Common Questions for Small Led

1. As a hotel employee, what is the most outlandish way youu2019ve ever seen a customer try to u201cget one overu201d on the hotel (i.e.

stealing stuff, extra people)?

There was a large group of gypsies that has family reunions every year. They try to have them in Orlando however, they have been ban from almost every hotel chain.

They stayed at a hotel that I worked with for two very long weeks. They caused problems for employees and other guest. A previous hotel director told them to never come back but, didnu2019t complete the proper paperwork to have them trespassed.

However, instead of kicking them out the first night my hotel kept giving them chances. They smeared a babyu2019s diaper on the wall and tried to say it was like that when they checked in. They also took a dump in the hot tub and tried to blame it on someone else.

They would order from food outlets then complain about it so they wouldnu2019t have to pay for it. You would think that if they had issues with the food every day they would stop ordering from the food outlets. They also tried to walk out of the hotel restaurants without paying.

Everyday they were nothing but trouble. Even the kids were disrespectful and would go around asking other guest for money. Finally, on the day they checked out the hotel called the Sheriff department and had them all ban from coming back.

Some family members tried booking through third party sites or using different names.About 3 months later one of the family members who was banned came back to the hotel. Several employees recognized him and reported him to the front desk managers.

Even though the front desk managers knew he was there they didnu2019t do anything to remove him. Their excuse was he was with different people and they havenu2019t been causing any problems. Well, he had some knowledge of when charges are posted.

He cancelled his credit card and ran out on a bill that was over a $1000 dollars

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2. Is Donald Trump a good president?

In all sincerity, I like Americans a lot; Ive met many lovely people in the United States, and I empathize with the shame many Americans (and not only New York intellectuals) feel at having such an appalling clown for a leader.

However, I have to askand I know what Im requesting isnt easy for youthat you consider things for a moment from a non-American point of view. I dont mean from a French point of view, which would be asking too much; lets say, from the point of view of the rest of the world. On the numerous occasions when Ive been questioned about Donald Trumps election, Ive replied that I dont give a shit.

France isnt Wyoming or Arkansas. France is an independent country, more or less, and will become totally independent once again when the European Union is dissolved (the sooner, the better).The United States of America is no longer the worlds leading power.

It was for a long time, for almost the entire course of the twentieth century. It isnt anymore.It remains a major power, one among several.

This isnt necessarily bad news for Americans. Its very good news for the rest of the world.My response is a bit of an exaggeration.

One has an ongoing obligation to take at least a modicum of interest in American political life. The United States is still the worlds leading military power and unfortunately has yet to break its habit of mounting interventions beyond its borders. Im not a historian, and I dont know much about ancient historyfor example, I couldnt say whether Kennedy or Johnson was more to blame for the dismal Vietnam affairbut I have the impression that its been a good long time since the United States last won a war, and that for at least fifty years its foreign military interventions, whether acknowledged or clandestine, have been nothing but a succession of disgraces culminating in failures

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3.

What are the most significant flawed assumptions in economics? In particular, what assumptions have led to incorrect theories which have been used to justify harmful and failed public policies?

A: Almost all of them.

Assumption: humans are rational decision makersRebuttal: not even close Assumption: markets are perfectly efficientRebuttal: the housing crisis, speculation, and the market for healthcare.True, markets are surprisingly resilient and for commodities work incredibly well. However, anyone who has ever been sick or had a family who has been sick understands that given the choice between any amount of money and dying, people will not choose dying.

The fact that economists try to improve the healthcare markets shows a fundamental misunderstanding of human behavior. That isnt to say more competition cant help the market, its that it only solves part of the problem.Assumption: You cant beat consistently beat the market (ie Markets have perfect information)Rebuttal: Warren Buffett, Renaissance Technologies, and a few legendary others.

This is just so obvious to anyone who watches the market that its painful. Why do mutual funds regress to the mean? Basically any fund that gets hot gets a huge influx of capital, signalling to everyone their position and then regresses to the mean, meanwhile taking a bunch of transaction costs and fees.

This isnt rational behavior of the marketthis is herding prayed on by capital managers who have fantastically poor results. And yet some people do consistently beat the market. Just look at why millions read Warren Buffetts letters and transcripts.

Assumption: Shareholders and companies maximize long term value to their companiesRebuttal: Snapchat, Twitter, others. Thats a picture of what Evan Spiegel did on Q1 conference call to his investors.I have no doubt that Evan Spiegel *wants* Snap to be a world beating company.

However, he has already sold it as one (and more) and it is not. He could not care less about about his investors, as you can see by the stock performance as well as the voting rights of the stock.In traditional corporate theory, blindly stealing from your shareholders and then evaporating value would have consequences.

For Snap, it almost certainly will not.These are just a few of my favorites. Economics has certainly moved on (in some places) from these simplistic and blatantly incorrect assumptions.

However, even at places like MIT youd be surprised by what you hear

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4. Has the United States ever won a real war?

The term is vague in some ways.

For one thing, many wars are fought between alliances of nations, so it is not that common to see a nation fight a war solo. In World War I, the US was considered an Allied Power, while it was an Allied Power in World War II. Some nations fight at higher percentages in alliances than others do.

The US contributed ninety plus percent to the defeat of Japan, half to the defeat of Italy, while the USSR suffered the largest number of battle deaths against Germany. The US lost more airmen against Germany, and provided huge amounts of war material to the USSR, UK, and other nations. Nations also fight wars with economic and technological assistance from other countries, so that the UK defeated the Argentinians in 1982 during the Falklands War, but they did they did so with intelligence and technical help from the US.

In other cases, volunteers from other countries may serve in the ranks of their military, so defining by itself is hard. -There are two wars that the US could readily be considered to have fought and won completely on its own without cooperating with another other nation: the Mexican War and Spanish-American War. The US had no allies in its war with Mexico, and the US decisively defeated Mexico in that war.

The Spanish-American War saw a US campaign at sea and on land with no help from any other nations that saw the US strip Spain of Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. We could also put in the Philippine Insurrection, but one could also argue that it was a continuation of the Spanish-American War as Filipino rebels who were fighting Spain shifted from fighting Spain to fighting the US. The American Civil War was fought between American citizens, but one third of the country lost the war, while the other two-thirds did.

We won/lost that war. Finally, the definition of war v. military action is problematic.

The US has not officially been at war since September 2, 1945, when Japan surrendered after the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack and US declaration of War on December 8, 1941. The conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Iraq, and Syria have not been wars officially

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5. Why didn't scientists know beforehand that the Titanic would sink?

No scientists were involved in the design and building of Titanic. As with most ships, she was designed by a team of eminent naval architects and built by an experienced shipbuilder. She was designed to incorporate every known safety feature, and neither her designers and builders nor her owners advertised her as unsinkable (the press was responsible for that).

Any ship will sink if its damaged sufficiently, and therefore the designers goal is to design a ship that will stay afloat long enough for other ships to arrive and rescue the passengers and crew. Titanic was indeed designed to survive any situation her designers could think of, primarily groundings and collisions with other ships, as nearly all passenger ship accidents (most recently the sinking of the White Star Lines RMS Republic in 1908) were due to one of these. Furthermore, such accidents, when they happened, all took place in areas where rescue, either in the form of the Coast Guard or other ships, was fairly close at hand.

Icebergs were a known hazard to ships on the North Atlantic run. Two well-known incidents were the Arizona in 1879 and the Kronprinz Wilhelm in 1907. Both ships sustained significant damage but were able to make port, and in each case, the collision was determined to be have been caused by the ships not keeping proper lookouts.

Titanics crew were experienced seamen and knew to keep a lookout for ice, but on that night, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.The iceberg, which would have been very difficult to see in any case due to the calm water and moonless night, was not spotted until it was only 300 yards away and when the ship scraped along it, her hull was holed in enough places along her length that all the safety precautions turned out to be useless.In essence, she was designed to survive any scenario except the one that happened, because no one in 1912 envisioned the possibility that a ship could sink far out at sea after colliding at just the right angle with a large object that was not another ship.