Economics in One Lesson

If you haven't read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, then you shouldn't be running for any government office.

This book begins by stating "Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other field of study known to man." And he explains, quite thoroughly, all the fallacies one encounters in dealing with government, politics, and economics.

One chapter really stands out in the timelessness of it's advice (the book was written in 1946), and that is the chapter called "Credit Diverts Production". Here is an excerpt of Section 2:

"The proposal for government loans to private individuals or projects, in brief, sees B and forgets A. It sees the people into whose hands the capital is put; it forgets those who would otherwise have had it. It sees the project to which capital is granted: it forgets the projects from which capital is thereby withheld. It sees the immediate benefit to one group; it overlooks the losses to other groups, and the net less to the community as a whole.
The case against government-guaranteed loans and mortgages to private businesses and persons is almost as strong as, though less obvious than, the case against direct government loans and mortgages. The advocates of government-guaranteed mortgages also forget that what is being lent is ultimately real capital, which is limited in supply, and that they are helping identified B at the expense of some unidentified A. Government-guaranteed home mortgages, especially when a negligible down payment or no down payment whatever is required, inevitably mean more bad loans that otherwise. They force the general taxpayer to subsidize the bad risks and to defray the losses. They encourage people to "buy" houses that they cannot really afford. They tend eventually to bring about an oversupply of houses as compared with other things. They temporarily overstimulate building, raise the cost of building for everybody (including the buyers of the homes with the guaranteed mortgages), and may mislead the building industry into an eventually costly overexpansion. In brief, in the long run they do not increase national production buy encourage malinvestment." (added bold-emphasis is mine).

Hm, that sound at all familiar?

If I were a teacher, no matter what I taught, I'd probably make my students read this book.

John Oliver's Stand-Up

I was watching John Oliver's stand-up on Comedy Central last night, and I almost had an aneurysm every time he spoke, because every time he spoke, it was about how stupid western society is, how everyone should feel absolutely guilty about the actions of ancestors, how stupid capitalism (free-trade) is, etc.

You know, the usual drivel from modern socialists and Brits.

It actually made my heart rate go up.

Why don't people get it?

More fighting in Somalia

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/04/21/somalia.fighting/index.html


"Somalia's current transitional government is trying to maintain control of the capital, with the help of the better-equipped Ethiopian forces."

Maybe Somalia is better off without a central government!!!

The worst fighting in the country happens when EXTRANEOUS entities (UN, Ethiopia) try to set up a government in Somalia, and then the warlords and militias try to take control of it. This happened in 1991, 2003, and again in 2005, if my memory serves me correctly. Anarchy in Somalia is actually WORKING. LEAVE IT ALONE.

But, no, the UN can't have a stateless society. Anarchy? Why, that's Chaos!!!

School Bomb Plot - it was bound to happen.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/21/school.bomb.plot/index.html


A student in North Carolina planned to blow his high school up with ANFO - ammonium nitrate fuel oil, a.ka. a fertilizer bomb. *Caveat: I don't know how to make it, I've never attempted, that's illegal. These crazy little shits - and that's just what they are - are upgrading. It was bound to happen. After seeing Columbine's 15 dead, and Virginia Tech's 32, these fuckers have decided that the body count of those they hate should be higher, and that everyone in the school should suffer, simply because the bastards are jealous/picked on/whatever reason people will use to excuse his actions.

Shit, I'm surprised they haven't done this already.

This kid, Ryan, would have succeeded, but he made the (fortunate) mistake of having the 10 lbs. of fertilizer shipped directly to his house where his mom then discovered it and notified the police.

I could turn this into a diatribe about the moral decay of the youth, or how Ryan is actually the victim, or how we need more laws restricting who can buy fertilizer, but I won't, because it's all bullshit.

Have you ever heard of the Law of Large Numbers? With a big enough given sample, all possibilities will show up at least once, basically. What does this mean? I'll let John Ross explain this to you.

Author and fellow gun-nut Mr. Ross, on the Law of Large Numbers:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060513130605/www.john-ross.net/lawlarge.htm

"How many students are there at any given moment in this country, fifty million? Aren't teenagers often depressed and disaffected? Does it strike you as astonishing that one out of every ten million of them might be not only depressed and disaffected, but also a murderous little shit?"

One in ten million gives us a school shooting every ten weeks, and we don't have anywhere near that many, even though they put the evil little bastards on the cover of Newsweek. Given fifty million students, and incessant media coverage, I think we're lucky not to have one every week.

We're especially lucky they've so far used guns, but that may change. What if the next homicidal teenaged misfit dissolves Styrofoam in gasoline (homemade napalm), carries it in five gallon buckets to his school ("It's for chemistry class, Miss Johnson"), pours it in the hallways ("Whoops!"), uses bike locks on the exit doors, and strikes a match?

...

The law of large numbers tells us that with a big enough sample, unlikely things will start to happen, and they'll happen in direct proportion to the size of the sample. If a new drug is used to treat a quarter of a million people and one person has an allergic reaction and dies, is that acceptable? Most people I ask say "Of course." Yet if the same drug becomes so helpful that now fifty million people use it, and 200 have an allergic reaction and die, the media will scream that it's unsafe. No, it's the same as it was. Do the math.

When you do the math, life looks a lot better."

Cuba Adopting Capitalist Policies

Sorry, haven't posted in a while, here's a good story.

"HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) -- President Raúl Castro has moved quickly since taking the reins of power from his ailing brother, Fidel, last year to boost food production by putting more land into the hands of profit-earning farmers."

...

"I'd work it, and I'd work it well," he said. "It would solve their problem, and it would solve mine."

When he says "their problem," he is referring to Cuba's disastrous state-run agriculture industry. Cuba imports about 80 percent of the food it rations to the public. Additionally, state-run television reports that half of the country's state-owned land is either unused or underused."

We'll duh, Capitalism solves many, many problems. What a bunch of idiots in that country. But, props to Raúl for displaying at least a little bit of intelligence in an otherwise retarded country.