Meh. So bloody typical. People don't like the message, so they take aim at the messenger. And I don't know what Seth's deal is — he seems to be talking out of a six-sided mouth: economies don't have to be fair, but they DO have to be fair to the Japanese who don't want to spend and respect their wishes — Seth, do you even realize the internally inconsistent nature of your argument?
I think probably the most perceptive comment on Krugman was the following:
Which of course is the eternal debate between Keynesians and Hayekians, market regulation versus free markets.dave_dave wrote:I believe the faulty assumption in the original example is that each coupon has to be for a fixed time frame, regardless of how low the scrip supply dips. A truly perceptive individual in the coop would see this and say, "hey, for one scrip ill babysit for two nights as opposed to one, because i really need those coupons". Another person may see this and say, "iill give you an even better deal!". At this point the individuals are free to bargain over the babysitting time each coupon is worth. Each would approach the "hoarder" and offer their babysitting deal, now the hoarder can get more worth out of each scrip than he put in, making them more likely to spend scrip again.
Eventually, through bargaining, the amount of babysitting time per scrip should settle on a value that may be different than the original, say two nights, rather than one, but this would have the benefit of keeping scrip in circulation with out having to issue more of it.
What I think gets over-looked in the rather soft sciences of economics and political theory is that most arguments center around a pair of conflicting but mutually necessary values. Those are the values of fairness (the bulk of capitalistic rhetoric) and the value of charity (socialism). The conservative makes the mistake in believing that if we can arrive at the proper formula which takes fairness into account in the proper way, then charity need not be attended to. This is false. This is false because, as a species, our evolutionary success depended on a synthesis between these competing values. They are both necessary — at a genetic level — for us to flourish and prosper as a species. Any politic which neglects one for the other, or tries to account for one with the other, will fail. And with it, perhaps the entire species. Many pie-eyed liberals expect science and human goodness to prevail in our war against impending climate catastrophe. I think they are naively deluded. We face a potential extinction event of the first order, which will probably put an end to the dominance of the human species, to be replaced by something else. Sacrificing one or the other value, for petty political purposes, pushes us, as a species, that much closer to extinction. We are no longer fighting for "more take home pay" or "a lower tax rate". We are fighting for the survival of the species. And both sides are on the wrong side.
