So you think I'm arguing for a rational market. I am not. Another commenter thinks that I'm ignoring the benefits of getting up and working any kind of job. I am not.
Why would you guys have such diverse opinions on what I'm advocating? Because the problem is not sufficiently stated. That's my entire point. You make one measurement and say "let's work on this directly" and you haven't said much of anything. All you have is correlation. Lots of correlation in the world. It's like the doctor taking your temperature and then applying ice packs because you have a fever. Maybe you have a cold! Maybe you just exercised! Maybe cool water would be better! And so forth. Hell, I don't know what you have, all you've given me is one data point.
If you don't define a problem well, you can't define an experiment to prove that some intervention works or doesn't work. You just have a measurement you want to be different. That may be a huge social problem, but in terms of being useful, it's not a lot of anything. I don't particularly like the fact that high schools graduate so many kids who fail a reading test, but I doubt changing the test is going to alleviate my concern.
Sure, the market is probably irrational to one degree or another. That doesn't mean that we should approach it with an equal degree of irrationality. This very well could be a multi-faceted problem only solved at the level of the individual, like most problems are. Or not. From this article, we don't know one way or another.
Why would you guys have such diverse opinions on what I'm advocating? Because the problem is not sufficiently stated. That's my entire point. You make one measurement and say "let's work on this directly" and you haven't said much of anything. All you have is correlation. Lots of correlation in the world. It's like the doctor taking your temperature and then applying ice packs because you have a fever. Maybe you have a cold! Maybe you just exercised! Maybe cool water would be better! And so forth. Hell, I don't know what you have, all you've given me is one data point.
If you don't define a problem well, you can't define an experiment to prove that some intervention works or doesn't work. You just have a measurement you want to be different. That may be a huge social problem, but in terms of being useful, it's not a lot of anything. I don't particularly like the fact that high schools graduate so many kids who fail a reading test, but I doubt changing the test is going to alleviate my concern.
Sure, the market is probably irrational to one degree or another. That doesn't mean that we should approach it with an equal degree of irrationality. This very well could be a multi-faceted problem only solved at the level of the individual, like most problems are. Or not. From this article, we don't know one way or another.