Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Ghengis Jon]

Its field hockey with too many players, an oversized goal and no sticks. Boring.

[hack]

Poorly run sport, and not just because of Sepp Blatter and all that. It values the wrong things. It values ``flow'', and even diehards admit that their eyes glaze over at times thanks to the monotony created. It needs to open up to substitution, and allow for some situational players to come in and out. Offer managers more strategic choices than keeping a man back to be defensive or sending one up to be offensive. You can sub like hockey on the fly, so they can keep their precious flow without suffering the downsides of it.

[Mike]

I refuse to accept that I'm supposed to like women's soccer. It's an already boring sport played at a slower speed. I'm sure the 15 million people who watched are counting the days until the next friendly with Nicaragua.

[entropy]

I enjoyed watching it because it was the world cup.. and the US was involved. I'm not sure I'd watch women's soccer otherwise.. I'm not going to watch Brazil vs Germany nor watch a match next year involving the US.

But I'd say the same about men's soccer. just not my sport..

[froot loops]

It was an enjoyable tournament, although some of the other games not involving the top teams didn't look that great, especially in Moncton.

[Da Geezer]

Hack:

I had just never heard of John McPhee, and I found the article terrific. You and Talent were talking about him like he was Robert Frost or something, and I've spent much of the day reading snippets of his material.

I have a presentation coming up on Monday at noon in front of some state legislators regarding the Dune Protection Act. I know you and I disagree on some things, but I think we do agree that it is simply arrogance for humans to think that by passing laws, or spending a lot of money that we are "Big" enough to make an appreciable difference in matters like the level of the Great Lakes, or the shaping or dunes.

EE Cummings called us "human merely beings" and a little humility regarding our ability to pass laws which have any impact on a planetary scale is warranted. I know we can nuke the place and there are other extreme things humans could do, but normal folks just don't, and can't have that much impact.

What I wrote last night included the "Julian Simon Bet". You can look it up, but basically it stands for the proposition that scarcity just doesn't happen in the real world, and the price of oil, or natural gas, 20 years from now will be cheaper than it is today (absent government intervention). The real resource is the human mind, and its ability to adapt. When whale oil gets expensive, Rockefeller makes kerosine. He throws out the gasoline, but Henry Ford knows where to use that by-product.

[iam416]

I would say McPhee is the best naturalist writer there is, but that short-changes him. He is brilliant regardless of category. He was the first author I found where I just read almost everything he did.

Human ingenuity can't be underestimated. Ehrlich famously did so in the Population Bomb. We now feed roughly 2B more people than he thought possible. The shit "we" come up with is stunning.

Incidentally, McPhee's collection of essays on geology entitled Annals of a Former World leaves the reader with that complete feeling of human insignificance you mentioned.

Seemingly two contradictory thoughts. But not really. What we do matters in "human time" but is of no fucking consequence in geologic time.

[Da Geezer]

Yes.

Never heard of him and I feel like I have a refund coming from Hope. But I'll fix that deficiency. I'll start with Annals of a Former World if that is one you recommend.

Last night, I wrote about the Population Bomb and Silent Spring being the beginning of the environmental movement. I have basically spent my life litigating regulatory takings, and more recently Section 1983 Civil Rights claims against regulators. I was the test case for a Dune Protection Act in MI in 1989. At the time, Lucas v. South Carolina was the lead case on the matter, and it held that you had to have a 100% taking for there to be a regulatory taking, a decision in which Souter abstained because there was no real controversy (proving blind squirrels can find acorns once and a while). Then I was involved with Palazolo v. RI in 2003, which finally recognized partial regulatory takings.

I was gratified by your view of entrepreneurship. There is a small book called The Entrepreneurial Vocation by Robert Sirico. He is a priest, but his analysis is similar to yours. He says, and I believe, that some people are born with a gift. It may be an idea, or a way of organizing known information in a new way, or just the drive to work 80 hours a week for themselves, but certain persons have it. Most don't.

Talent, I'd like to bury the hatchet. You have been attuned to my change in attitude toward you when I found out you were an AG in Ohio. My whole experience with AGs is that they are the muscle behind the bureaucrats who make my life miserable. I wish I could meet ONE who has the respect for entrepreneurs that you expressed. They are all about process and never about outcomes. And they do it under the belief that they are somehow impacting the global welfare of the human race in some way. We humans are just not that big a deal.

I just settled with the California Coastal Comm, on piece of land where I tore down a cottage on the Pacific. Now I have the most beautiful 300' parcel on the Ocean, west of Highway 1 north of San Fran. Sonoma Co. is the epicenter of a movement called "tiny homes" which are 220 sq ft or so homes on trailers. Now, my piece of land extends 140 feet maximum westward of Highway 1, but they are moving the Highway 1,500 feet east.
So, I brought up placing a tiny home on my sliver of land (that has 2 water hookups, each worth $ 10,000). Immediate reply was:
"you can't do that",
"why not",
"because there are no regulations that cover those homes, They are not trailers and they are not homes"
"That's why they were invented, to get around all the regulation."
"JUST DON'T DO IT!"

Talent, that is what I pictured you doing. These tiny homes are going like a house afire, because they are almost impossible to regulate. In the Scottsdale area, folks buy them and put them in Flagstaff on government land. They spend the summer there. If they get caught, they move them. E-cigarettes are another example. How can this not be better than real cigs. Tiny homes are available for rent through AIRB+B. Uber. These are not "big" ideas, but they do disrupt segments of the economy. And the response from their competitors is the same: regulate it. And you brought up the ultimate disruptive technology, cold fusion. Imagine what that would do to the world.

Nothing threatens the establishment as much as an entrepreneur.

[hack]

I think with most things the truth lies between the extremes. I believe in the need for regulation. Uber is a good example to talk about. There are some areas where regulation is prone to corruption, foolishness or a losing battle given the resources available to the private sector's accountants and lawyers or the complexity of the activity, but private transportation services are a pretty good fit and there's an easy case to be made. Public safety is at stake. Anyone want to fly an unlicensed commercial airliner? But as for Uber, I've gotten around in cities without regulated services, and taking a taxi in those places makes it instantly clear why some sort of oversight is necessary. ``Inefficient'' is a best-case scenario.

[hack]

http://whynationsfail.com/

Could be interesting, if you're not familiar. There's a blog and a book. The idea for these guys is that innovation happens when government succeeds at providing a level playing field. They're full of historical examples.

[Da Geezer]

Can we agree that regulation should not be used as a competitive tool by established businesses. I used to develop property on Lake Michigan. The saying was that before a person purchased their lot they were a developer, after they bought, they were an environmentalist.

In the US today, it makes more sense to hire a good firm to lobby for you than it does to actually compete. The CCC's stated purpose is to stop all building on the Pacific Coast. OK, then buy the land. Hack, when I did the tear down of the cottage, I had to have a representative of the local Indian Tribe and an Archeologist from Sonoma State on site in case I uncovered any bones that might be Kennewick Man.

[iam416]

I'm also an Environmental Science major, Geezer, so I'm quite familiar with Erhlich, Carson and Lucas. Heh. To OSU's credit, at the time it was far more a "conservation" approach to the environment as opposed to a "preservation." In any event, I never wanted to practice in that area -- just wanted to learn science stuff and get enough hours that I could eventually sit for the Patent Bar. I've grown to have zero trust in the environmental lobby because their MO is (and has to be) alarmist in nature. DDT was (and remains) tarred by Carson w/o much scientific support.

My role with the AG is unique. It's literally one of a kind as no other state has it. It's an odd case of political desires intersecting with good government. The AG, fully understanding that his office basically makes life a pain for businesses, wanted to do something purely to assist businesses. We'll see if his successor carries it on.

I'll take a look at the website, Hack. Entrepreneurship has certainly benefited from, say, government funding. As with everything there's a balance. Sensibly discussing the proper gray area point of balance is difficult in a world of black/white rhetoric. In the private/public continuum in this area, I definitely side much closer to private. At the same time, one of the big things these guys do is try to get funding from State and Federal agencies -- funding which can be crucial.

Bit of a ramble, but whatever.

[Da Geezer]

Hack:

Yes. I'm familiar with Why Nations Fail. I simply respond like Lord Acton "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely". The Big Idea here is the consensually strong state. Plato presented substantially the same argument in The Republic. Makes sense, but doesn't work in the real world. Can you name me a place where this has held for any length of time? Where or when has a strong state provided a level playing field?

Of course, all philosophy comes down to one basic question. Do you believe man is inherently good or inherently evil in the philosophical sense. What is the nature of man? Plato, Aristotle,Augustine, Marx and Lenin all believed in man's inherent goodness. Put the right man in place, and you will have heaven on earth. On the other side of the coin is Rousseau, Bastiat, Jesus, Adam Smith, Von Mises, Hayak and Friedman. They said that you should structure society so that power is atomized as much as possible.

Oh, and Christianity, alone among the major world religions, believes that man is evil (fallen). In every other religion, man's activities on earth affect his ability to reach paradise. The Christian can do nothing himself to reach paradise, because he is fallen, and is reliant on grace; on God reaching down into history.

And we have a multitude of examples where Christianity and/or free market capitalism, both based on the dissipation of power and the assumption that man is evil, result in raising more humans out of poverty and providing more liberty than any of the other systems.

Strongly recommend The Law, by F. Bastiat.

Hack, do you work for the government?

[Da Geezer]

Talent:

I wish Bill Schuette could hear you talk. He is looking for ways to ease the regulatory burden for business. One idea of mine he accepted is what we called "Truth in Litigation". Basically, it asks "what is the litigation of this matter going to cost both parties with the State's attorney being paid a normal rate (250-300 now)". If that total is more than the amount at issue, then the taxpayer is allowed binding arbitration.

But environmental litigation is the most frustrating. In both the Lucas and Palozolo cases that went all the way to SCOTUS costing millions, where the citizen prevailed, the states simply handed the citizen a permit to build (mitigating damages). Now if you can untie that knot, I'll root for the Buckeyes a few more times this year! There is absolutely no downside to environmental litigation from the states' point of view, because the government always has the option of granting a permit, and that is wrong.

[hack]

Can we agree that regulation should not be used as a competitive tool by established businesses.

Enthusiastically. IMO if most of your profits are generated by what your lobbyists do in Washington, I don't think you should be called an entrepreneur. But Washington is where most of the heavy lifting is done in far too many sectors of the economy. Banks and the endless bailout are a good example -- bankers don't take risks these days. They seek rents and pay lobbyists. Can't blame them -- they are responding intelligently to the structure. Blame the structure. Telecommunications is another where most of the work is done in Washington.


Can you name me a place where this has held for any length of time? Where or when has a strong state provided a level playing field?

Well, name a place where anything at all has held for any length of time, really. Things change. Systems are born elegant and effective and then loopholes emerge and soon enough you can't plug them fast enough and it's time for something new. It's a cycle.

I'm not in government. I'm a freelance journalist with an emerging markets political-risk consultancy I'm trying to develop. (In a sense I am an entrepreneur). I write about developing-country economics, formerly in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, but now mostly in Africa. I like it there because it's where where the most inspiring entrepreneurs are found, IMO. You know the phrase ``Necessity is the mother of invention'', I'm sure. That phrase comes alive in full color in poor places where people are out there scrapping to feed their families. Especially where the state is too weak to dominate the economy. In those conditions you see genuine economic creativity. To me that's entrepreneurial far more than your typical Harvard grad with easy access to capital fumbling around for something to disrupt or reimagine because that's the trendy path these days.

So to answer that question right now Germany is doing a good job -- one of the few western states with both a strong financial sector and an intact manufacturing sector. IMO that's no small trick. But in truth I think very few states are going to get it all right. I think they can get little bits of it right, however, and in the cases where there are natural economic strengths those little victories go a long way. Thailand is an example. Pretty much the one thing they got right was an incentive structure to lure foreign manufacturers, and Thailand has become a middle-income country on the back of Japanese investment, and now gets two things right because since the '97 Asian crisis the central bank has the banks on the shortest of leashes, so the financial system is very stable. I can also offer Ghana as an example. They've gotten everything horribly wrong save for being a rock-solid democracy in a region where that's uncommon. So they can go get an IMF bailout and raise a billion in bonds simultaneously from the private sector. In the west, Canada is an example. Another place where the banks are on a short leash and the economic climate is stifling, but they got manufacturing right in the Windsor-Toronto corridor servicing the US market.

You and I might share low expectations for government effectiveness, but where the difference may lie is that I am equally skeptical of the private sector. I think most companies do not want to compete in an open market and rely on their ability to offer a superior product. I think the natural instinct is to seek rents. They want to hamper legitimate competitors, often via Washington lobbying, and hire the best accountants to work the tax-havens/offshoring system to the best they can. That's what the structure incentivizes them to do. I don't have a solution to at least somewhat curtail and control all that save for regulation. Somebody or something is going to control it. Better to have bad regulation than a free-for-all.


"Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely"

100%. IMO power isn't just held in Washington. It goes to peoples' heads and creates sociopaths and dysfunction regardless of whether you're in government, commerce, aid, or whatever.