Author: VD

Keynesian shock tactics still don’t work

Abenomics has, as predicted, conclusively failed:

Japan’s economy unexpectedly fell into recession in the third quarter, a painful slump that called into question efforts by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to pull the country out of nearly two decades of deflation.

The second consecutive quarterly decline in gross domestic product could upend Japan’s political landscape. Mr. Abe is considering dissolving Parliament and calling fresh elections, people close to him say, and Monday’s economic report is seen as critical to his decision, which is widely expected to come this week.

Rising sales taxes have been blamed for triggering the downturn by deterring consumer spending, and with Japan having now slipped into a technical recession, the chances that Mr. Abe will seek a new mandate from voters to alter the government’s tax program appear to have increased significantly.

The preliminary economic report, issued by the Cabinet Office, showed that gross domestic product fell at an annualized pace of 1.6 percent in the quarter through September. That added to the previous quarter’s much larger decline, which the government now puts at 7.3 percent, a slightly worse figure than in its last estimate of 7.1 percent.

The surprise recession underscores the difficulties faced by Mr. Abe, who won power two years ago on a pledge to reinvigorate the economy and end his country’s long streak of wage and consumer-price declines. His agenda, dubbed Abenomics, has focused largely on stimulus measures, in particular an expanded program of government bond purchases by the central bank.

When the Obama stimulus plan failed, Neo-Keynesians like Paul Krugman claimed it was because the stimulus wasn’t big enough even though it was BIGGER than Neo-Keynesians like Paul Krugman had claimed was necessary to jump-start the economy.

Then Japanese Prime Minister Abe launched the Abenomics program, which consisted of  “monetary policy, fiscal policy, and economic growth strategies to encourage private investment. Specific policies include inflation targeting at a 2% annual rate, correction of the excessive yen appreciation, setting negative interest rates, radical quantitative easing, expansion of public investment, buying operations of construction bonds by Bank of Japan (BOJ), and revision of the Bank of Japan Act.”

The total fiscal stimulus was ¥20.2 trillion, and yet even in combination with all the aggressively easy monetary policy pursued by the Bank of Japan, it hasn’t been able to grow the economy at all. The plain and simple economic fact is this: you cannot print or borrow your way out of an economic depression that is a consequence of excessive debt. No matter how many Nobel-prize winners assure you that you can.

In defense of scientists

The Mayor of London speaks out in favor of science nerd fashion:

I watched that clip of Dr Taylor’s apology – at the moment of his supreme professional triumph – and I felt the red mist come down. It was like something from the show trials of Stalin, or from the sobbing testimony of the enemies of Kim Il-sung, before they were taken away and shot. It was like a scene from Mao’s cultural revolution when weeping intellectuals were forced to confess their crimes against the people.

Why was he forced into this humiliation? Because he was subjected to an unrelenting tweetstorm of abuse. He was bombarded across the internet with a hurtling dustcloud of hate, orchestrated by lobby groups and politically correct media organisations.

And so I want, naturally, to defend this blameless man. And as for all those who have monstered him and convicted him in the kangaroo court of the web – they should all be ashamed of themselves.

Yes, I suppose some might say that his Hawaii shirt was a bit garish, a bit of an eyeful. But the man is not a priest, for heaven’s sake. He is a space scientist with a fine collection of tattoos, and if you are an extrovert space scientist, that is the kind of shirt that you are allowed to wear.

As for myself, I’m not a fan of either the tattoos or the garish shirt. Dr. Taylor’s tears certainly revealed that tattoo sleeves don’t indicate any degree of toughness; he would have done far better to give that second interview in a Grand Theft Auto shirt and flipped a symbolic bird to his idiot critics.

But #ShirtStorm was a useful reminder of what we’ve learned from #GamerGate. One cannot compromise with pinkshirts because they don’t believe in compromise. They believe in taking eternal offense and staying on the permanent offensive. They are like sharks; if they are not complaining and attacking, they lose their assumed power.

I know I’ve said this several times over the last few days, but I cannot repeat it enough. NEVER APOLOGIZE. SJWs regard apologies as weakness, as leverage, and as a ritual preface to complete submission. I can assure you from personal experience, all their hatred is nothing more than sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing. The only response to their attacks and their attempts to create false equivalences and assign false meanings should be to pour unrestrained scorn on their heads.

Fifth Frontier War turn 1

Fifth Frontier War prelude

The expected Zhodani invasion has begun. As I suspected he would, their High Admiral has gone with a fairly conservative, broad front envelopment that is aimed more at methodically taking control of planets than hunting down and destroying the Imperial fleets or targeting a few specific Schwerpunkts.

Of the five distinct incursions, the most dangerous fleet is the Zhodani 1st Assault Fleet, as it not only packs enough punch to have destroyed one of my colonial cruisers and driven off the 120 system defense boats guarding one of my subsector capitals at Jewell, but also contains transports that landed two field armies bolstered by several armored divisions to secure the planet. About my only accomplishment was bloodying the 1st Assault’s nose a little while extricating my colonial battleship. My hope is to use it to either wreak a little havoc behind his lines or possibly distract one of his fleets. It’s not likely, given the requirement to plot up to five turns in advance, but perhaps I can force him to tie up the 65th Fleet in pursuit of it.

Fortunately, the extra reinforcements I provided the large Jewell militia prevented the Zhodani from claiming the planet in the first turn, so hopefully that will disrupt their schedule. The planetary militia has taken 70 percent casualties and the Imperial army corps stationed there was destroyed, but with the help of the elite Marines and some mercenaries,they managed to nearly eliminate two Zhodani divisions, including one of the armored ones.

In the north, the Vargr are unopposed and have already bypassed Dentus in order to land troops and take Kinorb. Three fleets have entered the demilitarized zone, but they haven’t done more than take out a scoutship or two. And in the south, the two Sword Worlds fleets blundered by launching without waiting for their troops, which means that even though I’ve only got the minor 213th Fleet to deal with both them and the Zhodani 67th Fleet. That means the Zhodani have only taken two planets when they probably expected to claim four or five in the first turn.

Now I can begin my own plotting; I’ve got my best admiral on Regina along with my main battle fleet, the 214th. However, I dare not risk them against the 1st Assault Fleet, which I now know has more than twice their firepower. The question is whether I use them to hold Regina after Jewell falls, if I throw them forward to slow down the Zhodani assault, or if I fall back and use them to pick off the weaker Vargr fleets while I wait for my reinforcements.

This is a long game and will last at least 26 turns, with 50 being more likely. So, I’ve decided the key at this point is to preserve my forces until my reinforcement fleets begin arriving from the galactic core. So, my inclination will probably be to destroy the Vargr and reclaim Kinorb, leaving it up to the various planetary defenses and the land forces to slow the advance they cannot possibly stop.

VPFL Week 10

102 Greenfield Grizzlies (8-2-0)
86 Mounds View Meerkats (5-5-0)

93 Bane Cornshuckers (6-4-0)
49 King (5-5-0)

81 RR Redbeards (6-4-0)
79 Favre Dollar Footlongs (5-5-0)

81 Gilbert Gamma Rays (6-4-0)
54 Boot Hill Bogs (2-7-1)

79 Texas Chili Eaters (5-4-1)
64 Clerical Errs (1-9-0)

Bloody Grizzlies…. It’s good to see that it looks like the Vikings should be getting AD back soon. I have slightly mixed feelings about this week’s game, however. A friend of mine is tight with the Bears’ head coach, and I have the sense that a blowout Vikings would likely seal Trestman’s fate immediately. But honestly, if he can’t stop the Bears’ historic defensive meltdown against a rookie quarterback leading a division rival missing its star player at home, then he probably should lose his job before the end of the season.

One of the fascinating things about seeing the Bears implode is that I know for a fact that Marc Trestman is a very smart guy. He’s probably one of the smarter coaches in the league. So the whole thing has provided an object lesson in demonstrating the fact that sheer intelligence, even when combined with hard work, is not necessarily synonymous with success.

UPDATE: Sweet fake punt by the Vikes leads to a touchdown. And to think Sparklepunter tried to get Mike Priefer fired! Lesson: never listen to an idiot punter.

Aristocratic tiger-riders

In the introduction to the third edition of FA von Hayek’s A Tiger by the Tail, Austrian economist Joseph Salerno observes:

Inflating aggregate money expenditure leads to a short-run increase in employment that causes an inappropriate distribution of resources whose inevitable correction ensures another depression. Such a correction can be postponed, but never obviated, only by repeatedly neutralizing relative price changes through accelerating inflation.

Those who deny Hayek’s analysis—as all contemporary mainstream macroeconomists and policymakers do—and promote ever-increasing spending as the panacea for our present crisis live in the simplistic Keynesian fantasy land from which scarcity of real resources has been banished and in which the scarcity of money and credit is the only constraint on economic activity. As Hayek pointed out, such people do not merit the name “economist”:

“I cannot help regarding the increasing concentration on short-run effects—which in this context amounts to the same thing as a concentration on purely monetary factors—not only as a serious and dangerous intellectual error, but as a betrayal of the main duty of the economist and a grave menace to our civilization.”

Of course, as we were reminded in 2008, and again in 2014, not only does the postponed correction always eventually arrive, but the nominally palliative measures become increasingly ineffective. The Left is not entirely wrong to focus on the evils of income and financial inequality, because today they are not the result of capitalism and free enterprise, but the neo-feudal largesse distributed by the federal government to the financial aristocracy through the central bank.

I had always wonder why the Ciceronian cycle predicted the rise of aristocracy rather than the conventional expectations of post-democratic dictatorship. But in light of the post-2008 crisis events, it makes a good deal more sense.

Banning “feminist”

Men loathe them. Women are embarrassed by them. Civilized people despise them so much that TIME Magazine had to withdraw “feminist” from its “words to ban in 2015 poll” because so many people were voting for it and that made the feminists at the magazine experience the dread feelbad.

TIME apologizes for the execution of this poll; the word ‘feminist’ should not have been included in a list of words to ban. While we meant to invite debate about some ways the word was used this year, that nuance was lost, and we regret that its inclusion has become a distraction from the important debate over equality and justice.

In other words, “the important debate over equality and justice” should not involve any actual criticism of the beliefs of one side. Forget banning the word “feminist”, what would be better is to ban all feminists from the Western Civilization they are trying to destroy.

Feminism is the one ideology that makes National Socialism look merciful and Communism look viable by comparison. Regard its adherents accordingly.

How to make a monster

A Very Important Lesson from John Scalzi and the SJWs:

John Scalzi@scalzi
Kid called me out on Twitter last night for something she considered sexist. Proud of her; happy to have raised her so she knew she could.

Josh Neff ‏@joshuamneff
You’re doing parenting right.

The Inner Babysitter ‏@PSMHopkins
I literally cheered when I saw that last night.

Ben Emery ‏@JamesBenEmery
As a parent, that’s when you sit back and go, “I know I’ve made mistakes, but overall I haven’t completely failed.”

ChaosNexus ‏@ChaosNexus
I can’t imagine there would be any wilting flowers in the Scalzi household.

John Scalzi ‏@scalzi
@ChaosNexus There really aren’t.

Well, there is observably one wilting flower there, at any rate. Notice how the male SJW openly revels in his failure; he asserts pride in his own degradation. Now, where have I heard this sort of thing before? Ah, yes, now I recollect, in Isaiah, when the prophet speaks of the judgment of the wicked of Judah.

“O My people! Their oppressors are children, And
women rule over them. O My people! Those who guide you lead you astray and confuse the direction of your paths.”
– Isaiah 3:12.

And then, of course, there is this:

“The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it
to account. They had played a similar trick with the instinct of
parenthood. The family could not actually be abolished, and, indeed,
people were encouraged to be fond of their children, in almost the
old-fashioned way. The children, on the other hand, were systematically
turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their
deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought
Police. It was a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded
night and day by informers who knew him intimately.”
– George Orwell, 1984

There is nothing new about the SJW. He is the harbinger of evil and the symptom of a decadent society in the process of collapse. But to return to this specific SJW, there is, as you might expect on Twitter, a punchline.


@scalzi “Kid called me out on Twitter last night for something she considered sexist”
So you muted her?

High-larious.

Confessions of a Baby Boomer

Steve Sailer admits to possessing the conventional bulletproof Baby Boomer delusion bubble:

When I was young, music was seen as a zero sum warfare, a blitzkrieg to take social validation away from older people. When it comes to music, my Baby Boomer ego is generationally bulletproof. My generation having won a massive victory, I, like many Baby Boomers, am convinced that all forms of music were already existent by, say, my 23rd birthday, or are merely trivial extensions or recombinations. Flipping through the radio dial, I never have the feeling “Wow, I’m really old.” Instead, it’s like, “Oh, sure that new style the kids like these days … it’s just a combination of Killing Joke and Seals & Croft, with a little Chic guitar and Curtis Mayfield falsetto. Been there, done that.”

Don’t try to persuade me otherwise with your “facts” and “logic.” I am a Baby Boomer, so my ego is the final authority on all questions involving pop music.

I imagine that this imperturbable complacency among us Baby Boomers that our musical tastes are the be all and end all of youthfulness is discouraging to younger generations, making them feel old before their time. As Camille Paglia would probably say, we Baby Boomers are the vampiric Dorian Grays of culture, siphoning youthfulness from everybody else.

The amusing thing about this is the way that the Boomers actually believe they are more youthful than the people who are two and three generations younger than they are. Guys, you’re old, you’re over it, and you’re going to die soon.

Isn’t it time to grow up and get over yourselves already?

I always find the vast gulf between what the Boomers think later generations think of them and what everyone else actually thinks of them to be hilarious. Which, of course, is why Boomers get so upset on the rare occasion that they stop contemplating their collective navels long enough to find out.

Their “imperturbable complacency” isn’t discouraging in the least. It just makes us look considerably more favorably upon euthanasia than we otherwise might.

The future of Aztec America

Remember, Hispanics are “natural conservatives”:

On Sept. 26, a violent gang and a criminal government combined to massacre 43 students near the Guerrero state town of Iguala.

A perceived attitude of elite indifference by Guerrero state and federal government officials has fanned national outrage. Now, as demonstrators block the runways of Acapulco’s airport and protests over gang-government collusion spread, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto faces an expanding crisis of confidence in government institutions….

On Sept. 26, Iguala municipal police broke up a march and a political demonstration staged by student protestors. Police killed six and then arrested another 43 student protestors. The police killed perhaps another dozen (by “asphyxiation,” investigators believe) and then handed the others over to the Guerreros Unidos (United Warriors) gang. The gangsters killed the other 30 or so young men and women, shredded their corpses and burned the remains. After two gang members confessed in late October, investigators found burnt bone fragments in a dump near the town of Cocula (17 kilometers from Iguala). Search parties also discovered six bags of human remains.

Yes, policemen and gang gunmen colluding to commit mass murder….

That’s what the Obama administration and Republican immigration supporters are is seeking to make possible here in the American Southwest. Geography isn’t magic. The nature of a country is formed by the people who inhabit it. Just as the America inhabited by Indians was very different than the America inhabited by white European colonists, the America invaded by 60 to 100 million non-European settlers, none of whom have any regard for white European traditions, is going to be very different than the one that preceded it.

No one is coming to America or Europe because they “want to be free” anymore. They’re going there because they want to live more comfortably in a rich, white, Western country. Which is completely understandable, of course, but if most of them were capable of doing so successfully, they would already be doing it in their homelands.

It’s much easier to pull things down than lift them up. And neither civilization nor societal wealth and order are givens. Is it possible for immigrants to transform into quasi-natives over time? Of course. My great-grandfather, the Mexican revolutionary, fled to America in order to escape the assassins who killed Pancho Villa. But he came by himself and integrated to such an extent that neither his daughter nor his granddaughter ever learned Spanish. But that is small-scale immigration. What we have been seeing for the last three decades is mass migration and invasion, and it has already had an observably negative effect on the wealth and social order of the USA.

Perhaps it would be useful to distinguish between the immigrant, who intends to transform himself and his children into the native culture, and the settler, who intends to transform the native culture to better suit him and his children.

This is what happens when you don’t retreat

A journalist is astonished by what he finds by peeking under the rock of #GamerGate:

One of the most stunning experiences I have had so far, while keeping in contact with the community after the publication of my first story on them, has been to discover that GamerGate feminists are real. Despite what a person would assume after being constantly bombarded with the narrative of their misogyny, do-it-yourself feminism is an everyday aspect of the movement. The only condition to that statement is that the feminism which GamerGate represents is the type that becomes offended at the suggestion that women need help to achieve what a man can. It is the type of feminism that believes in promotion by merit, not quota, and where the women are themselves individually powerful enough not to require leadership to assist in determining what they are allowed to think or say.

That goes back to the cumulative character of the people who make up GamerGate. It would have been easy for any of them to eschew the label and enjoy the comfort of being a less persecuted human being. Instead, the character of the average gamer-turned-media-activist tends to be such that they stand directly in the line of fire, knowing that the temptation to disassociate from the movement is the primary means through which a corrupt confederation of clickbait media institutions and Social Justice charlatans intend to dismantle it.

That is how I went native; by becoming convinced that these people represent the highest ethical standard, and through watching them put their personal reputations in harms’ way on principle.

This is why you don’t cry and apologize when attacked. This is why you don’t back down when one vicious name after another is hurled at you. This is why you spit in the ugly face of the SJWs when they offer you the carrot and threaten the stick. This is why you don’t step aside and leave your ally’s flank exposed when they are targeting him and not you.

Because others, less willing to stand in the line of fire, find themselves inspired by your example. Every time you stand there and take a shot without flinching, you cause one, or two, or ten other people to realize that they can do it too. Every time you refuse to submit to the enemy, you make ten, or twenty, or one hundred other people see that defeat is not inevitable.

Don’t back down. Don’t apologize. Don’t disassociate. Don’t despair. Remember, the Reconquista began with a single little battle in northernmost Spain. It took 700 years, but eventually, Spain was once more Christian and free. You’re not given a spirit of fear, so don’t be afraid. We will win in the end.