Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Hillary and Trump share an address in Delaware...along with 285,000 companies

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/25/delaware-tax-loophole-1209-north-orange-trump-clinton

[entropy]

Price of labor and land allowed Burj Khalifa to be built far, far, far cheaper than what it would've cost in NYC, Chicago or LA. Same holds true for building, upgrading a country's infrastructure.

is this even being debated? Technology plays a role, but I've been to Dubai and it's not like they are using people to lift steel beams 100 ft in the air.

[Wild Hoss]

is this even being debated? Technology plays a role, but I've been to Dubai and it's not like they are using people to lift steel beams 100 ft in the air.

That's Jim Harbaugh's sidejob.

[Dr. Strangelove]

A lot of the labor used in the Middle East, specifically Qatar for the World Cup, is pretty akin to slave labor.

I have no point. Just sayin

[hack]

Don't use the word slave. Talent gets upset.

[Ghengis Jon]

This is a pretty cool story and I just ordered my copy. As an unrepentant history geek, I have a special respect for ancient literature and documents. This is the story of a like minded fellow responsible for saving nearly 300,000 ancient works from Al-Qaeda when millitants overran Mali.

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/The-Bad-Ass-Librarians-Timbuktu-Manuscripts/dp/1476777403"]The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts: Joshua Hammer: 9781476777405: Amazon.com: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51O5XxPnRGL.@@AMEPARAM@@51O5XxPnRGL[/ame]

[hack]

Nice. I'd like to get to that too. I can't remember where, but I think the author wrote a feature on this in a mag a few years back.

[Da Geezer]

The statist/socialist/communist ideology depends on a populace that accepts limitations. That is why "limits on growth" is preached from the rooftops.

We are missing each other completely on this. Statists have the initial burden of convincing people that their situation is miserable, and that entails claims of scarcity, danger or unfairness. The socialists' recommendation is more government intervention in the economy.

It is the left that is part of the "zero growth movement" and that is not at all what I am talking about. That movement simply accepts the near impossibility of growth and recommends changing a person's wants, not his income. The statist just wants more government to seek a fairer or safer apportionment of existing production. When I say "limits on growth" I mean that as a predicate to socialist thought, there has to be an acceptance of scarcity. Otherwise, why put the statists in charge?

And I believe this is hogwash. China's emergence has been because they have reverted to a basically market economy in the last couple of decades. Socialism fails in large part because it warps the market signals that a relatively free market sends. Marxist thought always contains a pyramid-like income distribution, and it is the "1%" or the "Billionaire Class" that is causing the problems.

But the Marxist first has to get the populace to accept that there is a fixed pie. Then, the rest follows. I view the phrase "limits of growth" and "fixed pie" as the same thing.

[Hannibal]

The statist/socialist/communist ideology depends on a populace that accepts limitations. That is why "limits on growth" is preached from the rooftops.

We are missing each other completely on this. Statists have the initial burden of convincing people that their situation is miserable, and that entails claims of scarcity, danger or unfairness. The socialists' recommendation is more government intervention in the economy.

The Cloward-Piven strategy.

1. Impose unreasonable mandate on markets
2. Blame failure on capitalism.
3. Recommend another government fix.
4. Return to step 2.

The housing bubble is a perfect example of this. So are skyrocketing health care costs.

[iam416]

So true.

Geezer:

It's fine to accept the notion of a "fixed pie" in theory while correctly maintaining we are currently using but a percentage of that pie. I think you've been quite correct in arguing we're no where remotely close to the asymptote and have pointed out how demonstrably wrong scarcity arguments have been -- whether wrt to food (Ehrlich) or Peak Oil...lol.

Meanwhile, Trump should dominate tonight. I think 1237 is going to be really close. And, of course, The Bern is deader than dishwater but will push on to the convention trying to do as much as he can to covert the D Party his laughable socialist views.

[Hannibal]

I thought that he wasn't going to get to 1237 but Trump is (somewhat surprisingly to me) ahead in Indiana and he's miles ahead in California now. I wonder if there is a behind-the-scenes agreement between Kasich and Trump since Cruz's only chance to stop Trump at this point is to face him one-on-one. Kasich is doing Trump a huge favor by helping to split up the anti-Trump vote.

I don't know how exactly the math works, but Trump may walk away with 100% of the delegates tonight. He's at or over 50% in four states and he has about a 14 point lead in Maryland.

Unbelieveable that Republicans keep doubling down on "#NEVERTRUMP". Truly amazing to me.

[hack]

Geezer it looks to me like there's a lot of theory and terminology in that post, and my experience is that those two things are best used judiciously, because it's a messy world out there that doesn't willingly conform to the labels. In truth pretty much every system I see is a blend, and the theories behind their decisions are not typically the real explanations for their successes or failures. China is an example. It's said that economic strength has come by opening the economy, but the state remains the prime economic agent through the many state-owned corporations. In truth though Deng opened up a few years before free trade and the age of the true multinational, and China had the largest chunk of cheap labour available on the planet. The only policy that really and truly mattered was an openness to foreign investment in manufacturing.

In a different example, when Saudi Arabia took back its oil industry from the US IOCs it became, and still is, the prime mover in its economy. That had nothing to do with scarcity -- the Saudis knew they could run the show themselves and keep the profits, and, after all, it was their country. Perhaps that could have been staved off with a more generous approach to sharing, but decisions of decades past but the IOCs to keep information from the Saudis and by the US govt to control the price it paid for oil (statism) had set the tone.

State vs private-sector is currently a debate in Africa, and a very interesting one. Nigeria has been following the Washington consensus model of privatization, but hasn't been able to get things right, for a whole bunch of obvious reasons that involve government stupidity and corruption, but also garden-variety human behavior. It may be on the precipice of succeeding in spite of itself, thanks to a good-ol' rent seeker who has amassed so much capital and influence that he's about to make an investment that is about to create a whole bunch of genuine non-rentier opportunity for genuine entrepreneurs. In this case the two sides need each other. Then again Nigeria may also reverse course, because people are looking at Ethiopia. It is the most statist of African economies, and has grown at 10% of GDP for the past ten years. Clearly there are in that case opportunities created by government playing the role of rent seeker. Won't be the same in every case, but in some.

The Nordic model is not statist, but of course has plenty of elements labeled socialism in this country. Then again Statoil is a model of how to run an oil company these days and has provided a platonic ideal of wealth creation. It's a state-owned company.

So I think in truth what you see is a spectrum. I don't see the black-and-white distinctions you make, and I view the terms you are using as having different definitions. "The statist/socialist/communist ideology depends on a populace that accepts limitations" - statements like that just don't jive with what I see out there. I think that we have seen time and again that if you give the private sector enough freedom it will respond with a degree of greed that will naturally make people inclined to use government to strike a balance, and usually to overcorrect. The private sector can often preserve its golden geese by sharing more of the eggs, which, theories and values aside, is just good policy if you want to keep on generating value. Which brings us to pie. The private sector has consistently demonstrated an inability to extend the growth of the pie by dealing everyone in. The private sector typically chooses a greater share of a smaller pie, even though that always leads to mobs with pitchforks.

The reality as I see it is that no system is ideologically pure. Elements of various approaches creep in based on circumstance and leadership and reactions to events, and the blend shifts in this direction or that over time. I think it's useful and important to know the theory, but I think it is so often demonstrably very difficult to use theory to explain reality.

[Ghengis Jon]

"Unbelieveable that Republicans keep doubling down on "#NEVERTRUMP". Truly amazing to me."


This is political dumbfuckery entertainment in its highest art form. We will cherish these memories in the years to come. If it comes to a contested convention, the GOP will have evolved from a 17 member clown car to a full blown three ring circus. All that's missing is the squishy orange Circus Peanuts.

[Jeff Buchanan]

From the Vox article talent linked to up thread........

So long as liberals cannot find common cause with the larger section of the American working class, they will search for reasons to justify that failure. They will resent them. They will find, over and over, how easy it is to justify abandoning them further. They will choose the smug style.

I hope the principals in the excellent discussion here regarding the end result (production and sustainability) of free market, capitalist economies versus economies bounded by socialist or communist ideologies have read this article. It pertains to the important question, albeit tangential to the argument, of labor and how liberals have managed to disconnect themselves from this important political base.

I think it also suggests, if I get the Vox Asst. Editor's views, that American (economic) policy as it relates to sustainability and production of said economy is significantly endangered by the kind of thinking embodied in the brand of American Liberalism present today as opposed to, say, American Liberalism of the FDR, through the Regan era. Again, from the concluding paragraphs of the Vox article .......

In 2016, the smug style has found expression in media and in policy, in the attitudes of liberals both visible and private, providing a foundational set of assumptions above which a great number of liberals comport their understanding of the world.

It has led an American ideology hitherto responsible for a great share of the good accomplished over the past century of our political life to a posture of reaction and disrespect: a condescending, defensive sneer toward any person or movement outside of its consensus, dressed up as a monopoly on reason.

[iam416]

I thought that he wasn't going to get to 1237 but Trump is (somewhat surprisingly to me) ahead in Indiana and he's miles ahead in California now. I wonder if there is a behind-the-scenes agreement between Kasich and Trump since Cruz's only chance to stop Trump at this point is to face him one-on-one. Kasich is doing Trump a huge favor by helping to split up the anti-Trump vote.

Yeah, the real thing is California. Trump is going to win that in a walk. He's going to be over 1200. It's going to be really close.

Buchanan:

A relatively respectable liberal columnist offers a response to the "Smug Liberal" -- acknowledging the general truth while pressing some, IHO, important nuance: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...lism_smug.html

Anyway, the original article sort of rated as a "no fucking shit" thing for me. It's only significance is that Vox is a liberal/progressive website that I generally find fatuous, but I was stunned by the relatively serious introspection.

It should also go without saying that Rs have tons of self-examination to undertake, too