Selling a song in a filleted form

A song is usually recorded on several separated tracks. I guess that it is good business to sell every track separetely. You practically don't lose sale on the packaged song but gain a market on its fillets or tracks.

Economic decisions

By definition of "economic" every decision is economic.

Market environmentalism

The more nature you consume, the more nature market either produces or otherwise protects.

The road to legalizing drugs

Do you want to legalize drugs? Allow the government to have a monopoly on them.

A true capitalist

A true capitalist is devoted to make money not to make politics.

Not really an exception

Markets failures are to market law as hydrogen globes are to gravity law.

We all save lives

I meet this guy and he says: "My work is to save lives. I'm a doctor". I answer: "Great! Mine too is to save lives!". He says: "Are you a doctor too?". I answer: "No, I'm an economist". He sees me frowning. I explain:

"An economist job is, for instance, to tell people how the economy is faring. This helps people to take decisions; in particular decisions related with the best way to finance colleges where medicine is taught, to finance profitable colleges and to shut down unprofitable ones. Other people decides on hiring or firing doctors, or on how to invest funds in order to pay hospital rolls.

By the way, all other people too helps in saving lives: the security officer outside the hospital, the traffic officer in the streets which helps doctors and security officers to arrive on time to their jobs, the man who sells the yachts which are the reason why some doctors decide to work at night, etc.

The fact that we only see the clock hands but not the pinions or ratchets are not an argument at all to conclude that only the hands are instrumental to allow a clock to work."

So, yes the doctor helps to save lives. He is the last part of a process not designed (and not designable!) by anyone but which nevertheless works. But as long as the doctor has a claim to say that he saves lives, anyone else has it too.

My summary of Knight's "Risk Uncertainty and Profit"

There is not such a thing as "systematic uncertainty". That's an oxymoron.

An ex-post zero sum game

The utmost feature of a forward commitment (forward, future, swap, etc.) is that ex-post if one party wins, the other party losses, ceteris paribus.

Market failure

If you find that markets fail, that's a proof of you lacking reading.

Intelligence and God

More intelligence is required to believe in God than to to be an atheist.

Time is a mere informational topic

Future is future only and as long as we are ignorant about it.

As long as we arrive at the logical mechanics of a system that system becomes for us in an eternal present.

Put another way: it is not merely that time is related to information. From the viewpoint of human thought, time is entirely an informational phenomenon. Uncertainty is not a feature of future, it is its essence. There where you don't find uncertainty, you don't have a future whatsoever.

There is not such a thing as time on the one hand and information on the other. There's only a one, un-separated, phenomenon: timeformation.

Two sorts of arbitrage

There are both commercial and productive arbitrage.

Commercial arbitrage is the typically-seen arbitrage consisting in buying cheap and selling dear commodities without incurring in transaction costs.

Productive arbitrage occurs always that there is a difference between the value of a finished good on the one hand, and a set consisting of an input plus a transaction expenditure on the other. In this sense, it is the most convenient to conceive of the set of inputs as a synthetic, such as the term is used in finance.

Since productive arbitrage is less obvious and require expectations on more issues, it is conceivable that there is easier to find businesses opportunities this way.

Productive arbitrage is the reason behind producing.

Always that the ratio between output and inputs through production is perceived as different from the price ratio between these two sets of commodities which can be expected to be achieved in the market, a decision to change the current level of production will occur.

General equilibrium never seen

The economy works, every single economic action is undertaken, precisely because and as long as the law of one price is not being accomplished.

The economy lives because there is no equilibrium.

Equilibrium and the law of one price are ultimate states. The economy always tends to them but never reach them beacause those states are themselves constantly changing due to disequilibrating forces (changes in preferences, technologies, and resource availability; and in general by our changing attitude towards resources).

Nevertheless, the market is that spontaneous order through which information flows towards entrepreneurs which then interpret them and act in order to make use of disequilibrium opportunities. By doing this entrepreneurs, this is all of us in our aim to improve our condition by buying cheap and selling dear, embody the very invisible equilibrating hand of the market, this is the economic or social manifestation of God, as it were.

Freedom

Freedom is always and necessarily, freedom to buy, which is akin to freedom to sell.

A creepy but regrettably true law on the fate of any industry in regards to its relation with government

A new industry either will be successful or not. If successful, either will be a competition for government or not. If competition for government, it will eventually be either taxed proportionately to its level of competitiveness against the government or plainly banned.

Apodicticity of theories

A theory, if correctly constructed from a logical viewpoint, can be useful or useless, but never empirically wrong. The test on a theory is exclusively on its logical correctness on the one hand, and on a useful identification of parts of the reality with concepts of the theory.

Transaction cost

1. By implication of the definition of input, any good requires more than one inputs to be produced.

2. Let's group inputs to produce a good g into two groups: on the one hand input i, and on the other hand all the rest of inputs, which we will call (composite) input j. Let's don't call it input i anymore. Since now on, let's call it good i.

3. Transaction cost from good i to good g, or good g's transaction cost from good i, or beginning with good i, is the value of input j.

4. The fact that the term "transaction cost" is mostly used when the value of good i is much dearer than the value of good j doesn't introduce anything analytically relevant to the analysis.

Market is the most efficient mechanism

The interaction of the information of agents with, in principle, different plans is the very definition of what a market is. It is true that a market could incorporate not all conceivable information, but markets do incorporate all possible information. If information is not already in the market, nobody (in particular, not the government authorities) can incorporate further information.

A market reaches all possible efficiency. There is no further informational, operating, or allocative efficiency beyond the market. In that sense, if you accuse the market of being inefficient, automatically you neglect the possibility of any further possibility whatsoever of improving that inefficiency.

If you do find a possibility of improving efficiency, you automatically become part of the market, not something beyond it.

There is, for instance, no way of reflecting new information faster than through the market. To put another way, the quickest way in which new information can be reflected is precisely what a market is.

No choice

By having to pick some currency in which to charge taxes, and by having to pick to pick some language in which to record information, the government cannot not choose a currency and a language for the territory whereas it rules.