried before has been…

In fact, the study, which was commissioned by Exodus International, the world’s largest organization ministering to people suffering from unwanted same-sex desires, determined that change is not only possible, it is very unlikely to produce harm, a fiction homosexual activists have maintained for years.

Oh, wait. It’s not new; it’s the same old shit you incontinent jackanapes have been peddling for years now. Might as well take the time to see what the results you’re claiming for Exodus look like this time…..

The study followed 98 men and women from between a three- to four-year period who self-identified as homosexual. Baptist Press summarized the study’s results as follows:

“15 percent reported their conversion was successful and that they had had ‘substantial reduction’ in homosexual attraction and ‘substantial conversion’ to heterosexual attraction. They were categorized as ‘success: conversion.’

“23 percent said their conversion was successful and that homosexual attraction was either missing or ‘present only incidentally or in a way that does not seem to bring about distress.’ They were labeled ‘success: chastity.’

“29 percent had experienced ‘modest decreases’ in homosexual attraction and were not satisfied with their change, but pledged to continue trying. This category was labeled ‘continuing.’

“15 percent had not changed and were conflicted about what to do next.

“4 percent had not changed and had quit the change process, but had not embraced the gay identity;'” and,

“8 percent had not changed, had quit the process and had embraced the ‘gay identity.'”

Hmmm…..I think I’m missing something here. Fifteen percent of the study participants went from thinking of themselves as “gay” to thinking of themselves as “bisexual”, twenty-three percent of the participants went from thinking of themselves as “gay” to thinking of themselves as “gay but not getting any”, and twenty-nine percent went from “gay” to “well, okay, so I’m gay,but at least I’m not enough of a slut to cruise guys in public restrooms”. The remainder – almost a third – went from “gay” to…..”still gay”.

I’m still looking at these stats for the percentage of people who went from “gay” to “straight”. If I’ve done the math right, the total number of such people found in this groundbreaking study is…..none.

This IS a groundbreaking study, Matt! It conclusively proves that no matter what the numbers actually say, dingleberry public scolds like you will always read into them whatever they want to!

In fact, just about everything done by conservatives over the last couple of decades makes total sense in this light! “Less than a third of the people in Iraq actively loathe us; this means the war for hearts and minds is a complete success!” “The only countries in the world with lower infant mortality rates than ours are every single other wealthy industrialized nation in the world; therefore our health care system totally pwns everybody else’s!” “Under NCLB legislation, grade-level literacy rates have climbed from about a third to STILL about a third; what more could you possibly ask for?”

When your respect for the truth and your concern with basic accuracy are as low as the standards that have been set by our leaders lately, you really can define anything as “success”.

Confederate Yankee is once again hot on the heels of his latest major story:

A Journalistic Farce

Today is the two-month anniversary of Franklin Foer claiming that he and The New Republic would run an honest investigation into the claims made in a story written by Scott Thomas Beauchamp:

[Insert approximately 1500 words of an A+ argument-to-convict, as crafted by a recent graduate of a prestigious non-accredited law school.]

The editorial staff of The New Republic, led for the last time by Franklin Foer, should retract all three stories penned by Scott Thomas Beauchamp, apologize profusely to the readership of The New Republic for deceiving them for over two months, and resign.

It remains to be seen if they retain that much integrity.

Today is the six-day anniversary of Confederate Yankee claiming that his char-coal grill was knocked over by a so-called ‘hurricane.’

And many questions remain unanswered.

Our favorite blogger, Megan McArdle, has, I think, outdone herself today with a particularly hilarious example of her own trademarked style of fact-free, vodka-soaked blogging. Normally Megan makes up facts about stuff which she has no reason to know and no desire to learn, which makes sense if the whole point of her blogging exercise is to see how many Stoli Orange Martinis she can drink in the morning before anyone (other than her persecutors at Sadly, No!) notices. But today she makes up stuff that she really ought to know, unless she has completely lost her long-term memory, which is, of course, a distinct possibility in Megan’s case.

For reasons that are not completely clear, Megan decides in a post today about the Supreme Court to talk about rotary phones — of all things — and says this:

I remember 1980 [That remains to be seen – ed. note]. You young people may not realize it, but back then, we didn’t have these crazy touch-tone telephones you like to use to fax all your friends. We had rotary dials, with little holes for each number that you had to stick your fingers into and drag them all the way over to the right, where a touch bar known as the finger stop would register each digit.

She’s kidding, right? Touch tone phones were first introduced in the 1963. There were tons of them around in 1980. More of them than rotary dials if my memory serves and it should since I drink less than Megan. And never at work.

And what’s this about “touch-tone telephone you like to use to fax all your friends”? To be certain, Megan probably has to call the Geek Squad to reboot her computer, but surely even she must know that you don’t use touch-tone telephones to fax things. Or maybe not.

So, kids, next time you think that another blueberry mojito or vodka appletini sounds like a good idea, just think of Megan and do the right thing.

Gavin adds: There’s also this, apparently in reply to us:

More Big Con Blogging

I have to admit to a bit of private hilarity at the multiple accusations that I couldn’t possibly have read Jon Chait’s book because a mere thirty six hours before I posted my review of it, I complained of not having a copy. I hadn’t realized that so many people considered reading a 250-page book, set in the EZ Reader Xtra Large typeface popular among political polemics, such a heroic feat. I’m sorry to disappoint, but shortly after that post, I borrowed a copy from my colleague Matt Yglesias, then sat down and read the book.

Um, wait. Let’s slow down a bit and get this timeline straight.

1) Complaining about not having copy of book

2) Borrowing copy from Matt Yglesias

3) Reading book

4) Posting a review of the book without any reference to anything in it, instead expanding on earlier arguments detailing her personal views on what she previously imagined Chait was saying

So okay. To be rigorously fair, maybe she read it but all the boring words just bounced off.

Which Half?
If, as this Cato scholar claims, half the money that the US spends on health care is wasted, then perhaps it’s because we’re supporting the rest of the world in terms of health care research, or maybe something like that.

PKBlog!
I see Paul Krugman has a blog, although I must say it isn’t a very good one.

What You See Is Not What You Get
While I didn’t even obtain a copy of Jon Chait’s book before reviewing it unfavorably in the TPMCafe Book Club discussion, I shall now hide behind Will Wilkinson in expressing that, like Will, I wish I could have spent more time on the book discussion. Alas, so busy lately with things, Will and me. That said, Will has posted another few sentences from his copy of Chait’s book, and I have an opinion on those too.

Feel That Earning Power
I’m a fan of the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is supposed to encourage work. Then again, the 28-year-old maverick economist Raj Chetty says it’s flawed because poor people don’t even know how much they’d be making without taxes, in a paper for which he received a $60,000 fellowship from the right-wing Hoover Institution.* I mean, not that I knew that. I mean, not that I read Chetty’s paper either. Anyway, food for thought.

Driven Consumers
Regarding this thing that Ezra said, the actuality is that, okay, it isn’t that uninsured people decide to go without medical care; it’s that insured people have all sorts of unnecessary procedures foisted on them. Take me for instance: Now that I’m insured and not paying for medical care out of pocket, doctors make me undergo tests for diseases I don’t even end up having. Does that make anyone healthier? I think just the opposite.

* Home of such luminaries as Thomas Sowell, Newt Gingrich, Victor Davis Hanson, and Edwin Meese III

Jason Mattera, who once told Chris Matthews that he didn’t need to fight insurgents in Iraq because he was fighting liberals at home, is on the front lines again, this time running a Special Op against Congressman John Murtha.

Armed to the teeth with a video camera and a preposterous haircut, Mattera infiltrated the Rayburn House Office Building and hunkered down to wait for the Congressman. After a week-long bivouac at the Members’ elevator, Mattera at last spied the Congressman approaching. Mattera leaped from his hiding place and attacked, declared victory, jumped in his armored vehicle and rushed back to the base to post the video of the thrilling mano-a-mano confrontation on YouTube.

For those who might be disturbed by the gratuitous violence and gunfire in the video, and would rather not click through the previous link, here’s a partial transcript:

MATTERA: Congressman Murtha, Jason Mattera, Young America’s Foundation. Now that the first charges against Lance Corporals Justin Sharratt and Stephen Tatum have been, uh, dropped in the Haditha incident, or are in the process of being dropped, would you like to issue an apology for saying that they killed innocent civilians in cold blood?

I love the smell of manufactured outrage in the morning! Murtha, you see, never named Sharratt or Tatum, or anybody else, as responsible for the Haditha deaths. This is all he said:

Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.

Murtha said “our troops.” He didn’t single out Sharratt or Tatum or anyone else. And the Marines themselves seem to think that our troops killed civilians in cold blood because they have taken the charges against Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich to trial based on testimony from another Marine that Wuterich shot civilians in Haditha without cause.

Oblivious to these facts, a whole battalion of of wingnut bloggers have posted the tape of the Battle of Rayburn HOB, and ever since been high-fiving and shouting “Hooyah” to each other over Matterra’s extreme courage under fire. Among the battalion are Allahpundit’s butt boy PFC Bryan as well as Staff Sgt. Jim “Gateway Pundit and Fashion Model” Hoft, Brigadier General Scott “Big Trunk, Small Johnson” Johnson, and, natch, Lance Cpl. Charles “Little Green Dingleberries” Johnson (note: referrals from here are often bravely redirected).

The best part of the Battle of Rayburn HOB, however, seems to have gone unnoticed by all those clamoring to award Mattera the Medal of Honor. As Mattera, guns blazing, tried to follow Murtha into the Members’ elevator, this exchange occurred:

MATTERA: Do you like besmirching our troops, sir? Do you like besmirching our troops, sir?

MURTHA: Have you been in the service? I enlisted in Korea and I enlisted in Vietnam . . .

MATTERA (ignoring Murtha’s inconvenient question): You accused them of murdering innocent civilians in cold blood! That’s something that would come from Al-Jazeera!

And something that could have come from the Marines too, since they have taken the charges against Sgt. Wuterich to trial. I always knew that the Marines and Al-Jazeerah were in cahoots.

But before Mattera could blast another volley at the Congressman, the elevator door shut and the enemy escaped. Mattera then mugged a shit-eating little grin for the camera and went back to his base . . . ment. I think we can safely say that our young hero now knows first-hand what they mean when they say that war is hell.

Oh this is a good ‘un:

Possible Terror Threat for San Diego?

While looking at my histats at The Ice Palace, something peculiar came up:

My hair stood on end. I thought it somewhat peculiar that anyone would be searching for blueprints for the San Diego Sewer system; so I went and checked out the IP address […]

Now why would someone who’s supposedly currently in Uruguay want to obtain blueprints for the sewer system of the city of San Diego? I contacted the FBI with this information, first by phone. The guy on the other end pretty much hmmm’d and hawwed but finally found a person who is an expert in “cyber crime,” gave me his email address, and had me email that person with the information. I don’t know how strong the Gorelick wall continues to be, but my hope is that if I publish this information on this blog, and if it gets picked up, it may prompt some more timely and intensive investigation.

Y’know, there’s a reason that the guy from the FBI didn’t take you too seriously: it’s because he gets about 20 gazillion calls a day from random paranoids who INSIST that they have first-hand knowledge of an impending terror attack because they picked up signals about it from the radios the Soviets installed in their teeth. Allow me dash your hopes for you by saying that this investigation is going nowhere.

I will say, though, that I’m glad you decided to post this sort of lunacy on BlogsforBush instead of further wasting the FBI’s time. If another 9/11 happened while the Feds were mucking about in the San Diego sewer system, you’d be entirely to blame, homez.

Gavin adds:

Above: FBI also alerted to sewer system’s low spawning of RPG ammo

UPDATE: From the comments:

I sure hope when we get hit again, and we will, that you’re in the vicinity of the attack. Maybe you’ll rot in hell, thinking about what might have been, had you listened to the adults…

Nothin’ says lovin’ like fantasizing about your ideological rivals’ deaths.

Gavin adds: Hey, can someone click this, and then follow the link?

…AAAGH! Somebody just Googled us who has “first-hand knowledge of an impending terror attack!!!1”

Above: Evidence of a plan to… With the… Because it…

Oh crap, sorry. Copied the wrong Google referral there.