In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul. -Mary Renault, novelist (4 Sep 1905-1983)
Substituting legislation for the spontaneous application of nonlegislated rules of behavior is indefensible unless it is proved that the latter are uncertain or insufficient or that they generate some evil that legislation could avoid while maintaining the advantages of the previous system. This preliminary assessment is unthought of by contemporary legislators. On the contrary, they seem to think that legislation is always good in itself and that the burden of the proof is upon the people who do not agree. My humble suggestion is that their implication that a law (even a bad law) is better than nothing should be much more supported by evidence than it is.--Bruno Leoni, setting a high bar
Market processes are always just, because that cake is baked with the slices already allocated. The problems for social justice arise when coercion is misused, precisely because our “contract” with the state is unenforceable.
Who is...Little Willie?
Yikes! "It is, frankly, frightening that a person possessing such power, and such a large public following, is so clueless about reality, so uninformed about economics, so blatant in his willingness to behave as if he’s a dictator, and so unintelligent as to be unaware of his own logical contradictions. A certified madman divining ‘facts’ about trade from his reading of the entrails of a hamster would make no less sense than does the current president of the United States of America." --Lemieux
Most research shows that immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, commit fewer crimes, including violent crimes, than do native-born Americans. Cato Institute’s Alex Nowratesh compared crimes rates of immigrants to those of the native born in Texas and found that in 2016, “the homicide conviction rate for native-born Americans in Texas was 3.2 per 100,000 natives while it was 1.8 per 100,000 illegal immigrants and 0.9 per 100,000 legal immigrants.”
The power to provide coercive enforcement services seems different, because somehow the “social” contract is supposed to enforce itself. If the plumber comes back and says “You wouldn’t enjoy this house without the toilet, pay me!” it seems silly; we already paid. If the roofer wants more money, we reject the request. But for security services the state keeps coming back, over and over again. That makes no more sense than saying your dog owns your house. The difference is that once a state is established, there is no way for citizens to prevent ex post recontracting in violation of original contract, because the state gets to decide what the contract is and whether to enforce it.
Bordeaux on a basic problem in Progressive "thought:" "Progressives trust unrestrained majorities with the power to redistribute income, to mandate paid leave and otherwise to regulate private enterprise in ever-greater detail, and to run K-12 schooling better than profit-seeking businesses and private non-profits would do. Why should the same voters who are so parochial and ignorant that they can’t be trusted with the power to collectively govern abortion, school prayer, marriage policy, and other non-economic matters be trusted with even more power than they already possess to collectively govern the distribution of income, the manner in which people trade, the wages that employers pay, and other economic matters?"
This is not, however, an inconsistency. These people trust only themselves; any support of the people is a coincidence.
This is not, however, an inconsistency. These people trust only themselves; any support of the people is a coincidence.
In 1915, a prototype tank nicknamed Little Willie rolled off the assembly line in England. The British developed the tank in response to the trench warfare of World War I. In 1914, a British army colonel named Ernest Swinton and William Hankey, secretary of the Committee for Imperial Defence, championed the idea of an armored vehicle with conveyor-belt-like tracks over its wheels that could break through enemy lines and traverse difficult territory. The men appealed to British navy minister Winston Churchill, who believed in the concept of a “land boat” and organized a Landships Committee to begin developing a prototype.
Little Willie, was unveiled in September 1915. Following its underwhelming performance–it was slow, became overheated and couldn’t cross trenches–a second prototype, known as “Big Willie,” was produced. By 1916, this armored vehicle was deemed ready for battle and made its debut at the First Battle of the Somme near Courcelette, France, on September 15 of that year. It was known as the Mark I.
Further design improvements were made and at the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917, 400 Mark IV’s proved much more successful than the Mark I, capturing 8,000 enemy troops and 100 guns.
U.S. President Donald Trump slammed Harley-Davidson Inc. after the motorcycle maker said it would move production for European customers overseas to avoid retaliatory tariffs that could cost it up to $100 million per year. So the easily predictable begins.
These people are really astonishing.
I'm struggling with the Sarah Huckabee Sanders eviction from the restaurant. I think it is a terrible thing to feel so strongly about peripheral political matters but I am impressed with the importance of the right of association, a right that I think is more important than I originally assumed. So...if someone wants to run the risk of a boycott, then I'm o.k. with it. I am not sure how far this should be allowed to go, however. Private association is different from public accommodation. I don't care at all if someone wants to exclude me because of my religion or race but I do not feel the same way about other races, and I am not sure why.
As of mid-2017, there were 29,288 steel-consuming firms, employing more than 900,000 workers who face higher prices versus just 916 steel-producing firms with 80,000 employees who benefit from those higher prices and reduced competition.
Trump--as a policy maker--is hard to define. But his influence through court appointees will be profound. The problem is, of course, no one knows what will move his decision. His first appointment was a constitutionalist. But his domestic policy is a potpourri and his economics defy description. We could get anything. (Will wrote caustically: "The quality of Trump’s thinking about matters juridical can be gauged by his remark, during a Republican candidates’ debate, that his sister, a federal judge, was so conservative she had signed a “bill” that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. had signed.") But there another element. In the 2016 election a lot of conservatives polled said they voted because of the court vacancy; they did not want Clinton filling it. This new spot might motivate them to vote again this year, despite what they think of Trump.
Economic historian Deirdre McCloskey has named her second book in her trilogy, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World, an effort to explain what she calls the Great Fact: the unprecedented rise in standards of living that began in 1800. She rejects a number of traditional explanations like capital accumulation, expansion of trade, one of my favorites--institutions, property rights, neither slave trade nor imperialism nor geographical factors nor improved transportation. (You can see where this is going.) Rather she says the stimulus was social: Once entrepreneurs were given leeway and incentive—both financial and social—to pursue their objectives, innovation in the form of Schumpeterian creative destruction was unleashed, leading humankind to the most prosperous period in history.
A Japanese space probe arrived at an asteroid 300 million kilometers from Earth after a three-and-a half year journey.
Hayabusa 2, named for the peregrine falcon, will spend the next few months orbiting about 20 km above the asteroid and mapping its surface before landing. It will then use small explosives to blast a crater on the surface and collect the resulting debris.
Asteroids are believed to have formed at the dawn of the solar system and scientists say Ryugu may contain organic matter that may have contributed to life on Earth.
"These students ... are among the most privileged human beings in human history. To be at an American college with educational resources available to them that the Renaissance humanists would have killed for. (Yet they) think of themselves as victims. That, to me, is a very sad state of delusion."--MacDonald
Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes in his new book, "Skin in the Game," about the phenomenon of "renormalization," whereby larger, more moderate groups appease small minorities simply to avoid certain costs.
I'm not sure "disinterested compromise" needs a new word.
Golden oldie:
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steeleydock.blogspot.com
A continuation of the period of The Duchess of Malfi: And there was The State. Elizabeth developed a domestic spy system. The printing ...
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The U.S. has resigned from the U.N. Human Rights Council. It leaves behind such worthies as: Venezuela, Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its political assassins, the People’s Republic of China and its organ harvesters, and the Castro dictatorship in Cuba.
These politicians think we will believe anything.
These politicians think we will believe anything.
Williamson has an article in the National Review with some interesting points. These are the three best: 1. [..after the government socialized the oil industry to pay for their social programs...] [t]he central planners in Venezuela were arrogant and hubristic, as they always are. (As, indeed, the entire concept of central planning is.) When oil revenues proved insufficient to sustain their program, they printed money; when the foreign-exchange markets responded by devaluing Venezuela’s currency, they enacted controls on foreign exchange; when prices rocketed out of control (Venezuela’s inflation rate is difficult to calculate, but it is estimated to have been around 18,000 percent a month in April), they enacted price controls; when producers declined to produce at those artificially low prices, they seized their assets. 2. In a 2006 poll conducted by the University of Chicago, Venezuelans led the world in national pride. The second-proudest nation in that poll was the United States. 3. I have long argued that about half of our political disagreements are simply cases of failing to agree about the meaning of a word. By “capitalism” libertarians mean the free enterprise of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman, while our friends on the left mean by “capitalism” the shenanigans of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala (it’s always the United Fruit Company!), the crimes of Enron, the purported misdeeds of Halliburton, etc. Libertarians might respond that lobbying the CIA to knock over unfriendly tropical governments is not exactly what we mean by free enterprise, but the conversation rarely advances much beyond that, in part because of the emotional resonances of certain words, e.g. “neocon,” “corporation,” “exploitation,” etc.
The Pens had 38 guys to their developmental camp. This guy is one of them:
Austin Lemieux
Height: 6-3 Weight: 170 Age: 22
Last year: 20 goals, 54 assists, 45 games, Islanders (USPHL)
Arizona State recruit led the U.S. Premier Hockey League in scoring last season.
The leader of the anti-immigration League party and interior minister is blocking migrant-laden boats from landing in Italy, challenging European Union rules on asylum, and adding to the pressure on Germany’s beleaguered chancellor, Angela Merkel. (wsj)
In June, 1950, President Harry S. Truman ordered U.S. air and naval forces to South Korea to aid the democratic nation in repulsing an invasion by communist North Korea. The United States was undertaking the major military operation, he explained, to enforce a United Nations resolution calling for an end to hostilities, and to stem the spread of communism in Asia. In addition to ordering U.S. forces to Korea, Truman also deployed the U.S. 7th Fleet to Formosa (Taiwan) to guard against invasion by communist China and ordered an acceleration of military aid to French forces fighting communist guerrillas in Vietnam.
Aaaaaannnnnnddddd....a map of the source countries in red who sold liquor in the ABC Store in Oakton, Va. Small store, many big countries. Who organized that?
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