SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

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Vanya
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Re: SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

Post by Vanya »

Rex Kramer wrote:
Uncle Jeff wrote:If there was a problem with the question, it was the claim that high demand can cause a shortage. High demand can cause a prohibitively high price. A shortage results from someone (usually a government) using force to prevent price from rising to an equilibrium level.
Just so I'm clear on this: So if there's a bad harvest and a million people want to eat but only enough food to satisfy the minimum requirements of 100,000, it's not a shortage so long as the people who own the food are free to charge such a high price that only the wealthy survive? That is dismal.

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How else would you decide who survives?
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Re: SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

Post by --Pete »

Hi,
Rex Kramer wrote: Just so I'm clear on this: So if there's a bad harvest and a million people want to eat but only enough food to satisfy the minimum requirements of 100,000, it's not a shortage so long as the people who own the food are free to charge such a high price that only the wealthy survive? That is dismal.
It's not that you have a shortage of food, it's that you have a surplus of population.

Kidding aside, it makes little difference how you choose, you end up with 900,000 dead. In a situation like that, is there any non dismal way to select the survivors?

I also don't think that wealth will matter as much in that situation. I suspect that determination, anger, and armament will be more important.

However, returning to the original discussion, the question is about a technical definition, not a moral value.

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Post by OldSchoolChamp »

Rex Kramer wrote:f there's a bad harvest and a million people want to eat but only enough food to satisfy the minimum requirements of 100,000, it's not a shortage so long as the people who own the food are free to charge such a high price that only the wealthy survive? That is dismal.

I’m sure you meant this as a deliberate allusion to Thomas Carlyle’s characterization of economics as “the dismal science,” but did you also realize that this (in reference to Malthus’s theory of overpopulation outstripping the food supply) was precisely the argument that led him to that famous phrase?

In our own day we have a parallel example in the pricing of prescription drugs. Some life-saving cancer medications sell for thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per dose. I find it hard to imagine that such prices are justified by the actual cost of production, or even of the research and development behind it. No, it’s just simple supply and demand: people whose very lives depend on receiving a particular treatment tend to have a very high demand curve. The manufacturers charge those exorbitant prices simply because they can; it’s the moral equivalent of tossing a life preserver to a drowning man in exchange for the deed to his house. Dismal, indeed.
 
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Re: SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

Post by Vanya »

--Pete wrote: Kidding aside, it makes little difference how you choose, you end up with 900,000 dead. In a situation like that, is there any non dismal way to select the survivors?
And where would you bury them?
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Re: SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

Post by Volante »

Vanya wrote:
--Pete wrote: Kidding aside, it makes little difference how you choose, you end up with 900,000 dead. In a situation like that, is there any non dismal way to select the survivors?
And where would you bury them?
"Bury"?

If you've got 900,000 dead out of 1,000,000...I don't think those remaining 100,000 are going to spend the better part of the next few years digging up holes and making lye, especially since that much death would get pretty putrid after a few weeks. I figure either dumping at sea, incineration or Soylent Green would be the three options.

Then once society's stabilized they get a huge memorial.
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Re: SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

Post by Rex Kramer »

Vanya wrote:How else would you decide who survives?
What does that matter? My point was only that it seems inhuman to decide whether or not to characterize a lack of resources as a "shortage" based on who gets to enjoy the resources. If it makes you feel less threatened, I could posit a world in which a lack of resources is considered a "shortage" unless the most ruthlessly amoral killers are the ones who end up with the food, or a world in which such a lack is considered a "shortage" unless people with blood type AB end up with the food. Whatever -- it still makes no sense to say, "We had no shortage of food -- the chosen few lived!"

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Re: Your money or your life

Post by Rex Kramer »

OldSchoolChamp wrote:I’m sure you meant this as a deliberate allusion to Thomas Carlyle’s characterization of economics as “the dismal science,” but did you also realize that this (in reference to Malthus’s theory of overpopulation outstripping the food supply) was precisely the argument that led him to that famous phrase?
I did, and I did not. Every once in a while I am more savant than idiot. :)

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Re: SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

Post by --Pete »

Hi,
Volante wrote:
Vanya wrote:
--Pete wrote: ... select the survivors?
And where would you bury them?
"Bury"?
Think about it.

--Pete

PS I want to be buried with the survivors. ;)
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Re: SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

Post by Vanya »

Rex Kramer wrote:
Vanya wrote:How else would you decide who survives?
What does that matter? My point was only that it seems inhuman to decide whether or not to characterize a lack of resources as a "shortage" based on who gets to enjoy the resources. If it makes you feel less threatened, I could posit a world in which a lack of resources is considered a "shortage" unless the most ruthlessly amoral killers are the ones who end up with the food, or a world in which such a lack is considered a "shortage" unless people with blood type AB end up with the food. Whatever -- it still makes no sense to say, "We had no shortage of food -- the chosen few lived!"

Rex
Well, in Uncle Jeff's world, there would never be a shortage because price would rise to decrease demand until demand matches supply. Any other way to distribute resources is arbitrary and as Jeff said would probably require force behind it. See: Holodomor.
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Re: Shortage

Post by Uncle Jeff »

Rex Kramer wrote:So if there's a bad harvest and a million people want to eat but only enough food to satisfy the minimum requirements of 100,000, it's not a shortage so long as the people who own the food are free to charge such a high price that only the wealthy survive?
In economics, a "shortage" is the absence of supply at the price set in the market (a buyer has the money to pay for a loaf of bread, but there isn't one for sale). When prices are fixed by force below market equilibrium, store shelves are swept clean and the affordable price is cold comfort to those who get nothing. When prices float, supplies are stretched out and supplemented so that the market does not run out completely, but that may likewise be cold comfort to the unfortunate soul who can't afford the price.

First, rising price convinces even the wealthy to eat that minimum you mentioned, otherwise the bad harvest would feed even fewer than the potential 100,000 survivors. Second, rising price rewards anyone who can find substitutes, like fish, wild game, Euell Gibbons' pine trees or even lab-manufactured sugar to feed more than the 100,000 supported by the bad harvest. Maybe rising price would convince farmers to forgo gov't subsidies and stop turning corn into ethanol.

Rising price would also convince ranchers to cull livestock. That would not only liberate animal feed to become emergency rations, but it would give us a one-time boost in animal protein.

Finally, rising price attracts imports. Other countries' food prices are pushed up some by that, convincing them to share their food (in exchange for something else that the bad-harvest country can still make).

Even so, a free market does not guarantee that everyone's needs are met, only that (without some break from the "ideal" free market) supply won't be exhausted. Feeding everyone is a different concept, important but not a "shortage" in the economic sense. Politicians must grapple with that terrible truth, hopefully without inflicting more damage than they avoid.

Where you see starvation (e.g. Ireland in the 1800s, Ukraine under Stalin, or the US under FDR), a gov't is interfering with free trade (setting prices, blocking imports / exports, plowing produce into the ground etc). You'd be hard pressed to find an historical famine in a place where prices were unrestricted, property rights protected, and goods/information flowing freely.
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Re: SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

Post by Volante »

--Pete wrote:Hi,
Volante wrote:
Vanya wrote: And where would you bury them?
"Bury"?
Think about it.

--Pete

PS I want to be buried with the survivors. ;)
I was under the impression Vanya was referring to the first part of your quote:
--Pete wrote:Kidding aside, it makes little difference how you choose, you end up with 900,000 dead.
Also: Rex, go check out our W4D6 responses. Best part, look at the times :lol:
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Re: Shortage

Post by Rex Kramer »

Uncle Jeff wrote:You'd be hard pressed to find an historical famine in a place where prices were unrestricted, property rights protected, and goods/information flowing freely.
What about the Great Famine of 1315-1317?

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Re: Shortage

Post by Rex Kramer »

Uncle Jeff wrote:First, rising price convinces even the wealthy to eat that minimum you mentioned, otherwise the bad harvest would feed even fewer than the potential 100,000 survivors.
Ho ho, this makes me laugh. Do you know any wealthy people?

Rex

P.S. -- Let me just make clear, before anyone accuses me of being anti-rich or communist or something, that my point is that the wealthy have no more special grace than ordinary folks -- not that they are specially evil. When ordinary folks see that something they consider important is scarce -- as evidenced by rising prices -- they often buy more of it, not less, to make sure they don't run out themselves -- at least they buy more until they don't have the money for it. The wealthy are no more sainted in attitude, and less like to run out of money. That's because they are wealthy. So, no; while I know there are plenty of altruistic wealthy people who would cut back, or even share, I don't believe that, on the whole, "the wealthy" would end up eating that minimum amount.
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Re: SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

Post by hbomb1947 »

So, what is the intended answer for the 4.6 15-pointer -- Baden or Baden-Württemberg?
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Re: SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

Post by Vanya »

hbomb1947 wrote:So, what is the intended answer for the 4.6 15-pointer -- Baden or Baden-Württemberg?
I dunno, but the clue referred to a region, not a state (Baden-Württemberg), and Baden was a Grand Duchy.

In any case I suspect DoT will accept either. But will he accept Baden-Baden?
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Re: SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

Post by BoK »

hbomb1947 wrote:So, what is the intended answer for the 4.6 15-pointer -- Baden or Baden-Württemberg?
I think it's Baden. Baden-Württemberg is the modern-day state, while Baden is the region that was a grand duchy in the 19th Century. That being said it wouldn't surprise me greatly if DoT accepted both answers.

ETA: Apparently, Vanya types faster than I do. With regards to Baden-Baden, I don't think it should be accepted since that's a town, not a region or a state. That would be like asking for the state which Tulsa is in and accepting the answer Oklahoma City. That being said, I have been on the receiving end of DoT's largesse a time or two so I won't complain either way.
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Re: SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

Post by Rex Kramer »

Volante wrote:Also: Rex, go check out our W4D6 responses. Best part, look at the times :lol:
I can't believe it was just us! Obviously our tastes are rarefied.

To elevate the rest of the Board:

Wisconsinish: http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

Hufflepuffish: http://thefifthdistrict.com/potter/

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Re: SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

Post by alamble »

Good lord, that's more annoying than the Hamster Dance.
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Re: SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

Post by dhkendall »

Vanya wrote:
hbomb1947 wrote:So, what is the intended answer for the 4.6 15-pointer -- Baden or Baden-Württemberg?
I dunno, but the clue referred to a region, not a state (Baden-Württemberg), and Baden was a Grand Duchy.

In any case I suspect DoT will accept either. But will he accept Baden-Baden?
Which is why I went with "Baden", as I figured it could pass muster for either intended response.
Rex Kramer wrote:To elevate the rest of the Board:

Wisconsinish: http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

Hufflepuffish: http://thefifthdistrict.com/potter/
Yay! My Safari on Mac isn't loading it! (Boo, my Firefox on Mac is.) (And alamble, Hampster [sic] Dance is worse, but then I haven't subjected myself to repeated viewings of Rex's links yet.)
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Re: SHC Round 4 Instant Replay Thread (SPOILERS)

Post by alamble »

Well, part of the annoyance of the Ham(p)ster Dance was the deliberate misspelling of the word hamster, which I refuse to continue to perpetrate. I have no particular animosity towards hamsters or badgers in general. Heck, one of my favorite children's book characters is a badger!
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