We have previously discussed the calls of figures like Rep. Adam Schiff and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse to investigate Ginni Thomas, the wife of Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. I have expressed great concern over the calling of a spouse of a sitting justice who is among millions of Americans who believed that the 2020 election was stolen. I am not among them, but Thomas has every right to that belief and to advocate for actions in light of that belief. Yet, the Jan. 6 House Select Committee thrilled many on the left by demanding that she appear and answer for her advocacy.
Now the media is breathlessly reporting that “Ginni Thomas tells Jan. 6 panel she still believes false election fraud claims,” as if it were a public confession of a reactionary resisting reeducation. On CNN, anchor Jake Tapper declared to viewers that Thomas has not changed her mind and remains “untethered from all of the facts and evidence.”
One can seriously question whether that is news, but it is certainly satisfying as a congressional committee pulls in the spouse of a conservative justice to grill her for four hours on being a MAGA Republican who called for challenges to the 2020 election. None of the media even raised the question of whether such interviews could be viewed as harassment or pressure on a member of the Supreme Court. I understand that the Committee made this news by pursuing Thomas, but a balanced treatment would have at least raised the question of why she has been singled out over her advocacy.
Select committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) left the voluntary interview with the Committee to report, according to Politico, “she still believes false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.”
Ok, so what? Millions of people hold the same view. They have a right to hold that view, even if we do not believe that they have compelling support for it. For those of us who disagree, we can continue to voice an opposing view, but Thomas and others are unconvinced. (Notably, there is another controversy today of YouTube demonetizing a video showing Democrats calling the 2016 election stolen). There was never any evidence that Thomas participated in any violence and had simply encouraged White House and other officials to challenge the election.
A well-known Republican activist and Trump supporter, Thomas encouraged then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to pursue legal and legislative challenges to what she viewed as a stolen election. The reason that Ginni Thomas’ messages were seized is not because she was a key figure in the investigation but that the Commission has demanded any messages that deal with such challenges or the rally — a scope that has been criticized as overbroad. Congress then leaked the messages and the media did the rest.
There is no evidence that Ginni Thomas ever encouraged violence or was even present at the Capitol during the riot. Thomas said that she attended the Ellipse rally on Jan. 6 but left early, before Trump spoke, and never went to the Capitol.
The challenge to the 2020 election was no surprise. Indeed, not long after the election, I wrote about that possibility in what I called the “Death Star strategy.” It is not a crime to plan such a challenge, even without good cause. It was the same course taken by Democrats without any outcry from the media in challenging Republican presidents.
When Sen. Barbara Boxer launched her own challenge to President Bush on this law, Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised her challenge as “witnessing Democracy at work. This isn’t as some of our Republican colleagues have referred to it, sadly, as frivolous. This debate is fundamental to our democracy.” Joining her in that challenge of George W. Bush was Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who now chairs the committee looking into the Jan. 6th Committee. (Fellow Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sought to challenge Trump’s certification in 2016).
Yet, various media outlets were quick to report that Thomas remains unreformed and unapologetic in holding these opposing views. The satisfaction in forcing the wife of Clarence Thomas to appear for hours of examination is deeply disturbing. Thomas is hated by the left and that hatred seemed to drive much of this effort.
If there was a single piece of evidence showing that Ginni Thomas engaged in violence or called for violence, it might be a different question (though others who engaged in such crimes were not called to account before the Select Committee). The only evidence, however, was that this longtime Republican advocate engaged in political advocacy in opposing the certification. Her position in these emails was consistent with her public positions.
Yet, reporter Jamie Gangel went to CNN and reported, while Thomas cooperated, “Chairman Bennie Thompson has also told reporters that she still believes the election was stolen, Jake. So after everything we know, Ginni Thomas is still an election denier.” Tapper responded “That’s just wild. I mean, that’s just untethered from all of the facts and evidence.”
What’s “wild” is that coverage has taken on a reeducation element that it is now news that the wife of a jurist is unrepentant and unreformed.
The foolishness of the efficient market hypothesis:
https://truffle-investments.com/2017/06/09/computational-complexity-reveals-the-folly-in-efficient-market-hypothesis/
So you are citing investment counselors on the P v NP problem pretending to be economists ?
The tract you cite goes off the rails close to the start.
The efficient market hypothesis does NOT assert – I note they writers use “imply” as a means of ducking the issue. that markets are a P rather than NP problem, only that for all known means of achieving the outcomes that humans want or need, Markets outperform all alternatives.
That does not address one way or the other whether they are P or NP.
I did not read further – there is no reason to deal with an argument whose premises are false.
Fundamentally market efficiency is only a theory or hypothesis in the sense that we have no existing better solution.
Maybe there are some that claim that no better solution is even possible. But that is not the general claim.
The hypothesis is at its core observational,
To the extent that it is more than observational – I would suggest Reading Ronald Coase who won the economics Nobel for providing a mathematical and logical basis. Coase is one of the top 4 economists in the past century.
I strongly suspect that will not change in the future.
I would also suggest that you and your link are making the same mistake that warmists do. Living in ivory towers crafting all kinds of mathematics (in the case of climate scientists often badly) in their heads without grounding it in reality.
BTW the global temperature anomally UAH6 since 1979 as of the end of august is +0.28C. Oops.
https://dealbreaker.com/2017/01/data-analytics-garbage-in-garbage-out
The core point – relative to this discussion – GIGO
Garbage in Garbage out.
John Say is wrong again:
Market is efficient iff P = NP
https://content.iospress.com/articles/algorithmic-finance/af007
😮
You missed my point, as did your initial source and your new one.
Your trying to disprove something that is not being claimed.
I strongly suspect based on the idiocy in their abstracts hat both your sources are full of schiff so to speak.
But I am tired of going down ratholes with you, then you just end up claiming I am wrong because after proving you an idiot 15 steps down the rathole you end up with some nonsense about something like the precise defintion of exponential in a context unrelated to the actual argument.
From your abstract:
“I prove that if markets are efficient, meaning current prices fully reflect all information available in past prices”
It is always telling when someone starts out an abstract with something idiotic like “I prove”
Regardless, “current prices fully reflect all information available in past prices”
Did someone claim that ? I certainly did not ? It is possible that Coase’s law claims that – thought I doubt it,
But even if it did, the claim would only be for a perfect world with no friction at all.
Regardless, I am not aware of anyone claiming that current prices are perfect. Pretty much the entirety of classical economics asserts pretty much the opposite. Classical economics does not even require that the price for the same thing is the same for two different sales at the same time.
The price of anything is what a willing buyer and a willing sellor agree to. That is the only definition of
of price. The buyer and the sellor have some knowledge of the market – but certainly not perfect knowledge.
Efficiency is a goal. Perfect efficiency – the premise of your two articles with certainty can not exist in a system with humans in it.
And may not be possible at all.
I have no idea whether either of your papers ever prove anything – both start with bogus premises, which inherently means the rest is worthless – maybe the false premise is the only error – unlikely. But even if it is, They prove something no one is claiming.
These are stupid logic errors. Bu typical of the stuff you shill.
keep beating that straw man to death.
Regardless, there are lots of claims of economics or some economists about market efficiency that may or may not be correct – but those are completely tangential to anything I have argued.
My arguments are pretty simple – but also very important.
The first is that the more efficient we are – efficiency being securing what we want and need with the least HUMAN resources,
the higher standard of living is.
The next is government is and always has been, and must be inefficient – government is therefor always the worst we to deliver anything want or need that can be delivered by free markets (or likely markets of any kind).
Government is FORCE. I would hope that you would not even try to attain the efficient use of force in Government, that is litterally
what NAZI’s are all about.
The last is that of all the possible means of attaining what we want efficiently – with efficiency being defined as consuming the least human resources, through history NOTHING has performed better than free markets, the freer markets are the better they perform.
There is nothing in any of the above about perfection.
I would note that the efficient market hypothesis, is a theory about trading in STOCK markets.
It has little to do with classical economics.
Coases Theorum – which is also not what I have been talking about, but is closer atleast is
“In law and economics, the Coase theorem describes the economic efficiency of an economic allocation or outcome in the presence of externalities. The theorem states that if trade in an externality is possible and there are sufficiently low transaction costs, bargaining will lead to a Pareto efficient outcome regardless of the initial allocation of property. In practice, obstacles to bargaining or poorly defined property rights can prevent Coasean bargaining. This ‘theorem’ is commonly attributed to Nobel Prize winner Ronald Coase.”
Please read the above carefully, it should be trivial to grasp that all that has in common with the straw many your papers are attacking is the word “efficient” and not even defined the same.
“Pareto efficiency is a where no individual or preference criterion can be made better off without making at least one individual or preference criterion worse off. ”
But go ahead – Beat that Straw man to death.
Coase ‘theorem’ doesn’t apply to reality:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem
except in some rather special cases.
This Wikipedia article makes clear that sometimes government regulation is a ‘good idea’ although according to some it is overdone.
Still at it.
Newtons laws do not apply to reality – except in some special cases – like 99% of human experience.
Regardless, coases theorum, like Newton’s laws are driven by observing reality.
Further you miss the point – both mine and Coases.
Economic efficiency – delivering more of what people want with less human resources.
drives rising standard of living. In fact it is tautological that higher economic efficiency is higher standard of living.
Anything that reduces economic efficiency makes us POORER.
Coase “theorem”, as Coase himself pointed out, is vitiated by transaction costs, hence not applicable to reality.
Using ‘less human resources’ means putting some out-of-work so that the privileged few have a higher standard of living. I fail to understand how that process, readily observable in these parts, is “Pareto optimal”.
You are trying to make a binary out of something that is not.
You are also trying to deny reality.
You are correct in the words Coase said , but you miss the fact that he criticized those like you who presumed that automatically meant the Coase theorum never applies.
The coase theorum is like free markets generally – they work better the more then are applied.
We have been reducing transaction casts for atleast two centuries.
While the hypothisis that the stock market knows everything about what a stock prices should be is false. It is TRUE that transaction casts are incredibly low in the stock market and that regulation is not necescary. It is also true that the stock market is highly efficient.
It is also true that free markets in general have far lower transaction costs than in the past, and that increasingly the primary costs is government.
I am virtually certain that Coase will tell you – and likely did, that if the primary transaction cost is govenrment – get rid of it.
Regardless Coases theorum is like Newton’s laws. It does not always apply. But it likely does most of the time.
Using less human resources always means putting someone out of work.
It does NOT mean raising the standard of living of a few. It means raising the median standard of living.
The benefits are not always or even usually even but ultimately everyone wins.
“I fail to understand how that process, readily observable in these parts, is “Pareto optimal”.”
I can not help what you can not see.
Was standard of living higher in 7000BC ?
in 1800AD
in 1960 ?
It is self evident that we have worked hard to deliver more of what we want and need with less human effort.
That doing so has raised EVERYONE’s standard of living – are the poor as poor as they were in 1800 ?
Progress puts people out of jobs ALWAYS.
It is literally the POINT.
It is ONE version of what Schumpeter called creative destruction.
When you put people out of a job – while still producing the same amount of what people want and need. That freed labor is available to produce something else – and THAT is how standard of living rises.
This is all very basic economics.
It is shocking that you are ignorant of it.
“Every body must be sensible how much labour is abridged and facilitated by the application of proper machinery. By means of the plough two men, with the assistance of three horses, will cultivate more ground than twenty could do with the spade. A miller and his servant, with a wind or water mill, will at their ease grind more corn than eight men could do, with the severest labour, by hand mills. To grind corn in a hand mill was the severest work to which the antients commonly applied their slaves, and to which they seldome condemned them unlessl when they had been guilty of some very great fault. A hand mill, however, is a very ingenuous machine which greatly facilitates labour, and by which a great deal of more work can be performed than when the corn is either to be beat in a mortar, or with the bare hand, unassisted by any machinery, to be rubbed into pouder between two hard stones, as is the practice not only of all barbarous nations but of some remote provinces in this country. It was the division of labour which probably gave occasion to the invention of the greater part of those machines, by which labour is so much facilitated and abridged. When the whole force of the mind is directed to one particular object, as in consequence of the division of labour it must be, the mind is more likely to discover the easiest methods of attaining that object than when its attention is dissipated among a great variety of things. He was probably a farmer who first invented the original, rude form of the plough. The improvements which were afterwards made upon it might be owing sometimes to the ingenuity of the plow wright when that business had become a particular occupation, and sometimes to that of the farmer.”
Adam Smith
“Using less human resources always means putting someone out of work.
It does NOT mean raising the standard of living of a few. It means raising the median standard of living.”
That reminds me of a statement attributed (I think correctly) to Milton Friedman, made while he was visiting China. Friedman questioned, ‘why were the men using shovels when other heavy equipment was available to finish the job quicker?’ The Chinese answered that ‘shovels permit more jobs than so that more people have jobs.’ Friedman responded, ‘if that is the case, why are you having the workers use shovels instead of teaspoons?
This applies to David’s logic as well.
David is literally arguing against the ONLY means of improving the human condition.
I would note that some of this applies to our debates over immigration.
If you bring in 5M new workers – you will increase GDP, but if they are unskilled workers, you will reduce GDP per capita.
You will increase nearly everyone’s standard of living – the immigrants will have a higher standard of living than where they came from. The rest of us will get more of some goods and services at lower cost. But the median standard of living will go down.
Nearly everyone will be better off but the statistical measures will be worse.
Further you will screw low skilled workers already in this country.
We have strong opposition to immigration from the working class and the unemployed.
many of these are the big losers in immigration.
Almost nothing is positive for everyone.
The luddites burned the mills when owners put in new equipment that left 5/6 of workers unemployed.
But the NET was positive, and the workers who lost jobs got new ones. During the period of time with the most rapid improvement in standard of living, we also had the highest turnover.
There are other complexities. Massive numbers of low wage low skill workers creates an economic dilemma.
It is illegal to hire these people – yet most will get a job. The risks associated with hiring illegals means they get paid even less.
Nor is shifting portions of the economy underground a good idea..
The fact that most low skill low wage workers are illegal is also driving automation. Farm workers used to be a big source of ACTUAL migrant employment. Increasingly Farmers are automating.
we are not seeing that yet, but it is likely we will see the automation of more and more aspects of building construction too.
Farming was hard to automate. But the benefits are enormous. building construction will be hard to automate too.
The only thing relevant to DB’s arguments – an argument he has not raised, is that free markets are incredibly hard on the least capable. If you are low skill and you do not have the ability to learn easily, to adapt to improve, your oportunities decline, and eventually you get replaced by a machine.
There is no solution to this that does not make everyone else worse off.
I would note that even without immigration – the low skilled are still screwed, just more slowly.
No employer will ever pay you more than you can produce for long.
So many on the left do not grasp something that has been known for thousands of years.
“From the sweat of your brow you will earn your daily bread”
Your value is what you produce that others value enough to pay for.
I do not care if you are Yo Yo Ma or a burger flipper in McD’s.
You make more by producing more value.
If you flip more burgers you are worth more.
If you can manage others and get them flipping more burgers you are worth more.
Elon Musk produces next to nothing. But without him tens of thousands of people would produce much less value.
I am constantly shocked by the fact that though you are likely abundantly schooled, you are severely lacking in fundamental knowledge.
Here you correctly note that economic efficiency results in unemployment, and then you stop.
Apparently in Benson world those without a job do not ever do anything else productive again in their lives.
You should not need to be Adam Smith to understand that if you have produced the same amount of value with less human effort, that you now have surplus human effort to produce even more value.
But you have Adam Smith. and thousands of other economists,
And unlike Smith who wrote the Wealth of Nations at the cusp of the industrial age you live well into the information age.
1% of the people in this country do the work that 99% did a few hundred years ago. 99% of the people in this country produce value that never existed before.
This is not hard.
With specific respect to Coases theorum.
Absolutely we do not have a world without economic friction.
But we do know how to reduce economic friction – and in fact modern human history is the history of reducing that friction,
and the self evident benefit has been higher standard of living.
In fact we have a bizzare paradox – government – which increases economic friction has grown, while at the same time economic friction overall has declined – and the results have been rising standard of living.
The efficient market theory – which you went on a tangent about, at least partly reflects that today there is so low friction in certain types of transactions – stocks, that coasean optimums are achieved.
Increasingly we see ordinary people able to trade for cat litter with the same very low friction that wealthy people can trade stocks.
And increasingly the market approaches the coase theory optimums.
Contra your and possibly wikipedia’s assertion – in the real world the applicability of coases theorum is not the special case, but the norm.
The special case is where it does not apply.
We are partly touching on a conflict I frequently have with SM who beleives in incrementalism practically as a principle.
I do not know for certain whether all economic regulation is bad, or just 99% of it. Nor do I think the distinction matters.
But all deregulation is not good. Large scale deregulation which I advocate for and SM usually opposes is the most disruptive, but the least likely to create moral hazards that we do not foresee.
Immigration is a beautiful example. I absolutely support “open borders” – I would still build the wall, but I would let almost everyone who wants in, into the country.
But other regulation in this country means that open boards would create an gigantic moral hazard. These new immigrants would quickly qualify for all kinds of free services in the US, and we would likely bankrupt the country, or at the very least dramatically lower standards of living.
Removing one regulation can create moral hazzard with other regulations.
Quite often incremental deregulation has a net positive effect, But once in a while it blows up in our faces.
The problem is never int he regulation removed, but in the change in incentives caused by regulations that remain.
Carter massively deregulated the freight transportation system in the US. The results ? A system that was very nearly completely bankrupt rapidly became the best system int he entire world bar none – and it remains so today. There is no country in the world that can match the US rail and truck freight system.
We are constantly hearing comparisons between US passenger systems and those of the rest of the world where the US is far behind.
But we quietly ignore the fact that the US freight system is far ahead. And the impact on our standard of living much larger.
Further US freight rail almost entirely subsidizes the US passenger rail system. With the exception of a few high speed rail projects are tracks in the US are paid for by the relatively unregulated freight system – even though passenger rail gets priority use.
Carter also massively deregulated the airlines – again to very large positive effect.
Regardless, what is always true – which is part of Bastiats Seen Vs. Unseen,
is that free markets will ALWAYS optimize profits in any environment – regulated or not.
Open Borders – which I will join the left in asserting is far more good than bad.
Still can be disastrous as a result of significant moral hazzards created by other regulations.
Make it easy for people accross the world to come to the us and qualify for all sorts of free services and benefits,
And people will come from all over the world just for those services and benefits.
Open borders WORKS – when the freedom to come to the US is matched with the freedom to succeed OR fail.
The prospects of failure are incredibly important. They are part of what motivates us to succeed.
mitigating failure is a dangerous game that can easily create the incentive to fail, or even to never try to succeed.
Naive about railroads. Even some frieght only railroads are state supported, viz:
https://wsdot.wa.gov/business-wsdot/freight-railways
And of course you should know that the federal government heavily subsidizes Amtrak:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak
Amtrak: “The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, is a corporation that was chartered by the U.S. government in 1970”
From the GAO: Amtrak: Deteriorated Financial Condition
https://www.gao.gov/products/t-rced-94-145
This proves John’s point. Over 40 years and the government still can’t fix the problems.
I have no idea what John’s point might have been but the freight railroads do not subsidize passenger service. For that matter, the freight service is not the world’s finest.
I pointed out that Amtrak was run by government for over 40 years and they still haven’t gotten things right.
It depends on what you consider service. I think we move more products by train than any other country in the world
Wrong again:
https://www.nationmaster.com/nmx/ranking/volume-of-rail-freight-transport
US #3
I mentioned product, not tons, but I won’t argue the point. Do you think the Russian rail system is better than America’s?
It’s not wrong again, as you proudly state ,especially since my words were “I think”. You are wrong on almost everything, so this is what you will hang your hat on. Awful. You haven’t improved your reputation.
Much of the product produced in Japan for the European market passes over the Russian railroads. Must faster time-to-market than via ships, so high value goods go via Russia.
Or used to before the affair in Ukraine.
The Russian passenger service is superior in all respects. Again before Ukraine the trips via the Trans-siberian, first class, were a memorial journey for the well-to-do. For the more adventurous there was an alternate to the Pacific via the BAM.
It really does not depend on what you call service.
I can not think of a metric by which US freight rail is not superior to anywhere else in the world.
Freight is boring – except possibly to rail buffs.
Remember what I said about standard of living ?
Produce more of what humans want and need with less human effort.
US Freight rail does exactly that.
I would note our trucking system is pretty damn good too.
Our entire supply chain is unequaled anywhere in the world.
Wrong and wrong.
As I actually wrote – the US freight service pays for the construction and maintanace of all the rail in this country EXCEPT a tiny portion of exclusively passenger rail. The operation of the traffic control system is entirely by the freight rail.
Those are SUBSIDIES.
“America’s rail system is the envy of the world, carrying more than six times as many ton-miles of freight each year as all of the EU-27 nations combined.”
https://www.up.com/customers/track-record/tr090820-us-rail-envy-of-the-world.htm
https://www.masterresource.org/railroads/us-most-advanced-rail-world/
Do you want more ?
Bafflegab. I already posted a source wherein you would have found that China is first, followed by Russia, in ton-miles via rail.
Cato as a resource? 😮
Amtrak leases the use of trackage that it does not own:
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/Planning/freight_planning/talking_freight/september_2017/21/talkingfreight9_21_2017bl.pdf
You read that and you still think that the freight system is not subsidizing Amtrack ?
Real leases are negotiated – remember again the price of something is what a willing sellor and a willing buyer agree to.
As noted in YOUR document – the railroads are not willing – they are compelled to lease by law.
They can not say no. They do not get to set their own price.
As noted Amtrack gets priority.
We can debate all kinds of things. What is not debatable is that Amtrack is subsidized by the private freight rail system.
Typical leftist, you put a gun to someone’s head and demand a meal, and then claim because you left a tip that you treated them fairly.
Get rid of the subsidies, get rid of the law, and see what happens.
My suspicion is that Amtrak dies – almost all public transportation int he US is heavily subsidized, because decades ago it started to die off because it was not profitable. It was not profitable because it was not valuable enough to enough people.
Anythin that is not sufficiently valuable that people will pay enough to continue its existance – should not exist.
Otherwise you are lowering standard of living – you are meeting wants an needs that people do NOT hold dearly enough to trade the human resources necescary to sustain them.
An important part of economics is “creative destruction” When you preserve what is past its time, your do so at the cost of a better future.
Of course it is possible that I am wrong, and Amtrak could thrive in a free market.
Either way the wrong choice is to subsidize it.
Not from government, not privately with the force of law behind it.
The freight system was headed towards bankruptcy when it was deregulated- now it is both wealthy and cheap
The price of air travel dropped by 200% and has remained at very nearly the same NOMINAL prices for decades.
There are more planes, more routes, most things about air travel are better, more importantly airtravel is as we want it
and we know that – because we pay for what we want and not what we don’t.
Who knows freed from government Amtrak might thrive.
For certain it will either be better or it will die.
Free markets require that you constantly do better or you die.
Look around you. Look at everything that has improved in your life and everyone else’s.
All that comes from free markets – not government.
Finally I would note that – unlike out roads, the rail lines are nearly all private. Amazing private infrastructure can exist.
“Rail transport in Russia runs on one of the biggest railway networks in the world. Russian railways are the third longest by length and third by volume of freight hauled, after the railways of the United States and China.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Russia
Neither Russia nor China match the US in FREIGHT.
The Metric Russian and China lead combines Freight and Passenger miles.
No one is claiming the US passenger rail system is something to write home about.
“Despite impressive passenger statistics, freight rail modeshare in China trails other countries like USA, where some 40% of all tonnage is shipped by rail, according to US Federal Railroad Administration[66] or Switzerland where a similar share of ton kilometers of freight is carried by rail.”
And I responded with multiple other sources that all contradict your claim – including wikipedia.
Your errors are quite simple to explain. First, they US carries the largest percent of freight by rail of any country, including China and Russia. Next, because freight is he primary use of nearly all US rail. The numbers you cite that place China or Russia ahead are from a formula that factors in passenger miles.
No one has claimed consequence to the US passenger rail system.
I would further ask you – though you are still wrong – would it matter ? Russia is a larger country than the US and it must transport raw materials far further. Of course at the same time its economy is maybe 1/13th that of the US. How does an economy so much smaller than the US manage more tonne-miles ? If it did it could only be because it had to transport things farther.
China is a far more meaningful comparison. Its size is close to the US, and its economy is closer to the US.
Excluding passenger transport, its freight system should be comparable – assuming a similar percent of freight is transported by rail. Except it is not.
I have little doubt that if China’s economy continues to grow, its freight system will surpass the US in tonne-miles, eventually.
I would separately note – that while I do not have the specifics for speed of delivery, or cost, it is well known that the US has the best logistics system in the world – despite our recent supply chain problems – partly caused by Covid in China (shanghai) and partly cause by the inability of port of los angeles to scale up and down to match supply, and partly caused by stupid new trucking rules in CA.
Regardless, free markets adapt. I have no idea how things are going now. But one of the reasons for the pile up at port of los angeles is that when Shanghai reopened and flooded port of Los Angeles with goods it could not unload, and therefore the ships did not return to Shanghai for more, chinese shippers raided cargo ships from arround the world. Fairly quickly older, smaller less efficient ships were sent accross the pacific, as rates rose.
But there is a thing about these smaller ships – they can get through the panama canal – to golf and east coast ports that are not bottlenecked.
Never said that the federal government does not subsidize Amtrak.
This is typical of you – straw men and red herrings out the wazzo.
I would note that while it is entirely possible that WA subsidizes some freight operations – that is NOT what your articles says.
What is says is that WA bought right of ways and then leases them.
While I would oppose that – state involvement in the economy always reduces efficiency and therefore makes us poorer.
That does not make state involvement a subsidy.
Finally My post was about federal deregulation.
There is very little state regulation of railways – because nearly all railways are interstate and states can not regulate interstate commerce.
But in the rare instance where a rail is entirely contained within a state that can and does happen and it is as bad an idea as it was in the first 2/3 of the 20th century.
The article by WaDoT of course doesn’t come right out and say that the state subsidizes the mentioned freight lines. Learn to read between the lines.
And those are entirely within the state of Washington so the state regulates them. Guess what? They state “follow the federal regulations”.
“The article by WaDoT of course doesn’t come right out and say that the state subsidizes the mentioned freight lines.”
In fact it says nothing close.
This argument does not matter – your point is tangent to the actual argument.
You could prove WA subsidizes a couple of small freight lines and change nothing.
But you haven’t.
“Learn to read between the lines.”
I rarely do that – because the odds of error are enormous.
Regardless, in this instance – there is nothing to read between the lines.
“And those are entirely within the state of Washington so the state regulates them. Guess what? They state “follow the federal regulations”.”
So the state of WA does not want to go to the trouble to write its own regulations for internal rail commerce.
There is nothing inside this country that is not covered by some federal regulation or another.
The fact that Carter deregulated freight and airlines, does not unfortunatey mean they are regulated entirely by torts and Laissez-faire
They are still substantially deregulated compared to the 70’s.
You didn’t get ownership of Amtrak right.
This is how government rewards failure (The National Railroad Passenger Corporation chartered by the U.S. government in 1970) I don’t begrudge the dollar figures. If this were a private company, they would be fired or the company would go out of business.
https://nypost.com/2022/10/05/amtraks-10-highest-earners-raked-in-six-figure-bonuses/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news_alert&utm_content=20221005?&utm_source=sailthru&lctg=62680bbe38a279b1870b18c5&utm_term=NYP%20-%20News%20Alerts
“We are partly touching on a conflict I frequently have with SM who beleives in incrementalism practically as a principle.”
Wrong.
“But all deregulation is not good. Large scale deregulation which I advocate for and SM usually opposes is the most disruptive, “
Wrong.
Biden is using your approach to immigration. How is that holding up, John?
I addressed immigration in my post.
My point – which you frequently disagree with is that incrementalism might work 80% of the time, but 20% of the time it will explode in your face.
What is happening at the border is more than incrementalism, but it is a step that ignores all the other steps that must be done concurrently for it to work.
I have been crystal clear from the get go that you can not do open borders without doing lots of other things too.
One step in this case a LARGE incremental step – without the necescary other steps results in disaster.
So lets look at a more reasonable open borders:
Build the wall.
Allow most everyone at points of entry in – filtering for terrorists, criminals, …
Eliminate the minimum wage.
Either eliminate the entire social safety net, or at the very least restrict access to it to citizens.
This is probably not all you need to do, but it is the minimum or you end up with significant moral hazard.
I would note that the above is likely to be politically unpopular – though possibly not as unpopular as what we have now.
Or try a different alternative:
Build the wall.
Limit entry completely to those who have a sponsor who takes financial responsibility for them.
Let anyone, individuals, businesses, churches, advocacy groups to sponsor whatever immigrants they wish.
We can allow in as many people as can get sponsored.
Sponsors choose who they wish to sponsor – ukrainians, chinese, hatians, venezeullans.
This does not require changes to our safetynet. But sponsorship has to have teeth.
If you sponsor someone and they end up on some public benefits YOU PAY.
This would likely be far more popular.
I can probably come up with other arrangements that likely work
Though I would note it is still likely I have missed something – that we will not see until implimented and then it will be obvious.
Big steps are highly disruptive for short periods of time – but everything tends to adapt quickly.
Bolivia shifted to free markets overnight – a major change – and it worked very well.
Poland made the change overnight, but it took a couple of weeks before everything was working well.
Russia tried to do it incrementally – and fundimentally never succeeded, All the communist power players just became wealthy oligarchs.
The only thing wrong with the Russian plan was it was stalled too long and the powers that existed gained the time to figure out how to game it.
I would note that China essentially implemented unplanned incrementalism and up to Xi’s assention to power that worked.
I would recommend Ronald Coase’s “How China became Capitalist”. It is an excellent primer on Post Mao china. it is an excellent primer on economics, it is readable by anyone. And though the book ends arround 2013, it talks about what China must do next, and what will happen if it does not. Xi and what has followed is pretty much what happens if it does not.
On a related note. Sources that I usually trust have suggested that we should be careful about the narratives of China or Russia’s imminent collapse. Both are relatively closed countries so data is difficult to be sure of. And the sources that we do have are to an extent the same people who have lied to us about all kinds of other things.
I am not trying to say that what I and others have said regarding Russia and China is false. Only that so much of our media has burned its own reputation it is hard to know for sure what is true.
As an example – while I generally favor Ukraine, and mostly support aide – even military aide.
The narrative that Russia/Putin is evil and Ukraine/Zelensky is good is wrong.
Separately There is a fair amount of evidence that the West, Nato, Biden, the EU tanked a negotiated settlement back in February or March.
Probably 150K people – more ukraine than Russian have died since then. Russia loses more soldiers, But Ukraine has civilian casualties too.
More recently we have the destruction of NordStream II. While the press is now selling th narative that Russia blew up its own pipeline.
People I do trust are arguing extremely credibly that just did not happen. It would be stupid and Putin is just not that Stupid.
Nor was it Ukraine, because Ukraine does not have the capability AND could accomplish the same thing much easier
That leaves the US or some NATO country, and almost certainly no country in NATO could do it without US knowledge and permission.
The destruction of that pipeline is a huge act of war.
“My point – which you frequently disagree with is that incrementalism might work 80% of the time, but 20% of the time it will explode in your face.”
I don’t know about the numbers, but either one can explode. I am careful when considering how something will or will not work.
“I have been crystal clear from the get go that you can not do open borders without doing lots of other things too.”
I’m sure you meant to be, but I remember bringing up the welfare state as a reason for not permitting open borders. I believe you adjusted your rhetoric accordingly. We are probably in agreement on that issue with a few corrections, but it is a moot point as we will not get rid of the welfare state in my time.
China, mostly baby steps and had to change mid-stream from heavy industry to lighter and closer to the needs of the society.
Both China and Russia have good reasons to collapse, but once again there is uncertainty so one needs caution.
The pipeline explosions are an enigma to me. No one seems to benefit, but there is a lot of stupidity in the world. Why would Russia do it, unless it was to send a message involving nuclear weapons. Why would the US do it? The administration is nuts and has destroyed its own economy. Who has the submarines and capability?
I have no idea when you have raised specific points with me.
But I have not “modified my rhetoric” – just because you think – possibly correctly that you raised some issue first between us.
I do not address everything in every post. There is plenty of moaning about my post size as it is.
No one is required to know what all my past posts contain. But you do not get to accuse me of changing my position, based only on your recollection of our exchanges.
The incompatibility of open borders and the entitlement state was pointed out by Friedman 50+ years ago.
And he likely was not the first. I am sure Sowell has addressed it.
If I did not address it with you – I addressed it with other atleast a decade ago.
China’s late 20th century transformation is NOT baby steps. Standard of living rose from about $90 per year in 1974 when Mao died – unchanged from 1900 to 11K/year today. Singapore and Hong Kong are the only places that have matched that rate. They were smaller started earlier and reached standards of living exceeding that of the US.
India is improving rapidly – but not as rapidly as China did, and it started later.
This is not baby steps.
“Russia is the agressor in Ukraine.”
Yes, but I fault our government for pushing into another’s sphere of influence when it doesn’t alter our security. In particular, I am talking about the expansion of NATO.
Does the US, NATO, Ukraine have the right to discuss NATO membership for Ukraine ? Yes.
Does Putin have the right to thwart that ? No.
Is it wise for those on the west to test this premises at resk of war, or possibly even nuclear war ? No!
There are many reasons for this war. that all are the responsibility of the Biden regime.
Pushing NATO membership was one.
“Both China and Russia have good reasons to collapse, but once again there is uncertainty so one needs caution.”
I am inclined to beleive the problems in china and Russia are real and severe. But we agree data is sparse.
Further it is not like we have not been lied to repeatedly by the same or related people.
My core point is we should accept the possibility that like Mark Twain the stories of Putin and Xi’s demise are premature.
I hope that is wrong.
I would further note that we have to be careful of painting things in black and white.
Russia is the agressor in Ukraine. But there are lots of problems with Ukraine.
And the west generally and Biden specifically made many mistakes that brought this about.
“But I have not “modified my rhetoric”
Modified was not my word. I wrote, “you adjusted your rhetoric” and added content that you previously left out. One cannot assess for sure if you had that knowledge before or not, but knowing what you have read, I believe you were fully aware of it. Nonetheless, that leads to my additions when I wish to agree with you.
You are on target most of the time, but sometimes in haste, you leave things out, overgeneralize, use words with various definitions, and make spelling or grammar errors that change the meaning. That is fine with me, but that frequently leads to my hesitancy in agreement that you later misinterpret as a significant difference of opinion.
No one is required to cover every issue and every objection in every post.
People complain about the length of my posts as it is.
It is dangerous to presume you know my position on something that is not in a specific post, particularly when you can find it out from earlier posts.
“People complain about the length of my posts as it is.”
I don’t ask for shorter posts. I only ask that when we have a mild dispute you are careful with definitions and overgeneralization. Those two things are the most common causes for disputes between us that should not exist.
No. Nothing personal, but I have made clear – I do not agree with your assessments of Either.
Further the inability of the left to refute generalizations is damning.
Newtons laws of motion are “over generalizations” – and yet we still call them LAWS of physics.
They are actually NEVER correct, but the error is so tiny that until you start dealing with objects traveling close to speed of light the error just does not matter.
I have said the laws of supply and demand are immutable. But over a century of examination has found two violations of the law of supply and demand. One is putely theoretical and has never happened int he real world. But the other is something that everyone is aware of – even though – like Newtons’ laws it makes up a miniscule fraction of the marketplace.
Yet, not one has raised a valid challenge to mu absolute use of the laws of supply and demand. Either like newtons laws those aware of the exceptions know it does not effect the argument or as is common with lefties they are so economically ignorant that they never think of the one rare in terms of proportion of the market, but common in the sense that pretty much everyone has experience with it exception.
Regardless, I am not going to cease using netwton’s laws in my arguments – and I do not expect you or anyone else to challenge that – unless I am trying to use them close to the speed of light.
Nor am I going to qualify the law of supply and demand when no one here has ever raised either of the two instances where it does not work,
And where my uses are not those exceptions.
Any generalization that is correct a sufficiently large percent of the time no one responds with a valid counter, is good enough to be treated as law for MOST purposes.
Further we are dealing with leftists who generalize all the time over things that are either never true or true only a few percent of the time.
Regardless, I am not appologizing, nor lacing my arguments with qualifiers.
As to definitions – we have been through that before.
There are contexts in which incredibly precise definitions matter a great deal scientiic proofs as an example.
The issue there is not so much one of communicaiton. But that without precise defintions whatever is being proven is almost always false.
For the most part in the real world we are in the opposite end. It is the definition that must match standard use. And to the extent the definition has value – it is to identify non-standard use, or misuse.
Justice Jackson response to the question “what is a woman” is a perfect example.
Contra Jackson you do not need to be a biologist know what a woman is. Further there can actually be multiple defintions – such as a legal defintion, and the legal defintion is with near certainty going to matter to her quite soon.
But more importantly without resorting to science or law or anything else. all of us know what a women actually is and most of us will actually admit that – even if we can not perfectly define it.
Regardless, it should be self evident that it is not the defintion that establishes whether something is a woman. It is the conformance with reality that makes the definition correct. Further I am not going to get into some defintional game over what is a woman – with either you or a bunch of leftists. If I offer a definition – and you or some left wing nut offers a valid exception, that is unimportant – unless that exception is commonplace.
“I do not agree with your assessments of Either.”
I assume that has to do with definitions and overgeneralizations, but in light of many discussions, I think that is the crux of our disagreements that are small compared to the whole.
I have no problem with Newton’s ‘generalizations’.
Frequently I have no problems with yours either unless it involves what I say and proves false in the discussion involved.
I do not argue about your perceptions, they are yours, and I understand your point of view.
I do not think we are overall that close together. But we are often quite close on the current issues.
Regardless, you engage in honest debate, which I respect even if I think you are wrong about something.
I do not wish to rehash the generalizations or definitions debate further in the abstract.
These will certainly come up again in the concrete, and you can make your case than that some statement is too broad, or that a definition is necescary.
I had not planned that but the recent debate over what is a woman does an excellent job of making my point.
Ask ten people and you will get 10 answers. Most of us agree. 10 years ago almost all of us would know what a woman was.
And no one would feel compelled to cite the Websters definition.
The biology definition – is important – in the field of biology.
The legal definition – is important – in the field of law.
But most of the time most of us know which persons are women and which are not, without referring to definitions and with few errors.
John, when you look around and compare the viewpoints on the blog, we are close together. When you look with a microscope, we are far apart.
That reminds me of a Victor Hugo quote, “Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has a grander view?”
“Regardless, you engage in honest debate, which I respect even if I think you are wrong about something.”
I admit that I am sometimes wrong, but the big question is can you tell my right from wrong, or is your response based solely on an individual perspective?
“I had not planned that but the recent debate over what is a woman does an excellent job of making my point.”
This point is where we agree.
“The biology definition – is important – in the field of biology.
The legal definition – is important – in the field of law.”
Ah, and after disclaiming my statements about definitions, you travel 360 degrees to meet me on my turf, 🙂
On this blog – and unfortunately in the country there are only two viewpoints – far left woke wacko and everyone else.
We are in the everyone else catagory
But that catagory is a huge domain of viewpoints.
Centrist democrats,
red pilled liberals.
libertarians
…..
“We are in the everyone else catagory
But that catagory is a huge domain of viewpoints.”
When one removes self-gain and self-promotion, those not on the left are not grouped so far apart. They will have different beliefs about specific policies but for the most part they want to be left alone yet have reasonable protections afforded to them.
It would be very easy to move that group in the libertarian direction but not if faced with the choice you offer. The all or none movement you suggest scares too many. Smaller steps would work better for libertarians to use, as would better definitions that appeal to this group.
“The pipeline explosions are an enigma to me. No one seems to benefit, but there is a lot of stupidity in the world. Why would Russia do it, unless it was to send a message involving nuclear weapons. Why would the US do it? The administration is nuts and has destroyed its own economy. Who has the submarines and capability?”
I am not sure this requires submarines. I beleive the depths are about 200ft. That is outside the range of ordinary divers, but it does not require submarines. I would further note that if this was done by submersible – the number of submersibles capable of this are few. This is not any country with a submarine.
There are many very good arguments why Russia did not do this.
But the very best is that this ENDS a significant amount of Russian leverage.
Russia can acheive the same effect by closing and opening a valve.
Being able to open the valve again is always a key bargaining chip.
Now they can not.
If this is not fixed very quickly the effect of salt water on the pipeline will transform this from a small repair job to a massive one.
I think the odds are ZERO that Russia did this.
I am told Ukraine does not have the capability. More important though is that they DO have the capability to stop Russian Gas in pipelines accross Ukraine. one of the weirdities of this war is that Russian gas traverses Ukraine to the EU in the midst of a fight for existance against Russia.
If Ukraine was going to do something they would have done so near the start.
The best speculation I hear is Poland. Immediately after this Poland opened a new gas pipeline to europe.
Probably with the aide of the US.
The primary replacement for Russian gas is US LNG.
The US is making a fortune off this war.
This war is great for our energy sector, great for our defense sector.
Often ignore with GW I and GWII is that the US used up $hitloads of old weapons stockpiles and replaced them with much newer ones.
I am not a big fan of US wars. But they are incredibly good for our defense industry for our national defense, for our military readiness and for our capabilites.
I am not sure if Russia is facing imminent collapse.
But I am certain that in a war of attrition so long as Ukraine is willing to sacrifice soldiers. Russia will lose.
As this progresses the Ukrainians get more and more advanced US weapons.
The world has run out of readily available used soviet equipment to give to Ukraine.
The US is now talking about F16’s – it will take time to train the Ukrainians for F16’s
But the US has enormous numbers of surplus F16’s.
It is self evident that Russia’s purported air capability was not worth the paper it was printed on.
This has been a weird war – there has not been a war since WWII where air superiority was not critical.
Yet here we are fighting a modern war and no consequential attempt to control the air.
Ukrainians in F16’s with sufficient training to deal with Russian SAM’s radically changes this. We are months away from that.
But those months seem likely.
The US will likely give Ukraine better and better weapons as we burn through our old inventories.
Thus far Ukraine has show a great deal of discipline in confining the war to Ukraine.
The US is likely to give them longer range and better weapons so long as they stick to that.
Shades of vietnam and Korea where american pilots had a limited sphere of operations.
Ukraine did remarkably at the start of this. But Ukraine loses without western munitions – and probably quickly.
Conversely Russia is a huge arms manufacturer, but their replacements are going to slowly get worse and worse.
Russia has enormous numbers of tanks. But most of them are much much older.
I read that a submarine was a necessary element for the destruction, but I can believe submersibles could be used and maybe even divers. However, this would have been a significant project, with many skilled people involved and transport. Transport vehicles on the surface could be seen and even recorded.
It made little sense as, to my knowledge, the pipeline off and such control was on both sides. That is the reason I suggested the rationale of stupidity or sending a message.
There is technology that obviously could do it.
But I beleive all that is required is diving equipment to go down to 200ft.
That is not commonplace. But I beleive nearly ever oil rig repaid company has it.
I do not want to make this too easy. But it is also not a superpower only task.
There are alternative ways to perform the act that do not involve submarines. One can detect ships above water as eyes are everywhere. Time and place are known, and the ability to calculate a ship’s speed is not a problem. There is also a problem with big mouths when the assembled group is not tightly knit.
Intentional destruction is not assured, so it is hard to conclude. For all we know, nations might already have the answers to why and how it happened. Assuming the destruction was intentional, I find that strange considering all the circumstances. It is a reason why one of my suggestions is that this act might be a warning.
It is already determined the destruction was intentional.
It was the result of explosions – not nature.
It appears that you are incorrect about the global ability to determine the perpetrator.
If the US or Poland did this and Putin could credibly allege that – he would.
If Puting did this – we would be providing proof.
“It is already determined the destruction was intentional.
It was the result of explosions – not nature.”
Yes, I have also heard the seismological reports from the area and other things, but though I believe it was due to an explosion, I will not conclude it until the fog clears.
.”It appears that you are incorrect about the global ability to determine the perpetrator.”
1) I didn’t say we would discover a surface ship in the area. My point was it was possible to see a surface ship, and such knowledge could dissuade one from doing so.
2) I don’t know that our government will ever tell us the truth, even if they know the answer. For all we know, the answer is already known.
This incident is one of those where the truth evades us even after the “truth” is released. I have little faith in the honesty of pelicans.
Someone knows,.
This is one of the points I make with respect to all the Trump nonsense,
The left constantly presumes that investigations will ultimately prove something true about Trump.
They do not consider that those things might not be true.
They also do not consider the possibility that Trump knows for certain whether these thins are true or not.
Knowing the actual truth – particular for someone with lawyers and resources is a massive advantage.
Someone KNOWS who blew up NordStream.
But most of us – including many governments do not. We have to guess based on the data you an I are discussing.
I am increasingly convinced that the US did this.
there is a claim that EU resolve was fading as the war continued and as winter approached. and more inclined to negotiate with Russia
Taking out nordstream ends negotiation, and ends consideration within the EU of the possibility of Russian Gas this winter.
Europe now has no choice but to figure out how to survive the coming winter.
Further though Poland is coming on line as an NG supplier – the US is so far replacing 100% of the NG that Russia cuts.
This war is very profitable for some US energy companies.
Americans are fixated on the economy – but we are fixated on the US economy.
Most of the world is in worse shape than we are.
Further the Russia/Ukraine war is economically good for the US, and bad for Europe and Russia.
I am very concerned because though it is certain we are looking at a global recession.
What is coming could be much worse.
The entire west – as well as some other parts of the world has made the same large monetary mistakes regarding Covid that we are all now paying for. Much of the world is facing a monetary cause recession.
Europe has additional problems driven by Energy. Russia has at most 18months before they can not prop up their economy anymore. China has a 16-28T housing bubble that is bursting.
We could easily be looking at global depression.
Further – while we have the Russia/Ukraine war right now, weaker economies and particularly higher global food and fuel prices drive violence and war.
The current moment has strong resemblances to the period leading up to WWII, and the similarities are increasing.
“I am increasingly convinced that the US did this.”
That is one of the possibilities. If the US did it, it opened the world up to different types of terrorist actions. Will undersea communications be next?
Yes, we could be heading toward a world war. That is what Biden and the left have done. If Trump had won, there would be no war in Ukraine, Russia would not be threatening nuclear use, inflation would not be high, gas prices would be low, and the American public would be better off.
The left is destroying America, Europe, and many other portions of the globe.
The US has been f’ing with russian undersea communications all my life.
Navy Seals tapped into Russian undersea communications cables near the arctic during the cold war and undetected monitored Russian military communications for decades.
There were amazing operations, they were in deep water, very cold water. Divers had to get to the cables from subs which had to get near these cables undetected. They had to cut into cables, not disrupt them,. tap them, and leave the cables undamaged – and all this work had to be done deep under very cold water.
John, I take note that they used submarines which brings us to what I said earlier.
Are we headed to a world war – I do not know.
Are we headed to more volatility and conflicts – with absolute certainty.
And foreign leaders – like those in OPEC would not be disrespecting the president,
Who would not be bagging and getting turned down flat.
This administration is bizzare. Not only won’t it admit error – that is not knew.
But it will not modify its position on anything no matter how badly it is working, not even when it can easily claim changed circumstances.
It would be trivial for Biden to say that in light of the ukraine war the US is going to choke Russian fossil fuels and replace them with OUR new production barrel for barrel. Instead they doubt and triple down on nonsense.
“And foreign leaders – like those in OPEC would not be disrespecting the president…”
The administration appears not to understand world politics. Biden is searching for oil, running like a chicken whose head was just cut off.
Oil is under his nose as the US is loaded and could be self-sufficient and an exporter.
Biden noticed the strategic oil reserves and is draining them for political reasons when they exist for our security. Moreover, when Trump wanted to fill them more, the Democrats refused Trump that ability. At the time, it would have cost around $20 a barrel. Today it is about $84.
With gas prices ready to rise and shortages ready to occur, mindless Biden seeks oil from foreign nations, but Biden lacks an understanding of spheres of influence.
Who has sufficiently large supplies of oil other than the US?
1) Russia, but we are presently in a proxy war with them.
2) Saudi Arabia, but they laughed at him. Biden is trying to make a deal with Iran, the Saudi’s enemy.
3) He hasn’t publically asked Iran who calls us the Big Satan, but it is unlikely they can increase supply sufficiently.
4) Now he is begging Venezuela, a client state of China, who is against us in almost every way possible.
Biden has screwed us, the world, and is responsible for the Ukraine war.
If Trump were magically placed in office, much of this would be gone in a short time.
And yet we keep hearing from the left that now foreign leaders respect us, when under Trump they did not.
I do not know what the left thinks respect is.
I think that a world at peace where global leaders do not thwart you at every turn is a sign of respect.
There is a clip of Biden towards the start of the Trump administration talking about the fact that Trump brought back the fear of nuclear war which has been gone since the cold war.
My son came to me worried about the prospects of nuclear war in in march 2022 – not 2017. When Russia invaded Ukraine
The likelyhood of global nuclear war is low. But it is the highest it has been since the 60’s.
Turley’s entire piece is premised on the notion that Ginni Thomas’s “view” that Trump won in 2020 is entitled to respect and credibility. NO, it isn’t because Thomas is not stupid–she does know better, and knows that there has never emerged anything resembling proof of his claims. In fact, all proof establishes that Biden won, fair and square. How many lost lawsuits, recounts, re-recounts and forensic audits have there been? And yet, she claims to still “believe”–believe in what? Someone who was predicted by every single poll to lose. Someone who took a thriving economy and trashed it into the worst recession since the Great Depression. Someone whose lies and incompetence caused unnecessary deaths. Someone who alienated America’s EU and NATO allies, and emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine. Someone who told Bob Woodward, before Election Day, that if he lost, he’d claim his “victory” was stolen. Someone who claimed victory the wee hours after Election Day, despite proof that he had already lost, and still won’t back down, and why? The ego of a spoiled brat with mental problems who doesn’t have the integrity to admit he’s wrong, nor the patriotism to respect the will of the American people. Thomas is using her position as wife of Clarence Thomas to lend credence to a lie that continues to divide America–and what for? Political reasons–to help Republicans seize power. And, does anyone really believe that Clarence Thomas didn’t know his wife went to the insurrection, that she, too, refuses to accept the recounts and lack of evidence of Trump’s loss and continues to push a falsehood? She’s either a pathological liar like Trump, or she’s a cynic who enagles the Big Lie just to keep the gullible disciples believing. Either way, she deserves scorn and condemnation.
Do you also have at least this much scorn and condemnation for Adam Schiff?
Robert Mueller?
Peter Strzok?
Kevin.Clinesmith?
It is irrelevant whether you think her view is entitled to respect and credibility.
That is not the standard. I do not care if Ginny Thomas said flying monkey’s voted by the millions for Biden.
While we all would prefer that the spouses of important people – and even more important those people themselves were not bat $hit crazy,
Believing something that is crazy is still not a crime.
As to the gist of your claims.
It is self evident that Biden did not win “fair and square”
Biden won a lawlessly conducted election – that NEVER should have happened.
You rant about lawsuits – can you name a single lawsuit that actually heard testimony from a witness ?
There were very few recounts – and recounts do not fix or find fraud or lawlessness. All a recount does is prove that for every vote recorded there is a ballot. The forensic audits – really only one of consequence – Arizona, found LOTS of problems – problems that do not prove fraud but are fully consistent with fraud. The AZ audit did prove that one specific fraud 4 times larger than Biden’s margin of victory without any doubt occured.
AZ counted almost 50K ballots from only 13K people – i.e the same person had multiple ballots. I would note that is Fraud no matter what.
It is also Error on the part of AZ. Further once those ballots are separated from their envelopes, the fraud could not be corrected.
I would further note that MIGHT be an indication that 13K people engaged in individual election fraud. That BTW is the LEAST bad possibility.
A more likely possibility is that there was ORGANIZED fraud by a handful of people submitting hundreds of thousands of ballots for people unlikely to vote, and in 13K+ specific instances they were wrong and that person voted.
“And yet, she claims to still “believe”–believe in what?”
The actual evidence of election fraud. I know you are blind to it, but there are literally hundred of examples – large and small.
There is video of people dropping half dozen or more ballots into a drop box at one time, and then 20min later doing it again at another dropbox.
There is video from Michigan of one woman puting boxes of ballots into a dropbox. There is geolocation information that confirms the video and indicates that the instances in which there are video is only the tip of the iceberg.
There are likely over 100K fraudulent ballots from senior care fascilities in Wisconsin. These are from residents, that are dead, in coma’s legally incompetent or competent people who swear they never voted. WI law allows a shutin to have an election official bring a ballot to them, so they can vote and collect it at the same time – this preserves the secret ballot requirement of the WI constitution.
But Nursing home staff or political operatives were requesting mailin ballots for residents, and in most cases filling them out and returning them without the involvement of the actual resident.
“Someone who was predicted by every single poll to lose.”
Yes, The polls said Trump would lose the popular vote by more than 10pts. He lost the popular vote by 4% – so the polls were off more than 6%
That is triple the margin of error. Please do not cite election polls they have been horribly wrong in 2016 and they were even worse in 2020 (and 2018). If the polling error is the same as it was in 2020 – Republicans are going to pick up 5 senate seats, 60 house seats, and half a dozen governorships. Reality is more complicated. Right now national polls are showing Republicans with a 1% lead in the generic ballot. That should result in 20+ republican pickups in the house, and 2 in the senate. But swing district polls are showing that republicans have an average +21pt lead. I suspect that is just as wrong as 1pt. Regardless, it is reasonable well understood right now that the democratic base is energized and is coming out to vote i much larger than normal numbers – specifically in deep blue districts. That republicans are ALMOST as energized and are coming out to vote in larger than normal numbers – in swing districts.
Worse still the current polls – which we know are biased towards democrats – like in 2020, we just do not know how much, are predicting that accross the nation in places democrats should not be facing a contest, republicans are competitive. That blue states – just as we saw with NJ and VA last year are threatening to go red. Even if this does not happen – Democrats are currently in deep trouble, they are spending money defenind seats that normally would be shoeins.
“Someone who took a thriving economy and trashed it into the worst recession since the Great Depression.”
There was no recession at all during the Trump presidency, There was the worst single Quarter decline in GDP in US history due to covid lockdowns and the greatest single month recovery in Human history in the following Quarter. The net result was Trump had 2.5%+ growth for 3 years and 0% in 2020. Trump’s 4 year average is still better than Obama’s and Bush’s and is the best in the 21st century.
We are right now in the midst of an actual recession – 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth.
I find it idiotic that those of you on the left are working so hard to deny this.
The Federal Reserve is DELIBERATLY causing a recession. This is no secret. Causing a recession is the only tool central banks have to purge inflation from the economy. And we have the worst inflation in 40 years. We have 2 choices – recession, or worsening inflation followed by even worse recession.
You like to blame Trump for things – well a SMALL number of economicst blame Trump’s covid stimulus for about 30% of the current inflation.
The remaining 70% is Bidenflation. Most economicst blame it all on Biden. Regardless those economists who think Trump shares the blame are probably right. The lockdowns and covid stimulus were a STUPID idea.
“Someone whose lies and incompetence caused unnecessary deaths.”
I am assuming you mean Covid.
Trump 300K covid deaths in 2020 – 12 months.
Biden almost 800K deaths in 2021 and 2022 – 22 months.
In the past month there have been 12,000 deaths and 1.6M cases – and yet Biden says Covid is over ?
“Someone who alienated America’s EU and NATO allies”
Nope, someone who pushed them into building up their own defenses.
“and emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine.”
Lets see – Putin waits 18months after Trump loses the election to invade Ukraine – and you want to blame Trump ?
Sorry Biden owns this. Had Biden done three simple things:
continued Trump’s energy policy
not done everything possible to appear weak,
Not said stupid things about Ukraine joining Nato to infuriate Putin.
This war would not have occured.
Regardless, Biden WANTS this war.
For the moment the war is good for Biden and good for democrats.
Biden is getting the oportunity to look strong – one that he would not need had he actually been strong.
Further he is hoping to create a legacy of being the president that took out Putin.
That sounds good – until you consider the costs – it is likely that there are 1/4 of a million deaths on both sides – military and civilian thus far.
Russia has not seen this many war casualties since WWII, counting civilians Ukrainian casualties are likely almost double russias – ukraine has lost less soldiers but many more civilians.
Biden intends to fight Russia right down to the very last ukraininan.
Turkey had apparently brokered a peace deal back in march, but Biden tanked it.
In addition to the direct causulaties of the war – this is making a weak global economy even worse.
Americans are fixated on the Bad Biden economy – but the EU is in worse shape, Inflation is higher growth is lower.
Globally though we have mitigated it a bit, food insecurity is the highest it has been in decades.
We are globally short food – because of the loss of food from the Ukrainian bread basket, because of rising fuel prices, because of inflation.
There is a strong possibility that the Ukraine war is just the beginning. The last time we had food problems like this – the entire mideast went up in flames under Obama.
Food insecurity ALWAYS results in bloody conflicts.
“Thomas is using her position as wife of Clarence Thomas to lend credence to a lie that continues to divide America–and what for?”
False and irrelevant. You keep trying to make crimes out of political differences.
Absolutly Ginny Thomas does not share your political views. She is certainly wrong about some things – though not half so wrong as you.
Regardless she is entitled to be wrong.
“And, does anyone really believe that Clarence Thomas didn’t know his wife went to the insurrection,”
There was no insurection.
“that she, too, refuses to accept the recounts and lack of evidence of Trump’s loss and continues to push a falsehood?”
Are you prepared to allow a REAL investigation into election fraud ?
Raffensberger under great pressure agreed to a signature audit of mailin ballots in GA.
That was supposed to be a full signature audit of ballots in Fulton county.
It turned into a random audit of much more afluent cobb county were there likely was little fraud.
5000 Ballots were pulled at random. 300(6%) were found to not meet the week GA standards for 2020, 30(0.6%) were found to be fraudulent.
Trump lost GA by 0.25% – that is less than half the fraud rate found in Cobb County.
It is possible that the signature audit in Cobb county was a fluke. It is highly unlikely.
What is actually likely is that Cobb country has the least error and least fraud of any democratic county in GA.
And that Fulton county’s problems are 3-10 times larger.
But no one did a full signature audit anywhere.
The private audit of the GA election found hundreds of duplicate ballot scans in Fulton county – you know the place that democrats tell us ballots were NOT scanned over and over. But when it was clear that what was being found was damming – democrats moved in and forced the judge to shut it down.
“She’s either a pathological liar like Trump, or she’s a cynic who enagles the Big Lie just to keep the gullible disciples believing.”
The Big Lie is that Trump colluded with Russia.
The Big Lie is that corruption allegations against Hunter and Joe Biden in Ukraine are Debunked republican conspiracy theories.
The Big Lie is that the Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation.
The Big Lie is that the Joe Biden was not involved in Hunter’s businesses.
The Big Lie is that the 2020 election was lawfully conducted.
The Big Lie is that the 202 election was free and fair
The Big Lie is that the 2020 election was secure.
The Big Lie is that the the J6 protests were an insurrection
The Big Lie is that the Joe Biden is competent
The Big Lie is that the Joe Biden is president.
The Big Lie is that we are not in a recession that is going to get worse.
……
“Either way, she deserves scorn and condemnation.”
Condem and scorn whoever you wish – that does not make them criminals.
Nor does it make their lives your business.
dimlibs just can’t resist #INFRINGING on our constitutional rights. I was surprised to read that @jerrynadler had informed @nancypelosi and @adamschiff that their impeachment of President Trump was unconstitutional, because they did not allow due process. They didn’t care.
I find JT’s broad assertion that citizens have a right to believe what they want to believe specious. It paves the way for deceitful infowarfare to take over and destroy our way of life. Whether a complex hi-tech society, or a tribal enclave 200,000 years ago, survival hangs upon truth-discovery and maintaining trust via honesty.
Certain facts are much less open to denial than others. One JT is surrounded by are court verdicts and decisions. A defendant who has been convicted can still believe he is innocent, but can he believe that the court rendered a verdict of not guilty? That is going too far.
The same applies to election results. They are verdicts officially rendered. If a citizen is free to mount an infowarfare counter-offensive to such weighty public decisions, the entire nature of a free, self-governing society is torn to pieces.
There are citizen responsibilities crucial to survival that bear upon allegiance to truth and its upkeep.
I doubt JT would defend the types of verdict-denying misinformation campaigns were they applied to a case he fought and won in court with facts and the law. We are setting the table for civil war and total wreckage by allowing wide berth to deceitful infowarriors.
Your argument is wrong in so many ways.
Your claim that we reach the truth and that is where it ends is nonsense.
Innocent people are convicted – and later proven innocent.
When that occurs the prior trial is essentially voided.
Finding the truth is a continuous never ending discovery process
it is a journey not a destination.
Innumerable times we reach what we are certain is the truth only to days, years centuries later discover we were wrong.
What you call “infowarfare” is a manditory part of the continuous process of discovering truth.
Your whole concept of “infowarfare” rests on the presumption that the majority of people do not have the ability to tell the truth from lies.
If you are correct – self government is not possible, democracy is not possible.
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind”
John Stuart Mill
Burn her. She’s a witch. And her husband is an apostate.
Progressive mob justice, Monty Python style. This used to be funny because it was manifestly ludicrous. Today, not so much:
“That’s just wild”–yes, it is newsworthy and pretty crazy that one of the SCOTUS spouse’s is so brainwashed that he/she cannot see the light at the end of the election-was-stolen-lie tunnel. I think it would equally newsworthy and surprising if a SCOTUS spouse would believe the Holocaust was hoax, or the moon landing a hoax, or [fill in any crazy conspiracy theory with no concrete evidence here].
They were both hoaxes.
Why is it more nerwsworthy than Adam Schiff promoting the “Trump colluded with Russia®™ to Steal the 2016 Election” conspiracy theory?
You do not understand. There are no left wing conspiracy theories. In the even the left makes something stupid up and large numbers beleive it – that is OK it is not a conspiracy theory. If something is not actually true, then it could have been true. If it really could not have been true – that is just your opinion.
There is no degree of stupidity in the claims of the left that can not be ignored away.
Those on the left hold the unique ability to hold several views that contradict each other and reality in their mind concurrently while not experiencing the slightest cognitive dissonance.
This is an incredibly important skill, it means that they never ever have to confront the fact that they have been wrong about almost everything.
Haven’t stopped by this blog in a while. What was once a diverse virtual marketplace of ideas has turned into an echo chamber of far right lunatics with no room for critical free thinking. Sad.
Critical Free Thinking
By “far right lunatics,” the author means George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin, John Adams, John Jay et al., the American Founders, the Framers, State vote criteria, the Naturalization Act of 1790, and the veritable Constitution and Bill of Rights – everything American and the “fundamentally formed” United States of America.
My dead parents and in-laws never voted dimocRAT until 2020, almost 20 years after they died.
I am dismayed, apart from the fact he is wrong, that Jonathan Turley, gratuitously, informed his readers he was not among those who believe the 2020 election was stolen.
Yes. Pretty pitiful. He’s signaling he’s part of the old guard. Bye bye JT
Many actual liberals are slowly being red pilled by the left.
Give him time.
I think it’s called ‘playing it safe.’ Jonathan should know, however, that he risks losing more credibility than he gains in so doing.
I am not speaking Just about Turley.
There are many many REAL liberals who even if they fall short of grasping reality, still have had glimpses and are headed in the right direction.
I do not want to do as the woke left does and excoriate them because they are wrong about some things.
Frankly I could live with the woke left – If they engaged in debate and did not use force until they had the actual consent of the majority – even though that is not sufficient. But they do not debate. They game the system to gain power, and they excercise power purely to please an out of touch minority, and they do not have the decency not to double down on failure.
I have no problem with anyone reaching their own conclusions regarding the 2020 election.
The big problem is that an issue that is so controversial, and that about 50% of the american people think is true, has been deliberately memory holed and suppressed from the very start.
We may each beleive what we want.
We are entitled to demand real inquiry – actual sunlight to see if we can find the truth.
We did not get that.
Turley shortly after the election encouraged Biden to agree to broad inquiry – that was quite good advice.
It is likely that AT THAT TIME, inquiry would have raised questions, but not answered them, and in the end most of us would have gone home accepting the final results.
But the stalling. the fighting tooth and nail, has provided time for lines of inquiry that were not possible in 2020.
You can decide that the TTV evidence does not prove that Trump won – if you wish.
But it is near impossible to deny an incredibly large scale ballot harvesting operation.
In 2018 North Carolina threw out the results of a federal election – because of credible allegations of ballot harvesting that were miniscule in comparison.
Right now Germany is throwing out election results because some of the polls stayed open too long.
If you want people to trust elections – you must conduct elections people can trust.
You can not hide problems. And when you find problems, there must be consequences, you must fix them, and you must do it over.
That is how you establish trust.
Even just the Zuckerbucks issue – which is completely in the open. The Zuckerbergs contributed 400M to the 2020 election.
That money was targeted something like 99% at majority democrat districts, Accepting the money required local election officials ceding control to people from Zuckerbergs “charity” – entirely democratic political operatives. These implimented a real time GOTV program – except that program had government working with a single political party to get out democratic voters. BTW Biden is engaged in something similar using Presidential power right now.
There is absolutely nothing improper about a political party running a GOTV program. But those in government – and their agents are NOT allowed to participate.
This is tax evasion – The Zuckerbergs contibuted the money to a 501C3 taking a tax writeoff.
501C3’s can not engage in politics. There are two huge low hanging fruit issues.
Zuckerbergs donations are political not charity and therefore tax fraud.
The assistance that his 501C3 provided was targeted at GOTV – therefore it was a political contribution in kind and violates federal election law.
This is no different from Putin stuffing ballot boxes.
JT and others don’t think all that stuff matters. It was legit they say. Ha! That alone kills any trust or credibility they thought they have built up. Poof gone! Colors!
Those of us not on the wacko left need to be tolerant of liberals and the center left as they slowly come to realize the bat$hit craziness of the left.
I do not have an axe to grind with Turley. He misses alot of the vile things the left is up to. But give him time he will come arround.
Those of us who are standing up to the left face two problems gaining overwhelming popular support.
Institutions that are owned and corrupted by the left. That is a huge problem and especially in education will cause irrepairable harm.
But in the end – and we are already seeing this the institutions that are responsible for providing our needs will ultimately not tolerate woke nonsense – because it does not work. They do not give a schiff about ideology. but if they do not produce, they do not profit and we do not thrive.
We are seeing across the globe shifts away from green energy right now – because of the Russia Ukraine war. Those might be somewhat temporary, or not. Regardless. Europe is not going to freeze to death this winter to pressure their green purity.
Ultimately the left fails because it does not work.
The next problem is that the left has somewhat successfully demonized anyone who disagrees with them.
Many of us have some issues with Trump’s style. But in terms of policies he is actually fairly middle of the road. He is not even close to extreme right. The left takes ANYONE who opposes them – where it is real nazi’s, centrists, or even members of the far left who are on the wrong side of current dogma and it demonizes them.
I beleive there is an aphorism – the right argues that the left is wrong. the left argues that the right is evil.
Regardless, this is true. This is also why left wing nut censorship is so incredibly dangerous. The left does not argue – they can not.
Their ideology has never worked anywhere at all. They demonize.
As they control most of the institutions today, that results in polarization. So long as we can preserve sufficient freedom, the left will inevitably fail – and all that is necescary to bring that about is precluding them from succeeding at totalitarian control – and even that only delays the inevitable.
The left must fail – because their ideology requires incredibly amounts of force to preserve. Censorship is expensive. Enforcement of wokeism is expensive. It not merely requires armies of woke gatekeepers, But armies of enforcers. There is a fight over the FBI whistle blowers right now.
Forget good and evil. The FACT is there are not enough FBI agents to go after political enemies – that either means massive expansion of the FBI or it means the FBI ignoring bank roberies, rapes, spies, and all the other tasks that are their job to go after political criminals.
The purpose of the expansion of the IRS is exactly the same – it is to weaponize them to target political enemies.
Completely ignoring the immoral nature of this – it is inefficient. Those 87,000 IRS agents are expensive, and they are ultimately destructive.
Maybe they will bring a piddling amount of additional revenue in, but they will be economically destructive. Many right and left do not understand – but especially those on the left, that Government is a MAJOR cost. Not just in what we must pay – but in what is not created as we endeavor to comply with government. The more effort we spend on taxes, the less we spend on producing value, the poorer we are.
All forms of big government are inherently inefficient, and inefficient means we are all poorer.
Further modern growth is so low that the small changes caused be government can easly drive us to negative growth.
No form of statism works.
That is the good news, the bad news is that we may have to experience more failure before enough people grow tired of all this.
I was only questioning Jonathan’s need to inject his opinion, which was immaterial to the article.
Perhaps the professor’s injection of opinion was to prevent others from mistaking what his position is. It is a type of disclosure.
“We may each beleive what we want.
We are entitled to demand real inquiry – actual sunlight to see if we can find the truth.
We did not get that.”
Nailed it.
And you commented it’s been “memory holed” – part of it has, the REST has been termed and treated “insurrection”.
The J6 UNARMED and NON-VIOLENT protestors who did not enter the capitol are not guilty of anything as the Constitution guarantees our right to seek redress from the government.
The J6 UNARMED and NON-VIOLENT protestors who entered the capitol whether by walking through doors held open by capitol police, or as part of a crowd pushing through those doors (like is done at concerts and black Friday sales) even including those who took objects as “souvenirs” are guilty of nothing but misdemeanor trespass and misdemeanor petty theft.
Instead they’re being called armed (they weren’t), violent (they weren’t), murderous (they weren’t) and their acts called a “violent overthrow” (it wasn’t).
Now if you want to see armed, violent, murderous, destructive, and something that lasted WEEKS in the Capitol just look at the MONTH LONG (May 29th thru June 23rd 2020) riots, protests, violence, vandalism following the suicide by drug overdose while in police restraint of George Floyd.
Interestingly enough THAT month of violence HAS been memory holed.
The Wikipedia page for “Timeline of Violent Incidents and the United States Capitol CONVENIENTLY leaves out that sequence of events. That’s right, 2020 is completely missing from their list.
Hmmmm.
People do not fully grasp the all of this. The censorship of the left and control of institutions is fairly effective.
But it is not completely effective. People are not ignorant.
As lincoln said.
You can fool all the people some of the time,
some of the people all of the time.
But you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
It takes the people way to long to grasp the real difference between the right and left in the face of the onslaught of lies by the left.
The world is not perfect and there will always be counter examples, or things that can be reframed as counter examples.
But people are not stupid,
and you can not fool all the people all the time.
Every “success” of the left creates more enemies, it creates more failure, it reduces trust.
All forms of statism – and leftism is always a form of statism must fail under the burden of their own weight.
I personally find it surprising that the current political environment is not R+20.
The Biden administration has turned gold into dross. It has the reverse midas touch.
There is nothing this administration has done that is successful.
Everything they do makes things worse.
This is not my viewpoint – this is objective measures of current circumstances.
And it is all just getting worse.
People are very SLOW to figure out which arguments are right and which are wrong.
But they are not blind, and they do get there eventually.
Very well written, John. It would be productive if everyone stopped attacking each other and debated the issue. Many comments from the left state that JT is a jerk but offer no input on what is false about his writing.
There is only one answer to the problems plaguing humanity and our country. It is not a “Christian” nation.
It is, however, an acceptance of and accountability to a Supreme Being, which I call God, and they had noted as our Creator.
Any effort to fix an imperfect but admirable institution is fruitless without this critical component. For a nation of laws to work, we cannot have millions of gods determining their application of the law.
Did you ever consider that there is not “one answer” to the innumerable problems of humanity and our country? The major problems are very complex (e.g., healthcare, hunger, poor, international affairs, global warming). How does an acceptance of the concept of a Supreme Being help solve any of these or other problems?
Hi Juris,
Yes, I have considered it and understand your comment. I agree that the problems facing this country are complex and each will require its own solution. However, my point is that our Creator has set for society values of morality, sacrifice, and love that when applied by the governed, allow us to overcome our natural inclination to be arrogant, deceitful, and hateful.
I could share quotes from the founding fathers, but instead I will offer a 2010 secular article from US News.
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2010/12/30/the-founding-fathers-religion-and-god
The argument you are making is precisely why problems can not be solved by government.
When we attempt to make things better we nearly always FAIL.
Failure in government is nearly impossible to correct.
Failure outside of government self corrects.
Free markets inextricably move towards a better world.
They inextricably move towards OUR values – whatever they are.
Government moves towards the values of those with power.
Further no matter how government changes work – and nearly all change makes things worse – no matter what we expect.
Governmentn changes are nearly irreversable.
Just as change in free markets always moves towards the good,
Government nearly always move towards greater failure.
Excellent. Almost all can be thought of as axioms.
“Failure in government is nearly impossible to correct.
Failure outside of government self corrects.”
“Failure in government” is the unknown discussed by Bastiat. Juris is only looking at the known half.
Failure in government is not an unknown – it is a near certainty.
I would suggest looking into public choice theory if you have not already.
That is nobel winning economist James Buchanan’s application of the principles of economics and free markets to government.
It is not a theory of how government should operate, but taking the way we KNOW people work in the free market and assuming they work much the same in government. The result is that because government is structurally different – because it is not a free market and there is no competion – the same incentives in human behavior predict usually the exact opposite results.
If you go to a customer facing business – parking is optimized for customers. If you go to the DMV it is optimized for government employees.
Mostly the same forces are at play, but different incentives produce radically different results.
We get alot of “Trump is a crook, he went bankrupt, ….” nonsense from the left.
Free markets fail ALOT, far far more often than they succeed.
Even when an idea is good – it often needs to be near perfect to succeed.
There is an aphorism – build a better moustrap and the world will line up at your door. That is complete BS.
You need the better mousetrap, and you need to build distribution, and marketing and manufacture, and business management
and if you have all that and succeed, then you need to be able to scale rapidly and not just your idea – but everything above has to scale with it.
And if you do not get all that right, your own success will rapidly turn to failure.
Charles Ponzi gave his name forever to pyramid schemes.
What is interesting is that Ponzi was not running a pyramid scheme.
He found a pricing error between italian postage stamps bought in italy and those in the US.
That essentially gave him a license to print money. He could buy stamps in italy, sell then in the US for more than he bought them for and he could make as much money as he wanted.
The problem is given the infrastructure of the time his model did not scale well. Stamps had to be bought in italy and moved by ship to the US and then sold. He accepted more investors than he could handle, guaranteed profits – which with quicker turn he could have delivered,
and paid investors cashing out from monies from new investors – certain that future profits would resolve the issue.
Fundimentally all he had was a cashflow problem caused by the fact that his scheme did not scale well because it takes time to move stamps by ship.
The point is that you can have a great idea – and still fail.
Failure is the norm in free markets not the exception.
“Failure in government is not an unknown – it is a near certainty.”
I agree, but it is an unknown for many and its path is not known to anyone. One can only guess.
Agreed, those of us who can SOMETIMES accurately grasp the specific way something will fail are a rare breed.
despite this almost everyone understands easily why something failed AFTER it failed.
This is not specific to government.
The additional problem we have with government is recognizing that something has failed – no matter how poorly it is doing.
There is not a single problem that is too complex for the free market to solve on its own.
Free markets and unbelievably good with complexity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYO3tOqDISE
Government is unbelievably bad.
This is intrinsic in the nature of government, and free markets.
It is not some supreme being that is the core to the betterment of society. It is the concept of free will and the entire system of morality that has slowly evolved as a result that is critical.
Take every single thing that those on the left beleive.
Why are those beliefs good (or evil) ?
Why is racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, …. bad ?
If you can not answer that – if you can not provide a few core principles that are near universally accepted then you are morally unmoored and incapable of making moral choices.
It is better to have the morality of most religions that may have some flaws, than no fundamental moral principles at all.
I am not so sure I share your position.
But that does not matter. The people I disagree with most strongly on the right are LESS dangerous in power than most anyone on the left.
I would agree with you that real core moral foundations are a requirement to government people.
The rule of law can not exist in a world where enough people beleive the ends justifies the means.
It can not exist were people judge themselves as good or evil based on their poorly considered thoughts on the issue of the moment, rather than on moral principles.
The fundamentals of principled morality can be determined logically and/or by practical experience – without reference to god.
But few people do the work for that and most of us at best learn SOME of that.
Practical experience is by far the most costly means of learning anything. and unfortunately the lessons tend to be forgotten over time.
Regardless, the most damning problem the left faces is that statism DOES NOT WORK – it CAN NOT WORK.
Economists fixate on efficiency. If two economists debate two ideas and one is established as more efficient as the other – then that idea is the correct one. To most of us that sounds crass. We like to think that some value other than efficiency is critically important.
What we fail to grasp is that inefficiency inherently means less of whatever it is we think is more important.
Inefficiency means more poverty. It means less leasure. It means less arts. It means less pleassure, it means more work, and particularly more drudge work. And all forms of statism are more inefficient just by inspection. Bigger government means fewer people engaged in productive efforts. There is with certainty some point at which less government actually results in less efficiency. But that inflection point is far less government than any developed country today.
More core point is that from where we are – all moves to more government make us poorer and worse off.
That is not an argument it is a fact.
It is not moral to force poverty on people. It is not moral to deprive them of a better world.
And that is what statism does. and that is the religion of the left.
It is guaranteed to fail. The only question is how much suffering we must endure first.
Conversely – the right of this country – whether I agree with them or not, are inherently far less dangerous – even when they are wrong.
At the very worst they will return us to a time which for all its myriads of problems that the left SOMETIMES accurately paints – still had all of us ending up better off year after year than we do now.
“Economists fixate on efficiency.”
Ye gods: an efficient orchestra!
… submit recommendations as to how its efficiency could be increased. He selected as his target a symphony orchestra.
—
I think you and others know where this is going. If you don’t:
https://mintzberg.org/blog/ye-gods-efficient-orchestra
We do not always mean the same thing by efficiency.
Free markets transform resources into whatever it is that we need and want.
The less efficient that process is the less of what we need and want we get.
The more efficiently we do so, the more of what we want and need we get.
This is especially important to what we WANT.
I have used the example of the breakfast aisle in the grocery store before.
Check any grocery store – there are bazillions of choices of breakfast cereal.
Left wing nuts like Sanders who fixate only on mass production – think we should only have cornflakes,
and only three large producers and this should meet everyones needs and produce the best possible price.
The problem is that people are NOT the same – they are not equal they do not have the same needs or wants.
Market efficiency NEVER means optimally producing what ONE person wants.
It means optimaly meeting the individual wants and needs of each member of the market.
Your orchestra example is a perfect reflection of that misunderstanding.
Orchestra’s are a luxury good. Efficiently producing what we want is NOT the same as efficiently producing something that is not what we want.
An efficient free market – produces a breakfast aisle with myriads of choices matched to the afluence of our society and our wants and needs.
If we were much poorer – we would have only corn flakes and they would cost more.
Markets highly efficiently deliver what we want and need constrained by what we can afford.
But the goal is not efficiency for efficiences sake.
It is efficiently meeting our wants and needs.
The efficiency is how we get to the affluence that allows us to meet even more of our WANTS
One of the problems we have with the left today is that the successes of each prior generation, allows the next to have more of its wants.
And that next generation confuses wants with needs.
Younger people today see healthcare as a right. Ignoring the fact that it is only because we are an incredibly wealthy nation that we can even pretend that healthcare could be a right.
“Your orchestra example is a perfect reflection of that misunderstanding.”
It means that one has to be careful of overgeneralization.
Nope. Your orchestra example shows YOU misunderstanding what economic efficiency means.
It means providing what people want and need with the least human resources.
It does NOT mean providing something they do not want.
The story is funny, but it is not applicable.
Efficiency does not mean doing something we do not want with the least possible resources.
The story is very applicable, but the argument you are raising lacks legs. Overgeneralization can kill good arguments.
Still hung up on overgeneralization.
Regardless, this is not an instance of overgeneralization.
You are misdefining economic efficiency.
You are making the same error that resulted in our stupid antitrust laws.
You are presuming that the most efficient orchestra is the one using the least resources.
Not the best meeting out wants for music – with the least resources.
Though atleast one part is sort of right. The most important resource in economic efficiency is the human being.
I would highly recomend this.
http://www.juliansimon.org/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
The ultimate resource is … the human mind. It is the only limited resource.
There is nothing else that we can not reduce the scarcity of or substitute.
In your orchestra example – if we could teach computers to play with whatever it is that makes Yo Yo MA, Yo Yo Ma,
we could have orchestra’s with zero people playing incredible music. It might take millions of dollars of computers – today,
but given that the humans from the orchestra could be redeployed more productively elsewhere the result would be a net rise in standard of living.
The goal of economic efficiency is a rise in standard of living.
NOT more widgets at lower cost.
You are assuming Pareto’s efficiency is the end product while thinking you can recognize it.
I am not making any of the assumptions you think I am.
Lets us assume for the moment that the left is right that our institutions are systemically racist. That the police are systemically racist.
It is still true that minorities in this country were better off BEFORE the Floyd riots than they are after.
That however the system worked in 2019 that fewer minorities were being murdered, robbed, …
The world was not perfect, but with respect to the impact of crime on minority communities it was inarguably better.
I agree with those on the left about SOME issues regarding law enforcement. There are lots of things that we should enquire into and fix.
I do not personally beleive the police are systemically racist. But I do beleive there are many systemic problems in government and law enforcement.
I can want to change those. It can even be clear that what exists is wrong. But all change is not good – infact most change is bad.
Our world works and improves with constant change – benefiting from that change, because of free markets, Because bad ideas fail, imperfect ideas are replaced by better ideas. Even if only one in ten ideas in the free market prove real improvements, the poorer changes will fall to the better ones. That is NOT true within government. Most change is BAD. Bad change fails, outside of government bad change is replaced by better. Inside of govenrment bad change stays with us.
It is inarguable that whatever good may have come from the left regarding policing law enforcement, courts, racism, that the net impact has been NEGATIVE.
It is very hard for those on the left to grasp that even if past policing was systemically racist (it was not) even if it had numerous flaws (it did).
That it is still superior than the changed version we have now.
In attempting to do good, and even possibly succeeding at doing some very specific good. The net result was still net BAD.
And this is why the right is always less dangerous than the left. Change within markets ultimately always moves towards good.
Change in government almost always makes things worse. Going back to the “bad old days” is often an improvement in government.
Changes in society must ALWAYS take place in the private domain. That is the only place where doing good always ultimately leads to actual good.
My problem was that Jonathan felt the need to express his opinion in an article in which his opinion was irrelevant and gratuitous.
So address the opinion, make your argument with facts.
I do not care much here about schiffing all over left wing nuts – atleast so long as I do not undermine my own credibility.
I am not going to reach them ever, and though they are who I reply to, they are not who I am writing for.
But there are people – like JT who are reachable. Who will listen to good arguments, who will be moved by the facts.
This country is shifting away from the woke, from the postmodernists, from the nihilists, from the left.
I am not responsible for that. Trump is not responsible for that. The left is responsible for that. They are their own worst enemy.
JT and the myriads like him are actually responsible for that shift.
I will argue with him, but I am not going to schiff on him.
He is headed in the right direction albeit slowly.
The leading lights of the left are all slowly doing one of two things:
going bat$hit crazy or getting red pilled.
Turley is slowly moving away from the idiocy. I am not pissing on him because he is moving slow.
Some of us interpret “1 person 1 vote” and “the secret ballot” to make GOTV a serious violation at a systematic level.
Yes, published campaign messaging and opinion sharing are legitimate.
But once it enters into personalized 1:1 pressure to vote, or to vote a certain way, it’s going over the line.
Not everyone cares about civics and govt. issues. They are to be left to their indifference. When they become targets of personalized persuasion, the activist persuader is hoping to amplify his/her impact on the vote outcome beyond the allotted 1 vote. We need strict campaign law to assure persuasion is indirect and only via published media.
So long as you have actual secret balloting – there is no problems with PRIVATE GOTV efforts.
But the moment you do not have Secret Balloting – as with mailin voting – GOTV encourages election fraud.
Secret balloting REQUIRES that the voter cast their ballot in a place where election officials protect them from both intimidation from others,
and prevent anyone from knowing how they voted – even if they WANT to share it.
When you allow people to vote from their couch – you can not protect them from intimidation – not from spouses, not from family members, neighbors, employers, or party activists going door to door.
If you do not think that occured large scale in many places you are naive.
It is his opinion. I fully support the expression of his opinion, even though I don’t agree with it. The statistics with regards to the vote count split in the waning hours is all the proof I ever needed: there is no question that 10’s of thousands of votes for Biden appeared virtually out of nowhere in certain states. The sequestration of vote counting machines, and thereby making it impossible to inspect them right away was another solid proof there was something to hide. The fact that one liberal court after another would not even hear any evidence in challenging to voting count or other irregularities was the final straw for me.
I must emphasize, I was not critical of Jonathan expressing his opinion. I simply questioned his need to gratuitously offer it as it was not material to the article he had written.
Agreed. No evidence? I think we watched evidence play out on election nite with still unexplained machine glitches. Later, video evidence of ballot manipulation of all sorts and an unprecedented number of ineligible voters, including the dead.
For your sake, I hope one day you will take the blinders off and be dismayed that you fell into a conspiracy hole that has no factual support whatsoever.
You seem like a pretty self-satisfied person. Perhaps even a know-it-all. What don’t we just wait and see.
He believes the “Trump helped the Russians®™ Srteal the 2016 Election” hoax?