Quotulatiousness

January 6, 2021

The Use and Abuse of the US Postal System (feat. Mr. Beat)

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Government, History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Cynical Historian
Published 10 Oct 2020

Thanks to Private Internet Access for sponsoring this video. Click here to get 77% off and 3-months free: http://www.privateinternetaccess.com/…

We’ve been seeing a lot of coverage about the post office here in the United States. A lot of folks talk about the history of it, but generally in a piecemeal fashion. The fact most of this commentary lacks is that the post office has always been a political tool, from its beginnings even before the US Constitution. Interestingly enough, what it has been used for over the years has changed substantially, but it is always a harbinger of the up and coming dominant ideology. The post office is a cornerstone of our democracy. The postal system in the United States is uniquely important.

Check out Mr. Beat’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=favVdKa6cRQ
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Connected videos:
3:30 – 1776 | Based on a True Story: https://youtu.be/xY4Te8Qm07A
9:15 – What caused the Mexican-American thing? https://youtu.be/HTmSN4Exci0
9:15 – What Caused the Texas Revolution? https://youtu.be/lDWH-DC74Pk
9:25 – California Gold Rush: https://youtu.be/W1dmyx6LBKA
9:30 – History of California: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
11:30 – The Sectional Crisis: https://youtu.be/Ff2AKILyi0o
14:05 – History of Voting by Mail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=favVd…
18:25 – Trains and Oil in California: https://youtu.be/0Ef0Ir-hbFc
18:30 – The History of Early Flight: https://youtu.be/sPgxuD0uYYE
20:35 – US Veterans History: https://youtu.be/ANUqaNykuRs
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references:
The United States Postal Service: An American History (Washington, DC: United States Postal Service, 2020). https://about.usps.com/publications/p… [PDF]

USPS’s website has a trove of information on their history: https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/pos…
The national postal museum is run by the Smithsonian and includes numerous research articles available to anyone on their website: https://postalmuseum.si.edu/research-…

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/hi…

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Wiki: The United States Postal Service (USPS; also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service) is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the United States, including its insular areas and associated states. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution.

The USPS traces its roots to 1775 during the Second Continental Congress, when Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general. The Post Office Department was created in 1792 with the passage of the Postal Service Act. It was elevated to a cabinet-level department in 1872, and was transformed by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 into the United States Postal Service as an independent agency. Since the early 1980s, many direct tax subsidies to the USPS (with the exception of subsidies for costs associated with disabled and overseas voters) have been reduced or eliminated.
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Hashtags: #history #USPS #USMail

January 5, 2021

QotD: Tax “loopholes”

Filed under: Business, Government, Law, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… “loopholes” is a term most often used by people who don’t understand accounting or tax law, to complain about how somebody else used the existing laws created by congress to pay less than what that person thinks is “fair.” Regular people have heard the bullshit term loopholes tossed around so much that they start to believe that it is some magical easy button that rich guys can just push that makes it so they don’t have to pay taxes.

Nope. They’re just laws. These “loopholes” exist because at some point in time congress (both democrat and republican both!) decided that they wanted to promote some type of behavior or discourage some other behavior. So they basically put a reward into the law saying if you do this thing we like, you’ll pay less taxes! Or the opposite, congress wanted to discourage some behavior, so if you do that thing we don’t want, it will cost you more.

Both sides have done this forever, state and federal. We want you to drive electric cars so if you buy an electric car you get a tax break this year. YAY! Uh oh, we want you to stimulate the economy by buying this kind of machinery faster, so you have to depreciate your assets this other way or you’ll pay more! BOO! You get a discount for paying your employees health insurance, YAY! Oh, wait … Not that kind of health insurance. BOO!

So on and so forth, up and down, these perks come and go, all based upon whatever behavior congress is trying to promote at that time (or what favors they are doing for their friends). Why was mortgage interest deductible? Because at one point congress said “we really want people to own houses!” Even regular people have things that are considered “loopholes” to somebody.

So when the blue check mark journalism major (who probably dropped out of PoliSci because “there’s too much math”) declares that it is immoral that some rich dude didn’t pay his fair share because he used loopholes, those are basically a bunch of meaningless buzz words strung together to prey on the feelings of the gullible.

Larry Correia, “No, You Idiots. That’s Not How Taxes Work – An Accountant’s Guide To Why You Are A Gullible Moron”, Monster Hunter Nation, 2020-09-28.

January 1, 2021

QotD: Buying “organic” food

Filed under: Business, Economics, Environment, Food, Health, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… every time I buy “organic”, I feel like I’m sending a reinforcement to several different forms of vicious stupidity, beginning with the term “organic” itself. Duh! Actually, all food is “organic”; the term just means “chemistry based on carbon chains”.

Take “no GMOs” for starters. That’s nonsense; it’s barely even possible. Humans have been genetically modifying since the invention of stockbreeding and agriculture; it’s what we do, and hatred of the accelerated version done in a genomics lab is pure Luddism. It’s vicious nonsense, too; poor third-worlders have already starved because their governments refused food aid that might contain GMOs. And without GMOs it’s more than possible that the new wave of wheat rust, once it really gets going, might condemn billions to death.

Vegan? I’ve long since had it up to here with the tissue of ignorance and sanctimony that is evangelical veganism. Comparing our dentition and digestive tracts with those of cows, chimps, gorillas, and bears tells the story: humans are designed to be unspecialized omnivores, and the whole notion that vegetarianism is “natural” is so much piffle. It’s not even possible except at the near end of 4000 years of GMOing staple crops for higher calorie density, and even now you can’t be a vegan in a really cold climate (like, say, Tibet) because it’ll kill you. In warmer ones, you better be taking carnitine and half a dozen vitamins or you’re going to have micronutrient issues sneak up on you over a period of years.

OK, I give on gluten-free. Some people do have celiac disease; that’s a real need. But “no trans fat”? Pure faddery, or the next thing to it. The evidence indicting trans fats is extremely slim and surrounded by a cloud of food-nannyist hype. I hate helping to keep that sort of balloon inflated with my dollars.

Who could be against “fair trade”? Well, me … because the “fair trade” crowd pressures individual growers to join collectives with “managed” pricing. If you’re betting that this means lazy but politically adept growers with poor resource management and productivity prosper at the expense of more efficient and harder-working ones, you’ve broken the code.

Finally, “pesticide-free”. Do I like toxic chemicals on my food? No … but I also don’t fool myself about what happens when you don’t use them. This ties straight back to the general cluster of issues around factory farming. Without the productivity advantages of pesticides, synthetic fertilizer, and other non-“organic” methods, farm productivity would plummet. Relatively wealthy people like me would cope with reduced availability by paying higher prices, but huge numbers of the world’s poor would starve.

I buy “organic” food because it tastes better and I can, but I feel guilty about reinforcing all the kinds of delusion and superstition and viciousness that are tied up in that label. We simply cannot feed a world population of 6.6 billion without pesticides and factory farming and GMOs and preservatives in most bread; now, and probably forever, “organic” food will remain a luxury good.

Try telling its political partisans that, though. Hyped on their belief in their own virtue, and blissfully ignorant about scale problems, they have already engineered policies that have cost thousands of lives during spot famines. The potential death toll from (especially) anti-GMO policies is three orders of magnitude higher.

And my problem reduces to this: how can I buy the kind of food I want without supporting dangerous delusions?

Eric S. Raymond, “Organic guilt”, Armed and Dangerous, 2010-08-23.

December 29, 2020

The Economics of Wine (Orley Ashenfelter, Princeton)

Filed under: Business, Economics, France, USA, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Marginal Revolution University
Published 30 Sep 2020

What does an economist know about wine? Given that many wines need years to mature, how can one predict which ones will be great or not?

Princeton’s Orley Ashenfelter explains how he used economic principles and regression analysis to predict wine quality (and score great deals!). His research helped spawn an entire field dedicated to the economics of wine.

This video is based on the following paper:

Predicting the Quality and Prices of Bordeaux Wines By Orley Ashenfelter
https://www.researchgate.net/publicat…

More of Orley Ashenfelter’s work: https://irs.princeton.edu/people/orle…

Orley Ashenfelter’s vineyard: https://cedarrosevineyards.com/

Want to see more Economists in the Wild? Check out our series: https://mru.io/economists-wild-67905

December 26, 2020

The Matchbox Car Story

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

Little Car
Published 27 Jan 2020

Matchbox is a popular British toy brand which was introduced by Lesney Products in 1953, and is now owned by Mattel, Inc. The brand was given its name because the original die-cast Matchbox toys were sold in boxes similar to those in which matches were sold. The brand grew to encompass a broad range of toys, including larger scale die-cast models, plastic model kits, and action figures.

During the 1980s, Matchbox began to switch to the more conventional plastic and cardboard “blister packs” that were used by other die-cast toy brands such as Hot Wheels. The box style packaging was re-introduced for the collectors’ market in recent years, particularly with the release of the “35th Anniversary of Superfast” series in 2004.

The script for this video comes from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbo…

If you find issues with the content, I encourage you to update the Wikipedia article, so everyone can benefit from your knowledge.

If you like these video and want to support me from just $1 or 80p a month at https://www.patreon.com/bigcar

#matchboxcars

December 23, 2020

No, Console Scalpers Aren’t Ruining Christmas

Filed under: Business, Economics, Gaming, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Foundation for Economic Education
Published 22 Dec 2020

Support Out of Frame on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OutofFrameShow

Check out our podcast, Out of Frame: Behind the Scenes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiS5…

As we enter peak holiday season, most people have their shopping done by now, but as always, many are scrambling last-minute for their purchases. And if you aren’t one of those early-birds fortunate enough to procure a PS5 or Xbox Series X, you can guarantee that you won’t be able to find one unless you’re willing to pay $1,200 to a scalper.

Many are understandably frustrated. How is it fair for people to buy up the consoles at $500 and sell for nearly double or triple the cost? “There ought to be a law” against that kind of thing — right?

Well, in short, there’s nothing wrong with scalping — and a few economic lessons will help explain why.

Scarcity is real and so is time-preference. Scalpers (and even bots) show that demand for some goods is so high that people are willing to pay several times the list price — which could provide a lot of information to Sony and Microsoft on how many consoles to produce and in what parts of the world. They could factor that information into the future, so there would be less problems with availability, but most retailers make this information exchange impossible.

______________________________
CREDITS:

Produced by Sean W. Malone
Written by Jen Maffessanti & Sean W. Malone
Edited by Paul Nelson
Asst. Edited by Jason Reinhardt

Repost – “Merry Christmas” versus “Happy Holidays” versus “Happy Midwinter Break”

Filed under: Business, Government, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

L. Neil Smith on the joy-sucking use of terms like “Happy Midwinter Break” to avoid antagonizing the non-religious among us at this time of year:

Original infographic from Treetopia – https://www.treetopia.com/Merry-Christmas-vs-Happy-Holidays-a/304.htm

Conservatives have long whimpered about corporate and government policies forbidding employees who make contact with the public to wish said members “Merry Christmas!” at the appropriate time of the year, out of a moronic and purely irrational fear of offending members of the public who don’t happen to be Christian, but are Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, Rastafarian, Ba’hai, Cthuluites, Wiccans, worshippers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or None of the Above. The politically correct benediction, these employees are instructed, is “Happy Holidays”.

Feh.

As a lifelong atheist, I never take “Merry Christmas” as anything but a cheerful and sincere desire to share the spirit of the happiest time of the year. I enjoy Christmas as the ultimate capitalist celebration. It’s a multiple-usage occasion and has been so since the dawn of history. I wish them “Merry Christmas” right back, and I mean it.

Unless I wish them a “Happy Zagmuk”, sharing the oldest midwinter festival in our culture I can find any trace of. It’s Babylonian, and celebrates the victory of the god-king Marduk over the forces of Chaos.

But as anybody with the merest understanding of history and human nature could have predicted, if you give the Political Correctness Zombies (Good King Marduk needs to get back to work again) an Angstrom unit, they’ll demand a parsec. It now appears that for the past couple of years, as soon as the Merry Christmases and Happy Holidayses start getting slung around, a certain professor (not of Liberal Arts, so he should know better) at a nearby university (to remain unnamed) sends out what he hopes are intimidating e-mails, scolding careless well-wishers, and asserting that these are not holidays (“holy days”) to everyone, and that the only politically acceptable greeting is “Happy Midwinter Break”. He signs this exercise in stupidity “A Jewish Faculty Member”.

Double feh.

Two responses come immediately to mind, both of them derived from good, basic Anglo-Saxon, which is not originally a Christian language. As soon as the almost overwhelming temptation to use them has been successfully resisted, there are some other matters for profound consideration…

December 21, 2020

Horrible Christmas music in retail stores – X-mas Music

Filed under: Business, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Viva La Dirt League
Published 14 Dec 2020

Rowan thinks its a good idea to play X-mas music in the store for the entire Christmas period … and the staff aren’t happy

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https://www.twitch.tv/team/vldl

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Merchandise: https://bit.ly/2DQm3GX
Songs: https://bit.ly/2OBeB4O

BUSINESS ENQUIRIES – vivaladirtleague@gmail.com

Postal Address:
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NEW ZEALAND

December 17, 2020

Henry Ford and the Mass Marketing of Hatred | BETWEEN 2 WARS: ZEITGEIST! | E.07 – Spring 1920

Filed under: Business, History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 16 Dec 2020

Racist conspiracies are on the rise in America. But other hysterias are also lessening. Will there be a return to normalcy?

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Image Research by: Daniel Weiss
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Colorizations:
Daniel Weiss – https://www.facebook.com/TheYankeeCol…
Spartacus Olsson
Mikolaj Uchman

Sources:
Some images from the Library of Congress
Portrait from Bibliotheque Nationale Francaise

From the Noun Project:
– agreement by Vectors Point
– film camera by Chanut is Industries, TH
– cowboy man by Adrien Coquet
– Protest by Juan Pablo Bravo
– Immigrants by Luis Prado
– pair figure skating by Andrei Yushchenko
– singles figure skating by Andrei Yushchenko
– Letter by Mochammad Kafi
– speech by Juan Pablo Bravo, CL
– universe by Icongeek26
– Arrow by IconTrack
– Galaxy By Victoruler

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound
– One More for the Road – Golden Age Radio
– “First Responders” – Skrya
– “Guilty Shadows 4” – Andreas Jamsheree
– “Slow Discovery” – Cobby Costa
– “Try and Catch Us Now” – David Celeste
– “The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Deviation In Time” – Johannes Bornlof
– “Disciples of Sun Tzu” – Christian Andersen

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

December 14, 2020

QotD: Goodhart’s law

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

This is why planning an economy simply doesn’t work. Issue targets that must be hit and people game the system to hit the targets without actually doing the desired underlying thing. Or, as it is formally constituted:

    Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.

Or as it has been reformulated:

    Goodhart’s law is an adage named after economist Charles Goodhart, which has been phrased by Marilyn Strathern as: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” One way in which this can occur is individuals trying to anticipate the effect of a policy and then taking actions which alter its outcome.

Set a target for tonnes of shoes and you get one tonne shoes. Set a target for 100 shoes and you get 100 left feet. Set a target for being on time and people fiddle their definition of time.

It is, by the way, entirely fine to insist that airlines play fair with telling us how long a flight will take. You said it will take 4 hours, then 4 hours should be about the time it takes. Yes, sure, we understand, airports, crowded places. Idiot passengers forget to board, luggage must be taken off. Winds vary, thunderstorms happen, French air traffic controllers actually turn up to work today, their one day in seven. Sure, there’re lots of variables. But if you say it’s about four hours then it should be about four hours. Great.

But to complain that they pad their number a bit is ludicrous. We’re holding their feet to the fire, insisting that an underestimate will lead to financial costs. Thus, obviously, they will overestimate. That’s not really even Goodhart’s Law, that’s just human beings. But then, as we know, those who would plan everything don’t deal well with the existence of people, do they?

Tim Worstall, “Goodhart’s Law Applies To Economies, To Everything – Why Not Scheduled Airline Flight Times?”, Continental Telegraph, 2018-08-27.

December 12, 2020

Trains and Oil | California History [ep.8]

Filed under: Business, Economics, Government, History, Politics, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Cynical Historian
Published 4 Jul 2019

After a long hiatus, here is the return of the History of California series. For those who haven’t seen the previous episodes, here’s the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

Today we’re going over the history of transcontinental railroads, monopolistic practices, and crude oil production in California.
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references:
eds. Richard Francaviglia and David Narrett, Essays on the Changing Images of the Southwest (Arlington: University of Texas at Arlington, 1994). https://amzn.to/2JwNiHk

William H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 1803-1863, new ed. (1959; Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1979). https://amzn.to/2K8tslY

Paul Sabin, Crude Politics: The California Oil Market, 1900-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). https://amzn.to/2W16gtt

Jules Tygiel, The Great Los Angeles Swindle: Oil, Stocks, and Scandal During the Roaring Twenties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). https://amzn.to/2ASH7Z0

Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011). https://amzn.to/2zkURO3
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Wiki: The history of the Southern Pacific stretches from 1865 to 1998. For the main page, see Southern Pacific Transportation Company; for the former holding company, see Southern Pacific Rail Corporation. The Southern Pacific was represented by three railroads. The original company was called Southern Pacific Railroad, the second was called Southern Pacific Company and the third was called Southern Pacific Transportation Company. The third Southern Pacific railroad, the Southern Pacific Transportation Company, is now operating as the current incarnation of the Union Pacific Railroad.

The story of oil production in California began in the late 19th century. In 1903, California became the leading oil-producing state in the US, and traded the number one position back-and forth with Oklahoma through the year 1930. As of 2012, California was the nation’s third most prolific oil-producing state, behind only Texas and North Dakota. In the past century, California’s oil industry grew to become the state’s number one GDP export and one of the most profitable industries in the region. The history of oil in the state of California, however, dates back much earlier than the 19th century. For thousands of years prior to European settlement in America, Native Americans in the California territory excavated oil seeps. By the mid-19th century, American geologists discovered the vast oil reserves in California and began mass drilling in the Western Territory. While California’s production of excavated oil increased significantly during the early 20th century, the accelerated drilling resulted in an overproduction of the commodity, and the federal government unsuccessfully made several attempts to regulate the oil market.
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Hashtags: #history #California #trains #oil

December 9, 2020

The late steam-era boxcar and (a brief) flourish of colour

Filed under: Business, History, Railways, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In his Trains blog, George Hamlin discusses the changing colours of the ordinary railway boxcar in the brief era between post-war prosperity and the economic disasters of the 1960s and 70s:

Pre-war Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic boxcar number 18052 at the Mid-Continent Railway Museum.
Photo by Sean Lamb via Wikimedia Commons.

The advent of streamlining in the 1930s started to blow historic convention with regard to car colors away on the passenger side of railroading, but had little impact on freight operations prior to World War II. Following that conflict, however, some of the industry began to consider livening up the equipment that produced much of the revenue (and most of the profits) from which they derived their economic existence.

Some railroads also adopted more colorful boxcar paint schemes to promote special aspects of their freight service: the B&O had special schemes for both their “Sentinel” and “Timesaver” services; another example was the Missouri Pacific’s blue and gray (the road’s modern-day passenger colors) for their Eagle Merchandise Service. The Bangor & Aroostook had boxcars with red, white and blue horizontal stripes advertising products emanating from their home state, Maine.

Bangor and Aroostook boxcar 6375 in “State of Maine” paint scheme.
Image originally from Panoramio, but no user information provided.

Another example was the large fleet of New York Central’s “Pacemaker” boxcars, adorned in a combination of bright red and gray. Early on, the NYC even ran solid trains of this equipment in an expedited service which was designed to re-capture LCL (less than carload lot) traffic from the increasingly competitive motor trucking industry. (Interestingly, the NYC also had a color they called “Pacemaker Green” that was used for the pre-World War II all-coach New York-Chicago service, as well as on the road’s initial orders of non-stainless steel streamlined coaches.)

In the late 1950s, the Central introduced a more radical change, and began painting its boxcars in a Jade Green color (“Century Green”, according to the railroad) that was quite a dramatic change from boxcar red. The Great Northern also adopted a similar shade. CB&Q boxcars still had the same basic hue, but now they came in a brighter version dubbed “Chinese Red”.

By the 1960s, a number of roads had livened up their freight car liveries; the modestly-sized Reading utilized bright green and beige/yellow for both freight cars and locomotives. Late in its career as an independent railroad, the Great Northern adopted the striking bright “Big Sky Blue” for both passenger and freight cars. At its formation in 1976, Conrail adopted “traditional red oxide” as its choice for freight cars, however, sticking with tradition (and reversing the NYC’s earlier efforts).

Great Northern boxcar 138660 in the “Big Sky Blue” paint scheme, delivered September 1967.
Photo by David Pride http://www.davidpride.com/USA/Minnesota/Osceola_11_007.htm

December 1, 2020

QotD: Elon Musk as a real life Delos D. Harriman

Filed under: Books, Business, Quotations, Space, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The “key story” [in Robert Heinlein’s “Future History” stories] I just mentioned is called “The Man Who Sold The Moon.” And if you’re one of the people who has been polarized by the promotional legerdemain of Elon Musk — whether you have been antagonized into loathing him, or lured into his explorer-hero cult — you probably need to make a special point of reading that story.

The shock of recognition will, I promise, flip your lid. The story is, inarguably, Musk’s playbook. Its protagonist, the idealistic business tycoon D.D. Harriman, is what Musk sees when he looks in the mirror.

“The Man Who Sold The Moon” is the story of how Harriman makes the first moon landing happen. Engineers and astronauts are present as peripheral characters, but it is a business romance. Harriman is a sophisticated sort of “Mary Sue” — an older chap whose backstory encompasses the youthful interests of the creators of classic pulp science fiction, but who is given a great fortune, built on terrestrial transport and housing, for the purposes of the story.

Our hero has no interest in the money for its own sake: in late life he liquidates to fund a moon rocket, intending to take the first trip himself, because he is convinced the future of humanity depends on extraterrestrial expansion of the human species. (Also, the guy just really loves the moon.)

The actual stuff of the story consists of the financial and promotional chicanery that Harriman uses to leverage his personal investment. Harriman uses sharp dealing with governments, broadcasters, political groups: he plants fake news about diamonds on the moon to blackmail (a disguised version of) the de Beers cartel, and terrorizes companies with the threat of using the moon to advertise for competitors. He is, in short, not afraid to use questionable means to achieve a worthwhile higher end, and does not — Musk haters take note! — recoil from actual fraud.

Heinlein didn’t provide for live broadcasting of his imagined lunar mission, which is almost an afterthought in his Great Man business yarn. TV cameras were, like computers, one of his blind spots. But if he had thought to make Harriman the owner of a fancy-sportscar manufacturing concern, and if he had thought to have Harriman put a car in solar (trans-Martian!) orbit as one of his publicity stunts, that would have been there in “The Man Who Sold The Moon.” Selling the moon is just what Musk is doing. Except the moon is a tad worked-over as a piece of intangible property, so we get Mars instead.

Colby Cosh, “Heinlein’s monster? The literary key to Elon Musk’s sales technique”, National Post, 2018-02-12.

November 29, 2020

QotD: The succession problem of totalitarian leadership

Filed under: Business, Economics, History, Quotations, Russia — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Back in the Cold War, prudent Kremlinologists had to take the marked decline in the Politburo’s collective intelligence very seriously indeed (the old adage “never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity” is terrifying when the potentially malicious dumbasses have nuclear missiles).

There were two main reasons for the decline, both structural. The first, of course, is Communism itself. A totally ideologized society is a society totally committed to make-believe. You could fill a good-sized book listing the catastrophes make-believe caused the USSR. Just to take the most obvious: Hitler did everything but send the Goodyear Blimp over Moscow, towing a banner announcing his invasion plans. But since everyone who accurately reported the goings-on in Poland ended up in the Gulag, the Wehrmacht walked right on in.

The second has to do with the nature of totalitarian leadership. Obviously sharing power is out of the question, so every Boss who finally claws his way to the top ruthlessly purges everyone who could conceivably challenge him. The purged are replaced by yes-men and toadies, who immediately enact mini-purges of their own inside their new departments. It doesn’t take more than a few rounds of this for smarter functionaries to learn to dig themselves in very, very deep, disguising themselves in a kind of protective stupidity. A few more rounds, and “protective stupidity” drops the modifier, as anyone with anything on the ball has decamped for the safer — and, not coincidentally, very soon much more profitable — havens of technical management.

It doesn’t take long before your “leadership” is nothing but ideology-addled dimbulbs. Sound familiar?

Severian, “How Dumb Are Liberals?”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-07-31.

November 28, 2020

Showdown at the O.K. BBQ joint

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Health, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Toronto police reacted with overwhelming force to a rebellion centred on a small business in Etobicoke, intending to overawe any more potential lockdown opponents on Thursday. Jay Currie is of the “worse before better” school on this particular flare-up of public sentiment:

Well over 100 Toronto police officers and at least ten horses shut down Adamson’s BBQ today. They arrested the proprietor for “trespass” on his own property.

His sin was, of course, opening when Toronto is under “lockdown”. And then opening again and then, today, getting around the changed locks on his premises and opening again.

Now there will be plenty of people who will say, “Well, it’s the law and necessary if we are going to ‘stop the spread'”. But I suspect there will be a strong minority who will say, “Lockdowns don’t work and Costco is in full operation a block away.” Have at it, my interest is in the show of force.

For the City of Toronto and the Province of Ontario, Adamson’s was a point of rebellion which had to be crushed. At any cost. If Adamson’s was able to open the entire pandemic lockdown regime would collapse. So out came 100+ cops and the horses. (I was surprised there was not a tactical vehicle or two.)

Given that there were all of about a hundred people at the BBQ spot today this was more than sufficient force to ensure Adamson’s would not be able to open. No doubt Mayor Tory and Premier Ford are pretty sure the job is done. Adam Skelly, the owner, is cooling his heels in custody pending a bail hearing. (If that hearing goes as I expect, there will be compliance conditions attached to his bail, namely no re-opening.)

Big government relies upon the general complacency of its citizens. A couple of hundred people showing up to a BBQ joint can be handled with a large police presence. A couple of thousand? Much more difficult. 20,000, not a chance.

I keep saying to my very worried wife, “Worse before better.” Which means that before there is any chance that reason, moderation and good government is restored, things have to get a lot worse. On the left, groups like BLM and Antifa work very hard to create martyrs for their narrative. So far with limited success. Adam Skelly may have set in motion the process which will make him a living martyr for common sense and a degree of justice.

As of Friday morning the GoFundMe campaign for Skelly had reached $130,000 (I’m expecting it to be shut down for “reasons” any time soon … but it was still online and accepting donations when I checked at 10am).

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