QotD; On poverty

“When the poor stop being poor, they lose the attention of the left. What actions on the part of the poor, or what changes in the economy, have led to drastic reductions in poverty seldom arouse much curiosity, much less celebration.”
~ Thomas Sowell

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QotD: On results, not wishful thinking

"The left is so invested in the idea that they are helping the disadvantaged that they seldom bother to check the actual consequences of what they are doing."
~ Thomas Sowell

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QotD: "Your group identity is not your cardinal feature..."

"Your group identity is not your cardinal feature. That’s the great discovery of the west. That’s why the west is right. And I mean that unconditionally. The west is the only place in the world that has ever figured out that the individual is sovereign... And it’s the key to everything that we’ve ever done right.”
~ Jordan Peterson, quoted in The Guardian

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Rising housing prices: It's frightening, and there are two leading causes ...

“The tidal wave of cheap money from … central banks has to go somewhere, so now it is flooding into housing and making serfs out of the middle class.”
~ Tweeter 'Rudolph E. Havenstein,' quoting Ken Sherman, in reference to WSJ’s article: 'Meet Your New Landlord: Wall Street'

Houses are generally paid for by borrowing. Each time a borrower borrows, a bank creates a new debt. This is now new money comes into existence, borrowed into existence to pay for either consumer borrowing or business borrowing. Debt organised into currency. It's what caused nearly all of history's boom-bust cycles.

Currently, around two-thirds of all the money borrowed into existence in New Zealand was created to buy (or borrow against) houses. [Charts here.] Think about that for a moment: nearly $250 billion of New Zealand's rapidly-rising $320 billion M3 money supply was created to buy (or borrow against) New Zealand's houses.

This is the demand side of the housing problem, about which too few folk have noticed -- demand (in the strict economic sense) being desire backed with money. In this case, borrowed money, and lots of it. This is where the purchasing power emerges to buy houses, and it's been growing each year of the last five by between five and ten percent!

This, ladies and gentlemen and other sane persons, is what monetary inflation looks like. And it's this monetary expansion that (eventually) causes all forms of price inflation, including asset price inflation.

So is it any wonder that the University of Auckland's Jeremy Gabe and Mike Rehm, and James Young, the Research Director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research, argue

that it's not a lack of supply, zoning, or immigration that's the big problem [in rising house prices], rather easy credit. [Listen here to RNZ's interview with the authors.]

Young's research for example [summarised here on page 69] suggests

It was found that [Chinese immigration] had a significant negative impact on the neighbourhoods most favoured by Chinese immigrants, but only for a short period of time. However, the effect was not uniform with more persistent impacts occurring within higher priced market segments. The effects on house prices diminished greatly within 18 months...
....These findings suggest that the use of immigration policy to constrain house prices are likely to produce limited specific results and only for a short period of time.

That is an academic's way of saying that banging on about Chinese immigrants is banging a noisy drum, but the wrong drum. Because immigration is not the long-term problem here. [CONCLUSION 1]

Meanwhile, Rehm and Gabe's research (summarised on page 23 here, comparing rising borrowing with rising prices across 23 US housing markets) finds that those gobs of borrowed money created by the banks was found

to "Granger cause" house prices in markets that experienced comparatively high house price growth during the boom years leading up to the global financial crisis ...
.... [This credit-fuelled] purchasing power maintains a strong, statistically significant positive correlation with house prices after controlling for interest rates in every market analysed.

They do not however conclude with a clarion call, as I would, for a complete review of the system of organising debt into currency. But they do argue for measures

to foster financial stability and dampen housing boom-bust cycles made worse by unbridled credit expansion and contraction.

Which, for any academic, are stern words wrapped around a certain and predictable conclusion: that unbridled credit expansion fuels both boom-bust cycles and explosive house-price growth. [CONCLUSION 2]

Their abstracts, from which I've quoted, don't mention having made any study the "lack of housing supply [or] zoning." (That quoted above was Radio NZ's summary of their research. But it does seems clear that if this rising monetary tide is lifting all boats, then they will be lifted less in those more liberal jurisdictions in which boat-lifting is made easier rather than harder.

And if it's not clear enough, then this graph below from the latest frightening report from Demographia, who do measure that relationship, should make it clear enough (and if Auckland joining Hong Kong, Vancouver & Sydney to be the four most unaffordable cities out of more than 400 measured doesn't frighten you, then it should), i.e., that when purchasing power fuelled by inflated monetary demand meets more restricted supply then it has nowhere to go but up -- up, up, up into the stratosphere of highly unaffordable prices. But when it meets a place in which supply is able instead to expand to meet this artificially-inflated demand, then it can and does expand -- or as economist Eric Crampton puts it, "Easy credit in a city where land use regulations aren't nuts turns into more houses rather than house price appreciation" [CONCLUSION 3]-- and without creating the speculative frenzy that, in places like Auckland, begin to feed upon themselves until they (or the economies around them) just burst.

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MORE READING:

• The Housing Bubble and the Credit Crunch - George Reisman, GEORGE REISMAN'S BLOG
  
• The Organisation of Debt Into Currency: On the Monetary Thought of Charles Holt Carroll - Robert Blumen, MISES DAILY
• REPRISE: How the Stock Market, [Housing Market] and Economy Really Work - Kel Kelly, NOT PC
• Prices Are Stable? - NOT PC
• Land-Use Regulations Matter - Michael Reddell, CROAKING CASSANDRA

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Bastiat & the 'balanced trade' bugaboo

With the announcement after all of a TPP deal that includes New Zealand, it's worth reminding ourselves, as this guest post by Marco den Ouden does, that trade exists because the parties to every trade see an advantage to doing so, not because it is "good for the country."

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"Trade protection accumulates upon a single point the good which it effects,
while the evil inflicted is infused throughout the mass. The one strikes the eye at
a first glance, while the other becomes perceptible only to close investigation."
~ Frederic Bastiat

Protectionists of all stripes often rail about trade deficits. An unfavourable balance of trade. One of the catch phrases of these people, because at some level they realise the value of trade, is that they want "fair trade." Yet that's just protectionism under the guise of being pro-free trade.

One of Donald Trump's bugaboos is trade with China. On the Trump website it says "for free trade to bring prosperity to America, it must also be fair trade. Our goal is not protectionism but accountability."

And Hillary Clinton, in her nomination speech at the DNC, said “we should say ‘no’ to unfair trade deals... we should stand up to China.”

Those dastardly Chinese just don't play fair!

Alleged currency manipulation is part of his objection to the Chinese. The Chinese renminbi was pegged to the dollar until 2005. There was considerable hue and cry in the States that the Chinese currency was overvalued. It was alleged that this created a trade imbalance.

The Trump website goes further. "In a system of truly free trade and floating exchange rates like a Trump administration would support, America's massive trade deficit with China would not persist."

Balance of trade! That old bugaboo.

What specifically does Trump propose with respect to trade? During the primary debates he argued for a 45% tariff on imported goods and scuttling NAFTA. Those dastardly Mexicans are as unfair as the Chinese with their cheap car production.

Ironically, proponents of free trade often make the same mistaken argument. They support free trade because they believe that their country will be a winner. They will win the "trade wars" and have a favourable balance of trade. The country's exports will exceed its imports which will be good for everyone.

But the idea that trade has to be balanced, that the amount of imports and the amount of exports should match is, on the face of it, a load of malarkey.

Frederic Bastiat vs. the Protectionists

Nobody has explained this fallacy better than Frederic Bastiat, the brilliant 19th century French economist and polemicist. Bastiat's forte is the reductio ad absurdum. He takes the position of the protectionists and draws it out to its logical conclusion. His petition of the "Manufacturers of Candles, Tapers, Lanterns, Candlesticks, Street lams, Snuffers and Extinguishers, and the Producers of Tallow, Oil, Resin, Alcohol, and Generally of Everything Connected with Lighting" against the competition of the sun is a classic. His proposal of a "negative railroad" skewers his opponents mercilessly.

His attack on the notion of a balance of trade is equally devastating and equally hilarious. It made me laugh out loud when I read it. Speaking of one of the protectionists, a Monsieur Lestiboudois, he says, "he believes and loudly proclaims that if France gives ten in order to receive fifteen, it loses five." In other words, if France exports say, ten million francs of goods and imports fifteen million, France is out five million francs.

He quotes this trade critic at length with the conclusion that when trade is not balanced, the deficit is money that is given away. "Every year we give away 200 million francs to foreigners.

The Trade Balance and the Businessman

The theories of the free traders are attacked  by the protectionists as valid only in theory, but, asks Bastiat, "do you think the account books of businessmen are valid in practice?"

If there's anyone who understands profit and loss, surely it is the businessman. So, says Bastiat, consider the case of one of his businessman friends who he refers to by his initials, M.T.. Let's compare M.T.'s accounting to that of the customhouse.

"M.T. despatched a ship from Le Havre to the United States with a cargo of French goods, chiefly those known as specialties of French fashion, totalling 200,000 francs. This was the amount declared at the custom house."

Now after arriving at New Orleans, paying the shipping charge and an American tariff, M.T. still manages to sell the French fashions for a profit of twenty per cent or 40,000 francs. The return of his original investment, the shipping costs, the tariff and his profit nets him 320,000 francs which he uses to buy cotton.

In addition, M.T. had to pay for shipping the cotton back to France, commissions, insurance and so forth bringing the cost of the cotton to 352,000 francs. And that is what the customhouse entered into its books as the value of the imported cotton.

M.T. sells the cotton and nets another 70,400 francs in profit. M.T. is up 40,000 francs on the sale of French fashions to the Americans and 70,400 francs on the sale of American cotton to domestic French consumers. He has profited to the tune of 110,400 francs! Not a bad business trip!

But in the accounts of the French customhouse, France has exported 200,000 francs and imported 352,000 francs. Oh my god! It's a trade deficit! France just got snookered out of 152,000 francs! Or as Bastiat puts it, the esteemed trade critic must conclude that France "has consumed and dissipated the proceeds of previous savings, that it has impoverished and is on the way to ruining itself, that it has given away 152,000 francs of its capital to foreigners!" (italics in the original).

Throw it into the sea!

But Bastiat is not done yet! It seems M.T. despatched another ship shortly thereafter with another 200,000 francs of goods. Sadly, the ship sank and M.T. had no choice but to enter into his accounts a loss of 200,000 francs.

The good gentleman at the customhouse, however, entered the shipment as 200,000 francs in the export ledger before the ship sailed. But because it sank, there will never be anything entered in the import ledger to counter it. "It follows," says Bastiat, "that M. Lestidoubois and the Chamber will view this shipwreck as a clear net profit of 200,000 francs for France!"

But wait! Bastiat is still not done! "There is still a further conclusion to be drawn from all this, namely, that, according to the theory of the balance of trade, France has a quite simple means of doubling her capital at any moment. It suffices merely to pass its products through the customhouse, and then throw them into the sea. In that case the exports will equal the amount of her capital; imports will be non-existent and even impossible, and we shall gain all that the ocean has swallowed up."

Indeed, when someone sells something, whether to a domestic or foreign consumer, he does so to make a profit or he wouldn't make the trade. Conversely, when someone buys something, whether from a domestic or foreign consumer, he does so because he sees it as advantageous. Trade exists because the parties to the trade see an advantage to doing so, not because it is "good for the country.

Indeed, we could go further and argue that if we need a balance of trade between countries, why not between islands? Why shouldn't the North Island insist that the value of foodstuffs it imports from the Mainland be balanced out by an equal value of manufactured goods exported there? To ask the question is to see its absurdity.

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Marco den Ouden writes at The Jolly Libertarian. His post has appeared previously there and at FEE. It has been lightly edited (did you notice?)
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QotD: Mises on trade

"In our age of international division of labour, free trade is the prerequisite for any amicable arrangement between nations."
~ Omnipotent Government, p. 6

 "Imports are in fact paid for by exports and not by money."
~ The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 286

"It is a matter of indifference whether one produces foodstuffs and raw materials at home oneself or, if it seems more economic, obtains them from abroad in exchange for other products that one has produced."~ Nation, State, and Economy, p. 84 

"History is a struggle between two principles, the peaceful principle, which advances the development of trade, and the militarist-imperialist principle, which interprets human society not as a friendly division of labour but as the forcible repression of some of its members by others."
~ Socialism, p. 268

The nationalists stress the point that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the interests of various nations, but that, on the other hand, the rightly understood interests of all the citizens within the nation are harmonious. A nation can prosper only at the expense of other nations; the individual citizen can"fare well only if his nation flourishes. The [classical] liberals have a different opinion. They believe that the interests of various nations harmonise no less than those of the various groups, classes, and strata of individuals within a nation. They believe that peaceful international cooperation is a more appropriate means than conflict for the attainment of the end which they and the nationalists are both aiming at: their own nation’s welfare. They do not, as the nationalists charge, advocate peace and free trade in order to betray their own nation’s interests to those of foreigners. On the contrary, they consider peace and free trade the best means to make their own nation wealthy."
~ Human Action, p. 183

"It is inconsistent to support a policy of low trade barriers. Either trade barriers are useful, then they cannot be high enough; or they are harmful, then they have to disappear completely." ~ Money, Method, and the Market Process, pp. 135–36 

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The shutdown scam

"[The US] government wastes so much that it has to borrow money! That $$ has to be paid back with interest via inflation and/or passed on to the next generation. The more that government spends — even for a 'good' cause — the less wealth its nation creates."
~ Mary Ruwart

Did you notice what wasn't being talked about in the just-ended US-government "shutdown"? Answer: the reason several government departments were being partially shut down - that being: because the government can't pay its bills -- that being: because it spends too damn much.

David Stockman noticed -- and he knows all about these things, he being that former Reagan Budget Director who resigned over the Reagan Administration spending too damn much and, as a consequence, having to borrow too damn much. That was back when all these big deficits started ....

Since 1975 there have been 14 shutdowns and we have had the privilege of being on-hand up close and personnel on 11 of these.
....Five shutdowns occurred while [I] was a member of the US House (1977-1981) and another six during [my] stint as director of OMB. The idea back then, needless to say, was that shutdowns came about mainly when anti-spenders refused to capitulate to the incessant demands of the swamp creatures for more appropriations, pork and graft.
....During the Reagan shutdowns, in fact ... they ... had some modest success in containing the worst excesses ...
....No more. On the surface the current fight appears to be over DACA, immigration and the Wall, and therefore a purely political enterprise in which both parties are attempting to feed their respective bases with copious amounts of rhetorical red meat.
....But, in fact, that's not the half of it----or even the most of it.

What is "the most of it" is the spending. That is to say, all the over-spending and consequently excessive borrowing.

The underlying issue behind the appropriations stall ... is a spending arms race between the two parties....
.....Needless to say, however, Wall Street is looking in entirely the wrong place for clues as to the implications of the current shutdown scam. The danger does not lie in adverse impacts on current quarter GDP; it lies, instead, in the implicit confirmation that a fiscally driven bond market collision will soon monkey-hammer the casino revilers...
.....What is really happening, of course, is that the Trumpite/GOP is proving in spades that America is now saddled with two pro-government parties. This means a good shutdown is going to waste and that there is no stopping the fiscal doomsday machine that is now racing toward a national calamity, unimpeded...
....If you think the law of supply and demand has been repealed by the financial gods in order to make Bubble Finance sustainable---why then there is nothing to sweat.
....Otherwise, now would be an opportune time to get out of the casino. The GOP has vacated its historical function as the party of fiscal rectitude and has now become the second pro-government party in the land.
....Accordingly, there is nothing left to stop the nation's fiscal doomsday machine...

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QotD: On haranguing dissenters [updated]

"This interview [below] between Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and UK Channel 4 interviewer Cathy Newman] is truly a work of art, and while one could probably write a treatise analysing it, one important [point], which I blogged about recently, is the phenomenon of the conceptual versus the anti-conceptual mind...
...."Newman demonstrates [the] anti-conceptual mentality by refusing to grasp the method that Peterson follows. Essentially, she continually ignores or evades his reasoning, mindlessly attaching herself to one word or fragment of his statement which she then tangentially relates to some PC cliche... This is a recurring theme. Peterson tries to explain the causes of an observable fact before jumping to any conclusions or evaluating the morality of those causes, while she wishes to take the fact alone as prima facie evidence of her own preconceived judgment: 'There is a pay gap, therefore men are oppressing women.' ...
...."This anti-conceptual method is endemic to the left and accounts for most of their own political positions.... Why is this? To the left, seeking causes is irrelevant because causes are preordained... These days, that means people are determined by their class, gender, and ethnicity... Consequently, the leftist mind is stunted at birth as it were, leaving its zombie disciples in a position not to have a reasoned discussion nor to debate in the pursuit of truth (causes), but only to harangue and attack dissenters."
~ from the Rational Capitalist's post: "Important 'Takeaway' from the Peterson Interview: The Anti-Conceptual Left"

UPDATE:

History teacher Scott Powell agrees that the problem here is conceptual.

For what it's worth, and this is for all you educators and activists out there mainly: the real significance of this interview is that it shows how difficult it is for someone who operates at a higher level of abstraction to talk to someone who refuses to, and why the real battle for freedom is in education.
....The interviewer insists on reframing all issues at a lower level of abstraction (to "simplify," to reduce to soundbites--by stripping away key elements of the truth) and Peterson keeps trying to elevate the discussion to the plain on which it belongs by maintaining the full context. Because modern education has failed so utterly, he can't do it. He stays patient and benevolent throughout, and he does "overpower" her intellectually in the end, especially during that one moment where the truth breaks through.
....But in a perfectly tragic twist befitting our modern world, Peterson's own uneducated "supporters" then attacked her on-line, which fundamentally undercut the intellectual effort he undertook.
....To make the world a better place requires nothing less than increasing the level of abstraction of the culture. Nothing less.

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If you go down to the woods today, you might hear a bit of te reo #PopUpGlobe

Pic by Stuff

In Shakespeare's outrageous comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream batshit crazy things happen to serious young things who have escaped the city's strictures for the unfamiliar and faintly dangerous delights of the forest, wherein they are made sport of by those who have born and grew up there: by a race of fairies invisible to the erstwhile city-dwellers whose puckish ways, however, are not.

They, and every receptive audience for the Dream (if the director is doing it right), are always in for a big surprise.

So too, it has been reported, were many of the audience for the Auckland Pop-Up Globe's production over the weekend -- surprised to discover that the fairies, the original inhabitants of the play's strange lands, were represented in this production by two Maori warriors and a wahine speaking in te reo. According to the Herald, who have clearly been simply trawling Facebook to muster controversy where there is none:

Online reviews left about the Pop-up Globe performance said the move was 'disrespectful' and 'bastardising' Shakespeare and confusing for audiences. Other theatre goers have made their equally damning views direct to the venue's management...
One person wrote on social media the use of Te Reo in A Midsummer Night's Dream "spoilt what otherwise was a thoroughly entertaining and professional production." In a Facebook review, another disgruntled theatre goer said the decision to have the fairies speak in Maori meant only two people at his count could understand what was being said.

The reporter does not say how many in total were included in that count, but she is at pains to link "the debate about the use of Te Reo Maori" in the production at the Globe with "the debate about the use of Te Reo Maori" elsewhere which, she says, "has flared several times in recent months ... [including] former National Party leader Don Brash clashing with RNZ's Kim Hill on her Saturday morning show over the public broadcaster's use of Maori greetings on air."

Linking the two "debates" seems to be both unhelpful and disingenuous. Because as every theatre-goer knows, it is possible to destroy a play with errant direction even if you support the director's intentions.

But as everyone leaving the play on Saturday night in tears of laughter could attest, this is not a play that has been destroyed. Far from it. In this setting, and with this directorial choice, the play comes alive.

As it happens, I too was at the show on Saturday night, and I was one of those wiping my eyes of tears when I left (and my Saturday-night-best of blood, but that, dear readers, is another story). And far from being surprised by the speaking of a strange tongue for 20% of the time, I was fully prepared for it -- indeed, I was coming back for a second time having enjoyed the first performance so much. And I will be back again for more before this season ends.

Because, what the reporter fails to point out is one very salient fact: this is a damned fine show! It is truly world class. The performances are stellar, the setting is superb, and the choice to use tangata whenua to represent the forest's native fairy folk is as thematically sound as it is dramatically stunning. Who better to represent the original forest folk than our original forest folk? And that choice being made, why wouldn't you ask them to speak in that original language? If it adds an air of unreality, then that is precisely what the Dream should do!

But there is much of it we can't understand? And so what -- there is much in Shakespeare's own English that is difficult for many to parse, and we don't usually play the Bard with subtitles. And there is much more of Shakespeare's original text that is cut in every production in order to reduce the show time -- a chainsaw being taken to the text that in some cases will see it reduced by as much as half!

But, comes the response, courtesy of the Herald's Facebook trawl, "This [is] silly because the fairies revealed key plot points." And indeed they do -- and apparently the Herald's erstwhile online reviewer is unfamiliar with the art of mime, which these actors speaking te reo use superbly to tell the story. The spells they cast over the various players could not be more clear if they were telegraphed; and if the reasons for their playfulness are not always clear, let me assure you that they are far more so than in many an opera sung in an unfamiliar European tongue. There are enough signposts in this Dream to understand where we are being led, both by mime and by the familiar-enough words of te reo each of us do know that pepper the text.

And as the play's director and Pop-Up Globe founder Miles Gregory explains (the man without whom, it should be remembered, this exciting theatre concept would not even exist),

 having the fairies speak Te Reo was a long-held dream because in Shakespeare's original work the fairies were written as communicating in a language unfamiliar to the other characters. "So to me, having the fairies speak another language enhances the storytelling and provides a fresh and exciting take on a play that is extremely well known."

And so it is, and so it does. That the storytelling is done in such a setting by such consummate performers only adds to the excitement.

Reuben Butler's Puck (played as a Maori warrior you truly believe could girdle the globe) is outstanding, he steals the show (as every good Puck should); Jason Te Kare's Oberon provides deft support; and if Edward Peni's Titania is more statuesque than seductive, then (s)he comes into her own when seduced herself by Nick Bottom's ass. (If you don't know, then you really must come along and find out!)

For me, the bitching, and the reportage about it, are just so much colourless carping. As an amused Puck says after watching the hilarious knock-down drag-out fight that climaxes Act III,

"Pakeha!" 

On Saturday night, that one beautifully-timed word brought the house down.
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QotD" On "privilege" and John Rawls's "new" theory of (in)justice

"The new 'theory of justice' demands that men counteract the 'injustice' of nature by instituting the most obscenely unthinkable injustice among men: deprive 'those favoured by nature' (i.e., the talented, the intelligent, the creative) of the right to the rewards they produce (i.e., the right to life)—and grant to the incompetent, the stupid, the slothful a right to the effortless enjoyment of the rewards they could not produce, could not imagine, and would not know what to do with... Why should those 'favoured by nature' be made to atone for is not an injustice and is not of their making?...."That this is regarded as a new theory, raises the question of where Mr Rawls's readers and admirers have been for the last thousand years."~ Ayn Rand, in an Untitled Letter -- "the most appropriate title ... would be 'I told you so." But since that would be in somewhat dubious taste, I shall leave it untitled."

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QotD: 'The chief menace of dictatorship...'

"In the democratic creed the State exists for the benefit of the individual. In the Fascist creed the individual exists for the benefit of the State....
...."A fascist leader must find some outlet for the renunciation of individuality to which he has condemned his people... The chief menace of dictatorship (other than to the unfortunate victims of it) lies, as I should have realised, in this: that if a dictator makes a false step, his pride must be saved at any cost to the country; whereas if a Government makes a false step, public opinion can demand a new Government, which will be only too delighted to repudiate the actions of the old one."~ A.A. Milne, from the 1935 introduction to his book 'Peace with Honour'

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Bonus Quote of the Day: She's having a baby...

"And as much as I sincerely mean congratulations to the PM, I dread, dread, the coming M.S.M. gushing, it's going to be puke-inspiring, and if there is one, ONE, picture of ruddy Winston holding the baby for a photo op, I am going to puke."
~ Mark Hubbard 

"The good governance of this country should not depend on the constant availability of any one person. If a system breaks down over the temporary absence of a single individual, then that system is not fit for purpose. The prime ministership is not, and should never be, be a single point of failure for the country as a whole."
~ Liam Hehir.

David Hume on universities

"In Hume's view ... the best endowed universities often served as 'sanctuaries in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices found shelter and protection, after they had been hunted out of every other corner of the world.'”~ from Dennis Rasmussen's book The Infidel & the Professor

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David Hume on 'the English'

"If there is a central, guiding theme of the work ['History of England'] as a whole it is the blessings of civilisation. As in his 'Political Discourses,' Hume takes a stand firmly in favour of the superiority of the modern world and against the idea of a fall from ancient glory.    "For Hume, most of English history—indeed, most of human history—had been a story of disorder, oppression, poverty, and dependence. He thus finds the tendency to romanticise the days of yore and 'exalt past times above the present' to be utterly preposterous.    “'My Notion is,' he writes, 'that the uncultivated Nations are not only inferior to civiliz’d in Government, civil, military, and ecclesiastical; but also in Morals; and that their whole manner of Life is disagreeable and uneligible to the last Degree.'    "He insists that 'the English, till near the beginning of the last Century, are very much to be regarded as an uncultivated Nation.'”~ from Dennis Rasmussen's book The Infidel & the Professor

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QotD: On Inequality

"Inequality is not so much a cause of economic, political, and social processes as a consequence."
~ Nobel-Prize winning economic historian Angus Deaton, from the article at the Human Progress site: 'Why We Shouldn’t Obsess Over Economic Inequality'
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Q: What is a house?

“The house is a machine for living.”~ a banality from the very banal Le Corbusier

“Oh yes, young man; consider that a house is a machine in which to live, but by the same token the heart is a suction pump. Sentient man begins where that concept of the heart ends.    “Consider that a house is a machine in which to live, but architecture begins where that concept of the house ends. All life is machinery in a rudimentary Sense, and yet machinery is the life of nothing. Machinery is machinery only because of life.”~ Frank Lloyd Wright, from his lecture ‘To the Young Man in Architecture'

“A house is not a machine to live in. It is the shell of man — his extension, his release, his spiritual emanation. Not only its visual harmony but its organisation as a whole, the whole work combined together, make it human in the most profound sense…  The poverty of modern architecture stems from the atrophy of sensuality.”~ architect Eileen Gray, designer of the house that Le Corbusier could never have designed, but nonetheless fell in love with

Happy New Year

Welcome back, everyone!

I hope you had (or are still having) a great break, and are ready (or almost ready) to dive into a new year.

Here then, through the words of author Neil Gaiman, are my best wishes for your new year:

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, your surprise yourself."
~ Neil Gaiman