Things That Can Both Be True - Mind-Blowing Partial List

Beware of false contradictions. It can be the case that:

• One is against the drug war (wants to completely legalize all drugs) and is against the use of most currently illicit drugs.
• One believes that prostitution should be legalized and that prostitution is morally wrong and culturally damaging.
• One finds many of the actions and policies of the Trump administration have been bad and many of the actions and policies of the Obama administration ON THE SAME ISSUES were bad. 
• One wants the best for low-wage workers and one is against the minimum wage. 
• One desires a strong, vibrant job market and one views jobs as an economic cost rather than a benefit. 
• One believes the government-commanded lockdowns were absolutely bad policies and voluntary social distancing is absolutely good behavior in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. 
• One thinks the United States of America is a great country and the U.S. government with the support of the people of the United States has done many very wrong things. 
• One believes a highly successful person worked very hard while being very smart and they benefited greatly from luck. 
• One sees college education is very valuable to college graduates and it is not the best option for a very large percentage of college attendees.
• One thinks college education is valuable to society and society would be better off with a lot less college education.
• One strongly supports freedom of speech and strongly disagrees with the specific speech that freedom of speech is protecting.

Updated to add:

• One believes that the use of fossil fuels meaningfully contributes to a negative effect on climate change and that the use of fossil fuels has been a wonderfully positive thing for humanity and the Earth.

Bargains Not Available

Just a little exercise in futile thinking (aren’t we all doing a bit of that nowadays?). I would swap these if I could. 

My rough rules on these were that they have to be relatively equal in stature and be games that I experienced—either agony of defeat or thrill of victory. 

I would lose this . . .                                                        To win this . . .

OU vs KU 1995                                                                  OU vs KU 1988

OU vs Nebraska 1986 & OU vs Wash State 2003                  OU vs Miami 1988*

OU vs OSU 1988                                                                OU vs Boise State 2007

OU vs Texas 2018                                                              OU vs Georgia 2017

OU vs Texas 1996                                                              OU vs Texas 1984

OU vs Nebraska 2010 & OU vs Alabama 2014                      OU vs Florida 2009*

OU vs Auburn 2017 & OU vs Texas 1993                              OU vs LSU 2003*

*As they all could be argued, I would admit these are the most arguable as unfair trades.

Partial List of Meaningless, Vague Phrases

I like foreign films. 

I am listening to the experts.

I want to work for a non profit. 

I support worthy causes. 

Failure is not an option. 

The cost going forward doesn't matter because if we retreat now, we will give up everything we have fought for up to this point. 

The team had the "momentum". 

I support sustainability.

This is no time to panic. 

My country right or wrong.

It is what it is.

Rules are rules.

Those who have been successful should give back to society.

We are prepared to do whatever it takes.

I buy American-made goods. 

This time is different. 

We've been here before. 

We should listen to the science. 

If it saves just one life...

Partial List of The Best Ways to Die

Perhaps apropos in a time of pandemic. Meant not to discourage or disparage. We all will do this eventually.

• As a martyr
• In a noble sacrifice
• For a crime one didn’t commit
• By plunging into a black hole
• In vain fighting for a great cause
• During a peaceful sleep after a life well lived

The Competitive-Efficiency Paradox

A more competition-friendly society will be more efficient (extract more wealth from a given level of resource consumption) which will make it wealthier which will allow it to have more inefficient production. For example, my ability to more cheaply purchase furniture from the finest woodworking craftsmen in the world allows me to myself dabble in woodworking at an uncompetitive, amateur level.

There are two sources of this effect:

1. My own wealth growing--call this the personal-income effect.
2. Society's wealth growing--call this the production effect.

I am generally concerned here with the second of these; although, the first is a derivative of the second thus it is in play as well. There are countless examples throughout culture and industry.

Think about this in capital markets. In the past few decades retail-investor trading costs in stocks have plummeted to now be explicitly zero. (Note: if your broker is still charging you a commission for trades, you might need to explore your options.) This massive reduction in cost has allowed a lot more trading to happen--both more traders especially amateurs and more frequent trading. Did this result in increased price-discovery efficiency? Probably some up until a point. But the next new person trading AAPL (Apple Corporation's stock) probably is not bringing new insight into the market. More likely that person is lowering average accuracy ever so slightly. Otherwise, why weren't they trading before this point There is probably enough liquidity in Apple stock so that is not a benefit of an additional trader's trades either.

Here we are suggesting another aspect of this paradox: without easy market entry/exit, we cannot maintain competitive markets. Yet, the next entrant into a highly competitive market is probably likely to be uncompetitive. Ban additional trading or traders for Apple stock and you will unravel quickly the efficiency we have come to enjoy in this highly-competitive market.

Back to the original paradox, is there more efficiency or less? To resolve the problem we should consider it as a continual process as opposed to being linear and finite. We should also expand our understanding of what ends we are achieving. The socialist's fallacy would be to look at two firms both producing cereal and declare this inefficient. "Obviously we could eliminate the duplication as well as the advertising costs by combining the firms," they would proclaim. But this would break the very process that allows for the desired efficiency (higher and higher production at lower and lower cost).

Imagine how disastrous a true socialists should view a marketplace like Etsy. Here the line between hobbyist and profitable craftsman is magnificently blurred. Magnificent because it is the essence of a culturally and materially rich society where experimentation is both allowed and enabled. A society that embraces competition necessarily invites dynamism. This is a foundational principle and an essential characteristic of growth. It is Schumpeter's creative destruction. It is a gift not a curse.

Partial List of Reasons I Can’t Take You Seriously

...(i.e., you can’t have it both ways.)

• You were giving Trump credit (completely dismissive) as the economy was very good 2017-2019, but completely dismissive (strongly blaming Trump) as the economy fell into depression-level problems in 2020. [related]
• You gave Obama credit (didn’t recognize a connection or basically denied it was the case) as the economy recovered following the Great Recession, but refuse to give Trump credit (basically attribute to Trump) as the economy is quite strong for the first three years of Trump’s presidency. 
• You were pro (anti) war under Obama but are the opposite under Trump.
• You were fine with (up in arms about) Obama’s trips such as Hawaii and Michelle’s trip to Spain but are the opposite about Trump’s such as Mar-a-Lago. 
• You were nonchalant (worried) about Obama’s extensions of executive power but the opposite about Trump’s. 
• You were a strong supporter (opponent) of free trade but reversed positions when Trump came into office.
• You want to severely limit and control immigration (guns) based on a few tragic examples but you do not want to do so for guns (immigration).
• You identified and were upset with (lived in denial about) the corruption in the Obama administration but you deny (identify and are upset with) the corruption in the Trump administration. 

Despite or Because

I would like to introduce a new tagline "Despite or Because"--a method of deeper-level thinking.

Specifically, analysis attains sophistication when it is distinguishing between causation and correlation and answering the question: "Is [this result] in spite of or because of [that]?".

The example du jour is COVID-19.

As we stand today a lot remains to be seen including if our efforts will prove successful. Assuming success, we would like to know if the successful flattening of the curve and much below forecast CFR was in fact because of the federal, state, and local governments' lockdown and shelter-in-place orders or despite them?

I'm not just asking if they had no effect. Did they actually impair the battle against the virus? There are three ways I could see the extreme efforts leading to a net harm setting aside the very important social loss of wealth and way of life not to mention that an economy on a strong footing is better able to withstand and respond to a major threat.

• By putting at risk people into high-dose exposures
• By preventing helpfully-quicker herd immunity
• By disallowing the virus to mutate into a milder strand (this ope is very speculative on my part and I might be very off base here)

Or did those efforts have no meaningful effect period? All of it is interesting and very hard to ask in mixed company much less get open-minded thinking on. 

Sweden, South Korea, Taiwan, and perhaps certain states and cities in the U.S. might provide the counter examples as natural experiments we would need to answer this question to some degree of satisfaction eventually.