Skip Mad Max

I certainly have no desire to see it myself. In addition to all the Grrrl Power nonsense, the core plot obviously makes no sense:

The truth is I’m angry about the extents Hollywood and the director of Fury Road went to trick me and other men into seeing this movie. Everything VISUALLY looks amazing. It looks like that action guy flick we’ve desperately been waiting for where it is one man with principles, standing against many with none.

But let us be clear. This is the vehicle by which they are guaranteed to force a lecture on feminism down your throat. This is the Trojan Horse feminists and Hollywood leftists will use to (vainly) insist on the trope women are equal to men in all things, including physique, strength, and logic. And this is the subterfuge they will use to blur the lines between masculinity and femininity, further ruining women for men, and men for women.

So do yourself and all men across the world a favor. Not only REFUSE to see the movie, but spread the word to as many men as possible. Not all of them have the keen eye we do here at ROK. And most will be taken in by fire tornadoes and explosions. Because if they sheepishly attend and Fury Road is a blockbuster, then you, me, and all the other men (and real women) in the world will never be able to see a real action movie ever again that doesn’t contain some damn political lecture or moray about feminism, SJW-ing, and socialism.

It’s a post-apocalyptic setting, right? That means survival is the absolute priority, which means K/selection, which means that having your women behave in a manner consistent with perhaps the ultimate r/selection environment means that you’ll be selected out of existence in short order no matter how awesome Charlize Theron pretends to be.

“the most despised man in science fiction”

Despised, feared, it’s pretty much all the same, isn’t it? The Wall Street Journal takes note of the Hugo Awards, with an article entitled “The Culture Wars Invade Science Fiction Online campaigners are pushing to give SF’s annual Hugo Awards to popular space yarns, not more literary fiction or tales of diversity”. It’s not entirely negative despite the reporter feeling the need to get the opinion of two writers, John Scalzi and George Martin, who don’t know a damn thing about what the Puppies are doing. But regardless, the main thing is that the reporter correctly grasped that this is a new front in the cultural war and not a self-serving attempt to pick up meaningless trophies.

Theodore Beale had a big day when the nominations for science fiction’s annual Hugo Awards were announced last month: He received two nominations for his editing work, and nine stories and books from Castalia House, the tiny publisher where he is lead editor, won nominations.

Quite a feat, since Mr. Beale—better known in the science-fiction world by his pen name, Vox Day—is probably now the most despised man in science fiction. In 2013, he was expelled from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America after he used the group’s Twitter feed to link to his criticisms of a black female writer as an “ignorant half-savage.” He has called women’s rights “a disease” and homosexuality a “birth defect.”

So why are he and the Castalia House authors being honored? Because two online campaigns by self-styled conservatives, one led by Mr. Beale, flooded the Hugo ballot box

The two groups—which call themselves the “Sad Puppies” and the “Rabid Puppies”—urged the science-fiction fans who vote for the awards to nominate slates of books and authors that the Puppies say have been ignored by the Hugos. The Puppies’ supporters contend that the awards are clique-ridden and biased, rewarding liberal perspectives and self-consciously “literary” fiction rather than traditional, popular tales of space battles and fantasy quests.

The Puppies succeeded wildly…. “This is an important symbol in one particular area of the culture war, and so we took it away from the other side,” said Mr. Beale, who headed the “Rabid Puppies” campaign.

Let them hear us howl… and be afraid. Next stop, Fox News. I thought it was about as balanced an article as one can reasonably expect from the mainstream media, but I did send the reporter the following corrections.

  1. I wasn’t expelled
    from SFWA. The SFWA Board voted unanimously to expel me, but the
    membership never voted as required by the bylaws and Massachusetts
    state law. Note that SFWA has never stated that I was expelled, for the obvious
    reason that I was not. 
  2. The feed concerned
    isn’t the group’s Twitter feed, which is @SFWA, but an unofficial feed called @SFWAauthors.
  3. “probably”? Come on, who else is there?

Of course, I’m not a conservative either, nor are many of you, but in my opinion, that’s within the reasonable margin of error. We’re certainly “conservative” in comparison with the SJW freaks in science fiction. All that really matters is that he got the cultural war aspect right.

As for the black hat, I don’t mind it at all. Let’s face it, I look pretty damn good in black. Let them open up their hate and let it flow into me.

Christianity: the predictive model

It’s somewhat remarkable that so many people refuse to grant the Bible any credence when it is observably the single greatest long-term predictive document ever known to Man:

 A proposed new law in Denmark could be the first step towards an economic revolution that sees physical currencies and normal bank accounts abolished and gives governments futuristic new tools to fight the cycle of “boom and bust”.

The Danish proposal sounds innocuous enough on the surface – it would simply allow shops to refuse payments in cash and insist that customers use contactless debit cards or some other means of electronic payment.

Officially, the aim is to ease “administrative and financial burdens”, such as the cost of hiring a security service to send cash to the bank, and is part of a programme of reforms aimed at boosting growth – there is evidence that high cash usage in an economy acts as a drag.

But the move could be a key moment in the advent of “cashless societies”. And once all money exists only in bank accounts – monitored, or even directly controlled by the government – the authorities will be able to encourage us to spend more when the economy slows, or spend less when it is overheating.

The idea that “high cash usage” in an economy acts as a drag is absolutely and utterly absurd when examined from the perspective of several economic schools. Even the Keynesian school, which will be in favor of banning cash in favor of more easily manufactured nonexistent numbers, teaches that Savings = Investment. Is getting rid of savings, and therefore investment, really going to strengthen the economy?

What this is really designed to do is to address the problem seen in the chart from yesterday’s post that shows the massive decline in debt growth from 1985 to 2015. As the production of credit money declines with the inability of consumers and corporations to take on more debt, other less productive sources are being tapped to keep the government beast alive. Hence their pursuit of even the coins under granny’s couch.

The real nightmare isn’t the economic abomination of the authorities playing a disastrous push-pull with the entirety of the money supply, though, it is the establishment of the infrastructure for the long-predicted Mark of the Beast. And it would be very interesting to hear a disbeliever explain how such an unlikely creation could have been envisioned so clearly nearly two thousand years ago.

Brainstorm is go

After the impromptu, but successful experiment in webinaring earlier this week, and after consultation with a few of those most interested in the concept, I’ve decided to proceed with the Brainstorm concept. Right now, all sessions are limited to 100, but I’m hoping to be able to expand that to 500, especially in anticipation of some of the more popular open events planned. All 100 slots were registered for the test, and most of those registered showed up at some point in time during what ended up being an hour-long session.

The annual cost will be $20 per month, which will comprise at least one closed Brainstorm session per month, plus additional sessions both open and closed. The closed sessions will be between 90 and 120 minutes, and will be comprised of a single main topic, which will usually be announced, plus two secondary topics that will be selected by that month’s panelists. Single sessions will cost $25, but until we get the annual ticket confirmed and set up, it will be $20 per month for everyone. Seats for Brainstorm May are available now and can be reserved at Castalia.

The first open event will be an interview and Q&A with Martin van Creveld later this month concerning his excellent book A HISTORY OF STRATEGY. The second one will be in June with William S. Lind and will address cultural 4GW as well as his forthcoming THE 4GW HANDBOOK and a certain novel whose deceased author he is representing.

As for the closed events, I will announce the three panelists after we set a time and date for the first one, which will take place in the next two weeks. The best time for me is around 7 PM EST, and it doesn’t really matter which day, so if you plan to attend and you have an opinion, let me know in the comments here.  Over half of the 100 spots have already been claimed, so if you’re inclined to participate, best to jump in before they all fill up.

To address four of the issues raised by the experiment, 1) the documentation says the panelists can see the questions, but I want to test to confirm that this is true, 2) there is no audience-to-audience chatting feature, 3) the irritating chimes were caused by people entering and leaving the session and will be turned off next time, 4) a transcript will be provided to all attendees and annual Brainstorm members within two weeks of the session. I do not plan to make transcripts or recordings of the closed events generally available, but transcripts of the free events will be available for purchase from Castalia for those who are interested in them.

The lead topic for May Brainstorm is going to be a discussion of a new hypothesis of a disease class and how it relates to some soon-to-be published research to which I happen to be privy. It’s a matter of particular interest to me and quite possibly to more than a few people here as well. I’d prefer to have one or two of the panelists have either medical or scientific backgrounds, so if you’re registered for the May event, you fit that description and you’re willing to control a mike, please email me and let me know.

I should assure those not participating that this will have very little effect on the blog, as most of what I intend to discuss in the closed Brainstorm sessions are the sort of things that cannot be reasonably discussed in an open, lightly moderated medium such as this one. And everyone is welcome to attend the open sessions, assuming that everyone < 500.

Mailvox: whitewashing history at Wikipedia

Wikipedia’s gatekeepers are up to their usual shenanigans, in this case, attempting to casually brush the topic of Cultural Marxism under the carpet to keep it from innocent eyes:

In case you haven’t noticed the “Cultural Marxism” entry to wikipedia has been deleted and replaced by “conspiracy theory” at the body of the “Frankfurt School” page.

I noticed this a few days ago.  After reading a work on Critical Race Theory which wasn’t inspired by an article I read on the Baltimore riots.  It reminded me a lot of the line of thinking that Pat Buchanan describes as Cultural Marxism in “Death of the West.”  Naturally, I looked up Cultural Marxism on wikipedia and I find that the page had been deleted and replaced.  Orwell would be proud.  To be quite honest, this really has shocked me.  Call me sheltered, but the audacity and dishonesty of it is appalling.

Being an optimist (or a masochist) I looked at the talk page to see if I couldn’t reason with someone.  Turns out that the page replacement took place in November and that a single editor it engages in some serious gate-keeping.

Over the past five months several dozen people have expressed concerns with the page and he dismissed and passive-aggressively threatened them all without answering any arguments.

I decided to engage with him, but the results are about what you’d expect.

Here’s a summary:

Me:I don’t think Cultural Marxism counts as a conspiracy by any reasonable definition and this article leans way left.  Can you please define your terms for Cultural Marxism and give me your criteria for conspiracy theory.

Him :Ok go ahead and try to prove your conspiracy theory Mr. Tin-foil hat man.  Oh and Welcome (grumble)…can you please go away…be a shame if someone were to report you for vandalism…..and did you know Satanic, baby eating, white supremacist Anders Breivik used the phrase “Cultural Marxism” in his manifesto…you don’t want to be like him do you…be a shame if you got reported….

You can imagine two days of this I’m sure.  But if you have time, I’d love to know what you think of the debate.  I’ve rarely dealt with someone so completely unwilling to actually argue all the while claiming that the battle was over before I got there and that he’s the victor. 

I’ve finally got him to consider an academic source from Paul Gottfried, but it looks like this will take time.

So, what I’d really like is you to give a shout on your blog detailing what’s happened.  It’s bigger than two guys fighting on the internet considering how many people use wikipedia, if only to get oriented in finding out more about a topic.  I know I do, or before this did.  Just a link would get more people involved.

I’ve decided to ask you because a) Castalia has published work by William Lind, one of the (if not the) coiners of the phrase “Cultural Marxism” to describe the ideology, obsessions, tactics, and behaviors of the Left and their current diffusion in society at large and b) because no one should know better than you that so-called little issues like Gamergate and the Hugos are key battlegrounds in the culture wars and will lead to bigger things. 

Honestly I think keeping wikipedia honest (as far as it’s possible) is even bigger.  This isn’t just a case of “oh no!  Somebody’s wrong on the internet!”

What do I think? I think this is simply SJWs SJWing. And what do SJWs do? The lesson, as always, is this: SJWs always lie. The ironic thing is that Wikipedia has a fairly extensive entry on one of the more important cultural Marxists, Herbert Marcuse, and even quotes him in some detail concerning the cultural Marxism he advocated, and which the SJWs practice.

  • “Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.”[17]
  • “Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc.”[17]

It should come as no surprise that cultural Marxists, which is what the SJWs manifestly are, don’t want people to understand their core doctrine or its roots in the misapplication of a failed economic theory.

Islands in a sea of rhetoric

I stopped commenting at File 770 as it proved to be another exercise in demonstrating the truth of Aristotle’s dictum about those who cannot be instructed. Give them dialectic and they shamelessly attempt to pick it apart, some honestly, most dishonestly, while constantly declaring that any errors or falsehoods on their part are irrelevant. Give them rhetoric to meet them at their level and they either cry about it or concoct pseudo-dialectic to explain why it’s not valid.

Example 1
VD: SJWs always lie.
SJW: I told the truth once back in 2007. See, you’re totally wrong. Your whole argument is disproved. You are a bad person. DISQUALIFIED!

Example 2
VD: I stopped commenting at File 770.
SJW: You said you stopped commenting and then LEFT ONE MORE COMMENT THERE! See, you’re totally wrong. Your whole argument is disproved. Aristotle! You are a bad person. DISQUALIFIED!

Quod erat demonstrandum.

But the SJW theatre of the absurd aside, the continuing Hugo coverage at File 770 makes for interesting reading, particularly as the few remaining commenters possessing intellectual integrity one-by-one throw up their hands and stop trying to force the relevant facts through the SJW’s cast-iron skulls. A pair of neutrals recounted typical experiences, as one of them juxstaposed his treatment at various Puppy sites versus SF-SJW Central:

Brief Side note re: Making Light. I posted there, maybe 4 times in a discussion a month or so ago. Never a name called, never a nasty word, did not attack anyone, and was in the middle of a dialogue with another poster that came across as reasonable. My posts were disemvowelled and the board owner called me a liar. I’ve posted several times here, and at Larry’s, Brad’s, and Sarah Hoyt’s boards. At least one time I got shouted at a little, but no one edited me away to nonsense. That makes me more sympathetic with the folks not grooming their comment sections /shrug

AG on May 14, 2015 at 3:20 pm said: Regarding disemvowelling at Making Light, I took part in the initial discussion about voting rules, which as a mathematician I found very interesting. There was a contributor there (I don’t remember his name) who was an expert on voting systems and made the most valuable contributions. I certainly learned a lot from his posts. Then he made a post where he mentioned his web site (which was on topic, because it was about voting systems and potentially of interest to the people who were taking part in that discussion) and he was disemvowelled, which is something that I had never seen before and found absolutely bizarre.

Ostensibly the reason was for spamming, although as I said the poster was the one who had made the most valuable contributions to the discussion and the link was not off-topic. Talking about it, he got several more posts disemvowelled. I respect owners’ right to moderate content in their sites, but I found the practice of disemvoweling abusive and humiliating, more indicative of a petty bully in charge showing her power than of a serious moderator, and it convinced me that I did not want to have anything to do with that site.

The Making Light crew is what it is, and what it has been for the past decade. Another former neutral expressed some degree of surprise at the insistence that the Puppy tactics have been in any way worse than past tactics utilized in the SF field:

Steve Moss on May 14, 2015 at 3:20 pm said:

David W. @ 3:08 pm- So log-rolling is acceptable, with all that implies, but slates are not?

Accepting for argument’s sake the definitions of some, a slate is a list of public recommendation with a common political interest. That’s bad.

Log-rolling, quietly horse-trading votes based on self-interest (I want to win and need to be “strategic”), that’s okay.

Leaving aside the debated to death argument on slates (which I disagree is bad), it occurs to me the greatest sin the SP/RP have committed is exposing the Hugo process to the light of day. Now that more fans know: 1) that it didn’t/doesn’t take much to get a nomination; and, 2) about the behind the scenes chicanery, the Hugo loses some of its luster.

I think the position of some in fandom is laughable. What SP/RP did is the exact same thing; they just did it better and publicly. And that’s unforgivable.

It’s not surprising that the SJWs are already working very hard to change the rules because we’ve shown up and operated in an above-board manner. Instead of playing coy and disingenuous and plausibly deniable, we simply said “hey, vote for these works.” Note that it wasn’t all that long ago that SJWs in SFWA changed the Nebula rules to HIDE the evidence of all the log-rolling that was taking place there. They are always determined to hide what is actually taking place under the rocks where they dwell, which is why our straightforward tactics are so abhorrent to them.

UPDATE: While this will no doubt set the rhetoricals spinning again, it was too painful to watch people opining ineptly about whether Scalzi’s LOCK IN was a relative failure (truth) or a massive success that only proves that John Scalzi is a massive success in everything he does (SJW narrative). So, against my better judgment, I pointed out the completely obvious that had somehow managed to elude the rocket scientists commenting at File 770:

Forget Old Man’s War and all the
hardcover vs softcover vs audio and so forth. The reason both Scalzi and
PNH were so disappointed by Lock In’s sales is obvious:

“Lock In’s sales are for the first 8 months”: 10,000

Redshirts first seven months: 26,604

As every writer here knows, success is a) relative and b) takes
trajectory into account. Doing one-third the numbers with considerably
more marketing expense than your previous book is not, in most quarters,
considered a desirable trajectory.

Scalzi is an inflated midlist writer. He has likely peaked at a point
much higher than most SF writers ever reach. It’s an incredible
accomplishment, especially if one takes into account how little talent
or originality he possesses. There is no shame in that.

Where there is shame is claiming that you have 2 million pageviews
when you truly have only 305,000. Where there is shame is aggressively
campaigning for nine Hugo nominations, and then campaigning for more
because two more than Arthur C. Clarke is not enough.

That is an apples-to-apples comparison. Hardcover to hardcover. And if that simple recitation of relevant facts isn’t sufficient to convince you, then obviously no information is sufficient to instruct you or change your mind.

Interview with the Green Thumb of Evil

Viidad’s Q and A with David The Good concerning the latest Castalia House release, the number one gardening bestseller on Amazon: COMPOST EVERYTHING: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting:

Viidad: Why did you write COMPOST EVERYTHING?

David The Good: I suppose I should say “because I love our mother the earth” or “because I want to world to reduce, reuse and recycle” or something stupid like that, but really, it’s because I’m a cheapskate and I hate following all the rules that tell me I should throw out stuff that could be added into my gardens as fertilizer.

Viidad: Like dead bodies.

David The Good: I wish people would stop bringing that up. One or three times does not a pattern make.

Viidad: But the precedent is there…

David The Good: I will not answer any more questions along these lines. I am VFM, craven servant of the Dark Lord, serial number 0156…

Viidad: Are not! That’s my number!

David The Good: Surely The Most Evil One could not have made a mistake…!

Viidad: Never! But… well… hmm… I… whatever.  Okay, weird.  Back to the interview. What about this question: who should really give a flying fetid flip-flop about composting?

I told you he was nuts. Read the rest of the interview at Castalia House.

The secret of sports

Throughout The Book of Basketball, Bill Simmons writes repeatedly about The Secret, and identifies specific NBA teams like the Bad Boys Pistons, the Russell Celtics or the Duncan Spurs that knew it and gained success by it.

In recent weeks, I’ve seen the same thing on the soccer field with my veterans team. My first two years, we were the champions, I was the number five striker, and we simply overwhelmed our opponents by scoring five or six goals almost every single game. But then age and injury began to strike, and at one point, I ended up the number two striker for an entire season, and when the number one striker went out, found myself trying to carry the scoring load up front on my own.

We brought in a number of new players, but despite them being quite skilled, we found ourselves not only being beaten by the best teams in the league, but unable to defeat lesser teams we should have been able to beat without any trouble.

At the beginning of the spring season, things looked really bad as our second-best player and new captain had to have surgery on his hand that rendered him hors de combat for the entire season. Not only that, but our best player has been injured and we’ve only gotten one-half out of him.

And yet, somehow we managed to not only win our local derby two weeks ago, but trounce them 3-0, with all three goals coming in the first half. Last night, we were playing the league leaders, who feature one former international and a fast-paced, highly skilled attack that has scored twice as many goals as we have this year.

But what is different now is that we have a group of players who don’t quit and who don’t give up on each other. We went down 1-0, then 2-1, and were still down 2-1 when I got in at halftime. Their defense had been stifling our new top striker, who’d recently come up from the first team, but once I scared them with an otherwise useless run or two, they started putting two on me and giving the new guy more room to work. I did very little but pull defenders away from him, but that was enough to help him level the game at 2-2.

In back, the defenders were just about killing themselves as well as the faster, better strikers and midfielders from the other side. They gave up two penalties, but our keeper made brilliant saves on both of them to keep us in the game. I stole a ball from a defender, but then didn’t see a wide-open midfielder to my left, and passed instead to my off-side fellow striker, ruining what should have been an excellent chance. Overall, it was a pretty poor game for me… except on this team, everyone keeps encouraging you to keep running, keep working, keep trying, keep doing your job. My job isn’t to score, or even to make assists, my job is to stretch the field, occupy the defense, and create space for our better players.

So, despite all my screwups, our right wing didn’t hesitate to put a long through ball for me towards the corner with only a minute or two left. And I didn’t give up when the defender tried to obstruct me as I started to go by him, as when he put his arm across my chest, I simply pulled it behind me and fought my way past him. When I broke free, the referee finally blew his whistle and correctly called the defender for the initial foul, which he probably wouldn’t have done if I’d backed down. The right wing stepped up and put a beautiful 25-meter free kick in the upper corner. 3-2. Game over.

There was no way we should have won that game. They were absolutely the better team in at least 8 of the 11 positions. And they play together well too; there were several strings of 10+ passes where no one on our team even touched the ball. But they have too many skilled technicians and not enough petty role players. The secret of sports is that the team where everyone accepts his role and throws himself into it 100 percent is usually going to beat the better team where the pecking order and the responsibilities are not as firmly established.

Irrelevant equilibriums

While I agree with Ari Andricopoulos’s observation of the danger of the Taylor rule as well as the utter ineptitude and irrelevance of the whole orthodox macroeconomic profession, this post somehow tends to remind me of Princess Leia pointing out how the tighter the Empire grasped, the more star systems would slip through its hands.

Equilibrium: γ*ES  = (1-αd)*d + (1-αi)*i + (1-αw)*w + (1-αC)*C  (3)

This means that the spending of existing savings exactly matches the amount being saved without any new debt being taken out. This is the true equilibrium in an economy that we need to aim for.

In any case, you can see how the dividends, interest and wages from GDP at time t, as well as the external sources of money (from existing savings, new loans and new central bank money) make up the next period nominal GDP.

What has gone wrong:

I would say that during the 1945 to 1975 period, a period of excellent growth across the developed world, we were broadly in equilibrium. The savings broadly matched the spending of exisiting savings. Governments, using Keynesian policy tools would increase their spending (the government component of L) when savings were too high and reduce when more savings were being spent than new savings made. It all worked pretty well.

What changed in the 1970s was the rise of credit. Looking at the Equilibrium equation (3) above, the share of GDP going to interest and dividends went up relative to the share going to wages. The coefficients of consumption (α) for the interest and dividends is lower than that for wages so we had the following inequality:

γ*ES  < (1-αd)*d + (1-αi)*i + (1-αw)*w + (1-αC)*C

This means that the economy is out of equilibrium. The GDP shown in figure 1, will now go down because of the excess savings.

Previously fiscal policy would have been used to stimulate growth and return the system to equilibrium.

Increased government debt is far more efficient at stimulating the economy than increased private sector debt. I show here that a 10% net increase in private sector debt stimulates the economy and adds approximately 1.1% to GDP growth in the year that the debt is taken out. So the multiplier of private sector debt to GDP here is 11%. However, the cost in future years due to the increase of interest repayments at the expense of wages is 0.15% of GDP for every year going forwards.

The same amount of increased government debt costs only 0.9% of GDP going forwards, but crucially the multiplier on this spending is much higher. Therefore much less government debt is needed to create the same amount of economic stimulus as private sector debt. In fact, I estimate that government debt is an order of magnitude more efficient.

 One problem with the Taylor rule is that it uses a linear trend extrapolation. But the increase in debt means that the growth potential of the economy is lower each year so trying to keep it at the previous trend means more and more debt.

Another point which I disagree on, is that the inflation targeting does not separate inflation with a domestic source compared to that with a foreign source. I discuss the error that I believe that they are making here.

But the main problem is that, as with the whole orthodox macroeconomic profession it seems, is that IT IGNORES PRIVATE SECTOR DEBT.

I can not stress how obvious this is. It assumes that debt can grow indefinitely. It assumes that previous debt has no impact on growth. It creates a positively reinforcing feedback mechanism that ends in stagnation.

This is the real danger of the Taylor rule, Dr Bernanke.

Far from the mainstream notion that private sector debt is irrelevant, I would argue that it makes more sense to measure the macroeconomy – to the extent that we bother pretending it even exists, which is the subject for another day – in credit money. This method would have its flaws, of course, because credit money can evaporate in a heartbeat, but it would have the benefit of providing a much more accurate snapshot of any given moment in macroeconomic activity than the woefully irrelevant Samuelsonian GDP model.

This observation on the negative correlation between private sector debt and GDP growth by Dr. Andricopoulos should be particularly educational for empiricists:

A few weeks ago I wrote this post which showed the results of my empirical study on the effect of private sector debt on the economy. It found that a 10% increase in the level of private sector debt corresponded to a 0.15% decrease in GDP growth every year going forwards. Considering that the levels of private sector debt in many advanced economies is around the 200% level, this is a pretty big drag and on its own would explain the current secular stagnation.

Now, according to the Keynesians and Neo-Keynesians, this shouldn’t be any more possible than the stagflation of the 1970s. Once more, even by its own supposedly empirical standards, Keynesianism, or more properly, Samuelsoniansim, is seen to be a failure.

It’s also worth noting that even Dr. Andricopoulus’s history is an inaccurate summary, at least as far as the USA goes. Below is a chart showing the annual growth of total public and private sector debt, aka “credit money”, in the US economy from 1948 through 2014. Where is this sudden “rise of credit” that is supposed to have taken place in the 1970s? Is it the increase from 8.58 percent in 1969 to a peak of 16.03 percent in 1985?