Arnold Kling is doing a lecture series. They’re all good.

The nonfinancial sector wants to hold risk-free short-term assets and issue risky long-term liabilities. To accommodate this, the financial sector does the opposite. If the financial sector suddenly contracts, the nonfinancial sector gets stuck with an asset mix that is riskier and more long-term than it wants and a liability mix that is less risky and shorter term than it wants. The reaction to this unwanted mix can cause a recession. That is how the financial sector affects the real economy.

And that’s the best brief explanation of the subject that I’ve ever seen.

Read it.

Many people assume that Canadians enjoy universal healthcare coverage while receiving the same quality and quantity of medical goods and services as Americans. But the alleged superiority of single-payer health care is not consistent with the evidence. The reality is that, on average, Americans spend more of their income on healthcare than Canadians do but get faster access to more and better medical resources.

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The closest comparable experience to what Russia went through when the Communists took over, I think, was the last serious attempt to eradicate Christianity under Diocletian — except that in Russia they government knew who all of the Christian clergy were. Things got pretty grim for a while.

It’s crucial to remember that all of this was taking place only a few generations after the Communists closed 98 percent of Russia’s churches and, in one brief period, killed 200,000 bishops, priests and nuns and then sent another 500,000 believers to die in labor camps. Millions later died in Stalinist purges. KGB records indicate that most clergy were simply shot or hanged. But others were crucified on church doors, slaughtered on their altars or stripped naked, doused with water and left outdoors in winter.

Look up “ROCOR” in Wikipedia for a brief discussion of the issues.

Read it.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

The retailers, in fact, have shoved a lot of their old inventory holding costs onto consumers by, for example, selling them cases rather than individual items. Part of the demand for bigger houses and bigger vehicles that has proven so expensive to us as a society comes from consumers taking on more of the burden of storing and transporting goods.

Read it.

When reading science fiction, I always have a hard time accepting an alien species unless it’s at least as strange as the Japanese.

Steve Sailer welcomes the Washington Post to the reality-based community.

The Hog isn’t doing politics any more. Heavens, no. Wouldn’t even think about it.

Liberalism appeals to coddled ivory-tower eggheads with high IQs and the common sense of lemmings, but it also appeals very strongly to people who are either unintelligent or ill-informed. Like many conservatives, I have had the experience of explaining undisputed, verifiable facts to self-proclaimed liberals, and then having them tell me they agree with conservative positions. Awareness tends to lead to conservative opinions. But we live in a nation which no longer educates its people, and a huge percentage of Americans know almost nothing and make decisions purely on the basis of emotion or a desire for approval from others.

Yup, just religion and cooking and guns and maybe tools. That’s all. No politics.

Read it.

Some data that seem incongruous.

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An interesting topic worthy of discussion.

I would buy such a device, and hook it up to my doorbell. But that’s me.

Alex Tabarrok sees the wolf at the door — or, at least, coming down the road.

It’s not just Social Security and Medicare which are underfunded.  State governments have vastly underfunded public pensions.

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, has started a new blog for the non-religious right. The linked article is a fine example of what you can find there.

When I said that “Any given theology is of zero interest to anyone outside the tribe,” I meant of interest in the way that a real intellectual discipline — math, biology, history — is of general interest. From the fact that a person wants to study microbiology, I can deduce nothing about his tribe or fictive tribe (e.g. religion). From the fact that a person wants to make a serious, engaged, non-hostile study of Islamic theology, I can deduce with high probability that he is a Muslim.

Further indicia of quality are that Walter Olson and Heather MacDonald blog there. Well worth your time.

Read it.

I love these charts that people create to try to peg others politically.

Read it.

As oil prices recede from all-time dollar highs and some of the hot air gets let out of energy policy debates, it’s a good time to remember that here’s a key concept missing from almost every popular discussion of the subject: energy density. Specialist economists get it, but almost nobody else does. It is important to understanding why most forms of “alternative energy” are mirages, and what a sane energy policy would actually look like.

Wisdom. Attend.

Read it.

One of the major surprises I received when I moved out of childhood into the real world, was the degree to which the world is stratified by genuine competence.

But entering the real world, I found out that the average mortal really can’t be an executive.  Even the average manager can’t function without a higher-level manager above them.  What is it that makes an executive?  I don’t know, because I’m not a professional in this area.  If I had to take a guess, I would call it “functioning without recourse” – living without any level above you to take over if you falter, or even to tell you if you’re getting it wrong.  To just get it done, even if the problem requires you to do something unusual, without anyone being there to look over your work and pencil in a few corrections.

Read it.

Whenever someone exhorts you to “think outside the box”, they usually, for your convenience, point out exactly where “outside the box” is located.  Isn’t it funny how nonconformists all dress the same…

Read it.

Sign me up. I’d like to see how many Democrats in Congress could solve a quadratic equation — or recognize the quadratic formula if they saw it.

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Indeed — why not?

What about international law? Article 110 of the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Convention — ratified by most nations, but not by the U.S. — enjoins naval ships from simply firing on suspected pirates. Instead, they are required first to send over a boarding party to inquire of the pirates whether they are, in fact, pirates. A recent U.N. Security Council resolution allows foreign navies to pursue pirates into Somali waters — provided Somalia’s tottering government agrees — but the resolution expires next week. As for the idea of laying waste, Stephen Decatur-like, to the pirate’s prospering capital port city of Eyl, this too would require U.N. authorization. Yesterday, a shippers’ organization asked NATO to blockade the Somali coast. NATO promptly declined.

Read it.

Not really news, but a good reminder that a lot of people out there are just stone-stupid.

Steve Sailer has a suspicious mind.

Spending hundreds of billions of the taxpayers’ dollars to keep illegal immigrant construction workers previously employed putting up unneeded McMansions in exurban Las Vegas from leaving the U.S. is a small price to pay for future Democratic dominance.

The Hog isn’t blogging on politics any more. Nope, not a bit. Wouldn’t even think about it.

The gun-haters among us don’t like sporting guns much. But they truly, TRULY hate self-defense guns. And there are a lot of Americans who will stand up for hunters, yet who will abandon people who own guns strictly for self-defense. This is what the Obama regime is counting on. Politically, it’s much easier to take away a Bushmaster than a squirrel gun. So Obama says he sympathizes with “sportsmen.” And Americans who aren’t bright or attentive assume he is referring to all gun owners. It’s a sleazy tactic. It’s obvious to smart people. But most Americans are not geniuses; they can’t see it.

See? No politics here.

Read it.

I have a simpler way:

1. Offer to buy.
2. Offer to lend.
3. Offer to drive.

This will guarantee you more “friends” than a rational person would want to have.

Having friends is vastly overrated. Mostly they wind up owing you money, and when you need help there’s always something that they need to do instead. Can’t see that having friends gets you anything.

The Hog has odd opinions about food.

I don’t understand why the British would avoid Mexican food. It’s not like eating Mexican food requires especially healthy teeth.

If I were Rachel, I just flat wouldn’t go. Not until I located some Mexican joints or confirmed that I could fix my own, using ingredients from English grocery stores. And I’d be scouting out places that serve Indian food. It’s not an ideal substitute, but it comes closer than toad in the hole.

And other subjects.

I used to watch Horatio Hornblower DVDs and marvel at the bravery of the sailors. Cannonballs would come flying into their ships, ripping off arms and legs, and the sailors stayed at their posts, shooting back and calling the French fairies. But bravery had nothing to do with it. They were plastered. Get me drunk enough, and I’ll fight the French, too. Well, okay, I see how ridiculous that looks. Replace “French” with a nationality that fights back. … A stint in the navy would be like climbing into a portal and experiencing the Seventies as Dennis Hopper. Or like going to a typical American college.

Tyler Cowen explains it all to you.

Read it.

There’s a universal truth for you.

The Hog looks at current economic affairs.

The Japanese used to make bad cars. They improved. The Koreans make good cars. The Chinese are going to make good cars, too, and they’re going to be dirt cheap. And it’s going to happen right when our bloated car industry is supposed to start paying off on our giant welfare check. Am I the only person who sees a problem here? Would you invest in a failing Burger King, if you knew the Chinese were going to open a similar restaurant next door, charging half as much for the same food?

No.

The UAW needs to get a grip. Their wages are going to plummet, with or without a bailout. That is a certainty. They can’t compete with the Japanese, and when the Chinese show up in force, they’re going to be annihilated. They should be working with the carmakers to increase efficiency and get wages in line with revenues. The free punch and pie are things of the past. The fifty-year-long frat party is OVER.

Read it.

Historically speaking, the music that white people have kept on life support for the longest period of time is Jazz.  Thanks largely to public radio, bookstores, and coffee shops, Jazz has carved out a niche in white culture that is not yet ready to be replaced by Indie Rock.  But the biggest role that Jazz plays in white culture is in the white fantasy of leisure. All white people believe that they prefer listening to jazz over watching television.  This is not true.

Read it.

When people are spending their own money they seek value for every penny and they keep an eye on things. The businesses they deal with know they have to provide a good service or the customers will go elsewhere. The more goods and services that are subject to those market pressures, the better the quality of what is provided and the better the value for money. It has long surprised me that some people call for government to nationalise businesses and run them “for the people”. After all, who would you trust more to provide groceries of good quality at a good price, the government or Tesco? Tesco makes huge profits whilst delivering excellent value for money, it is the best possible evidence that profit is a good thing not a burden.

Jerry Pournelle has been thinking about politics longer than I’ve been alive.

The Republican Party has fallen victim to Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy. The Iron Law states that in every organization there will be two factions. One will be dedicated to the goals of the organization> Examples are dedicated class room teachers in teacher unions, the Old Guard members of the Sierra Club from the days when you could not join the Sierra Club unless you had been backpacking in the High Sierra, etc.; we all know such people. The other faction will be dedicated to the organization itself without any regard to the organization’s actual reason for existence. Examples are teacher’s union officials, many administrators, the current management of the Sierra Club, etc..; we all know those people, too. Pournelle’s Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization.

Steve Sailer. Need I say more?

Christopher Hitchens takes a hard look at the Obama Nation.

Read it.

The Federal Government owns more than half of Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Alaska and it owns nearly half of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. … It is time for a sale.  Selling even some western land could raise hundreds of billions of dollars – perhaps trillions of dollars – for the Federal government at a time when the funds are badly needed and no one want to raise taxes.  At the same time, a sale of western land would improve the efficiency of land allocation.

Read it.

I’ll bet it works really well on no-longer-needed bodies.

“And what do you do, Mr Soprano?”

“Waste managment consultant.”

Turn on the lights, and make Jimmy Hoffa more useful than he ever dreamed of being.

FatBigot tells the truth, and let the fish-and-chips fall where they may.

I heard someone from one of the lucky councils warbling on the radio this afternoon about “empowering” the obese to get to a gym. The obese don’t need empowering, we know where the gym is, we could walk there if we wanted to or get the bus, that’s all the power it takes. We don’t go because we don’t want to.

And then there are the healthy eating initiatives. Lose so much weight and you get a voucher for a free sprig of broccoli. No, sorry, that is not what taxpayers’ money is for.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

Read it.

This may seem someone esoteric, but we’re going to see a lot of push for “New Deal” type programs during the Obama Nation, and citizens need to know what was actually going on back then.

Read it.

Writing a novel, going vegan, or sending their future kid to public school are just a few of these great breakable promises.  But by far the most common self improvement promise is to learn a new language.

Latin and Greek aren’t among the approved languages, of course; they’re too reactionary, and reading classical literature might undermine the proper progressive mindset.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

– I’ve never seen much evidence that Obama has any true respect for white feminists. He seems to see feminists as whiny me-too victims who try to hog the spotlight from the real victims: blacks. The Throw Grandma Under the Bus incident which he brought up this year to excuse Rev. Wright exemplifies this.

Hmmmm.

You’ll notice that Obama had his wife spend the last half of the campaign year acting like a devoted homebody who could barely bear to be away from her children for minutes. Of course, that raises the question: if Michelle’s priorities are so home-centric, what in the world was she getting paid $317,000 for in 2005? Was this money just intended as a payoff to Obama to protect the interests of a huge private hospital?’

Oh, ya think?

Read it.

We have the technology.

Mencius Moldbug explains it all.

Basically, dear Americans, this disqualifies you from voting ever again. You’ve been pwned. You’re out.

There are – or at least, were – lots of plausible candidates for chief executive who don’t have any kind of murky ties to murderous political fanatics. I mean, duh, you know, if history teaches us any lessons, I think one of them is: “don’t elect leaders with murky ties to murderous political fanatics.”

If nothing else, this is the first time I’ve seen “bezoar” used since I first encountered it in law school.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the current euphemism for “communist” is “progressive.” This is not even a new usage. My father’s parents always called themselves “progressives,” for instance. In fact they were CPUSA members. (Before Grandma fell down the stairs at Juilliard and smashed her frontal lobe, one of the last messages she imparted to me was that Frank Rich writes a really great column.) “Progressive” is also all over the place in my ’80s Soviet Life magazines. And La Wik helpfully informs us that the Congressional Progressive Caucus is (a) the largest voting bloc of Democrats in the House, and (b) the affiliation of the Speaker. And now, of course, the President. Summary: the Cold War is over. Communism won.

This post is just full of so many good things that it’s hard to pick out the best ones.

History remembers a number of things. One of them is that, over the last four centuries at least, the left tends to win and the right tends to lose. If you’re a young, ambitious man or woman, power is what you crave, and scruples are not your thing, history tells you: go as left as possible. Join the SDS, not the JBS. March with Martin Luther King, not Louise Day Hicks. Be a Patriot, not a Loyalist. And so on. Exceptions exist – but they are exceptions.

The fact that Billy Ayers has indeed become one of the most successful educators in the United States, without so much as apologizing for his crimes, tells us quite a bit about the terminal malignancy of the American polity. It also tells us quite a bit about how a Barack Obama could be elected: unless he or she grows up in some kind of cloistered uber-Christian cult, it is simply impossible in the present day for an American child to reach voting age without being indoctrinated in Ayers-style, “small c” communism.

This is the great thing about President Obama’s “change.” What he means by “change” is, of course, “power” – as in the phrase, “change the world.” Everyone wants to change the world. That is, they want to exert personal influence on the world. That is, they want power. This will get them laid, or so they think. It’s really not all that complicated.

As for conservatives and mainstream libertarians: forget it. You’ve lost. You’re in roughly the same position as a Southern segregationist in 1968. History may or may not vindicate your cause, but it has determined your chance of victory, which is zero. If you have a life, go live it. If not, now is probably a good time to get one.

Read it.

So I am getting to work clearing my desk. Then we can get to work building a new political party. We’ll have a lot of help from Obama, and even more from those that Jimmy Carter called “rapacious wolves.” He was speaking of Democratic Party Committee Chairmen who couldn’t even cooperate to divide the spoils. They helped build the Reagan Party and they’ll help again. Only this time we have to avoid the Country Club elements like Bush I and Bush II.

What he said….

The Hog isn’t doing politics any more. Absolutely not. Wouldn’t even think about it.

We often talk about the common sense of the American voter and how it will save us, but the truth is, that’s pride talking. We are just as clueless as people in hellholes like India and Haiti, when it comes to choosing leaders. Think about it. SOMEBODY elected Cynthia McKinney and David Duke. If people like that can be elected, Americans are capable of electing the next Hitler or Castro.

Nope. God, guns, and gardening is all he’s about these days.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

Read it.

There is still some common sense left in Britain. Pity it isn’t more widespread.

The cause of the recession is easy to identify. Too many people borrowed too much money or, if you prefer, the banks lent too much money to people who could not afford to repay it. Eventually chickens came home to roost and the excess credit now has to be squeezed from the economy. Since the excess credit has been buying goods and services for years it is inevitable that reducing that credit bubble will cause fewer purchases and a downturn in the economy. Very simple. But why did banks lend too much to too many?

Read it.

Would we be eating Tyrolian-style pizza?

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, is hard core.

Hey, if it worked for Alexander and the Romans, it works for me. I only wish we had the guts to do it ourselves, as our fathers did over Germany and Japan, instead of bribing corrupt third-world gangsters with armies of illiterate peasant boys to do it for us while we strike moral poses and swoon in admiration of our own high-mindedness.

He hears from those who repent of their foolishness in attempting to work in the private sector:

What a fool I was. It was all a vast waste of time. Time that could have been better spent building up pension credits, leading to an even more munificent lifestyle!!!! Oh, it was fun while it lasted but, seriously, I should have been a mailman out of high school!! Like yourself, I have advised my grandchildren accordingly.

The Hog is relaxed.

When a government decides to take wealth from productive people and pass it around, it has to give itself new, unnatural powers in order to get the job done. It has to be able to locate wealth, and it has to be able to identify what it perceives as need, and it has to decide who deserves the money it has forcibly confiscated from working people. A small, limited government can’t do those things. To get those things done, the government will have to diminish our privacy and our property rights, and it will have to employ a lot of bureaucrats to stick their nose in our business and decide who gets what. A socialist America (truly socialist, I mean) will be like Cuba or any other socialist state. There will be boards and agencies manned by cronies of the chief executive, and they will funnel loot and power to their buddies before thinking about the public good. That’s how socialism works. Jesse Jackson has a history of going to meet CEOs and saying, “We have to get rid of this meritocracy.” That is literally the way he says it; no paraphrasing. Under socialism, government bureaucrats by the tens of thousands will be paid to say the same thing, as policy. When merit no longer determines compensation, other measures have to be used. And that means empowering bureaucrats to decide what the measures are, and to do the measuring. That’s the Obama plan.

The basic truth about modern American politics. Print that out on a piece of paper and tape it to the mirror you look into every morning.

When it comes to giving, observant Jews and Bible-believing Christians typically START at ten percent; that’s a baseline. And they make up a big portion of the “selfish” hordes that support John McCain. Obama doesn’t begin to measure up. Joe Biden is also incredibly stingy in this regard. So was Gore. So was Clinton. Then there’s Dick Cheney, who gives a colossal, multimillion-dollar portion of his income to charity. Bad, evil Dick Cheney. Giving more per month than the Obamas, Bidens, Clintons, and Gores do, combined, in a decade. Once again, I have to ask: isn’t he supposed to be greedy and full of hate? If he is, how come Al Gore’s giving amounts to a tiny fraction of one percent of Cheney’s? Pope Prius I is not living up to expectations.

The basic truth about modern American culture. Remember that one, too.

Read it.

Now, imagine if that were hydrogen….

The Hog reflects on Halloween. He’s hard to please.

Every year, I have to make sure my car isn’t outdoors, because of the vandalism. That ought to tell you all you need to know about the wholesomeness of Halloween.

Mencius Moldbug is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning….

But there are alternatives.