Tuesday, January 30, 2018

We Need to Convince Girls That They Like to Program

To work in the software field means being constantly exposed to ideas like this.


The number one priority of any CompSci department is to recruit more women. My college had a separate ACM chapter for women, even though there were only 3 female undergrads in the department. I was close friends with one of them, and she reported her belief that being female made it much easier to get hired. I've not interviewed at a whole lot of places, but twice now I've been informed, in the hiring process, that the company really preferred to hire women. (Can you imagine a company telling its women applicants that they're really looking to hire men? They'd be sued to hell and back.)

So here some entrepreneurs have decided to solve the "problem" of female underrepresentation in the programming field by....selling a game. Supposedly the game will "inspire" girls to code. Now, I have a daughter. I think she's smart. (So does she.) I'd be thrilled if she became a programmer. It's safe, the benefits are fantastic, and as a lady she'd had an advantage. And we'd have plenty to talk about too. I won't actually attempt to coerce her to adopt the field, but if I did, how would I go about it? Games? To think video games would actually inspire career choices is just...cute. Most men don't pursue careers in military special forces, do they? People choose a career field because of their natural proclivities and the benefits & status the job offers. We can't alter the natural proclivities, so all we are left with is benefits. Programmers don't usually become rich, but the benefits are much greater than the average job. In short, the best incentive to inspire people to program is already in place. It's salary, and vacation days, and a comfortable work environment. If that doesn't draw women in, then nothing will.

It's tempting to assume the makers of this game are very naive, but maybe not. Maybe they're just responding to market forces. They know that the conviction is so strong among the public that there is a female programming incentive deficit that they can offer a solution and make a profit for themselves. It looks like they have hundreds of backers already, with the equivalent of $30K USD already pledged. I'm sure there are people who could knock out something decent in a few weeks. Not a bad gig!

If money and benefits don't provide the proper inspiration to program, nothing will. The truth is most girls don't like to program. And they really don't like programmers. I know some guys who used to go to spring break and lie about their backgrounds to pick up college girls. They pretended they were investment bankers or music executives or non-profit organizers. They never pretended to be programmers. I've never impressed a woman by telling her I'm a programmer. Actually I don't even do that. Why would you do that? Programmers have no social status. They really don't. The high geek ratio ensures it. They make good money, sure, but that's not the same as status. Women usually aren't naturally drawn to programming, and it offers no status. All that's left is the money. And still they mostly avoid it.

The only thing left to do is what these game designers are doing: profit off the prevailing belief system. You might say, "at least they're doing some good to help!" I think they're actually making things worse. Here's part of the first review from their blog post about the game:
“I​ ​had​ ​never​ ​coded​ ​before​ ​playing​ ​Erase​ ​All​ ​Kittens.​ ​I​ ​expected​ ​it​ ​to​ ​be​ ​difficult,​ ​boring​ ​and complicated,​ ​but​ ​now​ ​it​ ​seems​ ​fun​ ​and​ ​easy​ ​-​ ​the​ ​game​ ​was​ ​great!"
What a wonderful review from Sara, age 14! But the problem is, actual paid programming isn't fun and easy. It's difficult, boring, and complicated. All this does is to give false expectations. She'll join the hordes of kids who enroll into a CompSci department, realize within the first year that computer science isn't the same as video games, and transfer to some other field, taking a low GPA with them. I suspect these efforts do more harm than good. But also I don't really care. I'll just try to make sure my own daughter isn't "inspired" by video games.

Monday, January 29, 2018

Just when I think you couldn't possibly be any dumber...

In the past year a widely held belief that was something of a Hollywood open secret finally became headline news: that Tinsel Town is crawling with sexual predators and pedophiles. Accusations came out faster than we could keep track of. None was more demoted by the events than Harvey Weinstein, who lost his powerful career. What was most telling was not just the sheer number of allegations, or the corroborating testimony by others such as restaurant workers, but his own Hollywood buddies expressing regret that they didn't do more to stop it. In short, everyone in Hollywood knew what was going on, including, we assume, many of the young ladies who accompanied Weinstein in their quest for the spotlight.

In this context, the Golden Globe awards - held just a few weeks ago - decided to respond to the new reality that Hollywood is a cesspool of degenerate filth by lecturing the American public about sexual assault. Truly amazing. And like a big, beautiful cherry on top, they made Oprah their keynote lecturer, who has been pictured being semi-intimate with....Harvey Weinstein. It's as if, and this is not an exaggeration, it's as if in the year after the Gulag Archipelago was released, the Soviets put on a production lecturing other countries for their policing activities. It's that absurd, at least.

The Grammy's were held last night. Now I haven't watched any of these awards shows in decades, but the reports are that they really outdid themselves. It featured - I swear I'm not making this up! - Hillary Clinton reading excerpts from Fire & Fury, the book that no once cares about but people who already loathe Trump and always will. If there is possibly a more ridiculously partisan political signal they could have sent out, please let me know. I can't fathom it.

Here's the irony in all this. There is a world of difference between open secrets that everyone knows are true but maintain a facade of plausible deniability, and open secrets that lose the facade of plausible deniability. Case in point: Weinstein. What is the difference between Weinstein the Hollywood mogul who has his way with an endless stream of hot young women, and Weinstein the disgraced outcast who may end up in prison? Plausible deniability. He no longer has any. He did several months ago. Now he doesn't. Even his own people turned on him.

What is the major effect of the Grammy's having Hillary Clinton reading anti-Trump fan fiction? The wholesale loss of plausible deniability that Hollywood isn't just a big left-wing propaganda factory. We used to say (as of yesterday) that propaganda in America is much more powerful than, say, Soviet Pravda-style propaganda, because in Russia everyone know state propaganda was just state propaganda, whereas in America people believe the media is actually impartial. This stunt with Hillary lifts the veil. They can't possible pretend any longer that Hollywood is anything other than a mouthpiece for liberal political ideology. It is completely undeniable. The whole sham is exposed.

There's a point that's been made numerous times on this blog, but it bears repeating. Even if Trump was not a good president, even if his policy changes were terrible (they aren't), he is worth supporting because he drags the demons out of the shadows. No longer can anyone possibly pretend the media isn't primarily an outlet for liberal propaganda any more than they can pretend Weinstein isn't a serial sexual predator. It's not just something widely believed to be true. It is now inescapably true. Just like no one on the right could possibly believe that Republicans like Graham, McCain, Flake, or Romney are remotely conservative. They've been exposed. If all Trump's presidency consisted of was just the stupid parts, like Tweeting responses to Jay-Z, but he continued to drive the left to destroy their own cover of plausible deniability, then he's worth more than 60 RINOs in the Senate. 

Sunday, January 28, 2018

Lindsey Graham-a Jones & the Memo of Doom

Lindsey Graham, the US Senator whom the confused Republicans of South Carolina keep re-electing despite his routine declarations of allegiance to The Cult [for example], has declared, almost predictably, that the FisaGate memo should not be released to the American people.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Sunday he does not believe a classified memo purported to list Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses by the U.S. government should be released now.

"No, I don't want it released yet," Graham told ABC's "This Week."

"I want somebody outside of the Republican-led Congress to look at these allegations," he said.

"I've been a lawyer most of my adult life and the way the FBI conducted itself in the Department of Justice bothers me," he continued.
Lindsey Graham is bothered by FBI conduct in the abstract, but doesn't seem to believe that any specific evidence of wrongdoing should be released to the public. He says, and this is incredible, that "somebody outside of the Republican-led Congress" should vet the document first. Note that, as a Senator, Graham has not had access to the memo. He has the same knowledge of its contents as your or I, which is general characterizations given by members of the House. According to the Republican Senator from South Carolina, Republicans in Congress can't be trusted to release information to the public. This is not surprising, since Graham is alway a good little liberal whenever the press put a microphone in front of his face, but it is completely outrageous just the same. Graham isn't making a legal argument here. Congressmen have legal authority to disclose the full contents of the memo publicly on the House floor. Graham isn't implying that his party brethren don't have the legal authority. He's plainly stating that they don't have the judgment.

Graham doesn't specify who outside Congress should supervise his fellow Republicans in the House. If Congress can't be trusted in the matter, then who can? The relevant parties in the DOJ cannot be referred to for impartial advice. (This hasn't stopped the DOJ from levying a public opinion against the release anyway.) The President can't be consulted, as he is a victim of the wrongdoing alleged in the memo. Who outside these listed groups have the necessary security clearances? We likely can't go granting additional security clearances to outside parties to review the judgment of Congress. Who would we choose, anyway? Perhaps the best route would be to have the DOJ-OIG review the four-page memo (primarily written by Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes) and state whether it accurately reflects the results of their recently concluded investigation of the FBI. That would provide a testament to the authenticity of the summary, without pulling in uncleared third parties.

But if that is the only possible course of action, then what is the point of having a House intelligence oversight committee at all? If the House committee can't be trusted to provide oversight, then clearly they can't be trusted to provide oversight. (Hello, tautology.) Why have a chairman of that committee if he can't even properly provide a summary for committee actions (the investigation was performed at the request of Congress)? And, for that matter, what is the point of having an OIG?  If they can perform investigations whose results can never see the light of day, and which no one, not even Congress, can act on, then what is the point of having internal investigation? The whole point is to expose criminals so they can be punished, and to point out flawed processes to be corrected. If the results of investigations must remain secret and can never be acted upon, then there is no reason for investigations. The time and money spent on unactionable investigations just amounts to government fraud, waste, & abuse, and should be eliminated entirely. Lindsey Graham and the entirety of the Democrat party would seem to suggest that oversight doesn't actually apply to our government. The people can't know about the crimes of the government!

Graham suggests the issue is partisanship. Because a Republican penned the summary, it is suspect. But the chairman would by necessity have to be of some party. Are we saying that no member of Congress can be trusted to summarize the work of committees simply because they have a party affiliation? Or just Republicans? Perhaps he thinks the Democrats should have a say in the matter. But they did have a say! Every single Democrat voted that the memo should not be released to the House at-large. The committee made its decision to do so any way. Graham would seem to suggest that the minority party should be able to obstruct Congressional actions it disagrees with. (Why is that any time Lindsey Graham or John McCain are in the news it is to show support for the Democrats? A rhetorical question.) The Democrats unanimously voted against releasing the memo but didn't have the votes to stop it. How else should these things work? Didn't their hero Barrack Obama famously quip that elections have consequences? Apparently there is no level to which the people of American can vote the Democrats out of office where they still don't yield ultimate control. And why should the Democrats be trusted at all? Of course they don't want the memo released. It reveals egregious crimes committed by Democrats! This is so obvious that the only way to properly get it into Graham's thick skull would be to dust off the old ballbat of common sense and bludgeon him continuously until the desired effect is achieved. Of course they don't want it released, and they don't give a shit whether terrible crimes were committed or not. These are the same House Intelligence Committee Democrats who clearly displayed that they could not care less whether or not Hillary Clinton actually committed crimes or was careless with the sensitive information that could compromise (i.e. kill) US agents and assets. Not one professed an iota of concern for these very serious allegations. They made a mockery of the proceedings. To suspect they would actually desire honest inquiry into even greater and more widespread allegations of wrongdoings by Democrats is a level of naïveté so profound that surely we must ask Webster's to revisit the definition of naïveté to reflect such extreme measures of the word.

If the Republicans in the House are being honest and accurate, then everything I've said here is sound. The Democrats, the media, and their lackeys like Lindsey Graham are actively trying to suppress government crimes from exposure or punishment. And if the Republicans are being overly dramatic and partisan, then what will happen if the memo is released? Clearly the Democrats will have to push to have the OIG report publicized in such a way to counter the Republican claims without exposing sensitive US programs for intelligence gathering. It can be done. In fact, it is the only way that this can be properly done. If it comes to that, and the Republicans then vote to not release additional details of the OIG report, then the tables will be turned, and they will be the ones obstructing the release of evidence of criminal wrongdoing from the public, and it will be clear that the memo was in fact partisan. If the Republicans are wrong then the crimes will never be able to be prosecuted and the whole things will turn into a PR disaster for them. In short, if you know someone is lying, the most effect strategy is to call their bluff. That is the way this dilemma can properly unfold, but the Democrats and Lindsey Graham are fiercely opposing such a scenario, probably because they know the reactions of Republican Congressmen who have viewed the memo are genuine. The only plausible scenario where liberals are reacting as they are is if the memo is an accurate representation of the findings of the IG. Are we supposed to believe that suddenly the left are gravely concerned about matters of national security? Even a joke must have an element of truth to be laughed at. This is just straight lunacy without even a redeeming upshot of dark humor.

The real question is this. Do we live in a country where state crimes are state secrets? Or to rephrase it, are we living under undeniable tyranny? If the elected bodies of Congress can't be trusted to provide oversight, then allegations of government crimes must be suppressed on principle. That is tyranny in and of itself. A massive battle is being waged. If the wrong side wins, it will be a clear signal that government by the people is totally dead. It is quite apparent who is lining up on which side of the battle.

Friday, January 26, 2018

Etymology of Lincoln

To those that hate Western society (i.e. liberals), we are a people without culture. Like fish, who don't realize they flutter about in an aqueous medium, or we landwellers who tend to ignore the sea of air the surrounds us, they are so accustomed to western culture that they fail to note its existence at all. The truth is that we have a culture and history as rich as anyone else, and arguably much richer. I find it interesting to trace common English words back to their origins. To the left there is probably no place in the world less culturally interesting than Lincoln, Nebraska. Let's run that one all the way back.

The city of Lincoln is named after the great American president who fought to preserve the union two centuries ago, and is credited for ending slavery in the US. His name, presumably, comes from the English city of Lincoln, the county seat of Lincolnshire. The name Lincoln derives from its history as the Roman military settlement Lindum Colonia. By merging the terms in a portmanteau, we can easily see the emergence of the name Lincoln as well as the source of the silent L.

Lindum was a Latinization of the Brittonic word lindon, meaning pool or lake. The root lin can be found in many other names, such as Dublin*, which means "black pool." The Welsh name Lynn derives from the same root and is one of the most common names in America. The similarity of Lindon to London has been noted, although the etymology of the English capital city is uncertain. Lindon derives from the proto-Celtic root lendu-, meaning lake or water. This dates the term all the way back to the Bronze Ages in continental Europe - before the Celtic people migrated to the British Isles - around 1200 BC. So the first syllable of Lincoln dates back at least three thousand years.

Colonia is a Latin word, derived from colonus (farmer) which derived from colo (to till) which traces all the way back to the Proto-Indo-European root *kʷel- (to turn, end-over-end). So the second syllable traces all the way to the emergence of the caucasian race, 6000 years ago on the Eurasian steppe.

The name Lincoln most nearly means "lake colony." The first half was brought to England by the Celts; the second half was delivered by the Romans. The name was carried to North America by English settlers, one of whom became so prominent that many American locales bear the name today. The name passed through the three greatest empires of history (Roman, English, and American). The city name in England required or survived four invasions of the British Isles: the Celts, the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Normans. The fifth great invasion of Britain is currently underway. The name will likely survive, although that is never certain.

We are surrounded by words of similar historical significance. Our culture and traditions are similarly rich. Our ancestors built the world's greatest empires, and provided the majority of the major advances achieved by humanity. When anyone suggest we have no culture, they are as wrong as they could possibly be on the matter.


* The first half of Dublin comes from the proto-Celtic root dubno-, meaning deep or dark, which can be traced all the way back to the PIE root *dʰewb-, meaning deep or hollow.

Monday, January 22, 2018

Women's March Unmasked

On Saturday Trump made this Tweet:


I hadn't even realized that there was to be a Round 2 of the Women's March. Now, I blog frequently about the genius of Trump, but I missed this one until the results were in. I read it, assumed he was being flippant and just having a little fun on a Saturday, and that was fine because it was likely to annoy liberals. A worthy goal in itself. But the response was hundreds of Tweets like this.


Countless Tweets all to the effect: You're stupid Drumpf, the Women's March is a protest against YOU!! So on the day of the Women's March, we have tons of supporters admitting to what we already knew last year: that the women's march is really just a protest against Trump. They are not showing support for women, they are using women as political fodder. And they're not ashamed to admit it, so long as they're "correcting" Trump's stupidity. Media outlets also took the bait.



Were they marching against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, recently exposed as the most egregious serial abuser of women in US history? Were they protesting Democratic US Senator Al Franken, who just resigned in disgrace over his lechery? Were they marching in support of the very brave Iranian woman who just publicly removed her Hijab in public to protest the theocratic regime, and whose whereabouts are unknown? Nope! They admit, they're out there protesting the man who has appointed more women to top positions than any US president in history, even more than their beloved Clinton and Obama. Wow, that's an amazing lack of credibility, even by their standards.

It's hard to know if Trump brilliantly predicted the marchers would openly out themselves, or if he was just casually being flippant. The result is the same. The left was tricked into admitting their political action for women is a sham. What about the Democrats strong stance for DACA illegal immigrants? They pulled that after a few business hours of humiliation. I guess that support was a sham too. It's hard to know if the Democrat special client groups will ever realize they're being duped, but things like this must make it pretty hard to ignore.

Saturday, January 20, 2018

Lincoln Did Nothing Wrong

Many, including Newt Gingrich,  have noted the similarities between the reception Donald Trump has received in Washington and that of the first Republican president. Abraham Lincoln was called the "Original Gorilla" and was ridiculed for his appearance, for his speech, for the way he ate...everything was maliciously scrutinized. Sound familiar? There was no slander or slur that was too low to be levied at the new president. If you visit the Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, IL, as you wind through Lincoln's life there is a hallway dedicated to the insults he was subjected to. Many quotes are displayed on the walls as you pass, and some spoken over a speaker system. The intention is to convey some of the shock and disorientation Lincoln may have experienced at being exposed to such hateful lunacy.

It harkens back to yesterday's post, that although there seems to be plenty of cause for despair, none of this is a new problem. It seems to be the fundamental problem of humanity, one that ancient wise men well understood. To use their metaphor, there are a great many people who wish to regurgitate all the fruit they ever consumed from the Tree of Knowledge, and to return to a state of blissful ignorance in the walled garden. The desire to do so is understandable. Genesis lists just some of the costs man pays for the burden of knowledge. No one ever said being human was easy. If people wish to renounce the essence of their humanity and live in ignorance, I see no reason not to let them. But they can't then wield political influence. They can't be given a legitimate platform in the realm of rational debate, or to vote in elections. Their presence destroys those things, and we are all drug down into a pre-cognitive hell of pure emotion. We can't have rational spaces if we don't vigilantly exclude the deliberately irrational.

Lincoln is regarded as a national hero, but still there are many who despise him to this day, especially civil libertarians. There are two major issues people have with the man. First was his decision to preserve the union by force. Many feel the union should be a voluntary association of mutual benefit, not some Mafia-like enterprise where you're free to join, but you can't ever leave. We're told that America initially operated with the looming question hanging over it of whether states were free to leave, a question which Lincoln answered decisively in the negative. Because of Lincoln, his detractors tell us, we are forever to be subjected to federal tyranny.

I don't actually buy into this. I don't think Lincoln answered the question for all time. He answered the question in the context of his particular time and place. It probably made sense at that time to fight to preserve the unity of English colonies. That doesn't mean it would make sense to fight today to prevent, say, Calexit. California is white-minority, and increasingly so, and the populace and their elected leaders make every effort to refute America's people, her values, and her laws. (In the populous areas, anyway.) Why would we fight to keep that? It serves us no benefit to govern such a place. It would be more sensical, at this point, to invite them to leave, and to compel the rest of the ingrates within our borders to join them. I predict that, at the next tumultuous period of warfare that occurs, we won't see countries expanding to build vast empires, as in the last century, but consolidating to produce manageable ethnostates. It's hard to imagine the world would react any other way to a protracted era of multiculturalism, and there is plenty of historical precedent.

The other issue people have with Lincoln is his decision to imprison many journalists for war-time sedition. I agreed with this when I was younger. What is the point of defending American unity if you're going to discard all her ideals? Well, America is a nation, not an ideal, no matter what liberals like Lindsay Graham might tell you. And even then, the thing about ideals is that the devil is always in the details. It's easy to denounce Lincoln without understanding the context of the late 1860s. After watching the way our media has behaved these last couple years, I understand that they are completely seditious. I have not a doubt in my mind that Lincoln behaved properly in handling them, and probably with excessive undue restraint.

A lot of people won't ever be able to get past this. "The media has freedom of speech!" they shout. Thus the president can't shut them down for their words. The First Amendment really needs to be rewritten to state freedom of political expression, which is obviously the intended meaning. At no point ever was it taken to mean the freedom to say anything at all. There is all kinds of speech that is rightfully illegal. With the media, we give them license to print as they wish, under the assumption that they are making an attempt to disseminate the truth. There is a world of difference between a paper which tells truths that damage the government and a paper which tells lies that damage the government. The former is a vital process of exchanging truth in a political system where the free-flow of truthful information is absolutely critical. The latter is sedition. The major error made today is that so many falsely equate truthful media with lying media. It's sort of like comparing an investor who gets you a great return with one who takes all your life savings and flees the country. These are not comparable things.

Today's media do very little besides lie, and they lie to damage the elected government. They've done everything possible to bestow legitimacy upon a legal investigation against the president based on unsubstantiated "research" funded by his opponent. If that is not sedition, then the laws must be stricken from the books, because sedition does not exist. Check out this article, called 10 Of The Dumbest Questions Reporters Asked During Trump’s Health Press Conference. Look how desperate these reporters are to twist the medical report into something that will be damaging to the president. They accuse the doctor (appointed by Obama) of lying, by omitting details or providing a false body weight. This is exactly how we say they operate - they turn any reality into a negative against Trump - and here they are performing the act on camera in front of the American public! Realize that this is the process going on in every newsroom in America about every potential news story. "How can we contort the truth to damage the president?" That is sedition, not journalism.

If Trump followed Lincoln's lead and imprisoned the most egregious offenders, do you think that would be a net benefit to the country? I can't see how it wouldn't. These false slanderers are doing the devil's work. Who says the devil should be permitted to carry on his work unhindered? The moral dilemma that would arise is, if governments can imprison inconvenient lying journalists, what is to stop them in the future from imprisoning inconvenient truthful journalists, a favored tactic of dictators everywhere? Well, the difference is whether or not the journalist is truthful. Those who reject the fruit of knowledge can't possibly make the distinction. Only those who dedicate themselves to understanding the truth could possibly make the correct determination. In America, the brainwashed masses are the decision makers and, since they could not possibly come to a proper assessment, we just treat all journalists the same, no matter their degree of honesty. No one has the right to distinguish between truth and lies.

We can't continue like this forever. We all know that eventually someone will have to do something about the lying press. Trump won't use state power to suppress them, as much as they pretend he is already doing so. He is doing his best to destroy them in the court of public opinion. I hope it works, but I retain ample pessimism. He may, like Lincoln, find that the only way to preserve the union is to force shut the spigot of chaos.

Friday, January 19, 2018

Age of Evil

There's something really disheartening going on here, which isn't something I've been dealing with so much as holding at bay. A lot of what gets written here is pointing out irrationality where it exists, ridiculing it a bit, and hopefully at least getting a couple laughs out of the deal. But much of this is just therapeutic exercise for the author (and I imagine many readers as well). To be honest, I am deeply disturbed to my core about all this rampant irrationality.

They say many people are traumatized when they grow up and realize that their parents and other adult figures in their lives are not exceptional; that they are just regular people. Children grow up sort of idolizing adults and revering them (or at least they used to). It's understandable how it could be a difficult perception shift. But what about growing up and realizing half of your fellow countrymen don't even rightfully deserve to called human? I know that dehumanizing your opponent is the hallmark of extremism, but how else do you describe people who dismiss their unique faculties that make them human? What is most alarming has not been the people who are not good at discerning truth, or even the people who easily fall for pleasant lies, but that people can have truth presented directly before them, and they carry on as if it never happened. How do you account for that in your worldview? How do you not become militant? The apparent solution seems to be, "we must take the world by force, because it won't be reasoned with."

Some examples, which you're all familiar with: The Project Veritas videos are damning. Not only do they show people on tape detailing the crimes they commit, they also prove that the media outlets and authorities aren't even trying to do proper investigative journalism. Liberals, over half of America, just pretend they don't exist! And if you really push them, they might say, "oh, they're fake." It's that easy! The same with the tens of thousands of leaked Democrat emails, which showed how they rigged their own primary, among other scandals (like pay-to-play). Totally dismissed by the left. But then the reversal, that those emails were the product of Trump colluding with Russia to rig the election, now that's a belief they can get behind! It makes your head spin, and we could go on recounting this like this forever. They're now to the point of literally saying "objective truth is racist."

So there are two dynamics here. One is that people will intentionally ignore truth so that they can embrace nontruth. But the other is that people are doing everything possible to spread lies. What dynamic does that sound like? I'm not a particularly religious person, but I was raised Catholic, and to me this sounds a lot like the forces of Satan, who was the slanderer, or spreader of lies and chaos. That is literally what is happening here. That may make things sound even worse, but it should actually grant a degree of re-assurance. This is nothing people haven't dealt with before; it's a battle as old as time! Writers like Brett Stevens, who is heavily influenced by Nietzsche, believe that we have long left the Age of Reason and now find ourselves in the Age of Ideology. I wonder if we aren't more rightly in the Age of Evil. I don't know if "ideology" quite conveys the predominant characteristic of outright rejection of presented truths. But then, maybe that's exactly what ideology means: a belief system that perpetuates despite all apparent reality. It would have to suppress truth on principle.

In the last few years I've taken the time to read at least the major dystopian future novels, and they seem to have all missed the ability of people to just discard unpleasant truth like rain off of windshield wipers. 1984's Doublethink is similar but doesn't capture the phenomenon. In doublethink a person can hold two contradicting ideas at the same time. But the reality is there aren't two contradicting ideas; they've routed out the annoying contradiction completely. [There needs to be a new dystopian novel written to describe this.] I tested this on my facebook some time ago. A liberal was preaching abut Trump not disavowing right-wing violence at Charlottesville. I wrote, "Trump should have said something like this," and then pasted the relevant text of Trump's speech. He took my bait, and asked why Trump didn't say something like that. Then I closed the trap, and told him it actually was Trump's actual comment. He never commented after that, and I knew why. If he commented, it would mean he'd have to acknowledge he read it. By ignoring it, he could pretend he'd never read it and flush the incident away; it didn't happen. It was amusing to see a few months later he again posted something similar. This was his cognitive dissonance. He had surely washed our encounter from his mind, but there was something somewhere bugging him, so he posted the claim again to reassure himself.

You can easily see this in the Biblical metaphor. These people don't want to have to deal with truth. They'd way rather hear the pleasant lies of Satan. When Satan has his way, civilization crumbles, and that is exactly what is happening. I mean this guy is a freaking math professor, and he refuses to know what words the president really spoke, which is easily verified, because he wants to fuel the hate in his heart. If math professors can throw away all logic, what hope does anyone else have?

I think this is the great failure of direct democracy. Evil forces tell whatever lies they can to the public to get their votes, which is the key to power. The people are so overwhelmed with lies they can't rationally tell them apart, so they stick to whatever makes them feel the best. Whoever sells the best emotions gets the prize. Thus democracy doesn't do the one thing it pretends to do, which is to distribute decision-making to ensure some rationality. In fact, it ensures that rationale decisions are unlikely! And in addition, everyone is miserable because they're saturated with lies. Everything becomes fake and debauchery takes hold. Good people won't pick the right side, because they just assume everyone is equally lying. So even when you have a compelling case, it doesn't matter. No one trusts that you're not just making up a sweet-sounding lie, like everyone else.

I've got no positive silver-lining to finish with. These are dark times, and there is no easy way out. Ultimately, we're not going to reason our way out of this. We aren't going to "wake up" enough people and set things right. Deception is inherent to our political system. We're only going to change things by force, or we just wait around long enough until the thing collapses on itself, and see what we can do from there. So our options are war or societal collapse. Is that it? As Captain Kirk exclaimed, "I demand a third option!" Does the good book actually give a precedent for defeating overwhelming evil?

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Krugman: High Priest of Economics

On Nov 9, 2016, Paul Krugman - the media's leading economist - wrote his initial response to the presidential election. He stated that the markets were "plunging" and would "never" recover. He predicted the onset of a "global recession, with no end in sight."

This prediction was met with acceptance by the mainstream media. No one ever countered Krugman's dire forecast with something like, "No, the American economy will actually soar for the next year thanks to trends set by Obama." No one made that prediction, or anything close to that. On Nov 9, 2016, the media pundits agreed that this was now Trump's economy, and it would be a nightmare from which we might never wake up.

Over a year later and the economy has had its best year, ever. The markets had a record year. Unemployment is at record lows for minorities. Everyone is getting bonuses, businesses are expanding. Suddenly we're being told that actually this in fact IS Obama's economy after all. Trump is riding the wave the Obama created. Krugman himself put forth the theory just this month that, in fact, the economy WAS suppressed under Obama's adept leadership due to "Republican opposition" to stimulus. (Krugman doesn't attempt the obvious follow-on question: why then did the economy roar to life under Trump, without stimulus?)

After months of gloom-and-doom and Trump's economy, it has finally become inescapable that the economy has been 10/10. So now suddenly it's to Obama's credit. Whatever your opinions, consistency must be maintained. If liberals believe this economy is somehow attributable to the previous administration, then they must acknowledge Krugman was not just wrong, but as wrong as an economist could possibly be. How is that marginally acceptable? Krugman certainly does not deserve the position of world's most prominent economist if he's going to call a global recession right before a record-smashing bull run, all because he can't control his hatred for the man elected. As long as the left does not unseat Krugman, the game they're playing can only be this: everything good is thanks to Obama, everything bad is because of evil Trump. It's just religious superstition. (All good comes from God, all evil comes from the devil.) Krugman is merely a high priest in a belief system that so far has been unable to make a single accurate prediction.

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

The Unfalsifiable Left

There is only one real requirement that any hypothesis must have: it must be testable. It must make some predictions about the world, which can then be compared against reality. If the predictions match the observations, then the hypothesis is supported. If they contradict, then the hypothesis must be reworked or abandoned.

If there are no possible observations that could contradict a hypothesis, then it is unusable, because it is untestable. Superstring theory was all the rage for a time in the physics world, but has been mostly tabled because no one knows how they could actually test it. Belief in aliens would fit the bill. How do you disprove their existence? Believers can always just claim they've shrouded themselves with some super-advanced technology that we can't fathom. It's possible, but since we can't test the hypothesis, it's best that we focus our energy on other testable hypotheses which can expand human knowledge. It's also the reason that we don't have to prove our innocence to an accuser. It is often very difficult to prove one didn't do something, so the burden of proof falls on the accuser.

Someone might still support a hypothesis that is unfalsifiable, but such support must be called a belief. They believe the notion, even though it is outside the realm of empirical judgement. At the very least, these beliefs should be personally held and not imposed onto others.

It seems that the platform of the modern left consists entirely of unfalsifiable hypotheses. It's not that there are no observations that could reasonably invalidate the theories, it's that there are no observations that could convince the holders of the belief to invalidate it. Here's a tool you can use if you're ever in a debate with a liberal (heaven forbid) on nearly any subject. Once you find out their irrational belief (they'll let you know!), work in the question: what evidence would cause you to change your mind? There's a good chance they won't be able to provide any, and may even admit that they will never change their mind, no matter how much evidence. Certainly they will have never thought of questioning their beliefs this way, and if they do manage some ad hoc answer it will be easily fielded.

Let's look at just a few examples of unfalsifiable hypotheses of the left.

Global warming. Their theory of manmade global warming cannot be debunked. Hot weather is proof. Cold weather is proof. Hurricanes are proof (even when they come after a notably long dry spell). There are no observations that would dissuade the believers. If the earth glaciated from pole to pole they'd blame it on carbon emissions.

Russia. What evidence would dissuade liberals from believing Trump teamed up with Russia to rig the election? (By, of course, revealing the evidence that Hillary rigged the primaries.) The fact that the witch hunt was triggered by an absurd Democrat-funded PeePee dossier doesn't phase them, nor that the investigation has turned up nothing. The thing is, they've already flipped this on its head. They're forcing the accused to prove his innocence. Even after the kangaroo court has run its course, they'll still believe it happened, Trump just got away with it. Look a how the responded to Comey. First, Trump keeping him on was proof the Trump was protecting his buddy Comey. After Comey was canned, it was proof of obstruction of justice! There was no acceptable action possible.

Trump fitness. After a bunch of squawking that Trump is not psychologically fit for office, Trump had his doctor perform a cognitive screening during his physical. The chorus from the left was predictable. "Just because a person is sharp doesn't mean he's fit for office." "Well it didn't test psychological disorders." "The doctor is a military officer who answers to Trump. We must investigate!" (Never mind that the doctor was appointed by Obama.) There is nothing in this world that will convince these people Trump is fit for office. He needn't have bothered with the screening. The same goes from their belief he is a racist and so on. No possible evidence in the world will change their minds. These are beliefs. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

Socialism. How many times has it been tried? How many times has it led to disaster? It doesn't matter, because they weren't "real" socialism. Socialism could rise a million times and kill a million people each time and they'd still say, "hey man, it's time we try socialism for once!"

Those are just a few examples. No reason to go very deep, because the real question I have is, what liberal beliefs are not unfalsifiable hypotheses?

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Lindsay Graham Plays the Lib Card

It seems I have picked up this flu that's going around, so the economics posts will just have to be delayed for a while.

I was reading this article from the Hill, where another lawmaker has refuted that Trump made the shithole comments which has been all the media rage. That's all interesting enough, but what really jumped out was the quote from Lindsay Graham at the very bottom of the page.
"I've always believed that America is an idea, not defined by its people but by its ideals," Graham said.
This is Graham outdoing himself to declare allegiance to The Cult. "I believe America is a proposition nation. Please please please...just don't call me a racist." To some extent, America is a proposition nation. To what extent it is has been debated since the beginning. Benjamin Franklin questioned the number of Germans who were settling in Pennsylvania, as they differed culturally from the predominately Anglo colonists. It was still assumed that America was a white, European-descended nation until 1965, when Congress decided to prefer non-white immigrants.

We can reasonably accommodate the claim that America is a proposition nation. Even though many of us are becoming increasingly convinced that this won't work out in the long-run, we can at least admit America is a proposition nation, to some degree. Graham doesn't grant any sort of that nuance in his statement. America is not defined by its people. These statements are incredible enough when we hear radical lefties spouting them off, but Graham is a tenured Republican senator from South Carolina! According to Graham, it doesn't matter who makes up the populace. As long as they believe in the idea of America, then nothing will change! So we could move all the white people out, replace them with sub-70 IQ immigrants from places like Haiti, Somalia, and Sudan, and everything would be just the same as it was, save for a trivial change in skin tone. This is absolute fantasy, and flies in the face of all observable reality.

To the extent America is a proposition nation, the proposition is something like this: Each American enjoys certain inalienable rights, and great liberty to live as he wishes, so long as he does not infringe on the inalienable rights of others. That certainly is an important description of the American experiment. But is it sufficient that it alone defines the country, to the point the actual people can be ignored? Of course not. If anything, it gives even more reason for the direction of the country to be shaped by its people. The more liberty a government grants, the more its direction and success depends on the nature of its people. If we imagine a very strict government, where people have very little freedom (say, Communism), then the attributes of the people might be less important. The people will just have to do as they're ordered in any case. But in the US, where people are given a lot of license, we are absolutely dependent on the quality and attributes of our fellow countrymen. You cannot have a liberal democracy coupled to a population that is not intelligent, informed, and moral. The left believes that a liberal democratic state can just be assumed as a default condition. This betrays a very insulated worldview.

Graham doesn't consider any of these thoughts before he runs his mouth. He just recites the liberal slogans he knows will help keep the media from calling him mean names. He is a coward, he is not a leader, and he is a liberal. Most liberals are just people who are afraid to be torched for heresy, so they've adopted the right beliefs and convinced themselves they are sincerely held. Graham is one of them.

UPDATE

Not to be outdone, here is a recent Tweet from Mittens, America's favorite virtue-signaling anti-Trumper.



If the race and poverty of an immigrant are irrelevant, then what is relevant? Well, only their willingness to embrace the "American proposition," I guess. The problem here is that no evidence supports any of this. For instance, statistical analysis shows that a person's income is correlated to the average IQ of the country six times higher than his own IQ. National poverty levels are very telling as to the quality of immigrants from a certain country. Race is highly correlated to IQ as well, and to culture. To say that racial and national attributes of a source country are irrelevant means we really don't have any way to judge immigrants from one country over another. To rational people, that would indicate we should not bring immigrants from anywhere, as we have no way of knowing who is good and who is bad. But to liberals like Romney and Graham, it means we should take all the world's people, because nations don't matter, cultures don't matter, IQs don't matter, morality doesn't matter, genetics don't matter...nothing matters. These people are dealers of degeneracy, and they are even more dangerous than the Democratic lefties because a lot of people think they are actually conservatives! What is it, you must ask yourself, that they are actually trying to conserve?

Saturday, January 13, 2018

Oprah, Mother to the World

Another day bedridden, another day picking some low-hanging fruit. This article, linked on Reddit, describes Oprah's long-term relationship of 30 years with Stedman Graham, and why she has neither gotten married nor born children.

Let's start off here:
“When people were pressuring me to get married and have children, I knew I was not going to be a person that ever regretted having them, because I feel like I am a mother to the world’s children,” Winfrey told Good Housekeeping UK in early 2017.
These are the kinds of attitudes that we in dissident right accuse liberals of having, but no one outside of our own little circle gives it much credit. And why should they? Anyone can offer a nonsense psychoanalysis and make it sound plausible. They do it all the time. Look at their "analyses" of Trump, who, despite how he affects their feelings, keeps beating them over and over in the real world. We believe our particular psychoanalyses are supported by evidence, and here we have the queen bee of the left stating it clearly in plain English. What else is there to argue about?

This kind of attitude, outside of being rich with narcissism and grandeur, is very dangerous, and I would say it's the opposite of our core fundamental principle. The core principle of the left is equality (described in increasingly unrealistic definitions), which they have made into an ideology. The core principle of the right is - and I don't know the proper term for this - solving problems at the lowest level. Conservatives are federalists. They are states-rights activists. They are, largely, skeptical of the federal government. They like to solve problems at the lowest level...at the family level, if possible.

Oprah's statement is the complete opposite. She wants to solve problems at the highest possible level. You can't go any higher than "mother to the world." That's the problem with ideology, it seeks a monolithic top-level control structure. Such things aren't natural in the real world. In software development, the major activity is to abstract out the problem space and find the best level to solve a given problem. Software written monolithically is destined for catastrophe. (Witness the Toyota embedded braking software, or the Obamacare rollout website for examples.) The only way this kind of software can compete on the market is to be a monopoly. Which explains the left's deep desire to disarm the right and suppress them in public discourse in any way possible. Their proposed ideologies can't survive in the face of robust competition.

Much of the article is dedicated to rationalizing why the long-term intimate relationship never transitioned into a family. If we listen to the text of the article, it was largely a matter of circumstance. Her partner even proposed to her, but with the timing of her busy career, it just never panned out. But, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. This article contains two pictures of the couple, and much less than a thousand words.


You don't have to be a body-language expert for this. Here we have two different shots, which appear to have been taken on the same day. In both photos Mr. Graham is leaned into Miss Winfrey, while she is leaned out. In both photos her body is pointed towards the camera, while he is turned towards her. And finally, the caption shows she refers to him as HoneyGraham. (Luckily my current illness does not include nausea.)

His body language makes him the lesser of the two. And woman do not like to marry their lessers. It's why things can actually be quite difficult for women who rise to the top of the pack. Men don't necessarily date up or down. They're looking for a hot young thing, hopefully one that won't drive them mad. Women want to date up, so that tends to set the dynamic. Oprah doesn't want to marry Graham because she doesn't properly respect him, but she doesn't want to dedicate time to try dating again, plus she must have some inclination as to how that would work out for her.

Imagine the postures of these images were reversed: if he was standing upright (or slightly distanced) and she was leaned and oriented towards him. Do you think she would have rebuked his proposal? I doubt it. She may have even born him children. Then her maternal instincts would be directed more naturally towards her children, rather than at "the world." A lot of people on the alt-right think feminization is destroying the west. The voting habits of unattached women and soy boys would sure seem to corroborate that suspicion. On the other hand, her we see the exemplar of liberalism, the queen bee of the mainstream left, and she's only been able to live life on "her terms" because there exists a man who is happy to let her, and takes whatever deal she gives him.

Friday, January 12, 2018

ShitholeGate

I'm taking a little break from the economics posts since I'm home sick. I don't think my head could handle thinking about monetary theory right now. So instead today I'll engage in a favorite hobby that takes very little cognitive effort: demonstrating how liberals are dumb.

The big news of the now from the left seems to be ShitholeGate. If you haven't heard, apparently Trump is reported (by an anonymous source) to have called Haiti a shithole in a private meeting about immigration. Then the story was altered that Trump hadn't called Haiti a shithole but had rejected additional immigration from the country, and had used the term shithole in reference to a couple of unspecified African countries. There are three possible scenarios here, each of them ridiculous.

First scenario: Trump didn't call any country a shithole. I mean, we don't really know. The left want to believe a story from the NYT based on an anonymous source. How many times have they been burned by that? It would be just delightful if a transcript or recording surfaces that shows the phrase wasn't even uttered. There is also proof of insane bias in the media, if we needed more. The media never gave any attention to sources who claimed Hillary Clinton said terrible things behind closed doors. If they are only willing to engage in these kinds of speculative spectacles for Trump, well it just further proves that the media primarily is partisan propaganda.

Second scenario: Trump said it. What if he did? What if he called two African counties shitholes? Does the media really want to take the stance that there are not two shitholes in Africa? How much more absurd could they be? Everyone knows most African countries are shitholes. Haiti is as well and, guess what, Haitians loathe Hillary Clinton because her family embezzled so much of the disaster relief funds after their major earthquake. In other words, Hillary Clinton is a major reason Haiti is a shithole. What about Africa...isn't Libya a shithole? Didn't Hillary Clinton play a pivotal in transforming Libya from a success (by African standards) into a lawless hellhole where slaves are sold in open-air markets? This is not the only African country to be graced by the Clintons. The documentary Clinton Cash showed how they sold their political clout to grant legitimacy to violent African dictators. This family has played a significant role in these countries' continued shithole status, but it's Trump that gets all the heat for making the obvious observation? I was wrong before, all this absurdity actually does hurt my head.

Third scenario: Trump said it and he had it leaked. Very possible this is true. He's a master of making statements worded in such a way that the media will jump all over it, but the message is one the majority of Americans agree with. Of course most Americans think Haiti and Africa are shitholes. It's another example of a "controversy" where Trump gets tons of attention saying things that most Americans say themselves. Also, this sends a loud message to Trump's base, that he is out their fighting for the foremost issue that got him elected: immigration. This whole thing only hurts him with the people who already despise him, and we aren't primarily concerned with those lunatics anyway.

Thursday, January 11, 2018

Who Pays for Money?

Picking up where The Cost of Cash left off...

We discussed the notion that governments must pay to provide a money supply, a topic we continued with in Deficits Matter. A couple of things were left hanging. First, it seems that bitcoin might serve to effectively increase the money supply. That is interesting, if true. And if it is, the government doesn't have to pay for it. So who is paying for it?

Let's work through a couple scenarios and try to think about how all this is working. First scenario: you buy a bitcoin on an exchange. Someone else is holding the bitcoin and has offered to sell. You send them dollars, and they send you a bitcoin. What has changed? Nothing in the individual transaction. It's just a switcharoo and the slates come out clean. But, if a lot of people are buying, then the price of bitcoins will rise. Well, now that's interesting. The same Bitcoin is worth more dollars. What has changed? Still nothing. Dollars paid for Bitcoins cycle right back into the economy. That is to say, the Bitcoins aren't somehow backed by dollars that were invested. In Deficits Matter we defined three types of currency and showed how they are all backed by legal contracts. Bitcoin is a new form, let's call it auxiliary currency. It's auxiliary in the sense that it is not the same denomination as the primary currency, but it is still part of the money supply. And it is not backed by anything more concrete than belief. The price is only high because people believe it is high. That is literally it. There's physically nothing backing the price. No intrinsic value, no legal contract. So bitcoin is not just auxiliary, but it is also another category of currency as well, where nothing tangible gives it value. That's counter to, say, stocks, which are auxiliary currency, but by contract give part ownership in the company's capital and grant dividends, and sometimes convey voting power on the board. [Maybe stocks aren't the best example, as they also contain a high degree of belief valuation themselves.]

Second scenario: bitcoin mining. You mine a bitcoin and sell it. You've taken energy to run a computer algorithm that mines the bitcoins, then you get paid for the coin. Don't be mistaken in thinking that the energy spent mining is somehow invested into a Bitcoin. It is wasted. There are a number of schemes we could concoct that would deliver the desired release schedule with more energy efficiency. I suppose the Bitcoin designers chose CPU-intensive mining because it is easily distributable. Ultimately the mining destroys wealth, as resources must be consumed to power the operation. But that doesn't affect our analysis any. All currencies will have some overhead, even if Bitcoin's may be especially high. So you take your new Bitcoin and you release it into the world. What happens? Someone gives you dollars, and you give them Bitcoin. Congratulations, you've just expanded the money supply. And, if the economy has't changed, then you've caused inflation. The money supply has grown, while the denominated real wealth has stayed the same.

This brings us back to our question: who is paying for this extra money supply? My first guess was the people buying the Bitcoins. You can assume that Bitcoin will eventually go bust. When it does, all the people holding Bitcoins will lose their money. They must be the ones paying for it! But that's not the case. The people losing money when the price falls are offset by the people who made money when it climbed. It's a zero-sum game. There is no net outflow of cash that funded anything, save for transaction fees which are normal friction.

My second guess was that the cost was paid for collectively by poor allocation of resources. People are investing in Bitcoin when they might instead be investing in productive ventures. But the thing is buying Bitcoin isn't truly an investment. It is a currency exchange. You may do it speculatively, but that's not the same as investing. It's more akin to savings. If people are moving their money from investments to cryptocurrencies then their might be some distortions, but not so much if they are taking from their savings. The thing to keep in mind is that buying Bitcoin does not mean you are allocating wealth to Bitcoin. It's a currency exchange.

This brings me to my final guess as to who pays for the money supply added by Bitcoin: no one does. It kind of makes sense, since Bitcoin is a different class of currency that is not backed by anything tangible. It would have to be cheaper, at least. Bitcoin doesn't require a contract, and there's no expectation of interest. It is created by belief, and destroyed by disbelief. We don't yet have empirical data for cryptocurrency cycles since they're so new, but it's reasonable to expect that cryptocurrency valuations will rise and fall with the economy. When there's lots of money, people will buy Bitcoins in a gamble to get big returns. In downtimes they will sell because they need the cash, or fear their money will be destroyed by a disbelief implosion. What is interesting about that hypothesis is that the main goal for these recent economics posts is to gain a better understanding that can be applied to Energy-Backed Currency. This blog proposed the notion last year (and others had the idea before that) because energy production scales linearly with the size of the economy. If you could find a way to practically back currency with energy production, you could avoid both the deflationary and inflationary tendencies of the other currency types. Here, we suspect that Bitcoin valuations rise and fall naturally with the size of the economy too. That is fascinating! So cryptocurrencies naturally help grown and shrink the money supply in proportion with the size of the economy, and no one has to pay for it! But, is this truly any different than what happens in the stock market?

That's all for now. Please comment if you find logical errors in all this. Otherwise, we'll continue with this line of thought very soon.

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Deficits Matter

If you've been following along with the last couple economics posts, you may have noticed a contradiction between the two. In the first one, I claimed that modern fiat currencies are not inherently inflationary: it is merely the tendency of the governments who issue the currency to inflate. In yesterday's post, I suggested that the same currencies actually are inherently inflationary because the money supply must be borrowed. Let's dive in a bit and resolve that contradiction.

The notion that governments spend money into existence comes from Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). This blog took a look at the subject a year ago. (See here and here.) In large part, MMT is an answer to the question, if money is no longer backed by gold, what gives it value? Their answer: taxation. Money has value because governments require taxes to be paid in their issued currency. Someone who owes the government taxes will be willing to exchange goods and services to acquire the currency to avoid jail. Thus, value. (The first link above gives a pretty thorough treatment of this idea.) When we pay our taxes, we imagine the government is collecting the money and then routing it to whatever boondoggle program needs funding. Actually, the program is funded up front, and tax collection only serves to give value to the currency. Sure, the point is moot in our day-to-day lives, but when thinking about how our monetary system works it is very important and almost no one understands this.

Some do though. But that's a problem too, because MMT doesn't tell the whole story. It's not a complete model, which we'll get to in a second. This naive understanding causes many in power to make very faulty assumptions. Most notable was Dick Cheney's "deficits don't matter" assertion. Under pure MMT deficits don't actually matter. The government spends money into existence, and taxes it back out. The extra amount that remains in circulation is "debt" on the government balances, but is necessary to provide the money supply. Because the government can inflate or deflate the currency at will, the debt doesn't really matter. The government can reign in the money supply, thus reducing the debt, at its discretion. The whole thing is counter-intuitive, but MMT people tell us it's all sound. Well, they're sort of ignoring the white elephant in the living room.

The reality is that spending money into existence and taxing it back out won't actually provide us with a usable money supply. Imagine the government budget is $100, and it is balanced. (Like, really imagine.) In the examples given last year, we imagined the government as spending the money into existence at the beginning of the year and collecting it at the end. That would work, except what would happen at the end of the? All currency would be returned to the government. Thus all savings accounts would have to be zero, no dollars left under the mattress, etc. Which isn't feasible. We need extra money in circulation for the economy to actually function. Where does the extra money come from?

One theory you might be tempted with is the notion that the government just spends the extra money into existence. For instance, if the government spends $150, but only collects $100 (this should be easier to imagine), then there's an extra $50 floating around to facilitate transactions, savings, etc. There's your money supply! It gives our politicians a nice out too. They aren't being fiscally irresponsible...they're wisely providing needed liquidity! Unfortunately, that violates the fundamental tenet of MMT, that taxation gives money its value. Think about it. In that year, the government only collects $100. So only $100 of the currency should have value. What gives the remaining $50 value? Why nothing at all. It's just paper at that point. For taxation to give money value, it must be a closed loop. So deficits don't give us a money supply, as nice as that would be for our elected heroes.

MMT provides an answer to the question of the missing money supply, but they only get it half right. They tell us the extra money comes from fractional reserve banking. Banks can take the money the government issues through spending (call it primary currency) and can use that as backing to loan additional money into existence. Let's call the loan-created money leverage currency. [Note: I'm taking liberty with terminology. The MMT experts use different terms for this.] In the US the reserve requirement is 10%. So the banks can issue $900 of leveraged currency. So that must be the money supply! The mystery is solved.

But there is a problem with that too. There never really is $100 in primary currency floating around. It's all accounted for by taxation, and can't really be used as reserve. Bank reserves don't fall to zero at the end of the year. They'd have to call in all their loans every year to comply with the reserve requirement. If we instead imagine government as continually spending money into the economy and continuously collecting it (which is closer to how things really work) we are no better off. In fact, worse, because there is never so much as a dollar in liquid primary currency. Ten times nothing is still nothing. So something is missing. There must be extra money somewhere, in addition to primary currency, that provides liquidity; at least enough for the banks to make their reserve requirements.

This is where, from what I can tell, MMT stops. They stop there, I reckon, because if they go further they risk invalidating their theory, at least as far as the actual economy goes.

Note that we've shown two different ways that money is created and given value. One is through spending/taxing. The other is through bank script. Clearly, we can't just say that taxation gives money value. Even in MMT that would only apply to 10% of the money supply. The concept can be generalized. Contracts give money their value. Taxation is a legally enforceable contract. Bank loans are legally enforceable contracts. Money is born in a contract. But the contract also represents debt. The two are married like matter and anti-matter. Eventually, they will meet each again - at the conclusion of the contract - and will annihilate each other just like matter and anti-matter, although probably less spectacularly.

So we've identified two forms of currency, both enforced by legal contracts. We're looking for a hypothetical third. It must exist, or our theory of things is invalid. The source of the missing currency is (drumroll)...... taking on debt. Well, that sounds like a tautology at this point, right? We just said that currency necessitates debt. The government borrows money to provide a money supply. They must. What other way could there be? The government sells debt to individuals, corporations, foreign governments, and the central bank. In exchange, they can issue currency. But there is, as always, a contract. And the contract is that the government will pay those debts back, plus interest. That is the source of inherent inflation we're talking about. Say the government needs to borrow $100 to provide the money supply. We'll call this secondary currency. They promise to pay back $200 dollars in 7 years (the terms of a savings bond). Well, how do they have $200 in 7 years? They must borrow that, also. So yes, inflation is definitely built right into the system.

There is plenty to chew on if this is all true. [And it's all so counter-intuitive that we have to suspect it's not true. Then what's our error?] First, there must be some debt to provide the money supply. But deficits still matter. Just because the government borrows so it can issue cash, doesn't mean it still can't borrow recklessly in the normal way. They can still buy a cheeseburger today with promises to pay tomorrow. The big question I have is, even if governments were responsible, and only borrowed the minimum amount to provide liquidity, isn't the whole thing still insolvent in the long term? If you've read all along this far and haven't quite grasped the arguments I'm making, just picture a dog chasing its own tail. That image is all that really needs to be conveyed.

I guess I have one other big question: how else could it be done? There's something strange about the government, which issues the currency, having to first borrow it at interest. What sense does this make? The issue we'll explore next in this series will be whether there is a contract-based monetary scheme that isn't inherently inflationary. In the meantime, I have to wonder if resource-based currencies aren't the better solution. Yes, I've been beating up on goldbugs and cryptocultists, but maybe the deflation spiral is ultimately more favorable than the inflation explosion.

In conclusion, where does that leave us with the initial contradiction that fueled this whole post? Well, there is no contradiction. Under MMT, fiat currencies aren't inflationary. But in the real world they are, because MMT is an incomplete model of modern fiat currencies.

Thanks for following along. If you're bored to tears with the economics posts...well there's still going to be some more coming to slog through!

Tuesday, January 9, 2018

The Cost of Cash

As mentioned yesterday, the cryptocult believes that cryptocurrencies offer a solution to inflation. They shouldn't be completely confident about that. Advocates for the gold standard make the same claim, but that didn't stop the US government from de-valuing its gold-backed currency, nor the Romans or anyone else. Granted, I can't fathom how they would manage to inflate something like Bitcoin if it was the direct sovereign currency, but I'm certain they'd figure something out.

The question to ponder is why governments are so driven to inflate the currency. There seem to be many misconceptions. Many compare it to the aforementioned Romans, who watered down the denarius until it was worthless. The Romans would pay their expenses using the denarius, but demand payment with more sound denominations. Their scam amounted to a false tax rate. The were extracting more real wealth from the populace than it would seem. The same trick shouldn't work in our modern fiat currency. The government takes a set percentage of your income. Let's say it's pegged at 30%. It doesn't matter whether that income is denominated as twenty dollar or two million, the government gets 30% of your incoming real wealth in either case. Inflating the currency as a tax scam works when the currency has an intrinsic value, like gold, but not in a modern fiat system where the currency is given value by the tax collection itself.

This point is worth understanding. Most who talk about monetary policy still seems stuck in the pre-Nixon era, including almost everyone on the right. There has been a major paradigm shift, and once you pick it up you'll see these logical errors everywhere.

The reason we are told that governments lean towards inflation is to avoid a deflation spiral. They want to keep currency circulating freely. They measure the currency's performance by "velocity of money" calculations. Well, money doesn't have a very high velocity when it's stuffed under your mattress. Under deflation, that's just what happens. Your dollar will be worth more tomorrow than today. So why not hold on to it? That's just what happens with Bitcoin. Hardly anyone shops with bitcoin, save as a novelty. Most people are buying it because it is deflationary. As long as people are buying, the cost per coin goes up, which encourages more investment, which drives the prices higher, and so on. It's like a case study that confirms the validity of the deflation spiral fear. All those billions that could be invested in something more productive end up chasing themselves in a Ponzi scheme. So the official reason given for inflation is legitimate.

Some are more cynical. They suspect the government is intentionally inflating the currency to scam their lenders. It's realistic. Inflation favors the indebted. Governments have tried to inflate away their problems before. Weimar and Zimbabwe are always given as examples. There is no reason to trust governments not to do so, but then these are extreme examples. Evidence doesn't show that our current governments are particularly concerned about debt. As problems go, it's a massive problem. The US national debt is something like $170K per taxpayer, quite near the median home price of $188K. If we had another eight years of the trends under Obama, the national debt would exceed the total value of all housing in America! Can you even comprehend that? A government so in debt it would have to sell all the homes in the country to break even. It's a towering problem, but it's a tower in the distance. It's tomorrow's problem.

The interest on the national debt consumes about 6.5% of revenues. That is a big chunk of money. Politicians who've gotten their high-status jobs based on promises to balance budgets without cutting services would kill to get their hands on that. They'd certainly prefer that there wasn't a debt. But they must be even more fearful of economic turbulence. The downturn in 2008 caused state revenues to fall an astonishing 31.7%. Recession is much more ominous than debt to politicians elected to 2-year terms in Washington, or bureaucrats appointed to keep the ship upright just long enough to hand it off to the next one. These people may be dumping cash out of helicopters, but the intention is not to marginalize debt. They're doing just what they say they're doing: keeping the economy well lubricated.

One thing I suspect they aren't thinking about is the cost of currency. Nearly everyone thinks of money the way we normally think of money. It has value, and you can't spend less than you make. It really doesn't work the same way for governments. They spend money into existence, they collect it in taxes, and they pay interest on the money in circulation. The government pays a penalty for maintaining the money supply! Isn't that something? Most people don't realize this. Let's say you stash a hundred dollars under the mattress. That bill isn't backed by gold and it doesn't have intrinsic value. It was created because the government bought a bond from the bank. The bank charges interest, currently about 3%. Every year you keep that hundred dollars in the sock drawer, the government pays $3. (They must increase the money supply to achieve their desired liquidity.) If you have a thousand dollars, then they are paying $30 a year in interest. Never thought of it that way before, have you? We can clearly see two reasons why inflation must happen. First, the banks are not lending money for free. The government must pay back more than it borrowed.The whole process transfers wealth from the public to the central bank. Second, inflation must be maintained because the government can't afford for you to be holding onto cash. Imagine people were hoarding cash the way they are holding Bitcoins right now. The system would crash within a year. Inflation is a way of passing the costs of hoarding onto the hoarder. 

This all brings us to one last point. Many people assume the government must hate Bitcoin and is itching for any excuse to ban it. They're surprised it's been permitted to go on for as long as it has. But I don't see how Bitcoin competes with the USD at all. In fact, the government should love Bitcoin; it provides liquidity that they don't have to pay for! If I turn some of my savings into Bitcoins, the dollars go back into the economy, and Bitcoin becomes my savings, or is used to purchase goods. The velocity of money increases. These are all things the government should want. The next question that arises is: if not the government, then who is paying for the cryptocurrency money supply? It's an interesting question, and one we'll save for another post.

Sunday, January 7, 2018

Cryptocurrencies: Wealth You Can Believe In

I've been wanting to got back to talking about economics for a while now, but wasn't sure if I had anything interesting to say on the subject. And I've absolutely been wanting to return to the notion of energy-backed currency, but every time I start it doesn't go anywhere fruitful. Luckily some recent discussions I've had on a cryptocurrency forum have spurred fodder for a couple more posts, and hopefully more will spin out of that.

The cryptocurrency community is almost like a religion with competing sects. Each sect believes its particular form of currency is the one true currency, and the belief that its value will soon rise enormously is sacrosanct. Go on the Ripple subreddit and question the enormous valuation of the company, and you will be met with downvotes and responses like "market capitalization doesn't matter for cryptocurrencies." These communities contain an irrational belief system coupled with a demand for uniformity. They fit the criteria for a cult, at least as far as this blog has defined the term.

It's probably not fair to pick on the cryptocult too much in this regard. Most of what passes for investment these days is just adopting a belief system. Nearly everyone is invested through their retirement plans, which just amounts to a belief that the stock market will grow in value. Why will it grown in value? Because other people will keep buying stock! The fact that nearly all retirement programs are now private market investments means we can trust money will keep pouring in. We aren't investing in the underlying companies so much as we are investing in the belief that other people will keep investing. To invest wisely means not to judge the material worth of an asset, but to predict other peoples' belief in its worth.

The same holds for cryptocurrencies, but even more so, because they have no underlying value. When you invest in a company, you are taking part ownership of a firm with physical assets. When you invest in a normal fiat currency, your investment has value because some government will accept it for settlement of tax debts. Cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value. Yes, they are guaranteed to be scare, but that is not enough in itself to confer value. That requires belief. When you think about it, it's not surprising that the cryptocurrency forums feels like a den of believers. The whole industry is dependent on belief, and belief alone.

A veritable cottage industry has grown up around the success of Bitcoin. The best route out there today to get filthy rich is to create a new cryptocurrency that gets popular. But how do you get popular? Bitcoin is big because they were first. There are a few others like Litecoin and Etheryum, but there is only really room for very limited number of cryptocurrencies that bear no intrinsic value. Entrepreneurs are now trying to create market forces that give their currencies value, or at least the appearance of value. The biggest one is Ripple, who made big headlines last week after their cryptocurrency soared in value. Ripple aims to disrupt the market for settling international monetary transfers. It's a lofty pursuit in itself, but where the owners are really making bank is with the cryptocurrency. They are now billionaires, on paper at least. The currency is highly valued because people are buying it, because they want to be holding on to the next big thing. (Disclaimer: I'm one of those people.) The financial success of the Ripple's creators has less to do with the value they're providing to the world, and more with their ability to enrich themselves from a belief system. It's inspiring, in a way, but also appalling because the whole thing is like a can of condensed greed.

There's another belief out there amongst the cryptocult, that cryptocurrencies will solve the problems of sovereign fiat currencies, and will (or at least should) replace them one day. They say that fiat currencies are inherently inflationary, so cryptocurrencies will be inherently more sound. But that belief is double wrong. Fiat currencies aren't inherently inflationary. Fiat currencies aren't inherently anything. The government decides how much money is spent into existence. It can inflate and deflate the currency at will. Now, governments do tend to inflate the money supply, and in fact all mainstream economists and the Fed themselves are quite open about their goal of light inflation. Why governments want inflation is a topic will save for tomorrow's post, but certainly they do. That's not a problem inherent to the currency, but government control of the currency. Okay, so maybe they say the solution is that cryptocurrencies prevent the government from being able to abuse their powers of inflation. But the problem with that is cryptocurrencies are inherently deflationary. There are only a finite number of Bitcoins. It's not much different than gold in that regard. But it doesn't seem rational to replace a currency that can be driven to inflation by governments with one that is guaranteed to be deflationary. (Unless the economy shrinks, that is.)

There's a lot of money to be made out there in cryptocurrencies right now. But realize they mostly amount to belief bubbles. You want to get in and cash out smartly, and not be left holding the bag when the belief bubble pops.

Friday, January 5, 2018

Liberal Inc

It hasn't been all that long since liberals were the anti corporates. Remember that? The movie Team America poked fun at them for their sloppy anti-corporate rhetoric, and that was only about a decade and a half ago. The lefty/corporate switcharoo came after that. 9 years ago, if we had to really peg it down. Alex Jones predicted it. Or he came close at least. (I used to listen to a lot of Alex Jones in the Bush era.) He predicted that, despite running as an anti-war candidate, the Obama tenure would be even more dangerously imperial than Bush's, because under Bush at least there was strong resistance, but the anti-war left would give Obama free license. He was, of course, proven correct. We can generalize his prediction: all establishment action the left protested under Bush would be permitted under Obama. Look, for example, at Haliburton. Was there anything that they complained about more bitterly than Bush's government granting no-bid contracts to Cheney's former company? And then Obama went around and granted the same no-bid contracts! Not a peep from the left about it.

The reasonable prediction to make for the next administration would have been: the left will resume its old stances if a Republican is elected. We would expect the left to become, again, anti-war, anti-corporate, anti-establishment. But that hasn't happened. Instead, the left is thoroughly entrenched as pro-estasblishment and pro-corporate. Look at the recent net neutrality battle. On one side we had the left, and all the corporations! It was fantastic. Here the left were telling us the regulation change would empower evil corporations, who were their allies! If you're in the middle of a divisive political struggle, that's where you want your opponent to be. Making a stance that is inherently absurd. If you think back, when is the last time the left energized around an issue that put them in opposition to the corporate interests? The closest recent one I can think of is TPP, which would have empowered global corporations at the expense of state sovereignty, and which Bernie Sanders vehemently opposed. But then again, Trump killed TPP, and the left gave no credit. That is, their opposition to TPP ended when Trump adopted the same opinion, so we can't really count that one, not fully at least. I think you really have to go back to the bailouts, which occurred early in Obama's presidency. That must be the last time the left squared off against the establishment. Since then liberals have been their dutiful puppets.

It amuses me to no end when liberals put on airs that they are highly individualistic, rebellious free thinkers. It must be mere coincidence that their independent thoughts just happen to be exactly the same ones they are hearing from the corporate media. From their college professors. From the teachers unions. From their corporate employers. Is it really so progressive and brave to promote diversity or anti-racism when that is also the stance of every single Fortune 500 company? When it's the the promoted ethos of every television show and Hollywood movie? "Just because my every belief just happens to coincide with the liberal agenda I've been exposed to my entire life doesn't mean I didn't adopt those beliefs independently!" That would be the best argument those free thinkers would be able to come with, if they even bothered making arguments anymore. (Now they just find ways to call you some form of hater.)

There are two major reasons that the left hasn't returned to anti-establishment rhetoric with the new Republican president. The first is that liberal ideology has so captured the establishment. Perhaps media and academia have been infected for a long time, but now the corporate and government spheres are also crawling with lefties. Look at what's happening at Google, or in the FBI or at State. These are what Vox Day would call converged institutions. That is when an institution is so controlled by ideology that it can no longer properly execute its original function. Before, we never saw the left protest the media or academia, because those were leftist-owned. We would expect the left to protest corporations and the government, like normal, but now those are lefty organizations too. So they aren't protested. The only thing left to protest is fictional Nazis.

The second reason is Trump. He is anti-establishement. The left doesn't know what to do. Trump is their enemy. The establishment is their enemy. (How can the left be the left is they aren't anti-establishment?) But Trump isn't just an enemy. He's been branded as Hitler times Satan. So they side with the establishment to oppose Trump. Suddenly the left just loves John McCain and George W. Bush. Isn't that fantastic?

This is an existential crisis for the left. Trump deserves our praise, but I think it was bound to happen. Eventually there had to be an alt-right, a rising of anti-establishment conservatives and reactionaries. We talked about this years ago. How would the left react to an anti-establishment right? We saw that the Ron Paul wing of the Republicans and the Dennis Kucinich types of the left were naturally aligned, and wondered if some type of cross-aisle alliance would rise. Wow, nothing could be further from the truth! Were we naive? Or should we really have expected that the anti-establishment conservative candidate would be effectively branded as Hitler-Satan, that the mainstream left would derail into manic conspiracy theory, and the establishment deep-state would seek to remove an elected President with the Democrats cheering them on the whole way? Surely our hope for an anti-establishment left/right partnership sounds adorable now, but man it still seems more likely than what has happened. The left, practically defined as being anti-establishment, is now the establishment movement. (Does "establishment movement" even makes sense?)

Here's why I'm optimistic. We know the left doesn't engage in debate anymore. They can't. They can't be anti-war after cheerleading Obama. They can't be pro-democracy after supporting a coup against the elected president. They can't be anti-corruption after rallying around Clinton. And so on. They don't have any arguments they can make. Instead, they are entirely fueled by lies and hatred. Those are powerful fuels, don't underestimate them. Still, we have to look to the ancient wisdom of Sun Tzu. He who knows himself and his enemy will prevail. Our enemy has boxed himself into a position where he must flee reality at every turn. A lot of things look bad for us. We've lost mightily in the culture wars and in the institutions. Still, when you look at things from the highest strategic level, we are in the ideal position. Our eyes are open, theirs are shut. We must have faith that the inevitable will come to pass.

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

No, it is not inherently hypocritical to criticize Bill Nye while supporting Mike Rowe

Here is an argument/meme/viral rant I saw on social media. (What do you really call an image of paragraph of text?) I typed up a counter-argument because I believed it was an original argument from a Facebook friend. It wasn't until I finished I realized it was just a shared image. (Rule of thumb, never engage in rational debate with something so effortless as a shared meme. Even if you win, you still lose.)

Anyway, I'm sharing it here, so that maybe my effort wasn't entirely in vain. :)


You're making a claim of hypocrisy where it doesn't really exist. We can agree that both Nye and Rowe are entertainers turned activists. Their credentials are similar in that regard. No one really makes the claim (no one thoughtful & honest anyway) that either are disqualified to hold their public opinions or to engage in their particular forms of activism. The issue that so many have with the Nye (myself included) is the perception of exceptional credentials. He is treated by many as an authority where it is not warranted. It's not his credentials we disdain, but the undeserved esteem they are given by so many people.

The same does not apply to Rowe. No one subscribes to his form of activism because of some impeccable blue collar street cred. Everyone knows he got big because of his show. He makes routine references to his background as a theater performer from San Francisco. It's clear that his success as an advocate for the trades is in spite of his background, not because of it. No one believes he is some sort of credentialed authority of his domain. There isn't the false impression that he's some sort of roughneck who worked his way up through the trade unions, as you suggest.

The major difference between the two is that Rowe gained traction because he is a unique voice. Are there any other celebrities who adopted the cause of the tradesman? Can you think of any off-hand? I can't. Compare that to Nye. Supposedly he's a smart scientific intellectual. Any maybe that's true! But then, where is his body of intellectual thought? What original message does he deliver? What profound arguments is he making? Surely you should be able to describe his unique social and scientific theories in a couple sentences. From my observations, he just makes the normal claims about climate change and other liberal stances. There are hundreds of other famous liberals on Twitter saying the same thing, and there's not much that can't be found in the most recent official platform of the Democrat party. The only thing that sets him apart is he wears a lab coat, and many people seem to believe that gives him scientific authority.

It's entirely possible that my exposure to Nye's work is inadequate and unfair, because I mostly just see what people share on Facebook and the like. If I'm missing some compelling arguments he is making, please share. On the other hand, those Facebook-shared opinions are the ones getting all the attention from his fans. That is his public message. And it's vanilla liberal activism wrapped in a lab coat.
To that end, every blog linked in the sidebar here is a unique voice. They all provide their own theories or explanations that are supported with arguments and evidence. I could describe any of them in a couple sentences. That is why I was drawn to the dissident right in the first place. The writers are profound and thought-provoking. That is not the case from the left, where they mostly engage in enforcing ideological uniformity. If their arguments were compelling, well I'd probably be leftist too.