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The Great Depression (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Ishmael


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What caused and what ended the Great Depression?
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Grant



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Simple Explanation

The Federal Reserve's monetary policy during the 20s caused it - once people realised the boom was fuelled by cheap money and everything was over-priced.

Two incompetent presidents - Hoover and Roosevelt - prolonged it by unnecessary government intervention.

By the time it had run its course, WW2 soaked up unemployment and finished it off.

Very Simple Explanation

The motor car started it because millions of acres of farmland were no longer needed for animal feed, thus depressing farm prices and leading to bank collapses.

What ended it was that the economy eventually adapted to universal car ownership and WW2 soaked up unemployment
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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All wrong.
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Grant



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Don't tell me - bacteria?
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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According to AE, the future is unpredictable. In other words 'nothing' caused the Great Depression, other than statistical happenstance. If you run a whole bunch of years together, let's say, 1800-2000 AD, and you apply a random number generator based on a bell curve peaking at plus 2% (the long run growth of capitalist economies) then you are certain to have little bumps along the road when the number for one, two ... n years in a row goes negative.

In hindsight (ie as soon as we have the figures) we call these 'depressions'. The greatest of these bumps we call The Great Depression, again in hindsight, as soon as the former record is broken. Like we used to call the First World War The Great War until that record was broken.
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Mick Harper
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Notwithstanding the above the Great Depression can have a cause. It's just that that cause will either be a) something entirely beyond our control or b) obvious enough to be factored into the market and therefore guaranteed to be not the cause of the next Great Depression.

However AE also says that there are no fixed rules so the rule that the (economic) future is inherently unpredictable is itself subject to this rule which means that Ishmael is still in with a fighting chance.
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Mick Harper
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What would be really mischievious, and therefore not something I would ever dream of doing myself, is to predict Ishmael's reason for why the Great Depression started. If he was a true AE-ist we would not be able to predict this but if he were a right-wing ideologue (North American late twentieth century variant) we would predict that it would have something to do with government action. We shall see.
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Ishmael


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If ....you apply a random number generator based on a bell curve


That presumes the forces at work are random. Human beings, whatever else might be said, act with something less than purely random purpose.

Mick Harper wrote:
According to AE, the future is unpredictable. In other words 'nothing' caused the Great Depression, other than statistical happenstance.


That's bull crap.

According to AE, every effect has one cause, and the same cause everywhere the effect is seen. That's what AE says.

Wherever we have a phenomenon attributed to multiple causes and the experts are unable to agree on which sets of those causes are truly responsible, we have a high probability of paradigm error. Where disagreement persists for a lengthy period of time it is likely that the one thing upon which everyone actually agrees is the one thing most certain to be wrong.

That's what AE says -- as opposed to what Mick Harper says.
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Ishmael


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Mick Harper wrote:
However AE also says that there are no fixed rules....


Malarkey.

AE is all about rules. The rules of reason.
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Mick Harper
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That's not quite what Mick Harper said.

Wherever we have a phenomenon attributed to multiple causes and the experts are unable to agree on which of those causes are truly responsible, we have a high probability of paradigm error.

My "it's a statistical artefact" would therefore qualify as exposing a paradigm error. (Whether my explanation is right or wrong is another matter.)

Where disagreement persists for a lengthy period of time it is likely that the one thing upon which everyone actually agrees is the one thing most certain to be wrong.

Everyone agrees there's a definite causation, though they disagree as to what that causation is, so once again my solution -- that there isn't a definite causation -- is one that everybody agrees is wrong. (Whether my explanation is right or wrong is another matter.)

So it looks, on Ishmael's evidence, that my arguments are pure AE (as well as being pure Mick Harper, as of course they would have to be to qualify as AE). Thanks, Ishmael, as ever you are a Godsend..
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Ishmael


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Mick Harper wrote:
My "it's a statistical artefact" would therefore qualify as exposing a paradigm error.

No it wouldn't.

Your proposal is but an early manifestation of the next phase of careful ignoral; when the chestnut has been around long enough and remains controversial, the very notion that a solution is possible is eventually dismissed and those who persist with the matter, ridiculed.

Everyone agrees there's a definite causation, though they disagree as to what that causation is, so once again my solution -- that there isn't a definite causation....

Precisely.

Your solution is that there is no solution.

I suppose you are to be congratulated on being ahead of your time.
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Ishmael


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Mick Harper wrote:
Everyone agrees there's a definite causation....


What else does everyone agree on?
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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So you have shifted your ground. You accept it's AE but I just got it wrong. Bur enough of these local scraps, let's hear what your reason actually is. I hope your mention of 'careful ignoral' is not an unconscious acknowledgement that your reason is in fact tantamount to 'government action' and that you putting off the evil day. Heaven forfend etc.
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Mick Harper
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What else does everyone agree on?

That there was in fact a depression ie at least two years of falling output.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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If you're having trouble answering the challenge, simply begin by describing the beginning of the Great Depression in orthodox terminology.
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