US Politics Mega-thread - Page 115

On February 18 2013 10:25 TerribleNoobling wrote:
Either way it's a semantic discussion and hence unproductive but I don't see the point of having Republic and Democracy mean the same thing when you could have them mean separate things.

On February 18 2013 11:21 acker wrote:

Relative to what?

Replacing a broken window is a fixed cost, not a variable one*. It's very possible that dipping into savings to replace such a window could easily pay for itself, depending on the interest rate on his savings.

There's absolutely no reason why the shopkeeper must dip into his personal consumption. It's all relative to what he can get money for.

*Well, in the long run, even his shop will turn into dust, so I guess it's variable. Not relevant.

Even taking the example at face value, replacing the broken window could be $10,000 more profitable than NOT replacing the window. Assume that the broken window lowers sales by 10% and the shopkeeper normally makes 50k a year. But why would you arbitrarily add numbers to a theoretical discussion? Makes no sense.

On February 18 2013 12:08 sam!zdat wrote:
Yeah, I get it Jonny. the point is that you get these more complicated and more complicated models to try to express risk quantitatively using seriously flawed mathematical tools (the Gaussian) and the more complicated your air castles get, the more you are deluding yourself into thinking you understand what is going on.

On February 18 2013 12:24 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Edit: you also run into problems like assuming a normal probability distribution only to find out that reality follows a different curve and other technical oddities.

On February 18 2013 12:33 sam!zdat wrote:
And then you financialize your entire society, and tie everything together through a global stock exchange, and you know how risky your stock exchange is on average, and then you go and assume your society is average. It's like building a ship without any bulkheads.

that's because reality is mandelbrotian, not gaussian

On February 18 2013 13:21 aksfjh wrote:
I know this is a US politics thread, but has anybody been keeping up with Japan? They've basically devalued their currency by at least 15% against the USD in 4 months. That's ridiculous by any accounts, but I don't see a ton of panic on either side of the Pacific.

On February 18 2013 13:36 Souma wrote:


I wish they did that while I was still there... And I thought this is something both sides wanted, so I'm not sure why there'd be panic.

On February 18 2013 12:48 aksfjh wrote:
Gaussian is easier to represent mathematically. Blame the universe, not statisticians.

On February 18 2013 12:44 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

True. Entrepreneurs and regulators are supposed to find those flaws and exploit / fix them. But obviously that doesn't always work.


yeah totally! ::smiles, nods, pretends he knows what those words mean:::

After debuting with great fanfare, an RNC-backed scheme to rig the electoral college in blue states to favor Republican presidential candidates is looking mostly dead. But, to quote the Princess Bride, “there’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.” Enter Pennsylvania, where an electoral vote bill is more than slightly alive.

State Senate president Dominic Pileggi (R) is pushing a plan to change Pennsylvania’s current winner-take-all allocation of the state’s 20 electoral votes to a system that apportions them proportionally by each candidate’s share of the statewide vote. Had it gone into effect before the 2012 election, President Obama would have won just 12 electoral votes to Mitt Romney’s 8. According to a memo Pileggi wrote debuting his new plan, the revamped system “much more accurately reflects the will of the voters in our state.”

Pileggi’s bill is slightly less far-reaching a power grab than bills proposed in states like Virginia that would have divided electoral votes by congressional district, which thanks to gerrymandering strongly favors Republicans even in states Obama won handily. This is by design: Pileggi pitched a congressional district split along the lines of the Virginia bill in 2011 only to face near-unanimous opposition from Republican members of Congress in the state who feared Democrats would pour millions of dollars into winning their individual districts. While Pileggi has shifted on the issue, a pair of Pennsylvania state representatives have also introduced a congressional split version since the election.

But the biggest difference that sets Pennsylvania apart is that each of the top leaders necessary to pass a bill have expressed support for changing its electoral college. Gov. Tom Corbett (R) strongly backed Pileggi’s 2011 effort. So did state House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R), best known nationally for bragging that voter ID restrictions opposed by civil rights groups would help Romney win the state in 2012. By contrast, similar electoral vote bills elsewhere hit a wall this year after Republican statehouse leaders, key lawmakers, or governors indicated their opposition.

On February 19 2013 08:25 aksfjh wrote:

I'm actually ok with this. I don't like the people that support it and why they support it, but splitting the EC based on popular vote makes sense these days.