People are a factor of production

Julian Simon still winning 

Source: Global Financial Data

George Mason economist Don Boudreaux, writing today ("The Ultimate Scholar") in honor of resource economist Julian Simon, on the 10th anniversary of his death, revisits the famous bet in 1980 (it even has its own Wikipedia listing:
 "The Simon-Ehrlich Wager") between scientistPaul Ehrlich and economist Simon: Stanford University's Paul Ehrlich -- author of "The Population Bomb," foretelling disaster from population growth -- found economist Julian Simon's optimism about population growth to be so absurd that he famously accepted 
a bet from Simon in 1980. 

The essence of Simon's position in the bet was that, despite the population growth that was sure to occur during the 1980s, the effective supply of natural resources would increase during this decade because human beings would figure out how to find, extract and use such resources more efficiently.

And the surest measure of this increased supply would be lower inflation-adjusted prices of resources.

Convinced that higher population is a curse, Ehrlich accepted the $1,000 bet.
He chose (for Simon gave Ehrlich the choice of which resources to bet on) a bundle of copper, chromium, nickel, tin and tungsten and bet Simon that the real price of this bundle of resources would be higher in 1990 than in 1980.

In 1990 the prices in September of that year were compared to the prices of these resources in September 1980. Simon won convincingly. The real price 
of each of these five resources had fallen over the course of that decade, indicating that their supplies had grown even though human population 
had also grown by more than 800 million during that same time. 

Julian Simon wanted to enter into a second wager, based on either the same commodities, or a different group of commodities, but the terms of a proposed second wager were never agreed upon. Simon died in February 1998. 

What if the original bet had been extended for another ten-year period, from 1990-2000? Simon would have won again (see chart above), since all of the metals declined in real price except for tungsten, and the average price decline
of the 5-commodity group was -19%.

The fatal conceit

Why Socialism?

By Albert EinsteinFrom ''Monthly Review'', New York, May, 1949.

''A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?''

Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.

Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has -- as is well known -- been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.

But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called "the predatory phase" of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.

Second, socialism is directed toward a social-ethical end. Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and -- if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous -- are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half-unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.

Another Failed “Conservative Success Story”

by Paul Gottfried  

According to Joel Klein’s March 21 Newsweek column, “conservatives” went ballistic at their annual CPAC meeting in Washington because Obama had dared to question the holy doctrine of “American exceptionalism.” Supposedly Obama committed blasphemy when he observed that the British in the nineteenth century and the ancient Greeks thought of themselves as exceptional. We Americans are acting like other nations when we insist we’re unique. Obama’s crime was to have not noticed “our democratic institutions” and human-rights concepts, which have elevated us as moral giants above the rest of the human race.

This is a strange belief for people on the right to hold. For decades American conservatives were arguing that our society is decadent, much like the Roman Empire before it fell apart. Nor were these conservatives (speaking as a leading scholarly authority on this matter) pleased with “democratic” institutions, which they feared would lead to an uncontrollable central government that would confiscate our earnings in the name of equality. The religious right was complaining for decades that American morals were disintegrating and we were becoming the modern age’s Sodom and Gomorrah.

Obituary

Human capability peaked before 1975 and has since declined

I suspect that human capability reached its peak or plateau around 1965-75 – at the time of the Apollo moon landings – and has been declining ever since.


This may sound bizarre or just plain false, but the argument is simple. That landing of men on the moon and bringing them back alive was the supreme achievement of human capability, the most difficult problem ever solved by humans. 40 years ago we could do it – repeatedly – but since then we have *not* been to the moon, and I suggest the real reason we have not been to the moon since 1972 is that we cannot any longer do it. Humans have lost the capability.


Of course, the standard line is that humans stopped going to the moon only because we no longer *wanted* to go to the moon, or could not afford to, or something…– but I am suggesting that all this is BS, merely excuses for not doing something which we *cannot* do.


It is as if an eighty year old ex-professional-cyclist was to claim that the reason he had stopped competing in the Tour de France was that he had now had found better ways to spend his time and money. It may be true; but does not disguise the fact that an 80 year old could not compete in international cycling races even if he wanted to. 

They Wanted a New Order

by Anthony de Jasay*For ages before the panicky recession of 2008-2009, there has been a persistent anti-capitalist background noise all around us. It was loudest in France and Latin America, in the universities and the media all over the world. It was made up of the voices of socialists, professional politicians and union apparatchiks, cranks, "dealers in second-hand ideas" and resentful failures. Defence against them was not a very demanding task. While the dogs barked, the camels advanced. After all, in less than a century, the capitalist order made good the mad devastation of two world wars, beat and buried two mighty and nasty totalitarian systems, Nazism and Soviet socialism, and brought the standard of living of ordinary working people up to a level their grandparents have never even dreamed of.

Admittedly, while its competitive and meritocratic features broke down the privileges of birth, it did generate much inequality, too (though no one has managed to show why inequality was a wrong). It abused the environment (though it was a good deal easier to spare the earth when it was populated by one and a half billion people than now when it carries over six billion). Last but not least, it made it easy and tempting for people to enjoy the material good and forget the spiritual (though the choice was not imposed, but left to them to make). Above all, unlike any other system ever tried, capitalism worked.

End Game ...

Timothy Geithner says borrowing more from China to finance tax cuts for the most affluent Americans would be irresponsible.

The Treasury secretary has it backward. The real question is whether Beijing is willing to double down on a nation whose balance sheet makesItaly look good. Holding $1.2 trillion of U.S. debt is a fast-growing risk to China.

Traders have a theory about why the euro is reasonably stable amid a broadening debt crisis: Asian central banks are converting proceeds from recent intervention moves into other currencies. “Asian central banks” has become a euphemism for China, whose reserves now exceed $3 trillion.

China is making deals with nations such as Brazil to conduct trade in yuan. It’s also making noises about the Federal Reserve’s zero interest-rate policies and Congress playing games with the debt limit. If you were managing China’s reserves, how many more dollars would you really want in this environment?

Heck, China is even loading up on Spanish debt these days. “China’s open admission of continual purchases of European debt shows it doesn’t consider the U.S. any safer,” says Simon Grose-Hodge, head of investment strategy for South Asia at LGT Group in Singapore.

America’s Sugar Daddy

The risk that America’s sugar daddy is getting fed up hasn’t escaped U.S. officials. It’s probably no coincidence that Fed officials are talking about dismantling their quantitative- easing program, while Washington is homing in on the deficit.

This enough-is-enough dynamic was on display last week as the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the BRICS economies, met in the Chinese resort city of Sanya. Chinese President Hu Jintao called for reform of our international monetary and financial systems. A commentary by Zheng Xinli may offer a clearer view of what Hu meant.

Zheng, an executive vice president of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, wrote in China Daily that the “root cause” of the financial crisis was U.S. “long-term abuse” of sovereign credit. He called for the Group of 20 Nations to devise a multicurrency system.

The U.S. takes its AAA credit for granted, knowing that neither Moody’s Investors Service nor Standard & Poor’s has the bravado to downgrade it. Yet we may now be observing the flipside of the 1971 musing by Nixon-era Treasury Secretary John Connally that the dollar is our currency, but your problem. The dollar may soon be Washington’s problem.

Government Motors

By MARK MODICA

Fans of the federal govern ment's auto bailout will push the "GM comeback" story at this week's New York International Auto Show. Good luck with that one.

Taxpayers still own about 26 percent of GM, and it looks increasingly unlikely that they'll ever get their money back: The share price would have to rise to more than $54, and it's stuck in the low thirties. Here's why:

GM's management team lacks stability, with Dan Akerson being the fourth chief executive in less than two years (oh, and CFO Chris Liddell recently resigned).

One of Akerson's main focuses has been to ballyhoo the Chevy Volt, but Consumer Reports says GM's hybrid "just doesn't make a lot of sense." More important, it isn't selling -- only 1,210 Volts have sold this year through the end of March.

Akerson also likes to talk about China as GM's "crown jewel." Huh? The Chinese market is far less profitable than North America. Anyway, GM lost ground on both market share and profitability in China in the fourth quarter. (China first-quarter sales figures will be issued when GM reports earnings next month.)

GM's European division, Opel, continues to struggle. It's not clear when, if at all, Opel will get out of the red.

Adding insult to injury, Ford -- which avoided a federal bailout -- sold more vehicles than GM in March, for only the second time in the last 13 years. GM sales growth the month before was driven by incentives that were about $1,000 higher per vehicle than Ford and the industry average. This is an indication that Ford benefits from a stronger product lineup than GM.

'Consensus'

Josef Mengele would be delighted.

Children Given Drugs to Suspend Puberty to Facilitate Sex Change Operations

When you combine liberal social engineering with science, the result is horror. From Britain:

Children as young as 12 are to be allowed drugs to block puberty while they decide whether to have a sex change, it has been revealed.

The monthly injection suspends the onset of adulthood so that young people confused about their gender can be sure of any decision before they take on too many masculine or feminine features.

How do children become confused about their gender? Probably by attending moonbat-controlled schools, which the liberal ruling class has been using with alarming aggressiveness to brainwash impressionable kids into becoming perverts and freaks (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, etc.).

One of the main effects of the drugs is to stunt the development of sexual organs so less surgery will be required if someone chooses to permanently change their gender at a later date. …

Boys will be prevented from developing male traits such as facial hair, deeper voices and Adam's apples and girls will not develop breasts or menstruate.

Celebrating Vandalism

By Heather Mac Donald

Drive behind the Geffen Contemporary, an art museum in downtown Los Angeles, and you will notice that it has painted over the graffiti scrawled on its back wall. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be surprising; the Geffen’s neighbors also maintain constant vigilance against graffiti vandalism. But beginning in April, the Geffen—a satellite of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art—will host what MOCA proudly bills as America’s first major museum survey of “street art,” a euphemism for graffiti. Graffiti, it turns out, is something that MOCA celebrates only on other people’s property, not on its own.

MOCA’s exhibit, Art in the Streets, is the inaugural show of its new director, Jeffrey Deitch, a former New York gallery owner and art agent. Deitch’s now-shuttered Soho gallery showcased vandal-anarchist wannabes whose performance pieces and installations purported to strike a blow against establishment values and capitalism, even as Deitch himself made millions serving art collectors whose fortunes rested on capitalism and its underpinning in bourgeois values. MOCA’s show (which will also survey skateboard culture) raises such inconsistencies to a new level of shamelessness. Not only would MOCA never tolerate uninvited graffiti on its walls (indeed, it doesn’t even permit visitors to use a pen for note-taking within its walls, an affectation unknown in most of the world’s greatest museums); none of its trustees would allow their Westside mansions or offices to be adorned with graffiti, either.

Even this two-facedness pales beside the hypocrisy of the graffiti vandals themselves, who wage war on property rights until presented with the opportunity to sell their work or license it to a corporation. At that point, they grab all the profits they can stuff into their bank accounts. Lost in this antibourgeois posturing is the likely result of the museum’s graffiti glorification: a renewed commitment to graffiti by Los Angeles’s ghetto youth, who will learn that the city’s power class views graffiti not as a crime but as art worthy of curation. The victims will be the law-abiding residents of the city’s most graffiti-afflicted neighborhoods and, for those who care, the vandals themselves.

Euthanasia, PG-13

By Hal G.P. Colebatch

As both a science-fiction author and teacher of political science, I have read a good deal of dystopian literature and political horror-stories about the future as nightmare, not to mention the holocausts which have existed not in imagination but reality.

What they have in common is a vision of a society in which individual human life has no value. Nor, of course, does individual conscience or belief.

I have previously described Britain today as showing features of "soft totalitarianism." Recent news items suggest something a good deal nastier may be on the way unless there is a widespread moral regeneration.

One of the most shocking developments has been a video shown to 14-year-old children featuring assisted suicide campaigner Dr. Philip Nitschke, whose extremist attitudes have been condemned even by other pro-euthanasia groups.

Nitschke is shown on the video demonstrating a machine that delivers lethal injections. The film is already being shown to pupils as young as 14 in schools across the country. A program is also being made by the BBC.

There is footage of Nitschke giving workshops on assisted suicide methods. Also appearing in the program is one Michael Irwin, a former doctor and euthanasia campaigner who was struck off the medical register six years ago for attempting to assist a suicide.

The video, being shown as the BBC -- now dominated by the hard left -- is said to encourage assisted suicide. It actually films a man killing himself at the suicide Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. Writer Terry Pratchett, an outspoken advocate of euthanasia, presents the documentary, which is due to be broadcast on BBC2 this summer.

The Education Rip-off

By Alan Caruba

It has taken a severe recession, combined with rising costs for gas and the weekly grocery list, for Americans to begin to seriously question where their tax dollars are going and why. As individuals, as families, and communities, we can no longer be indifferent or profligate.
The events in Wisconsin where the teacher’s union led to protests against collective bargaining has made many Americans begin to question all those TV ads about what a great job teachers are doing and the reassuring message that it’s all about the kids. No, it’s all about salaries, health benefits, and pensions that far exceed those in the private sector.
A recent Policy Analysis (No. 662) published by the Cato Institute on March 10th and written by Adam Schaeffer is titled “They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools.” 

Earth Day and environmental insanity

Anyone who has been paying any attention to the environmental movement has got to have concluded it is insane. 

• While the United States stands poised on defaulting on its ever-growing debt—the highest in the nation's history; 

• While wars and insurrections are waged in the Middle East, across northern Africa, and in the Ivory Coast; 

• While Japan struggles to deal with a major earthquake and nuclear plant meltdown; 

• While Islam wages terrorism worldwide, and 

• While European nations attempt to deal with their own financial crisis, the environmentalists—Greens—engage in the most absurd frauds and nonsense since the Dark Ages.

In news from the United Nations—a misnomer if ever there was one—Bolivia is proposing a UN treaty that will give "Mother Earth" the same rights as accorded to human beings. It has just passed a domestic law that grants these rights to bugs, trees, and all other natural things in its own country. 

Rothbard on Greenspan (1987)

Yup, Alan Greenspan, Mr. Free Market, Mr. Small Government, this morning on Meet the Press said that the Bush tax cuts must expire. He also said that the U.S. government should not be allowed to default on its debt. And, he also on technical grounds questioned why there should be a debt limit at all.

This guy is as anti-big government as Mao. How this guy is even allowed on television after it is clear that his low interest rate policy, when he was Fed chairman, was responsible for the real estate crisis is nothing but a testament to how mainstream media will support anyone who continues to advance the big government cause.

Murray Rothbard nailed Greenspan decades ago. In 1987 Rothbard wrote:

The astute observer might feel that anyone accorded such unanimous applause from the Establishment couldn't be all good, and in this case he would be right on the mark...

Greenspan's real qualification is that he can be trusted never to rock the establishment's boat. He has long positioned himself in the very middle of the economic spectrum. He is, like most other long-time Republican economists, a conservative Keynesian, which in these days is almost indistinguishable from the liberal Keynesians in the Democratic camp. In fact, his views are virtually the same as Paul Volcker, also a conservative Keynesian. Which means that he wants moderate deficits and tax increases, and will loudly worry about inflation as he pours on increases in the money supply. 

Conventional Education Will Go the Way of Farming

by Doug French
Food is vital for survival, yet less than 2 percent of America's population works in agriculture. That's a big change from 100 years ago, when over 40 percent of the workforce was toiling away on the farm. If I had been born at the start of the 20th century in Kansas, rather than at the end of the 1950s, no doubt my life would have been spent on the farm.

Agriculture was labor-intensive then, requiring plenty of strong backs, human and animal alike. In addition to nearly half the human workforce, 22 million animals worked the fields. Now 5 million tractors and a dazzling array of farm implements do the work of thousands. Farms have become more productive and specialized. And the number of farms has plunged, while the average-sized farm has quadrupled.

According to the USDA's website, in 1945 it took 14 labor hours to produce 100 bushels of corn on two acres. By 1987, it only took 3 labor hours and one acre to produce the same amount. Now, it takes less than an acre.

Euro vs. Invasion of the Zombie Banks

by Tyler Cowen
Is a euro held in an Irish bank in Dublin, or in a Portuguese bank in Lisbon, as sound and secure as a euro in a German bank in Berlin? That apparently simple question holds the key to understanding why the euro zone may splinter and bring a new financial crisis. 

In Ireland, there has been a “silent bank run” on financial institutions for much of the last year. In February, for instance, Irish private sector deposits dropped at an annual rate of 9.8 percent. That’s largely because some depositors doubt the commitment of the Irish government to the euro. They fear that they will wake up one morning to frozen bank accounts, followed by the conversion of their euro deposits into a lesser-valued new Irish currency. Pre-emptively, the depositors send their money outside Ireland, where it still represents safe euros or perhaps sterling, accessible by bank transfers and A.T.M. cards.

Excuse me sir, that cockroach has rights ...

by Rex Murphy 

Does environmentalism rot the mind? I am beginning to believe that the more feverish and agitated greens are suffering from a morbid condition. There is, it appears, no intellectual folly to which they are immune, no frenzied leap off the pier of reason they will not joyfully execute, in their reliably bizarre efforts to horrify the rest of us into supporting their cause.

It was only a few months ago that I read an endearing article entitled “Was Genghis Khan history’s greenest conqueror?” on something called The Mother Nature Network. The article noted the “widespread return of forests after a period of massive depopulation,” which arose, of course, thanks to Genghis Khan’s hordes slaughtering 40-million people. An upside to ethnic cleansing?

And just this week, Bolivia’s president, Eva Morales, hailed national legislation that would enshrine the “rights of Mother Nature” — human rights extended to earth itself. Pause to marvel at the powers of the Bolivian legislature. May we note that Morales is a James Cameron fan? I think we may.

Vice-President Alvaro García Linera describes the country’s new legislation (“The Law of Mother Earth”) as making “world history. Earth is the mother of all.” He also gushed that the law “establishes a new relationship between man and nature.”

Ireland

In 2000, suddenly among the richest people in Europe, the Irish decided to buy their country—from one another. After which their banks and government really screwed them. 

by Michael Lewis

When I flew to Dublin in early November, the Irish government was busy helping the Irish people come to terms with their loss. It had been two years since a handful of Irish politicians and bankers decided to guarantee all the debts of the country’s biggest banks, but the people were only now getting their minds around what that meant for them. The numbers were breathtaking. A single bank, Anglo Irish, which, two years before, the Irish government had claimed was merely suffering from a “liquidity problem,” faced losses of up to 34 billion euros. To get some sense of how “34 billion euros” sounds to Irish ears, an American thinking in dollars needs to multiply it by roughly one hundred: $3.4 trillion. And that was for a single bank. As the sum total of loans made by Anglo Irish, most of it to Irish property developers, was only 72 billion euros, the bank had lost nearly half of every dollar it invested.

The two other big Irish banks, Bank of Ireland and, especially, Allied Irish Banks (A.I.B.), remained Ireland’s dirty little secrets. Both older than Ireland itself (the Bank of Ireland was founded back in 1783; A.I.B. is made up of three banks founded in the 19th century), both were now also obviously bust. The Irish government owned big chunks of the two ancient banks but revealed less about them. As they had lent vast sums not only to Irish property developers but also to Irish homebuyers, their losses were also obviously vast—and similar in spirit to the losses at the upstart Anglo Irish.

third anniversary of the creation of European Soviet Union

Now all of Europe is governed by a Kremlin
by Bruno Waterfield 


Behind closed doors, in conditions of utmost secrecy, two of the highest jobs in European public office were stitched up on the basis of lowest-common-denominator expediency rather than merit. The decision, taken in a conclave of European leaders , marks an important stage in the evolution of institutions, a statecraft and political method that have entirely dispensed with any reference or accountability to the public.

Herman Van Rompuy, Belgium’s prime minister, and Lady Ashton, a serial appointee from the UK who has never been elected to public office, embody the spirit of an inward-looking and defensive European political elite that has given up leading or representing their own societies on either the domestic or world stage. They are both anti-political leaders, in the sense that neither has earned their high public offices through democratic struggle. In fact, quite the opposite is the case. Van Rompuy – an eccentric haiku-writing but highly traditionalist Christian Democrat – is a shrewd operator who disguises his ruthlessness and steady political climb behind a quirky literary persona and dishonest protestations that he never wanted to be either Belgium’s prime minister or the EU’s new president in the first place (1). He became prime minister not as the result of a general election in Belgium but by royal appointment by King Albert II, after a financial and judicial scandal had caused the collapse of Yves Leterme’s resented government (he is now tipped to come back as Van Rompuy’s replacement).Van Rompuy’s low-key European federalism, a default political position in Belgium’s elite, has quickly got the chauvinistic British eurosceptic tabloids fizzing and frothing (2). But it is not his mild dreams of a European ‘superstate’ that are the problem. Six months before becoming Belgium’s prime minister, in April 2008, he abused his position as speaker of the Belgian parliament to cancel a politically inconvenient debate (3). Opposition MPs have alleged that to make doubly sure that the debate would be silenced he had officials change the locks on the plenary chamber so deputies could not get into their own parliament. The tactic was described as a ‘coup d’etat’. His humbug protests that leadership has been thrust upon him, and his dubious democratic pedigree, mark him out as the kind of anti-political leader that is well qualified for the EU’s highest office.

There is no such thing as a 'free lunch'

By THEODORE DALRYMPLE

All attempts to reduce bureaucracy increase it, and the same goes for cost. Such, at any rate, has been my experience of the British health care system—its famed, or infamous, National Health Service.

Thus, I could not but smile a little wanly when President Barack Obama said this week that he hoped an increase in the use of generic drugs, together with an expert commission to examine the cost-effectiveness of medical treatments, would make a significant impact on the vast budget deficit of the United States. We in Britain have been there and we have done that, and our health-care costs doubled, perhaps not as a result, but certainly at the same time.
The best that might be said for these measures is that the increase in health-care costs was lower than it might otherwise have been. That is certainly not enough to save a country from a financial apocalypse, or even enough to be a major contribution to its salvation.
In Britain we have been prescribing generics for years; I cannot remember a time when I personally did not. Our National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE, a typically Blairite acronym) has done cost-benefit analyses of drugs and procedures, often very sensibly, for years. But despite its best efforts, our system has been highly inventive in finding other ways of wasting immense quantities of public money.