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The idea that an economist is an expert even in Economics is a dubious one. I would like to see two control groups shadowing every team of ‘expert’ economists – one making random predictions, the other a group of astrologers. After five years we compare their predictions for accuracy. – Samizdata commenter Rob January 6th, 2017 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The logical end-point in the reach of government is either state ownership of all private property, which is communism, or state control over what people do with their property, which is fascism. With communism discredited, the world is moving inexorably towards the latter. Every business is regulated in some way or other, and economic freedom is being progressively restricted with ever-tightening regulations. January 3rd, 2017 | 53 comments - (Comments are closed)
Though in other ways, we’re clearly in a new dark age. The fact that New York City is unable to conceive of building new bridges or subways or other infrastructure, and on the rare occasions when it tries to do so fails utterly, should tell us that. It’s like being a Roman in 500 AD and wondering at the giants of the past who built bridges and aqueducts, by then long lost technologies. I feel like I’m not just at the epicenter of capitalism here in Manhattan, but also at the epicenter of the cancer at the heart of it, to wit, the socialist destruction of the human will. – Perry Metzger, in a private discussion December 19th, 2016 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is about Mike Raynor doing the Lord’s work by producing another yet computer model that makes happy predictions about the sugar tax. You can read it here. As always, the words ‘garbage in, garbage out’ spring to mind. If you wish to take such models seriously, that is your look out. Regardless of whether obesity rates rise, fall or stay the same, campaigners will produce another model in a few years claiming that the rate of obesity in 2018 was lower than it would have been had there not been a tax. That, too, will be treated as fact by their supplicants in the media. It is impossible to prove that nanny state policies fail. The goal posts are always moved. Scientific claims in ‘public health’ are unfalsifiable, which is to that they are not scientific. December 19th, 2016 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
That’s the New York Times which has been repeatedly asserting that higher minimum wages do not affect employment? It is indeed possible to have the most lovely arguments about how much a higher minimum affects whom but the assertion that there is no unemployment effect is simply an untruth. December 17th, 2016 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
The case is very simple indeed. Do you believe in freedom of speech or not? If you do then Stormfront gets to have a website detailing whatever it is that it misunderstands about the world. As does every other vile and hateful group from left and right. There is no shortage of sites insisting that Stalin had nothing to do with the Holodomor, that it was disease not starvation, that the starvation was just bad weather, that there was no campaign against Ukrainians and anyway, it never happened did it? December 14th, 2016 | 46 comments - (Comments are closed)
Though many things have changed in American political life over the past couple of years, one aspect remains a comforting constant: Democrats never lose an election. Not really. Not fairly. Sure, elections can be stolen. Americans can be misled. Big Oil or Big Business can buy elections – because these institutions possess the preternatural ability to control human actions. Voter always fail to understand what’s good for them (which, amazingly enough, always aligns with the state-expanding goals of the Left.) Whatever the case, something fishy and nefarious must also be going on, because there’s absolutely no way voters could reject Democrats. December 12th, 2016 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
We’re living longer lives these days, we’re working for fewer decades of them and thus people are rationally saving for their expected golden years. Thus capital as a percentage of GDP rises – not to produce inheritances, but to produce incomes in retirement. And rises by potentially at least more than 100% of GDP. We can’t see that this is a problem and we most certainly cannot see that this is an argument for greater taxation of capital. Quite the reverse in fact, people saving for their old age should be encouraged, not specifically taxed. December 10th, 2016 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
What is funny is to watch the media try to interpret [Trump] through their prism of politics. It is like trying to understand the workings of a nuclear reactor through the prism of deconstructionist feminist semiotics. December 9th, 2016 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
Incidentally, for once Trump himself was spot on when it came to the question of Taiwan. Anyone finding it horrifying that he talked to the Taiwanese leadership in supposed breach of protocol needs to pull themselves together. The Chinese government has had it its own way for far too long, whether it is in terms of Western leaders humiliating their countries by kow-towing or with Chinese companies stealing intellectual property and technology and exploiting open markets in the West that it will not open properly at home to Western firms. Terrible Trump is onto them, which is a rare shaft of light in the darkness. – Iain Martin. The article is actually mostly about Boris Johnson, another politician who commits lots of “gaffes” (MSM-speak for stating uncomfortable truths or comments deemed offensive for some reason, either valid or not.) December 8th, 2016 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
The story of the demise of slavery I take to have great significance for our evaluation of capitalism. The system is not to be judged purely by its material consequences. Relative or temporary happiness brought about by productive efficiency or growth cannot be the last word. Absent liberty and self-government, the situation would be inexcusable. We now can see that capitalism has as its essence individual freedom-rights. Without respect for these rights the system is in danger of turning into a monstrosity, as it would have in an unchecked antebellum South. It did so in Wilhelmine Germany and could do so still in crypto-communist China. Again, as in the case of the developing regions of today, liberty-rights are of the essence of capitalism as an improving force for humanity. If we do not see this we run the danger of suffering from the same tunnel vision of colonel Nicholson at the River Kwai. December 7th, 2016 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
[Sweden] appear[s] to have stumbled on the concept that a low-tech economy in which consumers have fewer choices produces fewer greenhouse gases. Now they want to move to such an economy, which is in the precise opposite direction everyone else is moving. We have the developed world. We also have the developing world. Sweden wants to kick-start the undeveloping world. December 3rd, 2016 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
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