Principles of Economics

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1. JumpCrisscrossJul 2026
   > For instance, you can look at how many tons of stuff are being moved by trucks

   Gross tonnage is a good input into "what we produce and consume." It's incomplete, however. Grossly. It excludes all services, for example. It's why we abandoned it as a measure after like the early industrial revolution.

   (A better one is electricity production, which you can estimate remotely from fuel levels and thermals. It’s also woefully incomplete—the nutters trying to forecast based solely on it are influencers, not fund managers or policymakers, for good reason.)

   > Do you know how they correct for inflation?

   Yes.

   > There is no way to "measure" inflation

   This is nonsense. It must be estimated. But so must e.g. "the surface that is being constructed" depending on how one defines surface construction.

   There are various measures of inflation of various utility. Some are used to deflate GDP.

   Mankiw's Principles of Economics might be a good start if you're serious about your questions. Because by your metrics, decarbonistion is a folly—the measures are probably made up anyway!

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2. JumpCrisscrossDec 2023
   > Is it that hard to substantiate your claims that a 60 year amortization + 15 year construction = 75 years is reasonable

   What do you mean reasonable? It’s real. We amortise over long time horizons in project finance all the time. Also, look up residual value. (And dams.)

   And yes, I’m contesting both 60 and 15; they’re 80 and 10 and could be 80 and 5 with permitting reform. And within that latter envelope, it works with conventional financing. (The same problem plagues HVDC lines, which also take 10+ years to permit.)

   > Do you see the year investment time ending up in the exponent?

   You may actually enjoy reading some of the foundational texts whose concepts you’re glancing across. (Principles of Economics, Mankiw, is a classic. For a more-applied text, Fabozzi’s Fixed Income.)

   You’re citing real things. But you’re connecting them nonsensically. Investopedia isn’t a replacement for training, though it’s a good reference once you’ve learned the material.

   (The exponent comes from compounding time preference. Its time component is orthogonal to technological progress, which embeds in the rate. That’s why it’s constant. If you want to consider obsolescence risk, you start getting into hyperbolic discounting.)

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3. alephnerdSep 2023
   Your confusing micro- and macroeconomics.

   Monetary Policy falls under Macroeconomics (eg. Currency Liquidity, Interest Rates, etc) and the price of an individual good (eg. iPhone) is Microeconomics, as you are dealing with a single localized variable and it's interaction with the dynamic system, not the entire dynamic system itself.

   Also, old school Keynesianism hasn't really been played around with since the 50s.

   Modern Macroeconomics has changed significantly since the early 20th century. A full explaination would take forever, but I'd recommend reading a basic Econ textbook like Mankiw's Principles of Economics to get started.

   Econ is similar to ML - a lot of very complex ideas are being distilled into meme soundbite explanations that fail to provide an accurate explaination of very complex systems.

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4. lifefeedMay 2022
   I don't know what your general knowledge of economics entails, so this might be obvious, but the back half of Principles of Economics by N. Gregory Mankiw covers how a lot of those pieces are interrelated.

   (Bonus tip: buy an international edition on eBay. It's the same content.)

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5. lifefeedDec 2021
   They cost far less than that if you buy international editions off eBay. Same content for less money, even new.

   (And if you want to know why they sell the same books for less money to different markets, pick up Principles of Economics by Mankiw)

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6. mr_overallsAug 2020
   I'm going to be a nonconformist myself and oppose the near-univeral approval of Sowell in this discussion. His book Basic Economics was the first book on econ that I read, and I was very impressed by it. It reaffirmed the rather right-wing political views that I'd inherited from my parents. However, after taking a few introductory econ classes at university and doing further reading on my own, Sowell starts to appear very ideologically driven.

   Sowell is a free-market fundamentalist, in that he opposes most government intervention in markets, and universally trusts laissez-faire capitalism to provide the optimal social & economic good for practically any situation.

   The problem with this position is that there's simply a ton of evidence that targeted government intervention provides far better outcomes in many situations.

   Another classic example is environmental pollution, a classic case of tragedy of the commons. On the topic of global warming, Sowell doesn't even try to address the issue. He belives climate change is a hoax perpetuated by Democrats.

   https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/01/27/sowell-the-catchwords...

   Sowell writes in a conversational style, which is great for accessibility for non-economics. However, he is rightly criticized as failing to cite rigorous studies to back up his opinions.

   For a more balanced view of basic economics, I'd highly recommend Principles of Economics by Greg Mankiw.

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