You either understand the point, or you vote Green-Labor, but I don’t see how anyone can do both.
[Via Small Dead Animals]
Who has the energy?
Reply
Monthly Archives: April 2015
You didn’t read the book and that’s all there is to it
From its very title – The post–WWII presidents made mistakes, but they were not pro-Soviet – I knew the article was about Diana West. And I also knew that its author, Ron Capshaw, despite what he says, has never read the book. Because whatever else West did or did not say, she never accused any American president of being pro-Soviet. And she most assuredly did not say it about FDR.
But what she did say was that Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s closest advisor, the man who constructed and oversaw the lend-lease program, almost certainly was. It’s a big difference, and if he had read the book he would have known this perfectly well.
But someone among the editorial staff at National Review must know, so the question really is why this latest shaft at West was let go.
If he or Radosh would like to deal with the accusations against Harry Hopkins and the mass of evidence West brings up, then get on with it. In the meantime, I do not believe they have read this book, or if they have, they must be the two persons least capable of reading for meaning I have ever come across in my life.
The bigger question that remains is why National Review will not let this issue go.
Our disintegrating cultural traditions
The moral centre travels. I was taken by a series of interesting comments by Roger on this post on culture bound is culture blind. I find the world looking ever darker because many of the cultural traditions which have held us together until now are disintegrating. This was the first of his comments.
There are two basic philosophical arguments against the cultural relativism you appear to be espousing:
1. It practically denies the existence of truth and the possibility of knowing what is true, yet it presents itself as a truth. Therefore it is an internally incoherent and self-defeating proposition.
2. Despite cultural differences, there is enough empirical evidence for universal moral truths being known across cultures and the religions that inform them to posit a basic common moral ground between different cultures. That is why Christians, for example, find echoes of their moral law in other religions.
One could go on, but, in short, if the oppression of women is morally wrong in Australia it is morally wrong in Iran. What we need to define, though, is what constitutes oppression? It may not necessarily be what hard-line Western feminists conceive as oppression, for example (e.g. a marriage freely entered into).
Conservatism doesn’t ask me to figure out for myself the long-term truths of the answers my society has provided for me before I was born and will live on after me when I am gone. I do not even begin to believe that there is or even could be “empirical evidence for universal moral truths being known across cultures”. I don’t even think there are such moral truths that now exist in our own society between generations. You ask yourself if the same answers to lots of these issues would be given by a representative sample of Australian citizens born in 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1990. Now try the same years with migrants. There will be some mash that will be the overall result, but I wouldn’t count on it being coherent nor will it reach any kind of consensus. Sure oppression of women is wrong everywhere, just what counts as “oppression” is also different everywhere. Try arranged marriages for a start and see how much consensus we can find across the world. Let me continue with his additional arguments – which I might add I largely agree with – to see whether there are any cultural factors involved in what he says:
Historically capitalism didn’t arise in a cultural vacuum. There were certain cultural pre-conditions for it to come into being and flourish; to name just a few: property rights, rule of law, freedom of association and free markets, what Hayek referred to as “spontaneous order”, though in truth there was nothing spontaneous about it. These pre-conditions first began to develop in a medieval Europe whose culture was Christian.
How did Christianity inform their development? Deep theological truths which formed the basis of the culture, such as that man is created in the image of God and thus bears certain inalienable rights, that the creation was ontologically distinct from its Creator and was thus a proper subject for study and later manipulation in the service of man’s needs, that time is linear and not cyclical and thus progress is possible and that man’s destiny is not constricted by the fatalism of the gods or the stars but he has a certain measure of free will at least in earthly matters. Eastern cultures certainly achieved some remarkable advances in science and technology, but lacking the order these pre-conditions created they could never give rise to the remarkable boon to humankind that is the capitalist movement of the last 700 years.
For the life of me I cannot see how the cultural bindings of our civilisation have not been crucial. Not everyone will have that same cultural inheritance that we have had as well as other inheritances that might make a difference in why we have achieved our economic success (which is obviously not the only form of success a culture can have). And then there is this:
I should have added that it is a very interesting question as to whether the modern adoption of elements of capitalism by Eastern cultures will lead to profound cultural changes in those cultures. I think we are indeed seeing evidence of such changes in some places. For example, the ability of the newly prosperous Chinese middle class to travel to Western countries as tourists or be educated here must inevitably have some negative impact upon the pact the Chinese Communist Party has made with its people to supply increasingly abundant material goods in exchange for the supine acceptance of their politically oppressive regime.
Another question, this time for the West, is whether once capitalism is completely severed from its ethical roots in Christianity it can continue to be a positive social force or instead becomes an agent of social disorder leading to the moral collapse of society. Democracy and capitalism are historically and culturally yoked together, but democracy can only thrive when the people are virtuous. In short, the very prosperity which capitalism has gifted us with may prove to be our downfall – the welfare culture is an example of this as is the related instability of the family unit.
If Christian ethics matter to our economic success, there is a fantastic amount of cultural inheritance we should recognise. But the world moves on. We are not our parents’ generation, nor that of our grandparents’ nor any other generation going back. A hundred years from now the ethic that will prevail where we happen to be right now is unknown to any of us. But this I can say with certainty, it will be profoundly different from what is found here today in the world in which we live.
How many economists can dance on the head of a pin?
This is a letter by Hugh Goodacre to the editor at the Financial Times on 16 April which came with the heading, Bringing economics back into liberal academic life. As you read the letter, you need to appreciate that the deeper reality is that the effort to marginalise alternative ways of looking at the economy goes beyond just putting such heterodox ideas into the history of economic thought. The further aim is to fully remove the history of economic thought as even being a component of the study of economics. I wrote a book on this very subject – Defending the History of Economic Thought – but these movements have a grinding relentlessness that will not be turned back unless there is the will to do so. I can see that for an academic, it may not much matter what is taught as long as doing whatever it is can get your paper published. That the university economics we actually apply to the real world have little value in curing any of the problems that exist, seems of only minor importance. I will also note that the one economist that was left out of the list is the one I think is the most important, being John Stuart Mill. I am also curious why Keynes is on the list since “Keynesian theory” is the very core of what we do teach. Pretty well every economist I know thinks they are teaching Keynesian models of one sort or another. Here is the letter that has been posted on the history of economics website with, so far, not a single comment from any one of the more than one thousand subscribers from around the world.
Sir, The moribund orthodoxy that currently exercises such an inflexible grip on university economics departments will, as Wolfgang Münchau comments, inevitably face a challenge, and this “will come from outside the discipline and will be brutal” (“Macroeconomists need new tools to challenge consensus”, April 13). The orthodoxy has brought this dismal prospect on itself through the brutality with which it has purged those departments of any other school of thought than its own.
Indeed, in its extreme version, the orthodoxy’s doctrine holds quite simply that there are “no schools of thought in economics”, a totalitarian assertion all too true in most economics departments today, so ruthless has been the purge of alternatives. As a result, the different approaches to economic issues of Adam Smith, Bentham, Ricardo, Marshall, Keynes, Friedman and so on are all relegated to the fringe subject of the “history of economic thought”. This is indeed a 1984 situation, in which the very idea that debate could exist on how to approach economic issues is regarded as a mere historical memory, and consequently of purely antiquarian interest.
However, economics students are increasingly demanding a pluralistic curriculum, as discussed by Martin Wolf in “Aim for enlightenment, technicalities can wait” (April 11). Similarly, the “fossilised habits of thought” entrenched in much of the economics professions are facing increasing criticism from within the academic world (see, for example, “The world no longer listens to the deaf prophets of the west”, Mark Mazower, April 14). Let us hope that all this pressure from students, from the worlds of journalism and of interdisciplinary debate, will combine to bring university economics departments back into the world of liberal academic life from which they have for so long isolated themselves.
The old economic verities are coming back
Chris M very kindly brought this to my attention on another thread: There’s a theory about what drives the US economy that you hear all the time. This financial expert says it’s completely wrong. And just what is the right theory?
“Consumption is zero percent of our economy.
It’s always production.”
It goes on to say:
If you don’t believe that, decide one day that you’re just going to consume and do nothing else. If so, you will very quickly die an unclothed, unfed death.
You must produce first in order to consume. And so it is production that drives the economy forward. And so, when you think about … economists love to say “We want everyone to consume, consume, consume.”
Well how are we more productive? We’re productive precisely because people save, and their savings flow toward more productive ways to build cars, to manufacture computers.
It is thanks to savings that we enjoy cell phones that we can watch tv on; that we increasingly have a good chance of winning the battle against cancer; that we get to drive cars that will at some point drive us around.
That’s because of savings. Savings are what power the economy forward. Consumption is the easy part. We all want to consume. But saving is what allows us to eventually consume.
It does seem the old verities are coming back, slowly, slowly, but coming back. You still have to understand saving properly, and the nature of value added and a number of other matters that must be very carefully defined and the co-ordination of their actions understood within their logical harmonies. Mises and Hayek, of course, explain it, and there is the impossible-to-read John Stuart Mill, but do not let me fail to mention this, which has the advantage of having it all explained against the backdrop of the Keynesian Revolution.
Ian Plimer – The environmental impact of Creation
By Ian Plimer, Australia’s greatest climate scientist, originally published at Catallaxy.
In the beginning God floated the idea of creating Heaven and Earth. He was immediately served with an injunction by Greenpeace to prevent any creative activity whatsoever as He had not undertaken an environmental impact study and had no permit to work.
At the court hearing, God was cross-examined and asked why He wanted to undertake this massive project, especially as it appeared that it was extremely unlikely that any social benefit would derive from His venture. The Wilderness Society reminded God that His Bible stated that “the earth was void and empty and darkness was upon the face of the deep” hence the area where He wanted to creatively meddle could be classified as a pristine wilderness. God successfully argued that, unless Earth could be seen, then it could not be classified a wilderness area. Upon further questioning, God revealed that by Him saying “Let there be light” the wilderness area could be seen for assessment of its environmental value.
This created pandemonium in the court house. How could God create light without burning something that would pollute the Universe? Had He considered the smoke, thermal and optical pollution that His creation of light would produce? What would be mined to produce all this energy? Would the mining be underground or open pit? Was this mining safe and did it exploit indigenous people? Would mining make a profit? What was God to do with the tailings and the waste? Was mining to be conducted by workers’ communes or faceless corporations? Was God aware of the dangers of greenhouse gases and nuclear energy?
In order to seek compromise, God argued that He would create a pollution-free, thermonuclear powerhouse a long way from the planet. However, at the mention of the word nuclear, the masses at the court hearing broke into histrionics. God faced aggressive questioning from the assembled environmental movements. Would His giant thermonuclear power generator really work? Could the safety of thermonuclear fusion be guaranteed? What about Chernobyl? In order to allow His creative proposal to proceed, God suggested that instead of thermonulear energy, He would create solar energy. A warm inner glow entered the hearts of those in the courthouse, the assembled detractors agreed that solar power would be far better environmentally than thermonuclear power and some of the more sensitive souls were so touched by God’s environmental concern that they actually wanted to shake His hand. The unions insisted that if God creates solar power, then He must create wind so that their union superannuation funds can skin the public alive with their subsidised inefficient wind farms. God reluctantly agreed in order to proceed with His creative process.
The remaining hard core continued to question God on his alternative energy proposal. Some wanted an Earth Month until it was realised that there would be no food. A compromise was made and Earth Hour was proposed. This was a time dedicated to wealthy consumers to feel morally superior with no sacrifice or knowledge and a time when they could hypocritically emit more carbon dioxide. The Earth Hour advocates argued that darkness was symbolic but God didn’t say that the symbolism was a political, moral and intellectual darkness.
Wouldn’t precious energy be wasted if light was emitted from the Sun all the time? God had a brilliant idea and, in order to conserve energy, God suggested that He divide light and darkness and He would call the light Day and the darkness Night. The assembled environmental masses seemed to think that this was an inspired energy-saving proposal and grudgingly acquiesced to this creative step.
However, the next creative step aired had God in a spot of bother. When God was asked how the Earth would be covered, He answered “Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters; and let it divide the waters from the waters”. Greenpeace, the Australian Conservation Foundation, Friends of the Earth, the Greens and miscellaneous other environmental movements voiced strong objections. If God created a firmament, would not the mining industry pillage the firmament for minerals? God tried logic and argued that a firmament was necessary in order to produce the 210 tonnes per capita per annum of water, food and minerals that would be consumed by each Western person at the end of the second millennium AD. The gag was applied, the court adjourned and God was refused permission to continue argument on the firmament. After the adjournment, God was given permission to make a short statement. He stated that homelands and sacred sites could not be annexed unless there was a firmament. After much discussion in court about the necessary provision of homelands for the tangible expression of guilt and the growth of the guilt industry, God was given permission to create a firmament and questioning shifted to His creation of waters.
Neither Greenpeace nor Save the Aquatic Fauna wanted God to create the oceans because this would tempt the petroleum industry into offshore drilling. Furthermore, if there were oceans, then there could be marine pollution, fishing and people enjoying themselves with water sports. To make matters even worse, international waters could not be regulated and controlled by the Greens. It suddenly dawned on God that logic was His worst defence and He started to invent arguments that would seem plausible to ideologues. Rather than discuss the necessity of oceans for climate, resources and survival, God insisted that His creative venture must have oceans. Without oceans, God argued, there would be no habitat for dolphins, dugongs and whales. The court room erupted into cheers, people struggled to pat God on the back, environmental leaders announced that the god of nature would now be called Gaia, God signed numerous autographs and a warm ambience settled over the tear-stained masses. However, because so few at the hearing had trust in God, He was instructed to apply for the numerous necessary permits from the appropriate local government, shipping, agricultural and water and international commissions before undertaking this creative step.
When God tried to explain that the barren firmament should be environmentally enhanced with vegetation, there was vigorous objection on the basis that the flora might be exploited commercially for profit. God was now aware that it was pointless to argue that flora would be the key to survival on earth, that flora uses carbon dioxide as plant food and that flora emits oxygen and so He stated that He would only create species native to planet Earth. He strengthened his argument by suggesting that if the firmament was covered by abundant vegetation, all could be vegetarian. The vegans tried to cheer but just didn’t have the energy. God’s popularity was increasing and the environmental leaders now privately felt that God was good, however they were committed to objecting in public to every creative step God wanted to make. It was eventually agreed, subject to Noxious Weed Board and Forestry Commission permission, that if God vegetated the planet with only native species then He would be issued with a permit to say “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit”
In order to win over various New Age movements, astrologers, UFO watchers, tarot card readers and the Lunar Cycle Birth Movement, God announced to the court that He wanted to state “And let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth”. The various New Age movements were asked to voice their objections however, because their answers required the construction of sentences and the use of words of more than two syllables, they could only look bleary-eyed at God, monotonously chanted “God is Cool” and fondled His long flowing robes.
Some disquiet was expressed in court about God’s plan to have only native flora without soft, cuddly environmentally sensitive fauna. A passionate discussion ensued with some suggesting that if there were animals on the firmament then they would be hunted, killed and eaten whereas others wanted soft cuddly objects to allow them to have publicity about the plight of these animals. The question of methane emissions from animals was raised. It was unanimously agreed, that in the absence of evidence, that methane emissions were bad, however a compromise was struck. If God could create sheep and cattle that had the choice of emitting methane, then wild animals could democratically decide whether they chose to emit methane or not. The gathered masses felt good. On the condition that God adhered to the various statutes of the Native Flora and Fauna Protection Act, various National Parks Acts, the Fisheries Acts and observed the RSPCA regulations, God was given permission to say “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and the fowl that may fly above the earth”.
The proposal to create man met insurmountable ethical and political difficulties. The vivisectionists were concerned about the morals of rib transplant on a sleeping patient without the required documentation, the Womens’ Electoral Lobby and the Lesbian Gender Equality Sisterhood would not agree that man was to be created before woman, animal liberationists were incensed that man was to have dominance over animals, the gay lobby did not want woman created from man, the right-to-lifers and human rights commissioners argued that rib tissue had inalienable rights and ASIO insisted that those created must first have security clearances. God was secretly pleased because, during these evidence-free emotional arguments, God had written some basic economics into His book because God now was sure that activists, communists and others on the Left don’t read books and can only chant ideology. He created commodities (gold; Gen. 2:12) and the market (women; Gen. 2:23). No one noticed. If his green opponents actually read books, there would have been uproar at God creating a capitalist system.
God now had the measure of his opponents and announced to the court that He would only create indigenous people. Opposition evaporated, there were excited suggestions about having a special year dedicated to indigenous people and, after no thought, it was decided that if these matters were aired at a subsequent public hearing, then God may be given permission afterwards to say “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth”.
Despite the onerous conditions laid down by the court, God was willing to adhere to all these conditions. God only had to abide by 96,213 approvals and regulations to be administered by Green politicians. However, at the end of the hearing, He was asked when He hoped to commence His creative project. Great consternation arose when God stated that He wanted to complete the project in six days. The unions would not agree, too many people would have to work too fast to an exacting deadline. This was unprecedented compared with all previous attempts at productive creativity that had been prevented by prolonged industrial action. God was advised that the EIS and necessary permits have an application period of 90 days followed by a public viewing period of 60 days in each capital city. Upon receipt of all of the information, the granting bodies required a minimum of 180 days to review the applications prior to the public hearing. If there were no appeals arising from the public hearing, the process would take at least 36 months from the time of application before God was permitted to commence His creative venture. If there were appeals, it could take up to 10 years before God could be given permission for His creation.
God became positively catatonic. To His horror, God suddenly realised that He had only focussed on creation of the Heavens and Earth and had forgotten to create the rarest commodity on Earth – common sense. The irrational unproductive constraints of the regulatory processes were such that it was just not possible for God to create Earth in the proposed six-day period. God fulminated in disgust “To Hell with My Project!” and Earth, as we know it, was then created.
The obliteration of inconvenient fact by the media-academic complex
This shouldn’t be one of those facts that only a handful of people know but there you are. Today is “Jackie Robinson Day”, the anniversary of the day that Jackie Robinson, the first black athlete to play major league baseball in modern times, played his first major league game. There is therefore this story mentioned naturally in only one place that has been put out today: On Jackie Robinson Day, Let’s Remember When He Was Fired From the New York Post for Being Too Republican. Well yes, let us. I encourage you to read the whole article since it takes you back to a world that has gone down the memory hole. Telling you how it ends gives away nothing but sums things up quite well:
Jackie’s retort [on being fired], published at his new home in the New York Amsterdam News in January 1962, is filled with some classic Robinsonian acid:
No one will ever convince me that the Post acted in an honest manner. I believe the simple truth is that they became somewhat alarmed when they realized that I really meant to write what I believed. There is a peculiar parallel between some of our great Northern “liberals” and some of our outstanding Southern liberals.
Some of the people in both classes share the deep-seated convictions that only their convictions can possibly be the right ones. They both inevitably say the same thing: “We know the Negro and what is best for him.”
I care less about the hypocrisy of the left in this instance than I do about how we are now so used to the obliteration of the truth by the media-academic complex that we merely look at such things as just how it is without a sense of real outrage.
I might also mention that I am amazed at how little coverage there is of Lincoln’s assassination on the 150th anniversary of his tragic death.
Culture bound is culture blind
This is from Tim Blair which he puts under the heading, It all makes perfect sense.
The UN recently decided that Israel was the number one violator of women’s rights in the world today. And then the UN appointed the Islamic Republic of Iran to the executive board of the UN’s Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.
I, of course, understand Tim’s point perfectly well. The West set up the United Nations in the 1940s under the assumption it set the standard for the rest of the world. But there were a large number of cultural assumptions built into the creation of that organisation which have been unravelling for quite some time.
Being culture bound is an unfortunate circumstance, although inevitable. The reality is that while we in the West think one way, other people think quite a different way entirely.
At the very minimum we should understand that people from different cultures do not share Western values, nor do they seek to emulate our way of life. They would like the goods and services our economies invent and produce in great abundance, and their political and social elites have more wealth than we can even begin to imagine. But they also have their own values, and these are enduring. Their societies will not become like our societies, not ever.
The Republic of Iran has, without any doubt, strong views on gender equity and the empowerment of women. They just don’t happen to be the same as ours. Why should that difference of opinion exclude their being a member of the Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women in the one-nation-one-vote structure of the ironically named United Nations?
Crony socialism
Here’s the nature of the problem. The Treasurer goes to the public service – the very people whose entire livelihoods are financed by public spending – and says to them that the government has a massive deficit that has to be dealt with. And he adds, in the short term, there are only two solutions:
What do you think these self-interested custodians of the public good are going to answer?
Every regulation has a thousand regulators who want to keep their jobs. Every program has ten thousand programmers who like the steady income and their cushy jobs. Much of it is a ponzi scheme in which they even get to set their own level of wages.
There is, of course, the one additional problem. Every regulation has a fan club. Every program has its clients. It is the regulations they have to endure they are really interested in removing. It is programs that don’t benefit themselves they think need to be ended. But there is a kind of everyone defends regulation since no one trusts the market, and removing any public programs threatens all of them so there is a reluctance to see any of them wound back.
Finally there’s the media, especially the publicly-funded ABC, who can be counted on the bag and slag any serious effort at public saving if it is done by a more conservative government.
In sum: where’s the constituency for cuts to spending?
An Eloi Manifesto
This is from Tim Blair and I cannot tell if this is a parody or something taken directly from a Green election pamphlet somewhere. Reads straight out of the 1930s so I opt for parody but who can be sure?
Going to the original Tim links to, the comments thread is hilarious. I guess I prefer the Greens to ISIS, but with the Greens in charge, ISIS will not be far behind.
I’VE NOW GONE AND LOOKED: It really is there, page 77, just like it says. There are no words for such people, but the Morlocks will come and get them sooner than they think.
And I have to say, this elois and morlocks thing has a kind of modern day significance I will have to dwell on further.
Law of Markets 