Shouldn't limited govt work and mostly private sector work be a disadvantage?

[Gustaf]

I think the disconnect here is that what you want with politics and politicians is essentially two-fold - you want them to implement your preferred policies. That is, you want them both to pursue the right policies and also be able to implement them.

The latter is a political skill and is why political experience matters. You know that someone like LBJ is able to get things done whereas an outsider (Jimmy Carter, for example) might often be unable to.

The first one is different. Here you might have reason to distrust career politicians. The very term suggests that such people don't share your values precisely because they don't really have any. And their lack of experience with how the world works outside of politics might make them to blind to the problems society faces.

That doesn't really speak well for Romney anyway though.

Running a business and running an economy is very different though. It's amazing how many people on the right seem unable to grasp this. Business success is about having business ideas and being good at management. Not about understanding the world or economics.

[Gustaf]

I think the disconnect here is that what you want with politics and politicians is essentially two-fold - you want them to implement your preferred policies. That is, you want them both to pursue the right policies and also be able to implement them.

The latter is a political skill and is why political experience matters. You know that someone like LBJ is able to get things done whereas an outsider (Jimmy Carter, for example) might often be unable to.

The first one is different. Here you might have reason to distrust career politicians. The very term suggests that such people don't share your values precisely because they don't really have any. And their lack of experience with how the world works outside of politics might make them to blind to the problems society faces.

That doesn't really speak well for Romney anyway though.

Running a business and running an economy is very different though. It's amazing how many people on the right seem unable to grasp this. Business success is about having business ideas and being good at management. Not about understanding the world or economics.

For one thing, I am pretty sure that Romney is just as smart in terms of "economics" as he is in "Business". I can't fathom he would do so well at Harvard Business School otherwise. Is there not significant overlap in the programs? I would imagine that one would struggle greatly had he not learned economics both before and during his studies there.

Second of all Romney is not just any business person. He is a former venture capitalist with experiences in many different companies. And you can dig deep and find ways in which he screwed them over or not. But at the end of the day, he did reorganized these companies for a purpose, however "unfair" one can characterize it. In the process, he experienced the effects of government policies directly. Experienced how it affected the decisions either directly or indirectly from actions or inactions of the government. That experience in conjunction with his previous experience as a Governor, and yes knowledge of economics in general, which I am pretty sure he has, is what makes him a good choice.

I would arge that an economics professor is just as ill suited, to run an economy. That you would seek someone with diverse experiences, is rather obvious. If Mittens was "just a business executive", you would have a point.

That was a general statement rather than specifically about Romney.

And I certainly don't think that actual economists are bad at understanding the economy. When it comes to running it, one gets back to my first point about political skill.

I must of course also comment on the notion that I don't understand conservative economic policy or whatever. I guess I'd say...lol?

[Gustaf]

Well, I presumed you were a Keynesian rather than an Austrian.

Well...hardly any educated, living economist is an Austrian. Which is not to say they didn't contribute something to economics back in the day. Of course, not that many people are Keynesians either (unless you're counting neo-Keynesians).

I'm more of a Chicago guy I'd say.

[Gustaf]

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Considering that many of the big names have passed on - that's really not a surprise.

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I'm lumping the Neo-Keynesians together, just mostly a broad definition.

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Well, that's Friedman et al, I'd consider you closer to Hayek than to Keynes.

Well, I'm not sure I would...anyway, the charge that my point was based on not understanding or disagreeing with some conservative economical idea should maybe be backed up by something more than just throwing around some label? What idea is it specifically that you're thinking of?

[Gustaf]

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I'd disagree with you here. A businessman needs to have practical knowledge about the economy in order to be an effective businessman. He should understand supply and demand. If he can accurately gage demand for things then he will make more money, if he can understand what people want and why.

I don't think the argument that 'businessmen know nothing about economics is very valid. Businessmen are much more sensitive to local realities even if they don't see the overall picture.

Did you mean to say macroeconomics?

A businessman doesn't really need to know supply and demand - that's why market economies work better than planned economies. He only needs to know his cost of production and the going market price, both of which can be easily ascertained and require no skill.

That's all in the model world anyway. In reality, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs did not get rich because they were good with economics but because they were good with technology. And that's how it is with most business people.

[Gustaf]

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Sure he does. How else does he ascertain market pricing?

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Both of which are dictated by the laws of supply and demand. Going market price isn't going to stay static.

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To make the most money, you want to be as close to the true market price as possible, and that's going to change. If your business is slow to react to these changes, then you are going to be losing money. I used to work for a store - my job was to overhaul their entire inventory system, to give them more centralized control over stock and real time updates.

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There are plenty of people out there who were as good at techonology as Bill Gates and Jobs. Gates and Jobs were successful because they combined the talent of designing quality computer equipment, and because they had successful marketing and distribution strategies.

They were able to better meet the needs of people and they adjusted their pricing to reflect it. MS and Apple have very different business models, Apple focusses on quality, princing things more highly but simplifying them so that the users do not have as much to learn. Gates did the other way - looking at price first, trying to reduce the costs of his components and becoming the overall market leader through sales volume and mass production.

Sure, the market price is driven by supply and demand but you don't have to know the specific curves to figure out the price, which was my point. And though it's not static, it's usually reasonably stable. That again makes the model more nuanced though.

The point is rather that the kind of decisions businesspeople make are very different from most economic decisions taken by politicians.