Category: Uncategorized

Well, Hitler was from Austria….

Oh sweet Mises, even Krugman at his most obstinately ignorant hasn’t descended to these depths regarding the Austrian School of Economics:

Ever wonder how one of the most educated and advanced nation in Europe ended up with Hitler as a leader in 1933? Well, you have thank Austrian Economics for that- at least partially. You see, after ww1 the allies made Germans pay exorbitant and ruinous reparations. The only way to escape these compensations was through hyperinflation- wiemar style.

But here is the fun part.. after a few years of such hyperinflation they decided to cool down and “normalize” the economy- using the advice of people like Friedrich von Hayek and his “Austrian” School Of Economics. The guy who led this effort, Heinrich Brüning, whose austerity measures resulted in a massive increase in unemployment- from 15% to over 30% in less than two years.

No, you really don’t. At all. The Austrian School of economics had as much to do with the rise of the National Socialists to power in Germany as Victoria’s Secret or My Pretty Pony did. First, as anyone who has ever read The Economic Consequences of the Peace will know, hyperinflation was not only a predictable consequence of the war reparations, but could not be utilized to reduce the German debt because it was subject to recalculations that were completely under the control of the Allied commission. Inflating their way out of the debt was never an option for the Germans; there was no escape except default. This was already obvious to everyone back in 1929, which is why the Young plan reduced the reparations payments and was followed by a moratorium in 1931. Note that the Young plan went into effect three months before Brüning even took office for the first time. Second, Austrian economics had no influence on German politics, which was dominated by socialism of varying stripes. In fact, the very name “Austrian” was given as a deprecating insult to the school by the empiricists of the dominant German Historical School during the Methodenstreit at the end of the 19th century.

Third, Heinrich Brüning’s attempt to rein in the Weimar hyperinflation was not based on Friedrich von Hayek’s advice. Hayek and the Austrians were hardly the first to notice the pernicious effects of inflation and Hayek didn’t even publish his first book until 1929. Moreover, he was in London at the London School of Economics while Brüning was Chancellor of the Weimar Republic. The ironic thing is that this inept Advocatus Diaboli appears to think that Brüning should have pursued a Keynesian approach, nowithstanding the fact that the the German edition of The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Mony was not published until September 1936, four years after Brüning left office. Keynes’s own words on the German economic tradition during the period that included the Weimar years are also somewhat pertinent to the subject:

“The orthodox tradition, which ruled in nineteenth century England, never took so firm a hold of German thought. There have always existed important schools of economists in Germany who have strongly disputed the adequacy of the classical theory for the analysis of contemporary events. The Manchester School and Marxism both derive ultimately from Ricardo, a conclusion which is only superficially surprising. But in Germany there has always existed a large section of opinion which has adhered neither to the one nor to the other. It can scarcely be claimed, however, that this school of thought has erected a rival theoretical construction; or has even attempted to do so. It has been sceptical, realistic, content with historical and empirical methods and results, which discard formal analysis…. Thus Germany, quite contrary to her habit in most of the sciences, has been content for a whole century to do without any formal theory of economics which was predominant and generally accepted.”

Keynes is describing the importance of the Historical School here, the same German Historical School that gave the name to its provincial theoretical rivals. Attempting to blame the end of Weimar hyperinflation, much less the rise of Adolf Hitler, on the Austrian school or even the slightly more plausible Manchester school reveals a near-complete ignorance of economic history.

Tony Soprano died at the diner

Look, it was never a mystery. I have not seen one second of The Sopranos, but when I heard it was coming to an end, I knew that Tony would be whacked. I knew he would be whacked because he HAD to be whacked. Any half-skilled dramatist – and by all accounts, David Chase is a highly skilled one – knows that a drama has to end in death, redemption, or the completion of an odyssey. Since there is no secular redemption other than a wedding (or its extra-marital substitute) and I assumed that no HBO series would end in Christian repentance, and because Tony Soprano was an overt antihero, (therefore precluding the odyssey), there simply was no other dramatically possible option.

And no one who has ever seen The Godfather should fail to grasp the metaphorical significance of someone walking into a bathroom at a restaurant. Especially not in a television series about the Mafia. I would give no more credence to the idea that the fade to black at the end – which ended on the word “stop” – meant that the lead character got arrested than it meant he left his wife, moved to Las Vegas, and became a poledancer at a gay club.

Actual persecution

As atheists continue whine about how no one likes them and how they are second-class citizens, Christians are still being murdered for their faith around the world… as they have been for the last two thousand years:

Islamist militants divided into two groups who accessed the Coptic homes through the roofs of their neighbors’ houses. The survivors say the masked attackers of the first home were led by Ibrahim Hamdy Ibrahim. They killed Joseph Waheeb Massoud, his wife Samah, their 15-year-old daughter Christine, and their eight-year-old son Fady Youssef. The other masked group was led by Yasser Essam Khaled. They killed Saleeb Ayad Mayez, his wife Zakia, their four-year-old son Joseph and three-year-old daughter Justina, his 23-year-old sister Amgad, their mother Zakia, and Saniora Fahim.

Richard Dawkins likes to assert that a child cannot have a religious identity. But the fact that a child can be killed for a nonexistent identity clearly disproves that assertion. It certainly hasn’t stopped others who share Dawkins’s lack of religious identity from killing them. Given the way in which secularism has proven demographically barren, science has proven morally neutral, and democracy has proven to be a two-edged sword, it is time for the secularists and atheists of the West to seriously rethink their intransigent opposition to Christianity.

The choice is the same as it has always been for Europe and the West, between Christian civilization and pagan barbarism. The third option simply doesn’t exist. It’s not that Christianity needs the support of non-believers to survive, history from Rome to Communist China proves that it will survive and even thrive during periods of pagan persecution. It is Western civilization itself that requires non-believers to support Christian institutions and traditions; if secularists continue to align themselves with the pagans against Christendom, they will find themselves destroying the very aspect of society which they wished to save.

Men are the real romantics

Betas, Deltas, and Gammas may do well to keep this interesting fact from the Pew Research Center in mind the next time they hear a woman sailing off on what they believe to be her heartfelt romantic fantasies:

Men (31%) are a bit more likely than women (26%) to say that every person has only one true love.

In other words, nearly three-quarters of women don’t buy into the Disney myth by which many men believe women live. This is one reason it often surprises men when they discover how ruthlessly calculating women can be, especially when those men happen to buy into the Disney myth themselves.

Never put a woman on a pedestal. Never put anyone on a pedestal. Statues belong on pedestals, not living people.

Krugman catches up

What’s going on here? It means that we’re either overstating inflation (and hence understating income gains) or overstating economic growth. Both the BEA (which measures GDP and related) and the BLS (which does consumer prices) work hard and honestly at their tasks; the difference probably arises (I’m sure someone has done this more carefully) in how you value new or improved goods. My sense has always been that the GDP accounts overdo their hedonics, but that’s very much a matter of opinion. Maybe the real point here is to remember, always, that economic statistics are a peculiarly boring sub-genre of science fiction; extremely useful, but not to be treated as absolute truth.

From RGD Chapter 4, No One Knows Anything: “Another indication that GDP growth may be exaggerated stems from comparing the data for the GDP deflator, which purports to correct GDP for inflation, with the Consumer Price Index, which is more commonly used as the primary measure of inflation. If one chooses 1983, the base year of index to which all of the historical CPI data are chained, one will find that the GDP deflator reports inflation of 79.1 percent over the last 26 years, while the CPI figure shows 114.1 percent inflation over the same period. While the two statistical measures are based on different criteria, their comparison shows the inverse of what one would tend to expect since CPI reflects the price of imported goods while the GDP deflator does not. And, as anyone who has been paying attention to the balance of trade over the last two decades will recognize, foreign imports tend to cost less than domestically manufactured products. Another oddity is the way in which an increase in the price of imported oil reduces the GDP deflator, thereby exaggerating GDP growth when the price of oil rises and reducing it when it drops. It’s interesting to note that when GDP is corrected for inflation using the CPI rather than the deflator, the real U.S. economy appears to be significantly smaller than it is presently believed to be. For example, whereas the GDP deflator shows growth from $3.1 trillion to $8.0 trillion over the last 26 years in 1983 dollars, using GDP-CPI would indicate a real 2009 GDP of only $6.6 trillion.”

My conclusion, of course, is that inflation has been erroneously defined and economic growth has been significantly overstated. This will become readily apparent once it is no longer possible to conceal the bad debts that are still being recorded as positive assets on the corporate and government books. And it is more than a little amusing to see Krugman admit that economic statistics are “a sub-genre of science fiction” and “not to be treated as absolute truth” considering the way in which he attempts to use them to macromanage the global economy.

Whether science is self-correcting

Vox: It is said that science is self-correcting.  For to be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny, according to the Cosmologist.  And yet, it is also said that life itself is an error-correcting process, as well as an error-making one.  Since science is not entirely unrelated to life, this raises the obvious question of what the material differences distinguishing science from life and scientific self-correction from life’s intrinsic error-correcting process might happen to be.

But let us be patient and attempt to limit ourselves to one issue at a time.  What is science and what distinguishes it from life?

The Biochemist: What is science and what distinguishes it from life?  Science is that portion of study that uses observation to describe a system. An adequate description so formed can be used as a tool for some purpose.  Science is one of the ways that life can utilize information.

I want “observation” to include both natural situations and perturbed systems (experiments). That way we are inclusive of both white and pink polar bears. I say “describe” so that both it includes both rule (i before e except after c) and rote (a list of words with adjacent i and e) and combination (i before e except after c with the following exceptions…).  I add the second sentence so that the “correctness” of the science can be judged. The adequacy of a description ( a model, a list, a definition) does depend on the end user (“Italy is shaped like a boot” is fine for helping someone find it on a map, not so great for navigation).

I make no claim that only life can employ science or that science always provides information that can be utilized by life.

The Physicist: While it’s tough to pin down a definition that will satisfy every scientist and philosopher, functionally I’m happy with saying that science is just the effort to understand the world through observation and experiment. The commuter who tries several routes to work to find the quickest is doing science in the process of going about daily life. So is the cook who tries different recipes to see which is most popular with the customers. In this respect science is something that most everyone does in the process of living their lives. People try different things and throw out what doesn’t work, in a process which it’s probably fair to call self-correction.

A person with “scientist” as a job title is just applying these same methods to difficult problems in nature. Separating what works from what doesn’t is especially crucial to science as a profession, and methods such as journal publication, conference presentations, public colloquiums and the like have been developed to make this process more efficient. But none of this is magic, and I wouldn’t argue that the science done by professional scientists is different in anything but degree from the “Try and see” methods most people use every day.

Vox: I see no reason to disagree with either statement. So we three are agreed that science is a thing that is done and a means that is employed. It is not alive, and it has no animating spirit, much less a self-aware consciousness. To this, we can add the observation that science can also be in error, or there would be no need for it to be corrected and we would not be able to describe it as self-correcting. Now, when an error occurs in the application of science, is it the means that is employed or is it the employer of that means that commits the error?

The Biochemist: Only the employer can “commit” the error, but it is possible that a modification of the means could prevent the error. For example, driving is a means of transportation and cars are not self-aware; if a car has a long stopping distance because of brake design, it is the driver who commits an error by not leaving enough stopping distance. Yet improvement of the brakes by the manufacturer would lead to less accidents.

The Physicist: If we agree that science is a thing that is done and a means that is employed, saying that the method is wrong is a category error along the lines of blaming the concept of language for the dumb things that people sometimes say. But if we agree that the means of science is observation and experiment, it’s clearly true that the conclusions drawn by scientists are limited by the accuracy of our observations, the limitations of our experimental apparatus, the accessibility of the things we wish to observe, the clarity with which we examine the results, and other problems of that nature. To the extent those problems exist, we’re limited in our ability to understand the world via science. And thus scientists make mistakes, and lots of them.

Conversely, nature is what it is regardless of what mistakes we make while trying to examine it. Our mistakes can only exist until we observe facts contradicting them, whereas a correct conclusion will never be overturned by a contradictory fact. As a wise man once said, truth cannot contradict truth.

Vox: How fortunate it is that we have thus far avoided contradicting truth! I am very much heartened in the hope that we shall continue to avoid any such fate by the fact that we three find ourselves once more in a harmonious accord, in which we have concluded that it is the employer of the method of science who commits the error when an error happens to occur. Now, since we are not only contemplating errors, but also the eventual correction of errors, it stands to reason that someone, or something, must have first discovered employer’s error prior to correcting it. And therein lies the next question: who, or what, discovers it?

The Biochemist: Errors can be discovered by anyone who finds the science wanting.

The Physicist: Anyone who experimentally tests the possible error against observed reality.

Vox: We appear to be rapidly approaching a potential conclusion, but lest we reach a false one overhastily, I urge caution.  We have now determined that an error in the application of science is committed by an employer and can potentially be discovered by anyone rather than anything.  Is this likewise true of errors that are unrelated to the application of science, errors that are, in fact, entirely unrelated to science in any way?  Or to phrase it another way, are the class of potential discoverers of non-science errors intrinsically limited in some way?

The Physicist: Since we’ve taken a broad but robust view of science as testing via observation, if an error – any kind of error, in professional science or otherwise – is detectable by observation, such detection is done through science by definition. There are no empirically observable errors entirely unrelated to science, and there is no restriction on who can use their own observations to discover and correct those errors. This is not some science triumphalist claim that science is everything and everything is science. The answers to a large number of important, legitimate, and well-posed questions are simply not amenable to test via observation. The discovery and discoverers of those errors is an interesting and profound question, but probably not one which science can say much of anything about.

The Biochemist: Non-science errors can potentially be discovered by anything or anyone. A phase-lock loop on an RF oscillator, a checksum for memory storage, the Mut proteins that find mismatched base-pairs in dna; these all find errors but are not (on their own) doing science.

Vox: So, if I have understood the Biochemist correctly errors in science can be discovered by anyone, while errors in non-science can be discovered by anyone or anything. But let us stay focused on the errors in science. Having been discovered by anyone, who or what then can claim credit for correcting the error? After all, to correct something it is not enough to merely note the error, correction implies the provision of an alternative answer that is not incorrect.

The Biochemist: The participants in the correction process deserve credit. Anyone can claim credit.

The Physicist: One can discover and publicize an error without putting forth a better explanation. To pick a random example, the perihelion precession of Mercury was discovered in the 1850s by Urbain Le Verrier and persisted as a nagging contradiction within classical mechanics for many decades. Its theoretical resolution remained incomplete until Einstein’s work in the early part of the 20th century. As for the credit, that’s an issue that matters a lot to scientists but not really to science. A discovery is a discovery regardless of the name attached to it.

Vox: So we have successfully established several important points of agreement. We know that when an error occurs during the employment of science, it is the responsibility of the employer. When that error is detected and corrected, the correction is credited to those who participated in detecting and correcting it, although the detectors need not be the correctors. These statements are all very clear and create no confusion with regards to themselves. And yet, I find myself unable to balance them with the original question. Allow me to explain the difficulty in which I find myself.

In addition to the previously mentioned conclusions, we have also noted that those who employ science are not uniquely prone to error. A doctor can make a mistake, as can an accountant. And just as we do not blame science for the error of the scientist, we do not blame medicine for the error of the doctor. Neither do we hold accounting responsible for the error of the accountant. When a second doctor corrects the error of the first doctor or when a second accountant corrects the error of the first accountant, we correctly credit the correction to the second doctor and the second accountant, not to medicine or accounting. And therefore, we do not say that either medicine or accounting are self-correcting, we instead consider them to be capable of being corrected.

However, because we have concluded that it is scientists, or anyone else participating in the correction process, who corrects the errors of other scientists in science, which is in keeping with the way that doctors correct the errors of other doctors in medicine and accountants correct the errors of other accountants in accounting, shall we therefore conclude that medicine and accounting are also self-correcting?

The Physicist: Science has no monopoly on self-correction. An accounting uncovering error or fraud by examining a spreadsheet is not doing something so different from a scientist uncovering a problem with a theory by examining instrument readings. In both cases the members of the professions are correcting their previous errors.

However, the the character of the corrections in accounting and science are somewhat different. The rules of accounting are set by accountants, lawyers, and legislators. Errors and corrections happen within that known framework, which can itself be adjusted. In science the framework is the laws of nature, which are not known a priori and can’t be adjusted. (Citigroup can rewrite accounting law, Virgin Galactic can’t rewrite gravity.) So sure, you could say accounting is self-correcting. That description might not be as useful as it is for the scientific study of natural laws, but it wouldn’t be wrong.

The Biochemist: Medicine and accounting are “capable of being corrected”. In your scenarios, they are self-correcting via redundancy; one engineering method of adding self-correction to a system. Most systems that are self-correcting can also exist in a non-self-correcting state. Most FM receivers use “Automatic Frequency Control” to lock to a station, but many also have a button to toggle the AFC off. A system of medicine or accounting is self-correcting if it enforces the requirement of a second opinion or an outside audit.

Vox: I am afraid both my distinguished interlocutors appear to be committing a basic category error here. Previously, we had agreed that the error is committed by one party and corrected by another party, which may in fact be the same party. But at no point in time has anyone asserted that it is the method utilized by one or both parties which either commits or corrects the error. Just as one cannot confuse the fact of a car being driven with a car driving itself, it is not correct to say that which is capable of being corrected is correcting itself. Now, I understand that one can reasonably describe the entire system which contains both the acting individuals as well as the process that is utilized as a “self-correcting” system in some very broad sense, but this all-encompassing systemic concept is quite clearly not the definition of science which we defined earlier.

But perhaps I am mistaken, so it might prove instructive to further contemplate this broad and inclusive definition of a self-correcting system. So far, it has been asserted that systems of science, medicine, and accounting are self-correcting. Based on the definition of “a system that enforces the requirement of a second opinion or an outside audit” can we also say that systems of politics, mathematics, law, publishing, and theology are all self-correcting as well?

Mailvox: the inexplicable antics of women

Drew is a bit discombobulated:

This is my first time writing to you, but I have followed your blog for about 6 months now. I was directed to your blog by a female friend after she quoted you on facebook. Many of your entries on politics and the economy are way over my head, but I do learn something from time to time. The articles that i find most applicable to me are the ones on women. Which is why I’m writing to you today.

One of my female friends has never seemed the least bit interested in me. Until two days ago, when I made it known that I will be moving out of state for a job. All of a sudden, she’s been all over me, totally out of character. I’ve talked to one of my friends, and he said he’s experienced the same thing when he was about to move away. What is it that makes women ignore guys until they no longer have a shot? Is it the “you always want what you can’t have” principle? Or is it something more sinister at work?

I don’t know if I would describe it as anything sinister, as it is probably the same reason women are so much more sexually accessible when they are traveling away from home than when in their home environment. I suspect she is sufficiently attracted enough to you to be interested in no-strings sex, but not enough to want an actual relationship. This is most likely because your status in the socio-sexual hierarchy is insufficient to impress her friends. Never forget that women are not pack animals by nature, they are herd animals until they emotionally bond with a man, at which point they abandon the herd in favor of a pairing that can form the nucleus of a new pack.

So, since you have already made it clear that you’re not going to be around in the future, she is free to pursue a dalliance with you without having her association with you judged by her herd and harming her status with it. This is why skilled male predators always make a point of cutting off a woman from the herd, because their chances of success with her always increase dramatically once she isn’t performing for her public.

But there is no reason you should take my word for it. This is a predictive model which we can test. I recommend that you perform a service to your fellow men and do the following experiment: Tell her that the plans for your job may be falling through and that because she is more important to you than any job could ever be, you are planning to turn down the job so that you can stay and be with her. If my interpretation is correct, she will be aghast at your response and attempt to convince you to take the job. Her unexpected attraction to you will also vanish as rapidly as it appeared.

If, on the other hand, I am incorrect and she reacts to the news with tears of joy before falling into your arms, well, you may want to actually reconsider taking the job and moving away. It’s always possible that she was just very shy and didn’t dare indicate how she felt until the last possible moment. Remember, it’s a lot harder to find a good woman who truly loves you than it is to find a job.

A challenge to the separation of powers?

Karl Denninger suspects the Obama administration is on the verge of committing sedition:

The White House officials said that the ruling would not have an impact on implementation of the law, which is being phased in gradually. (The individual mandate, for example, does not begin until 2014.) They said that states cannot use the ruling as a basis to delay implementation in part because the ruling does not rest on “anything like a conventional Constitutional analysis.” Twenty-six states were involved in the lawsuit.

So now we have a White House that has declared its intent to ignore a declaratory judgment. The Administration has no right to do this. Obama’s White House has exactly two options:

Comply with the ruling. This means that any and all activity authorized or mandated by the Statute cease now.

File an appeal and ask for a stay pending its hearing. If said stay is granted, then the ruling is held pending consideration.

That’s it…. This is now a full-blown Constitutional Crisis. The Executive’s willful, intentional and publicly-stated refusal to honor a declaratory judgment is an open act of willful and intentional violation of The Separation of Powers in The Constitution and, if combined with the use of or threat of use of force as is always present when government coercion is employed, treads awfully close to the line, and may cross it, of 18 USC Ch 115 Sec 238.

I tend to doubt that Obama and his crew are actually intending to challenge the separation of powers over health care reform. I suspect they are so accustomed to being able to impose their version of reality on everyone else that it doesn’t occur to them that it’s not always possible; after all they succeeded in convincing most of the nation that Obama is a highly intelligent author instead of the teleprompt-reading dolt with a ghostwriter that he observably is. I also suspect they simply didn’t stop to think about what the consequences of declaring that the executive branch need not pay any attention to declaratory judgments by the courts might be.

You must admit that it would be a rather peculiar objective for which to openly attack the separation of powers doctrine. And, given what is happening in Egypt and Tunisia right now, unusual timing as well.

When White Knighting is permissible

If you’re not only a Gurkha, but a Gurkha who clearly has Samuel L. Jackson-style Oedipal references inscribed on your khukari, you can white-knight all you like. You can, in fact, arguably do whatever happens to suit your fancy and no one in his right mind is going to be inclined to tell you otherwise:

Bishnu Shrestha, a brave Gurkha soldier in Indian Army, defeated 40 train robbers while returning home after a voluntary retirement…. While in the train, Maurya Express from Ranchi to Gorakhpur on September 2, 2010, 35 year-old Bishnu saved a girl about to be raped by train robbers, in front of her helpless parents. After looting the train, when the robbers started stripping the 18 year old girl in front of him, he couldn’t contain his calmness. He took out his khukari and attacked the group of 40 robbers, alone. In the fight, he killed three of dacoits and injured eight others. Remaining looters ran for their lives.

The police arrested the eight injured dacoits and recovered Rs. 400,000 in cash, 40 gold necklaces, 200 cell phones, 40 laptops and other items left by the robber while fleeing the train.

I don’t think the lesson we can take away from this really has a whole lot to do with white knighting, so much as the extreme importance of never messing with a Gurkha.

Consider the name

In which Israeli commentators appear to be genuinely surprised that a man named Hussein who attended madrassahs as a child might take a slightly different tack in the Middle East than his white Episcopalian predecessors:

If Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak is toppled, Israel will lose one of its very few friends in a hostile neighborhood and President Barack Obama will bear a large share of the blame, Israeli pundits said on Monday. Political commentators expressed shock at how the United States as well as its major European allies appeared to be ready to dump a staunch strategic ally of three decades, simply to conform to the current ideology of political correctness….

Who is advising them, he asked, “to fuel the mob raging in the streets of Egypt and to demand the head of the person who five minutes ago was the bold ally of the president … an almost lone voice of sanity in a Middle East?”

Regardless of whether Obama is a Muslim himself or not, he is obviously going to be sympathetic to the various causes of the non-European third worlders because he considers himself one of them. Look at how he behaves towards longtime European allies like the English versus his kowtowing before the Saudi king and the head of the Chinese regime. Obama’s degrees from Columbia and Harvard no more give him a normal American perspective than did the King of Jordan’s attendance at Deerfield Academy and Georgetown.

It’s rather like the Romans being surprised when they support a Teutonic general’s claim to the imperial throne and then see him taking sides in barbarian affairs. If against all expectations he somehow managed to survive and win a second term, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Obama start openly supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al-Ikhwān against Israel.

UPDATE: I wrote that before I read this article: The Obama administration said for the first time that it supports a role for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamist organization, in a reformed Egyptian government. The organization must reject violence and recognize democratic goals if the U.S. is to be comfortable with it taking part in the government, the White House said.

It would be interesting to learn what “democratic goals” are supposed to be, especially in light of how the Muslim Brotherhood is a bigger fan of genuine democracy right now than the Obama administration is.