Hitting the roof
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11:38 PM |
2 Comments |
Today, I had a class that was the best I've attended at IE, as yet. By far, it was the most intellectually stimulating one.
We just went through some basic 'supply and demand' curves, and saw how simple things can be, and yet people get them wrong time and again. The shocking part was that this stuff is so elementary, and yet governments the world over mess it up with their ham-fisted attempts to control markets & prices. And going by the reactions of the others around me, I wasn't the only one shocked !!
We went through two cases of Govt. price controls messing things up in a big way.
We studied how Price Ceilings invariably cause shortages, hurting the very people they're intended to benefit. We took the example of Venezuela, how Hugo Chavez's price ceilings on essential commodities gave the poor people the illusion that it was good for them, whereas it actually left them facing massive shortages.
It reminded me of this WSJ article, which I'd recently read and discussed incredulously with a Venezuelan friend at IE. There is also this video, in which a farmer discusses the exact same points we went through in class, only more specific to his case, how he was driven out of his coffee business. Amazing !!
We just went through some basic 'supply and demand' curves, and saw how simple things can be, and yet people get them wrong time and again. The shocking part was that this stuff is so elementary, and yet governments the world over mess it up with their ham-fisted attempts to control markets & prices. And going by the reactions of the others around me, I wasn't the only one shocked !!
We went through two cases of Govt. price controls messing things up in a big way.
We studied how Price Ceilings invariably cause shortages, hurting the very people they're intended to benefit. We took the example of Venezuela, how Hugo Chavez's price ceilings on essential commodities gave the poor people the illusion that it was good for them, whereas it actually left them facing massive shortages.
It reminded me of this WSJ article, which I'd recently read and discussed incredulously with a Venezuelan friend at IE. There is also this video, in which a farmer discusses the exact same points we went through in class, only more specific to his case, how he was driven out of his coffee business. Amazing !!
I though the highlight was the insights about "metrics" from information systems class! i was amazed everything than can be measured!
ReplyDeleteBut, lets be honest, de really cool moment of the day was to meet the iPad! =)
I was already aware of the metrics (somewhat). I'm a software engineer, so it's part of the job, he he.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, congratulations on the iPad!!