Rex and Steve's Blog

My hometown is having weather problems

marzke — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:44:50 +0000

I saw this article about flooding with a picture taken just down the street from where I grew up. It’s got to be a mess there. And here I am in Houston where it’s been in the mid 90′s with no rain for 20 days now.

Last week, there was a tornado at the other end of the street!

Is GDP a valid measure of our economy?

marzke — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:42:41 +0000

I read this editorial, “Could it be we’ve been in a recession since ’75?”, by Robert Costanza from the Los Angeles Times. I’ve been trying to form an argument that our obsession with the DJIA and GDP are poor indicators of our economy (and, to a lesser extent, are CPI and “opinion polls”). This editorial has some ideas that are worth pursuing. I’m wondering if Republicans will instantly denounce the concepts presented (because they were articulated by an obvious environmental group), even though the concepts are not anti-free market at all, simply because they’re against one measurement of a free market. [Go to the site for the Genuine Progress Indicator:]

My Niece Kristin

marzke — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:09:32 +0000

My
niece (Kristin Hartmann) is a senior in High School and a soccer
player. The Houston Chronicle watched her game last night and wrote an article and even mentioned her. I’m such a proud uncle.

Vacation (another cruise)

marzke — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:50:35 +0000

Steve and I are back from another cruise vacation. This time it was on the Radiance of the Seas out of Ft. Lauderdale to San Juan, US Virgin Islands, Antigua, St. Maarten, and the Bahamas. It was quite fun: our tablemates were especially interesting. See our pictures on Picasa Web.

The Myth of the Free Market

marzke — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 04:44:06 +0000

Many Republicans toss around the term Free Market as the solution to almost everything. However, what they’ve forgotten is that we don’t actually have free markets. IMHO, the closes we have to a free market is eBay.

A free market requires a number of things: no barrier to entry for suppliers; suppliers who do not lie to the customers; customer who have access to accurate information about all suppliers; and customers who make rational decisions.

IMHO, none of these exist in general society:

Barrier to entry

For example, air transportation has huge financial and governmental barriers to entry; auto industry is the same; steel manufacturing; gasoline exploration and refinement; hospitals; becoming a lawyer or doctor have barriers. Everything has barriers, so there can never be a truly free market.

Suppliers deceive customers

IMHO, the whole point of advertising is to deceive customers: this pill will make your sex life great; this car will make you hip; this toothpaste will make your teeth cleaner and get you a date; this shampoo is will get you a date; this vacation will make you happy. The argument is that suppliers are just providing information – if that’s true, have you ever seen an advertisement that told you the disadvantages of a product in the same manner as the advantages – rather than in tiny text or sped up voices in 5 seconds after a 55 second commercial?

Customers have accurate information

There are about 30 brands of toothpaste, each with at least three different varieties: there is no way a consumer could get complete and accurate information on all of them; there is no way to find out how many passengers died in-flight on a given airline (or cruise ship); there are hundreds of different makes and models of cars; there are no “lists of ingredients” in restaurants.

Customers are rational

48% percent believe aliens have visited earth.
37% percent think that it should be illegal for two men to have sex.
In this poll from the 2004 election, half (50%) rightly name Bush as the candidate who favors giving parents tax-funded vouchers to help pay private or religious school tuition, thirteen percent attribute the plan to Kerry, who actually opposes it, over a third (37%) admit they don’t know. From an AP story after Katrina, nearly one-third of young Americans polled couldn’t locate Louisiana on a map and nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi.

My Conclusion

So, IMHO, since none of the basic premises of a Free Market exist, confidently claiming that the Free Market can do anything is a subjective statement, completely unsupportable by any economic theory that includes supply and demand as any part of its premise.