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| 2006/9/20-22 [Politics/Domestic/President/Clinton, Politics/Domestic/RepublicanMedia] UID:44472 Activity:kinda low |
9/20 http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2465303&page=3 "Brilliant. I think he did a good job as president ... Had a little problem with the fucking honesty deal. And that gave me pause. But his presidency was successful." -O'Reilly on Bill Clinton \_ The invisible hand needs to give O'Reilly a spanking. --the invisible hand \_ What the hell is the invisible hand and why is it post so much? \_ What the fucking hell is the invisible hand and why is it post so much? \_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand Those who pursue their own selfish interests also promote the good of their community through a mechanism called "the invisible hand. For example, Enron execs and the War the fucking good of their community through a mechanism called "the invisible hand. For example, Enron execs and the fucking War in Iraq have helped countless individuals to become millionaires. The invisible hand theory is popular amongst free-market believers like the Reagan and amongst free-market believers like the fucking Reagan and Bush worshippers. \- see URL for berkeley connection to "rigorizing" the invisible hand: the fucking invisible hand: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/01/05_debreu.shtml \_ It's like a Swiss Army knife. It lest you make fun of the motd's wingnut libertarians, make random mastrubation references, and bizzare threats all at the same time! references, and bizzare threats all at the fucking same time! |
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| abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2465303&page=3 The Stereotyping Effect (Page 3 of 4) Opponents of O'Reilly -- and His Thoughts on Rumsfeld and Cheney O'Reilly has gotten in some nasty public arguments with those who disagree with him. He has had public spats with author and commentator Al Franken and taken on filmmaker Michael Moore, cable rival Keith Olbermann, and box office titan George Clooney, all of whom he labels "secular progressives." "20/20" checked O'Reilly's pulse on a few more public figures, like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and former President Clinton. O'Reilly said the war in Iraq had not gone well, but he did not slam Rumsfeld. But O'Reilly had harsher criticism for Cheney and compared him to Hillary Clinton. He believes Cheney does not want to be a guest on the "No-Spin Zone." To the surprise of some observers, O'Reilly believes Bill Clinton's presidency was a success. O'Reilly said he had a lot of respect for another presidential hopeful. |
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand savages, as well as in the early ages of heathen antiquity, it is the irregular events of nature only that are ascribed to the agency and power of the gods. heavy bodies descend, and lighter substances fly upwards, by the necessity of their own nature; edit The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith used the invisible hand phrase in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) too: It is to no purpose, that the proud and unfeeling landlord views his extensive fields, and without a thought for the wants of his brethren, in imagination consumes himself the whole harvest that grows upon them. The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These last too enjoy their share of all that it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for. The Wealth of Nations, arguing against import restrictions, on the basis that merchants naturally prefer to direct their resources in support of domestic (rather than foreign) industry. Every individual naturally inclines to employ his capital in the manner in which it is likely to afford the greatest support to domestic industry, and to give revenue and employment to the greatest number of people of his own country. As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it. edit Economists' Interpretation of The Wealth of Nations quote The concept of the Invisible Hand is nearly always generalized beyond Smith's original discussion of domestic versus foreign trade. Smith himself participated in such generalization, as is already evident in his allusion to "many other cases", quoted above. Many economists claim that the theory of the Invisible Hand states that if each consumer is allowed to choose freely what to buy and each producer is allowed to choose freely what to sell, the market will settle on a product distribution and prices that are beneficial to the entire community. The reason for this is that the benefit of competition will overcome the detriment of greed. In The Wealth of Nations Smith provides another, homelier metaphor that illustrates the simplicity of the principle: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. However, according to Smith not all private interests are equal. He thinks that agriculture is more productive than manufacture: Planting and tillage frequently regulate more than they animate the active fertility of nature; and after all their labour, a great part of the work always remains to be done by her. The labourers and labouring cattle, therefore, employed in agriculture, not only occasion, like the workmen in manufactures, the reproduction of a value equal to their own consumption, or to the capital which employs them, together with its owners' profits; The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. To attain to this envied situation, the candidates for fortune too frequently abandon the paths of virtue; for unhappily, the road which leads to the one, and that which leads to the other, lie sometimes in very opposite directions. In general, the term "invisible hand" can apply to any individual action that has unplanned, unintended consequences, particularly those which arise from actions not orchestrated by a central command and which have an observable, patterned effect on the community. Bernard Mandeville claimed that private vices are actually public benefits. In The Fable of the Bees (1714), he laments that the "bees of social virtue are buzzing in Man's bonnet": that civilized man has stigmatized his private appetites and the result is the retardation of the common good. Bishop Butler claimed that pursuing the public good was the best way of advancing one's own good since the two were necessarily identical. Lord Shaftesbury turned the convergence of public and private good around, claiming that acting in accordance with one's self-interest will produce socially beneficial results. An underlying unifying force that Shaftesbury called the "Will of Nature" maintains equilibrium, congruency, and harmony. rational self-interest, and the preservation and advancement of the self. Francis Hutcheson also accepted this convergence between public and private interest, but he attributed the mechanism, not to rational self-interest, but to personal intuition, which he called a "moral sense". Smith developed his own version of this general principle in which six psychological motives combine in each individual to produce the common good. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, vol II, page 316, he says, "By acting according to the dictates of our moral faculties, we necessarily pursue the most effective means for promoting the happiness of mankind." goods which have been produced almost entirely by people trying to maximize their own economic gain. Presumably those producers didn't manufacture the computers and develop the software out of a love for humanity or an altruistic desire to promote society's collective fortune. Any social benefits that have accrued therefore, according to Smith's doctrine, are simply a by-product of their striving for selfish reward. Contrary to common misconceptions, Smith did not assert that all self-interested labor necessarily benefits society, or that all public goods are produced through self-interested labor. His proposal is merely that in a free market, people usually tend to p... |
| www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/01/05_debreu.shtml Print quality photo available for download Gerard Debreu, 1983 Nobel Prize winner and UC Berkeley professor emeritus, dies in Paris at age 83 By Noel Gallagher, Media Relations | 5 January 2005 BERKELEY - Nobel Prize winner Gerard Debreu, emeritus professor of economics and mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, died Dec. Debreu won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1983 for applying mathematical rigor to the fundamental theory of supply and demand in economics. The law of supply and demand dates back to the 18th century, but Debreu's mathematical models provided proof of how prices affect the supplies of goods bought and sold. Through the work of Debreu and others, the conditions of the "invisible hand" in the marketplace were clarified. The next two and a half years are devoted to his conversion from mathematics to economics. Fall 1961 - As a visitor to the Cowles Foundation at Yale University, starts working on the core of an economy that gives rise to joint paper published in 1963 with Herbert Scarf, then at Stanford. Sources: University of California, Berkeley, The Nobel Foundation. A native of Calais, France, Debreu also was an officer of the French Legion of Honor and a commander of the French National Order of Merit. Fellow Nobel laureate and Stanford University economics professor Kenneth Arrow said he and Debreu found themselves independently researching similar economic ideas in the early 1950s, which eventually led to a joint paper in 1954 on the existence of equilibrium in an economy. Arrow warmly remembered how they collaborated on the paper. "It was a wonderful experience, he was just so brilliant to work with," Arrow said. "One of us would say a single word, and the other would just understand immediately. He broke off his studies in mathematics as a young man to enlist in the French Army after D-day, serving briefly in the French occupational forces in Germany until July 1945. He resumed his studies after the war, shifting his focus to economics. Debreu became interested in economics in 1945 after reading a book that described the mathematical theory of general economic equilibrium that was founded by Leon Walras from 1874-77. "During that period, I was an Attach de Recherches (research associate) of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, which showed an impressive tolerance for the absence of tangible results associated with the change from one field to another distant field," Debreu dryly noted in an autobiography he prepared for the Nobel Foundation. Before his almost 30-year tenure at UC Berkeley, Debreu worked from 1950 to 1960 at the University of Chicago and Yale University for the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, and at Stanford 's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences from 1960 to 1961. Debreu joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1962 at a time when the economics department was pointedly building up its staff to create a powerhouse that would soon be recognized as one of the pre-eminent economic departments in the academic world. Debreu's Nobel was the first in a string of four Nobel Memorial Prizes in economics won by UC Berkeley faculty. John Harsanyi won in 1994, Daniel McFadden in 2000 and George Akerlof in 2001. Debreu remained an active researcher and teacher after his retirement in 1991. He was also an economic adviser to several governments and toured extensively in Europe to lecture on economic theory. "He really was the most important contributor to the development of formal math models within economics," said UC Berkeley Professor Robert Anderson, who holds a joint appointment in economics and mathematics. "He brought to economics a mathematical rigor that had not been seen before." That mathematical rigor made lasting changes to the field of economics, making it a more formal and precise science, Anderson said. Debreu is remembered by friends as unfailingly polite and gracious, with a love of hiking in the Bay Area and of good food and accommodations when traveling. "He was a wonderful person to know," said UC Berkeley economics colleague and close friend George Break. "He used to go on very long hikes, Point Reyes was his favorite." When the families traveled overseas together, Break said Debreu would arrange the trip so they stayed at chateaus and had excellent meals at every stop: "He had very high standards." That standard of excellence was an important reason Debreu was recruited to UC Berkeley, said Break and Arrow. Debreu also took an interest in politics, deciding to become an American citizen after the Watergate hearings were over and he saw how the country had dealt with the constitutional crisis, friends said. "After the impeachment, he said: 'This is a great country. Arrow said Debreu also showed great courage when he went to Chile around 1980 on a human rights fact-finding mission on behalf of the National Academy of Sciences to report on how scientists were being treated. It was a more playful Debreu that was seen on campus in 1979, when he enthusiastically volunteered to coach the first ever "Little Big Game" between economics graduate students from UC Berkeley and Stanford - despite knowing nothing about American football. Debreu coached the UC Berkeley team while Arrow coached the Stanford team. The intradepartmental touch-football game became an annual event with the winner awarded a bronzed apple core trophy in honor of Arrow's and Debreu's Nobel Prize-winning theoretical work on the equilibrium (or "core") of an economy. "In his lectures he would always make a beautiful presentation, which clearly identified all of the assumptions and explained the proof in detail - and then ended precisely when it was supposed to. "At a personal level, he was unfailingly courteous, precise, and a joy to be around." A service at the Columbarium of the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris will be held Friday, Jan. |