An Allocation Economy Run by Autocrats Makes You Free

 

On this day:

991
Battle of Maldon: the English, led by Byrhtnoth, Ealdorman of Essex, are defeated by a band of inland-raiding Vikings near Maldon in Essex.
1519
Ferdinand Magellan’s five ships set sail from Seville to circumnavigate the globe. The Basque second-in-command, Sebastian Elcano, will complete the expedition after Magellan died in the Philippines.
1755
Under the orders of Charles Lawrence, the British Army begins to forcibly deport the Acadians from Nova Scotia to the Thirteen Colonies.
1792
French Revolution: Storming of the Tuileries Palace – Louis XVI of France is arrested and taken into custody as his Swiss Guards are massacred by the Parisian mob
1920
World War I: Ottoman sultan Mehmed VI’s representatives sign the Treaty of Sèvres that divides up the Ottoman Empire between the Allies.
1969
A day after murdering Sharon Tate and four others, members of Charles Manson’s cult kill Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.
1990
The Magellan space probe reaches Venus. (Symmetry!)

1995
Oklahoma City bombing: Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols are indicted for the bombing. Michael Fortier pleads guilty in a plea-bargain for his testimony.

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“One is not born, but becomes a woman”--Simone de Beauvoir

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The New World of Malice and Mischief: The water system in Braham, Minnesota, was among dozens of systems hit after federal agencies warned that Iran-linked hackers could target U.S. infrastructure.

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It was at Cambridge that Darwin read Alexander von Humboldt’s Personal Narrative – a book that was partly a travel account and partly a scientific treatise of the German explorer’s expedition through South America. It was this publication, Darwin said, that “determined me to travel in distant countries, and led me to volunteer as naturalist in Her Majesty’s ship Beagle”.
He returned to England in October 1836 with more than 1,500 specimens preserved in spirits and almost 4,000 skins, bones and other items. Then the real work began: sorting, classifying, writing and thinking. He published The Voyage of the Beagle (and sent it in trepidation to his hero Humboldt, who admired it) and began to make notes on his “species theory”.

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Three skeletons have been found in a cave in Mexico dating to about 13,000 B.C., earlier than the freezing of the Bering Strait. They look like ethnic Indonesians.

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During her Sunday appearance on ABC News’s “This Week,” Ocasio-Cortez discussed her decision to freeze her eggs, saying, “In this political environment where this administration is denying reproductive care to women across the country, from abortion rights to the ability to carry out a healthy pregnancy, I think it’s important for us, as leaders, to have these conversations and share these processes.”

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

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An Allocation Economy Run by Autocrats Makes You Free

According to Corey Robin, professor of political science at Brooklyn College, "the socialist argument against capitalism isn’t that it makes us poor. It’s that it makes us unfree. When my well-being depends upon your whim, when the basic needs of life compel submission to the market and subjugation at work, we live not in freedom but in domination. Socialists want to end that domination: to establish freedom from rule by the boss, from the need to smile for the sake of a sale, from the obligation to sell for the sake of survival." He continues, “The socialist believes that making things free makes people free.”

Freedom "from the need to smile for the sake of a sale?" From the unexplained bodega closing? The freedom to be rude? Impolite? Disinterested? Unmotivated?

And, more importantly, who is making these free things and why?

You can’t have socialism with a scarce good or service, especially among strangers, without the dreaded word unheard in socialism: allocation. Scarce goods and services must be allocated. Allocated. By someone. Not by the market, but by some person based on some uncertain criterion. 

Who are the allocators? What will be the criterion? 

This is a professor at a university, and this is simply not serious thinking.

Sunday/The Storm

 On this day:

48 BC
Caesar’s civil war: Battle of Pharsalus – Julius Caesar decisively defeats Pompey at Pharsalus and Pompey flees to Egypt.
1942
Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi is arrested in Bombay by British forces, launching the Quit India Movement.
1942
World War II: Battle of Savo Island – Allied naval forces protecting their amphibious forces during the initial stages of the Battle of Guadalcanal are surprised and defeated by an Imperial Japanese Navy cruiser force.
1944
Continuation war: The Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive, the largest offensive launched by Soviet Union against Finland during the Second World War, ends to a strategic stalemate. Both Finnish and Soviet troops at the Finnish front dug to defensive positions, and the front remains stable until the end of the war.
1945
World War II: Nagasaki is devastated when an atomic bomb, Fat Man, is dropped by the United States B-29 Bockscar. 39,000 people are killed outright.
1965
Singapore is expelled from Malaysia and becomes the first and only country to date to gain independence unwillingly.
1969
Members of a cult led by Charles Manson brutally murder pregnant actress Sharon Tate (wife of Roman Polanski), coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Polish actor Wojciech Frykowski, men’s hairstylist Jay Sebring and recent high-school graduate Steven Parent.
1971
The Troubles: The British security forces in Northern Ireland launch Operation Demetrius. Hundreds of people are arrested and interned, thousands are displaced, and twenty are killed in the violence that followed.
1974
As a direct result of the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon becomes the first President of the United States to resign from office. His Vice President, Gerald Ford, becomes president.

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A small percentage of listeners know that one of the core melodies of Paul Simon’s lovely song “American Tune” is taken from Johann Sebastian Bach, namely the Passion Chorale from “St. Matthew Passion.” You could say Paul Simon is a plagiarist, though I would prefer not to use this term. He borrowed creatively, as do many other popular music artists.

But wait, it gets worse yet. That melody does not come originally from Bach, but rather he in turn plagiarized a 1601 secular love song by Hans Leo Hassler, namely “Mein G’müt ist mir verwirret” (My feelings are confused). So the lineage is not even the glamorous one you might have imagined. If anything, “American Tune” sounds closer to the Hassler melody than to Bach’s adaptation.--Cowen, on artists borrowing art and, indirectly, AI

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Drones, like the shoulder-fired missile, magnify the damage an individual can do. And our concentrated technology makes that damage more impactful. 

Everyone is more dangerous, and more vulnerable.

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As the Wall Street Journal has documented, Trump has taken a personal hand in the Food and Drug Administration’s drug approvals, the Federal Trade Commission’s merger reviews, and the Federal Communications Commission’s authority over broadcast licenses. The administration can offer a plausible rationale for any one of these interventions. Cumulatively, though, they leave a different impression — that the administrative state’s technocracy has been restored to a clientelist species of democratic control. Unsurprisingly, spending on lobbying targeting the White House has surged to record levels.--drescoll

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Left-leaning Americans are averaging far fewer children than conservatives, whose birth rates hold steady near the 2.1 replacement level.

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Sunday/The Storm

Today's gospel is the walking-on-the-water episode, where Christ, at the end, calms the sea. It is a dense concept in which Christ, having multiplied the loaves and fishes, flees the crowd that would make him king. So he rejects the idea of worldly position, but later dominates the chaotic forces of the world.

Here, for the first time, Peter is singled out, and he behaves like most men, impulsively, with faith then, on consideration, with terror over faith's true consequences.

                                    E Tenebris

COME down, O Christ, and help me! reach thy hand,
For I am drowning in a stormier sea
Than Simon on thy lake of Galilee:
The wine of life is spilt upon the sand,
My heart is as some famine-murdered land,	5
Whence all good things have perished utterly,
And well I know my soul in Hell must lie
If I this night before God’s throne should stand.
“He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase,
Like Baal, when his prophets howled that name	10
From morn to noon on Carmel’s smitten height.”
Nay, peace, I shall behold before the night,
The feet of brass, the robe more white than flame,
The wounded hands, the weary human face. Oscar Wilde

SatStats

 On this day:

1503
King James IV of Scotland marries Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England at Holyrood Abbey, Edinburgh, Scotland.
1588
Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines – The naval engagement ends, ending the Spanish Armada’s attempt to invade England.
1844
The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, headed by Brigham Young, is reaffirmed as the leading body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).
1863
American Civil War: following his defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis (which is refused upon receipt).
1908
Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It is the Wright Brothers’ first public flight.
1942
Quit India Movement is launched in India against the British rule in response to Mahatma Gandhi’s call for swaraj or complete independence.
1945
World War II: The Soviet Union declares war on Japan and begins the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation.

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"The goal of socialism is communism." - Vladimir Lenin

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Super-rich complain but experts welcome Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax-- Guardian headline

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According to Adam Smith, contrary to the prevailing wisdom of his day, empire, once all the trade-offs were considered, diminished the wealth of nations rather than increasing it.

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Warren Buffett's own preferred metric -- the Buffett indicator -- recently reached its highest point in history. This figure measures the relationship between the total value of U.S. stocks and GDP, and Buffett himself noted that when it nears 200%, investors are "playing with fire." As of this writing, it sits at 232%.

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SatStats

42 percent of Americans over 60 believe they will literally work until they die.

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College graduates are currently entering the toughest entry-level job market in years, with underemployment climbing past 42 percent.

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In 2024, roughly 4 percent of fast-food locations in the US used voice AI technology in the drive-thru lane, according to Intouch Insight’s annual Drive Thru Survey. Last year, that figure grew to 5 percent; early research suggests that it has now climbed to 6 percent.

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White Castle was the only fast-food chain in the Fortune’s top 20 list of best workplaces in retail last year

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Homeschooling

Homeschooling is no longer a fringe practice. According to U.S. Census Bureau survey data, roughly 6 percent of American K-12 students — about 3 million children — were reported as homeschooled in the 2023-24 school year, nearly double what it was before the pandemic. And this is not a pandemic hangover that is fading. Analysis of state records found homeschooling growing at an average of 4.9 percent across reporting states in 2024-25 — more than double the pre-pandemic growth rate — with several states hitting all-time enrollment highs.

Homeschooling families are more racially and ethnically diverse than the stereotype suggests and growing more so over time.

In Delaware, one of the few states that reports these figures, Black students make up 12 percent of the homeschool population.

No single profile describes homeschooled adults. Outcomes vary

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A 2024 survey by the National Apartment Association found that 22 percent of property managers identified aggressive or abusive tenants as their biggest workplace challenge.

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While migration from NY has slowed in the last couple of years, high earners and married people continue to leave in large numbers. The data show that 13,662 taxpayers—roughly 1 in 1,000 resident taxpayers—on net left the state in 2024.

“The greatest net loss of taxpayers was among married filers with incomes between $100,000 and $500,000—a net loss of 8,200, or more than half of the total net out-migration, in 2024,” the comptroller’s office says. The highest out-migration rate was for households making $500,000 or more—about one in 100 of whom moved out that year.

All this before whatever effect Mamdani has.

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In the 2021-22 school year, about 31% students nationwide experienced chronic absenteeism, reports the U.S. Department of Education. The rate at the start of last school year was about 24%.

Pennsylvania reported a 21% chronic absenteeism rate last year, which is down from its peak 26% in 2022 but still higher than its 2018 rate of 15%.

Why do Bad Things Stick?

1284
The Republic of Pisa is defeated in the Battle of Meloria by the Republic of Genoa, thus losing its naval dominance in the Mediterranean.
1777
American Revolutionary War: The bloody Battle of Oriskany prevents American relief of the Siege of Fort Stanwix.
1806
Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor, abdicates ending the Holy Roman Empire
1862
American Civil War: the Confederate ironclad Ship CSS is scuttled on the Mississippi River after suffering damage in a battle with USS Essex near Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
1914
World War I: First Battle of the Atlantic – two days after the United Kingdom had declared war on Germany over the German invasion of Belgium, ten German U-boats leave their base in Helgoland to attack Royal Navy warships in the North Sea.
1930
Judge Joseph Force Crater steps into a taxi in New York and disappears never to be seen again.
1940
Estonia was illegally annexed by the Soviet Union.
1945
World War II: Hiroshima is devastated when the atomic bomb “Little Boy” is dropped by the United States B-29 Enola Gay. Around 70,000 people are killed instantly, and some tens of thousands die in subsequent years from burns and radiation poisoning.
1991
Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web. WWW debuts as a publicly available service on the Internet.
1996
NASA announces that the ALH 84001 meteorite, thought to originate from Mars, contains evidence of primitive life-forms.
2011
A helicopter containing members of Navy SEAL 6 is shot down in Afghanistan killing 38.

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Tyranny is not freedom just because you voted for it.

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More than 900 million SpaceX shares are set to unlock Thursday, more than doubling the publicly available stock in Elon Musk’s space and AI company.

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A new tactic is emerging in the evolving Social Security failure:

'Social Security is less a need-based program than a transfer of wealth from the young and unpropertied to the old and comfortable.'

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The Democrat's search for muscles has arrived in a tight black T-shirt and a mystery degree in Michigan.

This will be a rarely meaningful election as it offers a serial candidate who dislikes the country he wants to represent. That is a serious test of national tolerance.

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Is a "deal" a "treaty"?

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German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has suggested a state actor was behind the explosive-laden drone that was found at Leipzig airport.


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Why do Bad Things Stick?

Can we transcend our history? Should we? Somehow the great achievement of the Revolution has been eclipsed in recent years and replaced by guilt. Is that permanent? Does everything in history create a permanent alloy, or are they just blends of colors to be washed away?

Things in America are different now. Silliness is no longer simply dismissed. Foolish people who want to dismantle the Constitution are taken seriously. The President codifies petulance. He puts state money into company investments. These are significant, philosophy-altering events. Can they be rolled back when he leaves, or will we stagger on with the new, heavier and distorting alloy of what we once had?

This is one view:

"America at 250 has never been wealthier or more powerful. It has grown two-thirds faster than Western Europe over the past 20 years. Rival ideologies – Chinese authoritarianism, Islamism – are hideously unappealing.

Yet, at the same time, the US is starting to behave like a tinpot autocracy. The best way I can describe it is as Third Worldery. The attempt to browbeat the Nobel Peace Prize Committee; the obsession with building big arches; the tariffs; the annexation threats against Canada, Denmark, and Panama; the renaming of public institutions after a living leader; the successful attempt to bully FIFA over a red card. Such things are the hallmark of insecure dictatorships, not of confident democracies.

Opting for strongman government seems to have opened the way to Third Worldery across the board. Once you build your head of state into a Father of the Nation type, once dissent from his latest whims is portrayed as a form of treachery, other things follow.

It is the same pattern everywhere. When Recep Tayyip Erdoğan insists that the rest of us refer to his country in English as “Türkiye”, he invites us to treat Turkey as a post-colonial failed state rather than as the Western democracy it was before his time. I mean, we use English exonyms for serious places. No one demands that we say Deutschland or Nippon or Magyarország. But touchy third-worldists demand Côte d’Ivoire, Timor-Leste and Cabo Verde – and now the Gulf of America - the classic needy-country move.

…..

Then again, as Lady Macbeth says, “What’s done cannot be undone”. Those who have downplayed, excused, or ignored Trump’s venality will struggle to find grounds on which to oppose equally sleazy stuff from a successor in either party. Standards have been permanently lowered. We will look back wistfully on what was lost."--from Hannan

It's hard to know where to start. Trump? Biden's Presidency-from-the -Crypt? Johnson's creeping Authoritarianism-with-Good-Intent?

Bad ideas will always get a hearing. Some will lie fallow and, unopposed, will fester. The Bell Curve is nonjudgmental. But tolerance for error and respect for precedents has momentum. Ask Dred Scott.

The Nobles and Nobility

On this day:
1305
William Wallace, who led the Scottish resistance against England, is captured by the English near Glasgow and transported to London where he is put on trial and executed.
1583
Sir Humphrey Gilbert establishes the first English colony in North America, at what is now St John’s, Newfoundland.
1620
The Mayflower departs from Southampton, England on its first attempt to reach North America.
1689
1,500 Iroquois attack the village of Lachine in New France.
1735
Freedom of the press: New York Weekly Journal writer John Peter Zenger is acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, on the basis that what he had published was true.
1763
Pontiac’s War: Battle of Bushy Run – British forces led by Henry Bouquet defeat Chief Pontiac’s Indians at Bushy Run.
1862
American Civil War: Battle of Baton Rouge – along the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Confederate troops drive Union forces back into the city.
1864
American Civil War: the Battle of Mobile Bay begins – at Mobile Bay near Mobile, Alabama, Admiral David Farragut leads a Union flotilla through Confederate defenses and seals one of the last major Southern ports.
1884
The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty is laid on Bedloe’s Island (now Liberty Island) in New York Harbor.
1916
World War I: Battle of Romani – Allied forces, under the command of Archibald Murray, defeat an attacking Ottoman army under the command of Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, securing the Suez Canal and beginning the Ottoman retreat from the Sinai Peninsula.
1944
World War II: The Nazis begin a three-day massacre of anywhere between 40,000 and 100,000 civilians and prisoners of war in Wola, Poland.
1979
In Afghanistan, Maoists undertake an attempted military uprising.
1981
Ronald Reagan fires 11,359 striking air-traffic controllers who ignored his order for them to return to work.

And

In the future, on this day:

https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/onlinereader/there-will-come-soft-rains

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“Following a standard workplace safety check, I have just received an email from a university administrator in which my custom of keeping books on the shelves in my office is described as “the unnecessary storing of combustible materials”--some guy named Climperman

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The rising value of women’s time is largely counterbalanced by declining motherhood penalties in earnings and work hours, so forgone market work adds little to relative cost growth.--a paper that believes this is clear.

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Kenny Pickett is on his fifth NFL team since entering the 2022 NFL draft. Pickett signed a $4 million contract with Carolina in March.

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This year, like last year, “the European Union will again make more money from fining US tech companies than from the total tax income from Europe’s own public tech companies!”
Read that again.

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The New Yorker has an article on "Discrimination against the unattractive"

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The Nobles and Nobility

Fauci is beginning to change before our eyes into a weird alloy of his public service past and his new, careless and duplicitious present. But
Fauci, a man of parts, should raise some questions as to where the real dangers to us poor working stiffs come from. Is it the businessman? The capitalist? The farmer? Even the soldier? This will prove to be a tough assessment because the sort-of-free-Press is intimately involved in Fauci's image.

This quote is from Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith is not a capitalist apologist but a true philosopher, an integral part of the Scottish Enlightenment that included Frances Hutcheson, David Hume, and Thomas Reid. His Moral Sentiments was viewed at the time as being more important than his economic writings.

"The violence and injustice of great conquerors are often regarded with foolish wonder and admiration; those of petty thieves, robbers, and murderers, with contempt, hatred, and even horror upon all occasions. The former, though they are a hundred times more mischievous and destructive, yet when successful, they often pass for deeds of the most heroic magnanimity. The latter are always viewed with hatred and aversion, as the follies, as well as the crimes, of the lowest and most worthless of mankind. The injustice of the former is certainly, at least, as great as that of the latter; but the folly and imprudence are not near so great. A wicked and worthless man of parts often goes through the world with much more credit than he deserves."

"A wicked and worthless man of parts often goes through the world with much more credit than he deserves." And so the high-minded and the high-born are forgiven. 

We learn in school of warriors and warlords, the kindly beard-stroking teachers of homicidal philosophies--the cold and heartless man of parts and influence--and not the thoughtful, learned man of goodwill striving for a noble life. And, in any culture, what good can come of that?

Fauci versus Kennedy

 

On this day:

70
The destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans.
1265
Second Barons’ War: Battle of Evesham – the army of Prince Edward (the future king Edward I of England) defeats the forces of rebellious barons led by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, killing de Montfort and many of his allies.
1327
First War of Scottish Independence: James Douglas leads a raid into Weardale and almost kills Edward III of England.
1704
War of the Spanish Succession: Gibraltar is captured by an English and Dutch fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir George Rooke and allied with Archduke Charles.
1789
In France, members of the National Constituent Assembly take an oath to end feudalism and abandon their privileges.
1914
World War I: Germany invades Belgium. In response, the United Kingdom declares war on Germany. The United States declare their neutrality.
1964
American civil rights movement: civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21.
1964
Gulf of Tonkin Incident: U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy report coming under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin.

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"The US used to be a beacon of human rights. Not anymore. Today, it stands alongside North Korea, Nicaragua, Mali & Russia, isolated. And the world no longer listens to it."--The French mission to the UN groping for some invisible-to-most moral high ground

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The heavy drone saturation on the battlefield has prevented either side from capturing any meaningful territory in years. What seems more impactful now are deep strikes: for Ukraine, mid- to long-range drone attacks on Russian logistics, supply routes, and energy infrastructure.--Business Insider field report from Ukraine

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Pirates:

Keller out for the year.

Valdez walked more than any other NL player since the All-Star Game

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Information leaked from DOD states the military hardware stores--particularly drones and missiles-- have been bled down to critical levels. Several news outlets published this. Had the average citizen revealed such information, would he be a spy? Are governmental and journalist personnel held to different standards?

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Fauci versus Kennedy 

Rival political positions have rarely had such tarnished champions. Fauci is now a hero for standing up to the Senate and taking the Fifth countless times, and Kennedy, recovering from a 'troubled past' for leading a very important government department eccentrically. Both have been symbolically publicly dueling, the former in a Senate hearing, the latter on Dana Bash's TV show.

Which of these sorcerer's apprentices is most admirable?

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaking about the measles vaccine, said that “people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves. And what we need to do is give them the best information and encourage them to vaccinate. The vaccine does stop the spread of the disease.”

But Kennedy also downplayed the safety of the vaccine and wrongly told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that measles outbreaks could be driven in part by people who have waning immunity from the vaccine.

There’s some dispute among experts about how much protection may wane, if at all. However, they all agree that in most cases, the vaccine confers lifelong immunity against the virus.

The current outbreak “is absolutely being driven and started by unvaccinated individuals,” said Dr. Michael Mina, chief scientific officer of the telehealth company eMed and an expert in the epidemiology, immunology and spread of infectious disease.

Even those who may have waning immunity will not transmit large amounts of virus, he said.

This is only the fifth year since 2000 that an outbreak has led to more than 100 cases and only the third year with more than 200 cases.

“The goal of a vaccine is to induce the immunity that is a consequence of natural infection without paying the price of natural infection,” Offit said.

The price of infection can be high: One in five unvaccinated people with measles will be hospitalized, 1 in 20 children with measles will develop pneumonia, and 1 in 1,000 children with measles will develop encephalitis or swelling of the brain.

One to three in 1,000 children who have measles will die from complications, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kennedy also inaccurately said vaccine-induced immunity may not be passed through breast milk to nursing infants the way natural immunity is.

“He is wrong. Maternal antibody transfer is a key form of neonatal protection against infectious diseases,” said Dr. Lynn Yee, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine. “Even when a mother had vaccination many years ago, antibodies still transfer.”

Kennedy also incorrectly described adverse events from the MMR vaccine, saying it “causes deaths every year. … It causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes: encephalitis and blindness, et cetera.”

Measles infection can cause encephalitis and blindness, but only a handful of these kinds of illnesses related to vaccination have ever been reported.

A study in which the US Food and Drug Administration and the CDC reviewed reports from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, in addition to medical records, death certificates, and autopsy reports, did not find evidence to suggest “a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and death.”

Fauci's impact was far more reaching, and we know only the most glaring of inconsistencies. Still, it is quite obvious in his tenure as the nation's chief physician that neither hard science nor the public's health were very high on his priority list.

All this is in the setting of Fauci's recent testimony. And the Dems, with their Press PR department, are outraged. Articles and interviews compare Fauci, a man who has dedicated his life to public service, with Kennedy, who is, charitably, a nutball.

It's almost as if Fauci had not linked America to a lab run by autocratic sociopaths and facilitated the genetic engineering of a novel virus that then killed 15 million people in what, in most situations, would be a war crime, and we, the hapless American employers, would be accomplices.

The Scarce and the Non-scarce

On this day:

1492
Christopher Columbus sets sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain.
1852
Harvard wins the first Boat Race between Yale and Harvard. The race is also the first American intercollegiate athletic event
1914
World War I: Germany declares war against France.
1921
Major League Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis confirms the ban of the eight Chicago Black Sox, the day after they were acquitted by a Chicago court.
1934
Adolf Hitler becomes the supreme leader of Germany by joining the offices of President and Chancellor into Führer.
1948
Whittaker Chambers accuses Alger Hiss of being a communist and a spy for the Soviet Union.

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"The future is disorder. A door like this had cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It is the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong."--Tom Stoppard, Arcadia

***

In the top of the sixth inning, Arizona Diamondbacks utility man Tim Tawa attempted to bunt for a base hit with Guardians ace Gavin Williams working on a perfect game. Chaos followed. Then a single.

***

Why have grocery stores at all? Why not just give food away?

***

Are the scientists on the Shroud of Turin looking for the DNA of God?

***

According to Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon of The Athletic, the Pirates remain active in trade discussions involving not only bullpen help but also a right-handed-hitting outfielder. That looks like a team that thinks they can play in the playoffs. The team that played this weekend did not.

***


The Scarce and the Non-scarce


Economics is the study of the allocation of limited resources.

In an 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 can be shared into infinity and the other can't. That’s a huge difference. And those rules will not change whether or not a person understands them.

Not understanding this will sentence a person to struggle with the square peg and the round hole forever, with ever-increasing energy.

If we can’t get that straight, we can never learn to think rationally about economics. Even worse, failing to understand this and barreling ahead, mixing the two up, we can destroy both prosperity and liberty.