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Nirvana Phallacy

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MacFall Posted: Tue, Aug 12 2008 6:14 PM

It would have to be spelled that way, and it would have to be a she-male.

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, listen to yesterday's podcast.)

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I did a site search for “Nirvana Fallacy” and got two results:

 

This interview http://mises.org/journals/aen/aen19_4_1.asp

They talk about the Nirvana Fallacy here:

Thomas J. DiLorenzo:

Harold Demsetz coined the phrase "Nirvana Fallacy," which refers to the tendency of economists to compare the real world with some idealized version that exists only in mathematical models. Joseph Stiglitz will probably receive the Nobel Prize someday for doing precisely that. His models are designed to show that the market fails everywhere because real-world markets are not omniscient. It is for this reason that a former colleague of mine called much of modern economics "exquisite trivia."

 

And this article: http://mises.org/story/1941

Where he talks about the Nirvana Fallacy here:

Landsburg has committed the Nirvana Fallacy. The idea that subsidies and taxes necessarily lead to economic efficiency derives from a false comparison between an imperfect private sector and a perfect public sector.

 

 

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MacFall replied on Tue, Aug 12 2008 7:04 PM

Tom DiLorenzo said in his Monopoly and Competition lecture (uploaded yesterday) that "Nirvana Fallacy" sounds like the name of a porn star. That's what I was commenting on. ;)

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I always thought it means criticizing what actually exists or could exist, because it doesn't conform to some unattainable ideal (hence, Nirvana.)

-Jon

I cannot be caged. I cannot be controlled. Understand this as you die, ever pathetic, ever fools. Irenicus' Diaries.

 

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MacFall:

Tom DiLorenzo said in his Monopoly and Competition lecture (uploaded yesterday) that "Nirvana Fallacy" sounds like the name of a porn star. That's what I was commenting on. ;)

Does Nirvana Phallacy do any Naked short selling? Sorry, I just had to . . . .

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MacFall replied on Tue, Aug 12 2008 7:32 PM

Lol. ^

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