30 BC
Octavian (later known as Augustus) enters Alexandria, Egypt, bringing it under the control of the Roman Republic.
1800
The Act of Union 1800 is passed in which merges the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
1801
First Barbary War: The American schooner USS Enterprise captures the Tripolitan polacca Tripoli in a single-ship action off the coast of modern-day Libya.
1834
Slavery is abolished in the British Empire as the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 comes into force.
1894
The First Sino-Japanese War erupts between Japan and China over Korea.
1927
The Nanchang Uprising marks the first significant battle in the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and Communist Party of China. This day is commemorated as the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army
1944
The Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi occupation breaks out in Warsaw, Poland.
1966
Charles Whitman kills 16 people at The University of Texas at Austin before being killed by the police.
2004
A supermarket fire kills 396 people and injures 500 in Asunción, Paraguay.
***
The solution proposed by Spears and Geruso's book on population decline related to birth rate decline in After the Spike is no less than a total restructuring of society around family and child care, in which parenting is so well supported socially, culturally, economically, and medically that it is seen as a joy, not a relentless struggle.
Now, at last, is a project to satisfy the meddling instincts of social engineers, unemployable sociologists, do-gooders, and busybodies that no one could oppose: a social project aimed at encouraging and helping young families. My bet is that few people apply to solve the problem because it is not grand enough or revolutionary enough for their ambitions. And, of course, not enough of their enemies are killed.
***
White people make up 15% of the world's population. How are populations evaluated so that Whites are presented as the majority in the public eye?
***
I hope The Sweeney Crisis prompts people to remember the intellectual origins of the eugenics movement in the West. It was not the intellectuals' finest hour. Eugenics is, however, the combination of science and utilitarianism, exactly what the Left loves.
***
The Scarce and the Non-scarce
***
White people make up 15% of the world's population. How are populations evaluated so that Whites are presented as the majority in the public eye?
***
I hope The Sweeney Crisis prompts people to remember the intellectual origins of the eugenics movement in the West. It was not the intellectuals' finest hour. Eugenics is, however, the combination of science and utilitarianism, exactly what the Left loves.
***
The Scarce and the Non-scarce
Economics is the study of the allocation of limited resources.
In a clever article in AIER, Tucker discusses Munger's explanation of the distinctions between capitalism and socialism. The pro-capitalist camp believes in ownership, the evolution of prices, and production structures for scarce goods. There is no better, more peaceful, more productive way to deal with the fact that sometimes there is not enough of everything for everyone. The best solution is to adopt a peaceful method of exchange and production, allowing for more wealth to be distributed among everyone over time.
At the same time, capitalists believe in the universal sharing of non-scarce goods like knowledge. This distinction between scarce and non-scarce helps explain so much about the world around us. We have to learn to distinguish them so that we can apply tools of production and allocation in the proper way. Scarce goods absolutely require the application of economizing; non-scarce goods can be freely and expansively shared without the need for economizing.
The socialist left makes a mess of this distinction, mixing up the two things. They want socialism for scarce goods and private ownership for non-scarce goods. How so? They want free college for everyone, health care for everyone, food for everyone, and they advocate all this with near-zero appreciation for the reality that these are scarce goods and so there are massive costs associated with these plans and everyone must bear them, not to mention endless force to make people do what they would otherwise not want to do.
At the same time, these same people apply the limitations of scarcity where it need not apply. They say there can be no cultural appropriation even though culture is a non-scarce good that is malleable and universally shareable. They demand identity politics even though identity is something anyone can adopt without taking away anything from anyone else. Identity is a non-scarce good and need not be commodified like a physical good.
Socialists are mostly intellectuals. Their most valued personal production is within the realm of ideas. They share these ideas constantly with anyone who will listen. Their goal is to seek influence, which can occur without the need for allocating and apportioning their product. They are producing goods that are non-scarce.
They can’t understand why doctors, colleges, food growers, and factories cannot do the same. The problem of scarcity does not present itself in their profession, so they remain oblivious to the reality that scarcity exists for every single good other than ideas.
Why the rising popularity of socialism? Munger suggests, “Much of the new wealth is digital, and takes the form of music, movies, or other entertainment or software, code that once written down can be reproduced at no cost and transmitted worldwide essentially for free.”
The great migration from the physical world to the digital world has vastly expanded the realm and pool of non-scarce wealth. That’s a wonderful thing. But this might tempt intellectuals to believe the same thing can happen in the physical world. And yet no matter how much we digitize, it doesn’t obliterate the essential distinction between scarce and non-scarce.
If a Twitter post can be universally distributed, why not vegan dinners and brain surgeries? Now you know the answer; it is the difference between scarce and non-scarce. One cannot be shared unto infinity and the other can. That’s a huge difference.
If we can’t get that straight, we can never learn to think with economic rationality. Even worse, failing to understand this, and barreling ahead with a system that mixes the two up, can destroy both prosperity and liberty.
In a clever article in AIER, Tucker discusses Munger's explanation of the distinctions between capitalism and socialism. The pro-capitalist camp believes in ownership, the evolution of prices, and production structures for scarce goods. There is no better, more peaceful, more productive way to deal with the fact that sometimes there is not enough of everything for everyone. The best solution is to adopt a peaceful method of exchange and production, allowing for more wealth to be distributed among everyone over time.
At the same time, capitalists believe in the universal sharing of non-scarce goods like knowledge. This distinction between scarce and non-scarce helps explain so much about the world around us. We have to learn to distinguish them so that we can apply tools of production and allocation in the proper way. Scarce goods absolutely require the application of economizing; non-scarce goods can be freely and expansively shared without the need for economizing.
The socialist left makes a mess of this distinction, mixing up the two things. They want socialism for scarce goods and private ownership for non-scarce goods. How so? They want free college for everyone, health care for everyone, food for everyone, and they advocate all this with near-zero appreciation for the reality that these are scarce goods and so there are massive costs associated with these plans and everyone must bear them, not to mention endless force to make people do what they would otherwise not want to do.
At the same time, these same people apply the limitations of scarcity where it need not apply. They say there can be no cultural appropriation even though culture is a non-scarce good that is malleable and universally shareable. They demand identity politics even though identity is something anyone can adopt without taking away anything from anyone else. Identity is a non-scarce good and need not be commodified like a physical good.
Socialists are mostly intellectuals. Their most valued personal production is within the realm of ideas. They share these ideas constantly with anyone who will listen. Their goal is to seek influence, which can occur without the need for allocating and apportioning their product. They are producing goods that are non-scarce.
They can’t understand why doctors, colleges, food growers, and factories cannot do the same. The problem of scarcity does not present itself in their profession, so they remain oblivious to the reality that scarcity exists for every single good other than ideas.
Why the rising popularity of socialism? Munger suggests, “Much of the new wealth is digital, and takes the form of music, movies, or other entertainment or software, code that once written down can be reproduced at no cost and transmitted worldwide essentially for free.”
The great migration from the physical world to the digital world has vastly expanded the realm and pool of non-scarce wealth. That’s a wonderful thing. But this might tempt intellectuals to believe the same thing can happen in the physical world. And yet no matter how much we digitize, it doesn’t obliterate the essential distinction between scarce and non-scarce.
If a Twitter post can be universally distributed, why not vegan dinners and brain surgeries? Now you know the answer; it is the difference between scarce and non-scarce. One cannot be shared unto infinity and the other can. That’s a huge difference.
If we can’t get that straight, we can never learn to think with economic rationality. Even worse, failing to understand this, and barreling ahead with a system that mixes the two up, can destroy both prosperity and liberty.
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