Originally Posted by Justin '77

Walking is no more a social activity than is breathing or (to use Brian's example from earlier) digestion. We're not talking about systems in just plain organisms, but about systems in people -- that is to say, in social entities. So walking is different-in-kind from governing or language.

Why is this relevant? The key feature of language you note, that is has rules that people share, it because it is something that people learn, like riding a bike, not because it has social applications.

Besides language is much more than a communication method. It is thinking tool, like mathematical notation. Its non-social uses may even be more important than its social uses. After all, all sorts of social animals communicate just fine without language, but none of them (even Neanderthals whose brains were bigger than ours) ever developed a technology and culture as sophisticated as ours.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

You seem to be confirming my posited 'failure of imagination' explanation. I've been guilty of doing that myself from time to time; unfortunately, I can't recall how I got past it (if I actually did)...

That's bogus. It's not a "failure of imagination" as much as it is a refusal to follow you down this path of absurdity.

I see very well what you're trying to do. You're trying to alter the subject just slightly enough to avoid the heart of the matter. We are talking about social controls here, not communication. I see language as pliant; we can understand Yoda-speak even if it is not the grammar we're used to, but if we commit a crime, we should not expect the same kind of flexibility.

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

Its GROUNDHOG DAY yet again and Sonny & Cher are singing "I Got You Babe" for the zillionth time.

When we get done with the weekly discussion about creative definitions can we have the weekly discussion about the FDA and drug regulation?

Or lack thereof (HM, you just picked a topic where the libertarians have at least somewhat of a case to make ).

Originally Posted by Matt1989

I can hardly keep up with this, though I do plan on making some responses to some older stuff in the near future, but I think Justin's point is a good one. People largely adhere to grammatical rules (that is, the extent until which a language is subject to real constraints on understanding...that is, more or less, a language) because of a combination of innate faculties, learned experiences, and the benefits that cooperation gives us. (Actually, IIRC, there is a small portion of a child's life, right after they learn things like agreement, where they do not adhere to grammatical rules on a consistent basis, usually pertaining to overuse of a rule (e.g. I have two foots).)

Language is a very human example of rules, order, structure, being imposed from the bottom-up. In and of itself, it is a pretty poor argument for anarchism, but it seems just as ridiculous to suggest that the broader discoveries regarding spontaneous (in the tacit sense) order isn't relevant to discussions about political theory, and anarchism in particular. And that's all I really think the discussion was meant to be about with regard to linguistics.

You guys are going to have to find a better example, then.

And more long-lasting. We've all had experiences (power outages, accidents) where the formal authority is nowhere to be seen for the time being, and people do indeed spontaneously help each other out (even perfect strangers). They even negotiate busy intersections pretty well without the traffic lights functioning.

But I have yet to see where this kind of cooperation lasts very long beyond the immediate situation. And there will always be the jerks among us who will take advantage of the situation (i.e., looters).

So what about the long term, gentlemen?

Originally Posted by Mikebert

After the first Reagan cuts investors became rich enough to launch a speculative boom in large cap stocks, but they lacked the resources to bid prices all the way to bubble levels. The market corrected sharply in 1987, and moderated afterward. it wasn't until the mid-1990's that they were rich enough to create true bubbles.

If your criteria is whether investors are rich enough, then it's not the tax rate but how much wealth has aggregated in their hands. It seems like the tax rate would be less important than some measure of inequality like the Gini coefficient. If you look at one of the graphs in the linked article, you'll see that the U.S. Gini coefficient goes over 0.4 for the first time in decades around 1990. Oddly though, all the Western European countries in the sample are well below 0.4 and yet those countries had bubbles too. If you use a "Gini trigger" lower than 0.4, then you have to explain the absence of notable bubble activity in the 50s. If you use a higher trigger, then the recent bubbles in Europe don't make sense.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

My point was that most of the government spending during both periods was on consumption. And since the level of spending was about the same during both periods, government spending is unlikely to be the reason why growth during the high tax era was so much better than during the other periods.

You're probably right on this point.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

In December 1996 Allen Greenspan gave his famous "Irrational Exuberance" speech. It is almost certain that the real reason the Fed stopped cutting after January 1996 was fear of a developing stock market bubble. That is, an asset bubble prevented a reprise of 1960's policy in the 1990's.

Unfortunately, the situation in the financial sphere was radically different between these two eras and tax policy is only one of the differences. However . . .

Your argument got me to thinking that if you're looking for a correlation between bubbles and taxes maybe you should be looking at capital gains taxes instead. Or rather you should be looking for a major difference between taxation of investments and dividends versus wages and salaries -- or perhaps just investments versus everything else. The numbers I was able to dig up show a weird result -- the largest apparent difference between income taxes and cap gains was in the 50s.

So, while you have a mild statistical correlation between income taxes and credit market growth, you haven't established why that's even the right tax to look at (assuming there is any link whatsoever between taxes and bubbles). Moreover, your theory implies increasing inequality is the trigger for big bubbles (i.e. when there is too much money in the hands of the investor class). Yet, income inequality data does not particularly correlate with bubble intensity when you compare across countries. Essentially this looks like a coincidence that springs out of the U.S. data alone.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

You guys are going to have to find a better example, then.

And more long-lasting. We've all had experiences (power outages, accidents) where the formal authority is nowhere to be seen for the time being, and people do indeed spontaneously help each other out (even perfect strangers). They even negotiate busy intersections pretty well without the traffic lights functioning.

But I have yet to see where this kind of cooperation lasts very long beyond the immediate situation. And there will always be the jerks among us who will take advantage of the situation (i.e., looters).

So what about the long term, gentlemen?

Maybe it's an oversimplification, but most people have their paid jobs because someone wants them to keep doing what they are already doing. Spontaneous resistance to an invader is a likely action, but remaining a soldier on guard isn't so obvious a course of action unless the State pays someone to be a soldier. The fellow who guides people around a hazardous intersection might be the sort of person that the government wants as a traffic cop.

Nobody would ever do assembly-line work except if paid to do so... and people do such mind-numbing, soulless work only in return for steady pay.

So suppose that I have some hand puppets and I get caught in the Big One in northern California. I might put on a puppet show to entertain children if my regular job disappears. I'd put on skits that imitate what people are then missing -- television. I might expect to have some commercials, and I'd solicit some scripts from the power company, gas line company, the fire department, and the police force... basically, those would be advertisements telling people to stay away from downed power lines, report broken water mains and gas mains, follow the instructions of public officials...

Suppose that it is good, and someone from Hollywood, Chicago, or New York City notices what I am doing, likes it, and invites me to be the new Shari Lewis (even if I am a man, her role was not gender-specific) by offering money that I couldn't resist. There's enough money to make smog in LA, cold Chicago winters, or the congestion and high prices of midtown Manhattan tolerable. I think that you get the idea.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Of course its scaled relative to population. It would be meaningless if it were not.

Well, it would help if the chart had a vertical scale. But based on the relative heights, I assumed it was unscaled. Also, is that battlefield deaths, deaths of soldiers in general or total deaths?

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Where did you get this notion?

OK, so just using the Thirty Years War per this site, we get military deaths of 300K to 2M, and total deaths between 3M and 11.5M. Total population of the affected regions is about 25M (conservatively). So, assuming you're just using military deaths, and shooting low, we get 400 dead soldiers per year per 1M people. For WWII, we have military deaths of 19M and total deaths of 51M. Using the population of the affected countries (approximately half the world?) we'd get about 1200M affected people. So, that's 2638 dead soldiers per year per 1M people. If we use the high estimate for military deaths in the Thirty Years War the two wars are even.

But, if you use total deaths and use the 7.5M average for the Thirty Years War, then WWII doesn't even come close. The earlier war was far bloodier with 10000 deaths per year per 1M people versus 7000 deaths per year 1M people for WWII.

(I'll have to get to the ancient world stuff later.)

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Again, understanding that the formalized model bears only a vague resemblance to the grammar of the language itself (and English is hardly unique on that count), the above statement is beyond ludicrous. A person -- a social creature -- can not survive without some sort of means of coherent communication.

You seem to be confirming my posited 'failure of imagination' explanation. I've been guilty of doing that myself from time to time; unfortunately, I can't recall how I got past it (if I actually did)...

I would quibble. I believe humans could survive as hunter gatherers without language. I suspect the hunter gatherer social structure stayed pretty much the same during the millennia it took for language to develop. Man didn't need language. Man had the tribal bond, territorial instincts, aggression, dominance and similar instincts which were quite capable of structuring survival capable coherent groups. If man required language to survive, he could never have been able to evolve language ability.

But does it seem safe to say that formal states would not have evolved without language? While we might have managed agriculture, I don't see cities? We might have got stuck in the oft idealized state of primitive anarchy, which I suspect was not as pretty in reality as it was in Thoreau's daydreams?

Still, even if some of us grant that language is a key element in creating advanced and complex communities and cultures, it is not the only such human trait that shapes governance. Language enables complexity and scaling up, but doesn't seem to do much in the way of forcing human behavior down a given path. It would seem language could be used equally well by hunter gatherers, ancient agricultural empires, classical trade oriented republics, feudal hierarchies, fascist dictatorships, communist soviet republics, industrial democracies or even the hypothetical anarchist commune. Language is learned. Territory, greed, aggression and dominance are instinctive. Language allows us to do many things. The social emotions push human behaviors down specific paths.

Humans will form groups that select leaders, make up rules, and defend territories. An approach to human governance that rejects groups, authorities, laws and territories controlled by groups might be problematic. The metaphor might be the square peg being driven through the round hole. This can be equally hard on hole and peg. Eventually the arm driving the hammer might get tired.

So, sure, I'll try to stretch my imagination a bit and talk about the role of language in society. It enables complex formal states, among other things. Is there anything else you'd like to claim language contributes? Now, might you consider the implications of what On Aggression says about human aggression with respect to a value system that proposes man should stop being aggressive?

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

If your criteria is whether investors are rich enough, then it's not the tax rate but how much wealth has aggregated in their hands. It seems like the tax rate would be less important than some measure of inequality like the Gini coefficient.

It's not a criteria, its a possible explantion. You see this is the difference between you and us. You already assume the answers about how the world works can be found in tomes of economic and political philosophy that "make sense" to you.

So you start with answers and then deduce what the observable facts whould be. And when you find discrepancies you look for complicating factors that might hide

I start with an objective fact. And look for explantions.

I that a well-supported concept: growth can be slowed by increasing interest rates and increased by decreasing interest rates. Interest rates have a similar effect (but more dramatic) on the stock market.

I use this to explain why wage and GDP/worker growth was fast in the 1950's and 1960's and slower in recent decades.

This notion is nothing new, and attempts to generate have been made since the 1960's to attempt to restore the good growth. Both generated inflation rather than growth (the 1970's attempt produced goods inflation and the 1990's attempt gave asset inflation).

How do you rein in goods inflation without raising interest rates? Run surpluses.

So this was tried in the 1990's and we did not get 1970's-style inflation. We got an asset bubble instead.

The question is why do we get bubbles today. Why has the economy gotten so financialized?

There is no way to answer this. But a little reflection will reveal that financial actvities are pursued because they make money. They will always make more money than egngaging in business. Making and selling a product is for chumps. Always has been always will be.

The real question isn't why are we so financialized today. It's not why CEOs or professional athletes make so much money.

The real question is why was it not financialized back then? Why were CEOs and professional atheltes willing to work for peanuts compared to what their counterparts earn today?

You ask a financial professional (someonw who should have an answer to this because its their job) abut this and they will readily acknowledge what you note and say something like "It was a different time", or the WW II generation was calling the shots then and they were of a different quality than the boomers today or ...

...the situation in the financial sphere was radically different between these two eras...

Well of course it was.

The question I formulated was, what thing present in the 1950's and 1960's, but absent in recent decades, was preventing CEOs from paying themselves hundreds of times the median wage, as they do today?

If we can get an answer to that, it would be a step towards a solution. taxes make the most sense. More later.

Moreover, your theory implies increasing inequality is the trigger for big bubbles (i.e. when there is too much money in the hands of the investor class)..

Not exactly. Increased inquality is a result of what I think is the cause of bubbles. It is not the absolute level of inequality that is important, but the level relative to the time when there were no bubbles.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

It's not a criteria, its a possible explanation. You see this is the difference between you and us. You already assume the answers about how the world works can be found in tomes of economic and political philosophy that "make sense" to you.

You're presenting a magic bullet solution to financial bubbles based on a statistical correlation that occurs in only one country, and I'm the one jumping to conclusions?

Originally Posted by Mikebert

So you start with answers and then deduce what the observable facts would be. And when you find discrepancies you look for complicating factors that might hide.

Can we not go down the road where you accuse me of "market fundamentalism"? I took your theory as if it were true and pointed out that bubbles seem to be able to form just fine in countries with higher taxes than ours, and ones with less inequality. Many of these bubbles are also more intense than ours. Those observations contradict your theory.

Or does economics work differently for Americans than everyone else?

Originally Posted by Mikebert

There is no way to answer this. But a little reflection will reveal that financial activities are pursued because they make money. They will always make more money than engaging in business. Making and selling a product is for chumps. Always has been always will be.

Well thank goodness for all those chumps then. Also, it seems like you're asserting an economic law here (which, per above, is something you claim not to do).

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The question I formulated was, what thing present in the 1950's and 1960's, but absent in recent decades, was preventing CEOs from paying themselves hundreds of times the median wage, as they do today?

You present taxes as the answer, but it seems like if the taxes are really high, they'd ask for more pay to offset the taxes. Have you considered a drop in shareholder control over corporations as a causal factor? (The advent of 401K plans ca. 1980, would have dramatically increased the ratio of un-elected institutional proxies on corporate boards.)

As a counterexample, see this study. French top marginal tax rates declined from the late 60s onward and so did inequality. Also, per this article, the CEO-worker pay ratio was lowest in Spain in 2005, where the housing bubble was felt worst.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Can you provide some support for your assertions of high military/ population ratios for ancient societies? This is not what I learned from my reading.

It appears my numbers are slightly high, but still in the ballpark:

Rome was my specific example, so I'll stick to their armies. The numbers are a bit fuzzy, since Roman units were often not at full strength and since the terms used to describe shift over time. I primarily used these articles from wikipedia: Roman Army and Auxilia and Classical Demography

So, we know the following:
1) In 23AD Tacitus estimated the Roman Army as 25 legions of 5000 men each and a roughly equal amount of auxilia. That would be a standing army of 250,000 men.
2) We have estimates of about 60M people for the entire population of the Empire at that time.
3) So, this is a standing army of 0.4% of the total population.
4) On the other hand, the legions were all from Italy and their ratio would be much higher.

In 28BC, a census was taken that we still have record of, which gives the a population of 4 million citizens. This is generally taken to be the number of non-slaves from which the legions were drawn. That would be a standing army of over 3%, and that's after a draw-down from roughly 70 legions during the Civil War. So the peak mobilization of Italy during the Civil War was perhaps as high as 9% of the population or 15-20% of all male citizens.

We also know that although the population didn't grow very much into the peak Imperial period (~65M), the army grew to 375,000 per Gibbon, and some sources go all the way to half a million. Going with Gibbon we get 0.6% standing army when Rome was at its height.

Presently on Earth there are 20.7M active duty soldiers and total population of 6793M, for a ratio of 0.3%.

Just as a more apples to apples comparison between the US and the Romans, The CIA Factbook has the us population at 307,212,123. Wiki has active duty forces at 1,454,515, with 848,000 reserves. This yields 0.47% counting just the actives, with 0.74% if one threw in the reserves... which have been kind of busy lately.

Of course, my original proposition was that increased agricultural efficiency frees up a larger proportion of the population. Thus, if one doesn't include the Roman slaves, who did not a little agricultural work, it is not an apples to apples comparison relevant to question we've been asking. Also, Roman women were not citizens. That too skews the numbers if we're looking for apples to apples.

Anyone have a guess at the total Roman population as compared to to just the citizens?

And, of course, the US isn't really mobilized. The question I'm interested in is how large an army can be supported in wartime. The Romans might double their peace time force, while the United States can do much much better?

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

Well, it would help if the chart had a vertical scale. But based on the relative heights, I assumed it was unscaled. Also, is that battlefield deaths, deaths of soldiers in general or total deaths?

It's battlefield deaths in great power wars. The data came from Levy (discussed here)

I actually got the data from the appendix of this book

If you go down near the end of the appendix you see a war series. The GPINT series is casualties divided by population. It has a value around 995 for the 30 yrs war and one around 15600 for WW II.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

It appears my numbers are slightly high, but still in the ballpark:

Rome was my specific example, so I'll stick to their armies. The numbers are a bit fuzzy, since Roman units were often not at full strength and since the terms used to describe shift over time. I primarily used these articles from wikipedia: Roman Army and Auxilia and Classical Demography

So, we know the following:
1) In 23AD Tacitus estimated the Roman Army as 25 legions of 5000 men each and a roughly equal amount of auxilia. That would be a standing army of 250,000 men.
2) We have estimates of about 60M people for the entire population of the Empire at that time.
3) So, this is a standing army of 0.4% of the total population.
4) On the other hand, the legions were all from Italy and their ratio would be much higher.

The 0.5% figure was the one I recall from my coursework many moons ago.

Presently on Earth there are 20.7M active duty soldiers and total population of 6793M, for a ratio of 0.3%

Rome was a superpower. A better comparison would be to the superpowers during the Cold War. Here's a memo that suggests around 3-3.5 million in the armed forces of the USSR in the decade around 1960 and a population of about 215 million for a ratio of about 1.5%.

I couldn't find any US data.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The 0.5% figure was the one I recall from my coursework many moons ago.

Rome was a superpower. A better comparison would be to the superpowers during the Cold War. Here's a memo that suggests around 3-3.5 million in the armed forces of the USSR in the decade around 1960 and a population of about 215 million for a ratio of about 1.5%.

I found a study, Military Forces: What is the Appropriate Size for the United States? (PDF) It says US Cold War active duty forces never went below 2,000,000 with maximums around 3,500,000 during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts.

Here are lots of US population numbers. At 240,000,000 around 1986, the two million minimum would yield 0.8%. With the lower population in the 1950s, you can get 1.2% If one plugs the 3.5 million number into the 1970 Vietnam era population, 1.7%.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

Well thank goodness for all those chumps then. Also, it seems like you're asserting an economic law here (which, per above, is something you claim not to do).

I got a little carried away.

You present taxes as the answer, but it seems like if the taxes are really high, they'd ask for more pay to offset the taxes. Have you considered a drop in shareholder control over corporations as a causal factor? (The advent of 401K plans ca. 1980, would have dramatically increased the ratio of un-elected institutional proxies on corporate boards.)

As a counterexample, see this study. French top marginal tax rates declined from the late 60s onward and so did inequality. Also, per this article, the CEO-worker pay ratio was lowest in Spain in 2005, where the housing bubble was felt worst.

There is food for thought here.

Also, I looked into the tax issue in more detail, looking at the brackets just under the top one. Top tax rates is easy to find. I had to dig up an old paper chart to see the other brackets.

It turns out that the tax effect doesn't actually happen. I had thought CEO wages were low in the past because there was no point in paying oneself more money if the government was going to get 91% of it. By paying themselves less than the top bracket they would keep more of what they earned.

The top rate in the 1950's was 91%, the next bracket under that was 90% and under that 89% etc. Taxes really weren't steeply progressive on high earners, they were actually sort of flattish. Taxes were 80-90% on income 20-60 times median wage and 91% on income above 60X. Unless CEOs paid themselves less than 20X median income, their tax rate would not be all that different if they made 10 times more (as they do today).

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

...Presently on Earth there are 20.7M active duty soldiers and total population of 6793M, for a ratio of 0.3%.

Good analysis. The following is from an an interesting site:

http://www.globalfirepower.com/activ...y-manpower.asp

In 2008,The number of active military :
China: 2.2M;USA : 1.4M;India : 1.3M; Russia: 1.2M; etc.

Note: “GlobalFirepower.com (GFP)
 provides ... analytical display of information covering nations from around the world with statistics based on various public sources.”

The overall ranking( top five) for military strength, excluding nuclear:

1. USA
2. China
3. Russia
4. India
5. UK

Google Trends is the best way to track flu outbreaks or plan a media campaign, but what can it tell us about the radicalization of American politics?

In late August, anarchy spiked higher than after when Bush was re-elected. Around the same time, Congressional approval fell below 30% and still continues to decline. Obama holds a slim majority of support, but he's already at the low point of his career.

What good is a two party democracy if changing parties does very little to change policies, many of which are 50-100 years institutionalized by this point in time?

Originally Posted by independent

Google Trends is the best way to track flu outbreaks or plan a media campaign, but what can it tell us about the radicalization of American politics?

In late August, anarchy spiked higher than after when Bush was re-elected. Around the same time, Congressional approval fell below 30% and still continues to decline. Obama holds a slim majority of support, but he's already at the low point of his career.

What good is a two party democracy if changing parties does very little to change policies, many of which are 50-100 years institutionalized by this point in time?

What is a third party going to gather around?

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

What is a third party going to gather around?

Is there any serious gathering starting to happen? Other than a few individuals on these boards, I just don't encounter anarchist thought, either in the media or in the real world. It would seem anarchists are still few and far between, and the few I have encountered are lacking either short term paths to improvement or a long term approach consistent with my view at least of how the world really works.

With all due respect

"in late August, anarchy spiked"

what the hell does that mean??????

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

With all due respect

"in late August, anarchy spiked"

what the hell does that mean??????

It means that since August a lot of people have been doing Google searches on the word 'anarchy.' This is mildly interesting, but I'm not sure why people have been doing these searches.

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

With all due respect

"in late August, anarchy spiked"

what the hell does that mean??????

The scale is based on the number of Google searches for that word (i.e. anarchy, socialism, etc.).

Apparently in August, there was a lot of folks interested in video games with "anarchy" in the title.

You and I are suppose to believe that this means world governments are about to crumble.
(-- rather than we are too old to get excited about the latest RPG or FPS game. Hey, I have a teenage son and know what these initials mean! )

Thanks for the explanation Playwrite and Bob.

In other words, its a bunch of crap.

Originally Posted by playwrite

The scale is based on the number of Google searches for that word (i.e. anarchy, socialism, etc.).

Apparently in August, there was a lot of folks interested in video games with "anarchy" in the title.

That's one interesting theory. Although porn is a lot more likely an explanation than video games. This is the Inter Nets, after all.