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Robert Murphy wants to debate Paul Krugman

Onion Eater

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Robert Murphy wants to debate Paul Krugman!

When Krugman agrees to debate Murphy at the Mises Institute, $100,000 will be donated to the Fresh Food Program of FoodBankNYC.org, a non-profit dedicated to feeding the hungry of NYC.

The idea is a win-win-win:

* You won’t have to donate unless Krugman accepts the debate
* The money will be going to a good cause
* Worst case scenario: you keep your money and Krugman ends up looking like a asshole who’s too busy to see $100,000 go to the hungry.

Since I already beat Robert Murphy in a debate, if Murphy prevails against Krugman, that automatically makes me the top dog in the economics establishment. Yay!

I pledged $100. Critiques and rebuttals are how science advances, you know.
 
Is it possible that no one will claim the 1000 dollar rebuttal prize because no one knows or cares about who you are?

Watch this: I offer President Obama 1000 dollars to write a rebuttal to my post here that he is not fulfilling his campaign promises. Offer expires 1 year from today.

Can I play?
 
From your website: http://www.axiomaticeconomics.com/exposition/exposition4.php

Both the people traditionally labeled "consumers" and those labeled "producers" appear in the demand distribution. The conceptual separation of consumers and producers is a great mistake of mainstream economics. They are all just people, each with a bit of the stock, and they are all prepared to sell if the price is above a certain point and buy if the price is below that point. The only thing that distinguishes people from one another is their point of indifference. This has little to do with who produced different bits of the stock, the event of production having occurred in the forgotten past.
Poor use of jargon. Consumers are the demand, Producers are the supply. The producer is not going to buy the product if price is low. That is a fundamental flaw in how society works. Even in stocks, was GM buying it's own stock at 3 dollars a share? NO.
When economists draw one curve called "supply" and another called "demand", they are implying that the two are independent, for one cannot solve two simultaneous equations for two variables if the two equations are just versions of the same relation.

First the 2 curves ARE separate from each other. The first is supply vs price. As price decreases, then the available market items will decrease. The second is Demand vs price an item can sell for. As demand for an item increases, so too can the price the item can be charged for. They are 2 graphs superimposed over eachother to represent the ideal price target for the company to be profitable.

The criss cross text book supply demand 2 line cruve you refrence is not the the equation. It is to assist you in understanding optimization. An example of the equation which would show how the 2 interact would be Y axis PROFIT and X axis price charged per item. An example of a working equation would be -0.25Xsquared + 10x + 5 = PROFIT

This equation assumes as prices are low, the company needs to cover costs so profit is decreased due to overhead. As the curve peaks, demand for the item is optimized vs corporate costs. As the curve then slopes down, this represents the increased price causing decreased demand. It's pretty simple and it works.


Their dependence is well known at the macro level, but I assert that supply and demand are not independent at the micro level either. It is a mistake to inquire whether I support Say's assertion that "supply creates its own demand" or Keynes' assertion that "demand creates its own supply";
What came first the chicken or the egg? No one wanted nintendo untill there was nintendo. The 2 do feed off of eachother. Limited supply DOES cause an artificial increase demand. There is the human component that cannot be calculated such as the person who has to have the thing no one else has - the first on the block person. The hoarding/fear component like before a huricane comes, everyone goes to the store to buy water because of the fear that there will be a shortage after the storm, causing more water to be sold in the week then whould have otherwise been sold. Then when a store DOES report it is out of water, more people feel they need to have their supplies met.

I anticipate that the greatest block to the understanding of my theory will be people trying to interpret it in terms of supply and demand. I do not believe in supply and demand. I believe in the demand distribution, which is a mapping between price and stock.

Riddle me this. You and 5 other people have a rare disease which will kill you in 3 days. I have the antidote, but I only have 1 vial, enough to treat 1 person. What will determine the price I will sell the antidote for? How do you see the "market forces" working? Is a simple auction not supply and demand at work?

This is a particularly pressing question for people dealing in narcotics because the penalties are so much greater for being on one curve than the other. But, if one visits a neighborhood where such trade takes place, any of the people one encounters would sell if the price were right and would buy if offered a bargain. There is really only one relation and it is called the demand distribution. Since there are two variables, price and stock, this (single) relation can provide a mapping from one variable to the other but cannot fix them. However, later in this pamphlet, existence and uniqueness proofs are given for a point toward which price and stock tend. Thereafter, it will be assumed that they are fixed at that point, called saturation.
Simply put, you are using an example which assumes an unlimited supply. Your "neighborhood" picks one point in time which is reflective of the supply and demad at the point. It does not take into account what happens after 3 dealers get busted, and there is a squeeze on supply.
Supply and demand has never been used predictively, not even to make bad predictions. × marks the spot is a purely descriptive technique. Since they are using the 20-20 vision of hindsight, they can do this for three months in a row and, to nobody’s surprise, the sum of the quantities is the quarterly quantity.
I have a feeling you never ran a business. If pricing has nothing to do with demand, how are prices determined? Why do people go to the stores when there are sales? The bottom line is profit. Being able to have some way of estimating a starting point for where to price your product is how profits are created.

I have told them that price is related to stock, not supply...
It's semantics. They are the same thing.

They also know that nobody can predict sales. Supply never means anything in economics, though sometimes (for non-durable phenomena) it can pass for stock.
You will never sell an item you don't have. I can predict that.
 
Is it possible that no one will claim the 1000 dollar rebuttal prize because no one knows or cares about who you are?

I wrote my Critique of Austrian Economics in 2004 and, over the next three years, spent thousands of dollars advertising my challenge to any Austrian economist to rebut me.

In 2007 Robert Murphy took up my challenge by writing A Reply to Aguilar. I immediately paid him the $1000 and posted his rebuttal on my website.

A month later I tore Murphy's arguments apart with my paper, A Rejoinder to Mr. Murphy. Not surprisingly, he capitulated. Honestly, crushing Murphy was too easy. So now I offer the same $1000 challenge to Roger Garrison, in whom I hoped to find a more worthy opponent. But, three years later, he continues to cower before me.

What the Austrians have done instead is steal my tactic of pressuring one's opponents into a debate by waving money under their noses and applied it to Paul Krugman, whom they hope will be a weaker opponent than I was. And, in the meantime, they have encouraged their teenage followers to re-start false rumors every month or two about my not having paid Murphy.

As always, when confronted by another pimple-faced Austrian screeching about how I stiffed Murphy, as you are doing now, I respond by giving them Murphy's e-mail address so they can ask him themselves.

bob.murphy.ancap@gmail.com
 
Are you drz-400? Or are you just copying his posts?
Maybe you would like to take the time to explain your theory then. Why are my points so wrong? Accusing me of being a sock puppet instead of discussing the post... high class! Never read that post before, and I don't really see a lot similarities, except we each are challenging your OPINION that supply and demand do not exist.
over the next three years, spent thousands of dollars advertising my challenge to any Austrian economist to rebut me.
I am not impressed. You are not the first person with a theory. Your not the only person with money. You had to advertise your challenge and theory, seems like you really found the holey grail of economic theory.

I immediately paid him the $1000 and posted his rebuttal on my website.
Not impressed with your money. I'm not interested in your life story, you want to hear mine? How about discussing th=e post I wrote prior.

Explain why -xsquared+10x-6= profit doesn't demonstrate an example of the exact claim you made that no mathematical formula for supply and demand exist...

A month later I tore 's arguments apart with my paper
When I was 14 I made my first stock recomendation DEC stock went from about 20 to 50 in about a year's time... Are you impressed with me? Because I'm not impressed with your story yet.

What the Austrians have done instead is steal my tactic ...
What you've done is talk about anything except the post and information I ripped apart... What does narcist mean?

when confronted by another pimple-faced Austrian screeching about how I stiffed Murphy, as you are doing now, I respond by giving them Murphy's e-mail address so they can ask him themselves.
Are you really old enough to vote? I am no kid. I am no sock puppet. I am no Austrian. I don't care about your past. I don't care about "Murphy". I don't care to read you biography... You are pretty bad with logic, yet you think you are amazing at creating mathematical theories... :/ And for someone who so quickly throws around the sock puppet, do you really think an email account is anything hard to fake?

If you want to discuss what I wrote prior to this, please continue to do so. If you want to talk about yourself, I'm done here...
 
Here's a good one onion eater.

Manufacturing companies have been able to become more profitable by using JIT inventory. This is because reducing inventory reduces costs. Why then, if input prices are volatile, would a manufacturing company want to keep a larger inventory? Guess what, it’s because SUPPLY is not constant, and it matters.
 
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An interesting corallary:

"I assert that the stock of phenomena is more important than the supply because all of the decisions made regarding a phenomenon are based on its stock (how much of it is in existence), and not on how much of it happened to be produced in some arbitrary time period. Phenomena are the same whether they are produced in one time period or another." -- Onion Eater

So how do we determine the price of something if it is "made to order?"
 
I have told them that price is related to stock, not supply...

It's semantics. They are the same thing.

What makes you and drz-400 so similar is that both of you are not only ignorant of how to do differential calculus, but you both adamently insist that the subject doesn't exist. You believe that a function and its first derivative are the same thing; the distinction is "just semantics." Apparently those squirrelly mathematicians invented differential calculus just to give themselves something to do, playing with words that practical men know to be identical.

Honestly, that is really dumb. If a physicist insisted that position and velocity were the same thing and routinely interchanged those words in his lectures, he'd be the laughingstock of the physics department. But, if an economist insists that supply and stock are the same thing and routinely interchanges those words in his lectures, it just makes him neoclassical.

In my Rejoinder to Mr. Murphy I write:

As poorly as this misunderstanding (whether to look to future consumption or past costs of production for the source of value) reflects on Murphy, this is not the principle source of his confusion. Murphy believes, incredibly, that supply and stock are the same thing,...

Are supply and stock (or, more generally, income and wealth) the same thing? Murphy writes, "At the most basic level, there is nothing at all irregular about a graph meaning one thing ‘and also something else.' For example, a physicist could graph the vertical displacement of an object against time, and say that the graph meant height and also the potential energy stored in the object" (Murphy, p. 2).

The obvious retort is that height and potential energy are linearly related, that is, one can be obtained from the other by an equation of the form y = mx + b. Potential energy is mass times the acceleration due to gravity times height. For instance, if an elevator cab with a mass of 920 kilos is raised to the top floor of a skyscraper 412 meters above the ground, it will have 3.7 MJ of potential energy, (920 kg)( 9.8 m/s^2)(412 m). If the cable breaks, it will crash through the lobby with 3.7 MJ of kinetic energy. The potential energy of the elevator cab, in joules, is 9016 times its height, in meters.

A graph can mean height and also potential energy for the same reason that one can put Fahrenheit and Celsius side-by-side on the same thermometer. They are linearly related to each other: F = 1.8C + 32. Similarly, the displacements of American and also Japanese engines can appear on the same chart in spite of the fact that American manufacturers cite cubic inches while Japanese manufacturers cite liters. A liter is 61 cubic inches. They both measure the same thing, volume.

But are stock and supply linearly related? No. Supply is the derivative (change in) stock. The stock of houses in town is determined by driving up and down the streets and counting them. The supply of houses is determined by calling county records and asking them how many building permits have been filed recently. The units for the former are houses, e.g. "There are 5472 houses in town." The units for the latter are houses per year, e.g. "Twenty-eight new houses were built last year." In physics, this is the difference between position and velocity. If I am driving on the freeway, my position is five miles west of Phoenix and my velocity is 80 mph, eastbound. Not only do these two statistics have different units, but they are completely different things.

Every function has a unique derivative, but not a unique antiderivative. For instance, if f(x) = x^2 + 5, then its derivative is f'(x) = 2x. But 2x has many possible antiderivatives, x^2 + C, with C an arbitrary number. C could equal five, but it could also equal four or 327.28 or any other number. That is why antiderivatives are called indefinite integrals – because, without further information, we do not have any definite knowledge of what C is. Murphy is wrong when he claims that there is a one-to-one relation between stock and supply in the same way that there is a one-to-one relation between height and potential energy.
 
What makes you and drz-400 so similar is that both of you are not only ignorant of how to do differential calculus, but you both adamently insist that the subject doesn't exist. You believe that a function and its first derivative are the same thing; the distinction is "just semantics." Apparently those squirrelly mathematicians invented differential calculus just to give themselves something to do, playing with words that practical men know to be identical.

Honestly, that is really dumb. If a physicist insisted that position and velocity were the same thing and routinely interchanged those words in his lectures, he'd be the laughingstock of the physics department. But, if an economist insists that supply and stock are the same thing and routinely interchanges those words in his lectures, it just makes him neoclassical.

In my Rejoinder to Mr. Murphy I write:

Quote me were I ever said they were the same. You can't. I just disagree with your theory that supply is irrelevent.
 
Quote me were I ever said they were the same. You can't. I just disagree with your theory that supply is irrelevent.

Here's one:

your stock and supply thing does not evem matter. Mainstream econ already has distinguished between stock and flow. Obviously at an instantaneos point in time we have a stock.

Wrong. Stock is not the limit of differentials. The derivative is the limit of differentials.

You still don't get it.

One calculates a different price depending on whether one speaks of weekly or monthly supply and demand. This is an inconsistency since there can only be one price and it is not dependent on the caprice of an economist when he decides how often to conduct his surveys.

Supply is a differential. It has a time unit of one week, one month or one year. Regarding supply, I made two points:

1) One calculates a different price depending on whether one speaks of weekly or monthly supply and demand.

2) Stock is more important than supply.

You combined these two issues by claiming that, as the time unit asymptotically approaches zero, supply tends toward stock. That is not true. As the time unit asymptotically approaches zero, differentials tend toward the derivative.

Wikipedia said:
The idea [of derivatives] is to compute the rate of change as the limiting value of the ratio of the differences Δy / Δx as Δx becomes infinitely small.

If you measure how far my car travels in different units of time, starting with miles per hour, then feet per second and then millimeters per microsecond, the results do not eventually converge on position, 50 miles north of Las Vegas. They converge on velocity, which (in physics) can be expressed in any convenient units - for cars, usually miles per hour.

But economics is very different. One calculates a different price depending on whether one speaks of weekly or monthly supply and demand. They do not converge as the time unit becomes smaller. This is an inconsistency since there can only be one price and it is not dependent on the caprice of an economist when he decides how often to conduct his surveys.
 
Stock is more important than supply.
Can you explain what you mean here. This is how I understand what you are attempting to state. Stock as in the inventory for immediate sales in the store, is more important than the supply as in the warehouse storage volume? Am I understanding your point this correctly?

One calculates a different price depending on whether one speaks of weekly or monthly supply and demand. They do not converge as the time unit becomes smaller.
Why? if there is a 6 month supply of oil, or a 182 day supply of oil. What will the price variance be? How does the price magically change?
 
Here's one:



Wrong. Stock is not the limit of differentials. The derivative is the limit of differentials.



Supply is a differential. It has a time unit of one week, one month or one year. Regarding supply, I made two points:

1) One calculates a different price depending on whether one speaks of weekly or monthly supply and demand.

2) Stock is more important than supply.

You combined these two issues by claiming that, as the time unit asymptotically approaches zero, supply tends toward stock. That is not true. As the time unit asymptotically approaches zero, differentials tend toward the derivative.



If you measure how far my car travels in different units of time, starting with miles per hour, then feet per second and then millimeters per microsecond, the results do not eventually converge on position, 50 miles north of Las Vegas. They converge on velocity, which (in physics) can be expressed in any convenient units - for cars, usually miles per hour.

But economics is very different. One calculates a different price depending on whether one speaks of weekly or monthly supply and demand. They do not converge as the time unit becomes smaller. This is an inconsistency since there can only be one price and it is not dependent on the caprice of an economist when he decides how often to conduct his surveys.

Sorry it is unclear, but what I was saying was at an instantaneous point in time, a stock is how much stuff we have, while flow like supply would be how much this is changing. Did I even say anything about a differential in that sentence. Nope, but you are right, the rate of change for an infinitesimal change in time is the derivative.

I know you would love for that post to say instantaneous rate of change but it does not.

Why do we need to solve for time anyways? Why can we not just leave the answer in differential form, if that is what we are looking for? Oh yea, we can. If you integrate under a supply curve you get income.

You know, $ per apple x apples per year = $ per year
 
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Sorry it is unclear, but what I was saying was at an instantaneous point in time, a stock is how much stuff we have, while flow like supply would be how much this is changing.

That is correct. For example, this person obviously means “six month stock of oil.”

6 month supply of oil

But, again, you miss my point entirely. In my Simplified Exposition of Axiomatic Economics, I write:

Supply and demand curves are different depending on the time unit chosen. Mainstream economists provide no proof that their predicted prices are independent of their choice of time unit. For example, will thirteen predicted weekly quantities be the same as three predicted monthly quantities?

A large part of the problem with supply and demand is that it is used descriptively, but called predictive. It is easy to predict the past. Economists just observe the quantity produced one month and what it sold for and they put a little × over that spot. Then, by pure conjecture, they draw four tails on their × to fill their graph paper. Supply and demand has never been used predictively, not even to make bad predictions. × marks the spot is a purely descriptive technique. Since they are using the 20-20 vision of hindsight, they can do this for three months in a row and, to nobody’s surprise, the sum of the quantities is the quarterly quantity. In the real world, price is constant for years at a time but, for most companies, their weekly and monthly sales figures swing wildly and unpredictably, sometimes by several fold from one month to the next.

The time unit is important because the differentials do not converge to the derivative. Economists use calculus freely, slavishly imitating engineers as though supply were just like velocity, but they do not have convergence. Doing calculus without convergence is like driving a car without a transmission.

250px-Lim-secantsvg.png


For example, if the vertical axis were distance and the horizontal axis were time, then the graph above could represent the position of a golf ball and the slope of the tangent line its velocity. Where the graph is steep, the ball is quickly changing its position, that is, it has a high velocity.

If one wished to measure the ball's current velocity, one could take a picture of it now and then take another picture ten seconds later. The difference in position divided by ten is a measure of the particle's velocity. But it is a coarse measure of the ball's current velocity, as a lot may change before the second picture is taken.

A better measure of the ball's current velocity is to take a picture of it now and then take another picture one second later. Better yet, a video camera could be used which takes pictures every 30th of a second. With flash photography we can obtain quite fine accuracy, as with the photo below, but there is always some time delay before the second picture is taken. There is no “velocity meter” that gives us the current (instantaneous) velocity the way a camera gives us the current position.

golfball-1.jpg


How do we know where the ball was between photos? Intuition tells us that the ball was in points of space between where it was seen, but it may have darted off on a side journey, disappeared entirely or perhaps appeared momentarily on the dark side of the moon before re-joining our intrepid photographer.

We just don't know where the ball was between photographs. It is an axiom of physics that energy and momentum are both conserved. It is not a result. Darting off on side journeys would violate these conservation principles. Physicists are just not prepared to forsake these long-held axioms because someone raises impertinent questions about where a golf ball was between photos. Brushing impertinent questions aside is the whole point of having axioms. If physics were not based on the axiomatic method, it would degenerate into a skittish empirical science like Post-Autistic Economics, where everybody has an opinion, just like everybody has an _______.

Supply is the economic version of velocity and economists do not have a “supply meter” any more than physicists have a “velocity meter.”

If one wished to measure a factory's current (instantaneous) output, one could take a count of their inventory now and then take another a year later and subtract sales to learn how many widgets they are supplying. But it is a coarse measure of the factory's current output, as a lot may change before the second count is taken. A better measure of the factory's current output is to take a count of the inventory now and then take another a month later. Better yet, one might do this every week, every day or even every hour.

But are these measures of supply really “better” in any sense? They do not converge. The hourly figures would be all over the chart depending on whether the experiment was conducted in the daytime or at night, while the machines were running smoothly or wracked by malfunctions, etc.. Prices exist at every instant, so let us take our instant to be 3:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. A price for widgets exists at this moment, for one can certainly go online and order one. But if economists had established an hour to be their time unit, when they went to construct their supply and demand curves, they would find that supply everywhere is zero. There are no factories running.

So what should the time unit be? A week? A month? It has got to be one or the other and they produce different results. And the different results obtained by different time units do not converge to anything. There is no axiom in Neoclassical Economics equivalent to the conservation principles of physics that assures convergence.

Clearly, there can only be one price and it is not dependent on the caprice of an economist when he decides how often to conduct his surveys any more than the velocity of a golf ball is dependent on how many frames per second the video camera I have purchased operates at. If my camera operates at 30 frames per second and yours at 24 frames per second and we stand side-by-side filming a golf ball sailing past us, we should report close to the same velocity. All of Neoclassical Economics will fall like the House of Usher if it is seen that the prices and quantities it predicts depend entirely on a parameter plucked out of thin air and not on actual market forces.
 
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That is correct. For example, this person obviously means “six month stock of oil.”



But, again, you miss my point entirely. In my Simplified Exposition of Axiomatic Economics, I write:



The time unit is important because the differentials do not converge to the derivative. Economists use calculus freely, slavishly imitating engineers as though supply were just like velocity, but they do not have convergence. Doing calculus without convergence is like driving a car without a transmission.

250px-Lim-secantsvg.png


For example, if the vertical axis were distance and the horizontal axis were time, then the graph above could represent the position of a golf ball and the slope of the tangent line its velocity. Where the graph is steep, the ball is quickly changing its position, that is, it has a high velocity.

If one wished to measure the ball's current velocity, one could take a picture of it now and then take another picture ten seconds later. The difference in position divided by ten is a measure of the particle's velocity. But it is a coarse measure of the ball's current velocity, as a lot may change before the second picture is taken.

A better measure of the ball's current velocity is to take a picture of it now and then take another picture one second later. Better yet, a video camera could be used which takes pictures every 30th of a second. With flash photography we can obtain quite fine accuracy, as with the photo below, but there is always some time delay before the second picture is taken. There is no “velocity meter” that gives us the current (instantaneous) velocity the way a camera gives us the current position.

golfball-1.jpg


How do we know where the ball was between photos? Intuition tells us that the ball was in points of space between where it was seen, but it may have darted off on a side journey, disappeared entirely or perhaps appeared momentarily on the dark side of the moon before re-joining our intrepid photographer.

We just don't know where the ball was between photographs. It is an axiom of physics that energy and momentum are both conserved. It is not a result. Darting off on side journeys would violate these conservation principles. Physicists are just not prepared to forsake these long-held axioms because someone raises impertinent questions about where a golf ball was between photos. Brushing impertinent questions aside is the whole point of having axioms. If physics were not based on the axiomatic method, it would degenerate into a skittish empirical science like Post-Autistic Economics, where everybody has an opinion, just like everybody has an _______.

Supply is the economic version of velocity and economists do not have a “supply meter” any more than physicists have a “velocity meter.”

If one wished to measure a factory's current (instantaneous) output, one could take a count of their inventory now and then take another a year later and subtract sales to learn how many widgets they are supplying. But it is a coarse measure of the factory's current output, as a lot may change before the second count is taken. A better measure of the factory's current output is to take a count of the inventory now and then take another a month later. Better yet, one might do this every week, every day or even every hour.

But are these measures of supply really “better” in any sense? They do not converge. The hourly figures would be all over the chart depending on whether the experiment was conducted in the daytime or at night, while the machines were running smoothly or wracked by malfunctions, etc.. Prices exist at every instant, so let us take our instant to be 3:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. A price for widgets exists at this moment, for one can certainly go online and order one. But if economists had established an hour to be their time unit, when they went to construct their supply and demand curves, they would find that supply everywhere is zero. There are no factories running.

So what should the time unit be? A week? A month? It has got to be one or the other and they produce different results. And the different results obtained by different time units do not converge to anything. There is no axiom in Neoclassical Economics equivalent to the conservation principles of physics that assures convergence.

Clearly, there can only be one price and it is not dependent on the caprice of an economist when he decides how often to conduct his surveys any more than the velocity of a golf ball is dependent on how many frames per second the video camera I have purchased operates at. If my camera operates at 30 frames per second and yours at 24 frames per second and we stand side-by-side filming a golf ball sailing past us, we should report close to the same velocity. All of Neoclassical Economics will fall like the House of Usher if it is seen that the prices and quantities it predicts depend entirely on a parameter plucked out of thin air and not on actual market forces.

So because some discontinuities might exist, calculus will not be a valid approach to solving such problems? Perhaps instead of looking at a single factory for 30 minutes at midnight we should look at the relevant time frame. This is not much different than other fields in science. For example, most of continuum mechanics requires us to pretty much make the assumption that atoms don't exist. We must use a volume bigger than the "elementary volume" for it to apply. Also, mainstream economics has developed models that tries to go without using historical data when determine the possible effects of policy change, since future decisions will be made based on this policy change. This whole idea is fundamental to the lucas critique.
 
So because some discontinuities might exist, calculus will not be a valid approach to solving such problems? Perhaps instead of looking at a single factory for 30 minutes at midnight we should look at the relevant time frame.

Some discontinuities might exist???

That is a rather euphemistic way to say that your house is built on sand.

So what should the time unit be? A week? A month? It has got to be one or the other and they produce different results. And the different results obtained by different time units do not converge to anything. There is no axiom in Neoclassical Economics equivalent to the conservation principles of physics that assures convergence.

So what is the relevant time frame? A week? A month?

Can you prove that they produce the same result?

In my Simplified Exposition of Axiomatic Economics, I write:

Supply and demand curves are different depending on the time unit chosen. Mainstream economists provide no proof that their predicted prices are independent of their choice of time unit. For example, will thirteen predicted weekly quantities be the same as three predicted monthly quantities?

After 250 years, no economist has succeeded in proving this very essential theorem. But I have confidence in you, drz-400. You're going to be the one who shores up the foundation of Neoclassical Economics. ;)
 
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Some discontinuities might exist???

That is a rather euphemistic way to say that your house is built on sand.

So you would accept that continuum mechanics, the basis of fluid mechanics, mechanics of materials, etc is built upon sand?

What's your opinion of structural analysis? Just pure BS, since most shear and moment diagrams have discontinuities too?

Oh, wait, your theory has a discontinuity too. Price cannot be a continuos function. It is discrete. I cannot have $.00001. The smallest I can get is rounded to a penny either way. What about stock? Oh yeah, this is another discrete function. I can't have 1/2 of a car. I either buy the whole thing or just 1 of them.

What about the stock of money? You yourself don't think that demand deposits and other money equivalents should be considered money. So what do we do when someone draws $2000 cash out of their bank account? That is a discontinuity. What is enough? Can you prove to me that saying $1000, $2000, or more as an element of money will produce the same result?

So what is the relevant time frame? A week? A month?

Can you prove that they produce the same result?

No, why would I. The whole point of economics is to figure out what the effects of a change in supply would be. Not how much exists, but what happens when the amount of what is in existence changes. Supply does not remain constant.

After 250 years, no economist has succeeded in proving this very essential theorem. But I have confidence in you, drz-400. You're going to be the one who shores up the foundation of Neoclassical Economics. ;)

Thanks.:2razz:
 
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Is it possible that no one will claim the 1000 dollar rebuttal prize because no one knows or cares about who you are?

Watch this: I offer President Obama 1000 dollars to write a rebuttal to my post here that he is not fulfilling his campaign promises. Offer expires 1 year from today.

Can I play?

Moderator's Warning:
The thread concerns Robert Murphy's challenge to Paul Krugman. Please do not go off on tangents to turn the thread into a personal critique of a fellow DP member.

Thank you.
 
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