Responding To 3 Posts On American Decline – A Letter To Lawrence Lux
Lawrence, Thank you for your work in the public discourse. Your moderate pragmatism is often both interesting to read, and wise. However, a post today entitled “Whos Talking About Sheeps Clothing“, bothered me, not so much for what you said about it, but for the assumptions that are made by you and the others of…
The Threat Of Revolt, The General Strike, And The Myth Of Non-Violence
A tactic used by the vocal left is the threat of violence, or revolt if their needs are not met. The tactic of revolt is ancient. This modern version of revolt is a product of The Myth Of The General Strike. (I am referring to Burnham’s treatment) The contemporary version is the Economic Armageddon and…
A Subtle Redefinition In Opportunity Cost
I am going to redefine Opportunity Cost from the difference between one choice and another, to include the opportunity of expending violence. Because that is the FIRST cost that they pay in every transaction. I’m going to redefine Time preference from the silly Austrian implication that all purchasing decisions are made primarily by price, to…
Preservation Of Status Is A Resistance To Libertarian Solutions
I was listening to a lecture by Roderick Long this morning, entitled “The Moral Standpoint” which is part of the series “Foundations of Libertarian Ethics: A Philosophy Seminar” (Available from Mises.org). In this lecture, Dr Long (who I enjoy and admire, not the least of which because he is very funny and charming in person)…
A Convert: Winterspeak and the Public Purpose Of Banking
Over on Winterspeak, I found another convert. ….a bank should be required to keep all loans it makes on its books until maturity. In under six hundred words he provides a solution to a great deal of the problem. I’ve extended this basic line of reasoning to explain WHY banking should be run this way,…
Climate Data, Trust In Science, Secular Humanism, Truth, and Economics
The crisis over climate data has been met with numerous statements about preserving the “sanctity” or trust in the wisdom of science and scientists. As if our scientists were an improvement over their theological predecessors, or their pragmatic and prostituting peers in politics. But that can hardly be true, if one understands the history of…
Flashlights, Power Grids, Institutions of Calculation, Pride and Human Frailty
The difference between the schools of quantitative and behavioral of economics consists largely in which errors they choose to accept in furthering the utility of their craft. Each of these schools masters a set of conceptual levers with which they seek to solve problems. Or more realistically, the people in the school learn levers, and…
Simplicity Is a Relative Measure, Not A Test Of Truth
A left-leaning blog-squatter on Economist’s View repeatedly makes requests for simplistic reasoning, thereby making his level of understanding, that by which all rhetoric should be judged: a measure which is obviously arbitrary. All expressions are increasingly abstract evolutions of directly experiential concepts, and perceived simplicity in communication is a function of the commonality of experiences…
From The Private Sector: We Don’t Need Stimulus We Need Credit
1) From the private sector: We don’t need stimulus we need credit. Banks simply wont lend. While the process of correcting bank balance sheets is underway, that same process must occur in small and medium sized business before any turnaround can occur. In my largest company’s case, our banks have been failing gradually, and we…
Response To Economists View: One Way To Look At The Bush Years
RE: “One way to look at the Bush years is that job growth was lousy so the Fed (and the government policies) subsidized construction jobs by creating a housing bubble. That jobs program abruptly ended. It is now time for a new jobs program. For the longer run, it is time for a different labor…
Comparing Medical, Technical, Educational, and Political Testing Methodologies
There was a great deal of research and discourse on technology in medicine when computing systems began to enter the operating room in the 1990s. In particular, in the use of anesthesia. The most commonly discussed example was a difference in turning knobs, in which one machine turned right to increase and another turned left…
A Response To Krugman’s Petty Poke At Prestidigitators
Paul Krugman wrote today, poking fun at prestidigitators in the financial sector. As the most public advocate of forcible redistribution, I thought it was appropriate to poke back. The understanding that we obtain from reading the predictions of the financial sector, is limited to what these people are thinking, and how they will act because…
Credit Funded Jobs Programs
Another response from “A Shaky Start” on Economists View RE: “One way to look at the Bush years is that job growth was lousy so the Fed (and the government policies) subsidized construction jobs by creating a housing bubble. That jobs program abruptly ended. It is now time for a new jobs program. For the…
A Speech On The State And Violence
I’m going to say something. It will only take a moment. And my time is at least as valuable if not more so than the state’s, the court’s, or that of the officers’. You see, I understand something very important. I understand that the state’s only power is violence. That power comes from its claim…
A Note On Argument – A Substitution For Violence
Paine, We have free speech, logic and rhetoric so that we may make arguments, not a polysyllabic variant of ten year old girls trading insults. I realize that you may resort to these tactics because you are incapable of seeking a truth via argument. I also realize that you post sufficiently in this forum with…
All This From Gorbachev – The Silly Reign On Economists View
Economists View members are notoriously leftist, and rely on name calling and weak arguments with political bias on a regular basis. There are a number of squatting regulars and they outnumber who seem to avoid commenting on the blog. Every once in a while I feel a compelling need to intervene on what must be…
Positioning Political Philosophies
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Whether you call us Aristotelians, Machiavellians, Nietzscheians, or some other label, is immaterial – save to say that in doing so you attempt to make equal a difference between approaches to politics and economics that is anything but equal. Those of us in this school of thought, study what men do and why,…
An Environmental Software Company?
In May, one of my business partners asked me to rescue a bit of software development that was a joint venture between a prominent politician’s environmental activism foundation, a very large software company, and one of our smaller businesses. It took me until July to weed through two years of chaos and deception to understand…