Comment by feoren | Hacker News Reader

Comment by feoren | Hacker News Reader

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> Or you could recognize that "essential" has a meaning in economic/financial terms

I do not recognize that. That is the point of my argument. A large portion of economics is rich people trying to justify their own greed as being moral. Classifying goods as "essential" vs. "non-essential" is a way of telling poor people what they're allowed to have, and always has been. A good goes from "non-essential" to "essential" only when rich people are worried they'll get guillotined if the poor don't have access to it.

I'm aware that it has a definition in terms of what people are able to stop purchasing when their income goes down, or how consumption relates to income levels in general, but the former is a problematic definition for many reasons, and the latter does not actually coincide particularly well with the categories of goods people list off when they think of "essential goods". Humans in real life just don't respond to changing conditions the same way the little econs in your head do; they way you've decided they "should".

Ever heard that humans don't "behave logically"? Yeah, that's economists with overly simplified models being annoyed that (mostly) poor people don't act the way that they've decided poor people should act. See the trend?

Ask four economists write out a list of "essential goods" and you'll get five different lists. That is not how definitions work. Ask four mathematicians whether something is a Commutative Ring or not and they'll all agree. That's a definition. "Essential" does not have a definition. Its meaning shifts depending on which group the author of the Wall Street Journal op-ed you're reading wants to villainize this time.

> Ask four mathematicians whether something is a Commutative Ring or not and they'll all agree.

Amusingly, there are at least 3 different definitions of commutative ring.

The principal issue is whether it must have a 1 (unity, ie a multiplicative inverse). Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commutative_ring as well as most modern sources insist on this.

Britannica https://www.britannica.com/science/ring-mathematics#ref89421... as well as many older sources (such as Noether's original definition and van der Waerden) do not insist that the ring have a 1. Even first-edition Bourbaki didn't have 1!

Finally, if you do have a 1, then sometimes people include the condition that 0 != 1, ie the trivial/zero ring is deemed not a [commutative] ring. This is somewhat hard to find, but is relatively common among people who specifically define the concept of "ring with identity" (eg Zariski+Samuel). I have also found it unqualified (ie, just in the definition of "commutative ring") in the wild, eg in "Handbook of Mathematical Logic" by Barwise or "The Math You Need" by Mack.

(I agree with people like Conrad and Poonen that rings should have a 1. And I guess that the zero ring is in fact a [commutative] ring.)

The moral of the story is: "be careful with simile and analogy". Otherwise you get your arse handed to you on a plate and your very reasonable argument gets lost in the weeds 8)

In these circles is is generally safer to stick with car analogies.

> I do not recognize that. That is the point of my argument.

And my point is that you're going to continue to be frustrated and disappointed by refusing to use the same terminology for a topic as everyone else.

> A large portion of economics is rich people trying to justify their own greed as being moral.

Nope, but that view explains most of your reasoning.

> Classifying goods as "essential" vs. "non-essential" is a way of telling poor people what they're allowed to have, and always has been. A good goes from "non-essential" to "essential" only when rich people are worried they'll get guillotined if the poor don't have access to it.

Good lord. Which of these is more essential for human life? Food, or a luxury car? Basic medicine, or a trip to a casino? No one is stopping "poor people" from buying things from either category, but people clearly prioritize one over the other when funds are limited.

> I'm aware that it has a definition in terms of what people are able to stop purchasing when their income goes down, or how consumption relates to income levels in general, but the former is a problematic definition for many reasons, and the latter does not actually coincide particularly well with the categories of goods people list off when they think of "essential goods". Humans in real life just don't respond to changing conditions the same way the little econs in your head do; they way you've decided they "should".

So you do acknowledge the actual definition, you just refuse to accept it because you'd rather rage against the machine? Have fun with that.

> Ever heard that humans don't "behave logically"? Yeah, that's economists with overly simplified models being annoyed that (mostly) poor people don't act the way that they've decided poor people should act. See the trend?

Rich people also don't behave logically, for the record. It's almost like this class war you're describing is a figment of your imagination.

> Ask four economists write out a list of "essential goods" and you'll get five different lists. That is not how definitions work. Ask four mathematicians whether something is a Commutative Ring or not and they'll all agree. That's a definition. "Essential" does not have a definition. Its meaning shifts depending on which group the author of the Wall Street Journal op-ed you're reading wants to villainize this time.

Congratulations on your discovery that economics is not a hard science.

You already said that essential does have a widely agreed upon definition above, so the rest of this rant seems odd.

> Which of these is more essential for human life? ... So you do acknowledge the actual definition ...

And you don't acknowledge the actual definition, or you would have been asking about price elasticity, not what is or is not essential for human life. Plenty of people will give up Chinese takeout before they give up GPUs.

> Food, or a luxury car?

The luxury car, because it's grandma's old classic that Tom has kept in good enough shape to drive to his job, and he doesn't know how he'll get there when it finally breaks down, but he doesn't really have a penchant for fancy food and gets by with some cheap staples he prepares at home.

> Basic medicine, or a trip to a casino?

The trip to the casino, because Judy is getting evicted, and doesn't have any friends or family she can stay with, and won't survive the winter on the street, and hitting it big at Blackjack is unlikely, but desperate times call for desperate measures. And although she does sometimes take Tylenol for headaches, she's otherwise in good health and doesn't have any ongoing medicinal needs.

What are we doing? You're deciding what other people need for their lives?

> Rich people also don't behave logically, for the record.

Of course they do, because however they behave, they have an army of op-ed writers, sycophants, and apologists who spew out post-hoc justification for their behavior, and viola, their behavior turns out to have been rational all along.

Meanwhile, if the poor (and we are always talking about the poor when we are talking about "essential") stubbornly show an unwillingness to stop purchasing some good that some economist has decided is "non-essential", they're villainized and called irrational. Many of them even have refrigerators!

> It's almost like this class war you're describing is a figment of your imagination.

You choose now, in 2025, to deny that there's a class war? That's certainly a take.

> And you don't acknowledge the actual definition, or you would have been asking about price elasticity, not what is or is not essential for human life. Plenty of people will give up Chinese takeout before they give up GPUs.

You just listed two examples of discretionary items (prepared food is generally not considered a consumer staple).

> The luxury car, because it's grandma's old classic that Tom has kept in good enough shape to drive to his job, and he doesn't know how he'll get there when it finally breaks down, but he doesn't really have a penchant for fancy food and gets by with some cheap staples he prepares at home.

You're 0 for 2. That's not a luxury car, unless Grandma had a love of rare exotics that he should probably sell to buy food and a reliable car.

> The trip to the casino, because Judy is getting evicted, and doesn't have any friends or family she can stay with, and won't survive the winter on the street, and hitting it big at Blackjack is unlikely, but desperate times call for desperate measures. And although she does sometimes take Tylenol for headaches, she's otherwise in good health and doesn't have any ongoing medicinal needs.

And now you're 0 for 3. Your earlier comments are making more sense.

> What are we doing? You're deciding what other people need for their lives?

Most humans understand what is essential to sustain human life and what is not. In fact, every functioning adult I've ever met does.

The implications of the fact that you don't can be left for you or other readers to decuce.

> Of course they do, because however they behave, they have an army of op-ed writers, sycophants, and apologists who spew out post-hoc justification for their behavior, and viola, their behavior turns out to have been rational all along.

> Meanwhile, if the poor (and we are always talking about the poor when we are talking about "essential") stubbornly show an unwillingness to stop purchasing some good that some economist has decided is "non-essential", they're villainized and called irrational. Many of them even have refrigerators!

Not remotely true.

> You choose now, in 2025, to deny that there's a class war? That's certainly a take.

Whether there is or isn't a class war is debatable, but the one you've concocted that is led by economists is certainly not happening.

> That's not a luxury car

So an "old classic" (I was thinking a Mercedes) stops being a luxury car as soon as a poor person inherits it? Do you see how nebulous these categories are? How easy it is to just move the line whenever it suits your argument?

> Whether there is or isn't a class war is debatable, but the one you've concocted that is led by economists is certainly not happening.

I'll give you an economist who led the charge: Donald Regan, Ronald Reagan's secretary of the treasury and chief of staff. This was back in a time when people felt they needed to come up with a plausible-sounding excuse to strip poor people of their rights and keep them stuck in a cycle poverty. The banner was "Reaganomics", or "Trickle-Down Economics". You're so incredulous that the discipline of economics has anything to do with a class war that was largely started and still fought under the name "Trickle-Down Economics"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Regan

> So an "old classic" (I was thinking a Mercedes) stops being a luxury car as soon as a poor person inherits it? Do you see how nebulous these categories are? How easy it is to just move the line whenever it suits your argument?

No, it stops being a luxury car when it's old and no longer luxurious. Luxury cars are very expensive to maintain, and the poor person in question should absolutely sell a historic luxury car and buy a Honda Civic (or similar) and use the remaining funds for other essentials.

> I'll give you an economist who led the charge: Donald Regan, Ronald Reagan's secretary of the treasury and chief of staff. This was back in a time when people felt they needed to come up with a plausible-sounding excuse to strip poor people of their rights and keep them stuck in a cycle poverty. The banner was "Reaganomics", or "Trickle-Down Economics". You're so incredulous that the discipline of economics has anything to do with a class war that was largely started and still fought under the name "Trickle-Down Economics"?

So one guy (who wasn't an economist BTW) who died over 20 years ago and whose ideas have been long abandoned is your big example? Come on.

Your entire premise is ridiculous and your hyperfocus on blaming the rich for every ill in the world completely negates any shred of a valid argument you might have.

> the poor person in question should

So you are telling poor people how they should live their lives after all. The core point I made that set this whole thing off. It turns out this whole thing actually is an excuse to decide how poor people should live. Thank you for proving my point for me.

> So one guy (who wasn't an economist BTW) who died over 20 years ago and whose ideas have been long abandoned is your big example?

Are you kidding about being abandoned? Reaganomics has not been abandoned, it has been enshrined as the idol of American capitalism. Almost every element of the ongoing and ever-accelerating enrichening of the rich and the disenfranchisement of the disenfranchised can be traced to ideas put in place during the Reagan administration. And the guy who invents "supply side economics" and the economic policy of the United States for the next 50 decades is an economist, regardless of what his piece of paper says. There are plenty of Chairmen of the Fed that you could look at under a similar light, and they are mostly "official" economists.

> So you are telling poor people how they should live their lives after all. The core point I made that set this whole thing off. It turns out this whole thing actually is an excuse to decide how poor people should live. Thank you for proving my point for me.

I'm not telling anyone how they should live their lives. I'm explaining why the person in your example is making an objectively dumb decision, though it's one I think they should be allowed to make.

Your point only exists in your mind, where you are obsessed with "the rich" telling "the poor" what to do no matter what is actually being discussed.

> Are you kidding about being abandoned? Reaganomics has not been abandoned, it has been enshrined as the idol of American capitalism. Almost every element of the ongoing and ever-accelerating enrichening of the rich and the disenfranchisement of the disenfranchised can be traced to ideas put in place during the Reagan administration. And the guy who invents "supply side economics" and the economic policy of the United States for the next 50 decades is an economist, regardless of what his piece of paper says. There are plenty of Chairmen of the Fed that you could look at under a similar light, and they are mostly "official" economists.

I know it's cool in progressive circles to blame every problem in modern society on Reagan, but the MAGA crowd doesn't care about supply side economics so no one is advocating for it any longer.

And no, the guy was not an economist. He had no training as one nor ever acted as one in a professional capacity. He worked in finance and as an executive in industry and government.

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