Category Archives: Cultural

Fear the ignorance

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Supposedly an answer to Fear the Boom and Bust which you can watch here as an antidote. This has been put up at the History of Economics discussion thread, but the look on the face of the student at the start when he finds that Adam Smith wrote his Wealth of Nations in 1776 suggests he may not have found the most perfect launch pad. This has been posted by the chap who put the video together.

I thought that SHOE readers would like to know about a much anticipated reply to the Hayek-Keynes rap video. Here is “Fear the Economics Textbook (Story of the Next Crook): A Rap Video,” by Stephen T. Ziliak and the RU Ready 4Justice Collective at Roosevelt University, that is, students of economics and social justice studies.

The link he provides is here. The sound hasn’t yet been perfectly coordinated with the picture so here are the lyrics to help you follow along.

[Maya and Ben sing Refrain to “Wet Dreamz” beat by J. Cole]
I took my last look, at this textbook,/
Invisible hand, /story o’ tha next crook,/
I took my last look, at this textbook,/
Invisible hand, /story o’ tha next crook,/
So proud, so game, so orthodox,/
2
But ch’yer head’s in the sand, Prof,/
don’t blame da Nash box./
We read, we think, we write about it,/
But ch’you’re standin’ there lecturin’,/
n’ we’re worryin’ about it.
Took my last look, at this textbook,/
Invisible hand, /story o’ tha next crook,/
We read, we think, we write about it,/
But ch’you’re standin’ there lecturin’,/ n’ we’re worryin’ about it.
[Cyris sings Verse 1 to “Let ‘em Blow” by Chief Keef et al.]
Readin’ Greg Mankiw, /
Queue the conservative man’s view/
Supply, demand, invisible hand too /
Following these Ten Commandments he hands to you /
Hey kids, you understand what Econ really can do? /
These ain’t the pearly gates, Mr. Mankiw/
Just preachin’ on profit and Max U/
But where’s the vertical mobility?/
Masses are enslaved in poverty/Millions for your fat pockets see/
This poverty of nations ain’t so efficient/
Mainstream economists are mentally deficient/
Monotonous lectures despite student resistance/What works on the Blackboard but not
with existence/
3
Your crackpot theories plot all the wrong axes /
If you are the state we-Uber-killin’ all your taxis /
[Maya sings Verse 2 to “Let ‘em Blow” (Chief Keef et al.)]
Yo I say that with gritted teeth/
Admittedly, when it comes to justice and liberty/
You Ivy leagues just can’t compete, I pity thee/
So tell New Jersey fans we gonna need new Jersey’s man/
Cause you just stand in the stands lookin’ white wan/
Invisible hand doin’ nothing but hurting me/
Burnin’ me, doesn’t matter if it’s third degree/
Cause your economic policy causing nothing but poverty/
Death n’ destruction are all that I can see/
We need wealth for society, stop with the perjury/
You cheat, you steal, you lie through your pearly teeth/But today’s a new day and there’s a
brand new lesson to teach/
We’re turning over Ivy leaves as we stomp our feet . . . ./
[Pause . . . . then Maya concludes:]
I’m like Steve Nash, so check out this sweet pass/
[Maya and Ben sing Refrain to J. Cole “Wet Dreamz”:]
I took my last look, at this textbook,/
Invisible hand, /story o’ tha next crook,/
I took my last look, at this textbook,/
Invisible hand, /story o’ tha next crook,/
4
So proud, so game, so orthodox,/
But ch’yer head’s in the sand, Prof,/
don’t blame da Nash box./
We read, we think, we write about it,/
But ch’you’re standin’ there lecturin’,/
n’ we’re worryin’ about it.
Took my last look, at this textbook,/
Invisible hand, /story o’ tha next crook,/
We read, we think, we write about it,/
But ch’you’re standin’ there lecturin’,/
n’ we’re worryin’ about it.
[Eboni sings Verse 3 to “Let ‘em Blow” (Chief Keef et al.)]
Lesson one, it starts in a sympathetic fashion/
Government spendin’ can stop markets from crashin’/
You askin’, “where’s the money comin’ from?”/
It’s C+I and G and then we’re done some/
You see, it’s really not that complicated/
But steppin’ on the little guy ain’t the right way to make it/
You fake it, we take it, but it’s time to unionize/
Get ourselves organized, give the capitalists a huge surprise/
And begin the journey toward a social compromise/
5
Where the poor get more and the rich standby/
We fly, get high, and soar towards the blue sky/
Where moral sentiments replace demand and supply/
[Maya and Ben sing Refrain to J. Cole “Wet Dreamz”:]
I took my last look, at this textbook,/
Invisible hand, /story o’ tha next crook,/
I took my last look, at this textbook,/
Invisible hand, /story o’ tha next crook,/
So proud, so game, so orthodox,/
But ch’yer head’s in the sand, Prof,/
don’t blame da Nash box./
We read, we think, we write about it,/
But ch’you’re standin’ there lecturin’,/
n’ we’re worryin’ about it.
Took my last look, at this textbook,/
Invisible hand, /story o’ tha next crook,/
We read, we think, we write about it,/
But ch’you’re standin’ there lecturin’,/
n’ we’re worryin’ about it.
6
[Cyris and Erika sing and chant Verse 4 to “Let ‘em Blow” (Chief Keef et al.)]
It’s clear your markets are free of justice/
Looks like your supply curve needs some adjustments/
We need benevolence and sympathy in the mix/
These textbooks are corruptin’ our moral sentiments/
We need O.G.s in here, like Smith, Marx and Lerner/
Heterodox economics is the real table turner/
Get back to the real world, no catallaxy/
Spontaneous order, can’t put me in a Cadillac, see?/
Check Ferguson, Garner, and Rodney King too
People can’t work when they face black n’ blue!
[Prof Z raps Verse 5 to “Let ‘em Blow” (Chief Keef et al.)]
Dude from George Mason had a lot to say/
Not a whole lot o’ substance at the end o’ the day/
His message n’ beats are false an’ predictable/
Does he even teach his students about Rawls’s difference principle?/
We come from Roosevelt, yo, n’ we are the Lakers,/
Let’s get back to class now n’ forget all these fakers/
[Maya and Ben sing Refrain to J. Cole “Wet Dreamz”:]
I took my last look, at this textbook,/
Invisible hand, /story o’ tha next crook,/
7
I took my last look, at this textbook,/
Invisible hand, /story o’ tha next crook,/
So proud, so game, so orthodox,/
But ch’yer head’s in the sand, Prof,/
don’t blame da Nash box./
We read, we think, we write about it,/
But ch’you’re standin’ there lecturin’,/
n’ we’re worryin’ about it.
Took my last look, at this textbook,/
Invisible hand, /story o’ tha next crook,/
We read, we think, we write about it,/
But ch’you’re standin’ there lecturin’,/
n’ we’re worryin’ about it.
[Maya and Ben repeat first stanza of Refrain, with fade out . . .]
I took my last look, at this textbook,/
Invisible hand, /story o’ tha next crook,/
Took my last look, at this textbook,/
Invisible hand, /story o’ tha next crook,/ . . . . .

As Abe Hoffman used to say

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joanie phonie

We went to see an entertaining show last night on the ’60s, the last decade from which I know any popular songs whatsoever. My political conversion also turned out to mean that I never listened to popular music again, something I didn’t even notice until one day when I read about some song that everyone knew – “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” – which I had never heard a bar of. But the music of the ’60s I absorbed along with the politics. This is from the notice.

This story is about the rise of Joan Baez from folk singer, to performing the songs of Bob Dylan and Peter Seager [sic], all culminating in her brilliant performance at Woodstock in 1969. Joan became the voice of the peace movement with songs like ‘Joe Hill’, ‘We Shall Overcome’, ‘With God On Our Side’ and many more. All will be sung in this show. The Road To Woodstock is the story of one woman’s commitment to the peace movement and the music that accompanied it.

That they could not spell Pete Seeger’s name, and called him Peter [!!!!!], only shows how the times have been a changin’. But what made me laugh out loud was when “Joan Baez” said, “as Abe Hoffman used to say, if you remember the ’60s you weren’t there”. The actress being about 20-odd wasn’t there but I was. Reluctantly (my wife made me) I mentioned to her after the show that it had been Abbie Hoffman and not Abe. This was news to her, and obviously to all the others who had gone along in the many nights before.

I never did meet Abbie but I met Jerry Rubin at the University of Toronto back around 1969-ish. He had come to visit and I was sort of in the outer ring of the inner circle of the campus left so we met up. And we had a conversation in which I said to him that, you know, all this, all this radical revolutionary stuff will end, and he said to me, which I remember as clear as any memory I have, “No, it will never end!” And you know what? He was right. The long hair may be gone, and the folk songs, the communes and the rest, all gone, vanished. But those are mere ephemera. What really counts remains. All that was once radical and revolutionary is mainstream. Our culture is a disaster zone. You may think watching ISIS knock over 5000 year old statues is a unique form of vandalism, but I watch Obama and the political elites of my own civilisation knocking over many of our cultural icons and find much the same being done to the traditions of the Judeo-Christian West. But I am used to the idea that 2115 will be as different from today as today is from 1915. I may not like it, but I can’t stop it either.

As for Joan Baez, a product of her time as we are all. Al Capp’s Joanie Phoanie she may be, but a great singer as well.

We are the least racist country on the planet but the left are doing what they can to change it

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chan and sukumara

The left have no solutions to any of our problems, but are themselves the biggest problem we have. We are the least racist country on the planet, with the Canadians an equal first to us, which is what makes this such a peaceable kingdom. But until we have our own Baltimore-like rioting in the streets, these people will not rest content.

The above pic was picked up at Andrew Bolt, where you can find more of the same. Racial tensions are not reduced by insisting we classify everyone by race but by exactly the opposite. These two, drug runners though they be, are Australian. Whatever their racial origins, it made no difference either to us or to the Indonesians. We did what we could and they did what they did. But to try to find in any of this some kind of racism is despicable, sickening and vile. These typically anti-American fools import all of their politics from America, which should now become the perfect example of what to avoid at all costs. They lead empty lives whose only enjoyment seems to be to stir up trouble to fill the place where genuine emotion ought to be, but where is found instead a dead cold heartless void.

Did you cringe at the jingoism, the unthinking patriotism and crass commercialism? – Actually, no I didn’t

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Do people really believe this? This is a quote, now taken down, it seems, from Martin Hirst, who is a journalism lecturer at Deakin University which I picked up at Andrew Bolt discussing more Leftists protest in relation to ANZAC Day.

Did you cringe at the jingoism, the unthinking patriotism and crass commercialism that now defines ANZAC day? Or did you, like the free speech fundamentalists and Abbott apologists, take time from your orgy of bloody celebration of war, to call for a young journalist to be sacked for daring to question the ANZAC myth?… The myth is that both world wars were fought to protect “our” freedoms and that without them “we” would not enjoy the lifestyle we have today. That is utter tosh and ahistorical nonsense and it also conveniently lets the warmongers off the hook. War is never about principles and morals, it is about money… War benefits the capitalists who stay behind. There are profits to be made in the killing and in the rebuilding, which brings us to imperialism… It is a sad day for freedom of speech when telling the unpalatable truth to a nation that collectively sticks its fingers in its ears and sings the anthem to drown out critical voices causes someone to lose their job. [My bolding]

It’s not even that he is a stray, an outlier, but is as mainstream amongst the media/intellectual class as you could find. I am astonished that SBS actually sacked their sports reporter for discussing an issue in such an offensive way, over which he could not possibly have had the slightest expertise. We now indulge opinion journalism, but the carriers of these views merely have opinions. Research and detailed knowledge of any kind seems irrelevant. They read each other’s ignorant rants and then reword and repeat.

Churchill and the Gallipoli Campaign

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This is Steve Hayward discussing the military and political issues that surrounded the lead-up to the attack at Gallipoli. Everyone may know this already, or may just be wrong, but it seems the wasted lives were in the execution and not the concept. This is how it ends, but read it through.

The essential strategic soundness of the Dardanelles offensive has come to be more deeply appreciated as the decades have passed. Basil Liddell-Hart described the Dardanelles as “a sound and far-sighted conception, marred by a chain of errors in execution almost unrivaled even in British history.” It presents one of the great “what ifs” of history. Had Turkey been knocked out early, and the war ended sooner, perhaps the Bolshevik revolution would never have taken place. Perhaps Hitler would never have risen to power. These kinds of questions can never be answered, and it is perhaps frivolous even to indulge them. But it is a tribute to Churchill’s insight that nearly 50 years after the episode, Clement Attlee, who was Churchill’s great opponent in the Labour Party (it was Attlee who defeated Churchill in the election of 1945), remarked to Churchill that the Dardanelles operation was “the only imaginative strategic idea of the war. I only wish that you had had full power to carry it to success.”

I might also mention The Sunday Age ANZAC Day quote from Bill Shorten. Did they even pick it because they agreed with the sentiment. Here are the words. Read ’em and weep.

When we landed here on this beach, it was someone else’s country.

Who is his constituency for this, because if there actually is one, they are moronic to the core.

Unity, community and purpose

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I went to the Dawn Service this morning here in Caufield. I had intended to go to the main service in Melbourne, but when the tram never made it, I walked back up along the tracks and found that the traffic had been blocked because of the service at our local RSL. So I went there instead. Not as exciting perhaps as the 100,000 that went to the Shrine of Remembrance. But there were a couple of thousand, the speeches were excellent and the Last Post just as moving no matter where I might have been. We even had a fly-past of our own.

The speeches by our local RSL President, Bob Larkin, struck exactly the right note, as did the speech by the Special Guest Speaker, Colonel Michael Joseph “Mike” Kelly (Retd). Former Labor member for Eden-Monaro though he may have been, his speech resonated with my conservative instincts as he focused on the importance of “unity, community and purpose”.

And this contrasted very badly for me with the speech given by “the New Zealand Sub-Branch President” who spoke favourably about the New Zealand ANZACs who had had separate Maori battalions where they were able to maintain their way of life and camaraderie even under arms. This was unlike the circumstance of our Australian aboriginal soldiers, he said, who had been merely melded into the regular Australia army, just like anyone else.

So I have to tell you, that for me listening on this 100th anniversary of the landing at ANZAC Cove, I felt a renewed sense of what a great country this is. Even a hundred years ago, we did not segregate and separate out our fellow aboriginal soldiers, but allowed them to fight and die with the rest of us together, as the members of our one united national army. This is as it should be, and it made me once again proud to be Australian.

But it did change our attitude to gun ownership

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From Andrew Bolt, Of all the absurd analogies offered by the wilfully blind:

George Megalogenis, who has written a book and produced a documentary linking Australia’s economic success to its immigration program, said … the recent spate of terrorism-related arrests should not affect Australia’s attitudes to Muslim migration any more than the Martin Bryant massacre should affect mainland attitudes towards Tasmania.

It truly is an absurd analogy. Rightly or wrongly, we completely changed our gun ownership laws because of this one unique instance. Whether it did or did not make us safer, that was the premise of these changes. Our immigration program ought to at least not make us less safe on our streets, or when we go off to an ANZAC Day parade.

And for what it’s worth, the article Andrew was referencing was titled, Five million visas into Australia this year likely to set new records. Immigration is a good thing, generally agreed upon by all, if the numbers are increasing at a moderate rate so that migrants can be assimilated into our way of life. These are the necessary characteristics of migrants that we can agree on:

“If a nation’s immigration programme is well crafted and targeted, and migrants enjoy high levels of economic participation, as distinct from high levels of social exclusion and welfare-dependency, immigration has beneficial impacts in terms of growth in the demand for goods and services; increases in national income, and living standards; improved labour participation; expansion of the economy’s productive capacity; and growth in household consumption and public revenues.”

Every migrant comes at a substantial cost to the economy which is only repaid slowly over time and will only do so if they are productively employed. The kinds of migrants we should do everything we can to keep out are precisely those with “high levels of social exclusion and welfare-dependency”.

The best thing that can be said about Obama is that maybe he’s just stupid

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We still go safely to bed at night and these things are still a million miles from our homes. But they are getting closer and there are no barriers being place in their way by anyone at the top of our societies. The article: Amid talks, Mideast nightmare looms. Oh well, it’s just the Middle East. What’s any of this got to do with us?

Let’s face it: While we’re busy taking the pulse of level-headed negotiators in Switzerland, we forget that Iran’s a fanatical republic, intent on spreading its Shiite Islamic ideology far and wide. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif endlessly smiles at us in Lausanne, but in Iran, the man charged with exporting the revolution, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, has become a local hero.

Meanwhile, every small gain for Soleimani’s growing army of proxy militias strikes ever more fear among its Sunni enemies, many of whom feel it necessary to join with jihadi groups to roll back Tehran’s advances.

The see-no-evil deference paid by the Obama folks in the hope of reaching an agreement and maybe converting Iran’s mullahs into peace-lovers has only left the region more volatile.

Far from helping to pacify the region, the talks in Switzerland have only escalated wars there. Whether we reach a deal on Iran’s nukes or not, they have only helped Iran further its own goals — which fly in the face of our own.

The assumption that this is just there and will not soon be here is so ostrich-like that it defies belief. But this is one story in the midst of a million more about the latest goings on with Brad and Trish. Meanwhile, our European home is beset by Up to 1m migrants waiting to enter Europe, warns Italian prosecutor. Just imagine if they succeed, and what do you suppose is going to stop them?

The GYPSY life

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baby boomer reality v expectations

An interesting article sent to me by my son: Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy. And it starts with an equation of sorts:

Happiness = Reality – Expectations

Ah, as explained, Gen Y is in deficit compared with us baby boomers who are in a major net surplus, as shown in the chart above. And it begins the assessment of us with this: “after graduating from being insufferable hippies . . .”. Having been literally one of those insufferable long-haired hippy dropouts – life in the communal settings of Vancouver, a year and a half as a gardener in London after finishing my Masters, living in a garret in Paris, dishwasher at Honest Ed’s Ice Cream Parlour, before I finally snapped out of it.

And there were two parts to it that may seem contradictory but are not. The first was that I felt I was on a conveyor belt towards a future that was pre-determined and not my own. The job I didn’t get in Ottawa – the one my Mother always thought back on wistfully before I went off to Australia – I missed out on because the mailman came that day after 5:00 pm. So I took off instead, and aside from the pain it caused my parents, which is not a small consideration, I lived a very different life from the one they had thought I should.

The second half is that I felt a kind of fear that I would not measure up to the requirements of the adult world. It is not obvious when you are twenty-odd that you will be able to move up and along the career path towards higher levels of responsibility. Maybe you have it and maybe you don’t but failure is unpleasant, and the fear of failure stops many taking even those first few steps. Anyway, it was only after I had been promoted to Assistant Charge Hand for the gardening crew I was part of for the London Borough of Hammersmith that I began to feel a kind of confidence in myself that getting an A on an essay never could quite provide.

But the difference for me is that I was taught by and lived amongst members of that Greatest Generation. You have lived amongst and been educated by those despised hippies. They were your teachers, or your teachers’ teachers. And what a difference that has made, and you do have my sympathies. The worst generation and you have not even begun to see just how destructive we have been.

So let us see the first part of the false narrative of my generation that is supposedly believed by this GYPSY generation:

The GYPSY needs a lot more from a career than a nice green lawn of prosperity and security. The fact is, a green lawn isn’t quite exceptional or unique enough for a GYPSY. Where the Baby Boomers wanted to live The American Dream, GYPSYs want to live Their Own Personal Dream.

If you don’t think this is a hippy ethos, you were not paying attention. We were dropouts of a society that was a good deal more together than this one, and we were bored by it. But only a comparative few of us did the dropping out, and what we found was how unsatisfying it was. We tried it, and there is nothing there, which is why there are hardly any of us left leading such empty lives.

Everybody wants to fashion their own life to suit their own personal ambitions. No one even knows what these personal ambitions are until life begins to tempt us into our different directions. Until the moment comes, it is all just sampling and grazing. We are wealthy enough as a civilisation to indulge our young in an ability to mess around like this. The disdained hippy generation was perhaps the first ever to be part of a civilisation wealthy enough to allow large-scale indecision before most of us settled into a life-time pattern, although it is possible that the 1920s was also something like that as well, cut short by the Depression, then war and then the restoration of a hardened centre.

The apparent disdain for “secure” careers shown in the article is merely an artefact that there is no sense of insecurity felt by the young. And that is because, if you ask me, they have not yet felt the possibility that their entire lives may end up wasted in purposeless frivolity, an aimless path of no consequence in which nothing was achieved and life just petered out.