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.
***
"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.
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.
***
"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.
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.
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