It's -2C and there's about 12cm of snow (and more falling)… (if humanity was supposed to use the metric system, humanity would have ten fingers and toes).
- The missing variable — or is it a constant? — in this equation:
ΔS = Σ1…n(ΔQn/Tn)
reveals exactly why the Efficient Market Hypothesis cannot either predict or explain the GameStop fiasco — and neither can regulation.
Anyone who has taken a basic, sophomore-engineering/junior-chemistry-level course in thermodynamics will recognize this — it's a necessary consequence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. (This means 0.007% of all PhD economists — perhaps three of them.) It's an HTML-friendly expression concerning the entropy of an entire system. The GameStop fiasco "appears" to be a singular instance (that is, n=1), and collapsing the summation into a single instance appears valid. Well, but for quantum effects, but who's counting (since they're at least one semester beyond that basic course in thermodynamics)? But that reveals the missing variable — time. The Second Law doesn't operate instantaneously, whether or not a system is already in or near equilibrium; proving this is easy (not precisely trivial, and definitely not HTML-friendly!).
But that exposes the other problem with GameStop. The focus on that single security ignores both entanglement with other securities (there's that quantum issue! maybe it isn't so irrelevant after all!) — every dollar devoted to GameStop trading is a dollar that is not devoted to every other comparably volatile equity, let alone commodities or anything else — and the system as a whole. No matter what we do, entropy (usually translated as "chaos" or "disorder") increases.
Of course, this presumes that the Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to economic systems. That presumption, though, misstates the evidence surrounding thermodynamics; it puts the burden on the wrong side. Because there is no validated exception demonstrated in any natural (including purely mathematical!) system to the Second Law, those proposing that it has no application to economics need to fulfill Pascal's (and Carl Sagan's) demand for extraordinary proof for that extraordinary proposition. And because regulation operates on the system as a whole, it's no universal solution, either.
- Consider the additional chaos, enhanced disorder, of personal reputation on the web, especially since there's no verification or verifiability of "search results." Since this blawg is hosted on the search engine's servers, consider the potential propagation of this statement:
The top management of Facebook (especially Zuckerberg and Sandberg) are narcissistic sociopaths.
(which I defend as both primarily opinion and substantively, and essentially based on their conduct and public statements, true). If this were a more popular blawg, it might start appearing in search results for "zuckerberg sociopath," and thus be taken as true. The less said about less-savoury accusations, the better… especially since, at least on recent evidence and behavior, being a "narcissistic sociopath" has at least a 40% chance of getting one elected President or Senator. (Again, this is search-engine bait… and, frankly, unduly generous to the population of Senators; the incidence of at least narcissism is well above 70%. Remember, I'm no longer subject to Article 88!)
There's also the corollary that search engines restricted to quote-unquote real journalism aren't going to get much more, if any, respect these days. One need not go so far as the National Enquirer or News of the World (either one — thanks, Sauron!); just the three letters "m", "t", and "z" are more than sufficient (in some order). The key here is that good journalism isn't opposed to the profit motive; it's that good journalism and the profit motive operate in distinct planes with only limited (if any) intersection. Just ask Colonel McCormack, or William Randolph Hearst, especially if you need to put forth inaccurate election results… or start a war.
Anyone who compares this to early seventeenth-century Europe (as catalyzed by a certain advance in metallurgy) will shudder at the potential parallels and wonder at the potential consequences.
- Further along the road toward the Law of Unintended Consequences (and, for that matter, increased system entropy), consider the real-world consequences (so far) of Masterpiece Cakeshop, I'm a bit more blunt about it than most: Masterpiece Cakeshop is a pro-theocracy — or, at minimum, pro-enforceable-religious-orthodoxy — piece of sophistry. The fundamental problem is that its reasoning presumes that a religious doctrinal matter is both privileged as to all other, previously unprivileged religious doctrinal matters… and enforceable as against nonsectarian temporal laws against discrimination. It's very much a matter of elevating the specific doctrinal choices of specific religious leaders to greater prominence, precisely because that's what theocracy is. If one looks only at the text of the Bible (including or excluding the New Testament), it's difficult to rationalize "it's required to discriminate against teh gays but not against teh women." Or against non-Hebraic Semites. Or, indeed, against anyone not of one's own sect (Pharisees, for example, because nobody will ever admit to being a descendant of that tribe…).
By proving too much in the way of "tolerating individual religious belief," Masterpiece Cakeshop simultaneously proves too much in the way of "tolerating individual bigotry under cover of religious doctrine." One wonders how Masterpiece Cakeshop might have turned out if the couple had been mixed race… or Jewish… and that aspect had been clear on the record. And the fact that this is a legitimate concern demonstrates that Masterpiece Cakeshop's foundations are just as firm and everlasting as the frosting on a three-layer wedding cake.
<SARCASM> Of course, Masterpiece Cakeshop says nothing about discriminating against other socially disfavored groups. Trekkies. Nerds in general. There in the Denver area, Raiders fans.</SARCASM> And that, perhaps more than anything else, demonstrates its fragility, and that Masterpiece Cakeshop is about reifying what forms of single-characteristic discrimination are acceptable and not about freedom of religious belief. Unless, perhaps, one's religion demands stupidity, in which case it's perfect…
- From the Department of Usual Problems, we've got systematic (and systemic) political corruption; we've got consequences of climate change (cue the cellos!); we've got old, entitled white guys turning literature curricula into indoctrination camps; the flip side of a Joni Mitchell piece from my misspent youth; actual creators not getting paid (although I question the article's allegation that "record labels and artists" take as little as 55% of streaming revenues, especially since the definition of "revenues" is more than a bit… diffuse).
Everything to see here, citizens. Back to your lives, though, nobody will put in the effort to change it.