OT: James Arthur, the perfect market and the perfect op amp

You're making it too complicated, which I always take as a sign someone doesn't understand something. Ditto oversimplification, per Einstein.

What you're missing with op amps is feedback, which brings even a lousy op amp comes close to ideal. They self-correct. That's why we use them.

Free markets aren't perfect. They don't have to be. Markets driven by economic self-interest self-correct if you set the rules right. That result holds true over a broad range of conditions, and the rules don't even have to be very good. The players compete to best serve society, as measured by their customers' (the citizens') willingness to trade their own hard-earned money for whatever good or service the producer offers.

The usual caveats apply.

- Setting the rules right is not accomplished by some guy with a teleprompter deciding to try a hand at designing cars, or power plants or batteries; or deciding to plunder and redistribute things to his supporters, or other such. That kind of looting generates fear, causing people to clam up. Rational people fear Barack Obama,. They hunker down, seek shelter, and run from him if they can.

- Neither can the guy with the teleprompter replace the function of local feedback by constantly diddling from afar with a large phase delay, imperfect knowledge, and no idea what the hell he's doing. Like adding a bizarre, emotional network that's non-linear and non- monotonic in time and voltage to an op-amp's feedback, that makes the thing wildly unstable. It also re-directs the system from serving the public good, to serving political self-interest.

- The economic self-interest requirement is violated when you take the rewards of productive activity and redistribute them to unproductive enterprises. Over some continum it makes more and more sense to suck off the public dole than to work and produce things.

You speak of government interventions with the faith that people are too dumb to manage their own affairs, and that a gaggle of politicians can ride the gain and offset controls and close all the necessary feedback loops in real time to better effect. That view is flawed in every respect. Op amps aren't very smart, but they control themselves extremely well from one, single, simple guiding principle, provided you don't heap too many parasitic and or perverse burdens on them.

You, at bottom, want to replace the op-amp's simple, clear, linear mandate--subtract and multiply--with Obamacare and produce a stable, predictable, optimized output. Good luck with that.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat
Loading thread data ...

That's a bit simplistic. There are a lot of products on the market with all kinds of hidden costs. If the government doesn't make rules then you could end up buying a product which costs you a lot more money than you expected. Over here a lot of crappy financial products where sold. On paper they looked okay but it takes a real financial expert to uncover that the product will actually empty the customers' wallet. Insurance companies in NL will have to pay back billions of euro's in the next few years. Some probably will go out of business.

IOW: companies can steal from you by obfusticating their product descriptions and/or not tell you about the hidden costs. Without rules companies WILL steal from you whenever they can.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Nico Coesel

Its not socialist crap. You have no idea what socialism actually is.

The point the "Yes men" are trying to make is that companies don't care whether you live or die because of their products as long as they make a profit! The current recession has once again shown companies behave exactly like little kids. They need clear rules and guidance otherwise everything turns into a big mess.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Nico Coesel

Under Keynes London's riots are a positive boon. Think of all the construction needed to fix the damage, all the workers that will be needed for repairs, all the materials that will be purchased. GDP will soar!

On top of these Keynes adds his multiplier--each worker with a new job will spend his money at the shopkeepers' stores, who will spend their new income yet somewhere else. The cycle repeats several times before taxes at each transfer reduce the original sum into nothingness, for net multiplier claimed of 1.89 or such.

To a Keynesian, your house is worth twice as much burned down as left standing. They call this "stimulus."

It is. Regular Americans see it. You can't spend your way out of debt. Slicing the loaf thinner doesn't make it bigger. A gov't whose plan is setting neighbors against each other, promising each one more of the other's stuff does not create more stuff, but less.

Krugman squeals to the contrary, but having gotten his way twice, he's finding it harder and harder to convince people that it's all working. "Oh, phrenology works" he insists, "you're just not feeling the bumps right."

It's not working. According to Keynes and his multiplier, $1T in stim- u-louse should've produced 20+ million jobs. We got 500k (and they're temporary). It should've spurred all sorts of positive-feedback snap- back economic activity--if it were right--but the promise of looting spurs mostly pathological activity, especially hiding and hunkering down.

Krugman's a political activist, kind of an economic Michael Moore. The Nobel committee accidentally gave Moore's prize for being fat and obnoxious to Krugman, who's kind of a dwarf.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

On Aug 15, 12:36 am, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote: > On Aug 12, 11:19 pm, Bill Sloman wrote: >

I'm not making it too complicated, I'm just including stuff that you refuse to think about

If they've got built-in compensation capacitors. I'm old enough to have used the uA709, which didn't, and in fact needed two compensation capacitors and a resistor to prevent it oscillating when used with a low closed-loop gain.

They only self-correct in a useful way if you severely cripple the high frequency gain.

But you've got to enforce the rules. Anti-monopoly rules are pretty straight-forward. Anti-boom-and-bust rules involve fooling around with the the prime rate to temper the systems' natural tendency to over-shoot, and that can't handle large excursion in "business confidence" driven by events like the GFC, so you've got to work other levers as well.

Adam Smith's "invisible hand". Sadly, it doesn't do a thing to damp down market instabilities.

That's your perception of what's going on? You do live in cloud-cuckoo-land.

That just right-wing political propaganda. Your current administration isn't looting, plundering or redistributing, and when the previous administration tried to plunder Irak's oil (and made a total hash of it) you were perfectly happy to support their spuriously-justified piracy.

You can't - or won't - understand what he is trying to do, but you really ought to have enough sense to realise that he isn't trying to replace local feedback by "constantly diddling from afar" which is central control in a planned economy, but rather trying to adjust the willingness of every participant in the market to invest their money.

Lowering the prime rate in a recession so that it is cheaper for everybody to borrow start-up capital, thus making it likely that more people will expand their businesses or start new businesses is the very antithesis of "constantly diddling from afar".

That's the unavoidable human element in the free market - consumer confidence and market confidence - which has to be compensated out if you want to avoid repeating cycles of boom and bust.

More right-wing political propaganda

That's not what pump-priming does - it borrows money that is not being used and gives it to people who will spend it.

Government is always taking taking some of the rewards of productive activity and redistributing them unproductive enterprises, like the defence forces and the police, but they also spend what they get in taxes in more productive ways, by building roads, sewers and other infra-structure. Pump-priming happens to be one of those activities - you don't believe this, but that's your flat-earth economics ...

More right-wing propaganda. Some people claim to prefer to live of the dole, but this is basically part of the 5% of the population who need psychiatric care at some point in their lives. The sane majority wants work - it's most people's primary social activity and most people define themselves in terms of what they do when they are in work, and feel diminished when they aren't.

That's more right-wing propaganda, and has nothing to do with the kind of government intervention that Keynes encouraged and justified.

Managing consumer confidence isn't preventing consumers from managing their own affairs, it's just adjusting the environment for the community as a whole so that more people will be encouraged to invest (in a recession) or to save (if the economy is getting over-heated) than would be the case in the absence of that influence. If you've got a really good idea you'll still invest in it in the depths of a recession, and if you can't come up with a plausible market plan you won't invest at the peak of a boom.

Since you are describing the kind of government intervention that proved inadequate in the USSR, I have to agree that it isn't a good way to run a country. It's not the kind of government intervention that is going on in the USA at the moment, and the proposition that the two approaches have anything in common - beyond being equally unpalatable to people to the right of the Tea Party - is entirely fatuous.

And they've got that built in frequency compensation capacitor, which evolution has failed to incorporate in the components that make up the free market.

Your proposition seems to be that anything short of a totally uninhibited free market is Soviet-style central planning.

This is the digital approach to politics - everybody who is less right wing than you are is clearly a supporter of Marxist-Leninism. It is a simple idea, but does have the disadvantage of being utterly ridiculous.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
Reply to
Bill Sloman

Of course not... why should they?? Companies don't owe you shit, other than to stand by any product they sell you. Nobody _makes_ you purchase any particular product. Or are you of the Omamamania crowd... you're forced to buy whatever the government orders you to?

Utter nonsense. What we are seeing is companies so afraid of the Obama policies they're sitting tight until an administration change. ...Jim Thompson

[On the Road, in New York]
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

The idea that companies stand by their product is something you should let go. They are only interested in maximising profits. Show me an honest sales person. They are extinct like dinosaurs.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Nico Coesel

Sales people are _normally_ dishonest. Why do you expect differently? Do you need mommy to help you decide your purchases? I think you do ;-)

Does _anyone_ _owe_ you anything? Nope. You're on your own. Grow up and take care of yourself. ...Jim Thompson

[On the Road, in New York]
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

Companies can steal, and some reasonable legal protections make sense. Stealing has been illegal since biblical times.

So, why are all 2x4s actually 1.75x3.75 inches? Why is a 1x12 actually

3/4 x 11? Where is the Consumer Protection Department on this?

John

Reply to
John Larkin

"Regulatory uncertainty" is mostly a red herring.

We'll get a natural experiment as the court ruling on the individual mandate plays out in markets, but I predict "no effect". That may be because they're waiting for a SCOTUS ruling. I'd bet "no effect" then, too.

Survey data shows weak demand as more of a factor than regulatory uncertainty.

There's very little actual difference* between Obama's policies and Bush's ( and there was even less difference between Bush and Clinton) . Even if say, Rick Perry beat Obama in 2012, why would anybody think he'd behave differently?

The office is much bigger than one man. I don't think Perry would have any better advice from Bush41/43 or Clinton than Obama would, and I have little doubt that either president-emeritus would hold back for electoral reasons.

*George Will indirectly made this point on Charlie Rose this week...

-- Les Cargill

Reply to
Les Cargill

*Good* sales people are *NOT* dishonest. They figure out you're wasting their time and move on. Granted, many people think "Glen Garry Glen Ross" is a sales course these days...

-- Les Cargill

Reply to
Les Cargill

So why do people drive on parkways and park on driveways?

-- Les Cargill

Reply to
Les Cargill

The problem is that for a lot of things you need to depend on knowledge of others. Take your doctor for example. Does he prescribe you certain medicines because they work the best or are they the ones that give him a bigger bonus? Or is he prescribing lesser effective medicines so you return for another consult he can charge? You'll never know because he can always make an excuse.

Our whole society (and economic system) relies on people being trustworthy. Otherwise you'll need to be an expert on anything you ever buy. Do you test your food before you eat it? I guess not, you obviously TRUST the person who sold it to you AND the rules provided by your Government to prevent selling bad food.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Nico Coesel

Honest companies prosper because people trust them. Honesty is in their economic interest, especially if they're going to be around very long. Honesty maximizes profits. Politicians have no such incentive.

Yesterday I bought an inkjet. I specifically avoided and did NOT buy a Hewlett-Packard because I don't trust them. How does that help HP?

I used to do the opposite, because once upon a time I knew that if HP made it, it was excellent. But Carly Fiorina's HP sold me some shoddy gear. I haven't trusted them since.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

That is the natural sequence of events... sell me something shoddy and I'll never come back. ...Jim Thompson

[On the Road, in New York]
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

Sorry, but that is a lie. Sales people like to use that to gain your trust.

Just look at Microsoft and how long they are getting away by selling crap. Its all about marketing, not about quality. In general: count the number of adds touting 'new formula', 'better taste', 'stronger than ever'. Like the original product was crap!

HP may have lost one customer but by lowering the prices and quality they gained hundreds of new customers. HP still has good business gear but you must be willing to pay a bit more.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Nico Coesel

ma

The SBA estimates compliance with federal regulations cost $1.75 trillion dollars in 2008.

formatting link

Given that cost, why would firms be other than concerned about the reams of new regulations presently being pumped out night and day? That would be irrational. They should, for example, have a rational expectation that Obamacare and other regs are going to significantly add to their cost of employing someone. That, or make a rational determination to dump employer-based healthcare, as many firms--1/3rd IIRC--have indicated they will.

That's a bit of a strawman though--there are numerous actual effects of the President's policies contributing to the whole mess, like yelling at coal companies, seizing car companies, stopping oil drilling, dispossessing bond holders, stopping states from defending themselves, preventing companies from locating where they want to, and on and on.

All these things incite fear, and redirect people from doing other more important things.

Then there's the whole focus on "envy your neighbor and we'll get you more of his." Setting neighbor against neighbor isn't as good as encouraging each person to seek their own best fortune.

All this disrupts the civil society. A society ill-at-ease, afraid of their government, is not as cheerful or productive.

You mean why would he stop attacking employers and employment? Why wouldn't he?

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

Do you lie like that when it's in your economic interest?

If so, why should I trust what you say?

If not, why do you attribute such behaviour to all others?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

I do not own HP shares neither am I somehow employed by them. Actually, when I announced to be self-employed someone warned me my honesty would cost me money at some point :-)

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Nico Coesel

If you're honest, why do you impute dishonesty to everyone else?

There are lots of straight shooters in the world, which is a good thing because otherwise civilization would end abruptly.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.