On Complexes

Why is it, that the more deeply you probe a subject, the more you find that it is the simplest of concepts that befuddle you?

Two years of A Level Economics and one year of S Level, and I can't even get my head around economic efficiency. It's S Level Welfare Economics that's done it. Most frustrating.

Right, I suppose I'll just open this up to persons unknown, shall I?

Economic efficiency (as we are taught) is apparently made up of productive efficiency (lowest cost of production, AC=MC, maximum output for a given input etc) and allocative efficiency (P=MC, goods most highly valued by consumers produced, P=MU). Notice how only A Level Economics seems to be concerned with these terms.

Everyone else seems to use the concept of Pareto optimality (no one can be made better off unless someone else is made worse off, MRT=MRS, MSC=MSB, etc). Apparently A Level Economics reconciles this by making productive efficiency (PE) + allocative efficiency (AE) = Pareto optimal, which seems fair enough.

The problem comes when you get a PE monopolist. Clearly not Pareto optimal. What if you make him practice marginal cost pricing? AE + PE, but he's lost revenue, so that's not Pareto optimal either. So maybe Pareto optimality is only achieved under perfect competition.

After all, the First Optimality Theorem states "a private property competitive equilibrium, where it exists, is Pareto optimal." So far so good. Pareto optimality only achievable under competition.

So then we are told that every point on the Production Possibility Curve (PPC) is PE but only one point is AE. In other words only one point is Pareto optimal.

But surely that contradicts the First Theorem. After all, there is no unique Pareto optimum. Competition produces an infinite combination of Pareto optimal points. Which gives rise to the Utility Possibility Frontier, which is a locus of all utility combinations, all of them Pareto optimal. That is the whole basis of welfare economics: to attempt to achieve the impossible, to reach the "bliss point", the most Pareto optimal of Pareto optima. How is that possible if there is only one Pareto optimal outcome?

My, what a long rant. Either I'm wrong, or A Level Economics is wrong, or I'm missing something.

On Nails

There is something fascinating about fingernails. They appear rather atavistic, as I'm fairly sure mankind has progressed beyond the time we used our nails as weapons.

Also, I don't think they serve any practical biological purpose, apart from the fact that well-manicured nails may make you more attractive to the opposite sex.

I suppose without fingernails, the amount of mucilage that could build up in your nose could threaten to asphyxiate you. But then again you could always just blow your nose.

So, I've decided to remove my fingernails, plucking them out one by one. You can imagine it's rather painful, the cuticle tends to be connected to quite a lot of tissue and nerve endings. I hope the blood dries up soon.

On Spring

The season when a young man's thoughts turn to death, they say.

Funny, isn't it, how many ingenious ways life has constructed to end itself?

A slow, lingering, painful crawl, as your own cancerous body consumes itself. I wonder if it really does feel like a crab crawling across all of your body.

On the other end, there's the sudden, massive heart-attack that ends it all. It'll be like getting hit by a bus.

On Economics

How to tell you've been doing too much A Level Economics:

When you start wondering why Beard Papa (bizarre Japanese company that makes yummy cream puffs) doesn't appear to be a profit-maximising firm.

How much do they charge for one cream puff? $2.

How much do they charge for five cream puffs? $10.

How much do they charge for ten cream puffs? $20.

Just shows how relevant A Level Economics is.

On Bees

Whee, tomorrow's my GP exam. Can't wait to see what bowel-shattering essays they give us.

"Bowel-shattering"...good phrase, that. Might use it tomorrow.