Trading in the stock market in a way that leads to positive returns is a productive activity. Basically, a combination of improving capital allocation in the economy and soaking up risk so that others don’t have to bear it. But of course there are many forms of genuinely unproductive and damaging rent-seeking, so your overall point might be said to be correct.
Top actors do make 100x the films of struggling actors, in a sense. Or rather, their films have much higher popularity and exposure, in a way that’s highly correlated to their ability. (Top films may well be an ‘O-ring’ industry, where you need many different inputs to be high-quality if you want to achieve at a high-enough level. Including, yes, actors.)
Caution, this field is one where a lot of evidence gets refuted as more recent data becomes available.
Some people would argue that we’ve been plowing a lot of money into the education problem, with fairly dismal results. It’s not clear what the solution is, but it’s more likely to come from genuine innovation (MOOC’s?) than just throwing good money after bad.
4.3 If it is really a case if throwing good after bad, “we” should stop funding it, and if we think we should not stop funding it tomorrow, we should stop saying it is that bad compared to some unspecified alternative.
I am not unfamiliar with the string of complaints you repeated, I just think it belongs to the 99% of political diatribe that’s barely coherent.
Trading in the stock market in a way that leads to positive returns is a productive activity. Basically, a combination of improving capital allocation in the economy and soaking up risk so that others don’t have to bear it. But of course there are many forms of genuinely unproductive and damaging rent-seeking, so your overall point might be said to be correct.
Top actors do make 100x the films of struggling actors, in a sense. Or rather, their films have much higher popularity and exposure, in a way that’s highly correlated to their ability. (Top films may well be an ‘O-ring’ industry, where you need many different inputs to be high-quality if you want to achieve at a high-enough level. Including, yes, actors.)
Caution, this field is one where a lot of evidence gets refuted as more recent data becomes available.
Some people would argue that we’ve been plowing a lot of money into the education problem, with fairly dismal results. It’s not clear what the solution is, but it’s more likely to come from genuine innovation (MOOC’s?) than just throwing good money after bad.
4.1 Who:s we?
4.2 Dismal compared to what?
4.3 If it is really a case if throwing good after bad, “we” should stop funding it, and if we think we should not stop funding it tomorrow, we should stop saying it is that bad compared to some unspecified alternative.
I am not unfamiliar with the string of complaints you repeated, I just think it belongs to the 99% of political diatribe that’s barely coherent.