'"Whenever the EU tries to make itself more competitive, it fails'

"Whenever the EU tries to make itself more competitive, it starts from the assumption that large-scale public investment and EU-level coordination are the primary drivers of innovation and economic growth. ...But this EU view of the economy underestimates the role of markets and entrepreneurship in fostering genuine economic dynamism. That is also the biggest difference from other, more economically successful world regions.
    "At best, the EU’s economic policies do not work without causing any further harm. At worst, its plans often create additional layers of bureaucracy and regulation. These can stifle the very innovation and agility they seek to promote.
    "The EU’s repeated return to this style of economic strategy reveals a persistent belief in the efficacy of state-sponsored industrial policy. Yet ... [a]ttempts to pick winners or direct the course of technological progress from Brussels have a poor track record. When was the last time the EU created a genuinely world-leading industry that can stand on its own without protection or subsidies? Actually, has this ever happened?
    "What all the EU’s grand strategies tend to overlook is the importance of economic fundamentals. Issues like labour market flexibility, tax competitiveness and regulatory burdens ... 
    "A more effective approach might start by asking what barriers are preventing European firms from innovating and scaling up. It might look at why Europe has struggled to produce tech giants on the scale of those in the US or China. The answers likely lie in areas like Europe’s cultural attitudes towards entrepreneurship and failure.
    "Addressing these fundamentals could do more to boost European competitiveness than any amount of centrally planned investment. But that would require political courage, which might mean tackling vested interests and long-standing national practices.
    "It is all very well the EU wants to become more competitive – and it should. ... But before embarking on yet another grand plan, Europe’s politicians should reflect on the lessons of ...  similar past initiatives – and why they all failed.
    "And perhaps, just perhaps, they will realise that the EU’s own policies and regulations might have played their part in the slowing dynamism of the European economy. In which case, another grand plan designed in Brussels would be the last thing the continent needs."

~ Oliver Hartwich, from his op-ed 'Brussels sprouting same old stale economic plans'

Yes, you *did* build that

"[I]f you’re praising an achievement of someone, [an] anti-capitalist will chime in that the person was able to achieve such primarily due to the person possessing, before the fact, some social privilege that other people lack. ... [M]aybe you will be waxing about how impressed you are by Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak having founded Apple Computer. An anti-capitalist will chime in that this is actually because of privilege. .. 

"Even if it is true that the achiever was born into privileges that gave the achiever a head start, it doesn’t invalidate your premise that the achiever still made choices for which accolades are deserved. The reason is that many other people were born into the same privileges as the achiever, but, on account of different choices, did not perform the feats that the achiever did.
    "In the case of Stephen Wozniak: the fact is that there were hundreds of other white boys his age, who were the sons of Californian engineers, who attended the same schools that he did. But those other sons of Californian engineers did not invent the Apple II. Stephen Wozniak did. Even if the “privilege” made it easier for him than it otherwise would be, the privilege was not sufficient. The missing pieces that needed to be added were the choices of Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak. ... 

"Unearned social privileges do exist. But when someone — even a very privileged person — accomplishes an important feat, it’s usually the case that there were many other people who bore those same privileges but refrained from that feat. The choices of individuals are still what make the difference. And for that, they still deserve credit. To the degree that you make your own choices — choices not made and risks not taken by people from backgrounds similar to your own, and who have the same privileges that you do — you are indeed self-made in character."

~ Stu Hayashi. from his post 'A Fallacy Called ‘Privilege, or It Didn’t Happen’'

 

Occupational Licensing: Teachers union against more teachers

"What’s better, no teacher or a recently retired, though now deregistered one?

'An Otago principal facing relief staff shortages would rather use unregistered teachers than send his students home.. . . [But] PPTA Te Wehengarua president Chris Abercrombie said the “ad hoc” response ... meant thousands of young people would not be taught by trained and qualified subject-specialist teachers. . . [And] PPTA Otago regional chairman Kussi Hurtado-Stuart said the loosening of regulations [allowing this] was a 'short-sighted solution.'

"Surely a recently retired, albeit no longer registered, teacher would be better than no teacher? ..."

~ Ele Ludemann, from her post 'Union’s politics showing,' in which she submits "the union’s anti-Government politics" are on display here. I'd suggest however that this is less about the union's politics, and more about simply protecting its turf. Just like all occupational licensing.

"This is why most dystopian versions of AI are fundamentally unconvincing."

"This is why most dystopian versions of AI are fundamentally unconvincing. The machines are going to take over—and do what? What would they actually want or need? What’s their motivation?
   "We don’t often realise how important motivation is to human reason. If the purpose of thinking is to survive, then we have a direct and personal interest in figuring out the truth and getting it right. We can’t just follow a line of thought by rote repetition. We have to constantly compare our ideas and actions to their real-world results and adjust them accordingly.
    "The psychologist William James memorably explained the difference between mechanical action and goal-directed action.

'If some iron filings be sprinkled on a table and a magnet brought near them, they will fly through the air for a certain distance and stick to its surface. A savage seeing the phenomenon explains it as the result of an attraction or love between the magnet and the filings. But let a card cover the poles of the magnet, and the filings will press forever against its surface without its ever occurring to them to pass around its sides and thus come into more direct contact with the object of their love. . . . '

"Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely. AI has no such power to adapt its means to its ends because it has no ends in the first place, no outcomes it needs to achieve. So we can see it regularly following its algorithms into dead ends.
    "The most notorious illustration of this is ChatGPT’s tendency to produce outright fabrications. When asked to produce clear answers to basic questions, it will produce answers that are clear and sound authoritative but are completely made up. When asked to produce references or a work history for a real person, it will invent jobs you never held and books you never wrote. It will do this because it is mechanically following its algorithmic requirements wherever they take it, like a rock rolling downhill, and it has no need to make sure its answers are right. ...
    "The fears of an AI apocalypse are the flipside of the dreams of the AI utopians. They are manifestations of the same contradiction. We want a human-style intelligence to do all our work for us, but such an intelligence would have to be an independent consciousness with its own motivation and volition. But then why would it take our orders? ...
    "AI will definitely have its problems and growing pains, but they will be more prosaic than the worst-case dystopian nightmare."

~ Robert Tracinski, from his article 'Why the Robots Won’t Eat Us'

 

It's no wonder so many get interest so wrong, when they think it's the price of money. Because as Andreas Granath outlines in this guest post, it's actually the price of time ...

Why Interest Rates Are Not the Price of Money

by Andreas Granath

According to mainstream economics, interest rates are the price of money, but the 'Austrian' school of economics says differently. To understand these conflicting ideas, we must understand what prices, money, and interest are.

First of all, prices are exchange-ratios between goods and/or services. An apple might be exchanged for a pear or two bananas. In that case we can conclude that the price of an apple, at that moment, is either one pear or two bananas. However, direct exchange has many disadvantages, and one of them is the price system. Expressing an apple’s price in pears and bananas doesn’t tell a dairy farmer or baker much about his product’s purchasing power. The exchange-ratios (prices) in a barter system are vast, specific, and ever-changing.

Money solves this problem. Since money is a generally-accepted medium of exchange, it is also a common denominator in which we express prices. Suppose that an apple exchanges for $1 (e.g., 1/20th an ounce of gold). Given the above exchange-ratios (prices), a pear would also cost $1 whereas a banana would cost half a dollar. Thus, money prices help agents navigate and communicate better within the economy.

When we have money prices of other goods, we also have a price of money. A seller of goods or services is a buyer of money and vice versa. Money purchases goods and goods purchase money. Therefore, the price of money is inverted to the price of goods and services. If the price of one apple is one dollar, then the price of one dollar is one apple. The price of money is the array of goods for which money can be traded at any given moment. Finding out the overall price of money, however, is not so easy since we need to know all the ever-changing prices in the economy.

Some economists speak of an alteration in the so-called general “price level” and notice when frequently-purchased goods depreciate or appreciate, however, there is no economically meaningful way to define a general price level.

Interest, therefore, is not technically the price of money. But what is interest and why do some economists get it wrong? 

It might be better said that interest is the price of time. It is the premium some people pay for not being able to wait, as well as the discount some people get for being able to wait.

Interest is best explained by the concept of time preference, which means that people necessarily prefer present consumption more than future consumption. Suppose that John Smith wants to buy a house that he cannot yet afford. Since Smith has a very high time preference, he doesn’t even bother saving some money. Instead, he asks his cousin if he can borrow $100,000. Although his cousin values having his $100,000 stuffed under his mattress, he agrees to loan Smith his money. However, because of the sacrifice of not having access to the money in the present, he charges his cousin an interest premium of $105,000.

By observing this transaction, we can draw some conclusions. First, the price of the $100,000 in this case was one house. Second, the price of the loan provided was the 5% interest rate that amounted to $5000 in this case. Finally, suppose the money with which Smith paid back the loan was money he had earned from labor. In that case, the price of $105,000 was the amount of labor hours for which Smith was paid wages.

That said, many economists interpret this observation in the following way: since $100,000 can be exchanged for $100,000 today, the price of a dollar is a dollar. However, since the interest rate over a year is 5%, the price of today’s dollar is priced at 1.05 dollars-in-a-year. Hence, the conclusion that the interest rate is merely the “price” of money.

To sum up, I would like to end with a quote from an article on this same subject from economist Nicolás Cachanosky. He writes:

...if you get money and pay interest, eventually the day will come when you have to return the amount of money (plus interest.) If you have to return it, then you didn’t buy the money and so the interest rate is not the price of buying money.

* * * * 

Andreas Granath lives in southern Sweden with his wife and two daughters. He currently is working with valves for the marine industry. His passion for Austrian economics and Libertarianism began some years ago and he is self taught in the two studies. He writes for the Swedish Ludwig von Mises Institute.
His piece previously appeared at the Mises Wire.

'Why liberal capitalism opposed imperialism and colonialism'

“The whole Idea of colonial policy was to take advantage of the military superiority of the white race over the members of other races. The Europeans set out, equipped with all the weapons and contrivances that their civilisation placed at their disposal, to subjugate weaker peoples, to rob them of their property, and to enslave them . . . If, as we believe, European civilisation really is superior to that of the primitive tribes of Africa or to the civilisations of Asia – estimable though the latter may be in their own way – it should be able to prove its superiority by inspiring these peoples to adopt it of its own accord. Could there be a more doleful proof of the sterility of European civilisation than that it can be spread by no other means than fire and sword?
    “No chapter of history is steeped further in blood than the history of colonialism. Blood was shed uselessly and senselessly. Flourishing lands were laid to waste; whole peoples destroyed and exterminated. All this can in no way be extenuated or justified. The dominion of Europeans in Africa and in important parts of Asia [was] absolute. It stands in the sharpest contrast to all the principles of liberalism and democracy....”

~ Ludwig Von Mises from, his 1927 book Liberalism. Hat tip Stephen Hicks, who points out (in his post 'Why liberal capitalism opposed imperialism and colonialism') that while "imperialism and colonialism are older than human history, and across the centuries virtually every culture in every part of the world practiced it," it was the culture of the Enlightenment that ended it — movements arising to abolish slavery and the second- or third-class status of women. "Keep in mind," he says, "that 200 years is a blink of an eye in human-historical terms. It normally takes many centuries to change cultural mindsets and long-established practices. The Enlightenment’s liberalism and capitalism relatively quickly undercut and did away with millennia of conquest-and-control baked into human traditions."

 

"What part of libertarianism bothers you?"

 

[Hat tip Michael Hurd]

"No culture in history contributed more to human well-being than Western civilisation, nor even as much."

 

Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his 

wife and collaborator Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, 

Jacques-Louis David (1788)

"The charges against Western civilisation involve slavery, imperialism, and genocide. No doubt, some Westerners and Western regimes have committed such atrocities.
    "The transatlantic slave trade conducted by some Westerners between Africa and the New World was a horror. ... Regarding European imperialism, the cruelty toward indigenous peoples is best illustrated by ... King Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo ... [who] hired an army of mercenaries to enslave the native population, demanded that the enslaved meet high quotas for rubber production and ivory harvesting, had his mercenaries chop off the hands of those who fell short, and had them kill recalcitrant natives and burn their villages. ...
    "All these injustices occurred, and objectivity requires acknowledgment of this fact. But we should identify the full truth—which raises several questions about the anti-Western narrative. ...
    "The claim that European and American powers attempted genocide in the New World is worse than either a severe exaggeration or a gross distortion of facts: It is an outright lie. ... To the extent that slavery has been abolished, the credit lies with the abolitionism developed in the West, ending slavery in its own territories and then applying pressure on non-Western nations to shut down the evil practice. ...
    "Even ... a brief survey of history ... is more than enough to raise the question: Why single out white Westerners for the most virulent moral abuse? But we still have not mentioned the major truth overlooked by ... fallacious arguments against the West. .. We refer, of course, to the enormous life-giving achievements of Western civilisation—life-giving for human beings all over the world. ... I’ll merely provide a few examples of these achievements.

• Growing sufficient food is and has long been a terrible problem throughout the non-industrialised world. .... The Green Revolution helped people grow vastly increased supplies of food ... saving upwards of one billion lives ...
• Disease prevention and cure is another critical field for human life in which Western researchers have excelled. [Antoine Lavoisier's pioneering chemistry; Maurice Hillman's and Salk & Sabin's vaccines; Louis Pasteur's germ theory of disease; Joseph Lister's call for antiseptic surgery; Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin ... ] How many human lives around the world did these giants of medicine save? An incalculable number. 
• And Aristotle... the first great biologist of whom we know. His pathbreaking work in the life sciences laid the foundation for subsequent medical advances. Above all, Aristotle married his revolutionary work in logic to his commitment to painstaking empirical research, emphasising that knowledge is gained by logical, noncontradictory thinking about observed facts. He, more than anyone, taught humanity how to think, making progress possible in every field of cognition.
• And no discussion of Western science, no matter how brief, could omit mention of several of the greatest minds of history—Galileo, Newton, and Darwin ...
• In literature, from Homer and Sappho through Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Hugo, Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Jane Austen, and the Bronte sisters to Ayn Rand in the 20th century ... In music, the West has produced such giants as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Verdi, Dvořák, and Puccini. Michelangelo was a towering sculptor, Rembrandt and Vermeer superlative painters, and Leonardo an all-round genius. Film ... has seen such brilliant directors ... as Fritz Lang, Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock, Cecil B. DeMille, John Ford, Billy Wilder, David Lean, Steven Spielberg, and Clint Eastwood, as well as a host of talented actors and actresses.

"Even a brief recounting of Western genius must cite John Locke and the birth of the moral principle of individual rights in Great Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries, leading to ... an Industrial Revolution, and stupendous wealth creation and prosperity across vast swathes of the globe ... Starting in Britain, the principle of individual rights led, for the first time in history, to an abolitionist movement that succeeded, to a significant degree, in wiping out the age-old, worldwide scourge of human slavery. Slavery was ubiquitous. Abolitionism was Western.
    "Western civilisation is and often has been profoundly supportive of human life, not because its progenitors have largely been white but because of its fundamental, driving force: reason and all its fruits—freedom, philosophy, science, technology, business, the arts, and other such life-serving values. Skin colour is irrelevant to moral judgment, but reason, individual rights, political-economic liberty, technology and industrialisation—these are vitally important. Western nations export many intellectual and material values to non-Western countries. But its greatest export is a culture of reason and a politics of individual rights; for, to the extent they are adopted, these facilitate immensely life-giving advances in every field of rational endeavour, as they have done in the Asian Tigers.
    "No culture in history contributed more to human well-being than Western civilisation, nor even as much.
    "Why then, do critics single it out for special moral abuse?"

~ Andrew Bernstein, from his article 'The Case for Western Civilisation' [emphases in the original]

"They’re Eating The Dogs"? "They’re Eating The Cats"?

 

"Despite scaremongering to the contrary, Haitian immigrants don't eat cats, and have much lower crime rates than native-born Americans. ... Other evidence shows they have a high rate of assimilation and income growth, which—despite mythology to the contrary —is actually true of recent immigrants, more generally. ...
    "There are some broader lessons to be learned from this sorry episode.
    "First, it's important to look at aggregate data, rather than just focusing on a few individual incidents, that may be unrepresentative, even if they happened. ...
    "Even if a group does have an unusually high crime rate, it will usually be wrong to discriminate against [individuals] based on racial or ethnic characteristics they have no control over. But at least in such cases we can plausibly argue there is a problem that might require a policy response. There is no such issue in the case of Haitians.
    "The cat-eating hysteria is even worse than the usual scenario of nativists holding an entire immigrant group responsible for the unrepresentative actions of a few members. Here, it appears the accusation was just totally false. But it is still an example of the more general problem of focusing on dramatic stories rather than more systematic data.
    "Second, it is a mistake to judge migrants by the state of their countries of origin ... Haiti is one of the poorest and most violent societies in the Western Hemisphere. But that's not because Haitians are, by nature, somehow inherently violent and lazy. Rather, it's because Haiti has terrible political institutions.
    "For a more detailed look at arguments that immigration causes institutional degradation, I recommend Alex Nowrasteh and Benjamin Powell's book, 'Wretched Refuse: The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions.' I consider some of these issues myself in Chapter 6 of my own book, 'Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom.'"

~ Ilya Somin, from his post 'Lessons of the Haitian Migrant Cat Scare'

A reminder on rights ...

And if anything does require the labour of others, then it's not a right. It's something you have to earn.

Read more here on rights versus privileges.

And on getting property rights right.

Here's a handy Cue Card on Rights.

And something very timely ... "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that a whole lot of people were confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim that they require a Bill of No Rights."

Mush ado about ACT's (revised) Treaty Principles Bill.

 

Cartoon by Nick Kim

We now have our first look at the wording to be used in ACT's proposed Treaty Principles Bill. 

You'll recall that the aim of the Bill is not for Parliament to redefine Te Tiriti, which lacks too much to ever become a fully-founding document in any case, but to define —for the first time — the Principles that Geoffrey Palmer and followers began inserting into law without definition, and without any guidance to the courts. Which left the courts (and the self-serving Waitangi Tribunal) to simply make them up. And has transformed Te Tiriti into a welfare cheque for tribal leaders.

The Bill's proposed wording is grouped under three headings, to match the three Treaty/Tiriti articles: 

1. Civil Government; 
2. Rights of Hapu and Iwi Māori; and
3. Rights to Equality.

David Farrar has helpfully laid out the proposed wording against both ACT's initial proposal and the official "Kawharu" translation of Te Tiriti. It's quickly apparent that the weasel words of "partnership" and "participation" haven't been slipped in. And that "protection" only occurs in association with the word "rights," as it did in the original document. But also that a whole lot of precision has been lost. Much has been added to dilute the impact of the previously clear exposition of principle. Politically-necessary mush perhaps, but mush is mush, gumming up the finely-grinding machinery of law.

And what's been lost, I think, is the clear Lockean principle of the Treaty: i.e., that tribal sovereignty was being ceded in return for protection of natural rights, including the right to private property. In which case, is anything to be gained by the Bill?

Let's have a look article by article ...

The First Article is the sovereignty article. About who governs. Which this says, in so many words. But in bending over backwards to avoid the 's' word, a whole lot of mush has been added. Remember that good, objective law should be rights-based, and allow you to know in advance what you can and can't do by law — and since law is, or can be, a matter of life and death, one needs to know with precision. So what the hell does "in the best interests of everyone" mean precisely? How will the courts decide (since it is they, and the Waitangi Tribunal who will interpret this in their own best interests) what should be done for "the maintenance of a free and democratic society."

The Second Article used to be known as the Property Article. The recognition of the property held by tribes and tribal leaders,  and the insistence that government agents would have a coercive monopoly in buying it from them. So, about property rights, and how they're transferred. The Bill however now suggests the principle to be drawn from this clause is one about rights in general. Which is a different thing (especially since bogus "rights," requiring the labour of others, are being constantly added and expanded).

"The Crown recognises the rights that hapū and iwi had when they signed the Treaty." What were those rights? More mush. The Bill would again require the courts and Waitangi Tribunal to decide — oh, and they will! And remember that these are phoney collective rights, not individual rights. (And to thrive here as equals, as I've said before, we need to take off our collectivist lenses.)

And what's this? "Those rights differ from the rights everyone has a reasonable expectation to enjoy ..." Really? Oh: " ... only when they are specified in legislation, Treaty settlements, or other agreement with the Crown."  Ah: meaning that any explicitly race-based legislation etc. has to be explicit in its racial favouritism. Which is probably about as much as one can now expect, but much less than one would have hoped for. 

And, as everywhere else in New Zealand law, property rights have disappeared.

This Article has suffered the least damage in the re-write. And as an added bonus, the concept of "duties" has been lost, and "protection" clarified to be about protection by law, an equal protection, not about unspecified welfare claims for "ordinary New Zealanders," i.e., Māori (which is how this clause has begun to be interpreted by activists and the Tribunal). So maybe an improvement through the added mush — though a clear contradiction with the second article: how, for example does one enjoy "the same fundamental human rights without discrimination" if government can legislate for collective 'rights' for hapū and iwi that "differ from the rights everyone [else] has a reasonable expectation to enjoy"?

The answer, of course, is at the back of the next Tribunal report. Just under the money-amount awarded to claimants.

Remember that the words "the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi" have been inserted at the heart of every second bill that's passed through Parliament, so any mush injected here would infect every second law everywhere.

And it's now full of mush.

That's not an improvement.

The Bill may not be successful by the standard of "will it be passed into law." But it's already wildly successful by the standard of "let's talk about these made-up principles, and about what they should be."

But I'm not sure these re-writes should be part of law.

Banning fracking

What would be the effect of a US president banning fracking? Alex Epstein has the answer:

Banning fracking would have been one of the most harmful policies in US history. It would have destroyed 60% of our oil production and 75% of our natural gas production.

Why is that important?

Fracking is very likely the single most beneficial technological development of the last 25 years. By extracting cheap, abundant oil and natural gas from once useless rock, it has made energy far cheaper than it would otherwise be.

The availability of food is highly determined by the cost of oil, which powers crucial machinery, and gas, which is the basis of the fertilizer that allows us to feed 8 billion people. Thanks to fracking, the world is far better fed than it would otherwise be.

Given how life-giving fracking is to humanity and how essential it is to the prosperity and security of the US, any politician who has ever suggested banning fracking should be considered an energy menace until and unless they issue a deeply reflective apology.

So does any US presidential candidate want to ban fracking? Hard to know. But there's at least one who did: 

Kamala Harris ... in 2019 said, “There is no question I am in favour of banning fracking,” [and] now tells voters in fracking-dependent states like Pennsylvania that she is no longer wants to ban fracking.

Should we believe her?

They shouldn’t believe her, since Harris’s net-zero agenda requires banning fracking. ... And far from questioning the anti-fossil-fuel, “net zero” agenda, she has remained 100% committed to it.

Which means she’s an enemy of not just fracking but all fossil fuel use.

The guiding energy goal of Biden/Harris is “net zero by 2050”—rapidly banning activities that add CO2 to the atmosphere.

Since there’s no scalable way to capture CO2, burning fossil fuels necessarily means more CO2.

Given that “net zero by 2050” requires banning virtually all fossil fuel activity, the whole conversation about whether Kamala Harris wants to ban fracking is absurd.

You can’t be for fracking and for net-zero anymore than you can be for penicillin and for banning all antibiotics.

So, what about the other candidate? Where exactly does Trump stand?

Frankly, who the hell could know.

"The failure to distinguish between economic power and political power leads people to believe that large corporations have grown through coercion."

"Many people distrust Big Business: Big Tech, Big Pharma. Big Oil, even Big Grocers – any large corporations. They believe these companies have grown big by exploitation and coercion that they are able to perpetuate due their sheer size. Therefore, these people think the government should control these companies’ size to ensure 'fair competition' and to prevent monopolies. [The reaction to the recent discussions about supermarket 'monopolies' is an example] .... [C]ommentators relish the prospect that using (non-objective) ... laws, the government could cut [supermarket chains] to size ...
    "Those distrustful of Big Business fear that large corporations grow too 'powerful” and therefore can coerce and control us to do business with them, to buy their products and services, and to prevent us from competing with them. However, that fear is misplaced. Corporations, small or large, in free and semi-free countries (absent government intervention) don’t have the power to coerce. They cannot prevent anyone from acting or to force them to act against their will.
    "As Ayn Rand has observed, the only power business has is economic power: the power to produce and trade, which depends on its ability to obtain the voluntary co-operation of others through persuasion. ... Only the government possesses political power: the power to use physical force, or the threat of it, to restrain and punish those who initiate it.
    "The failure to distinguish between economic power and political power leads people to believe that large corporations have grown through coercion. ...
    "[A]bsent government favours and protectionism, companies grow large because they act morally. It means that they are productive: they continually develop and produce [and sell] goods and services that customers value. ... Only with the government’s help – protectionism and cronyism [and the RMA] – could [supermarket chains] coerce: to prevent competition from entering its markets, charge artificially high prices, sell subpar products, and to provide lousy customer service. ...
    "Instead of condemning Big Business, we should appreciate large corporations for producing the material values we need and want.
    "But we should condemn the government for initiating force to interfere in markets."

~ Jana Woiceshyn from her post 'In Defence of Big Business'

UPDATE: Why is there a "cosy duopoly" of Big Grocers here in New Zealand? Simple: the bureaucratic costs for new competitors to enter our distant market are too damn high, making a significant barrier to entry. (Call it bureaucratic drag.) Eric Crampton excerpts 

"a Jaw-dropping bit "from the Grocery Regulator on this, in interview at Interest.co.nz:

" 'What we've been told by these players is when they come and they want to open up a large store in New Zealand, the cost to get a spade in the ground is double that of Australia,” he says in a new episode of the Of Interest podcast. 

  " 'Now that is significant. And when they look at 'do we open up a store in Wagga Wagga or Tamworth or wherever in Australia' versus coming to open up in Auckland where there is massive demand or any of the other centres, really, the cost is double that of Australia. And the timeframe often is more than double as well. So when they do their business cases, they look at that and say, 'well, we're going to be better off by going elsewhere rather than here.' Now the government is saying that they're going to change things to make New Zealand more competitive for international players. And that's really what we're looking at.'
    "The Commerce Commission released its first annual grocery report on Wednesday which revealed ComCom’s efforts to boost grocery competition over the past year hasn’t had much impact'."

Later in the podcast, he says that Costco would already have expanded to more places in NZ if expanding in NZ weren't so freaking hard.
    It shouldn't be surprising that the grocery regulator hasn't chalked any wins as yet. The real problem is largely out of the regulator's hands: RMA, Overseas Investment Act, Council processes.

The emphasis there is mine. Eric's post has more detail on council clusterfucks.

Frank Lloyd Wright: Midway Gardens

 

Hypnolysis has animated old photographs to produce a "live" photographic walkthrough of Frank Lloyd Wright's European-inspired indoor/outdoor concert garden with space for year-round dining, drinking and performances. Built near downtown Chicago. Midway Gardens was a delight, creating a home for sophisticated pleasure-seeking and playing host to many of the early swing bands like Count Basie and Benny Goodman (who was 'discovered' while playing the Gardens in 1926). 

But the timing was rotten, the complex completed just a few years before the wowsers brought in Prohibition, closing large drinking establishments and handing booze profits to gangsters. 

Wright at least had the satisfaction of hearing that two demolition companies had gone bankrupt demolishing the beautiful structure.

"Kamala Harris is dead wrong. Freedom is not the right to vote."

"Kamala Harris held an August 2024 interview on CNN in which she ... [voiced] her reactionary core belief that voting is our most important right. ... [This is a] fundamentally anti-American orientation. ...
    "In the words of America’s Founding legal document, the Declaration of Independence,

'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . . [my emphasis]'

"Note the hierarchy. Governments don’t create rights. They secure our rights, which are thus unalienable. Note that the right to vote comes into view only after the institution of government, as implied in “the consent of the governed.”
    "[Harris's] Democratic Party holds the opposite principle—that rights come from the government ...
    "Harris is dead wrong. Freedom is not the right to vote. Freedom is the right to live one’s life by one’s own choices and values, regardless of anyone else’s vote or of the outcome of any election. Any government, including an elected government, that grants and rescinds rights at will is a totalitarian state. The Founders sought to protect individual rights from tyrannical government, whether autocratic, aristocratic, or democratic—or as James Madison put it, the one, the few, or the many. Harris seeks to obliterate that protection. And it’s a premise that dates back to the founding of her party. 

    "So much for Harris’s vaunted value of 'freedom.' .... She was never, and is not now, a champion of freedom, properly understood. Without inalienable individual rights, no freedom is possible. Remember that in the United States of America, we’re not free because we vote. We vote because we are free."

~ Mike LaFerrara, from his post 'Harris's Unchanged anti-American Values'

"Creationism is still bollocks even it is indigenous bollocks."

"The world is full of thousands of creation myths and other colourful legends, any of which might be taught alongside Māori myths. Why choose Māori myths? For no better reason than that Māoris arrived in New Zealand a few centuries before Europeans. That would be a good reason to teach Māori mythology in anthropology classes. Arguably there’s even better reason for Australian schools to teach the myths of their indigenous peoples, who arrived tens of thousands of years before Europeans. Or for British schools to teach Celtic myths. Or Anglo-Saxon myths. But no indigenous myths from anywhere in the world, no matter how poetic or hauntingly beautiful, belong in science classes. Science classes are emphatically not the right place to teach scientific falsehoods alongside true science. Creationism is still bollocks even it is indigenous bollocks.
    "The Royal Society of New Zealand, like the Royal Society of which I have the honour to be a Fellow, is supposed to stand for science. Not 'Western' science, not 'European' science, not 'White' science, not 'Colonialist' science. Just science. Science is science is science, and it doesn’t matter who does it, or where, or what 'tradition' they may have been brought up in."

~ Richard Dawkins from his post 'Myths Do Not Belong in Science Classes: Letter to the Royal Society of New Zealand' [hat tip Ele Ludemann]

Wealth taxes = loot + plunder

"The progressive personal income tax, the corporate income tax, and the capital gains tax all operate in essentially the same way as the inheritance tax. They are all paid with funds that otherwise would have been saved and invested. All of them reduce the demand for labor by business firms in comparison with what it would otherwise have been, and thus either the wage rates or the volume of employment that business firms can offer. For they deprive business firms of the funds with which to pay wages.
    "By the same token, they deprive business firms of the funds with which to buy capital goods. This, together with the greater spending for consumers’ goods emanating from the government, as it spends the tax proceeds, causes the production of capital goods to drop relative to the production of consumers’ goods. In addition, of course, they all operate to reduce the degree of capital intensiveness in the economic system and thus its ability to implement technological advances. […] [T]hese taxes, along with the inheritance tax, undermine capital accumulation and the rise in the productivity of labor and real wages, and thus the standard of living for everyone, not just of those on whom the taxes are levied. ...
    "Of course, many people will the line of argument I have just given as the 'trickle-down' theory. There is nothing trickle-down about it. There is only the fact that capital accumulation and economic progress depend on saving and innovation and that these in turn depend on the freedom to make high profits and accumulate great wealth. The only alternative to improvement for all, through economic progress, achieved in this way, is the futile attempt of some men to gain at the expense of others by means of looting and plundering. This, the loot-and-plunder theory, is the alternative advocated by the critics of the misnamed trickle-down theory."

~ George Reisman from his book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (pp. 308-310.) Hat tip Per-Olof Samuelsson, who observes: "The productive rich (think Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etcetera, etcetera) actually flood the rest of us with wealth (and themselves become wealthy in the process). Taxing or expropriating them simply means to dam this flood. And this may make it appear 'trickle-down' – because governments and politicians will only allow a small portion of this wealth to trickle down to us; the rest of it lands in their own pockets."

Busting labour monopolies. Case study: Occupational Licensing

"Occupational licensing is costly for both consumers and aspiring workers, but results in measurable benefits for existing market practitioners. Occupational licensing persists even though its costs very likely outweigh its benefits.
    "Occupational licensing makes it illegal for an individual to work in a profession before meeting minimum entry requirements set by the government. ... The minimum entry requirements often include paying fees, meeting minimum levels of education and training, passing exams, and meeting other requirements such as having a minimum age or possessing 'good moral character.'
    "Several dozen occupations, such as physicians, dentists, barbers, and cosmetologists, are licensed [along with] florists, interior designers, and ocularists. ... Many professions such as massage therapists, funeral directors, and athletic trainers, are licensed ...
    "Active market providers make up the largest percentage of licensing board membership. Many licensing board members own or have financial ties to schools that directly benefit ... Applicants for licenses are also future competitors of existing practitioners. Licensing board members can financially benefit from limiting entry into the profession by imposing expensive requirements. Consequently, licensing board members do not typically separate the public interest function of licensing boards from their own private interests. ...
    "The commonly stated objective of occupational licensing is to limit harm to consumers from poor quality service. ... But licensing has very clear negative effects. ...
    "Research confirms that licensing raises the prices of licensed services by anywhere from 3 to 13%. ... Studies estimating the effects of licensing in the 21st century often find little evidence of benefits for consumers. ...
    "[E]stimating the average effects of licensing on quality may not fully capture losses in access to service from reductions in the number of professionals. This has come to be known as the 'Cadillac effect' ... [L]icensing limits consumers to either purchasing services from providers meeting standards set by licensing boards (Cadillacs), or not purchasing services at all. This may encourage consumers to seek services in the underground economy, or to encourage consumers to do the services themselves. ...
    "[L]icensing boards [also] force consumers to purchase services meeting a standard that is not in the consumer’s best interest. ... [O]ccupational licensing reduces labor supply by as much as 29%. Occupational licensing restrictions can also limit the number of immigrants working in a licensed profession. ...
    "[T]here is very little evidence that licensing helps consumers. What is clearer is that licensing does indeed benefit existing practitioners."

~ Edward J. Timmons, from his post 'Occupational Licensing'

The best way to improve the world is to improve your *self*

"All individuals are faced with the problem of whom to improve, themselves or others. Their aim, it seems to me, should be to affect their own unfolding, the upgrading of their own consciousness, in short, self-perfection. Those who don’t even try or, when trying, find self-perfection too difficult, usually seek to expend their energy on others. Their energy has to find some target. Those who succeed in directing their energy inward—particularly if they be blessed with great energy, like Goethe, for instance—become moral leaders. Those who fail to direct their energy inward and let it manifest itself externally—particularly if they be of great energy, like Napoleon, for instance—become immoral leaders. Those who refuse to rule themselves are usually bent on ruling others. Those who can rule themselves usually have no interest in ruling others."

~ Leonard Read, from his 1962 book Elements of Libertarian Leadership [hat tip Jon Miltmore's post 'The Roman Philosopher Who Taught Jerry Seinfeld the Key to Success and Happiness']

"If you have a set of views that you can’t question, and a group of friends who’ll disown you if you do, you’re not a political activist – you’re in a cult."

Pic from The Spectator

"I have in the past admired twentysomethings for their interest in politics at an age when I was mostly clueless. I still do. But if you have a set of views that you can’t question, and a group of friends who’ll disown you if you do, you’re not a political activist – you’re in a cult."

~ Mary Wakefield, from her post 'No one will change their mind about Hamas'

"It is fear that drives them to seek the warmth, the protection, the 'safety' of a herd.
    "When they speak of merging their selves into a 'greater whole,' it is their fear that they hope to drown in the undemanding waves of unfastidious human bodies. And what they hope to fish out of that pool is the momentary illusion of an unearned personal significance."

~ Ayn Rand, from her essay 'Apollo and Dionysus' [hat tip Hilton H.]

"A lot of young people who feel lost would respond positively if they were exposed to how remarkable the journey of human civilisation has been. There’s a lot to fight for."

"Ever since the 1970s, there’s been a cumulative process whereby Western society – particularly in the Anglo-American world – has become more and more distant from its own past. ...
    "Now even the elites are increasingly disenchanted and estranged from history. What we have is this very one-sided war against the past with very little pushback.
    "It began as a quite specific, targeted attack on things like slavery in America or how the British Empire behaved in the 19th or early 20th century. Then suddenly every dimension of the Western experience was rendered toxic. It’s almost as if activists are trying to quarantine that legacy of the past – to suggest that there is no redeeming feature, that this is a story of shame. ...
    "There is a struggle for historical memory here. In the course of erasing important achievements of the past, what you’re doing is encouraging people to forget what the past was really all about. There’s that famous quote from George Orwell’s 'Nineteen Eighty-Four,' in which a man from the Ministry of Truth makes the point that, by 2050, people will no longer remember who Shakespeare was. They will no longer remember who all the important philosophers were. People will simply not know the writings and the arguments of all these great figures from the past.
    "We’re actually running ahead of that schedule by a good 20 or 25 years. Already we have a situation in which people no longer remember who the real Aristotle is, because we’re told that he was this founder of white supremacy. Kids going to school today might be told that Churchill was a war criminal. When you have such a warped vision of one of the greatest icons of 20th-century British history, then you can’t remember very much about where you’ve come from. ...
    "You’re certainly not providing people with ideals that can inspire them, particularly the younger generation. ...
    "A lot of young people who feel lost would respond positively if they were exposed to how remarkable the journey of human civilisation has been. There’s a lot to fight for."

~ Frank Furedi from an interview about his new book The War Against the Past: Why the West Must Fight For Its History 

 

"Rejecting industrial agriculture would be a grave mistake."

"In 2014, 'Scientific American' published a short but ominous article titled 'Only 60 Years Left of Farming if Soil Degradation Continues.' Similar claims popped up in the 'Guardian' in 2019 and in the BBC in 2024.
    "The BBC article ... proclaims that the world’s poorest areas already 'have zero harvests left. ... But the claim that earth has a small number of agricultural harvests remaining is unfounded. In 2021, the data scientist Hannah Ritchie busted the myth for 'Our World in Data.' Not only could Ritchie find no existing scientific citation for the claim, she found that such a claim could not possibly be defended. ...
    "The claims about soil degradation would not be the first time the media has bombarded the general public with excessively bleak depictions of our agricultural future with little evidence. ... The problem is that this narrative isn’t just wrong; it is dangerous. The practices these food systems critique elevate will have worse impacts on climate, global food security, and the environment writ large.
    "Although climate change may reduce agricultural productivity compared to a world without climate change, there is no reason to believe that its impact can’t be completely negated through technological progress. ...

"Most studies ... tend to find that, on a global level, climate and CO2 changes are detrimental to yields. Even so, climate change’s detrimental effects pale in comparison to the overall productivity growth caused by technological and practical advances in agricultural production. ...

 

"[T]he past half-century has seen about 1 degree Celsius in global warming. And yet, global agricultural output has increased almost four-fold over the same period. This increase in agricultural output is responsible for the prevention of g more than 3 billion hectares of land being converted to agricultural land—about a quarter of the world’s total arable land.
    "These yield gains saved lives. We’ve seen a steady decline in hunger over the past five decades, despite an uptick in the past few years due to conflict, the COVID-19 pandemic, and, to be sure, extreme weather impacts. For example, the amount of calories produced per person globally has increased by a quarter since 1970, despite the world population more than doubling.
    "Increased agricultural yields, which came despite a changing climate, were due to technological advances. These include synthetic fertilizers, modern pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides; fossil-powered mechanical equipment; expansive irrigation systems; advanced breeding, including genetic modification; confined animal feeding; and many other technologies, drove the incredible yield growth in both staple and specialty crops, and the massive leaps forward in livestock production. And there is no reason to believe, as BTI’s Patrick Brown, Emma Kovak, and I argued in 2023, that technological and socioeconomic factors will suddenly stop impacting agricultural yields. ....
    

"There is a deep irony [then] to how critics of the world’s food systems use the supposed impacts of climate change on agricultural yields to advocate for their preferred alternatives—alternatives that are proven to have negative impacts on crop and livestock yields ... [A] global switch to organic or regenerative agriculture by 2050 would have a worse impact on food security, the farm economy, and political stability than climate change, especially when modellers account for technological change. ...

"In practice, we already have examples of what might happen if the organic advocates won the agricultural transformation they dream of. In 2022, Sri Lanka decided to ban the sale and use of synthetic fertilisers at the behest of advocates such as Vandana Shiva. The ensuing months saw failing crop yields, skyrocketing food prices, and ultimately, a public coup that forced out President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
    "To be sure, climate change will likely impact our food systems. Some prices will go up, some will go down. But, technological breakthroughs and the adoption of existing technologies will also impact our food systems for the better. Rejecting industrial agriculture would be a grave mistake."

~ Alex Smith from his post 'Will Climate Change Starve Us All? No, But Bad Science Communication and Fear Mongering Might'

"It has sometimes been mentioned that the Chiefs did not have sovereignty to cede ... "

"A debate has recently begun between the Government and the Maoris regarding sovereignty ... That debate is incoherent and unnecessary and I will explain why. ...
    "Cede means 'give up (power or territory)' ('Oxford Concise Dictionary'), which entails that they must first have it. The Treaty itself says, the chiefs 'give absolutely to the Queen of England for ever the complete government [kawanatanga] over their land' (trans. I.H. Kawharu). That does not require that they give up their chiefly power or territory. The problem with the debate is that it does not allow for an arrangement whereby both the Queen's power of sovereignty and the chiefs’ power of rangatiratanga could exist together.

    "It has sometimes been mentioned that the Chiefs did not have sovereignty to cede. ... '[N]ational sovereignty ... was absent from the Maori communities in the country,' [explains Paul Moon in his 2002 book The Path to the Treaty of Waitangi] 'so the British were essentially asking for permission to acquire a type of sovereign rule which Maori would not have to sacrifice, as they did not possess it. This is distinct from the superficial interpretation ... in which Maori arbitrarily surrendered all their sovereign rights and powers to the Crown.'

    "So, by Article 1 of the Treaty, the chiefs did not cede sovereignty but instead accepted sovereignty; that is, they agreed that they would be subject to the Crown. That does not necessarily mean that they relinquished their chieftainship (tino rangatiratanga). That suggests an arrangement similar to the Magna Carta in which the Barons are subject to King John. The Barons were still barons with the dignity and estate of a barony, but as such they are subject to the Crown. ...

"Maori chieftainship was not like British sovereignty. The sovereignty (kawanatanga) referred to in Article 1 is with respect of all of New Zealand whereas chieftainship is with respect of an individual tribe. There were about 100,000 Maori at the time of the Treaty which about 500 chiefs signed and others did not, so the tribes were quite small and on average each comprised around only 200 people at most. Chieftainship therefore entailed much less authority over a much simpler social structure than the government (kawanatanga) of the entire country that was proposed and subsequently implemented by the British. It is not just a matter of degree; they are categorically different and provide very different outcomes of evolutionary significance."

~ Barrie Davis from his article 'Seeding Sovereignty in the Spring'

The Myth of Finite Resources

"Intellectuals, politicians, and journalists treat the idea that capitalism inevitably leads to ecological disaster as an unquestionable truth — ... that free markets cause the destruction of Mother Earth and that we must enact socialist policies to prevent an ecological doomsday scenario. But, what if I told you that economic facts do not buttress this hypothesis at all? And what if I added that an ingenious economist already proved the compatibility of capitalism and environmentalism as early as 1981? ...
    "One of the charges most frequently levelled against capitalism is that this social system must necessarily lead to ecological disaster. After all, the earth’s resources, the eco-socialist argument goes, are finite. Evil capitalists and greedy businessmen will gradually exploit non-renewables until we are doomed because we are out of natural resources. Karl Marx proposed this hypothesis as early as 1867 ...

"Inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Marx believed that the cause for ecological disaster is to be found in the introduction of private property rights. ... Rousseau and Marx’s solution to this alleged problem was the abolition of capitalism and property rights, a solution which has presently been voiced as vociferously as never before by the eco-socialists. ... While reading fairy tales and fables can certainly be an entertaining pastime activity, it is by now about time to return to reality ...

"In a free-market economy, the price of a resource is determined by its scarcity. If a resource becomes more abundant due to an increase in supply and/or a decrease in demand, its price will typically drop. If a given resource, vice versa, becomes more scarce due to a decrease in supply and/or an increase in demand, its price will usually rise. This change in scarcity and price, in turn, affects the behaviour of any rational market participant with an entrepreneurial mindset, producer and consumer alike. In his groundbreaking monograph, 'The Ultimate Resource,' American economist Julian L. Simon observes, 'Heightened scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices present opportunity and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to search for solutions.' In a capitalist society, the depletion of a nonrenewable resource is prevented by three emerging patterns of behaviour, all of them caused by the increase in the resource’s price.
    "[Between them, rising prices and] the profit motive offer an incentive to the rational businessman to obtain and store more units of the nonrenewable resource in question. ... and to start developing substitutes for the nonrenewable resource in question ... [Meanwhile] the desire to economise motivates rational buyers to become less dependent on the nonrenewable resource in question. ...

"Ultimately, there is only one resource which is necessary to replenish all others, namely the human mind. It is for this reason that Julian Simon chose to name his groundbreaking study 'The Ultimate Resource.' 'The main fuel to speed the world’s progress,' he explains, 'is our stock of knowledge, and the brake is our lack of imagination. The ultimate resource is people—skilled, spirited, hopeful people—who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit.' ...

"The eco-socialists are undoubtedly right in pointing out that the earth contains only a certain amount of nonrenewable resources in a fixed quantity. ...  More importantly, though, the eco-socialist errs in concluding that natural resources must be finite because the earth contains them in a limited quantity. Rather, in a free-market economy, as the resource becomes more scarce the price of the natural resource increases. Changes in producer and consumer patterns, in turn, prevent its depletion. In Simon’s words, 'Population growth and increase of income expand demand, forcing up prices of natural resources. The increased prices trigger the search for new supplies [or substitutes, and provides more human capital for the search and investigation.] Eventually new sources and substitutes are found.' ...

"The key economic problem of a socialist economy [however] is that the price of a resource will not rise if it becomes more scarce. Price ceilings effectively prevent an increase in price, thereby demotivating businessmen from increasing their production of non-renewables, and/or developing substitutes for them. The result, as can be witnessed in socialist countries all over the globe, are shortages and famines.
    "Thus, if people are truly concerned with the potential depletion of finite resources, they should start questioning their political convictions. The solution to preventing the exhaustion of the earth’s resources are not government controls but free markets and free minds. To paraphrase Ayn Rand, 'If concern with [the environment] and human suffering were the [eco-socialists]’ motive, they would have become champions of capitalism long ago; they would have discovered that it is the only political system capable of producing abundance'.”

~ Martin Hooss from his post 'The Myth of Nonrenewable Resources'

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