"In war the character and personality of the leader is decisive of events much more than minor questions of material."
~ C.S. Forester from his novel The Good Shepherd (made into a recent film called The Greyhound)
. . . promoting capitalist acts between consenting adults.
"In war the character and personality of the leader is decisive of events much more than minor questions of material."
~ C.S. Forester from his novel The Good Shepherd (made into a recent film called The Greyhound)
"To ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the law abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless."~ attrib. Lysander Spooner
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"Hmmm, I didn't know that..." Image Credit: Anders Hellberg [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)] |
"Russia’s military failure in Ukraine has defied almost everyone’s predictions. First came abject defeat at the gates of Kyiv. Then came the incredible shrinking blitzkrieg, as attempts to encircle Ukrainian forces in the supposedly more favourable terrain in the east have devolved into a slow-motion battle of attrition.
"What’s important about this second Russian setback is that it interacts with another big surprise: The remarkable — and, in some ways, puzzling — effectiveness, at least so far, of Western economic sanctions against the Putin regime, sanctions that are working in an unexpected way....
"As soon as the war began there was a great deal of talk about bringing economic pressure to bear against the invading nation. Most of this focussed on ways to cut off Russia’s exports, especially its sales of oil and natural gas. Unfortunately, however, there has been shamefully little meaningful movement on that front....
"As a result, Russian exports have held up, and the country appears to be headed for a record trade surplus. So is Vladimir Putin winning the economic war?
"No, he’s losing it. That surging surplus is a sign of weakness, not strength — it largely reflects a plunge in Russia’s imports, which even state-backed analysts say is hobbling its economy. Russia is, in effect, making a lot of money selling oil and gas, but finding it hard to use that money to buy the things it needs, reportedly including crucial components used in the production of tanks and other military equipment.
"Why is Russia apparently having so much trouble buying stuff? Part of the answer is that many of the world’s democracies have banned sales to Russia of a variety of goods — weapons, of course, but also industrial components that can, directly or indirectly, be used to produce weapons....
"The effect of sanctions on Russia offers a graphic, if grisly, demonstration of a point economists often try to make, but rarely manage to get across: Imports, not exports, are the point of international trade.
"That is, the benefits of trade shouldn’t be measured by the jobs and incomes created in export industries; those workers could, after all, be doing something else. The gains from trade come, instead, from the useful goods and services other countries provide to your citizens. And running a trade surplus isn’t a 'win'; if anything, it means that you’re giving the world more than you get, receiving nothing but i.o.u.s in return.
"Yes, I know that in practice there are caveats and complications to these statements. Trade surpluses can sometimes help boost a weak economy, and while imports make a nation richer, they may displace and impoverish some workers. But what’s happening to Russia illustrates their essential truth. Russia’s trade surplus is a sign of weakness, not strength; its exports are (alas) holding up well despite its pariah status, but its economy is being crippled by a cutoff of imports.
"And this in turn means that Putin is losing the economic as well as the military war."~ Paul Krugman (yes, that Paul Krugman), from his op-ed 'How the West Is Strangling Putin’s Economy'
"All of this [i.e., rapidly rising costs and the resulting cost-of-living crisis] is the result of continuous inflation of the money supply by [central banks]. As a result of the [bank]’s actions, tens and hundreds of billions of new and additional dollars have poured into the economic system, correspondingly increasing spending and driving up prices. There are more and more billionaires and millionaires and shockingly high-priced goods simply because of the flood of new and additional money coming from the [banking system].
"It’s not such things as '[supply] shocks' or [war] that are responsible. Without the flood of new and additional money, increases in the price of oil and [groceries] would be accompanied by decreases in the price of practically everything else. This is because practically all of whatever additional money was spent in buying oil et al. would have to be taken away from spending elsewhere, since the overall total ability to spend in the economic system would be limited by a limited quantity of money. And the rise in the price of oil and [groceries] would also not be nearly as great as it has been....
"The [central banks] and the rest of government seem to think that their job is always to be sure that the stock market averages and the price of homes is never to be allowed to fall too far below their most recent peaks, and to flood the economy with as much new and additional money as may be required to accomplish this.... One would think that a sharp reduction in home prices is the very thing needed ... and that the process needs to go a good deal further than it has, in order to do so.
"For the present and the foreseeable future, there is probably nothing that will stop the [central banks] from continuing with its inflation. Leading pressure groups are ardently in favour of it: ... share owners want it; the great majority of businessmen large and small want it; bankers and brokers want it; homeowners want it; labour unions want it; the political establishment wants it.... To the extent that the environmentalist agenda of declining energy production is imposed, inflation will be used to finance subsidies to the growing numbers who will be impoverished by it. Their expenditure of those subsidies will drive up prices for everyone else and cause further impoverishment and the need for more subsidisation and for still more inflation to pay for it."~ George Reisman, from his post 'A Creditor's Protection Bill' [emphasis added]. For a more detailed explanation of why "supply shocks" do not cause economy-wide price increases, read Chapter 19 [starting page 895] of his economic treatise Capitalism [free pdf here]
"Deficit spending, funded by borrowing, will have implications for the youngest in society. An unbalanced budget has to be funded, and if this is funded by additional borrowing, then future generations will bear the burden of paying off the debt. This is 'fiscal child abuse'...”
“A responsible political party and government would, at the very least, balance the budget ... Instead, [they] fund a series of deficits by borrowing, thereby mortgaging the lives of future generations."~ Julian Darby, from his 2009 press release 'Say "No!" to Fiscal Child Abuse'
"In an earlier era the caucus room was the amphitheatre in which issues of the day were fiercely debated. That happens less frequently and the caucus is served decisions that have already been pre- cooked in the Beehive and discussed and digested with coalition and/or support parties.
"Covid has tended to strengthen that trend.
"As the power of caucus has weakened, the role of communication specialists become more dominant. Ministerial offices have more of them and the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet has a small army, all marching to the same drumbeat."~ from the Point of Order post 'Caucus neophytes may be keeping the govt from knowing what Kiwis in their electorates are wanting'
"Two hundred years ago, before the advent of capitalism, a man’s social status was fixed from the beginning to the end of his life; he inherited it from his ancestors, and it never changed. If he was born poor, he always remained poor, and if he was born rich—a lord or a duke—he kept his dukedom and the property that went with it for the rest of his life.... This rigid system of feudal society prevailed in the most developed areas of Europe for many hundreds of years....
"Descriptive terms which people use [today however] are often quite misleading. In talking about modem captains of industry and leaders of big business, for instance, they call a man a 'chocolate king' or a 'cotton king' or an 'automobile king.' Their use of such terminology implies that they see practically no difference between the modern heads of industry and those feudal kings, dukes or lords of earlier days. But the difference is in fact very great, for a chocolate king does not rule at all, he serves. He does not reign over conquered territory, independent of the market, independent of his customers. The chocolate king—or the steel king or the automobile king or any other king of modern industry—depends on the industry he operates and on the customers he serves. This 'king' must stay in the good graces of his subjects, the consumers; he loses his 'kingdom' as soon as he is no longer in a position to give his customers better service and provide it at lower cost than others with whom he must compete."~ Ludwig Von Mises, from his 1958 'First Lecture on Capitalism,' collected in 'Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow
"Modern societies would be impossible without mass-scale production of many man-made materials....
"Four materials rank highest on the scale of necessity, forming what I have called the four pillars of modern civilisation: cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia are needed in larger quantities than are other essential inputs. The world now produces annually about 4.5 billion tons of cement, 1.8 billion tons of steel, nearly 400 million tons of plastics, and 180 million tons of ammonia. But it is ammonia that deserves the top position as our most important material: its synthesis is the basis of all nitrogen fertilisers, and without their applications it would be impossible to feed, at current levels, nearly half of today’s nearly 8 billion people.
"The dependence is even higher in the world’s most populous country: feeding three out of five Chinese depends on the synthesis of this compound. This dependence easily justifies calling ammonia synthesis the most momentous technical advance in history: other inventions provide our comforts, convenience or wealth or prolong our lives—but without the synthesis of ammonia, we could not ensure the very survival of billions of people alive today and yet to be born....
"[T]hese four materials, so unlike in their properties and qualities, share three common traits: they are not readily replaceable by other materials (certainly not in the near future or on a global scale); we will need much more of them in the future; and their mass-scale production depends heavily on the combustion of fossil fuels...
"Fossil fuels remain indispensable for producing all of these materials.
"Ammonia synthesis uses natural gas both as the source of hydrogen and as the source of energy needed to provide high temperature and pressure. Some 85% of all plastics are based on simple molecules derived from natural gas and crude oil, and hydrocarbons also supply energy for syntheses. Production of primary steel starts with smelting iron ore in blast furnace in the presence of coke made from coal and with the addition of natural gas, and the resulting cast iron is made into steel in large basic oxygen furnaces. And cement is produced by heating ground limestone and clay, shale in large kilns, long inclined metal cylinders, heated with such low-quality fossil fuels as coal dust, petroleum coke and heavy fuel oil.
"As a result, global production of these four indispensable materials claims about 17 percent of the world’s annual total energy supply, and it generates about 25 percent of all CO2 emissions originating in the combustion of fossil fuels. The pervasiveness of this dependence and its magnitude make the decarbonisation of the four material pillars of modern civilisation uncommonly challenging....
"Modern economies will always be tied to massive material flows, whether those of ammonia-based fertilisers to feed the still-growing global population; plastics, steel, and cement needed for new tools, machines, structures, and infrastructures; or new inputs required to produce solar cells, wind turbines, electric cars, and storage batteries. And until all energies used to extract and process these materials come from renewable conversions, modern civilisation will remain fundamentally dependent on the fossil fuels used in the production of these indispensable materials. No artificial intelligence designs, no apps, no claims of coming 'dematerialisation' will change that."~ Vaclav Smil, from his Time article 'The Modern World Can't Exist Without These Four Ingredients. They All Require Fossil Fuels' -- adapted from his new book How the World Really Works. Hat tip Jo Nova, who comments "Not the kind of article we’d [normally] expect to see in Time magazine. A 100% endorsement of the inescapable need for fossil fuels."
"People are asking the wrong questions about abortion.
"To determine whether a foetus has rights, the questions we must answer [first] are not 'When does life begin?' or 'Is a foetus a human being?' Rather, the questions are:"What are rights?
"Where do they come from?
"How do we know it?
"To whom do rights apply?
"If you can answer these questions soundly—with evidence to support your answers—you can know whether a foetus has rights. If you can’t, you can’t. Indeed, if you can’t answer these questions soundly, you can’t know whether anyone has rights."~ Craig Biddle, from his article 'Abortion and the Questions We Must Answer'
INTERVIEWER: How do you cure inflation?
HAYEK: You stop printing money.~ Friedrich Hayek, from an interview with Meet the Press, Hat tip David Henderson, who points out that Hayek later goes on to explain it more accurately: "In a sense, stopping the printing presses is a figurative expression, because it is being done now by creating credit by the Federal Reserve System." And it still is!
“Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. … Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves.”~ Thomas Jefferson, from his Notes on the State of Virginia, written around 1782, Hat tip Gary Judd QC, who reckons that in here we can find laid out the principles of a civilised society. (And he's right, you know!)
Seen on my way to work this morning, and too good not to post. Prestige Loos clearly know their shit.
"There was a time when a community would understand that with a more or less fixed resource base, the more the government spends the less [is] available for the rest of us. They would also have understood, perhaps only dimly, that governments cannot manage productive forms of enterprise.... The government is desperate for money to cover the massive debts it has wracked up.... they are going to have to cover their debt from the only source available, from the people who live [here]."~Steven Kates, from his post on Australian Interest Rates and [Their] Deficit [NZ graph from Trading Economics]
"Freedom of speech means freedom from interference, suppression or punitive action by the government -- and nothing else. It does not mean the right to demand the financial support or the material means to express your views at the expense of other men who may not wish to support you. Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to agree, not to listen and not to support one's own antagonists. A 'right' does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one's own effort. Private citizens cannot use physical force or coercion; they cannot censor or suppress anyone's views or publications. Only the government can do so. And censorship is a concept that pertains only to governmental action."~ Ayn Rand, from her column 'The Fascist New Frontier,' collected in The Ayn Rand Column"For years, the collectivists have been propagating the notion that a private individual’s refusal to finance an opponent is a violation of the opponent’s right of free speech and an act of “censorship.”
"It is 'censorship,' they claim, if a newspaper refuses to employ or publish writers whose ideas are diametrically opposed to its policy.
"It is 'censorship,” they claim, if businessmen refuse to advertise in a magazine that denounces, insults and smears them . . . .
"And then there is Newton N. Minow [then chairman of the Federal Communications Commission] who declares: 'There is censorship by ratings, by advertisers, by networks, by affiliates which reject programming offered to their areas.' It is the same Mr. Minow who threatens to revoke the license of any station that does not comply with his views on programming—and who claims that that is not censorship....
"[This collectivist notion] means that the ability to provide the material tools for the expression of ideas deprives a man of the right to hold any ideas. It means that a publisher has to publish books he considers worthless, false or evil—that a TV sponsor has to finance commentators who choose to affront his convictions—that the owner of a newspaper must turn his editorial pages over to any young hooligan who clamors for the enslavement of the press. It means that one group of men acquires the 'right' to unlimited license—while another group is reduced to helpless irresponsibility."~ Ayn Rand, from her article 'Man's Rights,' collected in The Virtue of Selfishness
To be clear [says Van Horn], while I often disagreed with the way Twitter moderated its platform, I appreciated then (and do now) that it is, ultimately, its owner's property to do with as he pleases.But that doesn't make it any less disturbing to see Elon Musk riding in like the white knight he intends to be -- but spouting the same nonsense about (what the left has caused everybody to regard as) "censorship," thereby helping pave the way for the government to come in and impose the real thing.
That said, argues Truth on the Market, while acknowledging that "Musk’s idea that Twitter should be subject to the First Amendment is simply incoherent" -- and, worse, by further confusing folk about who can censor whom, perhaps pave the way for real censorship to grow legs (disinformation commissars, anyone?)-- "his vision for Twitter to have less politically biased content moderation could work."
There has been much commentary on what Musk intends to do, and whether it is a realistic way to maximise the platform’s value. As a multi-sided platform, Twitter’s revenue is driven by advertisers, who want to reach a mass audience. This means Twitter, much like other social-media platforms, must consider the costs and benefits of speech to its users, and strike a balance that maximises the value of the platform. The history of social-media content moderation suggests that these platforms have found that rules against harassment, abuse, spam, bots, pornography, and certain hate speech and misinformation are necessary.
For rules pertaining to harassment and abuse, in particular, it is easy to understand how they are necessary to prevent losing users. There seems to be a wide societal consensus that such speech is intolerable. Similarly, spam, bots, and pornographic content, even if legal speech, are largely not what social media users want to see.
But for hate speech and misinformation, however much one agrees in the abstract about their undesirableness, there is significant debate on the margins about what is acceptable or unacceptable discourse, just as there is over what is true or false when it comes to touchpoint social and political issues. It is one thing to ban Nazis due to hate speech; it is arguably quite another to remove a prominent feminist author due to “misgendering” people. It is also one thing to say crazy conspiracy theories like QAnon should be moderated, but quite another to fact-check good-faith questioning of the efficacy of masks or vaccines. It is likely in these areas that Musk will offer an alternative to what is largely seen as biased content moderation from Big Tech companies.
Musk appears to be making a bet that the market for speech governance is currently not well-served by the major competitors in the social-media space. If Twitter could thread the needle by offering a more politically neutral moderation policy that still manages to keep off the site enough of the types of content that repel users, then it could conceivably succeed and even influence the moderation policies of other social-media companies.
Let the Market Decide
The crux of the issue is this: Conservatives who have backed antitrust and regulatory action against Big Tech because of political bias concerns should be willing to back off and allow the market to work. And liberals who have defended the right of private companies to make rules for their platforms should continue to defend that principle. Let the market decide.
"For 99 percent of the tenure of humans on earth, nobody could read or write. The great invention had not yet been made. Except for firsthand experience, almost everything we knew was passed on by word of mouth. As in the children’s game 'Telephone, over tens and hundreds of generations, information would slowly be distorted and lost.
"Books changed all that. Books, purchasable at low cost, permit us to interrogate the past with high accuracy; to tap the wisdom of our species; to understand the point of view of others, and not just those in power; to contemplate — with the best teachers — the insights, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history. They allow people long dead to talk inside our heads. Books can accompany us everywhere. Books are patient where we are slow to understand, allow us to go over the hard parts as many times as we wish, and are never critical of our lapses....
"Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society."~ Carl Sagan, from his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark