http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-08/europe-s-2-trillion-of-distressed-debt-to-outstrip-u-s-market-svp-says.htmlDo you remember the first two months of the crisis, when Europe was heaping daily abuse on americans because of european superiority in banking, lending, policy and judgement? They’re far worse.
Source date (UTC): 2011-04-08 14:47:00 UTC
http://www.thelocal.de/society/20110407-34257.html?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=185First plausible solution to the popular Victorian mystery. A german merchant seaman was in port in germany, london, and new york for each murder, and was captured and imprisoned in new york, after which the murders ceased.
Source date (UTC): 2011-04-08 10:07:00 UTC
Felix Salmon writes:
… it’s maybe no coincidence that the Russian clients of Goldman Sachs who are falling over each other to bid ever-higher prices for Facebook shares are much the same people as the Russians paying $100 million for trophy Picassos, or Los Altos mansions. The theory here is that Goldman Sachs, SecondMarket and the like have identified a group of buyers who are willing and able to pay through the nose for assets which are rare and special and which few other people can have. So long as companies like Facebook and Zynga meet those criteria, the winners in any auction for their shares are likely to be cursed — or, to put it another way, the final auction price is likely to significantly overvalue the company. Looked at in this way, the market in private equity is less an opportunity for plutocrats to get excess returns, and more an opportunity for intermediaries to extract large profits by selling them overpriced equity in overhyped tech stocks.
That’s true. And you’re right that it’s not an advantage for plutocrats to have access to shares that common investors dont. But, that rather pejorative language is not the way to look at it. Instead, business men are finding a product that has extra-monetary value to investors and charging them for it. Or, more simply, Social status is a ‘good’ that people will pay for. If I have a Ferrari, two Porsche’s an a Jaguar, and my wife has a gucci purse and a hanoverian horse, the fact is that cars, purses, and horses are not scarce. So social status is what we pay for. Why is it that shares of stock in companies should be regulated such that people cannot buy status in companies the way that they buy status in products? And in a market economy, paying for social status is about the only way of achieving social status. There is nothing fraudulent about selling social status. There are plenty of ways to lose money. There are plenty of ways to spend money getting something that you want.
Marxist doctrine states that steps are required to create the utopian communist society. The eventual result of marxism’s destruction of the system of property was for the purpose of creating an anarchic society where everyone had what they wanted, and wanted nothing more – the fixed-pie fantasy. The state was only necessary as a first step in order to make it possible to get to that utopia. Socialism was simply the first step in reaching the marxian utopian dream of the non-propertarian, anarchic, left libertarian society. Socialism means ‘state ownership of the means of production’. Communism means that there is no property whatsoever or the need for it. Communism was the next evolutionary step after Socialism. People tend to treat communism and socialism as synonyms but they are not. They are a sequential strategy for achieving the marxist utopian society.
[callout]Once you understand how ridiculously impossible communism is, you can also understand how ridiculously impossible anarcho capitalist libertarianism is.[/callout]
Once you understand how ridiculously impossible communism is, you can also understand how ridiculously impossible anarcho capitalist libertarianism is. Socialism is impossible because of the problem of knowledge (distributed and fragmentary), prices (provide the information system), and incentives (encourage people to produce). Communism is impossible because humans never cease to want new stimulation and because we are unequal, and our reproductive strategy insures rotation such that we shall never be equal. So effectively, communism is impossible because populations need property in order to produce prosperity. Anarcho capitalism is impossible because of the problem of creating and maintaining complex forms of property. Men will no more stop seeking better mates and more stimuli, than they will stop seeking to benefit by fraud theft and violence. We need political institutions to channel men’s actions into market activity rather than hedonism or predation. We need very few of those institutions. and the fewer the better. But we need them. If you think communism is impossible, then logically anarcho capitalism is impossible. They both depend on a belief in the nature of man that is counter to self-reflection, observation and history.
Newsweek did another poll that purports to measure our cultural ignorance.
How Dumb Are We? NEWSWEEK gave 1,000 Americans the U.S. Citizenship Test–38 percent failed. The country’s future is imperiled by our ignorance.
Which brings to mind a chain of reasoning: 1) To increase productivity and therefore decrease prices, we must all participate in a division of knowledge and labor. 2) As productivity in the division of labor increases, the total stock of human knowledge increases. 3) As the stock of human knowledge increases, each of our shares of that knowledge decreases. 4) As our individual shares of that knowledge decrease, our knowledge consists largely of those things that we can act upon given the resources at our disposal. In other words, people aren’t so much ignorant as they are knowledgeable about what actually matters. They may not have room for the irrelevant.
[callout]The general perception, and the presupposition of the boomer-era article’s sentiments, is that political knowledge is valuable.[/callout]
The general perception, and the presupposition of the boomer-era article’s sentiments, is that political knowledge is valuable. And it implies that we can possess the knowledge needed to understand the issues that our government must manage given it’s current constitution. And it further implies that political freedom is a ‘good’ – when, it’s evident from the record of history that personal freedom is absolutely a good, but political freedom is simply a necessary evil in order to prevent the government from forming a predatory bureaucracy, and treating the population as it’s property. So people only need the minimum knowledge of government needed to preserve their personal freedom. People aren’t ignorant. They’re too ignorant of political knowledge and economic principles to make political and policy decisions. And that’s not surprising because political decisions are of necessity made in ignorance. And decisions are made in ignorance either out of political necessity or political contrivance. They must be. Because we do not possess sufficient knowledge or DATA in government to make any other form of decision OTHER than decisions of political necessity and political contrivance. Politics has become ridiculous and irrational because at the scale of our empire, the data no longer exists with which to make rational arguments in real time. The political structure cannot operate without data. And so, like the chinese, we have devolved into sentimental moral arguments rather than practical, political and economic arguments — the furtive gestures and spittled pontification of silly Keynesian probabilists to the contrary. So it’s good that people are ignorant of it. There is no value in the study of falsehoods. Maybe Americans are wiser than we think after all.
http://www.capitalismv3.com/?p=2467″And it further implies that political freedom is a ‘good’ – when, it’s evident from the record of history that personal freedom is absolutely a good, but political freedom is simply a necessary evil in order to prevent the government from forming a predatory bureaucracy, and treating the population as it’s property.”
Source date (UTC): 2011-04-04 11:48:00 UTC
(Copied here for documentation purposes.) Over on The World Bank OTAVIANO CANUTO solves for happiness by actively working against it.
We economists tend to see well-being, and poverty in particular, as a matter of finances and income. But fortunately, at least in the Bank, we have come a long way from that simplistic view. Reducing poverty is not only about increasing productivity and income. It is about enabling people to have a broad sense of well-being and opportunities to express and make choices about their lives.
[callout]If you want to be a priest, join a church. If you want to move people run for office. If you want to celebrate, join a club. If you want to be a scientist, and to better mankind, stick with pragmatic improvement of the material well being of individuals by consciously upgrading their cooperative institutions so that they are ‘calculable’ and rational rather than political and sentimental. In other words, don’t make the problem worse by celebrating the ends, rather than the means.[/callout]
But, the road to economic Hades is paved with good intentions:
If you want to be a priest, join a church. If you want to move people run for office. If you want to celebrate, join a club. If you want to be a scientist, and to better mankind, stick with pragmatic improvement of the material well being of individuals by consciously upgrading their cooperative institutions so that they are ‘calculable’ and rational rather than political and sentimental. In other words, don’t make the problem worse by celebrating the ends, rather than the means. The happiness of man has been achieved by increases in the institutional ability for people to break up the world into little objects and apply increasingly fragmentary knowledge to the satisfaction of the wants of others outside of his or her social circle, and independent of his or her cultural memes, by using the information provided by the pricing system, and by the predictability created by institutional protections for his or her risk taking. Sentimental talk in economics and in politics is destructive and always has been. It is evidence of the failure of the political system utilized by the group making the statements. People on the ascent make arguments to productive group action – they ask us to pay opportunity costs for a collective end, for the purpose of increasing potential productive security. By contrast, all moral arguments are by definition false. And that’s the reality of it. Our job is to be the one academic discipline, and the one social science, that isn’t solving for the satisfaction of humanity’s tribal sentiments despite their natural conflict with a division of knowledge and labor and the pricing system, but that solves for the truth of what makes people actually happy by giving them choices. Humans want a discount. Always. So when you’re trying to determine if your arguing for conviction or convenience, make sure you’re not just looking for the discount that comes from embracing convenience. If you want to celebrate. Celebrate both the means – institutions of calculation and cooperation, and their happy ends. (Now that I’ve been a wet blanket I’m going to go celebrate the day with family.)
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/31/japans-nuclear-rescuers-inevitable-die-weeks/”Speaking tearfully through an interpreter by phone, the mother of a 32-year-old worker said: “My son and his colleagues have discussed it at length and they have committed themselves to die if necessary to save the nation.” – There really are men of honor left in this world.
Source date (UTC): 2011-03-31 16:24:00 UTC
Regarding Philosophy, Religion, and Government: a) A Philosophy is a set of related ideas for the purpose of allowing humans to take actions that accomplish ends in the face of necessary uncertainty about the future. b) A Religion is a habituated philosophical framework, for political purposes, using pedagogy for indoctrination, and which relies ostensibly upon voluntary participation, but because of habituation by the individual and within the environment, is largely involuntary. c) A Government is an institutionalized philosophical framework using forcible coercion, and therefore relies upon involuntary participation. What separates a philosophy, from a religion, from a government, is the formality of the institutions, where the increasing formality of the institutions eliminate human choice. What starts as a personal conceptual framework, becomes a framework that a group teaches to others, becomes formal institutions that compel others to adhere to the principles of the philosophy. It is an arbitrary Everything, every idea, has to come from somewhere. Humans may have natural sentiments. But ideas are something that they come by. Military, Political, judicial and pedagogical (religious) institutions do not require belief or consent. They compel adherence by the application of force, or, by near universal habituation, deprivation of opportunity for non-conformers. Philosophy alone allows voluntary adherence to Military, Policial, Judicial, Pedagogical as well as Moral, Ethical and Mannerism frameworks. But let’s look at the problem of choosing philosophy a bit… If there is anyone who is willing to debate me on the limitations of Rand, I’ll take the bet. Even if you bring Peikoff to the table. Yet, despite those limitations, I can defend her propositions against all classical arguments. However, the one I cannot defend it against, is the idea that it is in the interest of the common man, to adopt a political philosophy that is not in his or her individual, temporal, interest. We have but one life, and it consists of limited time. And the proletariat therefore, has a shorter term time horizon than the upper classes. So, Marxism is in the poor’s interest. Democratic socialism is in the working and lower middle class interest. Libertarianism is in the upper middle class interest. And classical liberalism is in the upper class interest. To argue that Rand is anything other than a class philosophy, is to argue that men are equal. Since men are not equal in ability, health, age, knowledge, experience, skill, resources, and relationships — then any philosophy that attempts to be universal to man is by definition a religion. That’s the provence of religion: universal application. Even if some adhere to tenets out of mysticism, some out of allegory, and some out of rational moral analysis, the tenets are the same. That’s the elegance of a religion, and the cultural principles of cooperation that religious idea sets contain. Unfortunately religions rely on mysticism in order to capture the attention of the poor and ignorant proletariat. The secular religion does not. It simply attempts to buy their conformity with services, consumer goods and redistribution. It is cheaper to rely upon mysticism. More expensive to rely on redistribution. And it appears to be more economically productive to rely on redistribution. The question is only how to achieve the redistribution, and the limits of it. Rand, like Marx, Trotsky, Mises and Rothbard, (and Simmel) is simply trying to apply Jewish diasporic religious sentiments to political philosophy. An attempt, that despite the obvious evidence that jewish philosophy is the result of either an arrested or failed civilization. A failed civilization wherein the members of the faith are either unwilling or unable to pay the social sacrifices necessary to hold land. And, having held land, created create the institutions of land holding, and then, by consequence, the institutions of property and built capital needed for an advanced society consisting of a division of labor wherein the natural inequality of humans is expressed by their unequal rewards from participating in the market. All humans seek to JUSTIFY their SENTIMENTS. An act which is anything but scientific. And an act which is arguably religious – it seeks justification rather than exposition.
[callout]A political philosophy that requires unanimity of belief, that does not have cooperative institutions, even private institutions as Hoppe recommends, is to argue that men will adopt a philosophy that is in the interest of other men, particularly those in a competing social class, and is against their interests economically, and socially (status being the human political economy), is not scientific. It is not scientific Because it is COUNTER TO OBSERVATION AND COUNTER TO REASON. [/callout]
A political philosophy that requires unanimity of belief, that does not have cooperative institutions, even private institutions as Hoppe recommends, is to argue that men will adopt a philosophy that is in the interest of other men, particularly those in a competing social class, and is against their interests economically, and socially (status being the human political economy), is not scientific. It is not scientific Because it is COUNTER TO OBSERVATION AND COUNTER TO REASON. Social status is the native human accounting system. We need no devices to sense it. We must rely upon social status so that human animals can know who to imitate, and learn from and associate with in order to best achieve their potential, and the group’s potential. People form groups: Race, Religion, Language, Nation, Class, Generation and Skill Set or career, then hierarchy within that career, are the broadest and most common. Social cues intra-group are lower cost than social cues extra-group. Therefore people specialize in intra-group social cues. This is why individuals in small homogenous single-city-state societies are more egalitarian than in empires. Empires may be able to dictate terms of commerce and issue inflationary currency, but why they are socially tumultuous if the groups can use the political system rather than the market to compete with other groups. As Randianism (and Galmbosianism) is counter to reason, because it requires unanimity of belief, despite not being the interest of the working or judicial classes, then it is unscientific. If it requires unanimity of belief then it is by definition a religion. Because it is the belief in the impossible and irrational. It has replaced superstitious belief in god, with a superstitious belief in the behavior of man. The market economy is superior because the pricing system is the most effective way of informing people as to the behavior that they must exhibit in order to create a low cost high production society where even the poor have more than our ancestors ever dreamed of. However, the market requires institutions and a minimal private government, which we consider a network of contractual agreements. And if individuals simply REFRAIN from theft, fraud, and violence, then they are in effect, shareholders in that society and due profits on their contributions to it. As such, some minimal distribution from the results of the market are due those minority shareholders. The argument that they pay no costs, and make no contribution to the market is false. Since inaction, even the inaction of refraining from theft, fraud, and violence, is a form of action. To say otherwise is to say only money is action.
“Sometimes, the words of political leaders requires interpretation beyond face value. In Russia’s case, abstention (from the vote on Libya) was a calculated move to *facilitate* intervention. The subsequent instability could eliminate Libya as an oil & gas alternative, thus giving Moscow greater market share – and greater control – in Europe. Making sense now?” – STRATFOR
Source date (UTC): 2011-03-30 10:03:00 UTC