Bulba! wrote:
I am probably not as pissed off as you might think, but I'm beginning to find (what I regard as) your naivety a little irritating. However, nothing I have said was intended to question your integrity.On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:42:42 -0500, Steve Holden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
You see, I'm not disagreeing with you that your model applies
_where it applies_. I only disagree that it applies in face of
stronger forces. Now what kind of forces is dominant in most frequent scenarios would have to be worked out in tedious
empirical research I think. Which I haven't done, because
learning some economics is just a hobby to me.
Yes, by all means let's just spout our opinions without any of that inconvenient tedious empirical research which might invalidate them.
Err, but what did I do that got you visibly pissed off?
I certainly did not mean offending anyone. If I did smth
that did, I apologize, but honestly I didn't mean that. I
just expressed my opinion and cited some small bits of evidence, which I think I'm entitled to.
[...]
Well, anyone who *does* believe that companies are managed in a way that's any more rational than the way individual humans manage their own lives is deluding themselves. But perhaps I'm a little clearer now about *your* thinking on this.
Oh, and by the way that installation doesn't get used much.
Somebody at the office didn't check carefully enough the
energy prices before ordering it and later someone discovered that off-site specialized cutting firms that take advantage of energy available at low prices at special times in other countries
can get it produced cheaper. Moving it elsewhere or selling
is not an option, since it is a specially constructed, low, 50-meters
long hall that stands inside the huge manufacturing hall of the
company.
And you are using this example to try and argue that engineers are better-educated than sales people?
Nope. The context was that behavior of companies tends to
be highly rational, optimized and not wasting resources. My naturally individual experience was that it was oft not the case, and that was the example.
Which was my point when explaining the clustering thatThe agent of economic forces, however, are always individual humans. It just isn't possible to factor them out.
demonstrably happened: if the behavior of decisionmakers
is highly informed, rational and not really induced much by risk avoidance as Alex claims, then the clusters are created by "natural economic forces".
However, if the process is not that rational, then maybe clusters are the correlation of "cover your ass" aspectI can live with that, I guess.
in managers' behavior all wanting to get their branch office in yesterday in Tokyo, today in Beijing, and during speculative craze in Russia in Moscow "because everybody
is doing that". Which observations of Paul Krugman on "defective investors" seem to support.
Now, I'm very strongly opposed to saying that all that somehow invalidates economics, including economics of software, as _science_.
All I'm saying is that maybe this particular model is not
what some people think it is. This is the problem with
economics, people tend to get hot under the collar about it for some reason and it's oft hard to debate that calmly. Which personally I find a pity, because e.g. economics of software is such an interesting subject..
I was merely trying to point out that the sales people may well have worked a flanker on the "better educated" engineers who might have bought the plant.
Who sold this installation? Who bought it?
I have no idea, as I were not a manager there and it didn't really pertain my work.
Well, you would know better than me, but believe me when I say that such decisions being made for the economic benefit of a single individual are far from rare.
I was utterly shocked. Having grown up in Soviet times I have been used to seeing precious resources wasted by organizations as if resources were growing on trees, but smth like this?! In a shining ideal country of Germany?! Unthinkable.
Indeed not. Quite often the brown paper bag is a factor in purchases like this. I wouldn't be at all surprised if somebody with a major input to the decision-making process retired to a nice place in the country shortly afterwards. You appear to be making the mistake of believing that people will act in the larger interest, when sadly most individuals tend to put their own interests first (some would go as far as to define self-interest as the determinant of behavior).
But there is a subtler point here: most likely it was NOT in the
short-term personal interest to make this mistake (as I believe
corruption was not the case in this decision)!
After all, whoever responsible was still running the considerable risk
of getting fired. It is an example that precisely negates either
collective or individual, long-term or short-term, interest was
primary factor in this decision.
Well, even assuming I were to allow that such an intellectual thing as a utility function were to apply to my behavior in this case (which would be allowing economists more credence than I believe most of them deserve, but what the heck), all we are really taking about is that "it takes all sorts to make a world".
The firm I was working for had a consensus decision-making process (even
I was involved) and managers (and other employees) and stockholders were
mostly the same people -- it wasn't all that large a firm at the time.
Nobody needed to practice risk avoidance.
Again, you may have had good luck. Where I worked (including
some places in Germany and UK) it was almost the only factor that seemed to matter to people - they'd do ANYTHING not to take a risky decision, to "pass the buck", not to stick their necks
out, not to declare doing some work that involved challenges.
Some people are like that. I chose a long time ago to try not to work with them whenever I could avoid it and, while that may have had negative economic consequences I an convinced it has improved my quality of life immensely. Of course, I have no proof for such an assertion.
Which in economic terms could mean that your "utility function"
is "modeled" in this particular way (well, strictly speaking utility
functions regard simple consumption), while most people tend
to misunderstand it as the idea that supposedly is "vulgar consumption of as much stuff as possible is what makes people happy" and they feel rightly repulsed from such an idiotic idea. The trouble is, well-informed people do not to argue that, while
people tend to think economists actually do...
I'm as fond of what money can buy as the next guy, but there are still limits on what I will do to acquire it.
So really a utility function is a very dry and abstract way of looking at human behavior, and is simply incapable (at the present stage of the game) of modeling human behavioral complexity.
-- It's a man's life in a Python Programming Association.
regards Steve -- Steve Holden http://www.holdenweb.com/ Python Web Programming http://pydish.holdenweb.com/ Holden Web LLC +1 703 861 4237 +1 800 494 3119 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
