Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Why it's smart to be a slacker

Elusive Wapati finds an epic rant on why Millennials are smart to slack off:
And then we have the Wall Street scams.  Corzine didn't go to jail and neither has anyone else.  Nor are the hospital administrators who billed out those charges for services never performed, or any of the other corporate interests that are always looking for a way not to make an honest profit but rather to rip you off wholesale.  These aren't little rip-offs either; those plague every society and it never ends, because there are dishonest people in the world everywhere.  No, these are big robberies that ought to be felonies everywhere and always, yet today they never are.  Go ahead, try to start a business or get ahead, but the dice roll on one or more of these *******s getting their claws into you and destroying everything you built, and your inability to obtain justice if they do, makes the deal rather less attractive than it used to be.
There's an old game: The Two Things.  You have to boil down everything about a particular thing into two characteristics.  It is a nice focusing exercise.  The Two Things about economics are:
  1. Incentives count.
  2. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Both of the links above examine aspects of these two points.  Recommended.

7 comments:

Divemedic said...

I agree with the rant. The winners in business are the ones who don't care about honesty. See:
Trillion Dollar Bank Bailout
Multi- billion Dollar Auto Manufacturer Bailout
Trillions in Medicare fraud not prosecuted
Government rules and licensing schemes set up to lock out the little guy. Remember, Abraham Lincoln became a lawyer by passing the Bar without finishing grade school. You can't even TAKE the bar without a 6-figure law degree.

NotClauswitz said...

We need to revive Letters Of Marque for such piracy, so that industrious people are incentivized to go after Corzine et.al.

Old NFO said...

Personally I like tar and feathers... And a rail...

Dave H said...

I guess that kid who spent all that money getting a PhD and now can't find a job isn't so bad off after all.

Elusive Wapiti said...

Thanks for the link and the mention! And yes, that was a fabulous article by the ever-excellent Denninger.

Anonymous said...

When old people slack off they call it "Going Galt," but apparently younguns aren't allowed to do it without being called lazy, even if they're doing it for the same reasons.

Ken said...

Yep, Denninger.