RedStateEclectic

Free Markets and Recovery From Natural Disaster

Mike, from Economic Freedom, sent me this the other day because my part of the country was threatened by some tornadoes the other day (not here, specifically, but the whole Midwest, including some places in Nebraska). I found it a great watch, and something we all ought to think about when the temptation is to look toward Washington, D.C.

Saving the Titanic - An Alternative Currency

Image credit.

As the two pieces below show, imagery drawn from the Titanic's disaster enjoys much currency these days, even though the anniversary of the super-vessel's sinking is still five days away.

I consider the Vieira interview (bottom of post) especially noteworthy - a very serious attempt at finding a practical way to fundamentally change the monetary framework of the USA. Vieira makes one wonder: will perhaps Nebraska spearhead a new American currency?

But first this:

We are like passengers on the Titanic ten minutes after its fatal encounter with the iceberg: the idea that the ship will sink is beyond belief.
 

As we all know, the "unsinkable" Titanic suffered a glancing collision with an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912. Ten minutes after the iceberg had opened six of the ship's 16 watertight compartments, it was not at all apparent that the mighty vessel had been fatally wounded, as there was no evidence of damage topside. Indeed, some eyewitnesses reported that passengers playfully scattered the ice left on the foredeck by the encounter.

But some rudimentary calculations soon revealed the truth to the officers: the ship was designed to survive four watertight compartments being compromised, and could likely stay afloat if five were opened to the sea, but not if six compartments were flooded. Water would inevitably spill over into adjacent compartments in a domino-like fashion until the ship sank.

We can sympathize with the disbelief of the officers, and with their confused reaction, simultaneously reassuring passengers and attempting to goad them into the lifeboats. With the interior still warm and bright with lights, it seemed far more dangerous to clamber into an open lifeboat and drift off into the cold Atlantic than it did to stay onboard.

As a result, the first lifeboats left the ship only partially full. Only when it became undeniable that the ship was doomed did people attempt to "make other arangements," but by then it was too late.

The tragedy was a cruel mix of human error (entering an ice field at nearly top speed, 23-25 knots), hubris-soaked planning (only enough lifeboats for half the passengers and crew) and design flaws: the high-sulfur iron hull plating did not bend when struck by the ice, it shattered like china.

As noted above, the watertight compartment design was also flawed; indeed, some studies have found that the ship would have stayed afloat an additional six hours had there been no watertight compartments, as water would have sloshed evenly along the entire length of the vessel.

I think this perfectly describes the present. Our financial system seems "unsinkable," yet the reliance on debt and financialization has already doomed it, whether we are willing to believe it or not.

Read the entire post.

 

And now, Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Constitutional Attorney and Author, and his plan for a Constitutional alternative gold and silver currency, run at the state level, to bring sound money to America.

 

Not Politics, But a Record?

I hadn’t looked at the weather predictions for a few days—had heard sort of vague notions that it’s supposed to be “nice” this weekend.  So, imagine my surprise when I looked at this, this morning:

This is the 5 day forecast for my part of the world.  Now we’ve had upper 70s and low 80s occasionally over the last few weeks, which has had some of us scratching our heads, considering that it’s only March.  But the Saturday and Sunday forecast?  Is this an April Fools’ joke by the Weather Channel?  91?  On April 1?  In Nebraska? 

Maybe it’s payback for the 4 months of cold and snow we had 2 years ago.  Or maybe the other shoe is going to drop. 

Our lilacs—which usually start blooming the end of April—our starting to burst out in color.  Daffodils have already pretty well finished their blooming. 

I’m not complaining—I like spring (although 90 degrees is much more like summer, which I’m not so keen about).  But I remember, back in 1987, when my husband was graduating from medical school, and we were looking for a new apartment the last few days of March and the first of April:  SNOW.  LOT’S of snow.  So much, in fact, that as we were driving around Omaha looking for places inhabit, that we ended up getting stranded at a friend’s place out in one of the suburbs of Omaha, because we couldn’t make it back to our midtown apartment near the medical center…

What’s it like in other parts of the world?  Has South Carolina reached 100 with 100% humidity, yet?  Are the tulips blooming in Michigan? 

LLE

The People Who Like Gary Johnson

Image credit.

Of course, I know Ron Paul (´s credentials and philosophy) a lot better than Gary Johnson ('s). If I faced an either-or-decision, I would support Ron Paul over anyone else - but this does not mean that I am adverse to Johnson.

In fact, there is much to be said for Johnson, not least that he attracts support from people (a) I admire and (b) personally like - (a) and (b) holding true with respect to Laura, (a) applying to the Coyote, who has this to say in his blog, today:

I decided today to volunteer for Gary Johnson’s independent libertarian run for President.  I have always been a Johnson supporter, and was disappointed that he did not get more attention in the debates and nomination process.

Yes, I know folks will be saying that if Gary Johnson does well, it will just be guaranteeing an Obama victory.  You know what?  Given the choices, I don’t care.  My other choices seem to be the guy who pilot-tested Obamacare and Rick Santorum, perhaps the only person the Republicans could have found with a deeper authoritarian streak than Obama.  You know those 2×2 matrices where one leg is “government intervention in social issues” and the other is “government intervention in economic issues?”  Where libertarians are low-low and Republicans and Democrats are each in one of the low-high boxes?  Did you ever wonder who was in the high-high box?  Well, Obama has moved pretty strongly into that space.  But Santorum staked it out years ago.   He is right out of the John McCain, I-am-nominally-for-small-governemnt-but-support-authoritarian-solutions-for-a-range-of-random-issues school.

In fact, I might argue that freedom and small government would be better served by an Obama second term that the yahoos likely to gain the Republic nomination.  First, there is nothing worse than having statism and crony capitalism sold by someone who is nominally pro-market (see either of the Bushes as an example).  Second, Republicans are much feistier about limiting spending and regulation in Congress when in opposition.  They tend to roll over for expansions of state power when they have a fellow Republican in the White House — just compare spending of the Republican Congress under Clinton vs. Bush.  Medicare Part D, anyone?

The source.

While the cold is giving way to thaw here, people in Amsterdam are skating the frozen canals - enjoy, and nite, nite:

 

Obama's Puck

That is, of course, Bubama's puck.

Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas released the following statement Monday evening regarding his absence from the Bruins' visit to the White House this afternoon:

"I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.

This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government.

Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL.

This is the only public statement I will be making on this topic. TT"

The source.

Abstumpfung

In any decent and civilised political culture this alone - see Indefinite Detention - would trigger a major government crisis with the likely prospect of the government's removal. Today, it is almost non-news, some odd report quickly to be forgotten.

Similarly,

And it’s bizarre to see people more upset about peeing on corpses than with corpsifying them in the first place.

The source.

If anybody is upset about barbarian acts of this kind at all. Admirable from the point of view of manipulative dexterity, how successive governments have managed to "cultivate" a hatred of Muslims that blunts any sense of decency.

From conversations with Germans exposed to or involved in atrocities committed during the Third Reich, I gather they seem to agree that Abstumpfung is a terrible weapon - the gradual blunting of people's ability to perceive and respect the human dignity of the victims of choice.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 The source.

 

Also ponder this take.

USA Founded to Avoid Obama (2/2)

...increasingly even fervent adulators of the walking teleprompter, the eager facilitator of totalitarian rule, are beginning to get it. In July 2008 I wrote:

... the Colonists severed their ties with Britain, and the United States of America were founded to make sure that people like Obama and their confused and dangerous thinking - basically copying European social democracy / socialism - could never hold sway over the nation.

See USA Founded to Avoid Obama (1/2)

 

Update - The Same Procedure As Every Year

A true oddity: Entirely unknown in the English speaking world, this little performance - Dinner for One or The 90th Birthday of Miss Sophie - is being watched by the German nation every year a quarter of an hour before the turn of the year:

 

And a satirical update, playing on the idea that - oh, arrogant, oh blinded Germany - Germany can dictate to France and the rest of Europe, being the economically sounder (hahahah!) and more powerful country.

 

Update, including some explanations of the conversation going on between Sarkozy, called "Flipp-Piepe" (a Berlinish/East German sounding contemptuous term that I have never heard before), and Frau Merkel, his mistress ("Ja, Herrin!").

Today Der Spiegel reports:

The "Merkozy" Dinner for One spoof, called "The 90th Rescue Summit or Euros for No One," cleverly plants the heads of Sarkozy and Merkel on the bodies of the original actors. It was created for ARD television by a German satirist, Udo Eling, and has become a YouTube hit.

In the Internet, at least, it has proven far more popular than Merkel's own New Year message to the nation in which she told Germans to prepare for a tough 2012. She got just a few thousand clicks for her trouble -- compared with 750,000 hits for the spoof clip on YouTube alone. On television, though, Merkel got almost 6 million viewers.

'Don't Forget -- Europe is Speaking German!'

"Get on with it," Merkel tells butler Sarkozy, who stands obediently by her side waiting for orders, "or your AAA rating will only apply to your watered-down champagne."

"You look richer than ever," Sarkozy oozes, adding "I'm a brown nose" and raising his glass in another toast. "To the euro, Mistress!"

Sarkozy has to stand in for absent leaders who have lost their jobs in the euro crisis, including Greece's Giorgios Papandreou and Spain's Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Italy's Silvio Berlusconi is represented by the tiger skin, who according to the voiceover "is no longer a tiger but still lies in the way."

British Prime Minister David Cameron, absent in his own way after casting his veto at the December European Union summit, is also among Merkel's imaginary guests. "Don't forget," Merkel tells him, "Europe's speaking German!"-- a reference to a controversial remark made by one of her allies in November, to the annoyance of British politicians.

In the end, disturbingly, Sarkozy leads Merkel upstairs for his final duty of the night, agreeing to refrain from using euro bonds and promising a sterling performance with the words: "I'll give triple-A."

The Obsolete Economics of Peak Oil

Industrial development would have been greatly retarded if sixty or eighty years ago the warning of the conservationists about the threatening exhaustion of the supply of coal had been heeded; and the internal combustion engine would never have revolutionized transport if its use had been limited to the then known supplies of oil (during the first few decades of the era of the automobile and the airplane the known resources of oil at the current rate of use would have been exhausted in ten years).

Hayek

Previous to the emergence of man, the earth was replete with fertile soil, with trees and edible fruits, with rivers and waterfalls, with coal beds, oil pools, and mineral deposits; the forces of gravitation, of electro-magnetism, of radio-activity were there; the sun sent forth his life-bringing rays, gathered the clouds, raised the winds; but there were no resources.

Zimmermann

The confounding of physics with economics has plagued a real-world understanding of mineral resources. The phenomenon of entropy and the laws of thermodynamics rule in their domain. But there is no economic law analogous to the physical conservation of matter. There is no law of conservation of value; value is continually, routinely created by the market process. And this value creation does not deplete.

Bradley Jr.

I encourage everyone to take the time to read Robert L. Bradley's superb, brief (28 pages), and intelligible history of resource economics, Resourceship: An Austrian Theory of Mineral Resources, which, among other things, provides another example of the statist, hence authoritarian, and more politically correct than economically informed nature of mainstream economics.

See also Be Fruitful and Multiply ..., Prosperity Protects the Environment, and Peak Oil, Peak Bird Excrement, Peak Anything.

The Structural Problem of the World Economy

In this (40 minute) lecture Peter Schiff brilliantly summarises the kernel of the impending paper money collapse: