Classifying People By Their Government Rather Than Occupation Simply Justifies The Expansion Of State Power
Today, Krugman yet again argues that there is a lack of demand. Yes, there is a lack of demand, I agree. There is a lack of demand because our lower classes are unproductive in comparison to their peers in the world. There is a lack of demand for their labor. Since there is a lack…
Four Reasons For The Long Term Decline In Violence
Regarding Pinker’s new book on the decline in violence in the world over time. I would argue that there are the following reasons for the worldwide decline in violence. 1. The Abstraction Of Property Stated by an unnamed commenter on The Economist: Odd that no mention is made of the most obvious point: that when…
List of 20th Century Genocides
The worst genocides of the 20th Century (160 million killed) – Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) 49-78,000,000 – Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39) 23,000,000 (the purges plus Ukraine’s famine) – Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII) – Leopold II of Belgium (Congo, 1886-1908) 8,000,000 – Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44)…
Honduran Experiments In Creating The Libertarian Paradise
Over On The Economist, an unnamed author writes that the Hondurans are sponsoring a libertarian experiment: , libertarians have a real chance to implement their ideas. In addition to a big special development region, the Honduran government intends to approve two smaller zones. And two libertarian-leaning start-ups have already signed a preliminary memorandum of understanding…
Pravda Rails Against Fox News Without Realizing That They’re Looking In The Mirror.
Over on Pravda, the popular, nationalistic and jingoistic Russian news agency, Fox News is attacked for it’s nationalist sentiments. I replied: Fox news is not exactly a minority business. It’s the most popular cable news channel. A better point of view, would be that Fox caters to the same audience that Pravda does: Nationalists. Just…
Defining ‘Rich’. It’s Easy: Whomever Can Exit Participation In The Market
On Economix at the NYT, Bruce Bartlett writes that it’s difficult to count who’s ‘rich’. The first thing to know is that there is no formal definition of who is rich, middle class or poor. Of course, there is an official definition for the poverty rate, but that figure is just a back of the…
Is Membership In The 1% Club Education Or IQ?
Greg Mankiw makes a case for graduate school education: Apart from their bank accounts, Gallup finds education to be the greatest difference between the wealthiest 1% of Americans and everyone else. The Gallup analysis reveals that 72% of the wealthiest Americans have a college degree, compared with 31% of those in the lower 99 percentiles.…
Defining Capitalism
“Capitalism as it is used in common discourse, refers to a decision making-methodology in it’s narrowest form, and a general bias in it’s broader form, that is used by members of a population that describes a broad spectrum of property definitions from the most several (individual) property, to the most shareholder (collective) forms of property,…
Inverting The Argument: Inequality Is The Product Of Diversity
Over on Stumbling And Mumbling, Chris Dillow writes about inequality, and refers to OECD Gini-charts on inequality and trust, in an effort to suggest it’s ‘how we believe’ one thing or another that determines redistributive policy. As if conservatives simply need to ‘feel differently’ in order to desire a more egalitarian society. I try to…
Why Are Artificial Breasts All The Rage In Columbia?
A friend posted a humorous advertisement from Columbia, where young women are advocating that ‘natural is better’. Someone asks why this kind of thing happens. An exacerbated interest in youth and sex is a cyclical expression of human behavior that is usually caused by the intersection of: (a) the ‘winter’ period of a civilization wherein…
From Freedom To Slavery: The Five Evolutionary Stages Of Fiat Money
1) Fiat Money(1) The operating principle behind fiat money is to require taxes be paid using it. This creates a demand for the fiat money that cannot be satisfied without widespread trade that makes use of it, or is conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the money needed to pay the taxes. 2) Fiat…
Doolittle’s Chart’s On Political Preferences
The world needs cartoons it seems. In macro economics, these ‘cartoons’ consist of a set of standardized charts the goal of which is to inform policy makers as to the actions required of their monetary policy for the purpose of reducing unemployment by fooling people into spending by using disinformation about their current ‘wealth’. However,…
My Friend Karl Smith’s Progressive Framing
Karl States: “I actually think this issue brings up extremely deep philosophical questions that virtually no one I can find wants to engage in.” What are you talking about? No one wants to engage in those conversations? You haven’t posted an issue yet that hasn’t been addressed in the past century pretty thoroughly. Or at…
An Anti-Masculine Bias In Pornography Actors?
An article on slate that says that men are homophobic when watching pornography. In other words, this is another feminist-appealing anti-male rant. The straight male performer must be attractive enough to serve as a prop, but not so attractive that he becomes the object of desire. Complete nonsense. It’s all about self image and arousal.…
Labor and Education Numbers Illustrate What’s Wrong With Progressives And Keynesianism
On Modeled Behavior Karl Smith uses these diagrams, and from it concludes: “The United States is becoming more educated faster than the economy would absorb educated workers.” Actually, that statement would attribute value to education that is not demonstrated by the numbers in the market. It would just as likely suggest that ‘education’ has lost…
Keynesian Absurd Optimism
From Modeled Behavior The desire of the expanders to expand is always exponential. In the end you only need one of them and they will attempt to take over the entire economy. What’s stops them is competition, scarce real resources and financing. Thus if you are in a world where no one else is looking…