Against Them All

Libertarian values in action

2007-01-18T15:55:00.000-08:00

Said there:

http://www.haloscan.com/comments/angrybear/116845425393571637/?a=27489

So, according to Jane Galt's logic it would be troubling if one employee was fired while the rest enforced a ONE MILION DOLLAR PER MONTH wage increase. But we can't do that, because it would be soooo unfair to that poor one guy.

To which I say boo fucking hoo!

Employers fire employees daily, while the Jane Galt's of this world applaud their sacred right to increase profits over people and forming contracts as they see fit. Hire and fire, baby, hire and fire.

If Jane Galt is so concerned about the poor guy who lost his job, she can go help trade unions create contracts by which the winners compensate the loosers. You have net gains form trade, why not consider net gains from collective bargaining?

Wal-Mart as the new Central Planner?

2006-09-24T09:15:00.000-07:00

Some comments snatched from here:
http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2006/09/cant_say_i_favo.html

Wal-Mart is the wet dream of Communists.

Capitalism was beating Communism, because critical economic information is distributed and a central planner with a pencil and a sheet of paper can not manage it all. So you had to leave that to the local manager/business owner.

Communism did not have the informational tools for administering the whole economy. Wal-Mart increasingly has the computing power to manage a growing share. Integrated supply chain systems and electronic data interchange became popular in business in the 90s.

There was also this article a few years ago about Wal-Mart data-mining their terrabytes of information to better plan distribution and logistics.

One day it will be possible to manage it all from one single CPU farm. It's quite funny, Capitalism will die through its own capitalistic means...

Posted by: Oskar Shapley | Sep 24, 2006 7:50:35 AM

Oscar,

That is a unique observation, insomuch as I have never come cross it before (might not be unique at all, but I certainly liked reading it).

If applied to a national economy it could actually work, if the administrators stuck to efficiency in meeting the demands of their customers, in this case The People, rather than redirecting resources to the whims of how they think things should be.

I have no faith in that happening, but it could.

Posted by: Guy Montag | Sep 24, 2006 8:12:34 AM

Here are several quotes from Hayek, which to my understanding are becoming increasingly OBSOLETE:

http://www.mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae5_3_3.pdf

"A mind endowed with full information could of course choose every point on the n-dimensional surface that appeared desirable to him andthen distribute as he saw fit the product of the combination he chose. But the only point on (or at least somewhere near) that surface we can reach using a procedure known to us is the one we reach when we leave its determination up to the market."

- Wal-Mart has near full information in it's own domain.

"About many important conditions we have only statistical information rather than data regarding changes in the fine structure."

- Wal-Mart has the data.

"It means, however, that of the combination of different goods that is actually being produced [in the market economy], as much is produced as we can manufacture by any method that is known to us. That is of course not as much as we could produce if infact all the knowledge that anyone possessed or could acquire were available at a central point and from there could be entered into a computer."

Computers in Hayek's time were sloooow and user unfriendly. The data mining tools that Wal-Mart can use now are much closer to Hayek's "mind endowed with full information".

Posted by: Oskar Shapley | Sep 24, 2006 8:25:03 AM

I don't think that managing the economy from one single place is in a good political idea. It puts the responsibility for the outcome on a central planner, who would be the go-to-blame guy for anyone not satisfied by the result. Which would be everyone, because wants are infinite and resources are not. The invisible hand and markets kind of sidesteps that issue by saying that the economic outcome is the result of a uncontrolled process and not the decision of a particular planner, who decided that you are going to be poor.

People in the Central/Eastern European Soviet economies were notoriously protesting against low wages, but it is not easy to say whether the low wages were a result of the wrong system or unproductiveness of the workers. The central authority got the blame anyway.

Here's a link to the Slashdot discussion of Wal-Mart's data mining. The article was in the NYT, but it's behind the paywall now and I can't find a copy .

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0C14F63D5B0C778DDDA80994DC404482

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/14/2057228

Wal-Mart's Data Obsession

"The New York Times covers Wal-Mart's obsession with collecting sales data. Fun fact: 'Wal-Mart has 460 terabytes of data stored on Teradata mainframes, at its Bentonville headquarters. To put that in perspective, the Internet has less than half as much data, according to experts.' That much information results in some interesting data-mining. Did you know hurricanes increase strawberry Pop Tarts sales 7-fold?"

Posted by: Oskar Shapley | Sep 24, 2006 9:01:40 AM

Wolfowitz

2006-01-22T12:46:00.000-08:00

... a very interesting interview with the Deputy SecDef.

War of the Worlds

2006-01-15T10:54:00.000-08:00

I can understand why you all hate WoW so much. It's not a pleasant movie. War movies are entertaining when the hero uses his virtue (knowledge, determination or teamwork) to succeed.

In the movie American's are getting invaded and they can do nothing about it. Their weapons are useless, civilians get fried like ants by towering monsters.

Tom Cruise is not brave. He and his family have to run and hide like rats from the exterminators.

And in the end the aliens lost not because someone made good use of his virtue. They lost because of bacteria... that's so unmanly.

The markets, they solve everything

2005-12-23T17:11:00.000-08:00

Stossel embarasses himself again with his free market religion:

The more I've watched the markets work, the more impressed I've become with how competition solves problems with speed and flexibility rarely seen in government-imposed solutions.

Enron and the other recent business disasters are evidence of the market working. Government regulators didn't discover the deceit. Enron's lies were revealed when private security analysts raised questions and private investors started dumping the stock.

Yes, because the market works at it best when it annihilates multi-billion dollar companies and thousands of jobs. And I've also heard they found the cure for cancer. It's called death.

Sometimes every problem looks just like a demand curve

2005-12-22T15:00:00.000-08:00

Alex Tabarrok is a fine economist, but sometimes the smartest people let routine overtake them. You can not explain every economic problem or the behaviour of a corporation by guessing the shape of its products' demand curve. Not every company is maximizing its short-term profits, sometimes the management is simply after world domination.

Everybody in the business knows that MS is after the market share. XBox is a money loser, they know that.

But they have a 75-80% profit margin on Windows and Office and are sitting on billions of cash. They decided to do what every mature company does to keep growing: expand into other markets, whatever the costs may be. They pour money into several areas: gaming, home entertainment, etc.

If the Department of Justice allowed them, they would give the boxes away for free just to kill off the competition. But that would obviously mean the end of Microsoft, because their competitors would immediately sue their asses and the suit would result in a judge ordering an anti-trust breakup of MS.

So, Microsoft is doing the smart thing: sell the boxes at the lowest possible price that can be justified compared to what the competition does. The profits will come, once the competition's leadership has been weakened financially and falls behind in technology and quality.

Baumol's symphony orchestra

2005-11-26T16:05:00.000-08:00

Prof. DeLong channels Marginal Revolution on the topic of European labor and musical protectionism. Here's my comment:

Let's remember that the symphony orchestra was the original case study for Baumol's cost disease: "Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma" (1966).

A French musician can not be more productive than a Bulgarian one. His higher wage is (was) only justified by his (no longer) exclusive access to customers who are more productive than the average Bulgarian.

Via:
Heilbrun, J., "Baumol's cost disease", Chapter 11 in: Towse, R. (ed), (2003), "A handbook of cultural economics".
Read it:
https://ep.eur.nl/handle/1765/782

The Babe Theory of Political Movements

2005-08-14T14:11:00.000-07:00

It's funny and insightful, WILLism explains:

The babe theory of political movements essentially holds that:

Where and when there are hot babes, an exponential number of men will show up. If 100 cute girls with voluptuous bodies are protesting for freedom, you can count on a thousand men being there as well.

If sexy babes are involved in a peaceful political movement, it has a far greater chance of succeeding. If there are no good-looking women involved, the odds of a successful (and peaceful) movement fall dramatically.

Where and when alluring women are excluded from demonstrations, you can expect greater chances of strife, rioting, and failure.

On the Idiots at the DLC

2005-07-29T05:28:00.000-07:00

Peter Ross Range is a fool:

Once again, the British prime minister got it right. He understands that winning this war requires working it from both ends -- quashing the terrorists remorselessly while ameliorating terrorism's root causes. Blair pointed out that on the day of the London bombings, he was working to reduce poverty in Africa and protect the global environment. How many poor people was bin Laden helping that day?

Apparently I didn't read bin Laden's fatwa, where he writes "I became a terrorist because of the poor black in Africa. And global warming. If it wasn't for these issues, I wouldn't have hurt a fly."

I am quoting LGF today

2005-07-24T13:42:00.000-07:00

Who are themselves quoting that old chap Sir Winston:

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities - but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”

—Sir Winston Churchill, from The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).

It's that old "Untergang des Abendlandes" theme. Yet it's really true, religions which are proselytizing DO spread.

The nuclear domino

2005-07-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

Those pals at The American Conservative write scary stories: Four Day War. But they observe one thing quite correctly, an international disarmamant in the near future is unlikely:

Iran is unlikely to give up its nuclear deterrence as long as Israel remains a nuclear power. Israel is unlikely to cede its nuclear capability as long as it feels threatened by the Arab/Islamic world and as long as Pakistan holds on to its bomb. Pakistan, of course, points to India, also a nuclear power. India looks at Pakistan and across the Himalayas and sees nuclear-armed China and says it would never give up its cherished membership to the elite nuclear club.

Teaching kids the Right Thing

2005-07-16T17:46:00.000-07:00

From the Daily Show:

Sommers: "Challenging children has positive results. There are all sorts of lessons that a bully can teach you. I think that adults are hovering around, trying to protect kids [...] this is weakening them, it's not strengthening them."

Bee: "Kids do have to learn that life is a humiliating charade of endless disappointment and tragedy, ultimately culminating in pain, decay and death. "

Sommers: "..."

Bee: "My parents used to sing me to sleep with that one."

"Pre-fab Outrage"

2005-07-10T09:09:00.000-07:00

Credits to Wolcott:

and should Spielberg depict any member of the Israeli assassin squad expressing doubt or regret in lip-biting closeup, he'll be accused of sewing Bin Laden a new robe of snow-white radiance, and the movie will be boycotted by those who never intended to go in the first place but wanted yet another pre-fab outrage to bitch about in their blogs.

Change the World with Violence

2005-07-05T04:34:00.000-07:00

Arthur Silber observes:

the ultimate roots of Bush’s foreign policy, with its plans for “benevolent worldwide hegemony,” are not in anything resembling traditional conservatism, which cautioned against governmental planning from above in all spheres—and the larger the sphere, the greater the caution to be utilized. No, the roots lie in the ideologues of the authoritarian, “transformative” left.

Peeperkorn adds:

Bush is evidently a guy who believes in the creative power of violence.

Silber responds:

the transformative, reordering leftist strain, that relies on force as a means for remaking the world, is one that has now been coopted by the neoconservatives.

Here is an old quote from Jonah Goldberg, which shows that this analysis of the neocon mind is true:

There is nothing we want to see happen in the Middle East that can be accomplished through talking around long tables festooned with bottled water and fresh fruit at Swiss hotels, that cannot be accomplished faster and more permanently through war.

If Goldberg's quote sounds plausible, that's only because the word "war" has been sanitized in the public mind. Usually when we say "war", we mean "the show of force". But war is not some kind of judo or wrestling. To wage war means to use painful violence and cause suffering. This is in turn sanitized by the expression "collateral damage", which makes it sound as if the only victim were shot up walls or hedges.

In reality Goldberg wants people to suffer, because the diplomatic way is not producing results fast enough for them. In fact, they prefer the violence even if it produces the same results, because the show of force makes the other countries more submissive.

Powell Memo 1971

2005-07-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Chait in The New Republic discusses the issue of policies and ideas. One thing caught my attention:

Liberals--who have developed a fascination with corporations and the rise of conservative institutions--have an explanation of their own. They invest enormous importance in a memo written by Lewis Powell in 1971, making the case that corporate America must aggressively defend its interests.

The story of the Powell memo was the first explanation for the rise of the conservative movement and the downturn of liberal politics, that I have learnt of and since it was the only explanation, I accepted it at face value. The real cause may have been much simpler:

My colleague John B. Judis, though, has a far more convincing explanation than a memo that changed the world. In February, he wrote in these pages that businesses adopted a more aggressive and self-interested stance because the U.S. economy changed. In the 25 years after World War II, U.S. business enjoyed a dominant and cushioned position. Therefore business leaders could afford to accommodate unions and reasonable regulations. But, as the rest of the world eventually caught up, profit margins shrank and businesses began fighting unions and looking to Washington to cut their taxes, eliminate regulations, and institute other changes geared toward their bottom line. The cultivation of conservative ideas certainly played a role. But the great shift in U.S. politics resulted not from the persuasive powers of conservative intellectuals but dramatic changes in underlying material conditions.

That's a far more reasonable and straightforward explanation. One which does not need to make use of conspiracy theories.

Two totally unrelated Thoughts

2005-07-04T12:11:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Chait understands how special interest groups work:

As conservatives well understand, once a group of voters has been given a property right by Washington, they will never allow it to be taken away. The individual rights will be a ratchet, one that can be expanded but never contracted. ... Privatizers understand full well that any concessions they make can be legislated away in the future, while private accounts cannot.

Daniel Nexon is quoting Guicciardini:

If you are involved in important affairs or are seeking power, you must always hide your failures and exaggerate your successes. It is a form of swindling and very much against my nature. But, since your fate more often depends upon the opinion of others than on facts, it is a good idea to create the impression that things are going well. The opposite reputation will be harmful to you (Series C, 86).

The sad Fate of M.I.T.-educated managers...

2005-07-04T11:08:00.000-07:00

Greg Ip and Neil King in the Walls Street Journal write on Japan and Germany's peaceful foreign trade development (Via Brad DeLong )

During the 1920s, Japan had low import tariffs and its democratic, civilian government encouraged domestic alliances with European and American companies to hasten Japan's technological catch-up, said Hideaki Miyajima, a Japanese economic historian at Waseda University in Tokyo and a visiting scholar at Harvard. General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. operated Japan's only major automobile assembly plants. The heads of Japan's "zaibatsu" -- urban industrial conglomerates -- were pro-Western. Many sent their children to U.S. universities. But these pro-Western elites were too weak to resist the forces of militarism and imperial expansion.... In 1932, military-backed right-wing nationalists assassinated both Japan's prime minister and one of its leading business figures, Takuma Dan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-educated manager of the Mitsui Group zaibatsu. In 1936-37, the military completed its takeover....

Germany's rivalry with Britain is similarly complex.... Britain's old-line industrial elites saw Germany as a threat, while its emerging financial elites saw it as an opportunity. Within Germany, Ruhr-based heavy industry favored the army buildup and were more willing to risk conflict with Britain, while Hamburg-based trading interests were more pro-British, though supportive of the German fleet buildup....

That's an interesting information. It basicly shows how the economic relations determine (or at least correlate with) foreign policy positions.

"I'm from the British Empire and I'm here to help"

2005-05-13T05:25:00.000-07:00

Typical Assrocket:

It's great to see someone standing up for colonialism, especially British colonialism. I agree wholeheartedly with this observation, for example:

Had Britain had the courage to face down Gandhi and his rabble a few years longer, the tragedy that was the partititon of India might have been avoided.

Sure...
Estimated death tolls:
1876-1879 Indian Famine 6.1 - 10.3 M
1896-1900 Indian Famine 6.1 - 19.0 M

(Via Atrios and LawyersGunsMoney )

Historikerstreit

2005-04-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

Dies war der Startschuß des so genannten Historikerstreits, an dem sich jeder dazu berufene geschichtskundige - und wer fühlt sich nicht als solcher - Journalist, Publizist Politologe, Philosoph und last not least Historiker beteiligte. Dabei war es vielen "Debattierern" nicht in erster Linie darum zu tun, die Vergangenheit möglichst unvoreingenommen zu untersuchen. Das Ziel der meisten Beiträge ... war vielmehr, ihre ohnehin festgefügte Weltanschauung durch eine subjektive Selektion historischer Beispiele zu "beweisen". Nur selten hörte und las man in dieser verbissenen Auseinandersetzung um Objektivität bemühte Stimmen (...)

Nach wenigen Monaten erstarb die Auseinandersetzung. Um eine "Debatte" hatte es sich nicht gehandelt. Denn den Kontrahenten war es nicht darum gegangen, die eigenen Erkenntnisse zur Diskussion zu stellen und dabei auch von anderen zu lernen, womöglich den eigenen Standpunkt zu revidieren. Sie wollten vor allem möglichst viele Unbeteiligte von der eigenen Sichtweise überzeugen. (...) So ist der Historikerstreit Beispiel für das Fehlen einer Streitkultur in Deutschland, wo man nach wie vor lieber kämpft als debattiert."
(Seligmann, S. 271f.)

Rafael Seligmann, "Mit beschränkter Hoffnung. Juden, Deutsche, Israelis." 1991.

Excellent Tom Toles Again

2005-04-18T04:42:00.000-07:00

Provocation,
Counterattack,
Escalation,
Conventional Retaliation,
Nuclear Option,
Mutually Assured Destruction.

'The Infinite Collective Insights That Comprise The Marketplace'

2005-04-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

Via Mark Thoma, Brad Delong et al. comes the pointer to the latest amateurish hackjob at the NRO:

Unless Volcker possesses more wisdom than the infinite collective insights that comprise the marketplace, he’s got things backward.

Finally, someone confessed up that it's The Golden Calf of Infinite Supply-Side Wisdom that the NRO crowd worships. Fools, haven't they seen 'Dogma'? Or read the Book of Capital Exodus? (which I for your convenience quote below ):

1. And when the NRO supply-siders saw that Volcker talked of “disturbing trends, huge imbalances, disequilibria, [and] risks” ( Book of WaPo, Page B07) they gathered themselves together unto Luskin, and said unto him, "Up, make us markets, which shall be most useful for discounting the future;

2. For as for this Volcker guy, the man that brought us out of the Land of Inflation in the early 1980s with standard Keynesian and monetarist theory, his crazy talk makes us now feel fuzzy inside."

3. And Luskin said unto them, Break off thy savings, which are in the Social Security of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto Trend Macrolytics.

4. And all the people brake off their live savings in the hope of 'achieving superior performance' and creating wealth, and brought them unto The Don.

5. And he received them at their hand, and managed them with a “supply-side” approach that has demonstrated superior predictive value

6. And its major tools are depth commentary and real-time analysis from principals Luskin and Gitlitz (not to be deemed to be recommendations for buying or selling specific securities or to constitute personalized investment advice),

7. For as for these so called 'traditional economists', they are concerned primarily with backward-looking statistical aggregates that have little market relevance by the time they are published.

8. After he had made their savings into the Golden Calf they said, 'These be thy marketplaces, O Israel, which possess wisdom of "infinite collective insights that comprise them".'

9. And when Luskin saw it, he built an altar before it; and Don Luskin made a proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the Supply-Side Calf.

10. And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered briefing papers, and brought talking points; and the NRO writers sat down to write Op-Eds and commentary,

11. And they wrote to expose and debunk the liberal bias of America's most dangerous leftist 'economists': Krugman, Stiglitz and Volcker,

12. And their bogus 'papers', credentials and Nobel prizes.

The Death/Paris Hilton Tax

2005-04-17T05:15:00.000-07:00

Data for ROLL CALL 102:

H R 8	Death Tax Repeal Permanency Act
13-Apr-2005	5:27 PM
On Passage	Passed

Party	Ayes	Noes	Not Voting
Republican	230	1	1
Democratic	42	160	0
Independent	0	1	0
Totals	272	162	1

Looks like the Democrats have a important problem. The Republicans vote in unison for their own programme, but 20% of the Democrats are switching sides. We are talking about socio-economic issues here, not some national security stuff where everybody is afraid to be the next target of anti-patriotism accusations. If members of your party do not believe in your own policies, you will never convince the voters. The whole talk about how stupid voters vote against their own economic interest becomes moot.

2005-04-17T04:27:00.000-07:00

testing the festing

"The long arm of the law belongs to the bounty hunter." - Boba Fett

2005-04-17T04:15:00.000-07:00

Alex Tabarrok of marginalrevoulution writes: I would add only that the commercial bail system, backed by bounty hunters, does a much better job than the public system in ensuring court appearances and capturing fugitives. The long arm of the law belongs to the bounty hunter.

Would you trust this man with enforcing the law?:

Requiem for Orson Scott Card Pt.1

2005-04-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

It's a said moment, when a man whom you once admired for his intellectual skills sinks so low and becomes a bitter, deluded partisan hack:

Condoleezza's Confirmation ( By Orson Scott Card January 30, 2005 ) When Condoleezza Rice's confirmation as secretary of state (a) was opposed by 13 Democratic Senators, it did not imply that she was singularly unsuited to serve in the President's cabinet. (b)

It meant that the Democrats in Congress were determined to be brutally partisan ... at a time when our country is at war, and we need to show our enemies a unified and relentless determination to defeat them. (c)

Instead, those thirteen votes had no effect except to encourage our enemies that if they just go on killing Americans long enough (d), there's a party in America that will vote against continuing the war.

Once the decision to go to war is made, then the actions of members of Congress must be undertaken with consideration of how our enemies will interpret them. (e)

There are so many falsehoods and fallacies stacked one on another here, that I am begining to doubt Card's sanity:

a) Rice is to become the secretary of state. That is the person responsible for DIPLOMACY, Mr Card. I wonder if you could explain what that has to do with the war effort, morale boosting, etc. Would the Democratic refusal to an appointment of a secretary of agriculture be treason, too? I could stop this post at this point, but there is a lot more to point out.

b) yes, they implied she is "unsuited" and someone else would do the job better.
c) no, the "determination" to continue a mistake is not something we should want to show the enemy.

d) If Card is talking about the insurgents and terrorist in Iraq, then they already know that there is a limit of losses at which America will simply decide to cut losses and pull out. The limit is certainly lower than 60,000 KIA, the Vietnam casualties number, and no senatorial vote this way or that way is ever going to change that. Hell, if your talking of "killing Americans long enough", at 500,000 losses the Republicans and their mothers would "vote against continuing the war". If Card has no such reasonable limit, he is a sociopath.

e) the INTERPRETATION by the enemy should never ever be the deciding criterium of strategic decisions. How many troops get killed by your decision is much more important.

Demands that the leadership be never critisized and that a dissenting opinion is tantamous to treason can be found in every autocratic state in history. Despite that, whenever the souvereign power ( rulers or parliaments ) realised that the designated commanders in war, the generals and chiefs of staff, were incompetent idiots, they removed them and put them where they could do no more harm. Unfortunately for the soldiers on the ground, the political realisation that something just went wrong comes usually after undeniably large loss in manpower.

Let's just leave the issue whether Rice is competent or not aside. Card does not even try to discuss that so I do not need to refute it, too.

What Card demands is that we REWARD failures of any hypothetical commander, despite the evidence of his incompetence. Apparently, admitting a mistake is worse than continuing it, because it could change the FEELINGS of the enemy. Yet I wonder how much comfort does it give the enemy that when you keep a (hypothetical) incompetent idiot in command. Wouldn't putting a new face in charge make them uncertain about our tactics and boost the morale of our own soldiers (who know what the raw deal is), too?

Unfortunately, Card puts himself into the a camp or the authoritarian loyalists, the Knobelsdorf of Verdun, whose only guiding compass is the faith in the infallibility of the leaders, stemming from the fact that they are not qualified to distinguish a good plan from a bad one and to evaluate the quality of leadership accordingly. It would make a thousand times more sense if Card used the the precious time and publishing space he's got to prove that Rice is competent and the thirteen senators' criticism is objectively wrong.