Curt Doolittle

Form: Quote Commentary

  • GENIUS: THE STATE’S MEANS OF GAINING SUPPORT (from Stephan Kinsella)

    http://www.stephankinsella.com/2010/02/swinkels-and-hoppe-on-the-tacit-support-of-the-state/HOPPE’S GENIUS: THE STATE’S MEANS OF GAINING SUPPORT

    (from Stephan Kinsella)

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-19 12:35:00 UTC

  • ON NONSENSE “Some people think that nonsense is too silly to answer. But not ans

    ON NONSENSE

    “Some people think that nonsense is too silly to answer. But not answering it can just allow nonsense to prevail.”

    — Thomas Sowell

    (Thanks to Greg Ransom)

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-19 12:18:00 UTC

  • GREAT DIVERGENCE: CHINA “These immensely rich individuals not only failed to dev

    http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/clannish-dysgenics/THE GREAT DIVERGENCE: CHINA

    “These immensely rich individuals not only failed to develop a capitalistic system; they seldom if ever acquire that acquistive and competitive spirit which is the very soul of the capitalistic system.”

    I’m a big fan of HBD_chick’s effort to explore the relationship between mating patterns, culture, political economy, and economics.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-12 21:05:00 UTC

  • CREATE GREATER DISPARITIES IN RACIAL INCARCERATION? This is one of those things

    http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/prison.htmLIBERALS CREATE GREATER DISPARITIES IN RACIAL INCARCERATION?

    This is one of those things that just would annoy my friends in Ottawa. 🙂

    La Griffe Du Lion is always priceless.

    His Smart Fraction theory alone would be worth reading his work. THe fact that he’s hysterically good using modern socratic characters only makes it more enjoyable.

    Thanks Ashtad for the pointer.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-08 22:03:00 UTC

  • SEA IN A THIMBLE “If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give yo

    http://trib.al/bXkp66A SEA IN A THIMBLE

    “If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves. – Thomas Sowell, via Libertarianism.org.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-07 15:44:00 UTC

  • CLANS AND WESTERN UNIVERSALISM HBD_Chick finds yet another exceptional paper on

    http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/the-return-of-the-return-of-chinese-clans/CHINESE CLANS AND WESTERN UNIVERSALISM

    HBD_Chick finds yet another exceptional paper on the impact of different cultural institutions:

    “The Return Of The Return of Chinese Clans”

    “In a clan, moral obligations are stronger but are limited in scope, as they apply only toward kin. In a city, moral obligations are generalized towards all citizens irrespective of lineage, but they are weaker, as identication is more difficult in a larger and more heterogeneous group. We refer to this distinction as limited vs generalized morality.“

    “Institutional mechanisms also differ between the clan and the city: clan enforcement mainly relies on informal institutions, whereas the city relies more on formal enforcement procedures. In terms of economic effciency, these two arrangements have clear trade-offs. The clan economizes on enforcement costs, whereas the city exploits economies of scale because it sustains cooperation in a larger and more heterogeneous community.”

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-01 01:24:00 UTC

  • PAPER ON HOUSING’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE ECONOMY “What made housing vulnerable to

    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2139670&http%3A%2F%2Fpapers.ssrn.com%2Fsol3%2Fpapers.cfm%3Fabstract_id=2114620EXCEPTIONAL PAPER ON HOUSING’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE ECONOMY

    “What made housing vulnerable to a bubble? And why has the housing market been so impervious to attempts at resuscitation?

    This Article critically reviews the theories of the housing bubble. It argues that housing is unusually susceptible to booms and busts because credit conditions affect demand and because the market is incomplete and difficult to short. Housing market distress transmits to the macroeconomy through a balance sheet channel, a construction channel, and a collateral channel.

    Housing is unique as an asset class in that it is both a consumption and investment good. It is also the largest single consumer asset and debt class. Because housing is credit-backed and such a large asset class, failure will impact the financial system itself and pull down the economy as a whole. The dual-use of housing, its ubiquity on consumer balance sheets, its highly correlated pricing, and its linkage to the macroeconomy make it a particularly painful type of asset bubble to deflate.

    The credit-backed nature of housing is also the key to understanding why there was a bubble. We argue that the bubble must be understood as stemming from the change in the mortgage financing channel from Agency securitization to private-label securitization (PLS). This shift enabled financial intermediaries — economic, but not legal agents of borrowers and investors — to exploit the information problems inherent in PLS for their own short-term gain. In other words, a set of agency problems in financial intermediation was the critical factor in fomenting the housing bubble.”

    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2139670&http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2139670&http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2114620

    Thanks to Adam Levitin at http://www.creditslips.org/

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-31 21:32:00 UTC

  • THE IRON LAW OF BUREAUCRACY “In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benef

    THE IRON LAW OF BUREAUCRACY

    “In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.” – Pournelle

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-23 10:48:00 UTC

  • THE IRON LAW OF OLIGARCHY “All forms of organization, regardless of how democrat

    THE IRON LAW OF OLIGARCHY

    “All forms of organization, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies out of the necessity for leadership and decision making, thus democracy is practically and theoretically impossible: He who says organization, says oligarchy.” – Robert Michels

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-23 10:46:00 UTC

  • THE IRON LAW OF LEVIATHAN “Because the possibility of effectively supervising go

    THE IRON LAW OF LEVIATHAN

    “Because the possibility of effectively supervising government varies inversely with government’s size, so does government’s lawfulness.” – George Will

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-23 10:41:00 UTC