“The issue today is not communism or socialism versus capitalism; it’s how much regulation of capitalism is optimal. ” – Posner
I DON”T THINK SO
I think the issue today is, regardless of regulation, what norms produce the benefits of capitalism and what norms threaten it.
But then I see the world in decades and centuries so I’m a little more attuned to the long run.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-24 13:54:00 UTC
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2013/09/has-capitalism-revivedsurvived-posner.htmlCHALLENGES TO CAPITALISM
“The major modern challenges to capitalism came not from that or any other depression, but from the two world wars of the twentieth century, without which it is hard to believe that the European nations would have lost their colonies, experienced a great depression (in the 1930s), or (in central and eastern Europe) become communist. Without World War I, it is very doubtful that Russia would have become communist; and without the Soviet conquests in eastern and central Europe in World War II, neither would Poland, Rumania, etc. have become communist.”
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-24 13:51:00 UTC
http://www.forbes.com/sites/charleskadlec/2012/02/06/the-federal-reserves-explicit-goal-devalue-the-dollar-33/IN 2007 WHEN I SAID THIS WOULD HAPPEN, EVERYONE TREATED ME LIKE AN IDIOT
Told ‘ya. No Other Way Out.
Period.
(Of course, I haven’t had any US dollars since 2009, or US assets since 2010.)
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-20 10:29:00 UTC
http://www.mauldineconomics.com/outsidethebox/the-need-for-a-new-economicsMUST READ
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-18 14:04:00 UTC
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/09/gender-jobs-gap-women-have-recovered-all-of-the-jobs-they-lost-during-the-recession-men-are-still-2-14-millions-jobs-short/THE MAN RECESSION CONTINUES
Women are back at work. Men, not. We don’t yet know how many will never reenter the work force again.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-17 23:30:00 UTC
Tonight I’m reminded that Hayek was a gentleman and didn’t refute Keynes because he thought it was obvious, and that it would be ungentlemanly to criticize him too harshly.
Friedman was unapologetically argumentative, and Rothbard was radically so. Sowell is at least apologetically argumentative.
The conservatives have abandoned direct discourse and taken the debate to its constituency on moral grounds and entirely ignores debate with their opposition, focusing only on criticism.
Which of these approaches to political discourse is empirically superior? Which can we demonstrate has been more effective at altering the course of policy?
Politics is not nice. It is not sweet. It is a bloody, brutal, dishonest battle for control over teh means of extracting and distributing resources, profits, opportunity and privilege and the stakes are demonstrably high. Perhaps at the cost of the civilization itself.
The period where we could return to civil discourse is done. The empire must end. They tyranny of the majority must end. Either fight for freedom or lose what you have left of it.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-17 23:06:00 UTC
ECONOMICS AS ARCHAEOLOGY
“I would happily settle for economics being compared to archaeology and our scientific activity placed on a level with that of the archaeologist. It would be a noble analogy.”
“…the veneer of mathematics tends…[T]o dress scientific brilliancies and scientific absurdities alike in the impressive uniform of formulae
and theorems. Unfortunately however, an absurdity in uniform is far more persuasive than an absurdity unclad.” – Schwartz, 1986, p.22.
“Classical real analysis is only one of at least four mathematical traditions within which economic questions can be formalized and discussed mathematically. Non-standard, constructive and computable analyses have been playing their own roles in the formalization and mathematization of economic entities – but mostly within the closure of neoclassical economic theory.”
(NOTE: a) Real analysis, b) non-standard, c) constructive and d) computable – all must be addressed from finitist perspective.)
“In other words, mathematics is about proof. I believe this to be a valid and standard characterization which helps delineate the different `schools’ of mathematics in terms of it”
(NOTE: mathematics is the process of making proofs ‘balances’, not truths (forecasts and testimonies).)
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-17 01:49:00 UTC
DEATH PANELS.
Told you. You cant control costs any other way. So care will be delayed. People will die from delay. People will die because of death panels. High cost experimentation will stop. The R and D will decline. We will export our only remaining technical advantage offshore.
So top medical care will require medical tourism. Great for me. Sucks for everyone else.
Should have just given people medical visa cards and subsidized hospitals and clinics to accept them. Create a signaling-only medical economy like we have for all other goods, so that the wealthy continue to pay for R&D and ordinary people benefit from the expenditures of the wealthy.
Like every other process in human history.
Sigh.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-16 14:28:00 UTC
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/09/11/more-money-more-children/MORE ON FERTILITY
Money = kids
Which is how it must be.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-16 12:17:00 UTC
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/09/america-the-nuclear-armed-insurance-company-in-one-chart/Weak article. But the title reflects one on my suggestions.
Split off the insurance company from the states.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-13 14:50:00 UTC