An anonymous reader writes, “Would you give us your opinion on major political issues these days such as immigration, drug legalization, abortion, and gay marriage?”

That’s a great question, and I appreciate the question. I suppose I would give my opinion on major political issues, given the right circumstances. Rest assured that I hold the correct positions on each of these issues. Good thing, too, since I’ll be White-House-eligibile next week.

In reference to the UNC-Michigan State game, played on the USS Carl Vinson on Veterans’ Day…

***BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

DR. HMNAHMNA: Basketball on an aircraft carrier is nuts.

VDV: Only when it’s a nuclear carrier. Otherwise it’s pretty… conventional.

DR. HMNAHMNA: YYYYEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

***END TRANSCRIPT

Cue the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Alas, I did not have sunglasses nearby.

Tonight’s JV boys’ soccer game at Wolfson:

Four minutes in, we chipped the ball into the goal area. Their keeper somehow managed to put the ball in his own net. Paxon 1-0.

Less than five minutes later, one of their players played the ball into our goal area. I still don’t know whether he was shooting or passing to someone who missed the ball. The ball rolled towards the middle of the goal. Our goalie stood two yards off its path and watched it roll. He seemed to think it was going to roll outside the post, but he clearly didn’t know where the post was, because the ball rolled right into the middle of the goal. Tie game, 1-1.

Back and forth, back and forth. With a few minutes left in the second half, one of our guys fought off two huge defenders, raced behind their entire defense (keeper included) to get to a loose ball just a few yards away from their empty net. Instead of tapping it into the net, he managed to kick the ball almost all the way to the sideline. 1-1 at the half.

The bad guys scored a few minutes into the second half: their forward and our goalie went head to head for a loose ball. They collided. From where I stood, it looked like in the process of getting up, one of them hit the ball and it rolled into our net. Wolfson 2-1.

A few minutes later, they scored a very good goal off a corner. They served the ball to just the right spot, their tallest guy outjumped our tallest guy, and headed it just past our goalie’s stretched arms. Wolfson 3-1, about 20 minutes left.

Almost from the kickoff, our guys finally started moving the ball quickly. They strung together a series of passes that looked something out of a video game set on the easiest level, and one of our guys tapped it past the goalie. Wolfson 3-2.

About ten minutes from time, a ball was thrown in and found its way right in front of their goalie. I think our guy hit the ball with his knee and floated it over the goalie. Everyone looked confused and waited for the signal from the ref. It was a goal, but despite having roared back to tie it up, both teams quietly and oddly walked back for the kickoff. Tied, 3-3.

With under two minutes left in the game, we got a corner kick. Our guy served it in low, right at one of their defenders– who caught it. I mean, he caught it with both hands. He looked thoroughly confused. Our guys were confused. It looked like the defender thought there was going to be a re-kick, or maybe he thought the corner kick was incorrectly called and that our guy was giving them the ball so they could set up a goal kick. He was that nonchalant about catching it– I think that the kid honestly didn’t think it was in play. But the ref blew the whistle, gave the PK, and it finally dawned on the poor kid that he’d made a critical mistake.

I felt awful for that defender. If the ref had blown the whistle and told us to re-kick the corner because he wasn’t ready yet, I wouldn’t have said a word.

Oh well. Our guy nailed the PK. Paxon 4-3.

It was the biggest comeback I’ve coached, it was one of the most exciting games I’ve coached, and it was probably the most bizarre game I’ve coached. Five weird goals and two good goals, but as I’ve said over and over again in practice: every goal counts the same, pretty or ugly.

…

I think I lost my cool a few times during the game. A particular kid held on to the ball too long, and I yelled something like, “Were the guys in front of the net too wide open?” Benched him for twenty minutes, but he redeemed himself by making better passes and scoring the PK.

They, ah… they announced the name of the new Bond flick today.

I gotta say that with Sam Mendes directing, Javier Bardem and Ralph Fiennes as bad guys, and Albert Finney as the Defence Secretary (or whatever he’s playing), this is as promising a cast as EON’s ever going to assemble. Unfortunately, it seems that the money spent bringing in all that star power came out of the maintenance fund for the Bond TitleTron.

When you hear the name of a Bond movie, you should think, “That’s somewhat poetic in a cheap, noir-ish way.” If not, then it should at least reference gold or death. But when I hear “Skyfall,” I don’t think “gold,” “death,” “spy,” “gambling,” “arch-villain blackmailing the world,” or “scantily-clad women with suggestive names.” Instead, I think “really bad made-for-afternoon-cable disaster movie,” or “G.I. Joe cartoon codename.”

Maybe they can get Shirley Bassey to warble the theme song. That’d do a lot for the title.

Here’s the continuation of my response to some of (Blonde’s) comments on a recent post. She wrote:

Firstly, the definition of a monopoly is the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service. Thus any competition, no matter how limited, could be argued as a negation of the term.

First, be careful not to define your argument out of existence. There are no examples of businesses or governments that have such exclusive control over a commodity or service that there is literally no competition or substitute. You think there is? Fine. Name it, I’ll come up with a substitute product—a competitor, “no matter how limited”– and there goes any claim to monopoly.

Now, in real life, that would leave us little to talk about. Again, when people discuss monopolies, they are talking about firms with at least one competitor (however weak) that produce a product with at least some substitutes (however imperfect), but still have a lot of price control (a.k.a. “monopoly power”).

There will always be natural monopolies, even with government regulation, but I can’t think of an example where there exists absolute monopolies under government regulation, at least in a comparative sense (government regulation vs. lack there of).

As I explained in part one, governments often make it easier to gain monopoly power. Robert Fulton had a monopoly on all steamboat traffic in New York– a monopoly granted by the state (it was the subject of a historic Supreme Court decision). AT&T had a legal monopoly on most types of phone service for roughly a century. My dad’s full of stories about the high-tech phone services that were blocked from the market for years because they would’ve interfered with AT&T’s monopoly. The railroad industry of the robber baron era received massive land grants and cash subsidies, which often allowed the bigger railroads to consolidate monopoly power. Monopoly power is more likely to be created by government regulation than by the lack of government regulation.

You can’t think of an example of “absolute monopoly” under government regulation? I can’t think of an example of anything close to an absolute monopoly without government regulation.

Free markets work much like natural selection, and it tends to maximize profits of the powerful while extinguishing competition.

Firms intend to maximize profits and intend to extinguish competition, whether it’s in a free market or not. However, the tendency in free markets is to whittle away what economists call “economic profits.” When actual or potential competitors see excess profits, they tend to swim towards the profits like sharks to blood. The existence of and potential for competition make it very difficult to maintain economic profits in the long run.

But, you might say, what about industries that naturally aren’t competitive? Well, if the market is unregulated, or not too heavily regulated, someone, somewhere usually finds a way to compete for those profits. Somebody will develop something that serves as a substitute. They aren’t going to just sit there and let Uncle Moneybags rake in the cash unchallenged.

These are tendencies. You may be able to find some exceptions, but the tendencies of freer markets are toward efficiencies that more regulated markets have great difficulties achieving.

I’m not educated enough on the topic to declare an outright no-capitalism approach, but I think unregulated capitalism does not work. Unregulated capitalism depends on the concept that people are rational with regard to money management and purchasing. But this doesn’t happen, people are emotional and irrational with regard to economics and it’s in part why the market crashed in 2008. It’s why people don’t save. It’s why we need economic regulation for capitalism to function at its highest capacity. Simply put, people don’t correctly calculate value and self-interest and entire markets fail to as well.

I… I don’t know where to begin. Since you made vague assertions (and since it’s getting late), I’ll respond in kind:

I contend that regulation was more of a factor in causing the 2008 crash than deregulation was, partly because there was virtually no deregulation. I can accept the argument that poor regulation led to the crash, I refuse to accept the argument that a decline in the amount of regulation did.

The idea that economic regulation can make up for people’s mistakes is an incredibly vain one, hence the title of Hayek’s The Fatal Conceit. Keep in mind that the term “market” is a metaphor for countless buyers and sellers engaging in hundreds of millions of transactions a day. Do you know better than all of them combined? Do you trust yourself to vote for someone who knows better than all of them combined? Do you trust them, once elected, to design just the right regulation to correct the mistakes all the little people make?

Markets tend to do a remarkable job of regulating themselves– if they’re allowed to do so. Markets are far better at calculating value and determining self-interest than government regulators are– if they’re allowed to do so. Markets work when people and firms are allowed to reap the rewards of their success and suffer their losses. Unfortunately, firms and governments have historically pushed for regulations that prevent firms and people from suffering their losses, which means the market isn’t being allowed to work its magic.

…

I have to leave it there tonight. The brain is fried and requires sleep. Must edit tomorrow.

It may be that I have misunderstood your argument. If so I apologize and humbly await correction or elucidation. It may be that you know what you’re trying to say, but your argument suffers from not having been taught microeconomics by a particular teacher with a barbaric yet soft persona. Ask your friends; you missed out. I recommend signing up for a micro class at your local university and making sure your prof isn’t a total yutz.