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I commented elsewhere but I studied Econ in college because it was a particular interest of mine. I hated it. I also wanted to understand it, so that I could know why it rubbed me the wrong way and live intentionally to push against it.

There was this moment when I was in a grad course and the professor was talking about self-optimizing markets. That's when it hit me. I literally stood up in the class, interrupted everything and went like "wait, the math isn't optimizing for income inequality". It was kind of funny watching more than 100 little economists in training suddenly start tearing apart the equation at once. You could literally hear the sound of frantic spreadsheeting and charting.

In the end, the professor himself said that it was true, you could achieve a fully "optimized" economy with literally everything being owned by a handful of people. Made me think.

How is a system supposed to be beneficial for us all when the mathematics at its core don't actually consider societal benefit?

If an economy is fully "optimized" but everyone is sick, sad, and angry - is it actually optimal?

A mathematical model can make sense without being sensible. This is why I have an implicit distrust of algorithms and other systems of optimization.

You can be pareto optimal / efficient without a everyone having a 1/n share.

The idea of optimization is that everyone gets the best possible set.

E.g. Alice prefers tomatoes, Bob prefers mangos. Thus, Alice ends up with 100% of the tomatoes, Bob with 0%.

Unfortunately it's mostly the externalities and irrationality / wrong assumptions that fail us.

An economy is not optimal (or pareto efficient) iff people are disproportionally sick, sad and angry because of economical reasons (and don't trade this sickness, sadness and angriness for something that gives them more utility).

That's the cold, hard truth of capitalism: It converges on the rich-get-richer, economies-of-scale winner-takes-all endgames.

Used to be you needed lots of skilled workers to get anything done. You had to pay them. Now with automation and tech and specialization due to global free trade, you only need skilled workers in a handful of professions, the value of doing anything else steadily decreases.

the concept of no-skill workers is a myth

> How is a system supposed to be beneficial for us all when the mathematics at its core don't actually consider societal benefit?

It isn't, but you could vote someone into power that makes it so. Theoretically, of course. In practice, it seems to me that people like a show of muscle and witty rhetoric more than a show of good math.

Most commonly, it's the poor that vote for the worst possible options which are projected to be the worst for the country (both rich and poor, and often disproportionately the poor). (Where "poor", to keep things in perspective, means someone living off of benefits or minimum wage, i.e. comfortable compared to the richest ten percent in an average African country.)

Not that the rich always vote cleverly, I don't have to look further than my own parents and grandparents to see that much, but e.g. christian parties are still better than voting for xenophobia and racism (e.g. Wilders), both if you follow the math on what immigration nets us and if you simply consider the amount of worldsuck.

> you could achieve a fully "optimized" economy with literally everything being owned by a handful of people.

Wait, no. That would only be true if all the other people were unable to perform any valuable work. Otherwise it would be more efficient to hire them and profit by selling their goods/services to one of the other handful of rich people.

>Honest real estate agents who try to match real needs to real properties were totally displaced (or outcompeted) by agents who spam fake ads in order to secure an exclusive contract with unfair terms and sell you the biggest property you can afford with no regard of your actual needs. The Fed in turn backstops any losses and buys toxic mortgages perpetuating the scheme.

There's lot's to criticize about real eastate agents but this ain't it. Try taking huge commissions for a disproportionate amount of work from the value of the house for one.

It's only disproportionate for buyer's agents in a buyer's market or seller's agents in a seller's market when the cost of a crap shack is $800k+ - which unfortunately is a growing part of the country.

If you're unaware - the brokerages can take up to 40% of the agent's commission. That's where the real rip off is.

There's lots of places where the median home is still <$250k. It's a lot of work to sell that house (in a buyer's market). In a seller's market - it's a lot of showings and offers before something gets accepted.

70% of 3% of $250k = $5250

Typically, R/E agents are 1099 - which means they're paying ~10% more income tax in the employer's side of Medicare and Social Security.

That's $4446 after payroll tax but BEFORE income tax.

You're lucky if you're selling >1 house a month.

Just because real estate agents aren't writing code and aren't making doo-dads, doesn't mean they're doing nothing, or that their time is worthless.

> real estate

The financial incentives to an agent are to sell as many houses as they can as quickly as possible. Every sale is an end to ongoing time being "wasted" dealing with potential buyers. Every deal is money in the bank now. Agents don't really care about the price beyond talking the seller and the buyer to agree to some number (overpriced or underpriced is mostly irrelevant).

The US system appears batshit crazy to me - very adversarial? In New Zealand there is usually only a sellers agent: it is rare to have a buyers agent. Buying a house in New Zealand has less percentage cost in total fees, from what I can tell. Total agent fees are commonly around 4% for the first $400k of the sale price (median house price $800k in NZ) and around 2% for the remainder. We have real estate companies advertising lower rates. Plus maybe 1% for marketing? https://www.nzherald.co.nz/property/what-does-it-cost/YO4VZM...

real estate agents aren't responsible for people overspending. come on