When Can We Start Breaking Things?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Its funny...

You have these free market values, which work well in your ideal vacuum. The peril to your vacuum is apparently automated labor.

If instead you valued basic freedoms and a relatively good standard of living for all, then automated labor would be pretty good. Who wouldn't want to live in a utopian society where all our needs are provided for by robots, and leisure becomes the most important persuit?

Oh my bad, I thought humans have an intrinsic value. I was under the impression that, you know, we have rights and such because we value human life in itself.

I guess you are right though, if you can't provide anything to the state of "worth" than why should we tolerate you living in our society? Or at all for that matter?



Such a brave statement.

PJ is speaking economically - his point is that if your Labour does not have economic value you cannot participate in the economy. For example, what is a ditch digger to do in a world full of mechanical diggers? He's out of work and on the dole.

Ergo if the demand for that future price goes up the price goes up. If I have agreed to pay $X per ton of wheat at Y date and the price goes up... the producer gets more.

No, he gets the same and you get a bigger profit margin.

Indeed but this demand has an upper and lower level bound by the market price of the resource.

basically there is a point beyond which it makes no sense to hedge anymore, this can be driven because the potential price of the resource will eat your future profit.

That will generally mean you will try to price below tomorrows price(assuming market price growth) and will probably have to offer something above todays price.

However not everyone prices for profit sometime it's for access, for example a brewery needs barley so they offer a high price to encourage planting for a stable supply of quality barley. (although usually it's a straight contract for delivery at a set price)

I don't think he really gets it.

SFSG - the Futures Market is a Market for contracts. The price going up and down on the market is not the price the farmer gets, it is the price the traders pay eachother to hold that contract until delivery. The trick of the Futures market is to buy a Future which was set at a middling price when everyone thinks that price has overshot, traders sell the Future at a loss and as a result you make a bigger profit than the person who originally held the Future when the price rises again.