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Flock immunity

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I wish I knew how better to deal with the lying and duplicity of the left. And for some, the triumvirate of media, entertainment and the academic world is almost enough to generate a majority in every situation. It is also clearly not enough to just answer their stupidities with logic, facts and reason. We have to make their opinions uncool and widen the appreciation that their solutions to everything are uncaring and heartless. They only do harm. We need a better means to make clear that in supporting typical Democrat/left-side solutions to a problem, many people, specially among those who are poor or on low incomes will inevitably be made worse off in the medium term and even more so in the longer run, even if not immediately. But thinking past the immediate moment is the shortest of suits among the left. Historical thinking is no more their forte than logic. Impractical sentimentality is their means to a solution which is why none of their solutions have ever provided an answer to any social problem. We are better off today only because the left live within a capitalist economic structure that provide the goods and services they do nothing to create and very little to distribute towards those on the bottom of the income scale.

It is a conundrum for us. We collectively have only the thinnest sliver of an attachment any longer to the principles of individual responsibility that made our societies what they are. Where we go from here is a great worry. I laugh at the “OK Boomer” notions of the millennial generation whose notion of wisdom today is the hippy idiocies of my generation way back then. We, at least, had the leavening of the actual adults amongst us when we were kids. Now we are the adults so there is all too little that any longer provides that leavening so far as I can tell.

Anyway, we shall see. It worries me that even Donald Trump seems to take this virus business as a serious matter. I think at the beginning he did know it was a scam, but he has been isolated by those others with another view. Socialist isolation is a very bad outcome.

The left are like a plague of locusts, destroying everything in its path. The phrase I use is that we need some means to deal with the “flock immunity” of the left. Those on the left seem impervious to either logic or the real world horrors where their policies have been put into place. More needs to be done. Beyond that, there needs to be greater coordination amongst us on the conservative side of the political divide on how to deal with the viral intellectual toxicity that is highly contagious, specially among the young.

In the hands of idiots

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It seems to me that every political leader wants to be remembered as the Winston Churchill of their times, when the reality is that there is no greater truth than rooster today, feather duster tomorrow. It is incredible what a bunch of fools this country is led by, state and federal.

We here in Victoria are blessed with the Laurel and Hardy duo of Dopey Dan and Slo Mo. Possibly the stupidest statement to come out of our present situation is from Paul Kelly in relation to the PM: “Political capital built during the virus crisis must be spent wisely on reform”. The only form of capital that occurs to me is capital punishment. We are led by such power-driven idiots that it is hard to have imagined this outcome. If any kind of reform is needed it is to find ways to limit the power we seem inadvertently to have put into the hands of our political leaders. Let me therefore take you to this from Adam Creighton – Coronavirus: We’re paying a high price for saving not many lives – who shows a great deal of what is now missing everywhere, common sense.

He discusses the absurd numbers flowing from the Victorian government. Whoever wrote the document he refers to should resign in disgrace:

The most absurd document published by an Australian government in recent times must be from Victoria’s Health and Human Services Department, which claimed 36,000 Victorians would have died from COVID-19 without the tough lockdowns brought in by Premier Daniel Andrews.

Adam Creighton also puts a number of what this is costing:

The cost [per life saved] is looking enormous and far more than we typically spend to save lives. If we’d followed the Swedish trajectory we might, crudely, have an extra 4500 fatalities by now (our population is 2½ times the size).

For the federal government alone, that works out at $48m per life saved, given the $214bn in budgeted federal assistance.

That is only the additional tally for federal money spent, leaving out the states. I did another similar estimate based on lost GDP which came to $300b per life saved. But let’s work with merely the $48m per individual life saved.

We are in the hands of idiots of such colossal proportions that no one will ever again be able to look back at the Salem Witch Trials and laugh at the people of their time since we are among people so far in advance with their own superstitions that believing in witches will eventually seem rational compared with the dolts we are in the hands of today.

What would an historian of economics know about John Stuart Mill?

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Classical Economic Theory and the Modern Economy

I posted the note below onto the Societies for the History of Economics website in regard to François Quesnay, an eighteenth century French economist, but it’s really about John Stuart Mill. No one has responded among the 1200 who are part of this website. Lots here that is scandalous to me, but the easy peasy way it is to demonstrate that at the very centre of the study of the history of economic thought, there is no one who has the slightest idea what Mill said about the theory of value which they nevertheless continue to ridicule. This is part of the reason I wrote my Classical Economic Theory and the Modern Economy.

I found this, from Spencer Banzhaf, the most astonishing sentence I may have seen in quite some time, and I could not agree more.

“One cannot possibly discuss what happened to the role of agriculture/nature in value between Quesnay and today without talking about what happened to the meaning of “value,” conceived of as a moving target.  Rival theories of surplus value from Quesnay to Jevons will have to come into play.”

I often go on about the disastrous effect on economic theory of the Keynesian Revolution, but almost equally disastrous was the Marginal Revolution which undermined the classical theory of value, which was outlined comprehensively by John Stuart Mill in Book III Chapter VI of his Principles. Before I state my conclusion, I will just mention this, which comes from the brief profile of Mill that is on the HET website:

“John Stuart Mill’s greater economic performance was his magnificent 1848 Principles of Political Economy, a two-volume extended restatement of the Classical Ricardian theory.  He believed  Ricardo’s labor theory of value to be so conclusive that, in the beginning of a discussion on the theory of value, Mill confidently notes that:

‘Happily, there is nothing in the laws of Value which remains for the present or any future writer to clear up; the theory of the subject is complete: the only difficulty to be overcome is that of so stating it as to solve by anticipation the chief perplexities which occur in applying it.’ (J.S. Mill, Principles, 1848: Book III, Ch. 1).

“Thus putting a stone on the matter, and burying supply-and-demand theory for another quarter-century.  When Jevons’s later grumbled at the ‘noxious influence of authority’ preventing the development of economics, there is little doubt he was referring to J.S. Mill.”

That is all we think we know about the classical theory of value and it could not be more completely wrong. Mill did not restate “Classical Ricardian theory”. He explicitly discussed supply and demand. If you go to Mill, the first two of the seventeen elements in his theory of value are firstly, that the issue is not price as such, but relative prices, and then secondly, that the “temporary or market value” of something can be determined by supply and demand. There is no labour theory of value to be found anywhere. This is what Mill wrote:

“I. Value is a relative term. The value of a thing means the quantity of some other thing, or of things in general, which it exchanges for. The values of all things can never, therefore, rise or fall simultaneously. There is no such thing as a general rise or a general fall of values. Every rise of value supposes a fall, and every fall a rise.

“II. The temporary or Market Value of a thing, depends on the demand and supply; rising as the demand rises, and falling as the supply rises. The demand, however, varies with the value, being generally greater when the thing is cheap than when it is dear; and the value always adjusts itself in such a manner, that the demand is equal to the supply.“

The shallow reasoning and lack of depth in a modern textbook is a scandal, but is kept from most of us because no one knows what the economic theory of the past actually consisted of. If Spencer Banzhaf intends to be stating that “rival theories of value from Quesnay to Jevons” will need to be examined, then that is absolutely the case. What astonishes me is that both macro (which has replaced the classical theory of the cycle) and micro were much more profound among the later classical economists than amongst the majority of the economics profession today. We have more diagrams, they had a deeper understanding.

Is this dumb or what ?

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An exchange of emails with a friend which he began under the subject heading, “Is this dumb or what ?”.

He: Coronavirus: Outcry after Trump suggests injecting disinfectant as treatment

Me: Do you really trust the BBC to report a story on Trump accurately?

He: Steve my buddy

He said this during this morning’s daily briefing and I was watching as were millions of others. The video evidence is irrefutable.

Perhaps he should try not ad lib , gets him into too much trouble .

But I guess everyone knows when to ignore his more outrageous comments and tweets by now.

Me: My point really is that you quote only where you think he was wrong.

Me: Why don’t you quote this?

THE MODELS WERE WRONG. DOES ANYONE CARE?

You do know the whole thing is a scam, don’t you?

He: That not true , I never inundate you posts , this was just so outrageous
Sorry 😐

Me: READ IT: Lysol Issues PSA In Response To False Social Media Claims About Trump’s Comments

In response to “speculation and social media activity” surrounding President Trump’s questions about new findings during the coronavirus briefing Thursday, RB, the maker of Lysol and Dettol, felt compelled to issue a public service announcement warning against “improper use of disinfectants.”

“Due to recent speculation and social media activity, RB (the makers of Lysol and Dettol) has been asked whether internal administration of disinfectants may be appropriate for investigation or use as a treatment for coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2),” reads RB’s PSA issued in response to false claims about Trump’s comments on potential treatment methods (full text of PSA below). “As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route).”

The announcement comes after some social media users claimed that Trump told people to “inject themselves with disinfectant” and “drink bleach” in order to kill coronavirus. Among those who made the claims were Democratic activist Chris D. Jackson, who tweeted that Trump had “urged Americans to inject themselves with disinfectant,” and Jake Maccoby, a former speechwriter for the Obama Justice Department, who tweeted that Trump “told people to drink bleach.”

But, as The Daily Wire reported, Trump of course did not advise people to “inject themselves with disinfectant” or “drink bleach.” Trump’s comments that sparked the misrepresentations came in response to DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology Bill Bryan detailing some “striking” observations about what impacts the virus at a press briefing.

Me: Also this:

Media erupt over Trump comments on disinfectant and sunlight to cure coronavirus: Here’s what he said

HERE’S THE TEXT: You can watch the President’s comments on the BBC link above and here are the words from there as well.

“So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous – whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light,” the president said, turning to Dr Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response co-ordinator, “and I think you said that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it.

“And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside of the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that too. Sounds interesting,” the president continued.

“And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?

“So it’d be interesting to check that.”

Pointing to his head, Mr Trump went on: “I’m not a doctor. But I’m, like, a person that has a good you-know-what.”

Here is what he said.

(1) A disinfectant kills the virus within a minute.
(2) It would be good to find something you could inject that would do the same.
(3) So he asks, is there a way to do that?

I don’t know if the first is true, but if it is, then the second is true. And in the end all he did was ask a question if there were some means to achieve that end with these kinds of means.

The left and the media are disgusting, liars and stupid. All this is so obvious that were it not for the tremendous lack of good will among the left, nothing further would be said. What a repulsive lot the President has to deal with.

IT’S WORSE THAN YOU THOUGHT: Or depending on your perspective, better: Christina Cuomo Says She Took Clorox Bleach Baths to Combat Coronavirus.

Christina Cuomo wrote of her use of bleach baths to combat coronavirus. As Rolling Stone magazine reported on Wednesday.

Cristina Cuomo, wife of CNN anchor Chris Cuomo (and sister-in-law to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo), is the founder and CEO of a wellness publication called The Purist. So it is not exactly surprising that, following her own COVID-19 diagnosis, she would blog about her family’s coronavirus health and wellness regimens, which are replete with wellness buzzwords such as Ayurvedic diets and oxygenation and cleansing shakes and body charger devices .

In the actual blog, The Purist,  Mrs. Cuomo states:

“At the direction of my doctor, Dr. Linda Lancaster, who reminded me that this is an oxygen-depleting virus, she suggested I take a bath and add a tiny amount of bleach, and I mean a 1/4 cup of bleach which in an 80 gallon water tub is a ratio of 1:5000. Why? To combat the radiation and metals in my system and oxygenate it.”

“As Dr. Lancaster said, “We want to neutralize heavy metals because they slow up the electromagnetic frequency of our cells, which is our energy field, and we need a good flow of energy. Clorox is sodium chloride — which is technically salt. Clorox is made by introducing an electric current to water and sodium chloride (saline) creating sodium hypochlorite. There is no danger in doing this. It is a simple naturopathic treatment that has been used for over 75 years to oxygenate the cells.”

I personally don’t thing the President was being sarcastic, as he described his words, but metaphorical, “a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance.” It would have just been too hard to say that it was a metaphor given the pig ignorance of the audience he was trying to address.

Madness and politics

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From The Other McCain and in full.

Study: 56% of Liberal Women Under Age 30 Have Been Diagnosed as Mentally Ill

Posted on | April 22, 2020 | 42 Comments

Trump Derangement Syndrome is real:

Zach Goldberg . . . has analysed the latest dataset released by the reputable Pew Research Center. This is the Pew Research Panel, Wave 64, which interviewed a representative sample of 11,537 American adults between March 19th and March 24th. . . .

Among those aged 18 to 29, some 20.9% of those who described themselves as “Conservative” answered “Yes” to the question “Has a doctor or healthcare provider ever told you that you have a mental health condition?” For those in this age group who were political “Moderates,” 26.3% answered “Yes.” But among those who self-classified as “Liberal” those answering “Yes” jumped up to an astonishing 45.9%.

So, to be clear, almost half of young white American Leftists have been diagnosed with a mental illness. . . .

In general, females are more likely to suffer from mental health conditions than males, because one of the most common of these conditions is depression. According to psychologist Daniel Nettle in his 2007 book Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are, females, being more prone to worry and anxiety, are more prone to depression than males. So Jonathan Haidt, known for his Moral Foundations Theory of political preferences whereby Liberals and Conservatives have a fundamentally different system of morality, asked Goldberg if he had broken down the data by sex.

And Goldberg — who is doing a PhD in Political Science at Georgia State University — analysed the data again, breaking it down by gender. The results were as predicted and were all the more striking for it. According to Pew Research Center data, 56% of Liberal females aged 18 to 29 have been diagnosed with a mental health condition . . .

 

The obvious question is, “Why?” And the most obvious answer, supplied by Emily Ekins of the Cato Institute, is “locus of control”:

 

Part of the reason liberals and conservatives disagree about the causes of poverty and wealth is that they disagree about the extent to which personal choices or external forces directs people’s lives. In other words: they disagree about the role of personal agency.
This idea is related to a concept in psychology called the locus of control. People who tend to believe events in their lives are within the control of the individual are described as having an internal locus of control. Those who tend to believe events in their lives are outside of a person’s control are described as having an external locus of control. While in reality both external forces and personal choices play a role, the question is what individuals emphasize. . . .
The [2019 Cato] survey finds that liberals emphasize external forces and that conservatives emphasize personal choices in explaining personal outcomes in their own lives. . . .

These data demonstrate that liberals and conservatives emphasize the impact of personal agency on outcomes differently. Conservatives are more likely to believe that people are responsible for their situations and use their agency to direct their lives, and liberals are more likely to believe that people’s situations are shaped by their environment and other external factors.

Modern liberalism (or “progressivism”) is obsessed with inequality, claiming that all disparities in outcomes are a result of systemic oppression, which must be ended in the name of “social justice.” Everything is interpreted through the lenses of identity politics, where racism, sexism, homophobia and other biases are believed to define the axes of oppression. Because vast social and historic forces are involved in this worldview, it is easy to see why it tends to breed an attitude of helplessness. If the “patriarchy” has been oppressing all women for the past 6,000 years — a core claim of feminist ideology — a young woman who buys into this worldview must see herself engaged in a desperate struggle, even though she herself might be highly privileged, by any objective standard. Feminist activism, I would argue, is a chief cause of the epidemic of insanity that prevails among girls at elite universities.

 

Think about this: You’re an upper-middle-class suburban white girl whose parents can afford the tuition at Oberlin, Stanford or Yale. Given your advantageous socioeconomic background, your success in life is almost guaranteed — or it would be, were it not for a curriculum that teaches you deranged nonsense, e.g., “gender is a social construct,” in a campus climate where becoming an “activist” is considered a smart career move. The path of progressive activism is unlikely to lead to personal happiness in life, because this sort of activism is all about grievance-mongering around claims of oppression.

 

Correlation should not be confused with causation, of course. Does liberalism create insanity, or does it merely attract insane people? A political movement based upon policy ideas that are obsolete, discredited and harmful will not attract the best people to its banner. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the core belief of leftism — equality through economic redistribution imposed by an all-powerful government — has been entirely discredited. No honest and intelligent person could endorse the crypto-Marxist policy agenda of the Democratic Party, which is why Democrats attract so many stupid and dishonest people.

Young people have no memory of the Cold War. They do not remember the failure of LBJ’s “Great Society” programs (about which Amity Schlaes has written a new book). Academia is now so dominated by the Democratic Party that Republicans can never be hired to the faculty at elite universities. Students thus never encounter a professor who will explain them that “progressive” policies are doomed to failure, and are instead encouraged to devote themselves to the politics of futility.

The app to automate contact tracing

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Better than Malcolm is about the best I can say about him. From here.

Scott Morrison has said new guidelines are coming on a range of restrictions in place, and Australians can expect the COVID-19 contact tracing app soon.

Mr Morrison said the app to automate contact tracing was now in the final stages of development, and that rapid response measures were being bolstered to handle outbreaks.

The Australian Government’s controversial app will store users’ personal information in a central database hosted by US tech giant Amazon, it was confirmed today.

But Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the database would be hosted on servers within Australia and it would be “illegal” for the multibillion-dollar company to use the information for any other purpose than for what it was originally intended.

It’s not that words fail, but I am not quite yet ready to say them.