
It's a Trap: Emperor Palpatine's Poison Pill - musgravepeter
http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.09054
======
uvesten
This post in itself is a trap!

Good attempt to get a the hacker news readers interested in macroeconomy, but
I'll not fall for it!

~~~
elmar
Macroeconomics it's a Keynesian economics fantasy creation, it's a waste of
time to study it.

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Mikeb85
Found the Austrian!

~~~
mindslight
Centralization is the winning team, right up until it's not.

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elmar
Blowing Up the Death Star Didn’t Destroy Economy, Building It Did.

[https://mises.org/blog/blowing-death-star-
didn%E2%80%99t-des...](https://mises.org/blog/blowing-death-star-
didn%E2%80%99t-destroy-economy-building-it-did)

~~~
acqq
How can the arguments from that article be applied to all the stuff produced
for the U.S. military?

1.5 Trillion (with a T) USD for just F-35 Joint Strike Fighter:

[http://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/31/how-
dods-15-trillion-f-35-bro...](http://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/31/how-
dods-15-trillion-f-35-broke-the-air-force.html)

V.s:

"While noted science fiction fan Paul Krugman may point to the number of jobs
that the Death Star created, Hazlitt is also ready with a response. Using the
example of government building an unnecessary bridge:

[F]or every public job created by the bridge project a private job has been
destroyed somewhere else. We can see the men employed on the bridge. We can
watch them at work. The employment argument of the government spenders becomes
vivid, and probably for most people convincing. But there are other things
that we do not see, because, alas, they have never been permitted to come into
existence."

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afterburner
Public investment doesn't crowd out private investment if the private sector
isn't investing anyways. Such as in a depression, or other instances of high
unemployment.

~~~
rplst8
Sure it does. In order to generate the money needed to pay the public workers,
either taxes must be raised or the monetary supply changed. In either case
this affects the private sector economy that shifts investors away from using
the capital they have to do some work.

~~~
xenadu02
Not in a huge recession (or depression). Even in the current environment
capital is extremely cheap and plentiful. In a depression with deflation there
is a strong incentive for capital to stop investing because the literal zero-
risk rate of return is positive (sit back and watch your dollar go further and
further!)

The economy has many variables and assuming that a condition holds for all
situations is ideological, not factual.

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sageikosa
I always figured it'd be easier to find a small moon and retrofit it with
power-plants, engines, weapons and facilities than build a complete small-moon
sized system made of (mostly hollow?) worked metal in orbit. Cheaper and
probably more rugged.

~~~
pavel_lishin
It could be a problem of mass - a Death Star made of composite materials
probably masses quite a bit less than an equivalent-sized moon or asteroid,
(presumably) making it a lot cheaper to shuttle around.

(I freely admit to being more of a Trek than Wars fan, so I don't actually
know how physics has been toyed with in that particular distant galaxy, so I
don't know if my hypothesis is true - maybe they use spindizzy-like motors so
that larger masses are actually more economical to move?)

~~~
kaybe
I think they never talk about it. Star wars is space opera, basically a fairy
tale in space, with the ancient story patterns, and not science fiction.

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philh
(Sorry, pet peeve.)

It's space opera, which is a subgenre of science fiction.

Some people invent definitions of "science fiction" that exclude some works of
science fiction, but that's silly. There's no definition of "science fiction".
It's a concept that we feel out by pointing to things that are "clearly
science fiction" and then sort of deriving a fuzzy decision boundary from
that. If you ask people whether Star Wars is science fiction, most people will
say yes. Robots! Lasers! Space ships! Aliens! It's clearly science fiction.

There are useful definitions, which talk about subsets of science fiction that
don't include Star Wars. But those aren't definitions of science fiction, even
if they use the same words.

~~~
dragonwriter
> It's space opera, which is a subgenre of science fiction.

That's an interesting view, but one which is nullified by:

> There's no definition of "science fiction".

Then the phrase has no meaning or use, and the statements "Star Wars is
science fiction" or "space opera is a subgenre of science fiction" are
semantically null, neither true nor false, just sequences of words that form
grammatically valid sentences that communicate no meaning.

If "space opera is a subgenre of science fiction" is to be true, then "space
opera" and "science fiction" both need to have definitions, and the definition
of the latter must include at least everything included in the definition of
the former. If either or both has no definition, then the statement has no
meaning, and cannot be said to be true or false.

For

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verisimilidude
You're dancing around philh's main point, which I find very much valid. When
we're talking about something popular like "science fiction", you need to
account for two different definitions.

* The written definition, as found in the dictionary and/or agreed upon by the tiny subset of hardcore fans who care.

* The loose popular definition, which varies for each person but tends to include the broadest set of common basics: lasers, robots, spaceships, etc.

When referring to the written definition, it makes sense to say, "It's space
opera, which is a subgenre of science fiction," as long as you're saying it
among folks who appreciate the distinction. But when referring to the popular
imagination, it's not a stretch to say, "There's no definition of "science
fiction," because it means something a little bit different to each person.

~~~
itaibn
I disagree. If philh intended to make the finer distinction you're now making
they should have stated it. As it stands they are stating both that a)
"science fiction" is a fuzzy category, there's no right or wrong in how you
categorize it in specific instances and b) this particular statement on what
is science fiction is right. These two points contradict each other, and
dragonwriter was correct in pointing this out. Just because a certain usage of
a word is not accepted by the majority doesn't mean it's wrong.

~~~
philh
verisimilidude didn't get me, but nor did you or dragonwriter. I'm
distinguishing between definition and meaning. You don't need to be able to
define a word, to know roughly what it means.

The words "science fiction" mean something. They're a map pointing to some
territory. They don't mean the exact same thing to everyone, but close enough
to be useful.

Attempted _definitions_ of "science fiction" attempt to point at the meaning.
They're maps pointing to a map.

When I say "there's no definition", what I really mean is "I've never seen a
definition that points to a good map of the territory".

In particular, a lot of definitions point at maps which don't point to Star
Wars, and those are bad maps.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I'm distinguishing between definition and meaning.

"definition" and "meaning" are the same thing.

> You don't need to be able to define a word, to know roughly what it means.

The degree to which you know what a word means is _precisely_ the specificity
to which you can define it. Those are different phrasings of the same content.

> The words "science fiction" mean something. They're a map pointing to some
> territory. They don't mean the exact same thing to everyone, but close
> enough to be useful.

I kind of disagree with this. The words "science fiction" mean different
enough things to different people (and even to the same people in different
contexts) that those definitions are _not_ close enough to be useful, except
where social convention, mutual agreement, etc., act to align the definitions
to, if not precise alignment, very close alignment within some very narrow
subset of the space of all the definitions the term has when considering all
possible contexts of use.

Often, a key aspect of _making_ the term useful in a particular exchange is
agreeing on a definition.

> When I say "there's no definition", what I really mean is "I've never seen a
> definition that points to a good map of the territory".

I think the problem is that you fail to recognize that the different uses
aren't various fidelities of "maps" pointing to the same "territory", they are
-- to borrow the map/territory metaphor -- maps pointing to different
territories that are share a name, the way the same name might refer in
different contexts to the juridical territory of a city, the territory of the
county of the same name in which the city is located, the territory of a
metropolitan area centered on the city that is not coextensive with it or the
county, or a geographical feature associated with and overlapping the
boundaries of the citiy. A map of any of those territories would differ
critically from the other, not because it is a bad map of the territory, but
because it is a map of a _different_ but _overlapping_ territory.

> In particular, a lot of definitions point at maps which don't point to Star
> Wars, and those are bad maps.

I think its a bad map in the way that a map of Los Angeles that doesn't
include East L.A. [0] is a bad map.

[0] An unincorporated community in Los Angeles County, but not part of the
City of Los Angeles.

~~~
philh
> "definition" and "meaning" are the same thing.

Given that I've explained the distinction I'm making, this is a super
unhelpful thing to say. It makes me disinclined to engage with the rest of
your comment.

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nilkn
This is a silly and basically irrelevant question, but is there a reason that
"sextillion", "billion", "quintillion", etc., are consistently written in all
caps? I've never seen this practice before.

~~~
dimgl
I would assume it's for clarity, but I've never seen this either.

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LanceH
I've seen it mostly in the days of typewriters. I don't know if there was ever
a style that specified it.

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tirant
Conclusion:

"In this case study we found that the Rebel Alliance would need to prepare a
bailout of at least 15%, and likely at least 20%, of GGP in order to mitigate
the systemic risks and the sudden and catastrophic economic collapse. Without
such funds at the ready, it likely the Galactic economy would enter an
economic depression of astronomical proportions."

~~~
LanceH
The death star has no intrinsic economic value. It produces nothing, so it's
destruction shouldn't really change anything. It could only ever be back by
either taxation or the printing of money. This doesn't change whether it
exists or not.

The destruction of the death star may reduce the burden since it would no
longer incur operational costs. On the other hand, it did establish the
operators as a tax authority.

I would expect lending banks to be covered by printed money followed by
corresponding inflation. On the other hand, if the lenders are isolated among
relatively few planets/systems, they could be overtaken by the government and
those systems would bear the brunt of the losses.

The most likely outcome wouldn't be galactic recession, but return to chaos
and war as the grievances between systems would now be unchecked.

~~~
pm90
It has as much economic value as Aircraft Carriers do. It might be an economy
in itself, creating a demand for food and other necessities which must be
procured from somewhere, generating demand. It must also be supplied by
weapons, clothing etc (not sure how durable they are in that world).

But you're right that it can act as an enforcement agency, a tax collector of
sorts. Or maybe an extortionist: "Pay up or we destroy your planet!".

~~~
Renevith
Creating additional demand for other goods is not valuable; quite the
opposite: it's a cost that needs to be balanced against whatever ongoing value
is being provided.

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gosub
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Interstellar_Tra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Interstellar_Trade)
should be in the bibliography

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amyjess
I'm impressed they managed to stick in a "Han shot first" joke.

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tinco
I doubt that president Obama's aides expected to be quoted in economic science
articles on their cost prediction of the construction of a Death Star like
orbital battle station.

If I read the paper right, I think the cost analysis of the Death Star is more
a fun trick to build a real world money analogy in which the final quantity is
of no relevance at all, as they later normalize it to a gross galactic
product, based on the manhattan project.

~~~
pjmorris
The Manhattan project example struck me as an odd idea in the paper, as the
project involved creating a whole industrial infrastructure from scratch [1],
where it seems like the Death Star is a very large spacecraft in a galaxy
filled with spacecraft. The carrier example seems like a better model to
project from.

[1] 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb', Richard Rhodes

~~~
kpil
I guess the Manhattan project represents a feasible limit of the budget of a
large cost strategic weapon in a war-strained economy.

~~~
twoodfin
I don't think that's true: Wikipedia tells me the entire multi-year budget of
the Manhattan Project ended up at around $26B in 2015 dollars. Not chump
change, but certainly if they'd needed more money, more could have been found.
I'd bet at least 10x that was spent on the US Navy every year of the war.

Reminds me of Feynman's stories about testing the limits of what they could
actually requisition. A 10" gold hemisphere ended up as a doorstop after its
experimental use was complete[1]. I also remember reading somewhere about a
(somewhat fanciful) request for some quantity of a rare earth element, to
which the response was that it was more than the entire known global supply.

[1]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=7papZR4oVssC&pg=PA135#v=on...](https://books.google.com/books?id=7papZR4oVssC&pg=PA135#v=onepage&q&f=false)

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Macha
Clearly they need a follow up article on the consequences of building a much
larger multiple of solid gold death stars:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMldEs0rf8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMldEs0rf8o)

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frozenport
The plural pronoun "we" is used despite there only being one author.

~~~
geon
The author + the reader?

~~~
kej
I always heard it explained as the author plus everyone who laid the
groundwork in the field. Sort of a standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants thing.

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kposehn
Technically, it is the Battle of the _Forest Moon_ of Endor in 4ABY.

>_>

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xntrk
I like the subject is "General Finance". It seems like pretty specific case
study to me....

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
I don't know how the q-fin section works, but in the math part of the arxiv
"General Mathematics" is the bucket that the admins put crank articles in
before they get removed.

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dsjoerg
Disney still not calming the F down

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logfromblammo
I am also growing irritated with the excessive promotion that is not only
saturating all media, but also somehow overflowing into everything else. It is
almost to the point where I expect that someone will sneak into my home and
replace my usual clothing with Star Wars 7 promotional apparel as I sleep.

And I also know that since Disney owns Lucasfilm now, it will never, ever
stop. The franchise is part of that entertainment black hole that has become a
never-ending advertisement for itself.

They're going to make this release a success on paper, whether anyone actually
likes the movie or not, because they're already contracted to make two more of
them, plus the toys and video games.

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talmand
I like the theory they are trying to recoup the costs of purchasing the
franchise off the first movie.

Then things may calm down.

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kaiizen
That's an Ad

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brink2death
Seriously, Episode VII spoilers on Hacker News?! Not cool guys!

~~~
pavel_lishin
Where do you see spoilers?

