#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
I like the Vikings tonight because I think Favre is more fired up about playing the Packers than the Packers are about playing Favre. Also, the banged-up Green Bay offensive line should give Jared Allen and the Williams twins a chance to beat up on Aaron Rodgers.
For the sake of the Meerkats, I’d like to see a shootout, though, since I’ve got Rodgers, Jennings, Harvin, and Shiancoe going tonight.
Which is really rather remarkable, when you consider that the man has been dead for some time now. The amusing thing is that Paul Krugman has no idea how utterly predictable both the failure of the Obama economic plan and his own reaction to it was:
[T]he worst of it is that it was more or less predictable. I went back to my first blog post — January 6, 2009 — worrying that the Obama economic plan was too cautious. I wrote:
This really does look like a plan that falls well short of what advocates of strong stimulus were hoping for — and it seems as if that was done in order to win Republican votes. Yet even if the plan gets the hoped-for 80 votes in the Senate, which seems doubtful, responsibility for the plan’s perceived failure, if it’s spun that way, will be placed on Democrats. I see the following scenario: a weak stimulus plan, perhaps even weaker than what we’re talking about now, is crafted to win those extra GOP votes. The plan limits the rise in unemployment, but things are still pretty bad, with the rate peaking at something like 9 percent and coming down only slowly. And then Mitch McConnell says “See, government spending doesn’t work.” Let’s hope I’ve got this wrong.
Alas, I didn’t have it wrong — except that unemployment will, if we’re lucky, peak around 10 percent, not 9.
Here’s a prediction: U-3 unemployment won’t peak around 10 percent and when it doesn’t, Krugman will come up with yet another excuse for his failed Keynesian theory that will relate to how the stimulus was either not implemented properly or was implemented too late on too small a scale… even if there is a third stimulus plan next year. It’s amusing to note that according to his recent column, he genuinely believes that the $1.2 trillion stimulus plan of Romer’s that he preferred to Obama’s $787 billion plan – which is right around the $1.18 trillion plan that he implicitly recommended at the time – would have magically made the vital difference.
None of this is any surprise, of course, which is why I was able to anticipate Krugman’s excuse-making two months before he began laying the foundation for it and ten months before he actually started making excuses. The reason it wasn’t a surprise is because, as Murray Rothbard explained in America’s Great Depression, this is the usual result when Keynesian theory fails in application, as it reliably does.
“Suppose a theory asserts that a certain policy will cure a depression. The government, obedient to the theory, puts the policy into effect. The depression is not cured. The critics and advocates of the theory now leap to the fore with interpretations. The critics say that failure proves the theory incorrect. The advocates say that the government erred in not pursuing the theory boldly enough, and that what is needed is stronger measures in the same direction.”
– Murray Rothbard, America’s Great Depression, 1963
But as bad as Krugman is when he’s ineptly trying to make forecasts using his own flawed Keynesian models, he’s utterly hopeless when trying to critique other theories that he quite clearly doesn’t know or understand. Here he unwisely attacks Arnold Kling, and, by extension, Joseph Schumpeter.
It’s all there: mass unemployment is necessary, because you have to shift resources away from sectors that got too big, stimulus is a bad thing because it slows the necessary adjustment. And now as then, the whole notion falls apart when you ask why, say, a housing boom — which requires shifting resources into housing — doesn’t produce the same kind of unemployment as a housing bust that shifts resources out of housing.
Sweet John Maynard but the man can really be astoundingly obtuse at times. He seriously can’t figure out why a boom doesn’t produce the same kind of unemployment that a bust does? It’s as if the Keynesian focus on the aggregate economy completely destroys an economist’s ability to focus on anything smaller than the entire economy, like an economic sector or an industry. He does have a point, though. It never made sense to go back to Schumpeter’s 1934 macroeconomics, since Mises already had this process nailed down in 1912 in his Theory of Money and Credit.
The housing boom, which was fueled by debt, causes resources to be shifted out of other sectors into housing. This doesn’t cause unemployment because the women who leave their office jobs to become real estate agents and the men who leave their auto manufacturing jobs to become construction workers aren’t unemployed. Once the creation of new debt subsides, whether it is because the central bank increased interest rates, banks stop lending, or consumers stop borrowing, the bust begins but the housing industry workers who lose their jobs can’t go back to their old jobs because those jobs don’t exist. It’s not as a decrease in demand for housing necessitates an increase in demand in some other sector of the economy. So, in this case, they become unemployed.
The reason stimulus is a bad thing is because it props up the malinvested industry at an artificial level of demand and pays for workers who would otherwise be unemployed to make things that no one is willing to pay for at current prices. (Or, as is more often the case these days, is unwilling to go into additional debt for in order to buy.) As the September plunge in car sales shows, the industry will collapse as soon as the government stops propping it up. And, to the extent it prevents capital resources and those otherwise unemployed people from going out and working in more productive industries, it harms the prospect of future economic growth.
Here’s a bit more news about my forthcoming book. First, I’m pleased to be able to say that the publisher has agreed to make The Return of the Great Depression available for only $1.99 on Kindle and Scribd. Second, I sent pre-release galleys to a few writers and business executives with whom I am acquainted; you may recall that the Mogambo Guru thought rather well of the book. Here’s what an executive at a large European industrial concern had to say about it. I should probably mention that by “large”, I mean that its revenues would pass for national GDP in some parts of the world.
“The upward and downward excess we have been observing in the global economy for the last years suggested there was something wrong. It must be recognized that the system is addicted by false and questionable principles of monetary policy which finally brought many enterprises to unreliable business forecasts and disastrous, unsustainable capital expenditures. This book is an analytic and courageous accusation against those principles, and suggests disruptive, clear-cut, and practical solutions which are quite far from those recently adopted by governments and central banks. I strongly recommend it as vademecum to any business executive.”
It was interesting how this executive found RGD to be useful in articulating the reasons behind what he was already observing in his professional capacity, which spans four continents. The ominous synchronicity between book theory and business reality here is that two weekends ago, he told me that the moderate improvement his industry had seen since the spring appears to have been little more than inventory restocking, as the industry’s new orders are now looking worse than they were in January.
So, it was all for nothing. All the pain, bloodshed and sacrifice has gone for naught. The Rebellion of 1878, the Young Irelanders, the 1919 War of Independence, Sunday, bloody Sunday, the bombings in Belfast, the assassination of Lord Mountbatten, last year’s “No” vote and every other aspect of the long and bitter struggle for Irish independence was to no purpose. On Oct. 3, 2009, the voters of the Republic of Ireland threw away their hard-won sovereignty out of fear, naiveté and greed for nothing more than the deceitful promises of the Eurocrats.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has more on the debacle.
As I’ve been saying has been the case for months now, the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund is officially OUT. From the FDIC:
11. When is the DIF expected to go negative?
FDIC estimates that the DIF balance as of September 30, 2009 will be negative.
I have the negative balance now between -$4.8 billion (est. losses) and -$15.3 billion (est. losses x average historical multiple for actual bank losses). Of course, the FDIC claims this is “a non-event for depositors”, which would appear to indicate that the fund was never anything but a publicity stunt in order to keep depositors placid.
While the Border Battle will be even more heated than usual this week – which would appear to settle the ongoing question regarding whether the Bears or the Vikings are now Green Bay’s primary rivals – I’m quite curious to learn if the Jets are for real. Sportswriters love a swaggering, gambling defense, but as TMQ has repeatedly pointed out in the past, such defenses tend to crumble at inopportune times. I’m also a bit skeptical of Sanchez being all that he’s cracked up to be.
I think Baltimore looks like the most impressive team thus far and if they’re able to beat up on what looks like a less than invulnerable Patriots team, this will establish them as the early Super Bowl favorite. While last week’s game was incredibly exciting and San Francisco isn’t the complete pushover they were expected to be, the reality is that the Vikes haven’t looked at all dominating in beating three weak opponents they were expected to beat. On the other hand, an easy schedule and an absence of injuries are two of the primary factors underlying success in the NFL and you can only beat the teams you play. If they can beat Green Bay convincingly this week, they’ll merit being taken seriously as a potential contender. Otherwise, the jury will remain out.
Good on Boris! I don’t believe David Cameron has any intention of holding a referendum unless he is absolutely forced to do so:
David Cameron today dug in over Europe and set himself at odds with Boris Johnson by refusing to say whether the Conservative Party would hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty if it comes into force before the general election. The Tory leader will try to face down his party this week in Manchester by claiming that the Conservatives should have “one policy at a time”: to promise to hold a referendum while the treaty is still being debated elsewhere in Europe.
Daniel Hannan or some other popular Euroskeptic ought to challenge Cameron for the Tory leadership if he will not commit explicitly to holding a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and abrogating it if the English people vote against the it. Cameron being a moderate EUnik was obviously hoping that the Irish would relieve him of having to take a public Euroskeptic position, but if he won’t, UKIP will become the UK’s second party.
Which they may do anyhow. It’s not as if the EU is going to become any more popular as hope that the European economy is in recovery now slowly dissipates.
Remember this vote the next time someone tells you, with a straight face, that people want to be free:
Irish voters approved the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty in a substantial shift of sentiment, with 67% voting in favor and 33% against, according to the final count announced Saturday…. The Irish last June rejected the treaty—which will establish a permanent president and foreign minister for the EU, and give more authority to Brussels— by 53% to 47% in a referendum.
Fools. Utter, utter fools. They so richly deserve exactly what they’re going to get. Fortunately, given the complete cluelessness of the Irish electorate, this is the last time they’ll be permitted to vote on anything meaningful. I used to wonder how Hitler won overwhelming plebiscites supporting his outrageous centralization and expansion of power. It’s not a mystery anymore.
Let me get this straight. The plan is to stick around occupying Afghanistan until these guys have been made into a more effective military?
An Afghan soldier on guard at a joint base with U.S. troops shot dead two American servicemen and wounded two others as they slept, a provincial official said on Saturday.
It’s over. It hasn’t worked. It was never going to work. Deal with it.
Dear Luke,
I was a little disappointed by the way your second letter appeared to indicate that this discourse is already on the verge of devolving into the very sort of debate that you originally proposed avoiding. Fortunately, I think we can avert that by focusing on the question you originally posed to me, namely, why I am a Christian. Evolution has no more to do with why I am a Christian than the ontological argument, and for all that you might like to discuss those things, they are simply not relevant to the subject. Now, as to the six sections of your last letter, the first two can be readily dismissed. Regarding the first, I can only say that when I initiate a public discourse with an established figure whose views are well-known to the audience, I prefer to operate out of as little ignorance as possible. If you happen to feel otherwise, that is certainly your prerogative.
As to the second point, entitled “Creationism and evolution”, I must inform you that you are both off-topic and incorrect. It is not possible for you to have investigated the matter, much less to have discredited what I wrote, as you clearly did not understand what I am talking about in any of the three statements I made. If you do happen to investigate them in the future you will discover, as others have before you, that it isn’t even possible to credibly dispute them. Perhaps if you had read more of my work, you would know that my criticisms are seldom the expected ones, even if they happen to look superficially similar to those that have been articulated before by others. And you would also know that professional, academic, and scientific consensus mean absolutely nothing to me when I have examined the supporting facts and logic and reached contrary conclusions. As it happens, in three weeks my publisher will release a book in which I detail the fatal flaws that render invalid a theory that predates the modern evolutionary synthesis and is equally well-established in its scientific field. But, as I noted previously, precisely none of this is relevant to the topic at hand! You wrote to claim that you can’t let me get away with my answers, but I am afraid you have no other choice. You chose to ask an irrelevant question and I answered it. It is of no concern to me what you might happen to think of the answer as neither my answer nor your opinion is pertinent to the present discussion.
Now onto the third point, which happily is a relevant one. You wrote:
You write as if Christianity is the only worldview that has an account of evil, but this is absurd. All religions have an account of evil. So evil is just as much evidence for their truth as for the truth of Christianity.
There are several problems here. You begin by incorrectly identifying an implication that simply is not there. I have never denied that other religions possess accounts of evil. Every worldview except that of the rational materialist has a more or less coherent account of evil, but the salient point is that those accounts of evil are all very different. Therefore, the question is: of those various accounts of evil, which most closely parallels the evil that we can observe and experience in the material world? For example, if we say that rape is evil, are we saying that it is an illusion, a personally distasteful confluence of atoms, a minor property crime against the father, or a grievous offense against God’s Will involving the desecration of one of His fleshly temples? Clearly your conclusion is incorrect because evil cannot provide the same evidence for the truth of competing accounts of evil. Also incorrect is your description of the Christian concept of evil as “a roaming magical force that hunts us down and seeks to destroy us”. Evil can be external but it is internal as well, because the Christian concept of evil is simply that which violates the Will of God. Satan is merely one of many evils, perhaps the greatest example of it, but far from the only one.
I very much agree with you when you write that “an all-good, all-powerful God doesn’t fit very cleanly with the amount of pointless suffering we see all around the world.” Of course, your statement does little more than confirm your unfamiliarity with both the Bible and Christian theology that I originally suspected, for as I wrote in my previous letter: “[U]nless you can understand why the first book in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy is called Out of the Silent Planet, unless you fully grasp the implications of the temptation of Jesus in the desert, you cannot possibly understand much about Christianity or the degree of difference between it and other religions.” The Christian God does not rule this world. The being that Jesus described as “the prince of this world” in John 14:30 does. To fail to understand this vital point is to completely fail to understand Christianity, since one cannot possibly understand the significance of the Redeemer if one does not understand from what, and from whom, Man must be redeemed. While it is true there are Christians who disagree with me on this point and insist that this world is precisely as God planned it and therefore the best of all possible worlds, that evil is an integral part of God’s perfect plan, and that the whole Redemption of Man is merely some sort of elaborate Kabuki dance where the pre-ordained steps are robotically followed, but my view of omniderigence is well-documented.
Since your understanding of my argument was demonstrably incorrect and your criticism of it verifiably false, it is clear that my belief in Christianity remains rationally justified even if I cannot conclusively prove its truth to anyone else’s satisfaction. I am curious, however, in your interest in seeing me argue for the existence of evil. While I have no objection to doing so given the obvious relevance of the matter, I must first understand something about your definition of evil. Do you believe in the existence of objective evil or do you believe that evil is a purely subjective matter?
I also note that given your obvious failure to correctly grasp some central aspects of Christian theology, the rational basis of your rejection of Christianity is necessarily called into question. As I’m sure you understand, the truth or falsehood of Christianity is not dependent upon your intellectual limitations. Or mine, for that matter.
On the fourth point, you write:
No doubt, Christianity is different. Every religion is different from all the others. But uniqueness is no measure of truth. Raëlism is pretty unique. So are Jedi-ism, Scientology, the John Coltrane Church, and many other things. But that does nothing to increase their probability of being true.
You’re correct, the mere fact of uniqueness does nothing to increase the probability of anything being true. The problem is, that is tangential to the point I actually made when I wrote that Christianity was a better guide to human behavior than those other religions, and than the very best models the social sciences have produced despite having two thousand more years of human experience upon which to draw. That does increase its probability of being true, even from the secular, scientific perspective.
On the fifth point, I am pleased that you find my perspective to be consistent. That you find it terrifying is entirely appropriate, since I think people should be terrified by the idea that the world is ruled by an intelligent, evil, genocidal being. I would find it terrifying too, were it not for the fact that I believe in a greater power that has given men the ability to be free of that rule. Fear, and freedom from it, is an important theme in the Bible as we would not so often be told “do not be afraid” if there was not something to quite reasonably fear. However, I have to point out that it is fundamentally unreasonable to fear my perspective if the Christian worldview is incorrect. The madness that could hypothetically lead me to conclude I am hearing a divine command to commit murder, for example, is not only no more likely to occur than any other form of lethal madness, but possesses an inherent restriction upon it that other forms of madness do not. Since God has not hitherto issued any such direct commands to me or anyone else of whom I am aware in quite some time now, the Biblical directive to test such phenomena would naturally call for some rather strict criteria. And, since Christians have been scientifically demonstrated to be happier and less subject to the sort of mental disease that such a scenario requires than non-Christians, it is obvious that any fear of Christians mistakenly believing they are divinely appointed to commit havoc is neither reasonable nor scientific.
On the sixth point, I have no problem whatsoever admitting that the resurrection of Jesus Christ, even if it were demonstrated to be an incontrovertible historical fact, does not conclusively prove that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that there is an immortal soul, that Heaven exists, or that Jesus is the only way to it. This isn’t in dispute; Jesus not only knew all this himself, but he outright predicted that there would be many men who would refuse to believe despite the wondrous signs they had been shown. Richard Dawkins is only one of numerous atheists who insist that they would not believe in God even if they encountered him directly. Belief is only half of the salvation equation anyhow, and it is the less important half.
The reason Christianity is rationally justified even though the ontological argument, cosmological argument, teleological argument, the magical resurrection of Jesus, and the existence of evil do not entail the complete truth of Christianity – which, according to 1 Corinthians 13:11, every Christian knows we cannot know – but they still suffice to establish the Bible as the most credible authority regarding that which is unknown. This would, in Daniel Dennett’s terms, justify the doxastic division of labor on the part of the Christian, in fact, it would make it a logical necessity. If we accept your hypothetical suggestion that the Bible genuinely confounds our current understanding of science, then obviously the most rational position is to accept the tenets and dictates of Christianity than to cling to the inferior verities of science, to say nothing of those other religions whose claim on observable, experiential reality is even more tenuous. This, of course, has nothing to do with why I believe, much less worship, but I think it should satisfy your desire to assert that various common arguments on behalf of the existence of God don’t actually prove the truth of Christianity.
Belief, like love, is less a state of being than a continuous series of choices. However, it is clear from your consistent misunderstanding of my statements that the choices you and I have made to believe or not believe are different ones, based on fundamentally different concepts. I hope that I have clarified some of those concepts so that you have a better grasp of what those differences actually are. If, in your next letter, you would clarify whether you believe in the existence of evil or not, what you believe its nature to be, and whether that nature is objective or subjective, I can then begin to inquire further as to the foundation of your beliefs.
With regards,
Vox
This was written in response to 2nd Letter to Vox Day.