Quotulatiousness

June 28, 2017

Concert-goers rejoice, for the government is here to help you!

Filed under: Business, Economics, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Of course, if you have any experience of the utility of “government help”, you shouldn’t get your hopes up too high, as Chris Selley explains:

The results of an online public consultation were clear, said Naqvi. “One: the current system clearly is not working for fans; and two: Ontarians expect the government to take action.” We should have expected nothing less: ticket rage is a real thing among concertgoers in particular — a mind-boggling 35,000 people completed the online consultation — and besides, the survey didn’t include an option to suggest the government do nothing.

Among other things, Naqvi said, it will be illegal to resell tickets for more than 150 per cent of face value, and it will be illegal to use bots. Soon, he promised, “everyone (will have) a fair shot at getting the tickets they want.” Ontario, he said, will become “a world leader in ticket sales regulation.”

You’re supposed to think that’s both plausible and desirable. You should instead be very, very skeptical. So long as U2, the Tragically Hip and other artists insist on pricing their tickets vastly below what people are willing to pay for them, there will be an enormous incentive to circumvent whatever laws are in place to prevent third parties from reaping those foregone profits. A 150-per-cent cap would reduce the incentive, as Naqvi says — but only if the entire scalping community decided to respect it.

It won’t. It doesn’t. Scalping is illegal in Arkansas. Tickets for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks’ Nov. 24 game against Missouri are going on Stubhub for well over twice face value. Scalping is illegal in Quebec. Stubhub will put you in the third row for Bob Dylan’s show at the Montreal Jazz Festival next month for US$275; face value is $137.50 Canadian. The experiment works in every scalping-restrictive North American jurisdiction I tried. Heck, scalping used to be illegal in Ontario. That sure didn’t deter the gentlemen who prowled around outside Maple Leaf Gardens and SkyDome.

Many Stubhub users aren’t even in Ontario — that’s even more true for the people with the bots. Is the Attorney General really going to prosecute people for the crime of selling tickets at prices people are perfectly willing to pay? People in other countries? That would get awfully old in an awful hurry.

As he points out in the article, this is yet another instance of the Ontario government pandering to the demands of economic illiterates (recent examples include slapping on new rent controls in the middle of a housing crunch and significant increases in the minimum wage as new workforce entrants are already finding it tough to get hired). It’s as though the government is reading the economic textbook upside down … bringing in exactly the wrong “solutions” to every problem they see.

TANKFEST 2017 – At The Tank Museum, Bovington

Filed under: Britain, Europe, History, Military, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Published on 27 Jun 2017

Tanks. They’re like big, angry houses.

The Tank Museum: http://www.tankmuseum.org/home

Handsaw comparison – Japanese pull-cut versus Western push-cut

Filed under: Japan, Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On Facebook, Paul Sellers posted a couple of photos showing the differences between some traditional western hand saws, which cut on the push stroke, and traditional Japanese hand saws, which cut on the pull stroke:

When you hear people say Japanese saws cut better, cut cleaner, cut faster, cut easier, usually it’s not necessarily true. In reality the Japanese saws cut on a pull stroke and the western saw on a push. When sharpened properly both cut very well. The difference for me is that one is a throwaway, the other a keeper for a lifetime. I own saws made in England and the USA that are totally functional and range in age from between the early 1800s 1860s and some up to date that I use daily. You can make any saw any thickness you like and it will work well.
Just saying.

The main difference nowadays is you throw away the Japanese saws because you can’t sharpen them whereas a decent western saw can be sharpened, well, for 200 years when you learn how. Most people can master saw sharpening with an hour of practice.


Why do mirrors flip things horizontally but not vertically? | James May Q&A | Head Squeeze

Filed under: Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 15 Nov 2013

A mirror is made from a sheet of glass with reflective material applied to one side of the glass. Designed to reflect lights, mirrors are used everywhere from making sure we scrub behind out ears in the morning, to helping us reverse around corners without crashing into a wall.

But what are mirrors exactly?

A mirror is like an old fashioned transparency photograph viewed the wrong way around. A mirror doesn’t reverse left and right, it reverses back to front. Writing appears back to front in a mirror because we present it back to front!

Go on; have a go writing BUM the wrong way around in front of a mirror!

QotD: How “Jim Crow” laws were brought in to suppress competition

Filed under: Economics, History, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Lebergott’s historical account – which reinforces the important findings of Robert Higgs about the postbellum economic trajectory of blacks in America – reveals the equalizing powers of economic competition. Contrary to popular myth, even racist southerners put their own economic well-being ahead of their irrational prejudices by competing with offers of higher wages for blacks’ labor and with offers of low prices for blacks’ business. This competition, in turn, increased blacks’ geographic and economic mobility and raised their incomes. The reason southerners – whether racists or rent-seekers (or both) – turned to government to get Jim Crow legislation is that market forces were undermining their racist preferences and competing away their uncompetitively high profits, rents, and wages.

Lebergott’s account also further reveals the utter implausibly of the claims of those who assert that today’s market in America for low-skilled workers is infected with monopsony power. While this market isn’t textbook perfect (no real-world market is), and while this market would be improved by making it even freer (for example, by eliminating occupational-licensing statutes and zoning restrictions), the ability of low-skilled workers today throughout the U.S. to move from job to job is surely better than was the ability of low-skilled blacks 150 years ago throughout the American south to move from job to job. And yet, as Lebergott documents, low-skilled American blacks of 150 years ago in the American south did indeed enjoy such mobility that economic competition raised their wages. Similarly, the ability today of entrepreneurs and business owners to discover and compete for under-priced labor is surely greater than was the ability of employers 150 years ago to do the same – and yet, again as Lebergott documents, such competitive initiative by employers was common 150 years ago and served to increase low-skilled workers’ mobility and wages.

Don Boudreaux, “Quotation of the Day…”, Café Hayek, 2017-05-22.

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