It occurs to me that we’re going to need a new name for this debt-based economics that is gradually coming to the intellectual fore. And we’re going to need an introductory book to it, given that Steve Keen’s severing of the link between micro and macro renders almost completely irrelevant all those Robinson Crusoe stories meant to illuminate the first foundations of the microeconomy.
Everything you know about economics is wrong. Also, everything the professional economists know about economics is wrong.
That may sound arrogant. That may sound crazy. It is certainly a very strong statement. Nevertheless, it is true, because math does not lie.
You see, professional economists make one single very important assumption that underlies their entire profession. This one assumption underlies all of their models, all of their statistics, and all of their fundamental understanding of their studies of human action. They assume that demand is cumulative. What that means is that they assume your preferences, and my preferences, and everyone else’s preferences, can be added together to make one giant set of preferences which can then be utilised in their calculations.
Or, to put it in a way that those of you with an economic background will recognize, they assume that all individual demand curves are a) stackable and b) follow the same downward-sloping trajectory.
As it happens, this is not true. What is more, this has been known to not be true since 1974.
Of course, it would be excessively brutal to follow that up by dropping the Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu theorem on them without warning and a considerable amount of explanation.
I have elected to call this debt-based economics “kraonomics”, from the Greek χρέος, or chréos, which means “debt, duty, indebtedness”. Why that particular spelling? For one, English-speakers will instinctively read the pronunciation correctly. For two, never use accents when you can avoid it. For three, as Psykosonik fans are aware, I always prefer using a “k” to a hard “c” or “ch”. And for four, it suggests just a hint of the chaos theory that it almost certainly requires.
On a tangential note, I wonder how many people noticed perhaps the most intellectually exciting note of the recent Brainstorm with Steve Keen. The professor mentioned, almost off-hand, that he was currently reading the work of one Robert Prechter. It strikes me that whatever comes out of the meeting of those two brilliant minds is almost guaranteed to be significant, revolutionary, and mind-blowing.
Just for starters, it may well be that outstanding private debt is a more useful metric for measuring social mood than the stock markets.
It has been thrown down the memory hole, but Jordan decided the way to help black sports reporters was to give them exclusive access and deny access to honkies. Guys like Ahmad Rashad and Michael Wilbon were given special access. This made their careers, but it also ushered in the era of access journalism. Players granted access to reporters who were willing to sing their praises in their columns and on TV shows.
Something similar happened around the same time in Washington politics. The Clinton machine was ruthless in controlling the media. They would shutout reporters that did not play ball. There’s always been some of this, as people are naturally going to be nice to those who are nice to them and not so nice to people they see as adversaries. The difference was, the Clinton team turned this into a formal policy and the Washington press corp went along with it. They liked being treated like players so they acted accordingly.
The Bush people could not play the same game, as the Washington media is universally liberal, but they did a little bit of it with operations like Fox and the talk radio guys. Rich Lowry of National Review remodeled the magazine to be a GOP mouth piece for exactly this reason. It gave them access to Republicans. The Weekly Standard largely existed as a public relations vehicle for the Bush family. Much of what has gone wrong with Buckley Conservatism is due to the perils of access journalism.
This is why we see the explosion of fake news. The NBA guys want access or at least the illusion of access. To that end, they tweet out rumors and fake news in the hope of getting a reply from an agent or front office guy. That way they can then shoot down their own rumor or fake news with an actual quote from a real person. “After talking with person X, I can now report that the rumor I reported is false.” Fake news about rumors produces gossip that is eventually addressed by a real person in the news.
That seems to be what’s going on Washington with all the fake news. No one in the Washington media bothered to develop contacts in the Trump team. Instead, they mocked and harassed them through the campaign, figuring they were currying favor with the Clinton people. Now, they have no access so they create fake stories hoping to get a response from the Trump people. In lieu of real reporting, it is provocative fake reporting in the hope of gaining access to real people in the Trump White House.
This is all pretty much news to me, but it’s as explanatory as anything else I’ve heard suggested. Personally, I find it a little strange that Fake News has exploded at the very time that it has never been easier for the average individual to do a little looking around the Internet to debunk it.
For those of you who do not know we took in 4 Dominican Republic students for the summer. We went through the Houston Embassy and United Travel out of San Marcos Texas. That is who we believe did all this damage to our personal property. With that being said here are the accounts of what happened the last few days……..We called the police after finding quite a bit vandalism damage to the interior of our house. In our front foyer we noticed all of our eyes blackened out in our family picture wall to include our 4 children by a permanent marker symbolizing a voodoo curse put upon our home and children.
Next was a precious moments preacher collectable taken from the back of the curio cabinet collection of about 150 figurines with its head ripped off and purposely set in plain sight on the kitchen table for all to see. Only one was pulled out and had its head ripped out..”The Preacher”. The only religious figurine in the bunch.
Next was our cabinet door in the kitchen ripped out from the wall. Digging further the washer was marked up with permanent marker. We then noticed permanent marker scribbled on the outside of my acoustic guitar. We then opened the case and found my most precious thing that i own. My limited edition signature cut- away Doyle Dykes Taylor was smashed and put back in its place very meticulously. At the time of the police interview in our house. The police stated he felt all of the boys were being deceitful. Their stories were not matching up.
In conclusion prior discussions with the boys on there rent being too high for them and all of there other friends are paying $325 a month. They wanted their rent reduced to what their friends were paying. I did not move on the rent discussion but i did reduce to paying for their laundry down to zero. Again they stated all of there friends are getting laundry included in there rent of $325.
As far as we are concerned they can leave or transfer to another location at their own expense. No money will be returned to any of them. One of them or all of them vandalized my house. They all deny it!!…i blame them all and no one gets any money back or any of their deposit. We prefer they get out asap at their own expense. If they do not leave i will file in court on Monday an “Emergency Exparte” to have them physically taken out of our home by police force siting we are in fear for our safety and our children’s safety.
Reality will always eventually intrude, no matter how firmly you are determined to believe in unicorns. Or equality.
Oathkeepers are no more keeping their oaths to defend the American Constitution and thereby secure the Blessings of Liberty to the posterity of the People of the United States than conservatives have conserved anything.
Rich @itswildrich White Nationalism – the radically “racist” idea that Whites have a right to preserve their homelands and culture. Just like everybody else.
Oath Keepers @Oathkeepers That is NOT what white nationalism is all about. They advocate ‘saving’ their race at expense of harming innocents; i.e. anyone not white.
Supreme Dark Lord @voxday now Why do you support the elimination of American posterity? A nation is a people, not borders or an idea. You have failed your oaths.
They have broken their oaths. They are rightly dismissed with contempt as “Oathcuckers”. They may not like to hear that, but it is obvious to anyone who understands the purpose of the Constitution they are sworn to uphold.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Posterity is not an idea. Posterity is not geography. Posterity is not paperwork. Posterity is descendance and DNA. Far too many U.S. citizens today are no more the posterity of We the People than they are of the Iroquois, the Cherokee, or the Mohicans, whose ancestral lands they now inhabit.
Fortunately, the Russians aren’t biting as the US attempts to slow down the Syrian army’s destruction of ISIS and reclamation of its territory. The Saker explains the dynamic.
The dynamic in Syria is not fundamentally different from the dynamic in the Ukraine: the Neocons know that they have failed to achieve their primary objective: to control the entire country. They also know that their various related financial schemes have collapsed. Finally, they are fully aware that they owe this defeat to Russia and, especially, to Vladimir Putin. So they fell back on plan B. Plan B is almost as good as Plan A (full control) because Plan B has much wider consequences. Plan B is also very simple: trigger a major crisis with Russia but stay short from a full-scale war. Ideally, Plan B should revolve around a “firm” “reaction” to the Russian “aggression” and a “defense” of the US “allies” in the region. In practical terms this simply means: get the Russians to openly send forces into Novorussia or get the Russians to take military actions against the US or its allies in Syria. Once you get this you can easily see that the latest us attacks in Syria have a minor local purpose – to scare or slow down the Syrians- and a major global purpose – to bait the Russians into using forces against the US or an ally. It bears repeating here that what the Neocons really want is what I call a “tepid” war with Russia: an escalation of tensions to levels not even seen during the Cold War, but not a full-scale “hot” WWIII either. A tepid war would finally re-grant NATO at least some kind of purpose (to protect “our European friends and allies” from the “Russian threat”): the already terminally spineless EU politicians would all be brought into an even more advanced state of subservience, the military budgets would go even higher and Trump would be able to say that he made “America” “great” again. And, who knows, maybe the Russian people would *finally* rise against Putin, you never know! (They wouldn’t – but the Neocons have never been deterred from their goofy theories by such minor and altogether irrelevant things as facts or logic).
Does the Russian strategy work?
To reply to this, don’t look at what the Russians do or do not do in the immediate aftermath of a US provocation. Take a higher level look and just see what happens in the mid to long term. Just like in a game of chess, taking the Gambit is not always the correct strategy.
I submit that to evaluate whether Putin’s policies are effective or not, to see whether he has “sold out” or “caved in” you need to, for example, look at the situation in Syria (or the Ukraine, for that matter) as it was 2 years ago and then compare with what it is today. Or, alternatively, look at the situation as it is today and come back to re-visit it in 6 months.
One huge difference between the western culture and the way the Russians (or the Chinese for that matter) look at geostrategy is that westerners always look at everything in the short term and tactical level. This is basically the single main reason why both Napoleon and Hitler lost their wars against Russia: an almost exclusive focus on the short term and tactical. In contrast, the Russians are the undisputed masters of operational art (in a purely military sense) and, just like the Chinese, they tend to always keep their eyes on the long-term horizon. Just look at the Turkish downing of a Russian Su-24: everybody bemoaned the lack of “forceful” reaction from Moscow. And then, six months later – what do we have? Exactly.
The modern western culture is centered on various forms of instant gratification, and that is also true for geopolitics. If the other guy does something, western leaders always deliver a “firm” response. They like to “send messages” and they firmly believe that doing something, no matter how symbolic, is better than even the appearance of doing nothing. As for the appearance of doing nothing, it is universally interpreted as a sign of weakness. Russians don’t think that way. They don’t care about instant gratification, they care only about one thing: victory. And if that means to look weak, that is fine. From a Russian perspective, sending “messages” or taking symbolic actions (like all 4 of the recent US attacks in Syria) are not signs of strength, but signs of weakness. Generally, the Russians don’t like to use force which they consider inherently dangerous. But when they do, they never threaten or warn, they take immediate and pragmatic (non-symbolic) action which gets them closer to a specific goal.
It’s rather fascinating how the Russians, rather like George Washington, keep “losing” the direct engagements, but somehow end up in the superior position a month or two later. But that’s why strategy and operations matter more than tactical brilliance.
Infosys, the India-based information technology consulting firm with an office in Plano, is facing yet another reverse discrimination lawsuit asserting that it creates a hostile work environment for workers who are not from India or South Asia.
Erin Green, a former supervisor at Infosys, filed suit this week in the Eastern District of Texas in Sherman, alleging that he and black and white staffers on his team were denied raises and promotions, and that other “non-South Asian” workers were berated by South Asian company officials…. In filing suit, Green joined a list of Infosys job applicants and employees who have filed suit in courts in several U.S. jurisdictions arguing reverse discrimination.
“Infosys maintains [more than 20,000] employees working in the United States,” Green’s suit said. While less than 5 percent of the U. S. population is of the South Asian race and national origin, roughly 93 percent to 94 percent of Infosys’s United States workforce “is of the South Asian national origin, (primarily Indian).”
“This disproportionately South Asian and Indian workforce, by race and national origin, is a result of Infosys’s intentional employment discrimination against individuals who are not South Asian, including discrimination in the hiring, promotion, compensation and termination of individuals,” the suit said.
It’s all about identity now. It’s about time whites started playing according to the replacement rules created by the Jews, Italians, and Irish. The days of the old “give it your best shot, Eddie, and may the best man win” have been over since 1965. The USA is no longer an American nation-state, so the only question that matters is “is it good for the whites”.
Or, in this case, Indians.
Realistically, 93 to 94 percent of Infosys’s employees should be repatriated. Because not good for the whites.
Wilcolac spoke in a soft voice, but made each word heavy with emphasis. “We have gathered certain scattered fragments of lore from the one place whence elfin lords never sought to remove it. In the Night World, which is their own, they can find and quell all who might know or guess their secret weakness. We of the Twilight World all vow when we come of age unbreakable oaths, intertwined with runes and curses, never to rebel. But among men, aha! In the Daylit World, the King of Shadows would never suspect the humans retain in rituals and rhymes, in old toasts or old place names, the clues of hidden things the men themselves no longer know!”
Gilberec moved restlessly. Matthias yet again raised his hand, but now Wilcolac spoke. “Your friend, my dear young man of the cloth, seems to be bursting to say something you don’t want him to say. Let us hear it.”
Gilberec said, “We come in Arthur’s name. In whose name do you speak?”
Wilcolac said, “There are those among the Cobwebs who are dissatisfied with the sneers and jeers of elfin lords and the sly looks of their ladies. The elfin blood is pure, their lives are long, and their magic is by nature what we half-breeds can only learn by art or by the crafting of bad bargains with dreadful entities. Their overthrow would please us. Do you support their reign?”
Matthias said wearily, “No one is going to give you a straight answer, Gil, not anyone who knows you are a living lie detector. You are wasting time.”
Gilberec said to him, “I would rather know for sure that he will not be straight with us than to suppose he won’t, without giving him a chance.”
Wilcolac raised both eyebrows. “Giving me a chance…? Your cross-examination is allegedly for my benefit…? I am not willing to say who my principals are. They are not sure whom to trust. That is why they come through me: the Cobbler’s Club is a bit like Switzerland. I have to be careful. If I even appeared to take sides, I would be ruined.”
Gilberec said, “There could be a simpler reason why you know how to break an elfish spell than all this talk of scattered books and Eskimo wizards.”
“And what might that reason be?” asked Wilcolac, assuming an innocent stare.
“You are an Anarchist. Do you deny it?”
Wilcolac took a moment to trim his cigar with a silver knife. He lit it with a spark of flame that seemed to come from the thumb of his white kid-leather glove. “A strange accusation. Here in my club, from time to time, I deal with parties on the wrong side of the law. I hear rumors of a Supreme Council of Anarchists. The oath we all swore to the elfs for some reason does not bind them. They use their supernatural powers to ruin all the institutions the elfs have erected among men as reins and chains, as hoods and horseblinkers. The Anarchists are said to have eyes everywhere, fingers in every pie, to control railways, shipyards, banks, communication nodes, and computer networks. They are said to be behind all the dark deeds that prevent the elfs from enjoying in peace their utter victory over men. But I hear rumors saying the opposite, that the Anarchists are mere agitators or died in the Great War. Supposing they were real: why would I serve them? Anarchy is bad for business.”
“That is not a denial,” Gilberec said to Wilcolac. To Matthias he said, “Come on. Let’s go. This is pointless.”
Yumiko had been listening very intently, glad that no one was looking at her.
But just then she shivered and glanced down. The collie dog had finished his caviar snack and laid himself down at the foot of Gilberec’s chair, placing his furry head on the carpet between his paws so that his bright eyes were staring straight at her.
When Gil stood up, the dog growled and coughed and made a slight sniffing noise. Gilberec turned his head, saw her in her scanty, snug costume, but this time, instead of averting his eyes, he looked at her face. A thoughtful frown creased his brow.
Wilcolac said wryly to Matthias, “At this point in the good-cop, bad-cop routine, you, as the boy good-cop, are supposed to restrain your hotheaded friend to sit again, and this will make me eager to show my cards.”
Matthias smiled and scooped up some caviar on a cracker. “I wish we were that organized. The Swan Knight is no hothead. He is slow to anger, but once he is angry, he is slow to forgive. He feels about truth the way I feel about forgiveness. Guilt and fear and hate tie men to their sins with heavy chains and long so that when they die, their tormented spirits remain on earth, haunting the scenes of their crimes. Without forgiveness, how can they be set free to go onward to their reward? So I have no qualms about entering the house of a Necromancer. You have more need of my services than any!”
Wilcolac said sharply, “What does that mean?”
“I saw a Jack-o’-Lantern in an upper window when I entered this house and smelled the spoor of many hounds. You flay the flesh of men for the benefit of wolves and expose the flesh of women for the benefit of men. Do you think I do not know who you are? What you do here?”
Wilcolac squinted at the young novice, and a look of true hatred appeared, if only for a moment, in his eye. “I think an innocent soul like yours cannot imagine the vices I sell, not even in your most sordid nightmares, little boy.”
Matthias smiled, but his eyes were sad. “You forget. Saint Jean Baptiste is only two streets away. Your patrons come to our confessional booth. My master has heard confessed every detail of all the sins you encourage. But they have been washed away, removed entirely from the dreadful scroll no man can read. I am familiar with your works and your ways, and familiar with how to undo them. You are bold indeed to invite me into your house. Unlike my knightly friend, my weapons are spiritual and cannot be bound in their scabbards. No do my weapons know any truce, nor rest.”
Wilcolac’s fingers tightened on his walking stick, but he said nothing.
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Every month, we send out two or three emails announcing our new hardcovers, paperbacks, ebooks, and audiobooks. We also announce and give away books that are published by bestselling independent authors who have proven to be friends and allies of the Revolution in Literature.
And with almost every email, we include an offer to download a free ebook. Sometimes it is offered as a reward for buying the new release, sometimes it’s just our way of thanking you for your support of Castalia House.
This summer, we will be publishing books by Martin van Creveld, Rod Walker, John C. Wright, Jerry Pournelle, LawDog, Vox Day, Moira Greyland, Peter Grant and other Castalia House authors. We will also be giving away books by Nick Cole, Jason Anspach, and other excellent independent authors as well as books from our own catalog.
The pro-Trump supporter Tony Forman was right in the middle of a recent protest in Cathay where emotions ran hot over the sanctuary city controversy, but nothing like the violence that’s left Foreman now fighting for his life.
“This was politically motivated. That’s a concern because he is a good friend of mine,” Omar Navarro said. “I’m just really shocked someone would do this. What happened to free speech?”
Navarro is running to unseat the long time Democrat Maxine Waters in the 43rd District of the U.S. Congress, and there are also accusations coming from others.
The stabbing attack on Foreman is a hate crime because of his outspoken support for President Trump and the conservative agenda. “We don’t know if it is politically motivated or racially motivated, but we do know there were some racial slurs for him being white that were said to him,” Tim Gionet, a friend of Foreman, said.
Santa Monica police did not mention a politically motivated crime, only confirming they arrested two suspects.
As I have pointed out in recent darkstreams, it is time to take your own rhetoric seriously. This is a cultural cold war that is in the process of turning hot. Prepare accordingly. If you’re going to take part in protests and public events, be equipped and prepared for the possibility of violence and don’t operate under the mistaken impression that the police are going to somehow magically protect you.
The police have simply got to learn that if they refuse to punish their own when officers cross the line, good cops are going to become reprisal targets. This killer ex-officer’s excuse is almost unbelievable:
The recently acquitted cop who killed legal gun owner Philando Castile at a Minnesota traffic stop last summer claimed a whiff of pot made him fear for his life.
Former Officer Jeronimo Yanez told investigators a day after the fatal July 6 shooting that he was “hit with a odor of burning marijuana” after he pulled over Castile, his girlfriend and her then-four-year-old daughter — an alleged smell he used in justifying why he’d put seven bullets in the St. Paul man.
“I thought, I was gonna die and I thought if he’s, if he has the, the guts and the audacity to smoke marijuana in front of the five-year-old girl and risk her lungs and risk her life by giving her secondhand smoke and the front seat passenger doing the same thing then what, what care does he give about me,” Yanez told the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
So now smelling like a pot smoker is sufficient legal justification for a cop to kill you? It’s pretty difficult to generate sympathy for the murderous Black Lives Matter movement, but between the corrupt legal system that magically excuses bad shoots like this and entitled idiots like this now-former police officer digging the hole deeper, that’s exactly what they’re doing.
Police must be held to a higher standard by the law, not so much to protect the public as to protect the police themselves as well as their standing with the public. A decline in discipline and accountability has never generated increased respect for the members of any organization.
