Thoughts at Random

The main idea: a corporatist system where only corporations of a certain minimal market cap would be allowed to operate any economic activity at all would be a great improvement over straight socialism. 0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This entry was originally posted on 26.09.2022, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form.   1 The system 1.1 The efficient implementation of a truly corporatist economic system requires publicly-listed firms acting as clearinghouses of their own shares, as discussed previously . 1.2 Now that one’s market cap is an actionable datum, you can put all the weight of the world on it. Only firms of at least X value are allowed to operate and serve the market. The X would be such as to allow the operation of no more than a couple dozen firms in the whole country. The end. 1.3 X would be enforced by establishing the appropriate lower limit to the price the firm ...

The main idea: allowing the private provision of some public services by peculiarities in contract design.  0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This entry was originally posted on 27.11.2022, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form. 0.1 This is an expanded and translated version of what I’ve written elsewhere for the specific application of city parking. I think it generalises pretty well. 1 The problem 1.1 Assume you wish to provide a service that is beleaguered by positive externalities to the degree that no private provider would ever fund the service, as they could only capture a small part of the true value it would provide. 1.2 An immediate example would be a rail line between two major cities, which increases the property values in both by orders of magnitude more than you can ever charge by way of ticketing. As I’m using this as just an example, ignore the obvious solution of sellin...

The main idea: STV needs to be amended into the Uber Open List when applied to factionalised party settings.  0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This entry was originally posted on 03.12.2021, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form. 1 A general theory of STV applicability 1.1 The Single Transferable Vote is a remarkable family of voting systems, claiming universal applicability across a wide range of scenarios, from picking where to eat out to picking a Legislature. 1.2 Nevertheless, in practice the claim comes just short, and STV requires some fine-tuning to live out to its true potential. 1.3 Let's distinguish voting scenarios by the degree of politicisation, which I’ll define for my purposes here as the likelihood of correctly predicting the subsequent preferences of one’s vote from the voter’s first preference. 1.4 At one end, the predictive power of first preferences is low, and you have yo...

The main idea: applying autoregression of development factors to estimate the tail. 0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This entry was originally posted on 06.10.2021, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form. 1.1 This technique would be incredibly obvious to anyone who has reserved non-life by triangles, and the only reason I’m posting of it is that I have not encountered it anywhere. Haven’t looked too hard though. 1.2 So you set up your reserving triangle, which you hope to complete by chain-ladder but - oh no! – development does not appear to be over (even if it does appear to be, is it really?). 1.3 What do you do about that tail, replicate the last factor, replicate its square, double, what? Well, first of all cumulate your development factors. 1.4 Now the next step is obvious. Just set up a simple autoregressive model on the cumulated factors, predicting each based on the factor preceding it....

The main idea: tell people what their house is worth, and tax that value, but also offer to buy at that price. 0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This entry was originally posted on 13.04.2023, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form.  1.1 I am rather fond of the concept of taxing the self-assessed value of something, usually implemented by requiring owners to declare a value at which they must sell the object to anyone, and upon which value the tax is applied. Indeed, I’ve relied on this mechanism myself here . 1.2 But there is a rather obvious drawback of this approach: it effectively transfers the actual ownership of the object away from the owner and, indeed, away from anyone. Well, anyone except the state which pays no tax, in practice making all sectors on which it is applied fall under de facto government ownership. 1.3 But a minor improvement may easily take care of this issue: instead o...