Quotulatiousness

October 26, 2022

You apparently only need to worry about inflation if you’re one of the “little people”

Filed under: Economics, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Tom Knighton was angered by a recent comment from a well-to-do type who is frustrated at all the “needless” worry about inflation when there are “bigger concerns” in play:

I really don’t like talking about my personal life too much, but I kind of feel like I have to. It started a couple of days when Never Trumper Tom Nichols tweeted this:

Frankly, I’m still pissed about it three days later.

You see, it must be nice for Nichols to view this as a problem of perspective, that people just aren’t seeing the forest for the trees because gas is a tad high.

I can’t be one of those people.

For the record, I think of myself as a working-class writer. I don’t make those six-figure salaries and socialize with the elite at cocktail parties. I make enough to support my family of four in what many could generously term a modest lifestyle.

And I’m OK with that. While I want more, I love the fact that my work life is what it is and I have tons more freedom to do what I want throughout the day.

These days, though, things are different.

You see, while Nichols pretends it’s just people a little grumpy about gas prices, I see the harsh reality that people like him never will.

I’m the guy looking at the time before the next paycheck and realizing that we might not have food in the house for a day or two. I’m the one trying to decide how to stretch the last $40 in our bank account to cover those couple of days and praying it will. I’m also the one who knows that two years ago, this wasn’t a problem.

Hell, a year ago, it wasn’t an issue.

And I don’t make awful money, all things considered. I can only imagine what it’s like for those whose families don’t bring in what I normally make.

For Nichols to get worked up because people don’t see any existential crisis but do see the harsh reality slapping them in the face day in, day out sounds an awful lot like “Let them eat cake” to me.

Unfortunately, that’s what folks like Nichols think.

Nichols, who seems to believe in expertise based on his previous work, is talking about stuff he knows nothing about, things he lacks the expertise to comprehend.

The current inflation isn’t just some mild inconvenience. It’s not one of those things where we all can just shrug and push through until better times. It’s real and it’s here and it’s hurting people like me.

That gives me a certain amount of expertise because this is my life and my livelihood. This is how my family suffers.

I’m very much with him on this, as rising inflation is already a pretty big concern for us and it doesn’t look like it’ll get better any time soon.

Sin Eaters & Funeral Biscuits

Filed under: Britain, Food, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 25 Oct 2022
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When mere accusation functions as a “guilty” verdict

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Sports — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I don’t follow hockey at all, so I hadn’t heard anything about the case of Jake Virtanen and the Vancouver Canucks after Virtanen was accused (but found not guilty) of sexual assault. Janice Fiamengo provides an outline of the case:

NHL forward Jake Virtanen’s once-promising career with the Vancouver Canucks was torpedoed by a rape allegation, and even after he was acquitted in a court of law, detractors have demanded he be shunned as a sexual predator.

In the summer of 2021, Virtanen was first suspended and then bought out by the Canucks after a woman alleged that he had sexually assaulted her in his hotel room in September of 2017. The woman had accompanied Virtanen to his room after a night of partying. She claimed that after she repeatedly refused his sexual overtures, he forced himself on her; Virtanen said the sex had been consensual.

The fact that the complainant stayed the night with her alleged rapist and then waited nearly four years to tell anyone or report to police may have played a role in the jury’s decision, in July of 2022, to find Virtanen not guilty. It was a He said/She said story that simply did not prove guilt.

Feminist advocates, however, couldn’t care less about the verdict, and many hockey commentators seem to feel the same way.

Mary Jane James, CEO of the Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton, was adamant in interview with Canada’s state broadcaster that the allegation mattered far more than the verdict, and that no team in the NHL should touch Virtanen. Referring to the decision by the Edmonton Oilers to sign Virtanen to a 2-month tryout last month, James accused Oilers’ leadership of “taking the verdict at face value, regardless of what the allegations were”. It didn’t seem to matter to James that our entire justice system relies on the acceptance of verdicts over unproven allegations.

In James’ expressed opinion, any man accused of a “very, very serious” sexual crime (and what sexual crime would she not consider serious?) should be presumed guilty. Hockey teams, she insisted, need to send a message that “We are not going to associate with anyone who has this history” (i.e., of being accused).

It is an extraordinarily crude statement of contempt for the cherished principles of western jurisprudence — and would presumably not apply to Mary James herself if she were ever tried and acquitted — but it corresponds fairly closely with the thrust of recent feminist activism: Accused men should be made pariahs, and so should anyone who refuses to participate in their shunning.

Four Myths About Construction Debunked

Filed under: Business, Economics, History, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Practical Engineering
Published 21 Jun 2022
Let’s set the record straight for a few construction misconceptions!

Errata: The shot at 4:16 is of the Greek Acropolis (not a Roman structure).

Over the past 6 years of reading emails and comments from people who watch Practical Engineering, I know that parts of heavy construction are consistently misunderstood. So, I pulled together a short list of the most common misconceptions. Hope you don’t mind just a little bit of ranting from me 😉
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QotD: Protectionism forces buyers to take worse deals

Filed under: Business, Economics, Government, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

No law or legislation prevents businesses from demanding, as a term of their selling outputs to consumers, that consumers continue to patronize these same businesses for a minimum number of years – or, indeed, until death (or bankruptcy) do them part. No law or legislation prevents workers from demanding, as a term of their agreeing to work for employers, that employers continue to employ these same workers for a minimum number of years – or, indeed, until death (or bankruptcy) do them part.

[…] too often when buyers shift some of their patronage from domestic producers to foreign producers, domestic producers – both firm owners and workers – insist that the state is morally obliged to force buyers to continue to purchase their products and their labor without any reduction in the prices and wages charged by sellers. These producers greedily and falsely insist that it’s bad policy for the state to allow buyers to shift their patronage to other sellers. Because those other sellers happen to be located abroad – or in the case of immigrants happen not to have passports issued by the domestic sovereign – such greedy and false insistence by domestic producers and workers is remarkably seen as legitimate, despite the fact that there’s nothing remotely legitimate about such insistence.

Tariffs and other forms of “protectionism” are means of forcing buyers to act and to pay as if they agreed to terms of contracts with sellers that these buyers never agreed to and that the sellers who benefit from the protectionism were unwilling to pay for in their contractual dealings with their customers.

Protectionism is akin to changing the rules of a game in the middle of a game. It’s unfair. It’s unproductive. It’s theft wrapped in flags, and too-often faux-sanctified by specious theorizing.

Don Boudreaux, “Protectionism Is a Means of Stealing That Which Suppliers Are Unwilling to Purchase”, Café Hayek, 2016-09-10.

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