Re:Just how bad are hard drive prices going to get?
by billswift on Monday November 07, 2011 @12:14PM
(#3207126)
For a readable introduction, I don't know of any better than Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics or David Friedman's Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life (David Friedman's textbook Price Theory: An Intermediate Text is almost as readable and is here: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_ToC... )
Re:Just how bad are hard drive prices going to get?
by anigbrowl on Monday November 07, 2011 @01:21PM
(#3207490)
Yeah, I can't understand the widespread ignorance of/indifference to micro either. It's like people either think it's less important (because of the name) or that it only applies to people running manufacturing or retail businesses. Macroeconomics is seriously incomplete, so when it fails to predict the future well people dismiss economics as a whole, not realizing how fantastically useful and illuminating micro is. Admittedly micro suffers from not having a good theory of oligopoly, but I venture to suggest that that's a bit like the 3-body problem.
For philosophical types, I recommend 'New Ideas from Dead Economists' by Todd Buckholz. If you just want to get going with the math, I like the Barrons Business Review book on Economics by Peter Eisen. You should be able to find either of these used for a few bucks.
Re:Just how bad are hard drive prices going to get?
by wanorris on Monday November 07, 2011 @02:46PM
(#3207811)
I don't think it's an indifference to microeconomics in particular so much as an indifference to anything that doesn't seem like it's especially relevant to one's life at the moment. People are indifferent to structuralist anthropology too, just to pick a random example. I agree that people are probably misinformed as to how useful microeconomics might be to their life though. It's a fantastically useful subject.
The reason macroeconomics is on the Khan Academy and has more general interest these days comes from the fact that people feel like their lives are in turmoil due to the economy, the real estate collapse, and Wall Street, and they don't understand how any of it works. Macroeconomics may be incomplete and perhaps even problematic, but it's the subject that can most shed a light on complex interconnected problems as opposed to local specific ones.
Re:Just how bad are hard drive prices going to get?
by anigbrowl on Monday November 07, 2011 @07:53PM
(#3208952)
Agreed...I just have my doubts about how well one can really understand macro without a firm grasp of micro. Some people reflexively dismiss economics in general as just so much dogma, and it's hard to make the case for economics as a discipline when micro is so poorly understood.
Re:Just how bad are hard drive prices going to get?
by zmj on Monday November 07, 2011 @07:42PM
(#3208923)
There have been some psychology experiments that cast doubt on the naive econ treatment. In behavioral economics, the alternative hypothesis is called the "endowment effect". The short version is that people get attached to something they intend to keep (as opposed to trade onwards) and demand a significantly higher price to sell it than they did to acquire it.
If suddenly the world supply of hard drives is cut to 10% of its normal values by a chance event (and we concentrate on the time period before new compensating production can be started) then those hard drives become more valuable. The price goes up, so that the people who are willing to pay the most for the drives get them. If Bob will only pay $100 for a drive because he's just using it to store his 2TB of cat pictures, but Sam will pay $500 because he needs the drive to run his business, then Sam will get the drive but Bob won't. If you try to hold down prices artificially with legislation (price ceilings) then each is equally likely to get the drive, which most agree is not good.
(Now, there are a million caveats to this naive Econ 101 treatment, especially regarding basic necessities--water, food, shelter--and disaster situations. And any normative "should" statement requires people to agree on a theory of ethics/morality. But in this case, most will agree that the basics of supply and demand lead to the appropriate outcome.)
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Incidentally, I was surprised to find that the Khan Academy has a bunch of macroeconomics and finance lectures, but little in the way of basic microeconomics. (This is especially funny because microecon is better understood.) Anyone know a better source for an introduction to supply and demand?