First, solar roads are a terrible idea. Even if they can be made to sort of work, the cost per KwH has to be higher than for solar panels in a more traditional installations — the panels are more expensive because they have to be hardened for traffic, and their production will be lower due to dirt and shade and the fact that they can’t be angled to the optimal pitch to catch the most sun. Plus, because the whole road has to be blocked (creating traffic snafus) just to fix one panel, it is far more likely that dead panels will just be left in place rather than replaced.
And who in their right mind would ever accept the statement that the solar panel roads would be cheaper to fix than a roadway? What agency anywhere takes out whole patches of road to fix small cracks? Square foot for square foot a solar road would be orders of magnitude harder to fix than just patching a pothole somewhere.
I love the line about “ideally” paying for themselves. I am sure this is their ideal, but what is the reality? I will bet anyone a million dollars that if all installation and maintenance costs are included, these will not come close to paying for themselves. The first rule of alternate energy in any news article is to give the installation cost or the energy output, but never both, so actual return on investment can’t be calculated. If they give neither, as in this case, it really sucks.
And finally, what is not to love about the last paragraph, which says effectively that roads should be as smart as the cars that drive on them. I have toyed with the idea of creating a whole new blog category on things people say that get millennials excited but make absolutely no sense. This would be a good example. Embedding solar panels in a road when just about any other flat surface anywhere would be a better place to put them is not “smart”, it is painfully stupid. A smart road might embed guide wires or some other technology to aid self-driving cars, but nothing like this.
Warren Meyer, “The Terrible Idea That Won’t Die: Solar Roads”, Coyote Blog, 2016-07-06.
October 1, 2018
QotD: The idiocy of “solar roads”
September 30, 2018
QotD: Limits of expertise
When you wrote your original article … you might have relied on public sources, but you might also have contacted one or more academics. If those academics did not flag for you that there was a substantial constitutional debate here, you might want to ask yourself if you were treated fairly by them or if they were themselves poorly informed about an area where they mistakenly thought they had expertise.
That’s an uncomfortable question. It is not intended to be ad hominem. But when an academic does not recognize his or her own limits, they are not really useful to themselves or to anyone else.
Seth Barrett Tillman, “Tillman’s Response to a Liberal Journalist’s Inquiries”, The New Reform Club, 2016-12-07.
September 28, 2018
QotD: “Lite” beers
Then there was the fellow who sent an unlabelled jar of Bud Lite to a laboratory for analysis. A week later he received their report: ‘Dear Sir, we regret to inform you that your horse has diabetes’.
David Warren, “On beer consumption”, Essays in Idleness, 2018-09-07.
September 27, 2018
QotD: Gandhi’s views on Britain
… as almost always with historical films, even those more honest than Gandhi, the historical personage on which the movie is based is not only more complex but more interesting than the character shown on the screen. During his entire South African period, and for some time after, until he was about fifty, Gandhi was nothing more or less than an imperial loyalist, claiming for Indians the rights of Englishmen but unshakably loyal to the crown. He supported the empire ardently in no fewer than three wars: the Boer War, the “Kaffir War,” and, with the most extreme zeal, World War I. If Gandhi’s mind were of the modern European sort, this would seem to suggest that his later attitude toward Britain was the product of unrequited love: he had wanted to be an Englishman; Britain had rejected him and his people; very well then, they would have their own country. But this would imply a point of “agonizing reappraisal,” a moment when Gandhi’s most fundamental political beliefs were reexamined and, after the most bitter soul-searching, repudiated. But I have studied the literature and cannot find this moment of bitter soul-searching. Instead, listening to his “inner voice” (which in the case of divines of all countries often speaks in the tones of holy opportunism), Gandhi simply, tranquilly, without announcing any sharp break, set off in a new direction.
It should be understood that it is unlikely Gandhi ever truly conceived of “becoming” an Englishman, first, because he was a Hindu to the marrow of his bones, and also, perhaps, because his democratic instincts were really quite weak. He was a man of the most extreme, autocratic temperament, tyrannical, unyielding even regarding things he knew nothing about, totally intolerant of all opinions but his own. He was, furthermore, in the highest degree reactionary, permitting in India no change in the relationship between the feudal lord and his peasants or servants, the rich and the poor. In his The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi, the best and least hagiographic of the full-length studies, Robert Payne, although admiring Gandhi greatly, explains Gandhi’s “new direction” on his return to India from South Africa as follows:
He spoke in generalities, but he was searching for a single cause, a single hard-edged task to which he would devote the remaining years of his life. He wanted to repeat his triumph in South Africa on Indian soil. He dreamed of assembling a small army of dedicated men around him, issuing stern commands and leading them to some almost unobtainable goal.
Gandhi, in short, was a leader looking for a cause. He found it, of course, in home rule for India and, ultimately, in independence.
Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows”, Commentary, 1983-03-01.
September 26, 2018
QotD: Offensive and defensive use of the law
As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose — that it may violate property instead of protecting it — then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder.
Frédéric Bastiat, The Law, 1850.
September 25, 2018
QotD: The Laffer Curve
Around a certain sort of leftist mention of the Laffer Curve just brings a derisive snort. The sadness of that reaction being that it’s just an obvious mathematical truth. Tax rates of 0 % and 100 % bring in no revenue. Somewhere in between maximises the moolah. Note what isn’t being said, that all tax cuts always pay for themselves, nor even that lower tax rates are necessarily a good thing. Only that there’s some optimal level with regard to revenue collection.
All the arguments about the optimal level of government are over in the Wagner Curve and such others.
The Laffer Curve is also made up of two components, the income and substitution. Some people will work just to make their nut. Observational studies have shown that many taxi drivers do. So, increase their tax rates and they’ll work more. The substitution effect is, well, what’s that net wage worth to me? What’s the value of not working? When going fishing is worth more than working then people will go fishing. The curve as a whole is the interplay of these two effects.
Each tax in each society has its own such curve. A transactions tax of 0.01% can reduce revenue collection, as the EU’s study of a financial transactions tax shows us. Taxes upon income of 20% are below that Laffer Curve peak.
But where, exactly, is that peak for taxes upon income? The best study we’ve got, Saez and Diamond, says between 54% and 80% dependent upon other structures in the tax system. The Tory part of the UK Treasury says around 40 to 45% for income tax, plus national insurance, so at the bottom end of that S&D range. Many lefties want to say it’s higher so we can tax “the rich” more.
Tim Worstall, “How Lovely To Spot The Laffer Curve In The Wild – Doctors’ Pensions Edition”, Continental Telegraph, 2018-09-05.
September 24, 2018
QotD: Entrepreneurs
We need entrepreneurs to decide what to do.The only alternative is governmental bureaucracy, which is good for national defense and a few other things, but very bad at most of what we do, from room rental to rock music. The entrepreneuseonly succeeds if people like what she does, and agree voluntarily to pay for it. A free society is one of choice. Entrepreneurs give choice, bureaucrats crush it.
Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, “Why We Need to Admire Entrepreneurs”, Peace Love Liberty, 2018-09.
September 23, 2018
QotD: “Buggered up a perfectly good monkey”
[The title] is a somewhat sanitised version of a punchline to an Internet meme I saw sometime back, which (if I remember correctly) goes something like this:
GOD: “Behold! I have created Mankind!”
Angel: “You [deleted]-up a perfectly good monkey is what you did. Look at him — he’s got anxiety!”The meme goes on for a bit, and ends with the angel begging God to turn Man back in to a monkey.
Anyhoo, the punchline kind of stuck in my head — apparently it’s weird in there — and I have found that it is a wonderful comment for the occasions when “WTF?! Really?! W.T.F?!” just won’t do.
As a for instance, let us say you are observing a scene in which several laws of physics have been violated in a way only possible by a combination of an overabundance of hormones divided by an under-appreciation of mortality. Fire that is guaranteed to not be possible is possibly occurring, and something — probably important — is in a physical location that there is no sodding way for that something to be in. The young — they’re always young these days — person responsible is standing in front of you, twiddling their fingers in such a way as to suggest that the report that is about to cross your desk is going to be one of the more impressive works of speculative fiction/nitwittery you will read since … well, the last one … lacking only in the mention of the beer that someone was holding during the entire episode.
I find that glaring at the responsible party over your glasses, then performing a Migraine Salute while gritting out, “Yeee-up. Cocked-up a perfectly good monkey” manages to be completely apropos, yet just profane enough to properly convey my feelings on such occasions.
LawDog, “Because esoteric makes me warm and fuzzy”, The LawDog Files, 2016-12-09.
September 22, 2018
QotD: Epicurean influences on Marx
… what’s also interesting is that our friends the Marxists also thought Epicurus was a great philosopher. Marx himself did his doctoral dissertation on the differences between the atomism of Epicurus and his forerunner Democritus.
Most books on Epicureanism published in France in the 20th century were written by Marxists. (Well, I suppose you could say that of most books published in France on any topics in the 20th century…!) I have a booklet on Lucretius at home published in France in the 1950s in a collection called Les classiques du peuple – The classics of the people. In the Acknowledgement section, the author thanks all the Soviet specialists of Epicureanism and materialism for any original insight that might appear in the book.
Marx found in Epicureanism a materialist conception of nature that rejected all teleology and all religious conceptions of natural and social existence.
Martin Masse, “The Epicurean roots of some classical liberal and Misesian concepts“, speaking at the Austrian Scholars Conference, Auburn Alabama, 2005-03-18.
September 21, 2018
QotD: “Let us abandon Capitalism, and go back to Adam Smith”
An old friend of mine, among my bosses in late ’seventies Bangkok — Antoine van Agtmael, genuinely admired and loved — was the genius who invented the expression “emerging markets,” to replace that downer, “developing countries.” (Which in turn had been the euphemism for “backward countries.”) It was by such creative hocus-pocus that attitudes towards “Third World” investment were dramatically changed, in the era of Thatcher and Reagan. A man of indomitably good intentions; charitable, selfless, and a brilliant merchant banker; a little leftish in his social and cultural outlook — I give Antoine’s phrase as an example of the sort of poetry that changes the world. I took pride, once, in editing a book of his astute investment “case studies.”
Thirty-six years have passed, since in my youth and naiveté I was draughting a book of my own on what is still called “development economics.” (I was a business journalist in Asia then, who did a little teaching on the side.) It seemed to me that “free enterprise” should be encouraged; that “government intervention” should be discouraged; but that the aesthetic, moral, and spiritual order in one ancient “developing country” after another was being undermined by the success, as also by the frequent failures, not only of foreign but of domestic investors. This bugged me because, like my father before me (who had worked and taught westernizing subjects in this same Third World), my well-intended efforts on behalf of “progress” were ruining everything they touched; everything I loved.
My attempt to explain this, if only to myself, ended in abject failure to answer my central question: “Why does capitalist success make the world ugly and its people sad?”
Only now do I begin to glimpse an answer; and that part of it could be expressed in the imperative, “Let us abandon Capitalism, and go back to Adam Smith.”
David Warren, “In defence of economic backwardness”, Essays in Idleness, 2016-12-01.
September 20, 2018
QotD: Parenthood
What know I about 3 am feedings, Spongebob Squarepants, day care pickups or those special moments when one finds oneself on one’s knees, covered in vomit, as one’s darling child wails uncontrollably? I mean, it all sounds horrible, but I expect that it would be even worse to live it, fighting tears of exhaustion and a post-partum pouch.
[Incidentally, current parents should note that y’all are not doing a good job of selling this child-bearing thing to those of us who are as yet non-reproductive. You know, if you actually succeed in communicating all of the dreadfulness of your parental lives to us, as so many articles currently seem intent upon doing, your social security benefits are going to look pretty darn sad in thirty years or so. But I digress.]
Jane Galt, “Focus on the family”, Asymmetrical Information, 2005-02-18.
September 19, 2018
QotD: The “generations” of jet fighters
American warplanes like the F-22 and F-35 are often called “5th generation” fighters. This leaves many wondering what the other generations were and what the next one will be. The generation reference is all because of jet fighters, and the first generation was developed during and right after World War II (German Me-262, British Meteor, U.S. F-80, and Russian MiG-15). These aircraft were, even by the standards of the time, difficult to fly and unreliable (especially the engines). The 2nd generation (1950s) included more reliable but still dangerous to operate aircraft like the F-104 and MiG-21. The 3rd generation (1960s) included F-4 and MiG-23. The 4th generation (1970s) included F-16 and MiG-29. Each generation has been about twice as expensive (on average, in constant dollars) as the previous one. But each generation is also about twice as safe to fly and cheaper to operate. Naturally, each generation is more than twice as effective as the previous one. Increasingly it looks like the 6th generation will come without pilots. That’s because producing fifth generation fighters has proved difficult as well as very expensive. So far only the United States has managed to get 5th gen fighters (F-22 and F-35) into service. The Russians are still trying as are the Chinese, even though one of their stealth fighter designs (J-20) is technically in service (even though production has been suspended after less than a dozen were produced).
The Russians have said they will keep working on their 5th generation Su-57, although some of the derivatives of their Su-27 are at least generation 4.5. One of the reasons the Soviet Union collapsed was the realization that they could not afford to develop 5th generation warplanes to stay competitive with America. The Russians had a lot of interesting stuff on the drawing board and in development but the bankruptcy of most of their military aviation industry during the 1990s left them scrambling to put it back together ever since. At the moment the Russians are thinking of making a run for the 6th generation warplanes, which will likely be unmanned and largely robotic. As of 2018 they don’t have much choice because their answer to the F-22, work on the Su-57 was canceled (“indefinitely paused”.)
“Murphy’s Law: The Impossible 5th Generation”, Strategy Page, 2018-08-20.
September 18, 2018
QotD Breastfeeding
I threw out the baby books that I had been given after the first week of breastfeeding. All those promises/warnings of “don’t be surprised if you experience multiple orgasms while nursing”. Hey, I was always up for multiple orgasms which was no doubt why I had three children in four years but the reality is only a dominatrix could think that the initial stages of breastfeedings could produce an orgasm. Even after the extreme pain vanished there was never the slightest chance of orgasm which leads me to speculate that other people have a much more bizarre sexual life than I could possibly imagine. And if the books were will filled with such utter rot about breastfeeding; I wasn’t willing to chance the rest.
Kate “The Last Amazon”, “When Biology is Destiny”, The Last Amazon, 2005-03-02
September 17, 2018
QotD: Parents and drug use
Any parent who has ever smoked a joint has a moral duty to give up all hope of achieving good things in life, give him- or herself permanent brain damage, and get a career working on an assembly line, wearing a hairnet and stamping packages of irradiated food. Only in this way will kids realize drugs always lead to a bad end.
Tim Cavanaugh, “Don’t try this at home, kids; you might end up becoming President”, Reason Hit and Run, 2005-02-20.
September 16, 2018
QotD: Austria’s share of the Nazi legacy
This ambiguity, or (to put it less kindly) dishonesty, if it really exists, replicates in symbolic fashion the attitude of Austria to its historical record in the 1930s and 40s. Officially, Austria was a victim of Nazi aggression; in reality, it was an enthusiastic participant in Nazi crimes. But whatever crimes Austrians as individuals committed during the war, they committed them as Germans, not as Austrians. They were responding only to force majeure; the Austrian state was not implicated.
Suspicion of Austria runs deep, and with good reason. Everyone thinks (though it cannot be proved or disproved) that Kurt Waldheim, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, was elected president of the country not in spite of his Nazi past, but because of it. The Austrians claim that they insisted on voting for him because they resented the hypocritical reaction of the outside world to his candidature – surely, they said, powers with the combined intelligence resources of the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France must have known of his Nazi past when they accepted him as Secretary-General, so why should the Austrians themselves not accept him as President? Once again the Austrians were able to conceive of themselves as the injured party in the whole business.
Even the Austrian prohibition of Holocaust denial, under which the British Nazi-supporting historian David Irving was (in my view wrongfully) imprisoned until he recanted, or at least pretended to recant, is ambiguous. On the one hand, of course, it is a recognition of the moral monstrosity of what the Nazis did, and of the Austrians’ special responsibility for it; but on the other, it implies a deep mistrust of the Austrian people, who (it must have been feared by those who framed the law) might recant their anti-Nazism if they could.
Of course, there have been Austrians who were deeply disgusted by their countrymen. The greatest Austrian writer of the post-war period, Thomas Bernhard, inserted a famous clause in his will that repays reflection. He ordered that, for the duration of his legal copyright after his death, nothing he had ever written, including his plays, should ever be published or performed:
within the borders of the Austrian state, however that state
describes itself. I categorically emphasize that I want to have
nothing to do with the Austrian state and I safeguard myself
concerning my person and my work not only against every
interference but also against every approach by this Austrian
state to my person and my work for all time to come.‘For all time to come:’ that is a pretty strong injunction, implying as it does that the Austrian soul, or whatever you want to call it, is so tainted by its original sin, or sins, that it is irrecoverably and irremediably evil.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Austria and Evil”, New English Review, 2008-05.
