Category: Uncategorized

Why we do what we do

A supporter of the Junior Classics 2020 edition observes 60’s-era convergence:

My father in law recently gave us a 1962 edition of the Junior Classics that was sitting around his house. All female editors with a corresponding convergence in the stories included therein. Still some good stuff by today’s standards, but the rot was well established by then.

I’ve never seen that edition, having grown up on the 1958 edition, but I’m not even remotely surprised. Preserving knowledge, teaching children, and taking back cultural ground. The objective is right there in the name.

Speaking of the intellectual offensive, if you emailed about your interest in the Castalia Deluxe subscription but haven’t signed up yet, this is the time to do so. I don’t know if we’re going to close subscription sign-ups for the even months or add a sign-up fee during those months, but regardless, we want to pass 50 percent before we place the initial order with the bindery. Right now, we’re at 32 percent, which isn’t at all bad for the first 18 hours, but we can certainly do better.

Ditching Fitbit

I wouldn’t wear a Fitbit regularly anymore now that Google has purchased them. And I certainly wouldn’t have an account tied to it recording my data:

When Mike Carpenter learned Google’s latest acquisition would be Fitbit, the maker of a device he wore at all hours of the day except in the shower, he left his Fitbit Charge 3 on the table at his office where he was working that day. He, and others like him, haven’t picked it up since.

On Nov. 1, Google said would be buying Fitbit for $2.1 billion in hopes of boosting its hardware business getting a foothold in the health space. Google explicitly said in the announcing the deal that it won’t sell users’ personal or health data. Despite that assurance, some Fitbit users say they don’t trust the company, and are shedding the product altogether.

“I’m not only afraid of what they can do with the data currently, but what they can do with it once their AI advances in 10 or 20 years,” Carpenter told CNBC, saying he didn’t believe the company’s privacy assurances. “Health insurance companies would love to get their hands on that data and their purposes wouldn’t be advertising so is that what they are going to do with it? They didn’t spend the money to not utilize it in some way.”

The trend of people throwing or threatening to throw out their Fitbit devices comes as Google faces a perception problem that has spanned everyday users and regulators alike. The company has paid data privacy fines in the EU and made recent strides into the stringently regulated healthcare industry, which has caused the public to re-think seemingly harmless tools.

“I only recently got it and now I’m thinking I don’t need Google watching literally my every step or my every heartbeat,” said Dan Kleinman, who said he is getting rid of his Fitbit Versa.

Any benefit of knowing that information is significantly outweighed by the disadvantage of Google also having it

Why won’t you move?

Economists are upset that Americans aren’t uprooting themselves from their communities as readily as the Baby Boomers and preceding generations did:

Mobility in the United States has fallen to record lows. In 1985, nearly 20 percent of Americans had changed their residence within the preceding 12 months, but by 2018, fewer than ten percent had. That’s the lowest level since 1948, when the Census Bureau first started tracking mobility.

The decline in Americans’ mobility has been staggering, as the chart below shows. Mobility rates have fallen for nearly every group, across age, gender, income, homeownership status, and marital status.

Declining mobility contributes to a host of economic and social issues: less economic dynamism, lower rates of innovation, and lower productivity. By locking people into place, it exacerbates inequality by limiting the economic opportunities for workers.

A wide range of explanations have been offered to account for these substantial declines in mobility. Many consider the culprit to be the economic crisis, which locked people into declining-value homes; others attribute it to the huge differential in the housing prices in expensive cities. Some economists contend that job opportunities have become similar across places, meaning people are less likely to move for work; others see rising student debt as a key factor that has kept young Americans in their parents’ basements.

Now, a new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggests that other, more emotional and psychological factors may be at work. The study uses data from the bank’s Survey of Consumer Expectations to examine the degree to which people’s attachment to their communities affects their willingness and ability to move. To get at this, they use data from the survey (which covers a monthly panel of 1,300 respondents and is nationally representative) to group Americans into the three mobility classes I identified in my book Who’s Your City: “the mobile” who have the means, education, and capability to move to spaces of opportunity; “the stuck” who lack the resources to relocate; and “the rooted” who have the resources to move, but prefer to stay where they are.

The survey identifies respondents’ most recent move, their probability of moving in the next two years, and other data related to moving including job opportunities and income prospects, housing costs, the distance from current home, costs of moving to various locations, crime rates, taxes, community values and norms, and proximity to family and friends. The researchers use these data to estimate the overall costs—what they call the “willingness to pay” or WTP—for people to move different locations. They then use statistical models to examine the importance of these psychological factors compared to other mostly financial explanations.

A significant reason for the decline in mobility is that many of us are highly attached to our towns. Nearly half of those in the survey (47 percent) identify as rooted. The rooted are disproportionately white, older, married, homeowners, and rural. Their reasons for not moving are more psychological than economic: proximity to family and friends, and their involvement in the local community or church.

Note the significance of the “disproportionately white” aspect of the so-called “rooted”. In the 1950s and 1960s, even in the 1980s, all those Midwesterners who moved to California were moving, or so they assumed, to another white state. My parents moved from Massachusetts to Minnesota in the 1970s, then my parents’ best friends moved from Minnesota to California in the 1980s. Both moves were textbooks moves made for purely economic reasons.

Would the latter move be made today? Almost certainly not.

Now keep in mind that the entire purpose of free trade’s supposed economic benefits is to expand this labor mobility worldwide. The only price is the complete destruction of everything you know and love, including your relationships with your friends and family. So, it’s good that the US labor mobility rate is falling, the real problem is that it can’t fall fast enough to prevent the country from collapsing or preserve the remaining unity of the least-invaded states.

Fired from royalty?

I didn’t even know that stepping down was an option. What does that even mean?

Prince Andrew was forced to quit royal duties last night after a dramatic intervention by the Queen and the Prince of Wales. They took decisive action to contain the fall-out from the duke’s disastrous TV interview about his friendship with a paedophile billionaire.

The interview triggered days of catastrophic headlines and caused a string of businesses and charities to desert him.

Following lengthy discussions with Charles, who is touring New Zealand, the Queen summoned Andrew to Buckingham Palace and told him to step down.

That’s fine and all, but now tell him to fly to the USA and be interviewed by the FBI. (reads royal statement) Ah, “for the foreseeable future”. In other words, it’s just a PR stunt until everything blows over, or so they hope.

Announcing Castalia Deluxe

The much-anticipated monthly subscription to join the Castalia Deluxe Book Club and receive a deluxe leather-bound book published by Castalia House every other month is now available.

  • Genuine leather bindings
  • Gilded cover and spine titling
  • Gilded page edges
  • Archival-quality paper
  • First-rate fiction
  • Timeless classics of history, science, and philosophy

The first Deluxe Book Club book is the Deluxe edition of The Missionaries by Owen Stanley. And for the seriously hard-core book collector who has all the Franklin Signed First Editions, it’s also possible to sign up for the limited-edition Library subscription.

Just to be clear, Castalia Deluxe is the main product and the Deluxe editions are the focus of this project. The Library editions are an ancillary experiment we’re doing at the request of some very serious book collectors, and which the Deluxe editions make possible. In quality terms, we are targeting the late ’80s Franklin Library editions for our Deluxe editions, albeit with better cover designs.

Canada’s veterans celebrate the Revolution

There are so many New Canadians that they have their own veteran’s associations now.

Dressed in the uniform of China’s People’s Liberation Army, the 40 or so singers stood proudly in neat rows and belted out an old favourite.

I am a Soldier talks of defeating the Japanese, vanquishing Nationalist leader Chiang Kai Shek in the Communist revolution and being tested by the revolutionary war. The performance “brought forth a whirlwind of Chinese military spirit in a foreign land,” said a report on the concert.

The recital earlier this month at the Centre for the Performing Arts in Richmond Hill, Ont., was not offered by a visiting martial choir from Beijing.

It was the work of a surprising new Canadian association, dedicated to retired troops of the China’s People’s Liberation Army or PLA — China’s armed forces — who are now settled in this country.

Interesting that we don’t often hear how “Canada is fallen” even though it is a tossup between Canada and Australia concerning which will be the first to follow South Africa into the “formerly First World” category.

Antitrust intensifies

There is a stronger case for breaking up Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon than there was for breaking up Standard Oil:

Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft all easily have more than 10 times the net income as did Standard Oil when it was broken apart. Apple coming in at close to 50 times the net income! Cisco and Intel come in just under 10 times the net income as compared to Standard Oil, both at 9.9 times greater net income than Standard Oil when it was broken apart.

If 91 percent control of the oil refining industry and net income of $35 million per year was enough to break apart Standard Oil under the terms of the Sherman Antitrust Act, there are a few tech super giants that would face a similar fate if the trust-busting philosophies that held sway during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt were en vogue today.

In January, The Wall Street Journal published an article titled The Antitrust Case Against Facebook, Google and Amazon. The article reports that these major tech firms each have greater control over certain high tech industry sectors than Standard Oil had over oil production during its heyday. For example, 95 percent of young adults using the Internet subscribe to a Facebook product, whether it’s the company’s flagship social network or other services like Instagram or WhatsApp. Google controls 89 percent of Internet searches.

Where monopolies don’t exist, duopolies certainly do; Google and Apple, for example, collectively hold 99 percent of the mobile operating software market.

If the percentage of market share for important tech sectors held by these titans wasn’t enough, the massive fortunes these companies continue to generate would seem likely to trigger at least some antitrust scrutiny. Remember, Standard Oil’s annual net earnings through 1906 earned what today would be $969 million each year in 2017 dollars, adjusted for inflation. To some of the tech super giants of today, $1 billion in profits is nothing more than pocket change.

What is holding Republicans back? This is an absolute no-brainer as well as a certain vote winner across the political spectrum?

Self-reliance is a military virtue

Sanctions and U.S. military assistance are threatening to change the balance of power in the Middle East. Just not in the way they were intended to do so:

Despite decades of sanctions, Iran has succeeded in developing its missile arsenal, which is larger than that of any other Middle Eastern country including Israel, a Pentagon study said Tuesday.

“Iran has an extensive missile development program, and the size and sophistication of its missile force continues to grow despite decades of counterproliferation efforts aimed at curbing its advancement,” the Defense Intelligence Agency said.

“Lacking a modern air force, Iran has embraced ballistic missiles as a long-range strike capability to dissuade its adversaries in the region — particularly the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia — from attacking Iran,” the report said.

Iran has “the largest missile force in the Middle East,” the report said. A US intelligence official said on condition of anonymity that the assessment included Israel.

Not unlike the German development of the U-boat and the Japanese development of the aircraft carrier due to overwhelming British and American battleship strength, the Iranian bypassing of the aircraft-based air superiority doctrine is likely to have helped it strategically in the end.

And due to its inability to purchase weapons from the US or the European countries, it now has a base of missile technology that cannot be cut off at will by those countries.

A vice too far

Even evil corporations that proudly fly the rainbow flag are unwilling to get behind the P in LGBTP:

Prince Andrew’s supporters are in retreat today as yet another multi-million pound business cut ties with the pet charity project he plugged repeatedly in his BBC car crash interview…. KPMG, one of London’s big four accounting firms, was the first to admit it was protecting its reputation by ending its £100,000 a year sponsorship.

Insurance giant Aon asked for its name be removed from the scheme’s website and drugs maker AstraZeneca said it was reviewing its relationship.

Children’s charities and schools linked to Prince Andrew are also in disarray today as they distanced themselves from the under-fire royal.

A string of major companies and charities are also examining their links with Andrew after his extraordinary TV interview on Saturday.

The Outward Bound Trust, which has the prince’s daughter Beatrice as a trustee, is holding a special meeting this week to discuss the issue.

Children North East and The Children’s Foundation, both charities Andrew lists on his official website, refused to tell MailOnline if he will keep his official role supporting them in light of the Epstein scandal.

Now, I’m certainly willing to give Chick-Fil-A the benefit of the doubt regarding its recent marketing missteps. But I suspect that even its most die-hard supporters will admit that convergence has taken root inside the Christian restaurant chain  if it starts featuring Prince Andrew in its advertising.

Mailvox: Converging the Mustang

American automotive buffs are not happy with Ford permitting its new electric vehicle to wear the Mustang brand as a skinsuit:

Recently Ford revealed a new all-electric 4-door crossover SUV. Then labeled it a Mustang Mach E. There is a 50min video of the reveal on YouTube. In the comment section people are seeing the complete inversion of an iconic car brand and they’re not happy about it.

Based on the diversity hires shown from the design team, I’m not surprised they have no understanding of the Mustang brand.

I look forward to reading Corporate Cancer soon.

Although I’m not an American muscle car guy, I can sympathize. I wasn’t happy when Ford acquired and trashed the Jaguar brand either. But seriously, diversity or not, how hard is it to grasp that a Mustang is a sports car, not A 4-DOOR UTILITY VEHICLE?

Speaking of Corporate Cancer, the paperback is now available at Amazon and at a discount at Castalia Direct.

It may interest readers to know some of my predictions in the book are already coming to pass, such as the continued targeting of the Internet giants by national tax authorities.

The Czech government approved a seven percent digital tax proposal on Monday aimed at boosting state coffers by taxing advertising by global internet giants like Google and Facebook, the finance ministry said. The tax would apply to companies with global revenue over €750 million ($826.5 million) annually, 100 million crown ($4.32 million) turnover in the Czech market and a reach exceeding 200,000 user accounts.