Curt Doolittle

Theme: Crisis

  • DECLINE OF CREATIVE DESTRUCTION Cause? 1) The loss of relative technical advanta

    http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/11/the_decline_of_4.htmlTHE DECLINE OF CREATIVE DESTRUCTION

    Cause?

    1) The loss of relative technical advantage due to world adoption of consumer capitalism, and abandonment of marxism, socialism, and communism.

    2) Export of production and jobs due to high domestic taxes and cheap foreign labor.

    3) The distortionary effects of credit on innovation – favoring short term speculation rather than long term innovation: a general shortening of time horizons

    4) The misallocation of capital to reinforcing short run sectors including housing.

    5) The misallocation of human capital to finance, government, and housing.

    6) The failure to reform the education system out of its labor origins.

    7) The dilution of the work force by third world immigration

    8) The policy emphasis on consumption growth rather than innovation growth.

    9) …..

    I’ll just stop there…

    HOW MUCH ARE ECONOMISTS RESPONSIBLE?

    A lot actually. Because economics, as it is practiced, is a positivist enterprise incapable of measuring ‘what matters’: informal institutional capital.

    Civilizations fail, for very simple reasons: the instruments of production, calculation, coordination, and cooperation, cannot adapt to changes in circumstances, nor can they resist regressive results under the auspices of ‘innovation’. The reason we get wealthier is in fact ‘science’ or rather ‘extension of empirical tools of calculation’ that allow us to create increasingly complex divisions of knowledge and labor. Accounting is a far better weapon than cannon because one cannot produce a lot of cannon without accounting, nor an army and supply chain to support it. Laws are important but common laws are more important than other forms of law. Geometry is important but calculus is more important than geometry for many categories of problems. Perhaps most importantly, OPERATIONAL LANGUAGE is more important than mystical or allegorical, or moral language, and operation language requires the presence of scientific, operational, evidence. And further, operational language requires quite a few more IQ points than allegorical language.

    WILL TECHNOLOGY SAVE US FROM PROGRESSIVE DESTRUCTION OF THE WEST?

    It is an act of faith. You cannot extrapolate a trend. Most of our gains have been largely the product of harnessing fossil fuels so that we could teach people to read.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-11 01:55:00 UTC

  • DID THE LEFT LEARN FROM THE FINANCIAL CRISIS? (They never learn anything. As Bra

    http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/11/justin-fox-what-weve-learned-from-the-financial-crisis-noted.htmlWHAT DID THE LEFT LEARN FROM THE FINANCIAL CRISIS?

    (They never learn anything. As Brad Delong demonstrates yet again.)

    What “we” Learned is more interesting.

    (a) Capital flows were catastrophically risk producing.

    (b) Regulation of financial instruments was too weak to prevent fraud on a massive scale, and government created the incentive to commit systemic fraud, and the need to conform to systemic fraud because of a lack of regulation.

    (c) That the state allowed, and encouraged, the privatization of gains and the socialization of losses.

    (d) That the state still prevents individuals and organizations from suing individuals and institutions from regulating company, and financial system behavior via the courts, by declaration of standing, as a means of preserving the political right and responsibility for regulation of those institutions – and thereby creating the incentive for political influence and corruption. That they both create the problem and then offer to solve it isn’t lost on some of us.

    (e) The Austrian theory of the trade cycle is correct, yet again. Expanding credit causes misallocation and eventually, structural unemployment.

    (f) That the left blocked attempts to produce a compromise deal for spending that suited left leaning supporters, and reforms that suited right wing supporters. And that this block continues today.

    (g) We tried very hard, and, it looks as though it is possible to bankrupt the state if we work at it long enough. And either we bankrupt it or it bankrupts us and our families. Our view is that our families are family and that the state is an arbiter, not that all citizens are ‘family’.

    BUT THEN AGAIN, We aren’t positivists. 🙂 And the left is. Because it’s convenient.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-10 10:51:00 UTC

  • PROGRESSIVES ARE IN DENIAL…. ….over the immorality of GROWTH via CONSUMPTION

    http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-generational-injustice-of-social.htmlWHY PROGRESSIVES ARE IN DENIAL….

    ….over the immorality of GROWTH via CONSUMPTION and IMMIGRATION, rather than GROWTH via CONSTANT POPULATION and INVENTION.

    Because if they don’t stay buried in denial, they have to admit that their greatest ‘achievement’ of the 20th century was a catastrophic failure that destroyed the inter-GENERATIONAL system of calculation, cooperation and incentives.

    You know, there isn’t much difference between the necessity of money and prices for temporal coordination, and for the necessity of credit and interest for short inter-temporal coordination, and for the accumulation of wealth, and borrowing for long term, intergenerational coordination. These means of calculating are necessary, not arbitrary.

    FACTS

    The following are true;

    (a) consumption requires that population increases.

    (b) growth requires that innovation increases

    (c) consumption is not growth it is expansion – there is a difference.

    (d) consumption can finance growth.

    (e) the limit of consumption to finance growth is determined by the rate of invention produced by the financing of consumption.

    (There is a tidy graph defined here, but I”m not interested enough to go draw it, so I’ll leave it up to your imagination.)

    I don’t need to bring up that growth via consumption is dysgenic, and growth via invention is eugenic. We have to think about THE PLANET after all.

    I also don’t need to bring up that growth via consumption is the (mindless) female reproductive strategy that depends on regulation by nature, and that growth via invention is the (mindful) male reproductive strategy, and that this largely provides the explanation for the differences in voting behavior.

    NO FREE LUNCH

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-10 02:31:00 UTC

  • THE LOWEST AMERICAN PARTICIPATION IN THE WORK FORCE SINCE 1978 “On Friday, the L

    THE LOWEST AMERICAN PARTICIPATION IN THE WORK FORCE SINCE 1978

    “On Friday, the Labor Department reported that 720,000 Americans left the labor force. This exodus pushed the labor force participation rate down to 62.8%, the lowest level since 1978. One out of three adults in neither working nor actively looking for work”

    MORE THAN ONE THIRD OF AMERICANS ARE OUT OF IT. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-08 14:15:00 UTC

  • » Obama Secret Service Agent: “It’s Worse Than People Know… and I’m Not Trying t

    » Obama Secret Service Agent: “It’s Worse Than People Know… and I’m Not Trying to Scare You Either” Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind! http://www.infowars.com/obama-secret-service-agent-its-worse-than-people-know-and-im-not-trying-to-scare-you-either/

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-06 20:56:00 UTC

  • Fascinating. Because china is an empire that is hard to keep from revolution, th

    Fascinating.

    Because china is an empire that is hard to keep from revolution, the government acts as did the British government when the western militia were in place in britain.

    A government should fear its people.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-05 09:20:00 UTC

  • GOOD BUBBLE CHARTS. FROM THE BANK OF ENGLAND? (Not Nouriel Roubini?)

    http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/11/bubbles-bubbles-everywhere/REALLY GOOD BUBBLE CHARTS. FROM THE BANK OF ENGLAND?

    (Not Nouriel Roubini?)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-04 09:27:00 UTC

  • THE WELFARE SYSTEM – LIBERAL STRATEGY vs OVERWHELM THE CREDIT SYSTEM – CONSERVAT

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward–Piven_strategyOVERWHELM THE WELFARE SYSTEM – LIBERAL STRATEGY

    vs

    OVERWHELM THE CREDIT SYSTEM – CONSERVATIVE STRATEGY

    The point is, that the system doesn’t work. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-04 05:25:00 UTC

  • FALL OF ROME (As I understand it) 1) Scale 2) Diversity 3) Insufficient Rates of

    http://www.amazon.com/dp/0578094185/ref=tsm_1_fb_lkTHE FALL OF ROME

    (As I understand it)

    1) Scale

    2) Diversity

    3) Insufficient Rates of Reproduction

    4) Plague

    5) Human Cost of Land vs Sea Empire

    6) Germanic Invasion

    7) Muslim destruction of the east

    8) Muslim destruction of mediterranean trade

    9) Hard Money (gold)

    10) Lack of “calculative institutions”

    (Thanks for the Reminder Skye)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-22 04:12:00 UTC

  • WHY IS POLITICAL ECONOMY ONCE AGAIN CENTER STAGE, WHILE MONETARY AND FISCAL POLI

    WHY IS POLITICAL ECONOMY ONCE AGAIN CENTER STAGE, WHILE MONETARY AND FISCAL POLICY CLAIM LESS ATTENTION?

    Because it’s become obvious that democracy, permanent growth, equality, diversity, and the end of political innovation were false assumptions.

    Tribalism has, does, and will always rule.

    Perhaps academia should focus more on institutions of cooperation rather than optimum choices for all.

    MONOPOLY IS A BAD IDEA EVERYWHERE IN NATURE THAT WE FIND IT.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-20 08:57:00 UTC