Jan 15, 2020, 3:10 PM Agricultural goods, construction, and housing are efficient. Is that a good thing? Food other than meat is almost free. Why shouldn’t we drive up the cost of agricultural goods, construction, and ‘materials production’ (steel etc) and housing as the returns we can produce? In other words, at what point are we making things cheaper but making everything more expensive as a consequence? I mean, why not repatriate all digital electronic technology, and all medical technology, and at least conversion of raw materials into production goods, and state finance the whole thing? We can. WE aren’t New Zealand. We aren’t a developing nation. WE are not making things cheaper. We’re spending down genetic, cultural, and institutional capital.
Theme: Incentives
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Why Economists Fail to Propose Successful Solutions
Jan 15, 2020, 3:23 PM Most economists propose nonsense solutions that mean more taxes without changing the structure of the economy. My proposition is pretty simple and has profound consequences. Stop all lying, baiting into hazard, free riding and parasitism upon the people, and capture those proceeds in the production of PHYSICAL commons. THAT IS HOW WE FIX EQUALITY. I’m not in favor of equality. Im’ in favor of suppressing parasitism upon the people so that people aren’t rewarded for parasitism and predation and conquest. The result is MORE equality for the middle class at the cost of the parasitic media, academy, state, financial and probably marketing and advertising sectors. That’s how you fix it. What will happen? I think sh-t through. What will happen is increasing demands for investments that aren’t parasitic, and that leaves accumulating rather than spending down capital. Economists work by income statements. Citizenry works by balance sheets.
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Why Economists Fail to Propose Successful Solutions
Jan 15, 2020, 3:23 PM Most economists propose nonsense solutions that mean more taxes without changing the structure of the economy. My proposition is pretty simple and has profound consequences. Stop all lying, baiting into hazard, free riding and parasitism upon the people, and capture those proceeds in the production of PHYSICAL commons. THAT IS HOW WE FIX EQUALITY. I’m not in favor of equality. Im’ in favor of suppressing parasitism upon the people so that people aren’t rewarded for parasitism and predation and conquest. The result is MORE equality for the middle class at the cost of the parasitic media, academy, state, financial and probably marketing and advertising sectors. That’s how you fix it. What will happen? I think sh-t through. What will happen is increasing demands for investments that aren’t parasitic, and that leaves accumulating rather than spending down capital. Economists work by income statements. Citizenry works by balance sheets.
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The 20 Th Century Economies in Context – and How to Fix Them with Propertarianism
Jan 15, 2020, 3:42 PM You know, they called what we do today “Jewish economics” in the pre-war period because it favored investors at the expense of the middle classes (which in those days just meant ‘families’). Keynes was reading MARX, and just removed all references from his book (the general theory) before publishing. Keynes used mathematics (he was first and foremost a mathematician specializing in probability) to give us his elegant simplification of the economy, but he put no measures in place to control it’s abuse – and of course, and Hayek didn’t refute him, and no one produced a limit, so the government just took ‘presumption of growth from presumption of consumption’ as license to convert Keynes’ explanation of how to get out of postwar crisis with how to maximize spending by pushing risk downstream and consuming all institutional, behavioral, normative, physical, and human capital. That limit was a balance sheet, and full accounting of investments and returns. In other words, to maintain the MEASUREMENT that both the GOLD STANDARD and RULE OF LAW had made possible at the cost of inability to react to shocks. This isn’t to dismiss his aggregate theory which is, like all economics, hydraulic. And it isn’t to defend the classical theory, which presumes rational actors, rather than bounded rationality within the limits of our frustration budgets. (We used commercial consumption to sedate ourselves during what has been a long period of social disintegration all of which decrease mindfulness and increase stress, create dysfunctional infantilized ‘woke’ children, reduce our commons into barbarism, loneliness and horrors in old age.) We spent thousands of years incrementally building rule of law leaving only a markets, and in a century we have destroyed rule of law, markets, and our social, institutional, and worst of all, genetic capital. You can’t imagine how much advertising and that evil box in your living room has contributed to destruction of our civilization. But THOUSANDS of thinkers predicted it. The British were right with their BBC – which horrifies the libertarian remnant in me.. But it’s because the left (cognitively female) always and everywhere seeks to create consensus to undermine because it cannot produce and innovate itself. As such the parasite pursues ‘the pulpit’ from whence it conducts it’s false promise, baiting into hazard, as a means of undermining the order and the capital structure of the people who DO produce. Now, I have no problem with censorship in the Russian and Chinese and Turkish models, if it’s censorship of GSRRM, baiting into hazard, and advocacy of capital consumption or underclass reproduction or limiting upper class reproduction – all things that affect the balance sheet (capital). But the court must be there to defend the truth, and the law has to tolerate truth regardless of cost. In other words, it has to be ILLEGAL to suppress truthful statements if it’s Illegal to undermine. This kind of test wasn’t possible until Propertarianism. But it’s possible now. And you can’t imagine (I can and it overwhelms me) how different a world would be if we ended all the f—king lying – including the lying of false promise baiting into hazard, and advocacy of consuming capital.
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The 20 Th Century Economies in Context – and How to Fix Them with Propertarianism
Jan 15, 2020, 3:42 PM You know, they called what we do today “Jewish economics” in the pre-war period because it favored investors at the expense of the middle classes (which in those days just meant ‘families’). Keynes was reading MARX, and just removed all references from his book (the general theory) before publishing. Keynes used mathematics (he was first and foremost a mathematician specializing in probability) to give us his elegant simplification of the economy, but he put no measures in place to control it’s abuse – and of course, and Hayek didn’t refute him, and no one produced a limit, so the government just took ‘presumption of growth from presumption of consumption’ as license to convert Keynes’ explanation of how to get out of postwar crisis with how to maximize spending by pushing risk downstream and consuming all institutional, behavioral, normative, physical, and human capital. That limit was a balance sheet, and full accounting of investments and returns. In other words, to maintain the MEASUREMENT that both the GOLD STANDARD and RULE OF LAW had made possible at the cost of inability to react to shocks. This isn’t to dismiss his aggregate theory which is, like all economics, hydraulic. And it isn’t to defend the classical theory, which presumes rational actors, rather than bounded rationality within the limits of our frustration budgets. (We used commercial consumption to sedate ourselves during what has been a long period of social disintegration all of which decrease mindfulness and increase stress, create dysfunctional infantilized ‘woke’ children, reduce our commons into barbarism, loneliness and horrors in old age.) We spent thousands of years incrementally building rule of law leaving only a markets, and in a century we have destroyed rule of law, markets, and our social, institutional, and worst of all, genetic capital. You can’t imagine how much advertising and that evil box in your living room has contributed to destruction of our civilization. But THOUSANDS of thinkers predicted it. The British were right with their BBC – which horrifies the libertarian remnant in me.. But it’s because the left (cognitively female) always and everywhere seeks to create consensus to undermine because it cannot produce and innovate itself. As such the parasite pursues ‘the pulpit’ from whence it conducts it’s false promise, baiting into hazard, as a means of undermining the order and the capital structure of the people who DO produce. Now, I have no problem with censorship in the Russian and Chinese and Turkish models, if it’s censorship of GSRRM, baiting into hazard, and advocacy of capital consumption or underclass reproduction or limiting upper class reproduction – all things that affect the balance sheet (capital). But the court must be there to defend the truth, and the law has to tolerate truth regardless of cost. In other words, it has to be ILLEGAL to suppress truthful statements if it’s Illegal to undermine. This kind of test wasn’t possible until Propertarianism. But it’s possible now. And you can’t imagine (I can and it overwhelms me) how different a world would be if we ended all the f—king lying – including the lying of false promise baiting into hazard, and advocacy of consuming capital.
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The Economic Policy of Elizabeth Warren
Jan 19, 2020, 1:04 PM by Tyler Cowen Jerry Taylor has made some positive noises about her on Twitter lately, as had Will Wilkinson in earlier times. I genuinely do not see the appeal here, not even for Democrats. Let’s do a quick survey of some of her core views:
- She wants to ban fracking through executive order. This would enrich Russia and Saudi Arabia, harm the American economy ($3.5 trillion stock market gains from fracking), make our energy supply less green, and make our foreign policy more dependent on bad regimes and the Middle East. It is perhaps the single worst policy idea I have heard this last year, and some of the worst possible politics for beating Trump in states such as Pennsylvania.
Her private equity plan. Making private equity managers personally responsible for the debts of the companies they acquire probably would crush the sector. The economic evidence on private equity is mostly quite positive. Maybe she would eliminate the worst features of her plan, but can you imagine her saying on open camera that private equity is mostly good for the American economy? I can’t.
Her farm plan. It seems to be more nationalistic and protectionist and also more permanent than Trump’s, read here.
Her tax plan I: Some of the wealthy would see marginal rates above 100 percent.
Her tax plan II: Her proposed wealth tax would over time lead to rates of taxation on capital gains of at least 60 to 70 percent, much higher than any wealthy country ever has succeeded with. And frankly no one has come close to rebutting the devastating critique from Larry Summers.
Student debt forgiveness: The data-driven people I know on the left all admit this is welfare for the relatively well-off, rather than a truly egalitarian approach to poverty and opportunity. Cost is estimated at $1.6 trillion, by the way (is trillion the new billion?). Furthermore, what are the long-run effects on the higher education sector? Do banks lend like crazy next time around, expecting to be bailed out by the government? Or do banks cut bank their lending, fearing a haircut on bailout number two? I am genuinely not sure, but thinking the question through does not reassure me.
College free for all: Would wreck the relatively high quality of America’s state-run colleges and universities, which cover about 78 percent of all U.S. students and are the envy of other countries worldwide and furthermore a major source of American soft power. Makes sense only if you are a Caplanian on higher ed., and furthermore like student debt forgiveness this plan isn’t that egalitarian, as many of the neediest don’t finish high school, do not wish to start college, cannot finish college, or already reject near-free local options for higher education, typically involving community colleges.
Health care policy: Her various takes on this, including the $52 trillion plan, are better thought of as (vacillating) political strategy than policy per se. In any case, no matter what your view on health care policy she has botched it, and several other Dem candidates have a better track record in this area. Even Paul Krugman insists that the Democrats should move away from single-payer purity. It is hard to give her net positive points on this one, again no matter what your policy views on health care, or even no matter what her views may happen to be on a particular day.
All of my analysis, I should note, can be derived internal to Democratic Party economics, and it does not require any dose of libertarianism.
- Breaking up the Big Tech companies: I am strongly opposed to this, and I view it as yet another attack/destruction on a leading and innovative American sector. I will say this, though: unlike the rest of the list above, I know smart economists (and tech experts) who favor some version of the policy. Still, I don’t see why Jerry and Will should like this promise so much.
Those are some pretty major sectors of the U.S. economy, it is not like making a few random mistakes with the regulation of toothpicks. In fact they are the major sectors of the U.S. economy, and each and every one of them would take a big hit. More generally, she seems to be a fan of instituting policies through executive order, a big minus in my view and probably for Jerry and Will as well? Villainization and polarization are consistent themes in her rhetoric, and at this point it doesn’t seem her chances for either the nomination, or beating Trump, are strong in fact her conditional chance of victory is well below that of the other major Dem candidates. So what really are you getting for all of these outbursts? When I add all that up, she seems to have the worst economic and political policies of any candidate in my adult lifetime, with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders (whose views are often less detailed). I do readily admit this: Warren is a genius at exciting the egalitarian and anti-business mood affiliation of our coastal media and academic elites. If you would like to read defenses of Warren, here is Ezra Klein and here is Henry Farrell. I think they both plausibly point to parts of the Warren program that might be good (more good for them than for me I should add, but still I can grasp the other arguments on her behalf). They don’t much respond to the point that on #1-8, and possibly #1-9, she has the worst economic and political policies of any candidate in my adult lifetime. For Jerry and Will, I just don’t see the attraction at all. That said, on her foreign policy, which I have not spent much time with, she might be better, so of course you should consider the whole picture. And quite possibly there are other candidates who, for other reasons, are worse yet, not hard to think of some. Or you might wish to see a woman president. Or you might think she would stir up “good discourse” on the issues you care about. And I fully understand that most of the Warren agenda would not pass. So I’m not trying to talk you out of supporting her! Still, I would like to design and put into the public domain a small emoji, one that you could add to the bottom of your columns and tweets. It would stand in for: “Yes I support her, but she has the worst proposed economic policies of any candidate in the adult lifetime of Tyler Cowen.”
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The Economic Policy of Elizabeth Warren
Jan 19, 2020, 1:04 PM by Tyler Cowen Jerry Taylor has made some positive noises about her on Twitter lately, as had Will Wilkinson in earlier times. I genuinely do not see the appeal here, not even for Democrats. Let’s do a quick survey of some of her core views:
- She wants to ban fracking through executive order. This would enrich Russia and Saudi Arabia, harm the American economy ($3.5 trillion stock market gains from fracking), make our energy supply less green, and make our foreign policy more dependent on bad regimes and the Middle East. It is perhaps the single worst policy idea I have heard this last year, and some of the worst possible politics for beating Trump in states such as Pennsylvania.
Her private equity plan. Making private equity managers personally responsible for the debts of the companies they acquire probably would crush the sector. The economic evidence on private equity is mostly quite positive. Maybe she would eliminate the worst features of her plan, but can you imagine her saying on open camera that private equity is mostly good for the American economy? I can’t.
Her farm plan. It seems to be more nationalistic and protectionist and also more permanent than Trump’s, read here.
Her tax plan I: Some of the wealthy would see marginal rates above 100 percent.
Her tax plan II: Her proposed wealth tax would over time lead to rates of taxation on capital gains of at least 60 to 70 percent, much higher than any wealthy country ever has succeeded with. And frankly no one has come close to rebutting the devastating critique from Larry Summers.
Student debt forgiveness: The data-driven people I know on the left all admit this is welfare for the relatively well-off, rather than a truly egalitarian approach to poverty and opportunity. Cost is estimated at $1.6 trillion, by the way (is trillion the new billion?). Furthermore, what are the long-run effects on the higher education sector? Do banks lend like crazy next time around, expecting to be bailed out by the government? Or do banks cut bank their lending, fearing a haircut on bailout number two? I am genuinely not sure, but thinking the question through does not reassure me.
College free for all: Would wreck the relatively high quality of America’s state-run colleges and universities, which cover about 78 percent of all U.S. students and are the envy of other countries worldwide and furthermore a major source of American soft power. Makes sense only if you are a Caplanian on higher ed., and furthermore like student debt forgiveness this plan isn’t that egalitarian, as many of the neediest don’t finish high school, do not wish to start college, cannot finish college, or already reject near-free local options for higher education, typically involving community colleges.
Health care policy: Her various takes on this, including the $52 trillion plan, are better thought of as (vacillating) political strategy than policy per se. In any case, no matter what your view on health care policy she has botched it, and several other Dem candidates have a better track record in this area. Even Paul Krugman insists that the Democrats should move away from single-payer purity. It is hard to give her net positive points on this one, again no matter what your policy views on health care, or even no matter what her views may happen to be on a particular day.
All of my analysis, I should note, can be derived internal to Democratic Party economics, and it does not require any dose of libertarianism.
- Breaking up the Big Tech companies: I am strongly opposed to this, and I view it as yet another attack/destruction on a leading and innovative American sector. I will say this, though: unlike the rest of the list above, I know smart economists (and tech experts) who favor some version of the policy. Still, I don’t see why Jerry and Will should like this promise so much.
Those are some pretty major sectors of the U.S. economy, it is not like making a few random mistakes with the regulation of toothpicks. In fact they are the major sectors of the U.S. economy, and each and every one of them would take a big hit. More generally, she seems to be a fan of instituting policies through executive order, a big minus in my view and probably for Jerry and Will as well? Villainization and polarization are consistent themes in her rhetoric, and at this point it doesn’t seem her chances for either the nomination, or beating Trump, are strong in fact her conditional chance of victory is well below that of the other major Dem candidates. So what really are you getting for all of these outbursts? When I add all that up, she seems to have the worst economic and political policies of any candidate in my adult lifetime, with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders (whose views are often less detailed). I do readily admit this: Warren is a genius at exciting the egalitarian and anti-business mood affiliation of our coastal media and academic elites. If you would like to read defenses of Warren, here is Ezra Klein and here is Henry Farrell. I think they both plausibly point to parts of the Warren program that might be good (more good for them than for me I should add, but still I can grasp the other arguments on her behalf). They don’t much respond to the point that on #1-8, and possibly #1-9, she has the worst economic and political policies of any candidate in my adult lifetime. For Jerry and Will, I just don’t see the attraction at all. That said, on her foreign policy, which I have not spent much time with, she might be better, so of course you should consider the whole picture. And quite possibly there are other candidates who, for other reasons, are worse yet, not hard to think of some. Or you might wish to see a woman president. Or you might think she would stir up “good discourse” on the issues you care about. And I fully understand that most of the Warren agenda would not pass. So I’m not trying to talk you out of supporting her! Still, I would like to design and put into the public domain a small emoji, one that you could add to the bottom of your columns and tweets. It would stand in for: “Yes I support her, but she has the worst proposed economic policies of any candidate in the adult lifetime of Tyler Cowen.”
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Real Meaning of The Words
Jan 29, 2020, 3:32 PM REAL MEANING OF THE WORDS: LEFT PROGRESSIVE = CONSUMPTION, VS RIGHT CONSERVATIVE = CAPITALIZATION
—“Is progressive or conservative the most appropriate word?”—
Painful Truth:
Socialist: Left, female, herd, equalitarian, dysgenic, proportional, consuming, empathic, devoted, low disgust, fear of being left behind,
-VS-
Aristocratic: Right, male, pack, hierarchical, eugenic, reciprocal, capitalizing, analytic, loyal, high disgust, fear of not producing capital. Hypergamy, hyperconsumption, sh-t testing, defecting, undermining, seducing by false promise into hazard. The left uses the female dysgenic strategy and the right the male eugenic strategy and we no longer have reason to coexist under the same political artifice when there is no possible means of reconciliation of strategies that are polar opposites. The right must separate because the left like cancer is an uncontrolled dysgenic growth reversing thousands of years of evolutionary progress in in our genes, cultures, institutions, and knowledge.
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Real Meaning of The Words
Jan 29, 2020, 3:32 PM REAL MEANING OF THE WORDS: LEFT PROGRESSIVE = CONSUMPTION, VS RIGHT CONSERVATIVE = CAPITALIZATION
—“Is progressive or conservative the most appropriate word?”—
Painful Truth:
Socialist: Left, female, herd, equalitarian, dysgenic, proportional, consuming, empathic, devoted, low disgust, fear of being left behind,
-VS-
Aristocratic: Right, male, pack, hierarchical, eugenic, reciprocal, capitalizing, analytic, loyal, high disgust, fear of not producing capital. Hypergamy, hyperconsumption, sh-t testing, defecting, undermining, seducing by false promise into hazard. The left uses the female dysgenic strategy and the right the male eugenic strategy and we no longer have reason to coexist under the same political artifice when there is no possible means of reconciliation of strategies that are polar opposites. The right must separate because the left like cancer is an uncontrolled dysgenic growth reversing thousands of years of evolutionary progress in in our genes, cultures, institutions, and knowledge.
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Mating criticism
Jan 31, 2020, 1:42 PM Mating criticism from both sides is caused by the same problems. It overstates the sex maybe, underestimates the entertainment, friendship, and economic qualities – and how temporary entertainment, and social goods are compared to economic and friendship. Then, because of the overweight average, the lack of exercise, the safe-i-fication of sports, the suppression of male dominance play, and agitation of female victimhood, the percent of moderately desirable men and women has decreased. Yes, high performance women are of no value to men and they have to settle. Yes, low value men are not valuable to women (or men). And women ride the c–ck carousel as the article suggests only to discover it lowers their chances of successful relationships, and their value to quality men. Frankly? too many men and too many women are undesirable for very obvious reasons. This leaves high performance men holding all the cards.