Vox Popoli

It is quite apparent to everyone by now that the Bush administration has very closely followed in the Hoover administration’s footsteps, and that the Obama administration is almost certainly going to continue doing so as well. But what even some of the more sophisticated observers may not realize is how even the Hoover-Roosevelt response to economic contraction was little more than an echo of much older attempts at economic stabilization by the central state.

“When Diocletian came to the throne in 284, he found three great problems before him… The third and hardest was mainly economic – to restore the dwindled agriculture, commerce, and population of the Empire. On this Diocletian and Constantine went wrong together. They not only failed to cure the evil, but greatly increased it. Not much was gained by remitting taxes that could not be paid, and settling barbarian colonists and barbarian serfs in the wasted provinces. Serious economic difficulties have moral causes, and there was no radical cure short of a complete change in the temper of society. Yet much might have been done by a permanent reduction of taxation and a reform of its incidence and of the methods of collection. Instead of this, the machinery of government (and its expense) was greatly increased. The army had to be held in check by courts of Oriental splendour and a vast establishment of corrupt officials. We can see the growth of officialism even in the language, if we compare the Latin words in Athanasius with those in the New Testament. So heavier taxes had to be levied from a smaller and poorer population. Taxation under the Empire had never been light ; in the third century it grew heavy, under Diocletian it was crushing, and in the later years of Constantine the burden was further increased by the enormous expenditure which built up the new capital like the city in a fairy tale. We are within sight of the time when the whole policy of the government was dictated by dire financial need.”
– The Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I p. 20 (1911)

Immigration, higher taxes, larger government, vast public works, increased government spending, and even currency devaluations didn’t suffice to get the economy back on track in Constantine’s day. Depending upon your perspective, it’s either fascinating or depressing to note that central government’s response to economic crisis has changed so little in 1,700 years. The jargon and the justifications may differ, but the fundamental actions remain the same.

Chapter 12: The Close of the Hoover Term, for next week. A 25-question final covering the entire book will be posted the following week.

Okay, so the corpse hasn’t actually quit twitching yet, but I, for one, anticipate bidding a cheerful “good riddance” to the Star & Sickle:

The Minneapolis Star Tribune filed for bankruptcy, becoming one of the biggest U.S. newspapers yet to financially flame out under a heavy debt load and a punishing decline in advertising revenue. The 15th-largest U.S. daily based on circulation, which McClatchy Co sold to private equity firm Avista Capital Partners for $530 million less than two years ago, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after missing payments to lenders, it said on Thursday.

I actually spoke with an editor at the Star Tribune about writing an electronic games column for them many years ago, but being clueless dinosaurs, they didn’t think anyone would be interested in reading about video games. The editor at the Pioneer Press, on the other hand, thought it was a great idea, which, among other things, eventually led to this blog.

That’s not why I have long disliked the paper, though. Its unique combination of clueless arrogance, incompetent economics coverage, and mindless cheerleading of all things Left was astonishing for a product of the Midwest. It was a paper produced by people who wanted to be living in either New York City or San Francisco, and it showed. The Red Star actually had a MORE annoying collection of Democratic columnists than the New York Times has ever managed to assemble.

This is, of course, tremendously amusing in light of all those people who used to try to give me a hard time for electing to write for an Internet site… which just happens to have a readership that is not only larger than the Star Tribune, but has continued to grow since I began writing there in 2001. I guess after the last newspaper dies, there won’t be any real opinion writers anymore, we’ll all just be bloggers posting away in our pajamas.

VU2 participants will no doubt wince upon recognizing yet another echo of depressions past;

A stimulus package may be a lifeline for the nation’s economy, but it could be a death sentence for a lot of cows. Lawmakers are looking for ways to use the forthcoming stimulus bill to help dairy farmers, and the number one priority is to dampen milk supplies and prop up prices. Translation: reduce the nation’s dairy herd. Exactly how Congress will accomplish that remains uncertain.

Reducing supply to prop up prices didn’t work when wheat was the issue. And it won’t work now.

Happiness is a well-stocked library. One of the reasons I am in an exceedingly good mood today is that I finally obtained a set of the Cambridge Medieval History series planned by JB Bury to replace the one that was somehow lost amidst the chaos of a past move. This one is actually in better shape than its predecessor, for all that the dustjackets and maps are missing, and I found the whole set for not much more than the going rate of two single volumes. If you’re interested, and if you’re a regular here you doggone well should be, you can find PDFs of the eight volumes here. They’re absolutely worth the download, although at more than half a gig, you may want to burn them to CD rather than leave them on your hard drive.

Anyhow, having happily ensconced myself in the infamous Comfy Chair and settled down to a careful read yesterday evening, I was amused to encounter the following passage in light of last year’s literary labor:

Maximin’s endeavor was to stir up the principalities against the Christians, to organize a rival church of heathenism, and to give a definitely antichristian bias to education. Even the fall of Maxentius had drawn from him only a rescript so full of inconsistencies that neither heathen nor Christian could make head or tail of it, except that Maximin was a prodigious liar. He even denied that there had been any persecution during his reign.
– Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 1 p. 5

Maximin was the Emperor Gaius Valerius Galerius Maximinus, whose persecution of Christians inspired his rivals Constantine and Licinius to issue the Edict of Milan, the first state recognition of religious freedom, and was defeated by Licinius in 313 AD. The Edict was, like the Emancipation Proclamation, far more a political weapon than a genuine act of moral principle, but it had significant historical and philosophical ramifications. The entire episode is fascinating, not so much for what it reveals about the rivalries of emperors or Constantine’s eminently pragmatic character, but for how it shows the way the heathen attack Christianity has changed very little in the last 1,700 years.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. It didn’t work for Maximin then. It won’t work for Dawkins now.

Notice that whenever an economic prediction turns out to be correct these days, it’s almost never made by a Keynesian or a Monetarist:

“Technicals say it is time to bail out. Cut equity expose and prepare for rout. US depression looking likely. While China’s 2009 implosion could get ugly.”

Mr Edwards — who is of an “Austrian” persuasion, ie hates excess debt — was one of the very few economists to see this whole crisis coming, and to issue warnings clearly and emphatically (unlike others who now claim to have been seers, but in fact hedged). He said interests rates would be slashed to zero and that bond yields would fall to the lowest in history. All this has occurred.

Those who listened to the Voxonomics interview with Passport may recall his strong doubts about the Chinese economy some six months ago. Meanwhile, one of the few economically sane NROniks, Brian Riedl, shows some of the huge flaws in the latest Keynesian “stimulus” plan:

Policymakers are basing the “stimulus” bill on economic models that wrongly assume every $1 of government spending increases the economy by approximately $1.60. Is it really that simple? By that logic, debt-ridden, big-government countries like Italy, France, and Germany should be wealthier than America. And why stop at $800 billion? Such logic suggests unlimited prosperity could be guaranteed by the government borrowing and spending $800 trillion. Should America be basing such costly decisions on these types of economic models?

This should be easy to compare to the last contractionary go-round. If anyone wants to run the numbers, go for it. Just compare federal spending from 1932 to 1940 to the GDP and see if there is a $1.60 increase in the latter for every $1 increase in the former. In the meantime, we’ll be tracking that this year just as we’ve tracked NAR’s 2008 housing prices.

Meanwhile, Republican protests sound more than a little thin based on their performance over the last eight years:
“I just can’t tell you how shocked I am at what we’re seeing. You know it’s clear that they’re moving on this path along the flawed notion that we can borrow and spend our way back to prosperity.”

This video may well serve as a prophetic metaphor for the ultimate fate of those shiny, secular societies in which the multiculturalists and progressives placed such faith. Although, let’s face it, it is kind of inspiring to watch the uniformed police retreating in abject fear.

I have little doubt, however, that the European nations will eventually deal with its Muslims in much the same way they dealt with other unwanted immigrants in previous centuries. It’s important for Americans to remember that the Islamic population in Europe only averages around 4 percent, a fraction of the 15 percent Hispanic population in the United States, and anti-immigration forces are already much stronger in Europe than they are in the USA.

More evidence that Obama didn’t write his own books:

The belief that moribund institutions, rather than individuals are at the root of the problem, keep SAM’s energies alive.
– Barack Obama, “Breaking The War Mentality”

The highly indicative sentence above comes from an 1,800-word article Barack Obama wrote for Columbia’s weekly news magazine, Sundial, at the height of the KGB-generated anti-nuke craze in March 1983. Obama was 21 at the time. The sentence nicely captures Obama’s skill as a writer. The noun, “belief,” and the verb, “keep,” don’t agree – one of an appalling five such noun-verb mismatches in the essay – and the punctuation is fully random.

The President-elect is almost surely a complete fraud. There’s growing evidence that he has been from the very start. He doesn’t possess a shred of genuine literary talent, much less intellectual accomplishment; it’s hilarious to see how his supporters who are forced to confront the reality that the absence of a National Merit scholarship proves that he’s not Mensa material try to argue that he must not have taken the PSAT at his elite college prep school. No doubt they’ll argue that his bumbling press conferences in the future are nothing more than proof of his difficulty in speaking down to the level of the sub-genius.

I would say that this administration is going to be more fun than a barrel of monkeys, but no doubt some oversensitive soul would take offense at that. So, I shall simply say that I am utterly delighted that there will be magical negritude in the White House rather than bellicose neoconnery.

Camille Paglia shows her fellow atheists how it’s done:

I have been highly skeptical about the claims for global warming because of their overreliance on speculative computer modeling and because of the woeful patchiness of records for world temperatures before the 20th century. In the 1980s, I was similarly skeptical about media-trumpeted predictions about a world epidemic of heterosexual AIDS.

Not just skeptical, “highly skeptical”. I do so love that woman! The amusing thing is that just yesterday, the New York Times was trumpeting a pro-vaccine book… by a man who has made millions of dollars from his vaccine royalties. Imagine that! As a general rule, it’s always best to be extremely skeptical of the “science” or the “truth” pushed by those who have a tremendous personal incentive to convince you of it.

It’s completely fair for disbelievers to question the motivations of members of the priestly caste in all its modern forms. More believers should, in fact, I believe a statistically significant percentage of televangelists are little more than money-grubbing hucksters. I also suspect a fair number of pastors are more inspired by their desire to be on stage and perform than they are by their purported faith or love of God. The thing is, I’m confident that similarly base motivations apply just as often to politicians, lawyers, journalists, and yes, scientists too.

UPDATE – Speaking of skepticism, I note that the overheated ravages of AGW continue apace:

The cold wave that stunned the nation’s midsection expanded into the Northeast on Wednesday with subzero temperatures and biting wind that kept even some winter sports fans at home. The wind chill hit 33 below zero during the night at Massena, N.Y., and the National Weather Service predicted actual temperatures nearly that low in parts of the region by Thursday night.

All the horror stories of abused children notwithstanding, I have far more faith in the basic human decency of crackhead mothers and violent, alcoholic fathers than I do in the various state child abuse agencies:

Police say three New Jersey siblings whose names have Nazi connotations have been placed in the custody of the state. Holland Township Police Sgt. John Harris says workers from the state Division of Youth and Family Services on Tuesday removed 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell and his younger sisters, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell from their home Tuesday. Harris says family services did not tell police the reason the children were removed.

It is, of course, REMOTELY possible that the Harris family were abusing their children. But given the fact that it follows a big news story, it’s a hell of a lot more likely that some would-be Nazi at the agency took ironic offense at the children’s names and decided to kidnap them for their own good. One of these days, some angry father is going to blow away a large number of these latter-day fascists and the media will be shocked to discover how much public sympathy there will be for him.

There’s absolutely no question that the Harris parents decided to their children some stupid names. But if giving children stupid names was legitimate grounds for removing them from their parents, CPS would have raised about two-thirds of the National Football League.

Who will collapse first?

Mexico is one of two countries that “bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse,” according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.

All it would take is one narcopoly to assassinate Calderon and the whole structure will likely fall apart. Fortunately, the Great Southern Wall will prevent the chaos from spreading across the border and having a hugely negative affect on Americans… wait a minute….

Historians are going to look back at America’s post-1980 immigration policies and laugh. And, it must be said, Ronald Reagan’s legacy will be likely be severely tarnished by the role he played in helping exacerbate the problem.