“Is not liberty to do
evil, liberty? If not, what is it? Do we not say that it is necessary
to take liberty from idiots and bad men, because they abuse
it?"--Bentham
If you were to send a space probe to a distant star system, gather
information about it and send it back to Earth, you'd have to wait years
for the information to arrive. But if you have an entangled quantum
system -- say, two photons, one with spin +1 and one with spin -1 -- you
could know the spin of the distant one instantly by measuring the spin
of the one in your possession. A NASA mission is entitled "Entanglement-assisted
Communication System for NASA's Deep-Space
Missions: Feasibility Test and Conceptual Design". And MIT News
reported a research team is now making progress toward capturing paired
electron halves for quantum computing on gold film. "Our first goal is
to look for the Majorana fermions, unambiguously detect them, and show
this is it."
Trump is not an
aberration. He is a logical step in the trivialization of public debate
as a result of the public's ignorance and its fondness for celebrity. There is another element as well. People are less committed to making finances primary. Like Brexit, there is simply more involved. One un-measurable is the feeling of gradual loss of control over one's life.
A new book out called Taxing the Rich
by Scheve and Stasavage explores the intellectual and political debates
surrounding the taxation of the wealthy while also providing data
on when taxes have been levied against the rich and when they haven't.
Fairness in debates about taxing the rich has depended on different
views of what it means to treat people as equals and whether taxing the
rich advances or undermines this norm. Scheve and Stasavage argue that
governments don't tax the rich just because inequality is high or
rising—they do it when people believe that such taxes compensate for the
state unfairly privileging the wealthy. Progressive taxation saw its
heyday in the twentieth century, when compensatory arguments for taxing
the rich focused on unequal sacrifice in mass warfare. Today, as
technology gives rise to wars of more limited mobilization, such
arguments are no longer persuasive. This is a summary from Bryan Caplan:
1. Democracies have no inherent tendency to "soak the rich." 2.
Instead, democracies adopt high, progressive taxation in the face of
compelling "compensatory" arguments for redistribution. 3. Only major
wars of mass mobilization make compensatory arguments compelling. 4.
Modern warfare has made majors wars of mass mobilization obsolete. 5.
Therefore, tax the rich policies are a thing of the past, at least for
developed countries. They won't be coming back.
A basic precept in traditional economics is that private economic decisions are faster and more efficient than governmental ones. So, if private markets were wrong 9 times out of 10 and government were right 9 times out of 10, over time private markets would achieve better outcomes.
A basic precept in traditional economics is that private economic decisions are faster and more efficient than governmental ones. So, if private markets were wrong 9 times out of 10 and government were right 9 times out of 10, over time private markets would achieve better outcomes.
Who is....Pericles?
Agriculture has always been felt to be the driving force in modern history. But wait.
In 1995, archaeologists uncovered the first known temple in history in Turkey, near the Syrian border. Constructed over 12,000 years ago, Gobekli Tepe predates the invention of everything from agriculture to pottery. To put that in perspective, Gobekli Tepe is more than twice as old as Stonehenge and predates Solomon’s First Temple by almost 9,000 years. It’s the very first evidence we have of religion organized on a grand enough scale to construct great monuments. It was also extremely influential. Smaller, identical temples have been found up to 200 kilometers (125 mi) away, suggesting that Gobekli Tepe was the center of power in a massive, complex society focused around a common religion.
Most impressively of all, some experts are starting to think that Gobekli Tepe was less a result of the shift to agriculture and more the cause of it. German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt argued that agriculture arose because rulers needed a way to feed their workforce as they constructed such huge religious monuments.
Agriculture has always been felt to be the driving force in modern history. But wait.
In 1995, archaeologists uncovered the first known temple in history in Turkey, near the Syrian border. Constructed over 12,000 years ago, Gobekli Tepe predates the invention of everything from agriculture to pottery. To put that in perspective, Gobekli Tepe is more than twice as old as Stonehenge and predates Solomon’s First Temple by almost 9,000 years. It’s the very first evidence we have of religion organized on a grand enough scale to construct great monuments. It was also extremely influential. Smaller, identical temples have been found up to 200 kilometers (125 mi) away, suggesting that Gobekli Tepe was the center of power in a massive, complex society focused around a common religion.
Most impressively of all, some experts are starting to think that Gobekli Tepe was less a result of the shift to agriculture and more the cause of it. German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt argued that agriculture arose because rulers needed a way to feed their workforce as they constructed such huge religious monuments.
So religion came first?
If people respond to how discussions make you feel, how would that impact on how you would run for office?
"For
the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they
commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in
foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven
not on stone but in the hearts of men. Make them your examples, and,
esteeming courage to be freedom and freedom to be happiness, do not
weigh too nicely the perils of war." Here Thucydides is quoting from the
great Funeral Oration of Pericles delivered after Pericles had just led
the Athenians into the Peloponnesian war. The famous and rousing speech
was given after the war's first, victorious year. Yet Thucydides'
readers knew that this was to be the high-water mark of Athenian
greatness: what was to follow was defeat, conquest, and the imposition
of a Quisling government. Later Athens was to regain its independence,
but not its hegemony, and its permanently poisoned relationships with
the other poleis were to lead, in the next century, to the conquest of
all of Greece by the Macedonians under Philip and Alexander. So when
Pericles urges his hearers not to "weigh too nicely the perils of war,"
we are meant to hear in the background Thucydides' sardonic laughter.
Pericles took his own advice (or perhaps Thucydides put into the mouth
of Pericles words appropriate to his actions), and the result was
catastrophe.
“Personally he is sleek and unctuous, is always found among the godly.” Clifton Rodman Woolridge; Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World; Library of Alexandria; 2015.
95% of the time a car is parked. What kind of investment is that? No wonder there is Uber.
A
report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that
life expectancy for white women declined slightly from 2013 to 2014. A
paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences late last year
showed an astonishing decline in white male life expectancy as well. In
the 20 years prior to 1998, the mortality rate of middle-aged white
males fell about 2 percent a year, in keeping with the trend toward
lower mortality in other advanced countries. Then the rates diverged.
Rates kept declining in countries like France and Britain. They began
increasing for middle-aged whites in the United States.
The
slide in the wrong direction was driven by drug and alcohol poisoning,
chronic liver diseases, and suicide. In 1999, middle-aged blacks had
higher rates of poisoning than whites; by 2013, rates were higher for
whites. Overall, mortality rates for middle-aged blacks and Hispanics
have declined since 1999, as they have increased for whites.
The
trend among whites breaks down neatly by levels of education. The
mortality rate for middle-aged whites with a high-school degree or less
has jumped since 1999; the rate for middle-aged whites with some college
but not a degree stayed roughly flat; the rate for middle-aged whites
with a college degree or more dropped. If there is such a thing as white
privilege, no one has told less-educated whites.
The
most direct indicator of rising distress is that the suicide rate in the
United States is at a roughly 30-year high, according to new figures
from the National Center for Health Statistics. The rate increased for
white middle-aged women by 80 percent from 1999–2014. Although the data
wasn’t analyzed by education level, researchers believe it tracks with
other findings about increased working-class mortality.
Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/11/dogs-parking-meters-and-rule-of-law.html
What is characteristic of the socialistic solution of the so-called social problem is not the end of promoting public welfare and eliminating, as far as possible, poverty, ignorance, and squalor, for this end is not only perfectly compatible with individual freedom, but may also be considered as complementary to it. The very core of the socialist solution is the peculiar way its supporters propose to reach that end, namely, by resorting to a host of officials acting in the name of the state and limiting accordingly, if not suppressing altogether, private initiative in economics as well as in several other fields that are inextricably connected with the economic domain.--Bruno Leoni
Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/11/dogs-parking-meters-and-rule-of-law.html
What is characteristic of the socialistic solution of the so-called social problem is not the end of promoting public welfare and eliminating, as far as possible, poverty, ignorance, and squalor, for this end is not only perfectly compatible with individual freedom, but may also be considered as complementary to it. The very core of the socialist solution is the peculiar way its supporters propose to reach that end, namely, by resorting to a host of officials acting in the name of the state and limiting accordingly, if not suppressing altogether, private initiative in economics as well as in several other fields that are inextricably connected with the economic domain.--Bruno Leoni
In
1770 Captain James Cook discovered Eastern Australia in the now-famous
research vessel, the HMS Endeavour. The ship returned to England in 1771
and was last seen at sea in 1778. Researchers believe they have now
found the scuttled remains of the ship at the bottom of a harbour in
Rhode Island, New England. They believe the ship was used to ferry
British troops during the American Revolution.
In
Great Britain, a warm winter dropped their hospital respiratory
distress admissions from an average of 150 admissions per week to10.
One decade ago there was:
No iPhone. Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone in January 2007, and it didn’t ship until June of that year.
No Facebook (unless you were in college at the time). Facebook only opened to the general population in September 2006.
No Twitter. The full version of the product launched in July 2006.
No Instagram. The picture sharing site only launched in 2010.
No Kim Kardashian. “Keeping up With The Kardashians” debuted in October 2007.
No Uber. The company received its seed funding in 2009.
No iPad. Apple started taking pre-orders on the first-gen product in March 2010.
If we are not physically overrun by barbarians, what will
destroy us? Not learned quibbles on the nuances of what the Founding
Fathers really meant. Rather, we will ruin ourselves with minimum wage
and comparable worth laws; with controls on prices of goods, apartments,
and loans; with erratic changes in the price level; with government
domination through the budget, environmental regulation, and antitrust
intrusions; with progressive attenuation of property rights; with
subsidization of inefficiency and sloth and divisiveness….
Free men require free markets. If we lose the battle of economic freedom, we lose the entire war.
--William Allen
The Stationers Company was the official organization of printers and publishers, given a monopoly in 1557 to practice "the art or mystery of printing." As early as 1538, Henry VIII had issued a proclamation against "naughty printed books," and the creation of the Stationers' Company was yet another attempt to regulate and censor the "many false, scandalous, seditious, and libelous" books that were emerging from the private presses.
AAAaaaaaaannnnnndddddd.....a graph of seasonal variations in the market:
Free men require free markets. If we lose the battle of economic freedom, we lose the entire war.
--William Allen
The Stationers Company was the official organization of printers and publishers, given a monopoly in 1557 to practice "the art or mystery of printing." As early as 1538, Henry VIII had issued a proclamation against "naughty printed books," and the creation of the Stationers' Company was yet another attempt to regulate and censor the "many false, scandalous, seditious, and libelous" books that were emerging from the private presses.
AAAaaaaaaannnnnndddddd.....a graph of seasonal variations in the market:
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