Monthly Archives: January 2018

Capitalism is the only economic system that works

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Wandering through the city’s bookshops yesterday I came across this: Is Capitalism Obsolete? with the subtitle, “A Journey through Alternative Economic Systems”. I live in hope that there will be at least one volume somewhere that has no for an answer. Haven’t seen anything in years. The above is my picture of the back cover. If you read how they advertise the book, you will find the least unexpected turn in the history of modern publishing.

After communism collapsed in the former Soviet Union, capitalism seemed to many observers like the only game in town, and questioning it became taboo for academic economists. But the financial crisis, chronic unemployment, and the inexorable rise of inequality have resurrected the question of whether there is a feasible and desirable alternative to capitalism. Against this backdrop of growing disenchantment, Giacomo Corneo presents a refreshingly antidogmatic review of economic systems, taking as his launching point a fictional argument between a daughter indignant about economic injustice and her father, a professor of economics.

Is Capitalism Obsolete? begins when the daughter’s angry complaints prompt her father to reply that capitalism cannot responsibly be abolished without an alternative in mind. He invites her on a tour of tried and proposed economic systems in which production and consumption obey noncapitalistic rules. These range from Plato’s Republic to diverse modern models, including anarchic communism, central planning, and a stakeholder society. Some of these alternatives have considerable strengths. But daunting problems arise when the basic institutions of capitalism—markets and private property—are suppressed. Ultimately, the father argues, all serious counterproposals to capitalism fail to pass the test of economic feasibility. Then the story takes an unexpected turn. Father and daughter jointly come up with a proposal to gradually transform the current economic system so as to share prosperity and foster democratic participation.

Capitalism means a system of production in which the ownership of firms is in the hands of private individuals who use the capital they buy, rent or own, while directing the employees they hire, to produce goods and services in a lawful way to sell what they have produced to others in order to earn a profit for themselves. There are lots of variations on the theme but that is essentially it. Nothing else has ever worked, nothing else will ever work, however many fools and their fictional daughters there may be who think they have come up with something else.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t

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From If President Trump Is Mentally Unstable, Let’s Hope It’s Contagious.

Just look at what this president who supposedly has a diminished capacity has been able to accomplish:

    Led Congress to pass tax reform bill providing $5.5 billion in cuts and repealed oppressive Obamacare mandate.

    Fuel economic growth moving GDP above 3 percent.

    Boosted economic confidence, causing the Dow Jones index to grow to record highs and at a record pace.

    Signed an Executive Order demanding that two regulations be killed for every new one, boosting economic growth.

    Withdrew from the Obama-era Paris Climate Agreement, ending one-sided environmental regulations.

    Withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership which had terms unfavorable to the US.

    Began renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement for the same reason.

    Convinced companies like Toyota, Mazda, Broadcom Limited, and Foxconn announced plans to open new plants in the U.S.

    Ended Obama’s job-killing Clean Power Plan.

    Allowed military professionals freedom needed to win the war on terror, as a result, kicking ISIS butts.

    Normalized good relationships with Saudi Arabia that Barack Obama damaged

    Stopped treating Israel like an evil empire, Barack Obama did.

    Ended the Obama-era “catch and release” of illegal immigrants.

    Significantly reduced the number of illegal aliens slipping through the southern border.

    Appointed and got Senate confirmation for twelve federal appeals court judges an all-time record for a first-year president.

    Nominated and received confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

    Went to the Middle East and convinced some Muslim nations to join in fighting terrorism.

    Reinstated the “Mexico City Policy” killed by Obama which blocks foreign aid being used for abortions.

    Pressuring North Korea to end it’s nuclear program, got UN to increase sanctions against the N Korean regime, living rent-free inside Kim Jung Un’s head.

    Pressuring China to help get Kim Jung Un to behave.

    Ordered new sanctions on the despotic dictatorship in Venezuela.

    Pressured NATO partners to increase their military budgets to the negotiated level.

    Ordered the bombing of Syria for using chemical warfare against its own people, enforcing a red line Obama set and ignored.

    Used his personal relationship with China’s president to secure the release of three UCLA students arrested for shoplifting a pair of sunglasses.

    Kept his promise to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and began the process of moving US embassy to Israel’s capital city.

    Directed the Pentagon to upgrade and modernize America’s nuclear arsenal.

And there’s more to come along the same lines. What I would like to know from his critics is what another president, of either party, might have done that would have been even better?

As for the source of the quote, having discovered at a trivia quiz that no one else knew where “Now is the winter of our discontent” came from, all products of a university education, let me give you the source if your education has failed you as well.

Donald Trump is a genius

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Donald Trump is a genius in exactly the same way his enemies are morons. I don’t say these people can’t tie their shoelaces or cross the streets by themselves. What I do say is that when it comes to political judgement and ethical behaviour, they are so far below an acceptable norm as to place them beyond any need to pay the slightest attention to what they say or what they want because of how politically stupid they really are. This is what PDT said:

“Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence,” he wrote at 7:19 a.m.

“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” he continued. “Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames.”

“I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star . . . to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius . . . and a very stable genius at that!” he finished at 7:30 a.m.

This is from Wikipedia.

genius
ˈdʒiːnɪəs/
noun
1.
exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability.
“she was a teacher of genius”
synonyms: brilliance, great intelligence, great intellect, great ability, cleverness, brains, erudition, wisdom, sagacity, fine mind, wit, artistry, flair, creative power, precocity, precociousness More
2.
an exceptionally intelligent person or one with exceptional skill in a particular area of activity.
“a mathematical genius”
synonyms: brilliant person, mental giant, mastermind, Einstein, intellectual, intellect, brain, highbrow, expert, master, artist, polymath; More

If you cannot recognise genius when you see it – someone with an exceptional skill in a particular area of activity, political leadership for example – then maybe you are just too stupid to be able to tell.

“Lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist”

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The desperation of the left in trying to find something, anything, to pin on PDT has reached a new level of intensity with the release of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury. Based on the tried and true process, now being perfected across the media, of all the news I can make up that fits the narrative, we have even among the least credible statements ever made, that PDT didn’t really want to win the White House at all. Since the book is policy free from what I have read so far, nothing in it is likely to affect Trump’s electability. It will be the same empty heads on the left who think Obama was just peachy versus those who would like to see the American Republic continue on into the future. This is PDT’s response in the story about the book from The Oz.

“I authorised Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist,” Mr Trump tweeted on Thursday.

But Wolff countered: “I absolutely spoke to the President. Whether he realised it was an interview or not. I don’t know, but it certainly was not off the record.”

“Lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist.” Sounds like everything else you find out about PDT in the media. There is such a hunger for anything that attempts to damage The President among the left that if anyone can be thought of as deranged it is his enemies. For a different view, you might try this: The Great Experiment by Victor Davis Hanson. First there were eight years of a far-left “progressive” agenda to be followed by four or even eight years of conservative governance. That is the experiment.

Whatever Donald J. Trump’s political past and vociferous present, his first year of governance is most certainly as hard conservative as Barack Obama’s eight years were hard progressive. We are watching a rare experiment in political governance play out, as we go, in back-to-back fashion, from one pole to its opposite.

Among Obama’s signature foreign policies were “lead from behind” in Libya; quietude during the Iranian anti-theocratic protests; strategic patience with North Korea; the multifaceted and often clandestine efforts to swing the Iran deal; the Russian “reset”; realignment away from Israel, Egypt, and the Gulf monarchies; and rapprochement with Cuba, Venezuela, and the South American Communist and socialist states. . . .

[Domestically] identity politics, progressive policing of ideas on campus, an end to campus free expression that only empowered hate speech, the politicization and expansion of the deep state, along with open borders and new laxities governing citizenship and voting would usher in new, kinder and gentler race, ethnicity, and gender agendas. A single EPA director, one high IRS commissioner, or a federal-appeals-court justice would now exercise far more political power than any congressional committee. The “law” — in the sense of customary non-surveillance of American citizens, disinterested attorneys general, or a nonpartisan bureaucracy — was redefined as whatever would best serve social justice and equality.

On the economic side, more regulations, larger government, more entitlements, higher taxes, zero interest rates, and doubling the national debt were designed to redistribute income and “spread the wealth.” The idea that the stock market could get much higher, that GDP could ever hit 3 percent or above, or that industry and manufacturing would return to the U.S. was caricatured as the ossified pipe dreams of discredited supply-siders.

And in contrast we now have and can look forward to more of this:

Free-market economics, deterrent foreign policies, and conservative cultural reform that are championed in the abstract in think tanks, on radio and television by conservative pundits, and in magazines and journals by conservative intellectuals are currently being put to work concretely in the real world, a rare occurrence. Or they’re being implemented as least as much as possible with a president and a Congress of the same party behind them and within a set tenure.

All sounds good to me. What I can’t work out is why it doesn’t all sound good to them.

So who has the scariest biggest red button after all?

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After you’ve been negotiating with unions in the New York property market, what’s so tough about international relations? According to the story, North Korea agrees to high-level talks with South Korea on Jan. 9.

Seoul says North Korea has agreed to hold high-level talks with South Korea next Tuesday.

Unification Ministry spokesman Baik Tae-hyun said Friday that North Korea has accepted Seoul’s offer to meet at the border village of Panmunjom that day to discuss how to cooperate on next month’s Winter Olympics and how to improve overall ties.

The announcement came hours after the United States said it has agreed to delay joint military exercises with South Korea until after the Winter Olympics. The Games are to be held in the South Korean city of Pyeongchang.

The rival Koreas are seeking to improve their strained ties after a period of rising tension over the North’s push to expand its nuclear and missile arsenals.

It’s only a step, but a trip of a thousand miles must start with that single step.

And now for Iran.

Sighting a unicorn

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Described as “A story about the President and politics – a must read written by an honest Democrat”. Do the words “honest” and “Democrat” really go together in politics? Anyway, the words here seem right but I wish I could trust the source.

Marshall Kamena is a registered democrat and was elected mayor of Livermore, CA.. He ran on the democratic ticket as he knew a Bay Area city would never vote for a republican. He is as conservative as they come. He wrote the following.

Trump’s lack of decorum, dignity, and statesmanship

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.”

Here’s my answer:

We Right-thinking people have tried dignity.  There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.

We tried statesmanship. Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain?

We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney?

And the results were always the same. This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party. I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent. Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”

The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the ‘60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale.. It has been a war they’ve fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one – the violent take-over of the universities – till today. The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety. With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America ’s first wartime president in the Culture War.

During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming. Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln rightly recognized that, “I cannot spare this man. He fights.”

General George Patton was vulgar-talking loud-mouth. In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank. But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum then, Hitler and the Socialists would barely be five decades into their thousand-year Reich.

Trump is fighting. And what’s particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel’s, he’s shouting, “You magnificent bastards, I read your book!”

That is just the icing on the cake, but it’s wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he’s defeating the Left using their own tactics. That book is Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals – a book so essential to the Liberals’ war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis. It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer.

Trump’s tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do. First, instead of going after “the fake media” — and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri — Trump isolated CNN.. He made it personal.

Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as “the most powerful weapon of all.”… Most importantly, Trump’s tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. … They need to respond. This leaves them with only two choices. They can either “go high” (as Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery. The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve.

It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive. Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama’s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright’s church. Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration’s cover-up.

So, to my friends on the Left — and the #NeverTrumpers as well — do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be “collegial” and “dignified” and “proper”? Of course I do. These aren’t those times. This is war. And it’s a war that the Left has been fighting without opposition for the past 50 years. So, say anything you want about this president – I get it – he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times. I don’t care. I can’t spare this man. He fights for America!

Folks, there is no way he is a Democrat. If he says he is, it is only as a joke to irritate the ones who really are.

Trash talk negotiations with North Korea

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From Scott Adams [aka Dilbert]: Is President Trump’s Nuclear Button Tweet a Sign of Insanity?

Here we see President Trump “pacing” (or matching) the hyperbolic rhetoric of Kim Jung Un. The two leaders are trash-talking each other like sports rivals. But what is missed in the hysterics over wording is that President Trump and Kim Jung Un are negotiating personally, albeit in public. And I think it is safe to say both players know they are being over-the-top with their trash-talk. The odds of a nuclear miscalculation based on anything said so far is effectively zero. And if the rhetoric ratchets up to a new level of hyperbole, I would still see no additional risk. President Trump and Kim Jong Un have demonstrated they know the difference between trash-talk and action. . . .

So while it might look to many observers as two crazy leaders heading for a nuclear showdown, to me it looks like two colorful characters who probably have a weird kind of respect for each other.

Read the whole thing. It’s an optimistic view of how things are going but it also fits the facts as we know them.

Economic theory and junk science

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You may have heard me mention once or twice before that Keynesian economics is junk science, but just in case you missed it I am going to mention it again. What has brought all this to mind is reading the front page story in The Oz in the context of the booming economy in the US. In The Oz we have this: Bill shock as standard of living slumps. In the United States we have this: US private sector added 250,000 jobs in Dec, vs estimate of 190,000: ADP. It also mentions that “the report helped send the Dow to break the 25,000 mark for the first time”. Of course, here in Australia we have something else instead:

Australians have endured their longest period of falling living standards in more than a quarter of a century as growth in costs outstripped earnings for the fifth consecutive quarter, leaving households worse off than they were six years ago.

The moronic focus on public spending to lift our economies is such dead stupidity, but even more dead stupidity is that economists continue with Y=C+I+G as the mantra of macroeconomic thought. I have just been sent my copyedited article that will be published in June: “Making Sense of Classical Theory”. It is an attempt to remind others that there was not only an economic theory before the publication of The General Theory in 1936, but that theory was vastly superior to the theory that disfigures our economic textbooks today.

As it happens, I have just been re-reading the third edition of my Free Market Economics. There is, unfortunately, nothing like it. Perfectly clear and as easy to read as a blog post but entirely framed around classical economic theory. The economics of John Stuart Mill, the greatest economist who has ever lived, recast for the 21st century. If you don’t want to buy it yourself, just get your library to buy a copy.

The reality remains that our living standards will continue to descend if those who make policy continue to believe that public expenditures like the Snowy Mountain Project Mark II will make the economy grow. It will, in exactly the same way as the NBN.

Daemonology, climatology, it’s all the same thing, a means for the ignorant to pretend they know something important when they actually don’t

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This is Karabar commenting on a previous post. It’s about the kind of people who now invest psychologically in global warming. They are the same people who once burned witches at the stake.

In 1597 King James VI of Scotland published his work “Daemonology”. Within a few decades, Europeans discussed endlessly various methods of killing demons of all description. As time passed and people became “enlightened”, it became obvious that all this discussion about ‘fighting dangerou0s demons’ was nothing but make-believe intended to enhance the power and wealth of the elite.

We really haven’t learned anything, since in the 21st century we discuss endlessly the make-believe of ‘global warming’, ‘dangerous climate change’, the ways in which human activities affect the weather, etc.

Discussions about the imaginary “Global Climate” are as much nonsense as discussions four centuries ago about werewolves, vampires, and witches. In order to determine whether or not some parameter has changed, it is necessary to have some sort of metric that can be examined over time to discover the extent and nature of the change.

“Climate” indeed has such a metric, in the form of classification systems, for the most part Koppen-Geiger and Trewartha. Both have six basic classifications, which are further subdivided into approximately ten sub classifications each. In examining the geographical changes over a century or so, it is clear that areas of each classification can expand or contract slightly in tune with the cyclical nature of the solar system. Indeed, over the breadth of the twentieth century one can argue that there has effectively been no NET change, other than the remarkable greening of vegetation over the past three or four decades which is reflected in the Trewartha classification.

If there were such a parameter as the imaginary “global climate”, what would it be? Would it fall into the classification A, B, C, D, E, or F? Would that mean that the climate of the Scott base is of the same classification as Honolulu?

As homo sapiens did three or four centuries ago, today we insist on the discussion of pure nonsense, but instead of it being how to identify and torture witches, we insist on discussion nonsense such as ‘global warming’, ‘ocean acidification’, and ‘decarbonisation’.

Four centuries have passed with little or no anthropocentric advancement in common sense. Thousands of innocent people were tortured and burned alive in this previous bout of idiocy. How many have to suffer due to the IPCC version of “Daemonology”?

A bit of history and a challenge to the climate change people, a challenge they are absolutely certain never to take up.

If their presenters are this stupid what must the people who watch be like?

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From Twitchy: CNN busts fake news: Trump doesn’t REALLY have a big NUKE button on his desk. Be sure you read the final bit of this post just to see where we are at.

An actual nuclear blast would feel like a bit of an understatement at this point now that we’ve felt the shockwaves of President Trump’s tweet Tuesday night reverberate through social media and the press. In case you missed it, here it is again, currently hovering just above 420,000 likes:

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!

Sure, CNN thought it was breaking news and wondered if threatening a nuclear strike violated Twitter’s terms of service. Check out this clip of Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld busting a gut over it:

johnny dollar@johnnydollar01

Clip: @greggutfeld zings @brianstelter on today’s @TheFive w/ @DanaPerino

Perhaps in a bid to calm the country’s nerves a bit, CNN’s Chris Cillizza did a bit of fact-checking Wednesday, revealing that President Trump doesn’t actually have a big button on his desk that launches nuclear missiles at North Korea.

CNN

✔@CNN

No, Trump doesn’t have a big nuclear button on his desk | Analysis by @CillizzaCNN http://cnn.it/2DZHvEj 

Cillizza reports:

Practically speaking, it makes lots and lots of sense that there is no nuclear button on the president’s desk. As a clumsy person myself, I can imagine a president accidentally bumping into it — or tripping and landing a hand on it. Not good.

Now, that said: The power to launch a nuclear strike does rest entirely in the hands of Trump. Or, more accurately, in the hands of a small rotating group of military personnel who carry a briefcase that contains the nuclear codes.

Yeah, we know … remember the time Vice President Joe Biden in a speech pointed out the military aide who travels with him carrying the nuclear launch codes? CNN didn’t seem flustered about that, though.

Is everyone a little calmer now, or was that piece written just to soothe Brian Stetler and Anderson Cooper?

Of course, this story might be compared with this from Instapundit right now.

BUT TRUMP IS UNPRECEDENTLY INCOMPETENT: Bill Clinton once lost the nuclear codes for months, and a ‘comedy of errors’ kept anyone from finding out.

What really is there to say after that? There is no irony deep enough to cover this. We are far out and beyond even the wildest extension of Muggridge’s Law anyone could possibly imagine.