Reassessing That T-Shirt

What made us rich was liberty, not helpful nudges and lovely industrial policies and wonderful protections enforced by the government’s monopoly of coercion, on display in China in the hugely unprofitable governmental enterprises.--McCloskey

If the Astros cheated, I am going to be really unhappy.
Verlander wins Cy Young with deGrom.

I read an article that predicts a 70% increase in food production using less land. The big factors, vertical farming, 3D printing of food. 3D couldn't be any worse than Alexander's.

Interesting. Look who's tied with McGill:
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities


Historian Andrew Roberts, author of a bestselling biography of Napoleon, on the man himself:

"I’d set aside his military achievements—conquering half of Europe in the 16 years of his rule between 1799 and 1815—as all of those had completely disappeared by the time of the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Instead, I’d concentrate on those aspects of his rule that can still be seen in France and in much of Western Europe today. I argue that although he didn’t have much to do with the French Revolution itself, as he was too young, he nonetheless kept the best bits of the Revolution—equality before the law, religious tolerance, meritocracy—for France and the countries that France conquered. The Code Napoleon was still in effect in the Rhineland until 1900, for example, and it underlines modern European legal systems to this day. He got rid of the worst bits, like the mass guillotining, the Reign of Terror, the various mad ideas they had like the ten-day week, abolishing Christianity, and so on. He was the person who brought France into the 19th century with huge reforms of administration and finance. He was a moderniser."

It took over 200,000 years of human history for the world's population to reach 1 billion; and only 200 years more to reach 7 billion.

The Office of Management and Budget predicted that the US economy would grow at a 3.2 percent pace this year. That almost certainly won’t happen since the economy only grew 1.9 percent this quarter.
Models.

Have the Dems burned all their coup kindling?

A protest against poor conditions is not the same as a protest against inequality. Many Chilean complaints revolve around the pension system, health care, water rights, public transportation, schools and corruption. Are Chileans upset that their transport options aren’t better? That’s a complaint in absolute terms. Or are they upset that they are riding the subway while many of the wealthy have private cars with drivers? That’s a relative complaint. The answer will depend on the protester, and in virtually all protests around the world there will be those with both motives. But some North American commentators try to equate these two grudges and subsume them all under the heading of inequality. That just won’t wash.--Cowen

Capitalism = market-tested innovation (McCloskey) = more from less (McAfee).

They act as if spending our money is virtuous. 
Democrat Joe Biden would invest $1.3 trillion over a decade on electric car charging stations, high-speed railroads, clean-energy research and other public infrastructure if he is elected U.S. president next year, his campaign said on Thursday.
I'll see that and raise.....

On November 14, 1985, a volcano erupted in Colombia, killing well over 20,000 people as nearby towns are buried in mud, ice and lava.


                       Reassessing That T-Shirt

Here are some info bits about Saint Che in an article by Reed, drawn from Fontova’s book Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him and other sources:

• He publicly applauded the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and denounced the student protesters battling Soviet tanks in Budapest as “fascists.”
• Upon the victory of the 1959 communist revolution in Cuba, Che commandeered for himself one of the most luxurious mansions in Havana—complete with a yacht harbor, monster swimming pool, seven bathrooms, sauna and massage salon, and five television sets.
• Che played a leading role in the Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961 and, at the same time, helped direct the regime’s brutal policy of crushing dissenting opinion and opposition media. As Fontova documented in his biography, Che “promoted book burning and signed death warrants for authors who disagreed with him.” Communist despots routinely teach reading and writing but work even harder at making sure you only read and write what they want you to. Che’s first public book-burning set more than 3,000 books ablaze on a Havana street.
• Even Che’s adoring hagiographer, Jorge Castaneda, admits that Che “played a central role in establishing Cuba’s security machinery” in the early days of the Castro regime. In that capacity, Che supervised the torture and execution of untold thousands of Cubans without trial. He had a special affection for firing squads.
• Cuban poet and diplomat Armando Valladares, author of Against All Hope: My 22 Years in Castro’s Gulag, says Che “was a man full of hatred” who executed people “who never once stood trial and were never declared guilty” and who declared, “At the smallest of doubt we must execute.”
• Che was no equal opportunity oppressor. He held special dislike for gays, whom he incarcerated in multiple prisons. He was a well-known racist, as well.
• Fidel Castro appointed Che Guevara as communist Cuba’s first “Economics Minister” and president of the country’s National Bank. Within months, the Cuban peso was practically worthless. Castro appointed him Minister of Industries, too. In that job, Che proved equally incompetent. He once bought a fleet of snowplows from Czechoslovakia because he thought they would make excellent sugar cane harvesters but, sadly, the machines simply squashed and killed the plants.
• Che was Castro’s economic czar, though he knew nothing about economics beyond Marxist bumper stickers. His former deputy Ernesto Betancourt said Che was “ignorant of the most elementary economic principles.” Nonetheless, he actually wrote communist Cuba’s agrarian reform law, limiting the size of all farms and creating state-run communes. Production plummeted and is still lower today than before the revolution.
• The Soviet missiles in Cuba that nearly precipitated a world war in 1962 were Che’s idea. When the Soviets were pressured by the Kennedy administration to remove them, Che publicly declared that if the missiles had been under Cuban control, they would have been fired at the US because the cause of socialism was worth “millions of atomic-war victims.”
• Che left Cuba in 1965 to foment violent insurrections first in Africa and then back in Latin America. He was captured by the Bolivian military on October 8, 1967, and administered a dose of his own summary medicine the next day.
• Bottom line: Think twice (actually, just once ought to be enough) about adding a Che Guevara T-shirt to your Christmas giving this year.