Quotulatiousness

February 22, 2021

Australia experiments with social distancing from social media

Filed under: Australia, Government, Media, Politics, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Arthur Chrenkoff is mildly surprised to find that the Leviathan of social media — Facebook — considers his personal account to be a publisher for Australian ban purposes:

As of this morning, Australian media outlets – as well as government agencies – are not able to post anything on Facebook, and their articles and stories cannot be shared by anyone in the world using Mark Zuckerberg’s now somewhat anti-social network. This is Facebook’s retaliation for a law being introduced by the Australian government that would have companies like Facebook and Google pay Australian media outlets for having their content on their sites. Google has in fact just reached a global agreement with News Corp regarding content use, but Facebook is opting for a much more of a FU negotiating approach.

As much as I dislike Big Tech, I have so far been unable to see a good rationale for the new law. While the media keeps complaining that Facebook and Google (in particular) are monopolising the online advertising revenue, links to media stories are to my mind advertisements that drive online users to the source – and to the source’s advertisers. Perhaps it’s the media who should be paying the socials for this publicity. In the end, the war between the Big Tech and the Mainstream Media is one, to borrow from Henry Kissinger, it’s a pity that both sides can’t lose.

Apart from the fact that various health authorities around Australia are now unable to share COVID information on Facebook, the other ironic casualty of the Aust-Zuck spat is yours truly, whom Facebook has kindly deemed to be an Australian publisher, even though The Daily Chrenk media empire consists of a single ageing desktop in an inner Brisbane suburb utilised (all too rarely and irregularly) by yours truly for the love of it with no commercial element whatsoever. And so, the main avenue of promoting my new posts by sharing their links with the 1000-plus good people around the world who follow TDC page on Facebook has been (I hope only temporarily) lost to me. While it’s flattering to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with The Australian, I’m now somewhat confused: should Facebook be paying me when I voluntarily use their site to try to get eyeballs for my work? Thank you, Australian government, for thinking that should be the model.

I think the whole notion of taxing social media sites like Facebook is cracked … which might explain why the Canadian government has legislation in the works to do something similar … and earlier European attempts to extract money from the “tech giants” have always backfired. That said, I think Facebook’s retaliation is ill-advised, being both disproportional and very likely to induce other governments to look into ways to exercise more control over Facebook and other social media platforms. There are likely no winners in this dispute or the future confrontations that this will likely inform.

February 18, 2021

QotD: The “European Project”

Filed under: Europe, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Whatever else the European project was meant to be, it was never meant to be very democratic. Its deus ex machina, Jean Monnet, was quite clear abut this: the plebe was neither intelligent or informed enough to decide its own fate, at least as regards high politics. It would be dishonest to say that such thoughts never run through the heads of the more intelligent sector of the population in respect of the less intelligent; you have only to walk down the street to see that the voice of the people is hardly that of God. How many people, for example, know what the interest rate should be (assuming, that is, that there is a correct answer), or even what factors should be taken into account when assessing it? But few highly intelligent people would put their night thoughts into practice, and simply say, “We should rule because we are the most intelligent and know best.”

Theodore Dalrymple, “European Empire, Fractured”, Law & Liberty, 2020-11-10.

February 16, 2021

Reduce, re-use, recycle … reject

Filed under: China, Economics, Environment, Government, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

John Miltimore rounds up several recent stories about American cities backing away from their elaborate, expensive, and wasteful recycling programs. We’ve had three generations of kids brought up indoctrinated into the belief that recycling was not only a good idea, but that it had almost mystical qualities and that it was essential to “saving the world”. The economic facts strongly contradict that, and have always revealed the inefficiencies and outright waste produced by even the best-run municipal recycling programs.

China, perhaps the largest buyer of US recyclables, stopped accepting them in 2018. Other countries, such as Thailand and India, have increased imports, but not in sufficient tonnage to alleviate the mounting costs cities are facing.

“We are in a crisis moment in the recycling movement right now,” Fiona Ma, the treasurer of California, told the Times.

Cost is the key word. Like any activity or service, recycling is an economic activity. The dirty little secret is that the benefits of recycling have been dubious for some time.

“Recycling has been dysfunctional for a long time,” Mitch Hedlund, executive director of Recycle Across America, told The Times.

[…]

And then there are the energy and resources that go into recycling. How much water do Americans spend annually rinsing items that end up in a landfill? How much fuel is spent deploying fleets of barges and trucks across highways and oceans, carrying tons of garbage to be processed at facilities that belch their own emissions?

The data on this front is thin, and results on the environmental effectiveness of recycling vary based on the material being recycled. Yet all of this presumes the recyclables are not being cleaned and shipped only to be buried in a landfill, like so much of it is today. This, Mises would say, is planned chaos, the inevitable result of central planners making decisions instead of consumers through free markets.

Most market economists, Reed points out, “by nature, philosophy, and experience” a bunch skeptical of centrally planned schemes that supplant choice, were wise to the dynamics of recycling from the beginning.

In a 2004 episode of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit, they discussed recycling:

February 12, 2021

Calls for the federal government’s Broadcasting bill (Bill C-10) to be withdrawn

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Michael Geist updates the situation with the federal government’s attempt to massively rework the Canadian broadcast and internet regulation framework without proper scrutiny or transparency:

I have not been shy about expressing my concerns with the Bill C-10, the Broadcasting Act reform bill. From a 20 part series examining the legislation to two podcasts to a debate with Janet Yale, I have actively engaged on policy concerns involving regulation that extends far beyond the “web giants”, the loss of Canadian sovereignty over broadcast ownership, the threat to Canadian intellectual property, and the uncertainty of leaving many questions to the CRTC to answer. Yet beyond the substance of the bill, in recent days an even more troubling issue has emerged as Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, his Parliamentary Secretary Julie Dabrusin, and the Liberal government abandon longstanding commitments to full consultation, transparency, and parliamentary process.

Last week, I appeared before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage as part of what it is calling a “pre-study” on Bill C-10. In this case, “pre-study” is euphemism for avoiding the conventional parliamentary process. Bill C-10 has not yet passed second reading in the House of Commons and has not been referred to committee for study. There have been extensive debates in the House and last week Conservative MP Michael Kram called for the bill to be withdrawn, noting that politicians could do Canadians a lot of good by “rewriting it from scratch.” That move drew criticism from Guilbeault during an interview at the CMPA Prime Time event, as he called for pressure on the Conservatives to support referring the bill to committee. There are instances of pre-study, but doing so concurrently with second reading makes no sense since a pre-study allows for a wide range of amendments, whereas after second reading the permitted amendments are more limited.

In an earlier era (or with a different government), the prospect of conducting a study of the bill while simultaneously engaging in second reading would garner loud objections. In fact, at the Heritage Committee hearing last week, opposition MPs wondered why they were already being asked for amendments to the bill when they had yet to hear from witnesses, much less conduct an actual study of the bill. Indeed, for a government that once prized itself on robust consultation, it seemingly now wants to avoid any genuine consultation on Bill C-10, content to have potential amendments presented through lobbyists, rather than on the public record in open hearings.

The secrecy does not end there. At the same hearing (I was a witness and waited patiently for these issues to play out), Conservative MPs raised questions about promised data on how the government had arrived at claims that the bill will generate over $800 million in new money. Leaving aside the fact that Guilbeault has often inflated that figure to over $1 billion, there has no public disclosure about the source of this claim. Cartt.ca reports that officials told the committee that the calculations could be “confusing” without a verbal explanation. Days later, Dabrusin told the committee that in fact the data had been provided to the committee late last year but perhaps not distributed to committee members.

When I was questioned by Conservative MP Kevin Waugh during my appearance before the committee, he again raised concerns about the claim. Dabrusin interjected with a point of order to make it clear that the data had been provided to the committee, albeit not distributed to MPs. What made the exchange so striking was that Dabrusin – a parliamentary secretary – seemingly did not give any thought to the fact that the data has not been made publicly available. Promoting long overdue disclosures to a handful of MPs while the public is kept in the dark is hardly the stuff worthy of praise or a point of order.

February 11, 2021

“… the entire Canadian constitution boiled down to the government saying, essentially, ‘trust us'”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Andrew Potter on the interesting and almost certainly unCanadian notion that the Prime Minister actually accept responsibility for things that happen on his watch:

Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien speaking at the “No to the war in Iraq: 10 years later” colloquium, 15 March 2013.
Detail of a photo by Gopmtl1 via Wikimedia Commons.

The late UBC law professor Wesley Pue once remarked that the entire Canadian constitution boiled down to the government saying, essentially, “trust us.” He was speaking in the wake of the release of the Hughes Report into the APEC affair.

A refresher: In 1997 it was Canada’s turn to host the annual APEC summit, a free trade and cooperation gabfest for countries in the Pacific Rim. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien decided to hold the meeting on the campus of UBC. Given that it is probably one of the most gorgeous pieces of real estate in the country, Chrétien probably thought he was being a good host. But some UBC students objected to the presence of Indonesian dictator Suharto at their school, and so they marched, held up signs, blocked campus roads and exits, chanted slogans, the usual student protest stuff.

Chrétien was clearly embarrassed, and orders went out from the PMO to clear the roads. The Mounties started telling students their campus was now a “Charter-free zone,” arresting a bunch of them. In a notorious incident captured by CBC cameras, RCMP Staff Sgt. Hugh Stewart walked amongst the students hosing them down with pepper spray. (Asked about the incident at a press conference, Chrétien made a joke.)

The only proper investigation into the affair was led by commissioner Ted Hughes, who issued his report in the summer of 2001. Hughes found that the RCMP had behaved by turns incompetently and unprofessionally and that they had systematically violated the Charter rights of the students. Further, Hughes found that they had done so under direction from the PMO — in particular at the behest of its director of operations, Jean Carle. While Chrétien himself escaped direct censure (Hughes could find no evidence that Carle had acted on Chrétien’s explicit orders), Pue pointed out that the fundamental principle of responsible government requires that the prime minister accept responsibility for what happened. Yet Chrétien did not. He neither accepted personal responsibility, nor did he throw Carle under the bus. Instead, what happened was typically Canadian: the matter simply went away.

The APEC affair serves as a useful reminder of a fundamental truth about our system of government. As Pue noted, there are virtually no effective parliamentary or legal checks on a prime minister’s authority, and as a result it is pretty much impossible to hold our executive branch to account. We need to just trust them.

[…]

It’s worth rehearsing all of this because we are going through a rather extended “just trust us” phase in Ottawa. After shuttering parliament last spring, ostensibly to focus their energies on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals spent the summer dreaming of “building back better” while fighting a ferocious rearguard action to keep MPs from finding out the truth about payments to Trudeau’s family by a charity. Trudeau has since spent the better part of the last six months governing by press conference from the front steps of his cottage, but even as the extreme levels of federal spending continue, and even as scandals and reports of gross mismanagement pile up, the Liberals have been brazenly testing the waters for a spring election.

February 8, 2021

How did the Holy Roman Empire Work?

Filed under: Europe, Germany, Government, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

History Matters
Published 25 Aug 2019

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tenminhistory
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4973164
Merch: teespring.com/stores/history-matters-…

Special Thanks to the following Patrons for their support on Patreon:

Kevin Sanders
Chris Fatta
Daniel Lambert
Richard Wolfe
Joshua
Tom Loghrin
Warren Rudkin
Andrew Niedbala
Mitchell Wildoer
Blaine Tillack
Bernardo Santos
Matthew
John Garcia
Richard Hartzell
Will Davis-Coleman
Danny Anstess
Henry Rabung
August Block
Perry Gagne
Shaun Pullin
Joooooshhhhh
Vesko Dinev
PaulToon
Kelly Moneymaker
FuzzytheFair
Armani_Banani
Jeffrey Schneider
Byzans_Scotorius
Seth Reeves
Haydn Noble
Josh Cornelius
Gideon Rashkes
Spencer Smith
Cornel Borină
Roberto
Andrew Keeling
Richard Manklow
Chance Cansler
João Santos
Gabriel Lunde
Pierre Le Mouel
anon

How did the Holy Roman Empire work? It was an antiquated mess but it did have a system of government that did work. Sort of. If everyone felt like it.

Sources:

Prussia’s Relations with the Holy Roman Empire, 1740-1786 by Peter H. Wilson.

Benjamin Franklin, Student of the Holy Roman Empire: His Summer Journey to Germany in 1766 and His Interest in the Empire’s Federal Constitution by Jürgen Overhoff.

The Constitution of the Holy Roman Empire after 1648: Samuel Pufendorf’s Assessment in His Monzambano by Peter Schröder.

Bolstering the Prestige of the Habsburgs: The End of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 by Peter H. Wilson.

February 2, 2021

When the self-defined elites achieved class consciousness

Filed under: Economics, Government, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

At Rotten Chestnuts Severian adds to his ongoing series of posts identifying areas where Marx was right:

“Jay Gould’s Private Bowling Alley.” Financier and stock speculator Jay Gould is depicted on Wall Street, using bowling balls titled “trickery,” “false reports,” “private press” and “general unscrupulousness” to knock down bowling pins labeled as “operator,” “broker,” “banker,” “inexperienced investor,” etc. A slate shows Gould’s controlling holdings in various corporations, including Western Union, Missouri Pacific Railroad, and the Wabash Railroad.
From the cover of Puck magazine Vol. XI, No 264 via Wikimedia Commons.

… I liken Karl Marx to one of those bird-masked medieval Plague doctors — he sees the pathology clearly, indeed far faster and better than anyone else, but his proposed “cure” is far likelier to kill you than the actual disease. Worse, what makes Marx’s cure especially lethal is what ends up making his diagnosis essentially right: It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The proletariat is achieving class consciousness, all right — look no further than the GameStop “short squeeze” for proof. But the only reason the proles are achieving class consciousness is because the “capitalists” forced them to, just like Marx said they would. The Elite and the Bureaucracy (usually, but not always, a distinction without a difference) finally achieved class consciousness through the combination of NAFTA and the Louvre Accords. Starting around 1990, then, the Elite self-consciously embraced their role as rootless, stateless, jet-setting parasites (with the wannabe-Elites in the Media, academia, and the bureaucracies signing up for tours of duty as fart-catchers, both to bask in reflected glory and in hopes of being promoted).
In short, our “Capitalists” — really, “financial-ists” or “spreadsheet gangsters,” since they don’t actually make anything, they just bust out existing firms via debt manipulation — behave exactly as Marx described factory owners behaving all the way back in the First Industrial Revolution.

In my naivete, I used to think Marx’s ranting was hyperbole. I cited the example of Andrew Carnegie — a real bastard in his youth, who went on to be one of the world’s great philanthropists. That’s human behavior, I said, as opposed to the bloodthirsty caricature of Marx’s fantasies … but I was wrong, comrades. Carnegie happily would’ve sold his fellow Americans down the river, just as Bezos, Gates, and the rest of the pirates-in-neckties are happily selling us down the river now. Only two things prevented it back then: one structural, one cultural.

The structural one is simply technology, and therefore uninteresting. Britain’s “free traders” — you know, the Jardine-Matheson types who started the Opium Wars for fun and profit — would’ve happily outsourced Britain’s entire industrial base to China if they hadn’t been hampered by wind speed. By the time this was technically feasible — which is about 1860, if you’re keeping score — simple inertia had taken over. They didn’t retool until they had to, at which point instant communications and modern ships … well, you know the rest. Like I said, it’s vital, but boring.

The cultural one is much more interesting. You might be tempted to say, as I did, that Jardine and Matheson were always on the lookout for #1, of course, but were sincere British patriots for all that, just as Carnegie for all his faults was an authentic American. I doubt it, comrades. I sincerely doubt it. What kept these guys in check wasn’t patriotism, or even culture. Rather, it was fear.

Well, it is a very, very cunning plan …

Filed under: Government, History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest Libertarian Enterprise, Sarah Hoyt explains why the progressives’ cunningest of cunning plans may not be cunning enough:

The left has a plan so cunning that if it were a person, it would be teaching cunningology at Oxford. And the ones who get the reference will also know that their plan is about to go pear shaped in all sorts of interesting ways, and at the end of it there might very well be a turnip or two involved, but not as the only item available in the shelves of the grocery store.

Look, someone pointed out in the comments the left are trying to follow the “plan” for other communist revolutions round the world.

He’s right. They’re trying to follow it to the letter. Partly because it’s worked before, and partly, because to be fair, they’re a cult, and cults don’t know the reason for the ritual, they just follow it.

… but it’s already going wrong. And it’s only going to get worse.

You see, part of the problem is that the cult of communism and the procedures for “the revolution” were set in the early twentieth century. And it’s designed for the early twentieth century. To the extent they worked in places like Venezuela, it is because the underlying structures of the society were still very much “early twentieth century.”

The US? Well, not so much. In fact we never were much like the early twentieth century in Europe, which is why they’ve had a hell of a time getting a foothold here.

The communist revolution is designed to work in a country that is mostly urban, with a vast urban underclass that can’t rise above for reasons both internal and external despite working unreasonable hours. It’s designed for a country with a firm aristocracy of the hereditary sort (even if that aristocracy is often from trade), it is designed for a country with a conscript army where the plum assignments go to the “good families” as a matter of course, it is designed to work — most of all and very importantly — in a country where they ABSOLUTELY control all the means of mass communication and do so without the vast majority of the people being aware of it.

The last time they could have pulled that off in the US was in the mid seventies. And my guess, honestly, is that they tried. I don’t know for sure, since the news of the time were all reported by biased sources, and besides I’m too lazy and too busy […] to spend my day chasing down hints. I bet they did try, though. I bet they gave it a sporting try. And I bet part of the issue back then — as now, btw — is that they were pinning their hopes on a race war, having both not realized how much of a minority people of African descent are in the US (last estimate is what? 14%? Sizeable, sure, but not a large minority and certainly not a majority. Also, and seriously, a lot of that minority is middle class and whatever they voice from the mouth-out as uninterested as the rest of us in having the apple cart overturned. Apples are tasty. Genocide not so much.) Mostly because that sh*t was so successful in Africa, and again the left doesn’t think. It ritualistically applies “what worked” without being able to account for changed conditions.

Anyway, that was the last time they could have MAYBE credibly have followed their little red map to revolution and have it work. And even then Americans were just too darn contrarian. Why everyone and their parents were telling us that Republicans were so dangerous, that they were going to start the nuclear war, that — And we went and voted Reagan in. (Well, not me. I only worked towards it. I didn’t vote. I wasn’t a citizen and I’m not a democrat.)

In fact, America could have engraved on its door lintel “authorities can go f*ck themselves.” The left keeps forgetting that. And sometimes justifiably. Take their Covid-psy-ops. It worked. And it was all run on the “experts” and how important it was.

Uh uh. So, they think their control is back! They’re golden again, baby!

February 1, 2021

In the wake of l’affaire GameStop, frantic regulators call for more power to intervene in the market

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

“Regulatory capture” is the term for situations where the regulators and the regulated begin to get too close and the regulated industries or organizations begin to indirectly control the actions of the regulator for their own benefit. A topical example would be the sudden, agonized cries of politicians and market regulators for new powers to clamp down on disruptive players like the Redditors or other small investors who triggered the rise in GameStop share prices causing potentially ruinous financial losses for regulated hedge funds.

“GameStop” by JeepersMedia is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Although the story has garnered the attention of regulators and even the White House, the wrong takeaway is to suggest options for retail investors should be restricted more than they already are. Yet this is precisely what William Gavin, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, has called for. Gavin argued that there should be a 30-day trading suspension on GameStop to protect “small and unsophisticated investors.”

Gavin’s suggestion would have serious extended consequences. First, consider the knowledge problem that is involved in constructing such a restrictive regulation. When exactly would a rally become unacceptable? Despite years of decline, Kodak experienced a rally after its announcement that it would move into pharmaceuticals. Would this be permissible? If so, one could simply point to GameStop’s decision to appoint three new directors in an effort to turn the company around. If this is not enough, regulators must clearly state what identified the investments as unacceptable.

It is unclear if there is a perfect benchmark to distinguish rallies. But without such a measure, the suspension proposal would put every rally at risk of wrongful closure — potentially halting the growth of companies and industries, alike. Worse yet, the fear of missing out on a rising stock may push some investors to rush in with less information than they would otherwise acquire. Even if it is in a traditional rally, an uninformed decision could cause more harm than good.

Yet suppose the knowledge problem is solved and there is a perfect measure in place. Should other protections be put in place? One could make the case for a law against allowing “unsophisticated” gamblers from going to Las Vegas and losing money. And although this may seem like a leap, Gavin himself told Reuters, “This isn’t investing, this is gambling,” when he spoke of the GameStop rally.

The rally has attracted the world’s attention, but it does not require it. Rallies are a normal part of financial market activity. The only difference here is that it was Main Street that pulled one over on Wall Street.

January 30, 2021

Obey your technocratic elites, peasant!

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Government, History, Liberty, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Scott Alexander considers some historical (and current) examples of you peasants being steamrolled by the powers of the government at the behest of the technological elites of the day:

I am not defending technocracy.

Nobody ever defends technocracy. It’s like “elitism” or “statism”. There is no Statist Party. Nobody holds rallies demanding more statism. There is no Citizens for Statism Facebook page with thousands of likes and followers.

[…] it worries me that everyone analyzes the exact same three examples of the failures of top-down planning: Soviet collective farms, Brasilia, and Robert Moses. I’d like to propose some other case studies:

1. Mandatory vaccinations: Technocrats used complicated mathematical models to determine that mass vaccination would create a “herd immunity” to disease. Certain that their models were “objectively” correct and so could not possibly be flawed, these elites decided to force vaccines on a hostile population. Despite popular protest (did you know that in 1800s England, anti-smallpox-vaccine rallies attracted tens of thousands of demonstrators?), these technocrats continued to want to “arrogantly remake the world in their image,” and pushed ahead with their plan, ignoring normal citizens’ warnings that their policies might have unintended consequences, like causing autism.

2. School desegregation: Nine unelected experts with Harvard and Yale degrees, using a bunch of Latin terms like a certiori and de facto that ordinary people could not understand let alone criticize, decided to completely upend the traditional education system of thousands of small communities to make it better conform to some rules written in a two-hundred-year-old document. The communities themselves opposed it strongly enough to offer violent resistance, but the technocrats steamrolled over all objections and sent in the National Guard to enforce their orders.

US Highway System needs in 1965 from “Needs of the Highway Systems 1955-1984”, a letter from the Secretary of Commerce to the House Committee on Public Works, approved May 6, 1954.
US Government Printing Office via Wikimedia Commons.

3. The interstate highway system: 1950s army bureaucrats with a Prussia fetish decided America needed its own equivalent of the Reichsautobahn. The federal government came up with a Robert-Moses-like plan to spend $114 billion over several decades to build a rectangular grid of numbered giant roads all up and down the country, literally paving over whatever was there before, all according to pre-agreed federal standards. The public had so little say in the process that they started hundreds of freeway revolts trying to organize to prevent freeways from being built through their cities; the government crushed these when it could, and relocated the freeways to less politically influential areas when it couldn’t.

4. Climate change: In the second half of the 20th century, scientists determined that carbon dioxide emissions were raising global temperatures, with potentially catastrophic consequences. Climatologists created complicated formal models to determine how quickly global temperatures might rise, and economists designed clever from-first-principle mechanisms that could reduce emissions, like cap-and-trade systems and carbon taxes. But these people were members of the elite toying with equations that could not possibly include all the relevant factors, and who were vulnerable to their elite biases. So the United States decided to leave the decision up to democratic mechanisms, which allowed people to contribute “outside-the-system” insights like “Actually global warming is fake and it’s all a Chinese plot”.

5. Coronavirus lockdowns: The government appointed a set of supposedly infallible scientist-priests to determine when people were or weren’t allowed to engage in normal economic activity. The scientist-priests, who knew nothing about the complex set of factors that make one person decide to go to a rock festival and another to a bar, decided that vast swathes of economic activity they didn’t understand must stop. The ordinary people affected tried to engage in the usual mechanisms of democracy, like complaining, holding protests, and plotting to kidnap their governors – but the scientist-priests, certain that their analyses were “objective” and “fact-based”, thought ordinary people couldn’t possibly be smart enough to challenge them, and so refused to budge.

Nobody uses the word “technocrat” except when they’re criticizing something. So “technocracy” accretes this entire language around it – unintended consequences, the perils of supposed “objectivity”, the biases inherent in elite paradigms. And then when you describe something using this language, it’s like “Oh, of course that’s going to fail – everything like that has always failed before!”

But if you accept that “technocracy” describes things other than Soviet farming, Brasilia, and Robert Moses, the trick stops working. You notice a lot of things you could describe using the same vocabulary were good decisions that went well. Then you have to ask yourself: is Seeing Like A State the definitive proof that technocratic schemes never work? Or is it a compendium of rare man-bites-dog style cases, interesting precisely because of how unusual they are?

I want to make it really clear that I’m not saying that technocracy is good and democracy is bad. I’m saying that this is actually a hard problem. It’s not a morality play, where you tell ghost stories about scary High Modernists, point vaguely in the direction of Brasilia, say some platitudes about how no system can ever be truly unbiased, and then your work is done. There are actually a bunch of complicated reasons why formal expertise might be more useful in some situations, and local knowledge might be more useful in others.

“The only thing ‘dangerous’ about a gang of Reddit investors blowing up hedge funds is that some of us reading about it might die of laughter”

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

Matt Taibbi says “Suck it, Wall Street!”

Meme stolen from Ace of Spades H.Q.

The press conveyed panic and moral disgust. “I didn’t realize it was this cultlike,” said short-seller Andrew Left of Citron Research, without irony denouncing the campaign against firms like his as “just a get rich quick scheme.” Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin said the Redditor campaign had “no basis in reality,” while Dr. Michael Burry, the hedge funder whose bets against subprime mortgages were lionized in The Big Short, called the amateur squeeze “unnatural, insane, and dangerous.”

The episode prompted calls to regulate Reddit and, finally, halt action on the disputed stocks. As I write this, word has come out that platforms like Robinhood and TD Ameritrade are curbing trading in GameStop and several other companies, including Nokia and AMC Entertainment holdings.

Meaning: just like 2008, trading was shut down to save the hides of erstwhile high priests of “creative destruction.” Also just like 2008, there are calls for the government to investigate the people deemed responsible for unapproved market losses.

The acting head of the SEC said the agency was “monitoring” the situation, while the former head of its office of Internet enforcement, John Stark, said, “I can’t imagine there isn’t an open investigation and probably a formal order to find out who’s on these message boards.” Georgetown finance professor James Angel lamented, “it’s going to be hard for the SEC to find blatant manipulation,” but they “owe it to look.” The Washington Post elaborated:

    To establish manipulation that runs afoul of securities laws, Angel said regulators would need to prove traders engaged in “an intentional act to push a price away from its fundamental value to seek a profit.” In market parlance, this is typically known as a pump-and-dump scheme …

Even Nancy Pelosi, when asked about “manipulation” and “what’s going on on Wall Street right now,” said “we’ll all be reviewing it,” as if it were the business of congress to worry about a bunch of day traders cashing in for once.

The only thing “dangerous” about a gang of Reddit investors blowing up hedge funds is that some of us reading about it might die of laughter. That bit about investigating this as a “pump and dump scheme” to push prices away from their “fundamental value” is particularly hilarious. What does the Washington Post think the entire stock market is, in the bailout age?

H/T to Larry Correia for the link.

January 29, 2021

Costs of keeping Biden’s promise to forgive student debt

Filed under: Economics, Education, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan consider the frequently issued campaign promise by Joe Biden and what it will cost to implement:

Given the results of the recent election, it should come as no surprise that we’re poised for the next big expansion: student debt forgiveness, a promise Joe Biden made frequently as he campaigned for the presidency. Like the big ideas that came before it, this idea will cost us more than we can afford from day one, and far more than its proponents will admit. Biden’s plan as currently envisioned would cost over $300 billion. But that’s just this year. The plan will set in motion unintended consequences that will doubtlessly persist for generations.

First, next year’s crop of new students will — understandably — demand that their loans be forgiven too. And so will those of the year after that, and so on. This program will quickly become a sort of college UBI, where the government just hands out $10,000 to every college student. Some argue that if this results in a better educated populace, then it’s worth the cost. But it won’t result in a better educated populace; it will result in a whole bunch of students majoring in things the market doesn’t value, and another batch simply taking a four-year vacation on the taxpayer’s dime. Heretofore, graduates knew they needed marketable skills in order to repay their college loans. But when student loans are forgiven as a matter of course, graduates bear no cost for wasting our collective resources by studying things the market doesn’t value, or by not studying at all.

Data sources: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, National Center for Education Statistics.

Second, colleges and universities will respond to this new reality by raising tuition commensurately. Tuition and fees were a pretty constant 18 to 19 percent of family income from the 1960s until 1978. In 1965, the federal government started guaranteeing student loans. In 1973, Congress established Sallie Mae and charged it with providing subsidized students loans. And by 1978, tuition and fees had started a steady march to 45 percent of family income today. When the government makes it less painful for students to borrow, whether by guaranteeing, subsidizing, or forgiving loans, it takes away some of the pain of student borrowing, which makes it easier for colleges and universities to raise tuition.

Third, expect many taxpayers to cry foul. Homeowners will quite sensibly wonder why the government is not forgiving their mortgages. After all, student loans add up to about $1.4 trillion, while American mortgages total more than $16 trillion. If relieving students from the burden of their debts is a good idea, it should be an even better idea to relieve homeowners of theirs.

What about students who worked multiple jobs or attended less prestigious schools so they could avoid going into debt? Why aren’t they being rewarded? What about students who diligently paid off their debt and are now debt free? Will they receive nothing? What about, fantastically, people in the trades? Is it reasonable to charge people — via the higher taxes loan forgiveness will bring — who did not go to college to subsidize those who do? Regardless of the answers to these questions, implementing this plan will be fraught with difficulty.

January 28, 2021

The economic impact of a US national minimum wage of $15 per hour

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

I missed this post by Warren Meyer last week, but it’s still very topical:

I have talked a lot about the negative effects of higher minimum wages on low-skill workers. Two good example background posts are here and here. I covered how a broad range of labor regulation hurts unskilled workers in a cover story for Regulation magazine a few years back. Unfortunately, in a country where the average American buys about $1000 in lottery tickets each year, the willingness to believe we can get something for nothing is strong.

But I want to talk specifically about a Federal minimum wage increase, where one other problem emerges. The best way to state this is — how can one possibly set the same minimum wage for San Francisco at the same rate as one does for rural Mississippi? Here is one source for comparative state cost of living. Doing this by county would make the curve even wider.

Cost of living in Hawaii is more than 2x that of Mississippi. CA and NY are not far behind. A minimum wage that might comfortably be accommodated in San Francisco (and note even there the rise to $15 was ending service jobs in that city long before COVID), would be an economic disaster for rural Alabama. I don’t tend to think primarily along racial lines as seems to be the case on the Left today, but basically this is a policy driven by rich white tech guys in San Francisco that is going to devastate the employment prospects of rural blacks.

Whatever one’s misgivings about minimum wages, it is certainly true that allowing states to take the lead on setting minimum wages (counties would make even more sense) makes a lot more sense that trying to take action at the national level. Even with state action there are disparities.

January 22, 2021

Canada’s Governor General resigns, avoiding dragging the Queen into another Canadian political drama

Filed under: Cancon, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Colby Cosh notes in Thursday’s NP Platformed newsletter:

The Right Honourable Julie Payette, 29th Governor General of Canada (October 2, 2017 – January 21, 2021).

When NP Platformed saw Robert Fife’s Globe and Mail report this morning, our thought was that leaking the news of the report’s completion was an obvious political manoeuvre. (You know how a fife works: put some wind in it, and it will play a tune for you.)

Even a prime minister as callow as the current one would not want to try firing a governor general, which would require the personal intervention of the Queen. This would be a failure in itself, a blot on Canada’s copybook, even if the PM had the support of other parliamentary parties.

As hours passed, the thought naturally occurred to us: why should Payette be making anyone wait for some written report anyway? We know she has sometimes balked at most of the easily identifiable parts of her job, including travel to ceremonies and (for heaven’s sake) giving royal assent to legislation. Hired to be a dynamic female STEM mascot (for a Liberal government, sort of), she somehow degenerated, with unseemly speed, into an immured princess from a fairy tale, evidently driven half-mad by some faerie spell.

The main job, the essence of the governor general gig, is to be above suspicion, like Caesar’s wife in the proverb. The mere whisper of abusiveness or of clownish behaviour involving public funds ought to have been enough to settle things, possibly with a convenient health excuse. (If she offers one now, it can only provoke snide laughter.) The vicereine is, in our system of government, the passage through which national honours flow from the sovereign. The mention of “honour” in connection with this Governor General was becoming mighty awkward. She should have our thanks for doing the right thing today.

Hypocrisy is bad (for mere humans) but ostentatious hypocrisy is reserved for the powerful

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

David Warren notes the two very different kinds of hypocrisy on display during these fallen days:

Justin Trudeau with dark makeup on his face, neck and hands at a 2001 “Arabian Nights”-themed party at the West Point Grey Academy, the private school where he taught.
Photo from the West Point Grey Academy yearbook, via Time

Hypocrisy is often dismissed as a humdrum moral vice; rather as pæderasty, or buggery, or commissioning abortions: things considered very grave in the past, but now quite acceptable among progressive persons. One feels almost cruel, or envious, to criticize the adept hypocrite. How dare we try to withdraw the air in which he lives and breathes? “Zero tolerance” is directed at more serious vices, such as having wrong opinions, or voting Republican.

As Paul Valéry said, “Power without abuse loses its charm,” and when, for instance, a governor who proclaims crippling Batflu restrictions is seen ignoring them, he is outraged. His critics are his opponents, he reasons; they really ought to be investigated first!

A milder, general criticism is sometimes made, about the lifestyles of the rich and famous. How is it that prominent environmentalists burn so much jet fuel in their travels from one conference to another, at the world’s most lavish resorts? Shouldn’t they go about in sackcloth and ashes, as they tell us to do?

This is to misunderstand their hypocrisy. We assume they are motivated by greed, and the love of pleasure, the way we would be. But why must it be piled on so thick? Many a jetsetter hardly uses the jacuzzis. He takes a quick shower, because he has another aeroplane to catch.

Yes, most people are attracted to the sumptuous, but in a fine and private way. They rarely encourage the paparazzi, or wish to be watched over their fences and walls. They hire security, to scare trespassers away. Servants, up to a point, must be endured, but in the past they could be ignored, the way we ignore appliances. I may not have a toaster, but I do have a stove, and could swear that it is staring at me. But it was manufactured in the 1960s, so I needn’t fear it has an Internet connexion. And besides, if it did, it wouldn’t be reporting to the tabloids, but to technical staff. We try to ignore them, at least so long as we can pretend they are equivalent to our maids and butlers.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress