Hi Ray, I haven't understood everything you've written but here are a few extracts and my comments:
(REH) <<<< Doesn't it bother you writing such stuff to professional economists on the list? >>>> No, not at all. If I write anything silly I'm sure they will correct me. So far, out of three responses to my pieces on game theory, only one has been from an economist -- Harry Pollard. There are at least a dozen other economists on this list, including some very perceptive ones, and I'm sure that they're aware that many eminent economists accept that game theory has a lot of valid insights to offer. (REH) <<<< Maybe you mean to set a context for what you are saying and if that is the case then I apologize but you state things as if they are laws and they aren't. >>>> Well, I've set a context for those one or two games I've described so far. As for their being laws, I haven't said that. Remember that I've said that games theory experiments are repeateable, cross cultural and that they are saying something valuable *only within the context of the experimental parameters*. They're not valid otherwise. (REH) <<<< As for the Games? Game theorists set the rules for the game biasing the outcome by the words they use for the rules. Math serves to eliminate the ambiguity of reality. The problem with ambiguity is that it is the root of creativity and change. That is the flaw IMHO. >>>> Not at all. The theorists set the parameters of the experiments. They don't know the 'rules' and they don't set them. They are often surprised by the results. In fact, most of those that are published in the literature are surprises -- or else they wouldn't be worth publishing. (REH) <<<< I published Free Rider Game studies on this list from George Mason University four years ago that made the same points but asked embarrasing economic questions. The answer was a deafening silence. >>>> Intriguing! I think I was 'resting' from FW list then -- as actors say -- when I was setting up my business. If you can fish these up from your archives and give me references I'd be most interested. (REH) <<<< Game theory seems to be useful in examining the structures of such things but it also is severely limited in its Societal application thus far. Remember Enron. >>>> Exactly what I've been saying several times. The conditions have to be specified and the parallels with real life clearly established. But games theory is having many useful things to say about circumstances when the public don't meekly do what the authorities (or the marketing departments of corporations) expect them to do. The public don't always fit comfortably into smooth supply-and-demand curves so beloved of the neo-classical economists. The public sometimes objects to being part of an aggregate. And it is these exceptions which are happening increasingly in the modern world and becoming critical in economic policy making. (REH) <<<< But the one area that is avoided at all costs by the monetarists is the Free Rider phenomena in Public Goods. All of the research that I've seen sounds like a machine running out of gas. >>>> On the contrary. It is the left-wingers who daren't tackle the free rider problem of state welfare systems. The particular Public Goods game I mentioned earlier clearly shows that if taxpayers don't have some form of direct control over the withdrawal of welfare from known malingerers then the whole system will inevitably be brought into disrepute over the longer term. (This means we need local welfare systems not distant, centralised ones.) Politicians in England have been well aware of this and every now and again government departments publish telephone numbers for the public to confidentially report false claimants. But they don't get much response. It's the same problem as the lack of witnesses coming forward to the police in the case of many serious crimes -- people won't snitch to the authorities because they might be involved in long and tedious procedures. (This is particularly tragic in the case of wife-beating which is far more widespread in modern society than reported. Only a small proportion of such crimes is reported to the authorities by friends and neighbours. In medieval England, when small communities were the norm, wife-beaters would be effectively shamed at charivari time or, if this didn't work, punished by moots.) Keith __________________________________________________________ “Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.” John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
