Energy executive chides Obama administration

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Its the exact same example as oiling a machine....yet you claimed that was a positive sum game

It's a different matter entirely.  The need for oil is inherent in the machine.  The cost of oiling the machine is fundamentally no different from the cost of acquiring the machine in the first place.  It's a cost you expect to pay in exchange for using the machine.

A scumbag lawyer stealing your IP, thereby forcing you to hire another lawyer you shouldn't need in the first place, isn't productive at all.  Even if we assume a favorable outcome from all of your lawyering and no expenses incurred in the process, all you're left with at the end is what you started with at the beginning, which you should have had all along.

An accurate analogy would be one repairman who degreases your machine, thereby forcing you to hire another repairman to oil it back up again.  Neither of these repairmen are productive.  

[FTA84]

A scumbag lawyer stealing your IP, thereby forcing you to hire another lawyer you shouldn't need in the first place, isn't productive at all.

And this is where you live in a perfect world and I in a pragmatic one as I keep saying.

You say that it is not a gain in productivity "because bad things should never happen!" .  However, once you accept that bad people exists and will do dirty deeds, you only have one choice, to minimize losses.  And everyone seems to be in agreement that minimizing losses causes a net increase in productivity.  Now it is not the productivity level that you would have if bad things never happened, but rainbows and ponies are not abound.

You accept that the machine needs to be oiled because you accept that friction exists.  You deny that patent/contract law needs to be oiled because bad people shouldn't exist.

You can't wish away bad people anymore than you can wish away friction.

Net Productivity in the real world = What you produce - What you could lose + What you didn't lose

Anyway, this is my last post.  I have no desire to argue on the internet -- so I resign from this thread.

[makattak]

And this is where you live in a perfect world and I in a pragmatic one as I keep saying.

You say that it is not a gain in productivity "because bad things should never happen!" .  However, once you accept that bad people exists and will do dirty deeds, you only have one choice, to minimize losses.  And everyone seems to be in agreement that minimizing losses causes a net increase in productivity.  Now it is not the productivity level that you would have if bad things never happened, but rainbows and ponies are not abound.

You accept that the machine needs to be oiled because you accept that friction exists.  You deny that patent/contract law needs to be oiled because bad people shouldn't exist.

Anyway, this is my last post.  I have no desire to argue on the internet -- so I resign from this thread.

Did you not read my post explaining zero-sum games and positive-sum games? Did you not also see how I said police work in the same zero-sum game as do alarm companies, security, locks, locksmiths, etc...?

I never said any of these are unnecessary. I said they are unproductive. They are good and useful things; however, they don't add value.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

How is minimizing losses a net productivity gain?  No matter how successful you are at minimizing losses, even if you achieve zero losses, you'll never have any more than what you started with.

[Werewolf]

How is minimizing losses a net productivity gain?  No matter how successful you are at minimizing losses, even if you achieve zero losses, you'll never have any more than what you started with.

It's a productivity gain in the same way that letting a tax cut expire is not raising taxes.

Yeah - that's the ticket. (at least according to the democrats anyway)

[De Selby]

Lawyers do add productivity, which is why they get paid so much when they work for corporations.  I don't have a horse in that race, because I don't work for corporations.  I make law reform recommendations, which is one way to add value by creating predictability in the legal system.

The lawyer tells the company what its risks are, and importantly in this context, how to approach and structure a transaction so that the result is predictable and that all parties know what the rules will be given the likely set of results.

This isn't that important if you're just loaning your lawnmower to the neighbor.  But pretending that two massive corporations can negotiate, say, a contract to supply materials for manufacturing by just sitting down and "honoring the contract" is absurd.  Both will have a litany of expert terms that everyone needs to be sure mean the same thing, both will want any number of assurances and guarantees that address completely different needs, and both will have very different ideas about what is "fair" for one side or the other to pay should things go wrong.

That's where the lawyers come in - they sit the parties down and make sure that everyone actually understands what the agreement is, so that they can go back to their clients and tell them exactly what they're in for.  It's an expert service like any other; the bosses say what they want, the lawyer translates that into results in the agreement.  No different from "I want this machine to make widgets" to an engineer, who makes a machine for widgets on those instructions.

[De Selby]

Now, as for government and business - Micro has captured exactly what I'm saying.

It is important to consider your own interests even where a corporation is asking for deregulation because, in many cases, that deregulation will simply allow the corporation to wield its government-subsidized hammer with greater ease.  It does not do the free market any good to, for example, remove price controls where there is a government-backed monopoly in charge of all the products subject to the controls.  All that achieves is less money in your pocket, which you might have used to contribute to real reforms.

Likewise, it may sometimes be advantageous to support a government restriction; if, for example, it strangles a major supporter of government welfare that would be a good thing.  It might also just add up to more money in the average pocket, which is also a good thing (people can spend on things they choose to, allowing for more of the GDP to flow to privately chosen endeavors.)

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

The lawyer tells the company what its risks are, and importantly in this context, how to approach and structure a transaction so that the result is predictable and that all parties know what the rules will be given the likely set of results.

If it was actually about understanding and pricing risk, then they'd use actuaries and not lawyers.  They need lawyers because the risks involved are usually artificial constructs of the legal system (i.e. what can the other guy's lawyers do to us) rather than true inherent risks.  You need a lawyer simply because everyone else has a lawyer.  People who don't engage in the lawyer arms races can, and often do, get along quite happily together.

[De Selby]

Headless, you do not understand corporate transactions.

The actuary tells you what the statistical risk is for any given course of action.  The lawyer tells you that you and your other party to the same contract are putting actuaries to work on the same risk analysis.  Big difference there, and it's not work that the actuary can do (or else the corp wouldn't pay lawyers like myself ridiculous fees for the service).

Sorry, but people who do not use lawyers often end up in long, drawn out fights about how to resolve a dispute.   That's why corporations always have lawyers, and always pay them at the top of their scales....no lawyers means bad agreements.