[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> It is also about the "Tyranny of Small Decisions" (title of an article in
> Kyklos some years ago by AE Kahn) which shows that people making a series of
> small decisions to optimize for themselves at that moment can often lead to
> an outcome that they would have voted against if they knew what all their
> small decisions meant.
>
> Walmart. Home Depot. Good prices and reasonable service but say good bye
> to your local merchants who are of your community and often donate time and
> energy to local causes.
What about simply the tyranny of small decision makers, i.e.,
Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons", too?
>
> Re: dynamic pricing of airline seats. It is the reality of maximizing
> revenue. From economics 101 it is a way of getting all that space under the
> demand curve, not just one price. But many prices, all the prices that
> buyers would be willing to pay. A way of capturing the consumer's surplus.
> It will be coming to most markets where the product is time defined, where
> marginal cost is zero, and where people are willing to pay a wide range of
> prices for the product.
[snip]
I see this as part of something far bigger: the complexification of
simple things. The way to get the best price on an airline seat,
as will be the case for all these things, is to become an
expert on the arcana of airline seat allocation (instead, e.g.,
of studying philosophy or even economics), and spending
lots of time checking and rechecking all the different
places where a cheap price might appear for a few seconds
before disappearing forever.
It used to be that there were published rates and you
could just buy a ticket, knowing that you were getting
the same deal as anyone else.
My favorite is the new piece-of-shit where, in November of
2002 I declare an amount of my 2003 income to be placed
in a non-taxed account to pay for the medical expenses
in 2003. You know how this workd: I put aside $3000.
If I have medical bills in 2003 of $5000, I'm tough shit
on $2,000 that I have to pay taxed on. If I have
$1000 medical bills in 2003, I'm screwed out
of $2000 income. You can see that I think this is
an OBSCENITY.
It used to be that you saved your medical expense bills
throughout the year and "simply" deducted them from
your taxes in the *following* April.
We replace simple, understandable processes with
complex, unmanageable processes.
Contrary to John Adams, we are working to see to
it that the next generation will spend its energies
in minutiae of bookkeeping even if we have
been fortunate enough to be engineers and
doctors (or, a fortiori, artists, philosophers
and other superannuated occupations).
In evolutionary terms, Rabelais and Aristotle and Duchamp
et al. were
monkeys (sub-human primates); the Ubermensch is the person
who knows when to go to tarvelocity.com and
when to go to buy.com and when to go to eBay
to buy their airplane ticket.
And the fortuneteller who can predict your
next year's medical expenses is far more
helpful than any mere CPA.
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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