A man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.--deTocqueville
In 2011, Robert Harte and his 13-year-old son went to a store for hydroponic equipment to grow tomatoes for a school project. A state trooper had been assigned to watch that store and write down the license plates of any customers (apparently, shopping at a gardening store translates to marijuana production). To follow up that stellar bit of police work, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office twice examined the Hartes’ trash. They found, both times, an ounce or so of “saturated plant material.”
The Keystone Kops couldn’t tell the difference between tea and tokes using their senses, so they field-tested the substance and the test came back positive for marijuana. (“A partial list of substances that the tests have mistaken for illegal drugs would include sage, chocolate chip cookies, motor oil, spearmint, soap, tortilla dough, deodorant, billiard’s chalk, patchouli, flour, eucalyptus, breath mints, Jolly Ranchers and vitamins,” notes Radley Balko.)
Still, after falsely reading the tea leaves, the deputy sheriffs performed a military-style raid on the family home. (From the Cato Institute, who filed an amicus brief when Hayes sued objecting to militarized police tactics.)
Washington’s destructive policies have been dubbed “regime uncertainty” in a strand of analyses pioneered by Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute. Regime uncertainty relates to the likelihood that an investor’s private property – namely, the flows of income and services it yields – will be attenuated by government action.
Compared
to 1970 when the first Earth Day was celebrated and 14,400 BTUs of
energy were required for every dollar of output, the energy efficiency
of the US economy has more than doubled – we use much less than half
that amount of energy today (5,970 BTUs) for every dollar of output.
Thanks to innovation, increases in energy efficiency, and advances in
technology, the US is able to produce ever-increasing amounts of real
output with continually decreasing amounts of energy usage per dollar of
real GDP.
AAAaaaaannnnnnddddd......an amazing picture of the Andromeda galaxy in the stars of the Milky Way--over Columbia:
In 2011, Robert Harte and his 13-year-old son went to a store for hydroponic equipment to grow tomatoes for a school project. A state trooper had been assigned to watch that store and write down the license plates of any customers (apparently, shopping at a gardening store translates to marijuana production). To follow up that stellar bit of police work, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office twice examined the Hartes’ trash. They found, both times, an ounce or so of “saturated plant material.”
The Keystone Kops couldn’t tell the difference between tea and tokes using their senses, so they field-tested the substance and the test came back positive for marijuana. (“A partial list of substances that the tests have mistaken for illegal drugs would include sage, chocolate chip cookies, motor oil, spearmint, soap, tortilla dough, deodorant, billiard’s chalk, patchouli, flour, eucalyptus, breath mints, Jolly Ranchers and vitamins,” notes Radley Balko.)
Still, after falsely reading the tea leaves, the deputy sheriffs performed a military-style raid on the family home. (From the Cato Institute, who filed an amicus brief when Hayes sued objecting to militarized police tactics.)
Washington’s destructive policies have been dubbed “regime uncertainty” in a strand of analyses pioneered by Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute. Regime uncertainty relates to the likelihood that an investor’s private property – namely, the flows of income and services it yields – will be attenuated by government action.
Who is....Bjorn Lomborg?
Scientism: 1 : methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to the natural scientist 2 : an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities) This is often pejorative. Unlike the use of the scientific method as only one mode of reaching knowledge, scientism claims that science alone can render truth about the world and reality. Scientism's single-minded adherence to only the empirical, or testable, makes it a strictly scientifc worldview, in much the same way that a Protestant fundamentalism that rejects science can be seen as a strictly religious worldview. Scientism sees it necessary to do away with most, if not all, metaphysical, philosophical, and religious claims, as the truths they proclaim cannot be apprehended by the scientific method. In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth.
Scientism: 1 : methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to the natural scientist 2 : an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities) This is often pejorative. Unlike the use of the scientific method as only one mode of reaching knowledge, scientism claims that science alone can render truth about the world and reality. Scientism's single-minded adherence to only the empirical, or testable, makes it a strictly scientifc worldview, in much the same way that a Protestant fundamentalism that rejects science can be seen as a strictly religious worldview. Scientism sees it necessary to do away with most, if not all, metaphysical, philosophical, and religious claims, as the truths they proclaim cannot be apprehended by the scientific method. In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth.
The
Treasury Secretary announced that Alexander Hamilton will remain
on the $10 bill and Andrew Jackson will be pushed off the $20 note in
favor of a woman from American history. Harriet Tubman. I hoped it would be Hillary. Or
Caitlyn. No such luck.
Wall Street and the offshore financial jurisdictions are being demonized by politicians and their media allies. Would these people respond? Do these people have a defense? The banks and Wall Street did not respond to attack and essentially won. Sort of Rope-a-dope. During the past decade or so, the attacks on the big banks have resulted in regulations that caused the big banks to grow bigger at the expense of smaller banks, while at the same time being less able or unwilling to service their smaller and more entrepreneurial customers, hurting economic growth and employment. Coal has been destroyed; they did not fight back. But the NRA does fight back and has been pretty successful.
Drug enforcement personnel estimate that about 2,500 Americans every day try cocaine for the first time.
You will perhaps doubt that the Great Enrichment happened, or that it was so great, or that it will continue – or doubt that it is justified, in view of environmental decay and consumerist excess. But the evidence, regarded without prejudice, is overwhelming. From about 1800 to the present the world’s economy did something good, which looks to be permanent and looks to be justified. If contrary to the evidence we cling to our prejudices about economic history – our view that the Industrial Revolution was impoverishing, or that the Great Enrichment was an irremediable environmental disaster, or that Europe is rich only because of poverty in the Third World, or that the new rich are always getting relatively richer, or that after all any enrichment is vulgar – we will mistake how we got here and will give mistaken advice on how to move forward. We will betray the remaining poor of the world.--Deirdre McCloskey
Wall Street and the offshore financial jurisdictions are being demonized by politicians and their media allies. Would these people respond? Do these people have a defense? The banks and Wall Street did not respond to attack and essentially won. Sort of Rope-a-dope. During the past decade or so, the attacks on the big banks have resulted in regulations that caused the big banks to grow bigger at the expense of smaller banks, while at the same time being less able or unwilling to service their smaller and more entrepreneurial customers, hurting economic growth and employment. Coal has been destroyed; they did not fight back. But the NRA does fight back and has been pretty successful.
Drug enforcement personnel estimate that about 2,500 Americans every day try cocaine for the first time.
You will perhaps doubt that the Great Enrichment happened, or that it was so great, or that it will continue – or doubt that it is justified, in view of environmental decay and consumerist excess. But the evidence, regarded without prejudice, is overwhelming. From about 1800 to the present the world’s economy did something good, which looks to be permanent and looks to be justified. If contrary to the evidence we cling to our prejudices about economic history – our view that the Industrial Revolution was impoverishing, or that the Great Enrichment was an irremediable environmental disaster, or that Europe is rich only because of poverty in the Third World, or that the new rich are always getting relatively richer, or that after all any enrichment is vulgar – we will mistake how we got here and will give mistaken advice on how to move forward. We will betray the remaining poor of the world.--Deirdre McCloskey
WSJ headline: "Ignoring LinkedIn Is Hurting Your Career"
Trump
has made protectionism a valid topic. Bordeaux writes protectionism
distorts the economy from a free consumer-based entity to a production
entity. Protectionism is a policy, enforced with threats of violence,
that prevents consumers from spending their incomes in ways that promote
their own best interests; protectionism is a policy of forcing
consumers to spend their incomes in ways that promote the interests of
current producers. Protectionism treats production as the ultimate goal
of economic activity — a goal that consumption must be made to serve. He
adds that it robs the producer of "dignity."
Golden oldie:
This
is quite amazing. N.Y. A.G. Schneiderman said that a group, calling
itself “AGs United for Clean Power,” will address climate change by
threatening criminal investigations and charges against companies,
policy organizations, scientists, and others who disagree with its
members’ climate policy agenda. Sort of the other side of RICO.
“Paul
Solotaroff said that in his time with Trump, he found ‘a guy with two
extraordinary senses. One is something I call clairvoyance, the ability
to read a market way it is formed and get there first. The second is
clairaudience, hear what is in people’s hearts and minds.’ He described
clairaudience this way: ‘There’s Donald, on the 26th floor of his
massive office in the Trump Tower, and somehow he read and saw and heard
into the hearts of disaffected underemployed white people in
Coatsville, Pennsylvania, in, you know, West Virginia, in Ohio. And not
only was he able to hear that seething rage, he was able to read it back
to them, word for word, in ways that no Republican has ever done
before.’”--Brian Stelter; Rolling Stone Writer: Trump ‘Was Not Talking
About Her Persona’; CNNMoney (Atlanta); Sep 11, 2015.
I
understand that the hacking group Anonymous plans to attack Trump's
campaign. If they are really interested in improving the world, how
about going after ISIS' social media.
"If,
as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be
born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth
evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday
life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then
their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a
permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become above all
an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than
one started it." This is from the esteemed Russian writer Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, in his despised Harvard address of 1978, a speech that
upset the so called intellectual community mightily.
A
2009 paper from the European Union expects that the reduction in cold
deaths will definitely outweigh extra heat deaths in the 2020s. Even
near the end of the century, in the 2080s, the EU study projects an
increase in heat deaths of “between 60,000 and 165,000” and a decrease
of cold deaths of “between 60,000 and 250,000.” In other words, the
effects will probably balance each other out, but warming could save as
many as 85,000 lives each year.--Bjorn Lomborg
In real wars, belligerents’ strategies include efforts to impoverish and dishearten enemy populations by destroying their enemies’ wealth – by burning their crops, bombing their homes and businesses, and embargoing merchant ships bringing valuable goods into enemy ports. Yet if Beijing really is ensuring that Americans continue to buy Chinese-made goods at prices below the Chinese’s costs of producing these goods, then Beijing is destroying its own people’s wealth no less certainly and ominously than if the People’s Liberation Army literally burned Chinese crops, bombed Chinese homes and businesses, and embargoed foreign merchant ships bound for Chinese ports.--Bordeaux
In real wars, belligerents’ strategies include efforts to impoverish and dishearten enemy populations by destroying their enemies’ wealth – by burning their crops, bombing their homes and businesses, and embargoing merchant ships bringing valuable goods into enemy ports. Yet if Beijing really is ensuring that Americans continue to buy Chinese-made goods at prices below the Chinese’s costs of producing these goods, then Beijing is destroying its own people’s wealth no less certainly and ominously than if the People’s Liberation Army literally burned Chinese crops, bombed Chinese homes and businesses, and embargoed foreign merchant ships bound for Chinese ports.--Bordeaux
The
poorest 40 percent of all Americans now spend more than 50% of their
incomes just on food and housing. That was presented last week as if it
was a lot. But historically there might be a different slant. In 1901,
food and housing took up about 60 percent of people’s incomes. About 40
percent of a consumer’s income was spent on food and about 20 percent of
a consumer’s income was spent on housing. 20 percent was spent on
apparel while virtually nothing was spent on transportation. Health care
took up about 5 percent, entertainment was 2 percent and books were 1
percent. In 1901, 1 percent went for alcohol and the other 11 percent
was used for everything else. So...are things worse or better?
AAAaaaaannnnnnddddd......an amazing picture of the Andromeda galaxy in the stars of the Milky Way--over Columbia:
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