A Arte da Fuga

"preços malucos"

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Uma das queixinhas mais frequentes das pessoas é que as coisas são muito caras porque alguém anda a fazer muito dinheiro. Descontando explicações macroeconómicas para alguns problemas reais (por exemplo política monetária), o que se constata é que este descontentamento deriva não só do mito da "ganância" como de uma profunda ignorância da estrutura de custos dos prestadores de serviços (incluindo custos fiscais - veja-se por exemplo toda a polémica à volta do preço dos combustíveis) .

Eis uma história engraçada que ilustra este ponto: Why Wedding Photographers’ Prices are “Wack”:

Earlier today my friend and fellow photographer posted a link to a craigslist ad from a woman in Seattle looking for a wedding photographer. The woman was upset because she thought that $3,000 for a wedding photographer was “wack” because all we do “is hang out at a wedding taking tons of photos and editing them” and that we are “making so much money its crazy.”

I am a wedding photographer in the Erie, PA area. Wedding season only last about 4 months here, so I photograph an average of 20 weddings per year for an average of $2,500/wedding (which totals about $50,000/year).

That being said, I am a small business owner, so I pay all of my taxes, totaling about $15,000/year, which leaves me with a gross income of around $35,000..

That would technically leave me with about $7,000/year to feed myself, buy groceries, pay for my heat and electricity, clothe myself, etc. But, usually I end up reinvesting whatever I have left on upgrades and new equipment:
..

All of that being said, I’m usually in the hole at the end of the year, and take on many family portraits, senior portraits and corporate jobs in order to make ends meet.

Photography is my passion and my livelihood, and it is also expensive. Yes, it seems like a lot of money for one day, but one day isn’t all we spend on your photographs or on our business. You will spend thousands of dollars on a wedding dress or flowers or a venue or on catering which you are going to have for only one day, but your photographs will be the only thing you have to remember that one day for the rest of your lives.

a Internet está segura com o Estado (11)

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

No seguimento de a Internet está segura com o Estado (10)

ACTA - World Web War.1

Forcing food down throats

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Do-do-DO-do, do-do-DO-do, do-do-DO-do…:

.. “Should Everyone Be Required to Have Health Insurance?” ..

Does Prof. Davenport advocate this model also for other businesses – say, restaurants? Does she think that restaurant customers would be better served if government required restaurants to price meals without regard to ‘hunger status,’ so that the bill paid by a diner who orders three lobsters, two filets, and a bottle of ’61 Chateau Latour be the same as the bill paid by a diner who orders only a single cup of soup? Does she think that whatever problems might arise from such a regulation will be solved if government also forces every American to buy a minimum number of restaurant meals? After all, food – even more so than health-care – is necessary for life.

If Prof. Davenport doesn’t advocate this regulatory model for restaurants, why doesn’t she? (Please, Prof. Davenport, no protests that the health-care market is ‘unique.’ Of course it’s unique; every market is unique. But is the health-care market unique in ways that prompt people consistently to act against their financial self-interest, as you apparently expect insurance companies to do?)

State of the Union Response (2)

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

No seguimento de State of the Union Response

Cato Institute: State of the Union 2012

The economics of role-playing games

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:00:00 +0000

The economics of role-playing games:

The more segmented those brains became, the weaker the overall social network was. Every new game system, and every new variant to those systems, subdivided that network further, making it weaker. Between 1993 and 1999, the social network of the TRPG players had become seriously frayed. Even if you just looked at the network of Dungeons & Dragons players you could see this effect: People self-segmented into groups playing Basic D&D, 1st Edition, 2nd Edition, and within 2nd Edition into various Campaign Settings that had become their own game variants. The effect on the market was that it became increasingly hard to make and sell something that had enough players in common that it would earn back its costs of development and production.

We looked around the industry and saw the same problem at virtually every company that had become successful: White Wolf had 5 World of Darkness games which were all slightly different, surrounded by a more diffuse constellation of games somewhat related to the Storyteller system but designed to be mutually incompatible. FASA had 4 games, none of which shared anything in common. Palladium & Steve Jackson Games both had “house systems” that they tried to use across their entire product lines, but they had ended up with the “Campaign Setting” issue that was bedeviling TSR; the variant rules at the edges of their games were creating independent game networks despite the shared DNA of the core. And we knew that inside every one of those companies they were seeing the same financial information we were seeing: Each new release was selling fewer and fewer copies, and in response, the companies were increasing the pace of releases trying to sustain planned revenues by volume of titles, not by volume of units. And it was killing everyone.

…My opinion is that the hobby gaming industry is going to transform into a very small niche business. It will cater primarily to an aging group of players who have made TRPGs their lifetime hobbies. As those players age, they’ll need less and less support in the form of commercially produced products. They will instead seek out community support tools to help them remain in touch with their hobby even as the social network they’re directly connected to becomes ever more frayed.

Social Cooperation in the Market Economy

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Social Cooperation in the Market Economy

Pro-Business and Pro-Market are Not the Same (2)

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 07:00:00 +0000

No seguimento de Pro-Business and Pro-Market are Not the Same, "Free Market" Doesn't Mean "Pro-Business":

.. Economists of a libertarian persuasion find this frustrating because our enthusiasm for free markets is often mistaken as enthusiasm for specific businesses or corporate interests. But just because something is good for General Motors does not mean it is necessarily good for America.

.. One of the key features of a free market is that it is a system of profit and loss. The “free” part of “free market” means free entry and exit ..

Do free-market solutions sound harsh? Perhaps .. In a free market, people compete to see who can best secure others’ cooperation. Government, on the other hand, works by the threat of violence. If we’re going to use government to protect a business, we can only do it by threatening violence against its potential competitors.

I teach economics, and I write for a couple of different websites. If I were to insulate myself from foreign competition by hiring the mafia to prevent potential foreign economists from teaching classes that compete with mine or from writing articles that compete with mine, it would be a criminal act. Change “teach economics” to “make cars,” “mafia” to “government,” and “foreign economists” to “foreign car-makers” and you have flag-wrapped American industrial policy.

.. Businesses should not be protected from competition, losses, and bankruptcy when they fail to deliver for the customer. All three are essential to truly free markets and free enterprise.

Fóruns Mundiais

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Lew Rockwell: World Social Forum and World Economic Forum are interchangeable

the vote pump

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

THE VOTE PUMP

Keep calm and CO2 at will

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:00:00 +0000

No Need to Panic About Global Warming:

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." ..

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Why is there so much passion about global warming .. a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet ..

.. There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

.. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.

Música Liberal do Dia

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Anarchy and Freedom is what I want

Minimovies - Crass - Trailer 1 (White Punks on Hope)

Love of looting

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:00:00 +0000

They May Hate Capitalism, But They Sure Love To Loot It:

Obama, Gingrich, Perry -- they all hate capitalism, but they sure like the loot it gives them to be the career politicians they are. Where would career politicians be without capitalism?

Don’t kid yourselves. The liberal-statist agenda is to raise taxes on the wealthiest (who already pay the great bulk of taxes), lower taxes on the poor and middle class, and massively expand the welfare-entitlement state, especially for the middle class. The conservatives will only ask, “How are we going to pay for it?” But the real question should be: WHO is going to pay for it? Obviously, those who make the most money are the ones who are going to pay for most or all of it as both taxes and government expand over time. Yet these are the same people who provide the jobs for the great majority of the working and middle class. They are the “capital” in “capitalism.” How does hitting them up for more money help the middle class? The politicians will take the credit for the seizure of wealth and expansion of nice-sounding programs, but those upon whom the middle class and the career politicians depend for their paychecks are going to be burdened ever further.

The more our government drains our economy of capital, the less capitalism there will be. Government is the vulture -- not anyone who runs a business! This means higher unemployment, more bankruptcy, and generally less productivity and economic growth. The world will be a less comfortable and poorer place, as capitalism continues to fade away because of government spending and taxation. We cannot go on like we are.

It doesn’t really matter who’s in charge in the long run ..

.. A great majority of Americans, with each election cycle, express disgust with “the system” as we know it; and demand “change.” Democrats, when in power, outspend Republicans; then Republicans, once in power, outspend Democrats. I suppose the next step will be “Independents” outspending both the Republicans and the Democrats. When will people understand that the “system” is nothing more than this continued process of spending more money on things that patently and self-evidently don’t work, even on their own terms?

Stock market bubble

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Biderman's Daily Edge 1/25/2012: Explaining the Bullish Market

Paul Gottfried

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:00:00 +0000

Attack the System: Interview with Paul Gottfried:

Keith Preston interviews Paul Gottfried. Topics include:
The core characteristics that distinguish the Right from the Left, including a belief in the necessity and legitimacy of organic hierarchy, respect for the limitations imposed by human nature, and a preference for tradition ;
How the American “conservative movement” is not really of the Right and how mainstream American politics is dominated by two factions of the Left;
The transformation of the Left from its previous orientation towards Marxism to its current obsession with multiculturalism and alternative lifestyles;
The role of the managerial state in promoting Political Correctness;
The relationship between Christianity and modern “politics of guilt”;
Neoconservatism as an outgrowth of the radical Left.

a Internet está segura com o Estado (10)

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:00:00 +0000

No seguimento de a Internet está segura com o Estado (9), If You Thought SOPA Was Bad, Just Wait Until You Meet ACTA:

Few people have heard of ACTA, or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, but the provisions in the agreement are just as pernicious as anything we saw in SOPA. Worse, the agreement spans virtually all of the countries in the developed world, including all of the EU, the United States, Switzerland and Japan.

Many of these countries have already signed or ratified it, and the cogs are still turning. The treaty has been secretly negotiated behind the scenes, with unelected bureaucrats working closely with entertainment industry lobbyists to craft the provisions in the treaty.

What Is ACTA ?

Say NO to ACTA

Ron Paul is sweeping the GOP youth vote

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Ron Paul is sweeping the GOP youth vote:

Across the country, the youth vote is down. Registration is low. Voter enthusiasm for Republican candidates has been lackluster.

Unless that candidate's name is Ron Paul.

Motivated by Paul's purist libertarian ideology — he opposes most foreign wars, advocates for severe cuts to federal budgets and believes drugs should be decriminalized federally — supporters say they're drawn to a movement that is consistent, fair and free. And while the 12-time congressman has failed to win any of the first three voting states, he's captured the youth vote every time, sometimes dominantly.

Paul has attributed the idealism of his platform to his popularity among young voters. Asked by Jay Leno, on "The Tonight Show," in December, about the issue, the candidate said: "Freedom is very appealing, it's based on principle. …. And I think younger people tend to be more principled and later on resort to blend in and mesh in and go along with the crowd".

la tradición anarquista española

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:00:00 +0000

fonte

A agenda

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:00:00 +0000

A agenda:

Em Portugal, a despesa pública representa oitenta mil milhões de euros, ou seja, 47% do PIB .. quase metade é originada nos chamados Serviços e Fundos Autónomos.

.. não me refiro aos gastos do Governo nem dos seus ministérios; refiro-me "apenas" aos institutos, às agências, às comissões, às entidades, às direcções, aos centros, às fundações, às administrações, aos serviços e fundos autónomos que, com estas ou outras designações, fazem parte do chamado Serviço Público.

Ora, neste labirinto, o dinheiro é facilmente esbanjado entre organismos que, sem razão de existir ou redundantes entre si, sugam recursos à actividade produtiva .. serviços e fundos autónomos a) não têm massa crítica e b) não tendo massa crítica, provavelmente, não têm razão de existir. Serão, porventura, redundantes no objecto, na forma ou até nos dois. E no total, representam um universo global .. no qual a miríade de estruturas, certamente, esconderá muita burocracia, muito ineficiência, muita artificialidade; tudo isto, é claro, pago com o dinheiro dos outros ..

Enfim, fala-se hoje muito numa agenda para o crescimento. Na minha opinião, uma boa forma de começar seria libertando o País destas redundâncias, reduzindo o peso que um Estado excessivamente oneroso e regulamentador persiste em impor à economia. O combate pelo aumento da produtividade tem, pois, de começar no próprio Estado.

a Internet está segura com o Estado (9)

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000

No seguimento de a Internet está segura com o Estado (8)

Molly Wood's Explanation of SOPA

Liberalismo versus anarcocapitalismo

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Liberalismo versus anarcocapitalismo:

El error fatal de los liberales clásicos radica en no haberse dado cuenta de que el programa del ideario liberal es teóricamente imposible pues incorpora dentro de sí mismo la semilla de su propia destrucción, precisamente en la medida en que considera necesaria y acepta la existencia de un estado (aunque sea mínimo) entendido como la agencia monopolista de la coacción institucional.

Por tanto, el gran error de los liberales es de planteamiento: piensan que el liberalismo es un programa de acción política y doctrina económica que tiene por objetivo limitar el poder del estado, pero aceptándolo e incluso considerando necesaria su existencia. Sin embargo, hoy (en la primera década del siglo XXI), la Ciencia Económica ya ha puesto de manifiesto: (a) que el estado no es necesario; (b) que el estatismo (aunque sea mínimo) es teóricamente imposible; y (c) que, dada la naturaleza del ser humano, una vez que existe el estado es imposible limitar su poder.

Se abre, pues, un futuro apasionante, en el que continuamente se descubrirán múltiples nuevos caminos que, en consonancia con los principios esenciales, nos permitirán avanzar en pos del ideal anarcocapitalista. Futuro que aunque hoy nos pueda parecer lejano, en cualquier momento puede ser testigo de pasos de gigante que incluso sorprendan a los más optimistas. ¿Quién fue capaz de predecir tan solo cinco años antes, que en 1989 se desmoronaría el Muro de Berlín y con él todo el comunismo del este de Europa? La historia ha entrado en un proceso acelerado de cambio que, aunque nunca se detendrá, sí que abrirá un capítulo totalmente nuevo cuando el género humano, por primera vez en la historia moderna, logre desembarazarse definitivamente del estado y reducirlo tan sólo a una oscura reliquia histórica de trágica memoria.

The Rule of Law

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

The Rule of Law

Um mundo sem inovação

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Management in Popular Culture:

I recently read Planet of the Apes, the 1963 novel by Pierre Boulle that inspired the movie franchise ..

It seemed absolutely clear that industry did not require the presence of a rational being to maintain itself. Basically, industry consisted of manual laborers, always performing the selfsame tasks, who could easily be replaced by apes; and, at a higher level, of executives whose function was to draft certain reports and pronounce ceratin words under given circumstances. All this was a question of conditioned reflexes. At the still higher level of administration, it seemed even easier to concede the quality of aping. To continue our system, the gorillas would merely have to imitate certain attitudes and deliver a few harangues, all based on the same model.

.. apes gradually assimilated and displaced a former human civilization simply by imitating their masters. The discovery of this older civilization (confirmed by the remains a talking human doll, as in the 1968 movie) explains the mystery of why ape culture stagnated at the level of its former human model. The apes could imitate, but not innovate.

State of the Union Response

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Sen. Rand Paul Delivers State of the Union Response - Jan. 24, 2012

The Consumer Theory of Prosperity

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:00:00 +0000

.. the usual effect of the attempts of government to encourage consumption, is merely to prevent saving; that is, to promote unproductive consumption at the expense of reproductive (investment), and diminish in total the national wealth by the very means which were intended to increase it.

John Stuart Mill

What You Should Know About School Choice

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:00:00 +0000

What You Should Know About School Choice