Surfing legend Tamayo Perry has died following a shark attack in Oahu, Hawaii.
***
“Pre-1983, mortgage costs were in the CPI as were car payments pre-1998. Now, price indexes do not include borrowing costs. Thus, when interest rates jumped last year, official inflation did not fully capture the effects it would have on consumer well-being.”
Indeed, if we measured inflation as we did in the 1970s, the inflation that started in 2021 would have peaked at 18 percent—double its reported peak. That’s higher than the worst of the 1970 and ’80s. Inflation’s current annual rate would be about 8 percent.
(Larry Summers)
***
In recent months, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which rules the southern state of Tamil Nadu, has used AI to resurrect its iconic leader M Karunanidhi from the dead, using lifelike videos of the former movie writer and veteran politician at campaign events. (He died in 2018.)
***
As dirty and harmful a bastard as politics can be, it comes from pure and noble parentage. Politics is the result of man's basic assessment of Man. That is, the nature of Man is the foundation of any political viewpoint. A political movement will be either the exploitation of Man's qualities as they see them or a reaction against those qualities for some perceived greater good. In either case, politics is the creation, the child, of our philosophy of life, of what we believe Man is and what the world he inhabits should be. If we believe Man a depraved killer, society should probably bear some aspects of a prison. If we think Man has been ruined by technology but has a good heart, perhaps some agricultural society would make sense.
But if something is not constructed correctly, it will fail. If your assessment of Man is erroneous or the world he is to inhabit completely fantastic, the resultant political structure will not work. It may take some time to fail--as power can compensate for unreality for a while--but in the long term it will not work. The Russian communist state was built on several gigantic fallacies and was doomed from the start. No support by the KGB, no pressure from Reagan, would have anything other than a minor effect. Internal flaws will bring a structure down. In government this means that some basic assessment and judgment of human nature must be made and, for the system to succeed, must be accurate.
Very bright guys have tried this before and have not agreed at all. Kant was thrilled with the Enlightenment, Rousseau thought it was a disaster. The problem is that most people think these guys are abstract thinkers with no practical meaning. That is untrue. These people either point to a future direction or are representative of it. Kant led to the English evolution, Rousseau led to the French Revolution and eventually Napoleon. Marx was worse as he unleashed a pious and charitably sounding philosophy that was arbitrarily homicidal. It is quite one thing to have people fail in a system because the protective nature of the system has been overestimated or the people themselves have, it is quite another thing to target a large element of the culture for extinction because of some vague and unprovable belief. It is no wonder that Hitler and Stalin found so much comfort in their treaty, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact: they must have recognized the fraternal homicidal gleam in the eyes across the table. Leaders and government theorists will influence us if they possibly can--they want to--and must be thought of in that way. Governments and leaders try to exploit what they think we are; so what we are, and their assessment of us, matters.
But the assessment of Man is difficult. Our analysis will always be contaminated by our hopes and prejudices. Worse, group behavior might be different from individual behavior--like flocking of birds--and the results from groups might be entirely unexpected. Even worse, times change. New factors--technological, religious, scientific--are introduced or removed. The ground changes. So political belief might come from optimistic views of Man, hopeful, radical, inspired, mystical--anything. But the evaluation of Man which forms the foundation of every political movement must be true. Man's personal plugs must fit the political outlets. For the outcome of inaccuracy in politics is chaos--until it is rescued--stabilized--, as it always is, by despotism.
More than the English Channel separated the development of the English state from the collapse of the French state. The English experience for the time was simply truer.
***
“Pre-1983, mortgage costs were in the CPI as were car payments pre-1998. Now, price indexes do not include borrowing costs. Thus, when interest rates jumped last year, official inflation did not fully capture the effects it would have on consumer well-being.”
Indeed, if we measured inflation as we did in the 1970s, the inflation that started in 2021 would have peaked at 18 percent—double its reported peak. That’s higher than the worst of the 1970 and ’80s. Inflation’s current annual rate would be about 8 percent.
(Larry Summers)
***
In recent months, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which rules the southern state of Tamil Nadu, has used AI to resurrect its iconic leader M Karunanidhi from the dead, using lifelike videos of the former movie writer and veteran politician at campaign events. (He died in 2018.)
***
The Genes of Politics
Aristotle thought Politics was the highest philosophical pursuit as it dealt with the creation and behavior of the city-state; ethics was only individual. But politics in theory bears little resemblance to politics in practice. And political parties are politics' worst distillate. Antagonism, belief founded on conjecture, mendacity, distortion--all these are the nature of politics and the essence of political parties. And these basic sins are intensified when the system begins to show it does not work.As dirty and harmful a bastard as politics can be, it comes from pure and noble parentage. Politics is the result of man's basic assessment of Man. That is, the nature of Man is the foundation of any political viewpoint. A political movement will be either the exploitation of Man's qualities as they see them or a reaction against those qualities for some perceived greater good. In either case, politics is the creation, the child, of our philosophy of life, of what we believe Man is and what the world he inhabits should be. If we believe Man a depraved killer, society should probably bear some aspects of a prison. If we think Man has been ruined by technology but has a good heart, perhaps some agricultural society would make sense.
But if something is not constructed correctly, it will fail. If your assessment of Man is erroneous or the world he is to inhabit completely fantastic, the resultant political structure will not work. It may take some time to fail--as power can compensate for unreality for a while--but in the long term it will not work. The Russian communist state was built on several gigantic fallacies and was doomed from the start. No support by the KGB, no pressure from Reagan, would have anything other than a minor effect. Internal flaws will bring a structure down. In government this means that some basic assessment and judgment of human nature must be made and, for the system to succeed, must be accurate.
Very bright guys have tried this before and have not agreed at all. Kant was thrilled with the Enlightenment, Rousseau thought it was a disaster. The problem is that most people think these guys are abstract thinkers with no practical meaning. That is untrue. These people either point to a future direction or are representative of it. Kant led to the English evolution, Rousseau led to the French Revolution and eventually Napoleon. Marx was worse as he unleashed a pious and charitably sounding philosophy that was arbitrarily homicidal. It is quite one thing to have people fail in a system because the protective nature of the system has been overestimated or the people themselves have, it is quite another thing to target a large element of the culture for extinction because of some vague and unprovable belief. It is no wonder that Hitler and Stalin found so much comfort in their treaty, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact: they must have recognized the fraternal homicidal gleam in the eyes across the table. Leaders and government theorists will influence us if they possibly can--they want to--and must be thought of in that way. Governments and leaders try to exploit what they think we are; so what we are, and their assessment of us, matters.
But the assessment of Man is difficult. Our analysis will always be contaminated by our hopes and prejudices. Worse, group behavior might be different from individual behavior--like flocking of birds--and the results from groups might be entirely unexpected. Even worse, times change. New factors--technological, religious, scientific--are introduced or removed. The ground changes. So political belief might come from optimistic views of Man, hopeful, radical, inspired, mystical--anything. But the evaluation of Man which forms the foundation of every political movement must be true. Man's personal plugs must fit the political outlets. For the outcome of inaccuracy in politics is chaos--until it is rescued--stabilized--, as it always is, by despotism.
More than the English Channel separated the development of the English state from the collapse of the French state. The English experience for the time was simply truer.
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For A Man who might have been president for Life you worry too much
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