Cranky-D

Frederic Bastiat:

What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen

In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.
1.2

There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.
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Yet this difference is tremendous; for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa. Whence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good that will be followed by a great evil to come, while the good economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.
1.4

The same thing, of course, is true of health and morals. Often, the sweeter the first fruit of a habit, the more bitter are its later fruits: for example, debauchery, sloth, prodigality. When a man is impressed by the effect that is seen and has not yet learned to discern the effects that are not seen, he indulges in deplorable habits, not only through natural inclination, but deliberately.
1.5

This explains man’s necessarily painful evolution. Ignorance surrounds him at his cradle; therefore, he regulates his acts according to their first consequences, the only ones that, in his infancy, he can see. It is only after a long time that he learns to take account of the others.**2 Two very different masters teach him this lesson: experience and foresight. Experience teaches efficaciously but brutally. It instructs us in all the effects of an act by making us feel them, and we cannot fail to learn eventually, from having been burned ourselves, that fire burns. I should prefer, in so far as possible, to replace this rude teacher with one more gentle: foresight. For that reason I shall investigate the consequences of several economic phenomena, contrasting those that are seen with those that are not seen.

Steven Den Beste:

Get out the tinfoil hats, folks, and let us delve into the realm of raving paranoia. Is there a different way to read the news lately?

The sane answer: they’re blithering incompetents. The paranoid answer: they’re doing it on purpose.

Glenn Reynolds asks, “Why is the Gulf cleanup so slow?”

The sane answer: because the Obama administration has sold its soul to the unions, and is reluctant to do anything that would make union leaders angry.

The raving paranoid answer: Because Obama wants this oil spill to be dreadfully harmful, because it will sour Americans on drilling in the ocean, and on oil (and other fossil fuels) in general. Never waste a crisis, my friends, and this crisis can help lead all the troglodytes (that’s you and me) away from their accustomed gas guzzlers and wasteful lifestyles towards the paradise of “green” energy and sustainable lifestyles.

I’ll be making an aluminum foil hat as soon as possible.

Here is an article whose premise sounds quite interesting. I’m too busy to read it right now, but I hope it’s worth my time and yours. The executive summary written by the author:

The Western World has quietly become a civilization that undervalues men and overvalues women, where the state forcibly transfers resources from men to women creating various perverse incentives for otherwise good women to conduct great evil against men and children, and where male nature is vilified but female nature is celebrated. This is unfair to both genders, and is a recipe for a rapid civilizational decline and displacement, the costs of which will ultimately be borne by a subsequent generation of innocent women, rather than men, as soon as 2020.

As Robert Heinlein said, any civilization that does not value women and children will very soon disappear. “Women and children first,” is not just a cliche, it’s a recipe for survival. However, we cannot be sure what will happen to a civilization that undervalues men. Right now marriage is a huge risk for men, and much less so for women. While it’s true that a woman of good character would not make it that way, one cannot truly know another’s character until it is truly tested, and then, of course, it’s too late.

Here’s a piece by Victor Davis Hanson that I think is worth reading. A sample:

Then after the requisite degrees I left academia, and returned to farm 180 acres with my brother and cousin-and sadly was quickly disabused of the world of the faculty lounge.

Oh yes, I came back to Selma thinking, “I am not going to be the grouch my grandfather was, yelling at neighbors, worried all the time, nervous, seeing the world as rather hostile, hoarding a tiny stash of savings, worried as if bugs, the government, hired men, weather, and markets were out to destroy him. I’ll farm with my Bay Area manners and sort of think, “I will reset the farm, and things will at last work as they should” (not thinking that my grandfather raised three daughters, sent them to college while mortgaging the farm in the Depression, and spent on himself last, and was a saint compared to my pampered existence in the university).”
…
I was shocked to hear that, and assured him that there would be no such incitements on my part on the new age of the Davis farm. No more ‘me first’, no more disdain for newcomers and upstarts. And then after about 3 months of sizing me up (at 26, I confess looking back I was not 1/8th the man my grandfather was at 86) he began stealing water in insidious ways: taking an extra day on his turn, cutting in a day early on mine, siphoning off water at night, destroying my pressure settings, watering his vineyards on days that were on my allotment. Stealing no less! And in 1980!

Here’s how I rushed into action. First, I gave a great Obama speech on communal sharing and why the ditch would not work if everyone did what he did. Farmers simply would perish if they did not come together, and see their common shared interests. He nodded and smiled-and stole more the next week.
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Then I appealed to his minority status, and remarked how wonderful it was that he came from dire poverty abroad and now farmed over 500 acres. He growled-and stole even more.

I took the UN route and warned that that I would be forced to go get the ditch tender (a crusty, old hombre who enjoyed watching fights like these for blood sport); he pointed out that the tender was, in fact, on the alleyway across the street watching us, and meeting him for coffee in an hour.
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Then in a trance-like fashion, I went out to restore deterrence. I got a massive chain and lock, and simply shut down his communal lateral. Locked the gate so tight, he couldn’t even get a quarter-turn. He’d be lucky if he got a 100 gallons in a week. Then I got a veritable arsenal of protective weaponry, got in my pickup, drove back over to the gate, and waited with ammo, clubs, shovels, etc.

In an hour he drove up in a dust cloud. He was going to smash me, get his football playing son to strangle me, sue me, bankrupt me, hunt me down, etc. He swore and yelled-I was a disgrace to my family, a racist, a psycho, worse than my grandfather. He was going to lock my gates, steal all my water, and indeed he leveled all sorts of threats (remember the scene in Unforgiven when Eastwood walks out and screams threats to the terrified town?-that was my neighbor). I got out with large vine stake and said something to the effect (forgive me if I don’t have the verbatim transcript-it has been 29 years since then), “It’s locked until you follow the rules. Anytime you don’t, it’s locked again. Do it one more time and I weld it shut. Not a drop. So sue me.”

I left a lot of the “negotiations” out, as well as the outcome. You should go and read it yourself.

While I recognize some of the formulas, and know most of the others but have forgotten what they mean, when I see the bunny that hangs around our yard, I just think, “hey, there’s the bunny,” and not much else.

Update: sometimes I say, “Hi, bunny,” because I like to be neighborly to the critters.

Shamelessly stolen from this entry at Ace of Spades

Here is an article on what happens to health insurance costs when programs like the one the Fed is adopting in a few years are actually implemented. The opening paragraphs:

The best guide to how President Obama’s historic health-care legislation will reshape the nation’s medical marketplace and fiscal future is the pioneering model in Massachusetts. The Bay State’s reform program started in late 2006, and it shares virtually all the major features of the new federal plan.

Both programs greatly expand Medicaid coverage for low-earners, and provide heavily subsidized policies for a broad swath of the middle class. They tightly restrict the range of premiums for customers of different ages and medical conditions; they bar insurers from charging older patients, or even couch potatoes who abuse their health, anywhere near their actual cost. Both plans impose a long list of expensive benefits insurers must provide whether patients want to pay for them or not, ranging in Massachusetts from in-vitro fertilization to chiropractic services.

The article goes on and spells out what has happened to costs under such programs:

When Massachusetts launched its reform program in 2006, it already had the highest medical costs in the nation. Today, the burden is still rising far faster than wages or inflation, from those already lofty levels. A report from that state attorney general in March — remember, this is a Democratic administration — asked rhetorically “Can we expect the existing health-care market in Massachusetts to successfully contain health-care costs?” The report concluded, “To date, the answer is an unequivocal ‘no.’”

Costs are rising relentlessly for both families and for the state government. The median annual premium for family plans jumped 10% from 2007 to 2009 to $14,300 — again, that’s a substantial rise on top of an already enormous number. For small businesses, the increase was 12%. In 2006, the state spent around $1 billion on Medicaid, subsidies for medium-to-lower earners, and other health-care programs. Today, the figure is $1.75 billion. The federal government absorbed half of the increase.

The fact that government programs inevitably increase costs should not be a surprise to anyone with a functioning brain and an ability to accept a reality that exists outside their own imaginations. Hopefully we can kill this before it smothers us.

Go here and be enlightened, or perhaps just have your current view of Obama reinforced. Either way is fine with me. A sample:

Many Americans are beginning to pick up the strange vibe that, for Barack Obama, governing America is “an interesting sociological experiment,” too. He would doubtless agree that the United States is “the place on earth that, if I needed one, I would call home.” But he doesn’t, not really: It is hard to imagine Obama wandering along to watch a Memorial Day or Fourth of July parade until the job required him to. That’s not to say he’s un-American or anti-American, but merely that he’s beyond all that. Way beyond. He’s the first president to give off the pronounced whiff that he’s condescending to the job — that it’s really too small for him and he’s just killing time until something more commensurate with his stature comes along.

Wow, it turns out that government intervention in the economy was the cause of the great depression. Wow, who would have thought that the Fed could be blamed for high unemployment? I mean, threatening to raise taxes and ramming new taxes down our throats in the form of “health care reform” should have had the economy going like gangbusters! I know if I had a business I would be hiring right and left, hidden fees be damned.

I have had hamsters with better sense than the current administration.

There is a huge piece of history most of us don’t know. I didn’t know until I watched this Glenn Beck show. For the Beck haters, this isn’t one of his rants, this is a pure presentation of some facts that need to be put forward. America was not created only by old white guys.

P.J. O’Rourke speculates on the notion of creating obituaries for those living whose deaths should be celebrated. Liberals, or those with a lack of a sense of humor (but I repeat myself) need not click over and read.

I don’t think I’ve directly pointed out Iowahawk before, but he has written some really funny stuff. His latest piece is about the Sarah Palin that lives inside the head of progressives, especially the one who just moved in next door to her and is writing a book about her.

Here is an article on how Obama fit in with the Hollywood narrative of the “Black Angel.”

The first signs of the spiritual zeal that would eventually play a significant part in Obama’s election came not from Washington or Chicago but from Hollywood. Our moviemakers are adept at measuring the zeitgeist of the nation—of its liberal half, anyway—and are a powerful force in shaping it. And for more than a decade, they’ve been churning out what critics call “black-angel” movies. These films feature a white protagonist guided to enlightenment by a black character, usually of divine or supernatural origin or, at the very least, in touch with spiritual experiences that the main character lacks. With the black angel’s help, the white hero finds salvation.

via Ace

If you are at all interested in legal matters and how laws are interpreted, and the competing philosophies related to interpretation, you might want to take a look at this post from Jeff G. at protein-wisdom. The interpretation discussed is related to how I expect Supreme Court Justices to apply the constitution. I think this is important in general, but especially when we are going to have at least one new Justice appointed during the next few years.

Jonah Goldberg makes a case that Obama is following a path paved by incremental socialism. It both gives him some cover to deny what he is doing and results in a road that will never actually reach a destination. Historical references are provided as well. It’s a long read by internet standards, but I think it’s worth it.

Here.

Song parody using a Kenny Rogers classic. The performance is off-key if that bothers you, but it’s just a couple of guys in a living room somewhere.

found in the comments at PW

Here is a site that contains photos of interesting” homes, and snarky captions to go with them. It’s a nice little diversion.

Thomas Sowell:

Contrary to clever political spin that likened those who refused to join the “global warming” hysteria to people who denied the Holocaust, no one denied that climates change. Indeed, some of the climate scientists who have been the biggest critics of the current hysteria have pointed out that climates had changed back and forth, long before human beings created industrial societies or drove SUVs.

It is those who have been pushing the hysteria who have been playing fast and loose with the facts, wanting to keep crucial data from becoming public, and even “losing” some of that data that supposedly proved the most dire consequences. It has not been facts but computer models at the heart of the “global warming” crusade.

While I may not agree with the principles of the person who wrote this blog post, I have to admit that it is an epic tale. It sounds like something out of a crime drama. I definitely would not want to be the person who lived through this.

via comradescott on twitter

Mark Stein:

Is America set for decline? It’s been a grand run. The country’s been the leading economic power since it overtook Britain in the 1880s. That’s impressive. Nevertheless, over the course of that century and a quarter, Detroit went from the world’s industrial powerhouse to an urban wasteland, and the once-golden state of California atrophied into a land of government run by the government for the government. What happens when the policies that brought ruin to Detroit and sclerosis to California become the basis for the nation at large? Strictly on the numbers, the United States is in the express lane to Declinistan: unsustainable entitlements, the remorseless governmentalization of the economy and individual liberty, and a centralization of power that will cripple a nation of this size. Decline is the way to bet. But what will ensure it is if the American people accept decline as a price worth paying for European social democracy.