In brief: animals who are not poisonous or dangerous copy the markings / signals of animals who are and thus gain protection of being vicious killers without the metabolic cost.
This article posits that all the woes of Capitalism are due to copycat entrepreneurs offering "facebook for dogs" and eventually the investment that would go to killer companies to create wealth simply vanishes
I cry rubbish here. Firstly he destroys his argument in the article himself ("""alternatively, one could remember the rule "Red on yellow, kill a fellow; red on black, friend of Jack" """). Fairly simple rules of thumb allow even not-so-smart-money to avoid Facebook for dogs.
Secondly mimicry is only a useful defence against predators of the killers. Killer snake happily kill non-poisonous snakes as well as prey.
And finally, Hy Minsky seems to have this already sewn up - Hedging, Speculating, Ponzi.
Sidenote: my all time favourite Batesian mimicry is the Cheetah cub, (http://milgistrust.wildlifedirect.org/files/2009/01/23.12.08...) whose colouring reflects that of the adult Honey Badger. Honey Badgers are great, such vicious fighters that lions basically think "I'll leave that for another day" - the animal kingdom's equivalent of short hairless Glaswegian pub landlords.
It's not a "woe of Capitalism", just an inherent property of an economy. In fact, it's an inherent property of all life. Economic cycles and life/death cycles in species have a lot in common. The dynamic nature of such systems make them hard to predict, but you can be sure that they will continue to occur. It's a way of resetting (or reallocating) resources that is essential.
An interesting point - thank you. I was just listening to a bbc podcast on Minsky, and while everyone agreed that previous economics failed to predict their instability, everyone now thinks Minsky is the key to preventing instability - but no one mentioned that actually death is part of life and we need not to prevent the next crisis, just not let it cause such damage. Harm reduction as public policy - whatever next
This article posits that all the woes of Capitalism are due to copycat entrepreneurs offering "facebook for dogs" and eventually the investment that would go to killer companies to create wealth simply vanishes
I cry rubbish here. Firstly he destroys his argument in the article himself ("""alternatively, one could remember the rule "Red on yellow, kill a fellow; red on black, friend of Jack" """). Fairly simple rules of thumb allow even not-so-smart-money to avoid Facebook for dogs.
Secondly mimicry is only a useful defence against predators of the killers. Killer snake happily kill non-poisonous snakes as well as prey.
And finally, Hy Minsky seems to have this already sewn up - Hedging, Speculating, Ponzi.
Sidenote: my all time favourite Batesian mimicry is the Cheetah cub, (http://milgistrust.wildlifedirect.org/files/2009/01/23.12.08...) whose colouring reflects that of the adult Honey Badger. Honey Badgers are great, such vicious fighters that lions basically think "I'll leave that for another day" - the animal kingdom's equivalent of short hairless Glaswegian pub landlords.