Quotulatiousness

December 13, 2011

The Zero Sum Fallacy

Filed under: Economics, Humour — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:02

P.J. O’Rourke on the big economic issue that the Occupy folks always get wrong:

The “Occupy This, That and the Other Place” people are right about the sins of the financial system and right about the evil of government supporting and subsidizing this malfeasance. It’s not fair that 1 percent of Americans are rolling in dough while the rest of us are scrimping to pay for our Internet connection so we can go on Groupon.

But the Occupiers are wrong about something much more important. They believe in the Zero Sum Fallacy — the idea that there is a fixed amount of the good things in life. Anything I get, I’m taking from you. If I have too many slices of pizza, you have to eat the Dominos box. The Zero Sum Fallacy is a bad idea — dangerous to economics, politics, and world peace. It means any time we want good things we have to fight with each other to get them. We don’t. We can make more good things. We can make more pizza — or more tofu, windmills and solar panels, if you like.

The Zero Sum Fallacy is just that, a fallacy. Economic history since the Industrial Revolution proves — be the rich however stinking rich — we ordinary people can make more of the good things in life. But we have to make them ourselves, with our knowledge, skills and hard work. Government can’t give us good things. Government doesn’t make things, it just redistributes them. This brings us back to fighting with each other.

NFL week 14 results

Filed under: Football — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:47

An okay week straight-up, but another terrible set of picks against the spread. I’ve tumbled all the way down to a seven-way tie for 35th spot in the AoSHQ pool, 15 points behind the group leader. I’m starting to suspect that I won’t be able to make up much of that deficit before the end of the regular season . . .

    √ @Pittsburgh 14 Cleveland 3
    √ @Cincinnati 19 Houston 20
    ∅ @Detroit 34 Minnesota 28
    √ New Orleans 22 @Tennessee 17
    ∅ @Miami 10 Philadelphia 26
    √ @New York (NYJ) 37 Kansas City 10
    √ New England 34 @Washington 27
    ∅ Atlanta 31 @Carolina 23
    ∅ @Jacksonville 41 Tampa Bay 14
    √ @Baltimore 24 Indianapolis 10
    √ @Denver 13 Chicago 10
    ∅ San Francisco 19 @Arizona 21
    √ @Green Bay 46 Oakland 16
    √ @San Diego 37 Buffalo 10
    ∅ @Dallas 34 New York (NYG) 37
    ∅ @Seattle 30 St. Louis 13

This week: 9-7 (5-11 against the spread)
Season to date 125-83

December 12, 2011

Defining crony capitalism

Filed under: Economics, Government, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 14:51

Bill Frezza explains what crony capitalism is and how it differs from free market capitalism:

If defenders of capitalism hope to win over fair-minded fellow citizens who are honestly upset and confused, we need to define these terms and answer some basic questions. In what ways are Crony Capitalists and Market Capitalists the same and in what ways are they different? What makes the former immoral and the latter virtuous? Why are Crony Capitalists a threat to democracy and prosperity while Market Capitalists are essential to both? How is it that ever larger numbers of Market Capitalists are being corrupted, turning into Crony Capitalists? And what can we do to reverse that trend?

All capitalism is driven by greed — the desire to not only achieve economic security, but to amass pools of capital beyond one’s basic needs. This capital can fuel the kind of conspicuous consumption that offends egalitarians. But it also finances investments in new products and businesses, without which the economy cannot grow. [. . .]

What makes Crony Capitalists different is their willingness to use the coercive powers of government to gain an advantage they could not earn in the market. This can come in the form of regulations that favor them while hindering competitors, laws that restrict entry into their markets, and government-sponsored cartels that fix prices, grant monopolies, or both.

Crony Capitalists are also more than happy to help themselves to money from the public treasury. This can come from wasteful or unnecessary spending programs that turn government into a captive customer, subsidies that flow directly into their coffers, or mandates that force consumers to buy their products.

[. . .]

Beyond these obvious Crony Capitalists lies a slippery slope designed to attract and entrap Market Capitalists: the tax code. By setting nominal corporate tax rates high while marketing tax breaks to specific companies and industries, Congress assures itself a steady stream of campaign contributions from companies looking to lighten their tax load. While there is no shame in reducing one’s tax burden from 35% to a more globally competitive 20%, is it any wonder that people get sore when some extremely profitable corporations manage to get their tax burden down to nearly 0%?

Next up for the weekly “This week in Guild Wars 2” posting

Filed under: Administrivia, Gaming, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 14:37

I’ve been posting a once-a-week Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2 summary for most of this year, but this week’s entry will probably be a bit different: I’ve been invited to take over the regular “Community Roundup” column at GuildMag. This will be a super-set of the information I normally provide in the “This week in Guild Wars 2” posting. I don’t know if I’ll still post a shorter version here or if I’ll just link to the new column at GuildMag (it’ll probably depend on how much extra work will be required to post in multiple places).

SpaceX Dragon to dock with ISS in February

Filed under: Space, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:31

Lewis Page on the recent announcement from NASA and SpaceX:

NASA has announced that — all being well — the first mission to the International Space Station by a privately built and operated spacecraft will lift off on February 7. The craft will be a Dragon capsule launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket, both made and handled by techbiz visionary Elon Musk’s new company SpaceX.

“We look forward to a successful mission, which will open up a new era in commercial cargo delivery for this international orbiting laboratory,” said NASA honcho William Gerstenmaier in tinned quotes announcing the planned date. However he didn’t stick his neck out, adding cautiously:

“There is still a significant amount of critical work to be completed before launch, but the teams have a sound plan to complete it and are prepared for unexpected challenges. As with all launches, we will adjust the launch date as needed to gain sufficient understanding of test and analysis results to ensure safety and mission success.”

Increasing calls to delay F-35 production until more design bugs are worked out

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:22

Strategy Page on the latest setback to the F-35 program:

U.S. Department of Defense officials are trying to slow down production of the new F-35 fighter because testing is revealing more design problems than anticipated. If the current production schedule remains in place there is a high risk that very expensive modifications will be needed for F-35s that have entered service. The air force has already ordered 58 F-35s to be produced before all testing is completed and plans to produce 472 F-35s this way. The Department of Defense is more concerned about the additional costs than the air force, which just wants to get the aircraft into production as quickly as possible. The air force fears that the production orders will be cut even further if the F-35 does not enter service quickly.

There are more disputes between the Department of Defense and the air force. For example, the two are trying to agree on what the F-35 will cost. The air force insists that it is $65 million each, while the Department of Defense says when all costs are included it will be more like $111 million each. Another number being debated is how many F-35s will actually be produced. The air force assumes 2,443 for the air force, navy, and marines but the Department of Defense is not so sure that many will eventually be built. Total development cost is now put at $65 billion, which comes to over $25 million per aircraft if 2,443 are built. Development costs for the new U.S. F-35 fighter-bomber has grown by more than a third over the last few years. The additional development costs are accompanied by additional delays. Current estimates are that the F-35 will enter service in another 6-7 years. The Department of Defense believes production and development costs will continue to rise and that the number to be built will decline. Both trends increase the average aircraft cost. Based on past experience the higher Department of Defense estimates are more likely to be accurate.

“Cameron has made a crucial misjudgment, simply to appease the City and his own jingoistic right-wingers”

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Europe — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:12

Bruno Waterfield looks at the frenzied abuse being heaped on David Cameron’s head over the EU negotiations:

The breaking of the EU at an all-night summit last week, where British prime minister David Cameron vetoed changes to the EU Lisbon Treaty, is a healthy sign that politics can assert itself over the slavish routines of Euroland. Until this crack occurred, the EU had been using the full force of statecraft to deny new facts and to enshrine failed doctrines in a world where reality had changed.

Still, over the next few weeks, there will be a concerted establishment campaign to depoliticise the split in the EU and to paper over the cracks with the bureaucratic pieties and conceits at which the EU excels. Quick out of the gate on Sunday was Lord Paddy Ashdown, a serially unelected panjandrum and one-time UN viceroy of Bosnia, who accused Cameron of ‘acting as the leader of the Conservative Party, not the prime minister of Britain’.

[. . .]

The opprobrium heaped on Cameron’s head by Europe’s elites and their fellow travellers is because he is perceived as having allowed the politics of party to triumph over the bureaucratic routines of state. ‘As an act of crass stupidity, this has rarely been equalled’, opined Will Hutton in the Observer. ‘Cameron has made a crucial misjudgment, simply to appease the City and his own jingoistic right-wingers.’

The shrill attacks on Cameron’s failure to achieve the ‘national interest’ demonstrate the extent to which that priceless commodity is now defined by permanent Whitehall officials rather than by public politics or through a clash of parties competing to lead the British people. Similarly, the EU, particularly during this economic crisis, has shown itself to be a mechanism for evading or even overthrowing public politics; it is about drawing up policy away from the institutions of democratic accountability, in an arena that is ‘independent’ of the public.

Vikings’ fumbles start and end game at Detroit

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:55

The game seemed to be getting out of hand on the Vikings’ very first play: a defender got past Phil Loadholt to hit quarterback Christian Ponder before Ponder had any idea he was there and stripped the ball away. The ball bounced into the end-zone and Detroit recovered for the touchdown. The Lions continued to build on their lead, getting to 21-0 before the Vikings could put together a scoring drive of their own.

Between interceptions and fumbles, Detroit scored 24 points off turnovers, most of them unforced. Things were going so badly for Christian Ponder that he was replaced with backup Joe Webb early in the second half. That upset the defensive scheme that Detroit had been using (Ponder can run, but is still limited with a hip injury — Webb is an even better runner than Ponder), allowing the Vikings to mount a comeback that almost succeeded. The last play of the game saw the Vikings on Detroit’s 1-yard line, only to fumble away the ball which Detroit finally recovered fifty yards upfield.

(more…)

December 11, 2011

QotD: Alcohol

Filed under: Books, Humour, Quotations, Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 20:20

It has been said that alcohol is a good servant and a bad master. Nice try. The plain fact is that it makes other people, and indeed life itself, a good deal less boring. Kingsley grasped this essential fact very early in life, and (so to speak) never let go of the insight. This does not mean that there are not wine bores, single-malt bores, and people who become even more boring when they themselves have a tipple. You will meet them, and learn how to recognize them (and also how to deal with them) in these pages.

In my opinion Kingers — which I was allowed to call him — was himself a very slight cocktail bore. Or, at least, he had to affect to be such in order to bang out a regular column on drinks for the pages of a magazine aimed at the male population. In “real” life, Amis was a no-nonsense drinker with little inclination to waste a good barman’s time with fussy instructions. However, there was an exception which I think I can diagnose in retrospect, and it is related to his strong admiration for the novels of Ian Fleming. What is James Bond really doing when he specifies the kind of martini he wants and how he wants it? He is telling the barman (or bartender if you must) that he knows what he is talking about and is not to be messed around. I learned the same lesson when I was a restaurant and bar critic for the City Paper in Washington, D.C. Having long been annoyed by people who called knowingly for “a Dewar’s and water” instead of a scotch and water, I decided to ask a trusted barman what I got if I didn’t specify a brand or label. The answer was a confidential jerk of the thumb in the direction of a villainous-looking tartan-shaded jug under the bar. The situation was even grimmer with gin and vodka and became abysmal with “white wine”, a thing I still can’t bear to hear being ordered. If you don’t state a clear preference, then your drink is like a bad game of poker or a hasty drug transaction: It is whatever the dealer says it is. Please do try to bear this in mind.

Christopher Hitchens, Introduction to Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis, 2008.

NFL week 14 predictions

Filed under: Football — Tags: — Nicholas @ 10:58

Thursday’s game was a bit disappointing (for me), as Pittsburgh didn’t cover the spread (bad for my AoSHQ pool) but they did win (which is good for straight-up):

    √ @Pittsburgh 14 Cleveland 3

Remaining games:

    @Cincinnati vs Houston (3.0) Sun 1:00
    @Detroit vs Minnesota (0) Sun 1:00
    New Orleans vs @Tennessee (3.5) Sun 1:00
    @Miami vs Philadelphia (0) Sun 1:00
    @New York (NYJ) vs Kansas City (9.0) Sun 1:00
    New England vs @Washington (8.0) Sun 1:00
    Atlanta vs @Carolina (2.5) Sun 1:00
    @Jacksonville vs Tampa Bay (0) Sun 1:00
    @Baltimore vs Indianapolis (16.5) Sun 1:00
    @Denver vs Chicago (3.5) Sun 4:05
    San Francisco vs @Arizona (4.0) Sun 4:05
    @Green Bay vs Oakland (11.0) Sun 4:15
    @San Diego vs Buffalo (7.0) Sun 4:15
    @Dallas vs New York (NYG) (3.5) Sun 8:20
    @Seattle vs St. Louis (0) Mon 8:30

Last week: 10-6 (8-8 against the spread)
Season to date 117-76

December 10, 2011

QotD: G.K. Chesterton on waiting for a train

Filed under: Quotations, Railways, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 13:21

[. . .] And most of the inconveniences that make men swear or women cry are really sentimental or imaginative inconveniences — things altogether of the mind. For instance, we often hear grown-up people complaining of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train. Did you ever hear a small boy complain of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train? No; for to him to be inside a railway station is to be inside a cavern of wonder and a palace of poetical pleasures. Because to him the red light and the green light on the signal are like a new sun and a new moon. Because to him when the wooden arm of the signal falls down suddenly, it is as if a great king had thrown down his staff as a signal and started a shrieking tournament of trains. I myself am of little boys’ habit in this matter. They also serve who only stand and wait for the two fifteen. Their meditations may be full of rich and fruitful things. Many of the most purple hours of my life have been passed at Clapham Junction, which is now, I suppose, under water. I have been there in many moods so fixed and mystical that the water might well have come up to my waist before I noticed it particularly. But in the case of all such annoyances, as I have said, everything depends upon the emotional point of view. You can safely apply the test to almost every one of the things that are currently talked of as the typical nuisance of daily life.

G.K. Chesterton, “On running after one’s hat” (1908), republished in Quotidiana, 2007-12-10.

“It was not, all in all, Canada’s finest hour. Perhaps that’s why we still don’t talk about it much.”

Filed under: Books, Cancon, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:48

Robert Fulford on the event in Ottawa that started the Cold War:

For just one moment in history, Canada found itself at the dangerous centre of global politics. That was in 1945, when Igor Gouzenko left the Russian embassy in Ottawa with documents proving the Soviet Union was spying on Canada with the help of Canadian communists.

Gouzenko’s revelations were the opening shot in the Cold War. A new book, Stalin’s Man in Canada: Fred Rose and Soviet Espionage by David Levy, takes a rambling, anecdotal approach to a major figure in the story, the only Canadian member of Parliament ever convicted of conducting espionage for a foreign state.

Official Ottawa reacted badly to the news that there were spies in its midst. The government arrested the suspects and locked them up for weeks, without access to lawyers or families. They were paraded before a secret royal commission and persuaded to incriminate themselves. Gouzenko was given a new identity to protect him from Soviet assassins but the Mounties leaked nasty stories about him. For decades journalists treated him as a money-grubbing clown rather than the hero that he was.

Today the case remains largely unexplored and poorly remembered. Among those involved, only Gouzenko described his experience in a book, This Was My Choice, a rather thin and hasty account. Twentieth Century Fox produced a forgettable adaptation, The Iron Curtain, with Dana Andrews as Gouzenko.

Nick Gillespie: Five myths about Ron Paul

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:20

Nick Gillespie in yesterday’s Washington Post:

Ron Paul is the Rodney Dangerfield of Republican presidential candidates. The 12-term Texas congressman ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket back in 1988 and was widely seen as a sideshow in 2008, despite finishing third in the GOP field behind John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Why, despite a small but devoted set of supporters, does this 76-year-old obstetrician turned politician routinely get no respect from the media and GOP operatives? Let’s take a look at what “Dr. No” — a nickname grounded in his medical career and his penchant for voting against any bill increasing the size of government — really stands for.

1. Ron Paul is not a “top-tier” candidate.

At some point in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, the mainstream media became more obsessed than usual with designating GOP hopefuls as “top-tier” candidates, meaning “people we want to talk about because we find them interesting or funny or scary.” Or more plainly: “anybody but Ron Paul.”

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has been accorded top-tier status from the start, but otherwise it’s been a rogues’ gallery. As their numbers soared, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and pizza magnate Herman Cain enjoyed stints in the top tier, and former House speaker Newt Gingrich is now ensconced in that blessed circle.

Back in August, Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) was designated “top tier” after winning Iowa’s Ames Straw Poll.Paul was not, despite losing to her by only about 150 votes. And when Paul won the presidential straw poll of about 2,000 attendees at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit in Washington in October, the contest’s organizer pronounced him “an outlier in this poll.”

Barack Obama and Teddy Roosevelt: the economic parallels

Filed under: Economics, History, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:12

Jim Powell looks more deeply at the similarities between Barack Obama and Theodore Roosevelt:

President Obama is a smart man who believes great wealth is a social problem, and ordinary people would be better off if wealth were substantially taxed away. Recently he drew inspiration from Theodore Roosevelt, another smart man who had a similar view, completely misinterpreted what was happening in the economy, and actively disrupted it.

Theodore Roosevelt was the man who, in 1906, encouraged progressives to promote a federal income tax after it was struck down by the Supreme Court and given up for dead. He declared that “too much cannot be said against the men of great wealth.” He vowed to “punish certain malefactors of great wealth.”

Perhaps TR’s view was rooted in an earlier era when the greatest fortunes were made by providing luxuries for kings, like fine furniture, tapestries, porcelains and works of silver, gold and jewels. Since the rise of industrial capitalism, however, the greatest fortunes generally have been made by serving millions of ordinary people. One thinks of the Wrigley chewing gum fortune, the Heinz pickle fortune, the Havemeyer sugar fortune, the Shields shaving cream fortune, the Colgate toothpaste fortune, the Ford automobile fortune and, more recently, the Jobs Apple fortune. TR inherited money from his family’s glass-importing and banking businesses, and maybe his hostility to capitalist wealth was driven by guilt.

Like Obama, TR was a passionate believer in big government — actually the first president to promote it since the Civil War. He said, “I believe in power … I did greatly broaden the use of executive power … The biggest matters I managed without consultation with anyone, for when a matter is of capital importance, it is well to have it handled by one man only … I don’t think that any harm comes from the concentration of power in one man’s hands.”

“Green is the easiest virtue”

Filed under: Cancon, Environment, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:00

Rex Murphy looks at how what he calls Dalton McGuinty’s “reasonably competent government” could fall for the snake oil salesmen of every shabby Green initiative going:

The Ontario government, and Premier McGuinty in particular, gave themselves over to this madness, becoming overzealous crusaders, because the cause was green. And, sadly, there seems to be no other area of public policy in which fitful enthusiasms, pie-in-the-sky thinking, under-researched proposals and the mere hint of possible benefit get so respectful a response and are shielded — almost as if by magic — from the criticisms and analysis that would greet proposals from any other policy area whatsoever. Call it green and every other consideration goes out the window. Start phantom carbon markets, subsidize a Solyndra, put gardens on roofs . . . green will rationalize every cost and subdue every sane objection.

For example: During the early day’s of McGuinty’s determination to “make Ontario a world leader in green technology,” it was interesting to watch him and his government studiously ignore the articulate criticisms and protests from some Ontario landowners. Now any other project inspiring such protests would naturally instigate the usual relentless series of environmental studies that have become so common in our time. But — windmills being “green initiatives” — naturally it was the reverse. The landowners who protested were pilloried as being the worst of the NIMBY crowd, just selfish types safeguarding their little nooks against the common green future.

Green is the easiest virtue. All it takes in most cases for politicians is simply to say the word often enough and whatever they propose — for a time — gets a pass. Who would question McGuinty against those “selfish” landowners. Wasn’t Dalton moving towards a greener world? Enough then. No studies required. No review of the windmills (until election time, that is, when suddenly Ontario voters were told, in effect, the science “wasn’t in” on what secondary effects windmills might have). Question the contracts for solar power? Impossible. Solar power is “clean.”

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