Economic segregation is most severe in America’s Northern metropolitan areas, as well, with Milwaukee; Hartford, Conn.; Philadelphia; and Detroit leading large cities nationwide, according to an analysis of 2010 census data by the Atlantic. White suburbanites across the North — even in Bill and Hillary Clinton’s adopted home town, Chappaqua, N.Y. — have fought the construction of affordable housing in their neighborhoods, trying to keep out “undesirables” who might threaten their children and undermine their property values. The effects of that segregation are devastating.
Greatly Appreciated, Dr. Sugrue
A good piece, and an honest one, by a professor at New York University.
Chesterton in America
Via AVI, a letter on America.
America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just....It's interesting that he found in the creed "that governments exist to give them justice" and not, as the Declaration actually says, that government exists to protect their rights. In a sense that is giving justice, but it is largely a project of abstention rather than provision. Mostly, on the original American ideal, the government 'gives justice' by refraining from doing anything to you, or for you, at all.
Now a creed is at once the broadest and the narrowest thing in the world. In its nature it is as broad as its scheme for a brotherhood of all men. In its nature it is limited by its definition of the nature of all men. This was true of the Christian Church, which was truly said to exclude neither Jew nor Greek, but which did definitely substitute something else for Jewish religion or Greek philosophy. It was truly said to be a net drawing in of all kinds; but a net of a certain pattern, the pattern of Peter the Fisherman. And this is true even of the most disastrous distortions or degradations of that creed; and true among others of the Spanish Inquisition. It may have been narrow about theology, it could not confess to being narrow about nationality or ethnology. The Spanish Inquisition might be admittedly Inquisitorial; but the Spanish Inquisition could not be merely Spanish. Such a Spaniard.... might burn a philosopher because he was heterodox; but he must accept a barbarian because he was orthodox....
[America is] a democracy of diverse races which has been compared to a melting-pot. But even that metaphor implies that the pot itself is of a certain shape and a certain substance; a pretty solid substance. The melting-pot must not melt. The original shape was traced on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy; and it will remain in that shape until it becomes shapeless. America invites all men to become citizens; but it implies the dogma that there is such a thing as citizenship.
The "John Doe" Proceedings
Or, "How The IRS, FBI and Justice Departments are Agents of Modern American Tyranny."
Imagine having a vision for your country.We have still the freedom to write about it. At least, we do if we haven't been placed under a gag order.
You worked hard to start an organization to promote the ideas and values that you believe can fix our nation.
When you apply for tax-exempt status, which should be a simple matter of paperwork, you face repeated delays and demands from the government that stretch the process across months and years.
Then you learn—not from the government, but from an outside source—that your private information was shared with multiple government agencies, all of whom wanted to “piece together” criminal charges against you.
Imagine being awakened in the middle of the night by a gang of police, shouting and waving their weapons at you. They turn your house inside-out, steal your laptop and phone, then order you not to tell anyone they were there.
All this happened because your political beliefs landed on the wrong side of those officials in power.
Jonah’s father may have been the target of the raid on his home, but according to the family, investigators went well beyond the scope of the warrant to seize business records in his mother’s possession, including confidential donor and financial information for two conservative Wisconsin nonprofits, which were paralyzed for weeks as a result. Yet despite the overly expansive search, to this day, no one in Jonah’s family has been charged with a crime. The damage to the family’s reputation was immense. Soon after the raid, and despite court orders mandating confidentiality (orders that prevented the family from publicly defending themselves), their names leaked to the press.
Heh.
Shapiro’s point is that Zoey Tur, formerly Bob Tur, is male genetically and therefore a man in fact, however he/she may identify. Tur’s reply is to grab him by the neck and threaten to knock him into the middle of next week, which is … about as cartoonishly masculine a response to an insult as I can imagine.It's true. A woman would have slapped him.
"The Little Sisters of the Poor v. the Big Sisters of the Rich"
Excerpt:
While Planned Parenthood does not call itself a religious order, it clearly has many of the trappings of a passionate and serious cult.... Our President, as the unofficial high priest, has asked God’s blessing to come upon them, making them too big to fail with even more business directed their way through Obamacare regulations.
The love and faith of the Little Sisters is perhaps most evident at the end of the lives of the residents they care for. The sisters bring them joy through socializing and even a little dancing, no matter what their physical limitations. And then when they are very close to dying, a sister is assigned around the clock so that no one will die alone.
As for the Big Sisters of the Rich, who have a government allowance of $528 million—nearly 100 times the annual budget of the Sisters of the Poor—their end of life story is slightly different.
Some Positive Eid al-Fitr News
American Muslim groups have raised $90,000 to help rebuild the black churches that have recently burned.
“In the time of the prophet (Muhammed), peace be upon him, there was a really strong history of Muslims working with Christians very closely — some of the first Muslims were sent to seek shelter under a Christian king in Ethiopia,” Islam said. “That connection has always been there.”
To Defend The Weak
``Deny it not, Sir Knight---you are he who decidedA meditation on that duty from the National Review. I agree: it is the foremost duty of a man to defend the weak. It is why God sent you strength. You will answer for how you used that strength.
the victory to the advantage of the English
against the strangers on the second day of the
tournament at Ashby.''
``And what follows if you guess truly, good
yeoman?'' replied the knight.
``I should in that case hold you,'' replied the
yeoman, ``a friend to the weaker party.''
``Such is the duty of a true knight at least,'' replied
the Black Champion; ``and I would not willingly
that there were reason to think otherwise of
me.''
Happy Eid Al-Fitr
Six things to know about today's terrorist attack on US Marines.
UPDATE:
UPDATE:
'Brothers and sisters don't be fooled by your desires, this life is short and bitter and the opportunity to submit to allah may pass you by.... Take his (Allah's) word as your light and code and do not let other prisoners, whether they are so called "Scholars" or even your family members, divert you from the truth. If you make the intention to follow allahs way 100 per cent and put your desires to the side, allah will guide you to what is right.'
All Right, My Turn
From their CD "Liquor in the Front," the Reverend Horton Heat skipped off their usual rockabilly and surf-rock to do a honky tonk piece. It's completely over the top.
Charlie Nagatani and the Cannonballs
Eric reminded me of these cultural juxtapositions.
I'll start out with a Brad Paisley video which features shots at Charlie Nagatani's place in Kumamoto, Japan. It's a good song, if you like Paisley's kind of country, but mostly I want to show you the visuals at Charlie's.
Now, here's Charlie himself, doing foreign culture in a very characteristic Japanese style.
I'll start out with a Brad Paisley video which features shots at Charlie Nagatani's place in Kumamoto, Japan. It's a good song, if you like Paisley's kind of country, but mostly I want to show you the visuals at Charlie's.
Now, here's Charlie himself, doing foreign culture in a very characteristic Japanese style.
A Helpful Article
I've never heard this allegedly Southern expression, "acting brand new." I can't vouch for anyone ever having said that. However, I find this article very helpful.
She goes on to point out that he spoke to the NAACP. Well, of course he did. The NAACP's call this week to sand blast the monument off Stone Mountain ought to be opposed for the same reason we oppose ISIS or the Taliban when they destroy artistic symbols of the world before Islam. But I don't think the NAACP is a "hate group" because of it. (Oddly enough, that's the kind of rhetoric long-time NAACP-supporter the Southern Poverty Law Center uses.) We understand there's a painful history, and oppose the rhetoric and the idea without thinking they are haters for expressing their anger and bitterness.
The differences ultimately aren't about race. They're about America, about liberty, about sovereignty, about the Constitution and about duty. Those are the things that divide us from this President. The things he does that point to race are the main things that don't bother us.
He's spoken off the cuff about race relations on a widely circulated podcast (even using the n-word) and then eloquently followed that with what can only be described as a sermon on race relations in America before breaking into song. He's challenged America to go deeper in its support of equality than retiring symbols of slavery (such as the Confederate flag) and impolitic words (such as the n-word).We've been strongly critical of the President and his administration on very many points. None of these, however, have come up as criticisms of him. In fact, in general we've supported all of these things -- prison reform, courtesy, with some regret the retirement of the Confederate flag from the war memorial at the South Carolina statehouse as a show of support for black Americans. Housing is the only one in which I suspect there's any strong disagreement lurking, and that simply because the most of you are pretty opposed to government interference in markets of any sort.
While eulogizing a slain minister and state lawmaker allegedly killed by a white supremacist in Charleston, S.C., he outlined a whole raft of ways in which discrimination remains and inequality continues to grow. And now, in the span of two weeks, he has announced two major reform packages — housing last week and criminal justice on Tuesday — that could, if ultimately implemented, be of particular benefit to people of color in the United States.
Here's the thing: This Obama might look or sound "brand new" to some Americans. He might even sound a little something like the black president some white Americans across the political spectrum feared (or hoped for).
She goes on to point out that he spoke to the NAACP. Well, of course he did. The NAACP's call this week to sand blast the monument off Stone Mountain ought to be opposed for the same reason we oppose ISIS or the Taliban when they destroy artistic symbols of the world before Islam. But I don't think the NAACP is a "hate group" because of it. (Oddly enough, that's the kind of rhetoric long-time NAACP-supporter the Southern Poverty Law Center uses.) We understand there's a painful history, and oppose the rhetoric and the idea without thinking they are haters for expressing their anger and bitterness.
The differences ultimately aren't about race. They're about America, about liberty, about sovereignty, about the Constitution and about duty. Those are the things that divide us from this President. The things he does that point to race are the main things that don't bother us.
"Why Aren't Ethicists Better People?"
Because contemporary ethical systems are bad. The two leading ethical systems are utilitarianism and deontology. Utilitarianism is really just a modern form of hedonism, i.e., an ethical system that takes pleasure and the avoidance of pain as its ground for "the good." Quite sophisticated versions of this philosophy have been known for millennia -- Socrates tries out a version towards the end of the Protagoras. It doesn't work because "to be good" doesn't align with "to cause pleasure and not pain."
This is true even if, as Socrates attempts, you suggest a model in which we're talking about 'the most' pleasure, so that minor pleasures now that cause worse pains later are not considered good. Sacrificing your life for your children may not bring any pleasure and only pain, but it might still be the ethical choice. Utilitarians try to avoid this problem by shifting to a kind of aggregate pleasure/pain as experienced by the whole society, but it still doesn't get it right. It still can't say just why it is more obvious for a parent to sacrifice his or her life for their own particular child, but extraordinarily excellent for a stranger to lay down his life to save the child. At worst, the movement to aggregate pleasure as the standard for utilitarianism can end up saying that we ought to sacrifice the child, especially if the death of the child can mean increased aggregate pleasure for the community -- witness the Planned Parenthood atrocities currently under discussion.
So, naturally ethicists who are utilitarians won't be especially excellent people. It's not just (as the article alleges) that they don't follow their own rules. It's that their system is pointed to the wrong ends.
Deontology attempts to establish duties. It's healthier than utilitarianism, but it still has the problem of rooting its ultimate standard for goodness. Does your duty come from reason? Kant makes an argument that it can't come from anywhere else: it is only reason that allows us to make choices that are more than actions from animal instinct. Reason must therefore be the standard for ethics. If ethics comes from reason, well, rationality is the same for all of us. Thus, we will all naturally agree about what is right and wrong. Kant thought this was so obvious that there really could only be one moral philosophy.
Empirical evidence demonstrates conclusively that Kant was not right about that. The problem, I think, is this:
1) Reason applies most perfectly to logical/mathematical objects;
2) Logical objects are like physical objects only by analogy;
3) Analogies always break at some point.
Thus, it turns out that rather than discovering laws of reason that ought to govern all human situations, we end up discovering that no two situations are really alike. We reason by analogy to previous situations, and to general working rules-of-thumb, but we can't come up with rational laws for human behavior of the sort the early moderns hoped to find. Ethicists who do state that they've found such laws and try to apply them end up doing injustice by trying to force square pegs into round holes (because the hole looks at least a little bit like a square, and certainly more like a square than a triangle).
So of course ethicists are bad people. They have devoted their lives to trying to make the world comply with bad systems. Naturally, at some point, the frustration leads them to tend to give up hope and just do what they want.
This is true even if, as Socrates attempts, you suggest a model in which we're talking about 'the most' pleasure, so that minor pleasures now that cause worse pains later are not considered good. Sacrificing your life for your children may not bring any pleasure and only pain, but it might still be the ethical choice. Utilitarians try to avoid this problem by shifting to a kind of aggregate pleasure/pain as experienced by the whole society, but it still doesn't get it right. It still can't say just why it is more obvious for a parent to sacrifice his or her life for their own particular child, but extraordinarily excellent for a stranger to lay down his life to save the child. At worst, the movement to aggregate pleasure as the standard for utilitarianism can end up saying that we ought to sacrifice the child, especially if the death of the child can mean increased aggregate pleasure for the community -- witness the Planned Parenthood atrocities currently under discussion.
So, naturally ethicists who are utilitarians won't be especially excellent people. It's not just (as the article alleges) that they don't follow their own rules. It's that their system is pointed to the wrong ends.
Deontology attempts to establish duties. It's healthier than utilitarianism, but it still has the problem of rooting its ultimate standard for goodness. Does your duty come from reason? Kant makes an argument that it can't come from anywhere else: it is only reason that allows us to make choices that are more than actions from animal instinct. Reason must therefore be the standard for ethics. If ethics comes from reason, well, rationality is the same for all of us. Thus, we will all naturally agree about what is right and wrong. Kant thought this was so obvious that there really could only be one moral philosophy.
Empirical evidence demonstrates conclusively that Kant was not right about that. The problem, I think, is this:
1) Reason applies most perfectly to logical/mathematical objects;
2) Logical objects are like physical objects only by analogy;
3) Analogies always break at some point.
Thus, it turns out that rather than discovering laws of reason that ought to govern all human situations, we end up discovering that no two situations are really alike. We reason by analogy to previous situations, and to general working rules-of-thumb, but we can't come up with rational laws for human behavior of the sort the early moderns hoped to find. Ethicists who do state that they've found such laws and try to apply them end up doing injustice by trying to force square pegs into round holes (because the hole looks at least a little bit like a square, and certainly more like a square than a triangle).
So of course ethicists are bad people. They have devoted their lives to trying to make the world comply with bad systems. Naturally, at some point, the frustration leads them to tend to give up hope and just do what they want.
Attack on Naval Reserve Center
Still waiting for any reliable information. All the news knows for now is that one police officer and two Marines were injured, but not how badly. The shooter is reportedly dead, but no information about who he was has been revealed as yet.
UPDATE: They are now saying four Marines were killed.
UPDATE: Pamela Geller, who whatever you may think of her has good reason to pay attention to ISIS's social media threats, claims that ISIS's account issued a threat specifying Chattanooga at 10:34 AM.
UPDATE: The gunman's name was Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. Eid al-Fitr, the feast at the end of Ramadan, begins at sundown.
UPDATE: They are now saying four Marines were killed.
UPDATE: Pamela Geller, who whatever you may think of her has good reason to pay attention to ISIS's social media threats, claims that ISIS's account issued a threat specifying Chattanooga at 10:34 AM.
UPDATE: The gunman's name was Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. Eid al-Fitr, the feast at the end of Ramadan, begins at sundown.
Italian rock and roll
The Mojomatics, out of Venice.
This stuff amuses me no end. If I heard this on the radio, I'd be thinking "hey, a new alt-country rock band, like the Old '97s." But no. They got the style down.
Wise Advice: Anger Can Make You Stupid
It is right and proper to be angry right now. I am myself furious. Just the last month or so has been one heavy blow after another for the country I grew up in and love. This Iran deal, which appears to cede everything to Iran in return for nothing, empowering, enriching, and arming a power that has been the world leader in state sponsored terrorism. The inversion of religious freedom, which has gone from being a point of bipartisan agreement to the next target for elimination by the courts and activists. The assault on Southern culture and history, which went from a bipartisan agreement to do something to show love and respect for our fellow citizens in the wake of a vicious murder to the destruction and defacing of memorials to the dead and calls to sand-blast Stone Mountain. The way in which the two parties have colluded to sell out our sovereignty to foreign courts via the massive TPP and T-TIP deals. Failure theater from the Republican "opposition." Failure theater from the Left, too, where those trade deals are concerned. Of course the political class' absolute determination to foist "comprehensive immigration reform" on us, in spite of endless promises to focus on security. The clear proof, from Lois Lerner and the IRS to Hillary Clinton's emails, that the law will not be enforced to control the powerful. I could go on. These are just stories from the last few weeks. You know them as well as I do.
So yes, anger is right and appropriate. Andrew Klaven is right, though, that we cannot afford to be stupid. We need to be cunning. We need to think and act strategically. The ordinary means of politics have failed. Winning elections isn't enough. Opposition will have to take a new strength from other means -- legal means always, to be sure, but means of resistance to rather than cooperation with authority. This does not come naturally for many conservatives, whose hearts are loyal and who have good reason to think of many expressions of authority -- especially the military and police -- as beloved institutions involving many personal friends. I suggest we remember that this shift is necessary to protect them. It is to protect them from being asked to do things that are violations of their oath, but it is also just to protect them: Iran has already killed many of them, and our government is now acting to empower that nation further. It is in the interest of all our sheepdogs that we resist the current powers that be. We have to save the country from its government.
Here, then, is Klavan's advice, which I think good.
So yes, anger is right and appropriate. Andrew Klaven is right, though, that we cannot afford to be stupid. We need to be cunning. We need to think and act strategically. The ordinary means of politics have failed. Winning elections isn't enough. Opposition will have to take a new strength from other means -- legal means always, to be sure, but means of resistance to rather than cooperation with authority. This does not come naturally for many conservatives, whose hearts are loyal and who have good reason to think of many expressions of authority -- especially the military and police -- as beloved institutions involving many personal friends. I suggest we remember that this shift is necessary to protect them. It is to protect them from being asked to do things that are violations of their oath, but it is also just to protect them: Iran has already killed many of them, and our government is now acting to empower that nation further. It is in the interest of all our sheepdogs that we resist the current powers that be. We have to save the country from its government.
Here, then, is Klavan's advice, which I think good.
You want to win back your country? Here’s how. Fear nothing. Hate no one. Stick to principles. Unchecked borders are dangerous not because Mexicans are evil but because evil thrives when good men don’t stand guard. Poverty programs are misguided, not because the poor are undeserving criminals, but because dependency on government breeds dysfunction and more poverty. Guns save lives and protect liberty. Property rights guarantee liberty. Religious rights are essential to liberty. Without liberty we are equal only in misery.We must proceed without fear, without hate, but with complete commitment and trust in the providence of heaven.
These things are true. They’re true for white people and black people, male people and female people, straight people and gay people. We should support the smartest, most proven, most statesmanlike candidate who best represents those principles. And we should do it out of — dare I say the word? — love. Love for our neighbors, our fellow citizens, white and black, male and female, straight and gay.
“Perfect love casts out fear.”
Privileged deliberators
Hillary Clinton and the State Department defend the withholding of a September 29, 2012, email discussing the Benghazi talking points as a "deliberative privilege"--even though it seems that what they were deliberating was the cover-up they were engaged in.
Fighter Pilot Tunes
Have we had Dos Gringos at the Hall before? I don't remember. This is probably their cleanest tune, and it's not pretty.
This one isn't much worse. Maybe.
Something I really appreciate about this band is that, if you don't listen to the words, they could be folk singers playing Kumbaya around a campfire.
Here, as far as I can tell, is their one and only song dedicated to anyone other than an F-16 pilot.
This one isn't much worse. Maybe.
Something I really appreciate about this band is that, if you don't listen to the words, they could be folk singers playing Kumbaya around a campfire.
Here, as far as I can tell, is their one and only song dedicated to anyone other than an F-16 pilot.
Almost Forgot -- I Hope You Had a Happy Bastille Day!
My favorite book on the topic has always been Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities.
While getting the link I noticed that Project Gutenberg has a warning up,which I'll reproduce here:
I don't know about you, Jacques, but I'm getting tired of a certain privileged class of folk trying to run our lives.
While getting the link I noticed that Project Gutenberg has a warning up,which I'll reproduce here:
Beware of the TPP!
Project Gutenberg is concerned about a new secret international treaty, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This will extend copyright term protection worldwide, thus halting the growth of the public domain. To learn more, and join Project Gutenberg in speaking out against this treaty, visit The Internet Archive.
I don't know about you, Jacques, but I'm getting tired of a certain privileged class of folk trying to run our lives.
Sources and Votes on the Iran Sanctions
Probably the best quick overview history of US sanctions on Iran that I've seen is at the US institute for Peace's website. The Treasury Department has a significant role in enforcing sanctions, and of course the State Department is involved. Their site has links to relevant executive orders, statutes, and UNSC resolutions.
Until I started reading through this material, I really didn't understand how fully the executive branch had authority over the sanctions. Most of the sanctions depend on executive orders, and even the legislation that has passed on this gives the president broad authority.
I think this solves a mystery for me. A month or two ago, someone posted a rant at Ace's or Hot Air (or both?) accusing Sen. Bob Corker and the Republicans of effectively guaranteeing that whatever deal Obama struck with the Iranians would be automatically accepted by giving Congress a normal vote on it (which Democrats could block and would not be veto-proof) instead of insisting on a 2/3s majority vote in the Senate as the Constitution requires. However, this appears to ignore the fact that sanctions against Iran have always depended primarily on executive authority, not treaty powers or legislation. So, I may actually defend Corker and the Republicans on this.
Until I started reading through this material, I really didn't understand how fully the executive branch had authority over the sanctions. Most of the sanctions depend on executive orders, and even the legislation that has passed on this gives the president broad authority.
I think this solves a mystery for me. A month or two ago, someone posted a rant at Ace's or Hot Air (or both?) accusing Sen. Bob Corker and the Republicans of effectively guaranteeing that whatever deal Obama struck with the Iranians would be automatically accepted by giving Congress a normal vote on it (which Democrats could block and would not be veto-proof) instead of insisting on a 2/3s majority vote in the Senate as the Constitution requires. However, this appears to ignore the fact that sanctions against Iran have always depended primarily on executive authority, not treaty powers or legislation. So, I may actually defend Corker and the Republicans on this.
Even Worse
The use of psychotherapy as a political discipline was characteristic of Maoists and Stalinists. This is the most alarming thing I've seen in... well, the day includes the Iran deal, so not really all that long.
Madness
The Little Sisters of the Poor ordered to pay for contraception. It's been a banner month, hasn't it?
Good Hunting
In my experience, Iraqi forces do better on the offense than defense. They can't hold a position in the face of artillery or superior maneuver, but they can take defended ground as long as you don't expect them to hold it later. Since what we all want most is dead ISIS members, that will suffice.
Hahahahahahahahahaha
Headline: "Obama adviser wants Israel to give up nukes."
1) That worked out great for Ukraine, didn't it?
2) I thought we were supposed to believe that this wonderful new Iran deal was going to "halt Iran's illicit nuclear program." Now the concept is this deal requires Israeli disarmament to ensure Iranian good behavior? Sounds like the deal's promised oversight of Iran isn't as solid as it's being portrayed.
The president of a think tank that arranged a conference call Monday between the White House and progressive activist organizations in which participants discussed how to coordinate public defense of President Obama’s pending Iran deal has another ultimate target in mind.Two small counterarguments:
Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, wants Israel to give up its nuclear weapons, arguing such a move will ensure Iran halts its illicit nuclear program and will help to create a Mideast nuclear-free zone.
1) That worked out great for Ukraine, didn't it?
2) I thought we were supposed to believe that this wonderful new Iran deal was going to "halt Iran's illicit nuclear program." Now the concept is this deal requires Israeli disarmament to ensure Iranian good behavior? Sounds like the deal's promised oversight of Iran isn't as solid as it's being portrayed.
Lost in Translation
You know those guys who get tattoos of Chinese characters that really don't end up meaning what they thought? There's an Asian version of that problem. When I lived in China, a few times I had to gently caution someone about a t-shirt they'd bought with an inappropriate English phrase on it, one that would make them terribly ashamed to wear if they'd understood what it meant. More often, I'd see horrible mistranslations like these.
The lesson, I suppose, is to stick to your own language unless you're really quite fluent.
The lesson, I suppose, is to stick to your own language unless you're really quite fluent.
Where the Boys Are
... and some of the girls, too. This video is best watched full-screen and sound blasting. Some profanity, though.
Groups of players in EVE Online are organized into corporations (corp / corps - yes, the plural is pronounced "corpse" - maybe Obama plays?). Many (though not all) corporations focus on fleet combat -- training players, building the right ships for their missions and tactics, and then running them. Fleet commanders have to recruit volunteers to fight, organize fleets around a particular type of mission, employ scouts to find enemy ships, fleets, or installations, consider logistics such as fleet composition, travel time, solar system features like asteroid belts and other stellar "terrain," repair and re-arming mid-fleet, and of course be good at (virtual) combat command and control.
Each fleet role -- commander, scout, tackler (focused on grabbing and tying down enemy ships), damage dealer, logistics ship, etc. -- has particular player skill, in-game character skill, and ship requirements. Different corporations develop different strategies and tactics depending on their goals. The deadly corporation Rooks and Kings, for example, developed the famous "pipe bomb" tactic which we see near the end of the video.
Besides combat, though, EVE has a more or less complete economy which is about as free market as it gets. The raw components for the ships we fight in are mined from asteroid belts, planets, and moons by players, then sold to other players who build the ships, then sold to other players who transport them to trade systems, then sold to yet other players who sell them to me to go blow up. Prices constantly shift based on supply and demand, and a lot of players pay for their ships by playing the market. Speaking of markets:
The article ends with some interesting speculations about applications in real life.
So how does the new player learn? You can apply to EVE University or join one of the other newb-friendly corps. Watching training videos is a pretty good way to learn specific skills.
Need to know your corp's fleet doctrines for the ships you fly? Join Fleet-Up. Need to keep track of markets around the universe? Eve-Central. Want to quickly play around with different module fittings on a ship to maximize its performance for a particular mission and your character's particular skillset? EFT. Need voice communications for fleet action? Mumble. Want to keep track of who's killing who? Try your corp killboard. Scouting for a fleet and need quick maps of regions and systems, with recent data on kills, jumps, and players in system? Dotlan. Just spent two hours in Jita shopping for good deals on interceptors, then planning and executing a supply run only to get ambushed and incinerated by a pirate fleet three jumps out from home, losing the ships, modules and ammo you'd planned to fly over the weekend, and need to chill out? Try some EVE music videos:
What's the value of all this? Besides fun, I don't know. I do know that fleet planning makes one really think about logistics, that commanding a fleet of volunteers in virtual battle is like directing a mass cat attack, and that the whole thing reeks of free market economics. Kinda cool.
Groups of players in EVE Online are organized into corporations (corp / corps - yes, the plural is pronounced "corpse" - maybe Obama plays?). Many (though not all) corporations focus on fleet combat -- training players, building the right ships for their missions and tactics, and then running them. Fleet commanders have to recruit volunteers to fight, organize fleets around a particular type of mission, employ scouts to find enemy ships, fleets, or installations, consider logistics such as fleet composition, travel time, solar system features like asteroid belts and other stellar "terrain," repair and re-arming mid-fleet, and of course be good at (virtual) combat command and control.
Each fleet role -- commander, scout, tackler (focused on grabbing and tying down enemy ships), damage dealer, logistics ship, etc. -- has particular player skill, in-game character skill, and ship requirements. Different corporations develop different strategies and tactics depending on their goals. The deadly corporation Rooks and Kings, for example, developed the famous "pipe bomb" tactic which we see near the end of the video.
Besides combat, though, EVE has a more or less complete economy which is about as free market as it gets. The raw components for the ships we fight in are mined from asteroid belts, planets, and moons by players, then sold to other players who build the ships, then sold to other players who transport them to trade systems, then sold to yet other players who sell them to me to go blow up. Prices constantly shift based on supply and demand, and a lot of players pay for their ships by playing the market. Speaking of markets:
Inflation can be a headache for any central banker. But it takes a certain type of economist to know what to do when a belligerent spaceship fleet attacks an interstellar trading post, causing mineral prices to surge across the galaxy.
Eyjólfur Guðmundsson is just that economist. Working for the Icelandic company CCP Games, he oversees the virtual economy of the massively multiplayer video game Eve Online. Within this world, players build their own spaceships and traverse a galaxy of 7,500 star systems. They buy and sell raw materials, creating their own fluctuating markets. They speculate on commodities. They form trade coalitions and banks.
It’s a sprawling economy, with more than 400,000 players participating in its virtual market — more people, in fact, than live in Iceland. Inflation, deflation and even recessions can occur.
...
In Eve Online, Guðmundsson oversees an economy that can fluctuate wildly — he says it expanded 42 percent between February 2011 and February 2012, then contracted 15 percent by the summer. His team will periodically have to address imbalances in the money supply. For instance, they can curb inflation by introducing a new type of weapon, say, to absorb virtual currency — not unlike the way a central bank might sell bonds to shrink the money supply. (In theory, Eve Online’s currency has real-world value — the highest-level spaceships, the Titans, are worth the equivalent of $5,000 to $8,000.)
...
“We’ve even seen large alliances trying to manipulate aspects of the market to control the supply and affect prices,” Guðmundsson says. “It’s a lot like OPEC.”
In some ways, the economy of Eve Online is a libertarian experiment on a grand scale. There are few overarching rules. Labor markets quickly bounce back from recession because there’s no minimum wage. Players can voluntarily band together to create all sorts of innovative arrangements, including corporations, trade alliances and financial institutions.
Eve Online’s banks aren’t supported by a central bank or lender of last resort. Much like Ron Paul has proposed for the United States, there’s no fractional reserve banking, in which banks need to keep only a portion of their deposits on hand at any time and can lend the rest out freely.
“That increases the burden on banks to be diligent and efficient,” Guðmundsson says. On the downside, the financial system is sometimes ripe for abuse — one large bank, EBank, collapsed in 2009 when its founder seized its virtual funds and traded them for real-life cash on the black market. ...
The article ends with some interesting speculations about applications in real life.
So how does the new player learn? You can apply to EVE University or join one of the other newb-friendly corps. Watching training videos is a pretty good way to learn specific skills.
Need to know your corp's fleet doctrines for the ships you fly? Join Fleet-Up. Need to keep track of markets around the universe? Eve-Central. Want to quickly play around with different module fittings on a ship to maximize its performance for a particular mission and your character's particular skillset? EFT. Need voice communications for fleet action? Mumble. Want to keep track of who's killing who? Try your corp killboard. Scouting for a fleet and need quick maps of regions and systems, with recent data on kills, jumps, and players in system? Dotlan. Just spent two hours in Jita shopping for good deals on interceptors, then planning and executing a supply run only to get ambushed and incinerated by a pirate fleet three jumps out from home, losing the ships, modules and ammo you'd planned to fly over the weekend, and need to chill out? Try some EVE music videos:
What's the value of all this? Besides fun, I don't know. I do know that fleet planning makes one really think about logistics, that commanding a fleet of volunteers in virtual battle is like directing a mass cat attack, and that the whole thing reeks of free market economics. Kinda cool.
So the Greeks got their bailout again
But it looks like the terms of the agreement are even more strict than what they rejected in their popular referendum.
Well, it seems that being completely out of money will do wonderful things to focus the desire to make a deal. In reality, the Greek government had no choice. They could accept the deal and keep themselves afloat a while longer (until this money also inevitably runs out) and deal with the consequences of having to tell the Greek people "yeah, about that referendum..." later, or not take the bailout and simply collapse now. It is still my considered opinion that by continuing to kick the can down the road, they're just making the (inevitable) collapse worse. But those in power in Greece wish to remain in power for as long as they can. But mark my words, they're finished one way or the other. The people who elected and supported them will see this as a rank betrayal (and honestly, rightly so; you can't claim to run on rejecting austerity measures only to accept even harsher ones without consequence), and the ones who didn't support them in the first place are certainly not going to suddenly change their mind in favor of saying "I told you so."
So having turned to the far-left and having them fold, I now expect the Greeks to turn to the far-right, who will fare no better, but will at least give the people a scapegoat of Jews and foreigners to blame. And that will pretty much end as it always does. So, we still have that phase of this tragedy to look forward to.
Well, it seems that being completely out of money will do wonderful things to focus the desire to make a deal. In reality, the Greek government had no choice. They could accept the deal and keep themselves afloat a while longer (until this money also inevitably runs out) and deal with the consequences of having to tell the Greek people "yeah, about that referendum..." later, or not take the bailout and simply collapse now. It is still my considered opinion that by continuing to kick the can down the road, they're just making the (inevitable) collapse worse. But those in power in Greece wish to remain in power for as long as they can. But mark my words, they're finished one way or the other. The people who elected and supported them will see this as a rank betrayal (and honestly, rightly so; you can't claim to run on rejecting austerity measures only to accept even harsher ones without consequence), and the ones who didn't support them in the first place are certainly not going to suddenly change their mind in favor of saying "I told you so."
So having turned to the far-left and having them fold, I now expect the Greeks to turn to the far-right, who will fare no better, but will at least give the people a scapegoat of Jews and foreigners to blame. And that will pretty much end as it always does. So, we still have that phase of this tragedy to look forward to.
Return From the Wild
That storm cloud on the left is hung up on Mount Mitchell, the highest peak in the eastern United States. I had camped on Commissary Ridge the night before, which connects to its shoulders, and was in that storm all night. There was wind like I've never heard, rain and thunder. In the morning, just at dawn, packed up the kit and backpacked back to the road. Just a few hundred vertical feet down, and I found this view from below the storm.
How America Changed in the 20th Century
In a moderate-length article at Ancient Faith, an Eastern Orthodox website, Joel J. Miller argues that, because of changes in American society in the 1940s, same-sex marriage was inevitable.
Back in 2010, economist and conservative intellectual Thomas Sowell published the book Dismantling America. The Hoover Institution interviewed him about it, and he talked about changes in the US across the 20th century in explaining how our nation is being taken apart. Some highlights of the interview were his comments on patriotism, his childhood in the Harlem public schools, his thoughts on Barack Obama, his comments on same-sex marriage as it was working its way up the courts, and why African Americans shifted from the Republican to the Democratic Party. I became interested in Thomas Sowell in particular after finding out he was very influential on the young Clarence Thomas.
Both the article and interview gave me new things to think about as I wonder how we got where we are today. I think I'll give Sowell's book a read.
Back in 2010, economist and conservative intellectual Thomas Sowell published the book Dismantling America. The Hoover Institution interviewed him about it, and he talked about changes in the US across the 20th century in explaining how our nation is being taken apart. Some highlights of the interview were his comments on patriotism, his childhood in the Harlem public schools, his thoughts on Barack Obama, his comments on same-sex marriage as it was working its way up the courts, and why African Americans shifted from the Republican to the Democratic Party. I became interested in Thomas Sowell in particular after finding out he was very influential on the young Clarence Thomas.
Both the article and interview gave me new things to think about as I wonder how we got where we are today. I think I'll give Sowell's book a read.
A Reality Show for the Hall
Popular Mechanics has an article on the History Channel's show, Forged in Fire.
There are some cool photos of forging and some of the contestants' blades with the PM article, and it looks like you can watch the full episodes at the History Channel's site.
History's newest competition show ... challenges smiths from across the country to, in the first of three rounds, forge a sturdy, deadly knife under a strict time limit. Following rigorous testing and an elimination, the smiths must then create a suitable hilt for their knife. Finally, when only two smiths remain, they have a week to replicate a particular historical weapon that not only retains its edge and cuts clean, but is period-accurate. The winner of each episode walks away with $10,000.
The show's three judges determine whose steel is most worthy of the prize. Baker, a veteran of Spike's Deadliest Warrior and Hollywood prop man, is the authority on historical accuracy and aesthetic beauty. Mastersmith J. Neilson examines the technical qualities and tests the durability of the swords, while martial artist Doug Marcaida determines how effective the weapons would actually be in their natural habitat: combat.
Stirring the pot is Wil Willis, a former ranger and pararescueman ...
There are some cool photos of forging and some of the contestants' blades with the PM article, and it looks like you can watch the full episodes at the History Channel's site.
Dystopian America
I recently read Dan Simmons's 2011 dystopian novel, Flashback.
From the back cover:
Simmons draws on the events of the last few decades, ending historically with the first years of the Obama administration, and offers a very dark, possible future. There are ongoing race wars, a new Mexico has reclaimed large swathes of the southwest, Texas is again an independent republic, and most Americans, including the hero, care far more about reliving their glory days than solving the problems.
Although it's science fiction, this is at heart a pulp detective novel with dark twists and turns along the way to solving a murder. Despite its 550 pages, it moves quickly and is a pretty good read. Simmons occasionally takes a break from the action to preach to the reader about obscure things like the disastrous effects of national debt and enabling Iran, but it didn't really diminish how much I enjoyed the book. (Maybe because I agree with much of what he says?) I don't want to spoil the ending, but I will say that it is unusual. If you enjoy these kinds of stories, I highly recommend it.
As a last note, parts of the book feature trucker convoys through the anarchic wastelands of the American West which reminded me a lot of the song Grim posted back at the end of June:
From the back cover:
Some twenty years from now, the United States is near total collapse. But 85 percent of the population doesn't care: They're addicted to flashback, a drug that allows its users to re-experience the best moments of their lives. After former detective Nick Bottom's wife died in a car accident, he started going under the flash to be with her; now an addict, he's lost his job and is estranged from his teenage son.
Nick may be a tortured soul but he's still a good cop, so he's hired by a top government advisor to investigate the murder of the advisor's son. Soon Nick becomes the one man who can change the course of an entire nation turning away from tomorrow to live in the past.
Simmons draws on the events of the last few decades, ending historically with the first years of the Obama administration, and offers a very dark, possible future. There are ongoing race wars, a new Mexico has reclaimed large swathes of the southwest, Texas is again an independent republic, and most Americans, including the hero, care far more about reliving their glory days than solving the problems.
Although it's science fiction, this is at heart a pulp detective novel with dark twists and turns along the way to solving a murder. Despite its 550 pages, it moves quickly and is a pretty good read. Simmons occasionally takes a break from the action to preach to the reader about obscure things like the disastrous effects of national debt and enabling Iran, but it didn't really diminish how much I enjoyed the book. (Maybe because I agree with much of what he says?) I don't want to spoil the ending, but I will say that it is unusual. If you enjoy these kinds of stories, I highly recommend it.
As a last note, parts of the book feature trucker convoys through the anarchic wastelands of the American West which reminded me a lot of the song Grim posted back at the end of June:
That explains it
From a three-part New Yorker article about sleep disorders:
If you sleep six hours a night for twelve days, Adusumilli says—and that’s about how much many Americans sleep all year round—your cognitive and physical performance becomes virtually indistinguishable from that of someone who has been awake for twenty-four hours straight. (The same effect is produced by six days of four-hour nights.) And the performance of someone who has been awake for twenty-four hours straight is similar to that of someone with a blood alcohol level of 0.1 per cent. In other words, “normal” amounts of sleep deprivation have us acting like we’re drunk. (Charles Czeisler recalls presenting these facts to a Times journalist; when the journalist handed in the story, the editor said it couldn’t possibly be true. Most people in the newsroom were sleep-deprived, and they still managed to produce the Times every day. Surely an intoxicated newsroom would be incapable of such a feat.)In my whole life, I've almost never used an alarm clock to wake up in the morning unless I had a plane to catch. It's one reason I don't like traveling.
Mismatched sets
Laura, a young woman in Bogota notices a man in a butcher shop, William, who looks so like Jorge, one of her co-workers, that she assumes she's caught him moonlighting. She takes a picture of him back to Jorge, who is struck by the resemblance. Jorge shows the picture to another friend:
"Tell me what you think of this photo," he told his friend, handing him the phone.
You look fine, the friend said.
"Except it’s not me," Jorge said. He could not stop staring at Laura’s phone.
. . . Jorge moved to his desktop computer so he could see the images more closely. He clicked once more on the photo of William and the friend holding shot glasses. Now that the image was large, he could examine what he had failed, incredibly, to notice when he looked at the photo on his phone. He leaned in close, his nose practically touching the screen. The man’s hair was slicked up like a rooster’s crown, and the shirt was all wrong. But there was the full lower lip and thick brown hair that Jorge knew well. The buttons on the man’s shirt were straining slightly at the hint of a potbelly, in a way that was intimately familiar. Jorge felt a rush of confusion, and then his stomach dropped. The friend sitting next to his double had a face that Jorge knew better than his own: It was the face of his fraternal twin brother, Carlos.
Going to the Wild
Going to go ride for a while. I think the Grandfather Games are going on right now. Might be worth stopping in.
Back Tuesday or so. Here's some relevant music to these hills, and to things Celtic.
Gentlemen Can Be Ungentlemanly If Necessary
I've long advocated being a gentleman.
To do so, though, requires that you constitute yourself a defender of your country and its civilization. It is not enough to say, as did Dutch humanist Oscar van den Boogaard:Today I read about men who were no gentlemen.
"I am not a warrior, but who is?" he shrugged. "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it."No, that is not a gentleman, though he wears the finest clothes and writes the finest novels, keeps the best society, and has the finest manners. He has only the accidents of a gentleman. He has nothing of its essence.
The essence is to bear arms, in defense of country and civilization. That is the real thing, the root of the tradition. The arms may be symbolic, or they may be actual. The defense must be devout.
On the afternoon of July 4 in Washington DC, a teenager with a knife boarded a crowded metro train and attacked a 24-year-old man, Kevin Joseph Sutherland, stabbing him 30 or 40 times and kicking his head repeatedly until he was dead. No one tried to stop him....The basic theory I advanced more than ten years ago in "Social Harmony" was that we need old men to be dangerous. This 18 year old was totally un-moored from our civilization. He was a murderer, an armed robber, and his society was so soft that no one in a train car full of people tried to stop him. Older, larger men did nothing. Even if they were too late to stop the killing, as knives work fast, they needed to stop him from leaving until police could arrive. A virtuous citizenry would have that courage. They would pull together to enforce the common peace.
That no one did displays not just cowardice but also a callous and unthinking selfishness. The Reddit eyewitness had no idea at the time how many more people Spires would kill, no idea if he would attack the 52-year-old woman or an elderly passenger. He just let him walk off the train into the subway, covered in Sutherland’s blood.
This is essentially the opposite of the spirit of United Flight 93—the heroic selflessness that prompted a group of courageous passengers on 9/11 to attack their hijackers, forcing them to crash the plane in a Pennsylvania field.
Maybe we've become too nice, and not rough enough. Present company excepted, of course. A dangerous world can only be tamed by what Louis L'amour used to call "men with the bark on." This guy isn't nice, he dresses and grooms himself in a terrifying manner, and he uses obscene gestures and language. Yet he has the spirit of the thing. He's a guy who dares to be an apostate from Islam, a convert to Christianity, and a proud American. He has understood what is valuable about our civilization, and he has constituted himself a defender of it.
We must do better.
Havok Journal: ISIS Must Die
How much brutality can you stand before we decide that something must be done? There is a point when we become numb to such behavior, when after that we become used to such behavior. I don’t want to be used to something like that and yet with innumerable occurrences, I can no longer feel the way I did before.UPDATE: Jim Hanson has an op-ed on ISIS today as well.
We lose a bit of our humanity when we learn to harden ourselves to something like this. I had calluses on my soul before. I don’t want them back.
Understand clearly, this is the pattern of the Islamic State; this is how they will rule and there is no turning back. No nation, which started out with brutality and bestiality has ever stepped back from that level of force. They started their campaign this way and nothing has changed in the few years since it began.
Old guys rule
The pleasure of seeing expectations confounded: young athletes get made up convincingly as geezers, then show up on the basketball court or skateboard park. It's a good joke on everyone, and no hard feelings.
Bad Habits
Same band as last night, this time singing about cocaine.
I don't care at all about cocaine -- I'm one of the last Americans to have never done any illegal drug -- but I was wondering about this song for a while. I heard it in this documentary about the Angels, and for a long time I thought it was an ode to BDSM: "everybody take a whip on me!" That turns out not to be the relevant lyric at all. It's an old tune, done by Woodie Guthrie.
By the way, forward that video to 8:24 to hear Jerry Garcia give an ode to bikers. "Is that out front, or what?"
"Are you afraid of them?"
"Sure."
"Why?"
"Because they're scary, man."
I don't care at all about cocaine -- I'm one of the last Americans to have never done any illegal drug -- but I was wondering about this song for a while. I heard it in this documentary about the Angels, and for a long time I thought it was an ode to BDSM: "everybody take a whip on me!" That turns out not to be the relevant lyric at all. It's an old tune, done by Woodie Guthrie.
By the way, forward that video to 8:24 to hear Jerry Garcia give an ode to bikers. "Is that out front, or what?"
"Are you afraid of them?"
"Sure."
"Why?"
"Because they're scary, man."
Root for the Socialists. It's Important.
There was a famous election in which David Duke ran against a legendarily corrupt politician that produced the slogan, "Vote for the crook. It's important." (The same politician produced the aphorism about political death meaning being caught in bed with "a dead girl or a live boy," the truth of which might now be questionable). At The Week, Michael Brendan Dougherty argues that conservatives should root for the socialists in Greece.
Conservatives may say that people get the governments they deserve. But the Greeks actually did something that was unthinkable in this country, kicking out both of the major parties that led them into debt-peonage. Syriza was their Tea Party, and like the Tea Party it boasts some grandiose and irresponsible rhetoric, flagrantly breaks Godwin's law, and is generally unruly.This is what I mean when I say that I expect us to have a conversation like this down the road. The ones who've been striving hardest against reckless spending are the ones being told they have to accept the consequences, including the disarmament of the Greek military at a time of national crisis. Doubtless we will hear the same things in our hour. We should look differently upon them, as we would want others to look differently upon us.
Too far?
Oh, my. I assumed the village flag in this HotAir newsclip was for funnsies, but apparently not.
Beating China on price?
Will the Chinese equivalent of WalMart soon have to start importing cheaper U.S.-made consumer goods? I wouldn't bet on it quite yet, but a Boston Consulting Group study claims that we're closing the gap in manufacturing costs and might actually get cheaper than China within three years, mostly as a result of drastically reduced fuel costs, which is turn will be mostly because of drastically reduced fracking costs.
As the article notes, all other things being equal, American companies would prefer to eliminate the risk and delay inherent in shipping "cheap" goods here from halfway around the world. We have to get pretty uncompetitive before that starts making sense, but maybe we can innovate our way out of the jam. Or maybe the EPA will find a way to outlaw fracking, to keep us from doing anything competitive or unfair or harmful to Gaia.
The Greek Perspective
We've been talking about the crisis in terms of the English-language commentary on it, and in terms of the clash between German and contemporary Anglo-Saxon economic philosophy. What we haven't really heard about is what the Greeks think, except insofar as it has been represented by Germans or Frenchmen or English or American thinkers. A Greek whose acquaintance I made in the last few days sent me this graphic to explain how the crisis looks to him.
From his perspective, the Greeks are proposing to pay 3.5B of the 4B Euros being asked. The creditors group is demanding the 4B (officially), but the way it has come up with for Greece to afford it is to violate its basic national security requirements. The Greeks were already proposing defense cuts at half the level the creditors would prefer, but -- at a time when Greece is facing a heavy influx of refugees, and possibly infiltrators, from the crises caused by ISIS and in Africa -- the creditors are demanding cuts to the bone.
Now national security in the face of an immediate threat is one of the few cases in which we often think it is reasonable for a sovereign power to run a deficit. After all, what are your alternatives?
Under this reading, the Greek position suddenly looks a lot more reasonable. They're willing to meet their creditors most of the way, but they aren't willing to commit suicide to close the remaining gap. And, by the way, isn't it really to all of Europe's advantage if Greece is able to maintain sufficient defense forces to deal with the influx of refugees? That seems like a problem it is carrying for the rest of Europe, to a certain degree. Might not the rest of Europe help to carry that burden a bit, or at least not kneecap the Greeks while the Greeks are carrying that burden for them?
Just so you know how it looks from the other side.
Oh, Really? Were There Snipers?
This story sounds familiar.
She told a story about the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. Clinton and President Obama were trying to negotiate terms with India and China—two of the fastest-developing countries in the world—for a climate change agreement.Hm.
The problem: China and India's leaders were nowhere to be found. Clinton said she and Obama "sent out scouts," who found that the leaders were meeting in a clandestine conference room. Clinton and Obama marched to the room, she said, and pushed past Chinese security guards to confront the heads of state. As a result, the assembled countries signed an accord... though much of the text was nonbinding.
Iron Lady II
For those of you who (like me) have never closely followed European politics, this WSJ article, which is linked via a Google search and won't trigger a paywall, is a fascinating summary. I didn't know that Angela Merkel was raised under communism or that she was a research physicist before going into politics. As she was the daughter of a West German Lutheran pastor who was assigned a parish in East Germany, her relationship with communism seems to have been ambivalent. She is a Christian Democrat who is openly skeptical of multi-culti assumptions, whose economic views pass for right-wing free-market enthusiasm in Europe, and who doesn't altogether despise Israel. She's also the Mean Mommy who tells countries with failing economies that they have to do their "Hausaufgabe"--their homework.
Update: This is not a bad thumbnail sketch of the bid-and-asked in the negotiations between Greece and its creditors.
Freedom Machine
Let's stick with Junior Brown for another day. I liked the last one because of some of the clever word-play. This song doesn't really have any of that, but it does have some solid looking hotrods and ratrods.
We're still close enough to the 4th for an anthem to freedom. America has 365 freedom days.
We're still close enough to the 4th for an anthem to freedom. America has 365 freedom days.
If You Put Your Thumb on the Scales Hard Enough, It All Makes Sense
The governor of Pennsylvania demonstrates a Euro-like understanding of the workings of the market. There hard liquor sales are run through state alcoholic beverage control centers, which set prices and determine how much you are allowed to buy. The legislature moved to privatize hard alcohol sales, but no. The governor vetoed the bill with this statement:
This legislation falls short of a responsible means to reform our state liquor system and to maximize revenues to benefit our citizen,” Governor Wolf said. “It makes bad business sense for the Commonwealth and consumers to sell off an asset, especially before maximizing its value. During consideration of this legislation, it became abundantly clear that this plan would result in higher prices for consumers. In the most recent case of another state that pursued the outright privatization of liquor sales, consumers saw higher prices and less selection.Turns out he's right about the last case, which was Washington state. Prices did go up after privatizing the market -- because the government slapped a huge tax increase on the stuff at the same time.
Late to the party
So I had a quiet 4th of July at home with my wife and mother-in-law (as my wife has managed to break her tibia, she is unable to walk for about the next three-four weeks), and am just now getting caught up here at the Hall. I came across Grim's An Independence Weekend Story and was reminded of a man I knew, who perhaps never fought for the Finns or Nazis, but did serve in the US Special Forces after fleeing the Soviet Union as a boy. His name was COL Sobichevsky, and I met him in 1993 during cleanup of the Defense Language Institute of Monterrey as we were expecting a Base Realignment and Closure Committee visit. So all the lower enlisted got to edge curbs, mow grass, trim hedges... all the normal spit and polish nonsense which kept up (or so the theory goes) from plotting bloody mutiny. He came up to me and asked to speak with the NCO in charge of my detail, so I pointed out SGT Schwartz and got back to work. He told my SGT to let us all know that we were doing a good job, and to let us know why we were out there... "Because those mother****ers want to close my base."
Perhaps a little insight into the man's history would give some clarity on why he made such an impression on me 20+ years ago. Vladimir Sobichevsky fled the Soviet Union in 1943 with his mother. They emigrated from a displaced persons camp to the US in 1949. Seven years later, he enlisted in the US Army, and joined the first Special Forces group. He spent his enlisted career in Special Forces and rose to the rank of Sergeant First Class, and decided to become an officer. He then proceeded to spend almost all of his commissioned career in Special Forces. For those who know of the Army's preference to "cross pollinate" officers between different branches of service, this will come as a surprise. For those who don't, then just know that this does not happen in the US Army. Officers don't get a choice in the matter, most times, unless that choice is to resign their commission. My own father went from an Armor Officer to Quartermaster. No one asked him if he wanted to. But every time orders would come down to transfer CPT (or MAJ, or LTC) Sobichevsky to another branch, his commanders would send a request up the chain of command stating that Special Forces could not spare Sobichevsky, and so he would be left in branch. One time (so the story goes) the request went before President Reagan himself who ordered Sobichevsky left in branch.
But we (of Military Intelligence) got COL Sobichevsky in 1992 for one very specific reason. In order to advance in rank to BG and stay in Special Forces, one of the BG's in charge of Special Forces Western Hemisphere or Eastern Hemisphere had to go. And neither was due to do so. So, for the first time in his Army career of nearly 40 years, COL Sobichevsky found himself out of Special Forces. We (lower enlisted soldiers) were more than a little intimidated by him, when he first arrived. And I think he was more than a little discomfited by us and our non-SF ways. One of his first acts upon being made Commandant of the school was to hold inspections of each soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine attending his school. Since he really wasn't up on the uniform regs for the other services, they were mostly judged on the shine of their boots, while we soldiers got a full uniform inspection. As I recall, he was impressed by the Marines, horrified by the sailors, lukewarm on the airmen, and we soldiers did okay (he passed by me without remark, not all were so lucky). No official condemnation or corrective action ever came because of his inspection, but it gave us our first glimpse of the new Commandant.
In researching for this article, I found that COL Sobichevsky retired in 1995 after completing his tour as Commandant. I was a little saddened by this, as it seems an ignominious close to an otherwise epic career, but a more earned retirement (39 years of service is a LONG time) would be difficult to find. I hope the good COL (Ret) is doing well, and I wish him all the best.
Perhaps a little insight into the man's history would give some clarity on why he made such an impression on me 20+ years ago. Vladimir Sobichevsky fled the Soviet Union in 1943 with his mother. They emigrated from a displaced persons camp to the US in 1949. Seven years later, he enlisted in the US Army, and joined the first Special Forces group. He spent his enlisted career in Special Forces and rose to the rank of Sergeant First Class, and decided to become an officer. He then proceeded to spend almost all of his commissioned career in Special Forces. For those who know of the Army's preference to "cross pollinate" officers between different branches of service, this will come as a surprise. For those who don't, then just know that this does not happen in the US Army. Officers don't get a choice in the matter, most times, unless that choice is to resign their commission. My own father went from an Armor Officer to Quartermaster. No one asked him if he wanted to. But every time orders would come down to transfer CPT (or MAJ, or LTC) Sobichevsky to another branch, his commanders would send a request up the chain of command stating that Special Forces could not spare Sobichevsky, and so he would be left in branch. One time (so the story goes) the request went before President Reagan himself who ordered Sobichevsky left in branch.
But we (of Military Intelligence) got COL Sobichevsky in 1992 for one very specific reason. In order to advance in rank to BG and stay in Special Forces, one of the BG's in charge of Special Forces Western Hemisphere or Eastern Hemisphere had to go. And neither was due to do so. So, for the first time in his Army career of nearly 40 years, COL Sobichevsky found himself out of Special Forces. We (lower enlisted soldiers) were more than a little intimidated by him, when he first arrived. And I think he was more than a little discomfited by us and our non-SF ways. One of his first acts upon being made Commandant of the school was to hold inspections of each soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine attending his school. Since he really wasn't up on the uniform regs for the other services, they were mostly judged on the shine of their boots, while we soldiers got a full uniform inspection. As I recall, he was impressed by the Marines, horrified by the sailors, lukewarm on the airmen, and we soldiers did okay (he passed by me without remark, not all were so lucky). No official condemnation or corrective action ever came because of his inspection, but it gave us our first glimpse of the new Commandant.
In researching for this article, I found that COL Sobichevsky retired in 1995 after completing his tour as Commandant. I was a little saddened by this, as it seems an ignominious close to an otherwise epic career, but a more earned retirement (39 years of service is a LONG time) would be difficult to find. I hope the good COL (Ret) is doing well, and I wish him all the best.
Shale crash? Not so fast
The conventional wisdom was that shale production couldn't survive the lower oil prices that it brought about by its own success in flooding the market. What's happened instead is that the pressure of lower prices has wrung cost reductions out of the market:
A Bloomberg analyst suggested that the cost of drilling services have fallen between 20% and 50% with break even prices in parts of the Permian and Eagle Ford below $40 per barrel.
Director of upstream research for Wood Mackenzie, Scott Mitchell forecast that producers could add up to 100 oil rigs by the end of the year.The article also notes that increased production will require employers to go back to the labor market with their hats in their hands, which will drive up wages and therefore production costs. That's how prices work. Meanwhile, Brits (and New Yorkers) still hate fracking, while Argentina and China lead the world in shale exploration.
Earth slows down, women and minorities hardest hit
As a result of toxic CO2, the Earth is orbiting the Sun at its slowest speed in a year. Wait, actually it's the aphelion, which happens this time of year. At 2:41 p.m. Central today, we'll be the farthest we get from the Sun in our elliptical orbit. We don't notice the resulting decrease in insolation here in the Northern Hemisphere, because the effect of being tilted toward the Sun in summer overwhelms the effect of being 3 million miles farther from the Sun than we were in January.
The slow-down, a natural aspect of orbital mechanics rather than a plot between The Heartland Institute and Big Fossil Fuel, means that summer lasts 5-1/2 days longer in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern.
The slow-down, a natural aspect of orbital mechanics rather than a plot between The Heartland Institute and Big Fossil Fuel, means that summer lasts 5-1/2 days longer in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern.
It's the thought that counts
The action so far: Greece borrowed a third of a trillion dollars. It's been obvious for some time it neither would nor could pay it back. Despite the best efforts of a lot of financial and political whizzes to obscure the issue in a series of "extend and pretend" paper blizzards, the issue came more or less to a head last week as the issue suddenly became concrete and unavoidable: the Greek banks have been closed for a week. Only little trickles of cash were available from ATMs, and that perhaps not for long.* Suddenly foreign banks aren't just the guys who are demanding payments any more: they're the guys with the buckets of cash that are needed to fill the ATMs back up. Greece faces the prospect of having to consume only what it can produce locally.
The fascinating thing about the bank closure is that the issue no longer is about whether Greece will pay back its loans; of course it won't. Four or five years ago, when it became obvious no such repayment would ever happen, the private lenders mostly sold out of the Greek debt and left it to the central banks. It's now a political issue: will governments, especially Germany, soak their taxpayers for new cash to subsidize Greece's living beyond its means indefinitely?
This being an extremely uncomfortable question, not to mention one that will inspire Spain, Italy, Portugal, and perhaps France to demand similar subsidies, all efforts are now being directed to creating the illusion that the corpse of the Greek debt is still dragging itself along by its fingernails. Everyone is frantically trying to preserve the impression that they are dealing responsibly with a troubled debt instead of deciding whether to pour shiny new Euros into the international project of making Greece a permanent welfare queen. Bloomberg has laid out an impressive array of squid ink available to ECB officials in this effort:
*Update: The Fiscal Times estimated that the Greek banks have about 1 billion euros left, which is 90 Euros per Greek.
The fascinating thing about the bank closure is that the issue no longer is about whether Greece will pay back its loans; of course it won't. Four or five years ago, when it became obvious no such repayment would ever happen, the private lenders mostly sold out of the Greek debt and left it to the central banks. It's now a political issue: will governments, especially Germany, soak their taxpayers for new cash to subsidize Greece's living beyond its means indefinitely?
This being an extremely uncomfortable question, not to mention one that will inspire Spain, Italy, Portugal, and perhaps France to demand similar subsidies, all efforts are now being directed to creating the illusion that the corpse of the Greek debt is still dragging itself along by its fingernails. Everyone is frantically trying to preserve the impression that they are dealing responsibly with a troubled debt instead of deciding whether to pour shiny new Euros into the international project of making Greece a permanent welfare queen. Bloomberg has laid out an impressive array of squid ink available to ECB officials in this effort:
Greece won’t leave the euro overnight. But it may face face three or four weeks of increasing pressure to start printing its own money.
That’s because Greek banks might soon be unable to meet European Central Bank demands for the collateral needed to keep access to Emergency Liquidity Assistance [a/k/a German cash subsidies], and the Greek government would run out of cash to pay its bills and workers....
[The ECB's] bank supervision arm will decide how to value the government-backed assets held on Greek banks’ balance sheets. Meanwhile, the central bank’s monetary policy arm will consider whether to object to collateral that lenders post to gain ELA [German cash subsidy] access from the Bank of Greece.
... Then, the banks would get calls for new collateral and might come up short. Taken together, the supervisory and ELA review could show the Greek banks to be insolvent, and Greece wouldn’t have the means to use euros to prop them up again.
At some point, a default could force a decision on Greece’s euro access. For example, if the government defaults to the ECB [again, and we really mean it this time] on July 20, that could trigger margin calls on the banking system and lead to a more generalized default....
The euro area could decide to help Greece to an “orderly exit,” through a phased withdrawal of liquidity [i.e., cut off the subsidies more gradually, like over a period of several lifetimes] or some other settlement mechanism. It could also put Greece’s euro membership on temporary suspension, a prospect raised over the weekend by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.
[Central Bankers could] convert the emergency aid into a swap line, a tool that central banks use to extend liquidity to their counterparts.
Already, the ECB is preparing a facility with its Bulgarian counterpart, as a way to offer euros to the Bulgarian banking system against eligible collateral. Neither central bank would comment on the project.Meanwhile, Greece issues dire warnings about the humanitarian crisis that Europe is causing. "Give me what I want or I'll keep hurting myself."
*Update: The Fiscal Times estimated that the Greek banks have about 1 billion euros left, which is 90 Euros per Greek.
Pensions for Poppers
I'm imagining a conversation. "I am also willing not to shoot people for a thousand bucks a month. I mean, contingently. There may be the odd month where somebody really just needs shooting. But I've got a pretty good record going, so..."
"That's just why you're not eligible. Your good record is pretty uniform. We only pay people who kill people sometimes. You weren't going to shoot people anyway."
"Well, probably, but now I'm thinking that I need to get on the list of people you want to pay off..."
They say they've had good results. I'm sure they have. What I wonder about is whether this is the sort of thing that doesn't set up perverse incentives over time.
"That's just why you're not eligible. Your good record is pretty uniform. We only pay people who kill people sometimes. You weren't going to shoot people anyway."
"Well, probably, but now I'm thinking that I need to get on the list of people you want to pay off..."
They say they've had good results. I'm sure they have. What I wonder about is whether this is the sort of thing that doesn't set up perverse incentives over time.
Imposing Law Upon the World, Two of Two (Economics)
So here is what the soccer article describes as the core German philosophical position as it relates to Greece:
So from the German perspective, the article is alleging, the important thing is to enforce the lawlike relations that allow for orderly economic progress. If that causes short-term pain (and boy is it doing that), that's too bad: we must resist the urge to allow the Greeks to make exceptions arising from self-love (i.e., not starving or having their economy choked to death because they can't spend money across borders).
Of course, the other problem is Taleb's problem of antifragility: just because the laws we think we see are really in us, and not in the economic activities to which we've assigned them, we often go wrong. We think we are considering an economic system with rational laws. In fact, there's just a bunch of human activities, which is governed not by rational laws but by (often irrational) human nature. If we don't structure the risk of going wrong in the right way, we create situations of systemic collapse when things do go wrong. That's our fault.
The article doesn't really say what it thinks the Greek philosophical position would be.* The alternative it poses is described as "Anglo-Saxon," and is the utilitarian position: the right thing to do is whatever it takes to avoid pain and restore pleasure in economic relations. Utilitarianism takes pleasure and the avoidance of pain to be the basic standard for human ethics, including economic ethics. The Greek suffering is a problem that cries out, on this model, for action to put an end to the suffering.
So, let's put all this together. The economic system we've set up isn't a thing in its own right. It doesn't have a nature, and therefore it doesn't have laws of its own. Economics is just a human activity.
Thus, the relevant laws to economics seem to be our laws, that is, they are consequences of our nature. Human nature includes the danger of starvation and the suffering of pain. It also includes this dangerous incapacity to always cleanly distinguish between what our mind tells us about the world and the world itself. Where we've set up a system that is fragile instead of antifragile, systemic collapse is our fault and should be our responsibility. In this case, the Germans' outsized influence on the system suggests outsized German responsibility. They have created much of this problem by acting as if it were possible to impose laws on economics that don't take account of human nature. All economic laws are located in us.
On the other hand, human nature also includes a robust self-love that corrupts us when we try to treat each other fairly. Greeks have behaved in accord with human nature, but not wisely or well. Making exceptions for those who have behaved unwisely is a serious business. It has to be done in a way that doesn't make exception-seeking an attractive proposition for other nations (such as Portugal or Spain).
If that can't be worked out, then we should bow to human nature and let the Greeks take care of themselves -- out of the Euro, and out from under the control of its rules. The rules are unwise, and the philosophy behind them likewise. Because it mistakes the locus of the laws, it thinks you can have economic laws that are detached from human nature. That can only lead to systemic collapses such as this one. We should expect to see more, whether the Germans or the Greeks "win," unless the whole set of rules is re-examined to take account of human nature in its fullness.
* One reason he doesn't give you the Greek philosophical position is that the Ancient Greeks didn't have one. Economics is really a modern production, and its focus on laws and lawlike relations is thoroughly modern. We get only a little talk about economic problems in Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle thinks that the household is the seat of economic production, and thus he would suggest that the problem is too much specialization: no family should put itself willingly in a position in which it can't provide for its basic needs. At the present moment, that position is untenable (though it may become tenable again in a more automated future). Specialization is necessary for economics as we practice it given our current technology.
Eucken's views are now known as ordoliberalism, and they're still very popular among German economists. A skepticism of debt is central to the philosophy, which many see influencing German policy today. As The Economist has explained in a brief history of ordoliberalism:Although this is presented as an alternative to Keynesian thought, both attempt to control what is really a natural process according to what are alleged to be 'laws of economics.' They are both trying to treat something organic as if the rules of reason and logic apply to it the same way that they do to mathematical structures. As D29 was pointing out just the other day, there is an important fact about Keynes' full position that gets lost. We all know about the 'pump priming' part, but people forget (willfully, perhaps) that Keynes believed this could only work coupled with at least some protectionist policies. After all, if I'm going to deficit-spend to prime my economy, I have to make sure the money I'm taking on debt to spend is going to create activity within my economy. That requires control. Otherwise, even if Keynes' General Theory works, we're just taking on debt to prime the Chinese economy. We're only hurting our own, even in principle.
This is an offshoot of classical liberalism that sprouted during the Nazi period, when dissidents around Walter Eucken, an economist in Freiburg, dreamed of a better economic system. They reacted against the planned economies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. But they also rejected both pure laissez-faire and Keynesian demand management.This showed up after the financial crisis of 2008. The Germans wrote a "debt brake" in their constitution, the Economist noted, that seeks to balance state and federal budgets, and they have tried to bring the philosophy to other European nations as well.
The result was a school that was close both in personal contacts and in its content to the Austrian school associated with Friedrich Hayek. The two shared a view that deficit spending for demand management was foolish. Ordoliberalism differed, however, in believing that capitalism requires a strong government to create a framework of rules which provide the order (ordo in Latin) that free markets need to function most efficiently.
From the original ordoliberals sprang one big idea for state intervention when cartels dominated the economy: a muscular antitrust policy. A second was a strict monetary policy that focused rigidly and exclusively on price stability. A third was the enforcement of Haftung, which means not just liability but also responsibility. Germany has tougher insolvency laws than America or Britain, for instance.
...the Great Thinker actually came out for stringent protectionism and economic autarky six years before he published the General Theory and for good and logical reasons that his contemporary followers choose to completely ignore. Namely, protectionism and autarky are an absolutely necessary correlate to state management of the business cycle and related efforts to improve upon the unguided results generated by business, labor and investors on the free market. Indeed, Keynes took special care to make sure that his works were always translated into German, and averred that Nazi Germany was the ideal test bed for his economic remedies.I wouldn't say it was entirely fair to suggest a necessary tie between Keynes and Nazis, but we can see that the German philosophical outlook is primed to believe in this kind of approach. They are thinking about economics in terms of lawlike relations between actors. They are thinking about it in terms of an artificial environment of economic activity in which the laws of the mind apply with full force in spite of the nature of things. An important part of keeping economics lawlike and predictable is to control the entry of non-lawlike forces. What kinds of forces are not lawlike? Self-love was Kant's great example: that force that calls us to make exceptions for ourselves from the rules.
Eighty years on from Keynes’ incomprehensible ode to statist economics and thorough-going protectionism, the idea of state management of the business cycle in one country is even more preposterous.
So from the German perspective, the article is alleging, the important thing is to enforce the lawlike relations that allow for orderly economic progress. If that causes short-term pain (and boy is it doing that), that's too bad: we must resist the urge to allow the Greeks to make exceptions arising from self-love (i.e., not starving or having their economy choked to death because they can't spend money across borders).
Of course, the other problem is Taleb's problem of antifragility: just because the laws we think we see are really in us, and not in the economic activities to which we've assigned them, we often go wrong. We think we are considering an economic system with rational laws. In fact, there's just a bunch of human activities, which is governed not by rational laws but by (often irrational) human nature. If we don't structure the risk of going wrong in the right way, we create situations of systemic collapse when things do go wrong. That's our fault.
The article doesn't really say what it thinks the Greek philosophical position would be.* The alternative it poses is described as "Anglo-Saxon," and is the utilitarian position: the right thing to do is whatever it takes to avoid pain and restore pleasure in economic relations. Utilitarianism takes pleasure and the avoidance of pain to be the basic standard for human ethics, including economic ethics. The Greek suffering is a problem that cries out, on this model, for action to put an end to the suffering.
So, let's put all this together. The economic system we've set up isn't a thing in its own right. It doesn't have a nature, and therefore it doesn't have laws of its own. Economics is just a human activity.
Thus, the relevant laws to economics seem to be our laws, that is, they are consequences of our nature. Human nature includes the danger of starvation and the suffering of pain. It also includes this dangerous incapacity to always cleanly distinguish between what our mind tells us about the world and the world itself. Where we've set up a system that is fragile instead of antifragile, systemic collapse is our fault and should be our responsibility. In this case, the Germans' outsized influence on the system suggests outsized German responsibility. They have created much of this problem by acting as if it were possible to impose laws on economics that don't take account of human nature. All economic laws are located in us.
On the other hand, human nature also includes a robust self-love that corrupts us when we try to treat each other fairly. Greeks have behaved in accord with human nature, but not wisely or well. Making exceptions for those who have behaved unwisely is a serious business. It has to be done in a way that doesn't make exception-seeking an attractive proposition for other nations (such as Portugal or Spain).
If that can't be worked out, then we should bow to human nature and let the Greeks take care of themselves -- out of the Euro, and out from under the control of its rules. The rules are unwise, and the philosophy behind them likewise. Because it mistakes the locus of the laws, it thinks you can have economic laws that are detached from human nature. That can only lead to systemic collapses such as this one. We should expect to see more, whether the Germans or the Greeks "win," unless the whole set of rules is re-examined to take account of human nature in its fullness.
* One reason he doesn't give you the Greek philosophical position is that the Ancient Greeks didn't have one. Economics is really a modern production, and its focus on laws and lawlike relations is thoroughly modern. We get only a little talk about economic problems in Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle thinks that the household is the seat of economic production, and thus he would suggest that the problem is too much specialization: no family should put itself willingly in a position in which it can't provide for its basic needs. At the present moment, that position is untenable (though it may become tenable again in a more automated future). Specialization is necessary for economics as we practice it given our current technology.
Greferendum
Early results suggest that the Greek people have issued a resounding statement: "No, you must continue sending us boatloads of money." Yay?
Taste and judgment
From C.S. Lewis, "The Seeing Eye," an essay on the difficulty of separating moral judgments from aesthetic or natural preferences:
Being fallen creatures we tend to resent offences against our taste, at least as much as, or even more than, offence against our conscience or reason; and we would dearly like to be able--if only we can find any plausible argument for doing so--to inflict upon the man whose writing (perhaps for reasons utterly unconnected with good and evil) has afflicted us like a bad smell, the same kind of condemnation which we can inflict on him who has uttered the false and the evil. The tendency is easily observed among children; friendship wavers when you discover that a hitherto trusted playmate actually likes prunes. But even for adults it is 'sweet, sweet, sweet poison' to feel able to imply 'thus saith the Lord' at the end of every expression of our pet aversions. To avoid this horrible danger we must perpetually try to distinguish, however closely they get entwined both by the subtle nature of the facts and by the secret importunity of our passions, those attitudes in a writer which we can honestly and confidently condemn as real evils, and those qualities in his writing which simply annoy and offend us as men of taste. This is difficult, beause the latter are often so much more obvious and provoke such a very violent response. The only safe course seems to me to be this: to reserve our condemnation of attitudes for attitudes univerally acknowledged to be bad by the Christian conscience speaking in agreement with Scripture and ecumenical tradition.... For our passions are always urging us in the opposite direction, and if we are not careful criticism may become a mere excuse for taking revenge on books whose smell we dislike by erecting our temperamental antipathies into pseudo-moral judgements.
Imposing Law Upon the World, One of Two (Metaphysics)
I was asked to talk about an article that tries to explain the Greek financial crisis using a Monty Python sketch about (Ancient) Greek versus (Modern) German philosophy. The Greeks are the good guys here, and the winners of the soccer match, but the author's whole point is to explain how the Germans are focused on trying to establish and enforce rules.
Unfortunately, I don't think the author correctly describes the philosophy, which is going to make it harder to understand. Here's what he says:
There is some truth to this position, as is made clear by the example of the banana. If the body were simply a physical instrument, such that the eyes were merely receiving light waves which were merely translated into images by the brain, bananas would change color with changing light conditions like other things do. That's the way this article from LiveScience describes the process, and it's what would be true if the process works the way they think it does: if the body was a machine, so to speak.
In fact, under any natural lighting condition, your mind will report it to you as banana yellow.
Now, the first thing you'll notice is that Kant isn't quite right: we have just managed to learn something about the thing itself, the thing outside of our minds. And we've managed to find, through science, an example of a place in which the apparent laws are products of the mind and not of the thing. There's this huge division in German philosophy since Kant, between those who think that lawlike ideas are real (Hegel) and those who think that ideas about the world are often totally unreliable (Wittgenstein). The science gives us a middle way.
Greek philosophy, being much older, believes the laws are in the things, and the things are real. If you kick a ball something different will happen than if you kick a dog, and the reason for the difference is that the ball and the dog have different natures. The things are different, and their natural or essential differences will produce different results.
That's more like the scientific position, oddly enough, than the Modern position is. It's why we can say that bananas aren't "really" yellow the way we think they are: we look at the thing, find out what wavelengths of light its skin are reflecting, and then see that our eyes are treating those wavelengths differently in some cases than in banana cases. Thus, we say (as the Greeks) that the nature of the banana produces skin that reflects light of a certain wavelength, but that it's our nature -- our evolved nature -- that makes us see a favored food source as brightly outlined in all the lighting conditions our ancestors would experience. Both are lawlike: the banana's genetics reliably produces skin of a certain kind, and our evolved nature reliably produces minds of a certain kind. The important question for answering the German problem is figuring out where the law is.
Unfortunately, I don't think the author correctly describes the philosophy, which is going to make it harder to understand. Here's what he says:
The basic question for all these thinkers is whether the patterns we see in the world around us really reflect patterns that exist in nature or are simply attempts by our minds to structure what we see. For many German philosophers, a key effort was to understand the principles governing societies.Kant is described as giving an account by which nothing happens except through law, and indeed he does say that in the Groundwork. However, Kant's already talking about the world as understood within the mind. What Kant argues in his first critique is that we can't understand the world as it really is, but only as it appears to us, at which it is already being filtered through what he called a "transcendental apperception." For example, your mind takes sound waves and light waves and a sensation of gravity and tactile sensations, and these are all coming in from different organs on different nerves. But it presents you a picture of a soccer game in which you are participating. Is there really a soccer game? You can't know that even in principle. You can only know about the appearances in the mind.
This is a particular issue for economists, who seek patterns in the mass of statistics coming out of stock markets and labor surveys. It's not always enough, though, to look at how markets and prices behave and describe the mathematical patterns they seem to follow. In practice, there always seem to be exceptions to the rules, sometimes catastrophic ones, which suggest that those maybe patterns have more to do with our minds than the natural world itself.
"Anglo-Saxon economists are guided by the utilitarian philosophy of John Stuart Mill or Jeremy Bentham, asking merely if a policy works," The Economist recently wrote. "Germans side with Immanuel Kant, believing that nothing works except through law, and are horrified when the [European Central Bank] strays from its narrow mandate."
There is some truth to this position, as is made clear by the example of the banana. If the body were simply a physical instrument, such that the eyes were merely receiving light waves which were merely translated into images by the brain, bananas would change color with changing light conditions like other things do. That's the way this article from LiveScience describes the process, and it's what would be true if the process works the way they think it does: if the body was a machine, so to speak.
In fact, under any natural lighting condition, your mind will report it to you as banana yellow.
What color is a banana? A banana is yellow in the sunlight and in the moonlight. It is yellow on a sunny day, on a cloudy day, on a rainy day. It is yellow at dawn and at dusk. The color of the banana appears constant to the human eye under all these conditions, despite the fact that the actual wavelengths of the light reflected by the surface of the banana under these varied conditions are different. Objectively, they are not the same color all the time. However, the human eye and color recognition system can compensate for these varied conditions because they all occurred during the course of the evolution of the human vision system, and can perceive the objectively varied colors as constantly yellow.So the law we infer -- "if it is a banana, then it is yellow" -- is actually not a product of the world, but a product of the mind. The evolved mind is coloring the fruit in a lawlike way. Once we move to kinds of lighting that our eyes didn't evolve to see, the law turns out not to be real. It was only a product of our minds.
So a banana looks yellow under all conditions, except in a parking lot at night. Under the sodium vapor lights commonly used to illuminate parking lots, a banana does not appear natural yellow. This is because the sodium vapor lights did not exist in the ancestral environment, during the course of the evolution of the human vision system, and the visual cortex is therefore incapable of compensating for them.
Now, the first thing you'll notice is that Kant isn't quite right: we have just managed to learn something about the thing itself, the thing outside of our minds. And we've managed to find, through science, an example of a place in which the apparent laws are products of the mind and not of the thing. There's this huge division in German philosophy since Kant, between those who think that lawlike ideas are real (Hegel) and those who think that ideas about the world are often totally unreliable (Wittgenstein). The science gives us a middle way.
Greek philosophy, being much older, believes the laws are in the things, and the things are real. If you kick a ball something different will happen than if you kick a dog, and the reason for the difference is that the ball and the dog have different natures. The things are different, and their natural or essential differences will produce different results.
That's more like the scientific position, oddly enough, than the Modern position is. It's why we can say that bananas aren't "really" yellow the way we think they are: we look at the thing, find out what wavelengths of light its skin are reflecting, and then see that our eyes are treating those wavelengths differently in some cases than in banana cases. Thus, we say (as the Greeks) that the nature of the banana produces skin that reflects light of a certain wavelength, but that it's our nature -- our evolved nature -- that makes us see a favored food source as brightly outlined in all the lighting conditions our ancestors would experience. Both are lawlike: the banana's genetics reliably produces skin of a certain kind, and our evolved nature reliably produces minds of a certain kind. The important question for answering the German problem is figuring out where the law is.
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