It is often said, and is true, that progressivism is in revolt against nature, but it is only true because progressivism is in revolt against the past and past knowledge, and a large part of our accumulated wisdom is knowledge of the nature of man, what humans naturally are. Progressives are not only in revolt against nature, but revolt against civilization. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘collapse’
Civilization: Hold back the darkness
Sunday, February 3rd, 2013The Flaw in Moldbug’s proposed dictatorship.
Saturday, October 27th, 2012Obviously democracy is not working, is failing catastrophically. The productive are outvoted by the gimmedats, in large part non asian minorities and white sluts. Moldbug’s solution is simple: Dictatorship, evolving into Monarchy. The dictator, he hopes and expects, will fire all government employees, except for military, police, and some tax collectors. What use are all the rest of them to a strong dictator?
A good government is a stationary bandit, since a stationary bandit has an incentive to shear the sheep, rather than flay them. A bad government is a mobile bandit, and the government service in democracies increasingly approximate mobile bandits. Each bureaucrat seeks to increase his power and wealth, even if the total burden is well above the Laffer limit.
The trouble is that a dictator is not necessarily a stationary bandit: A secure dictator, for example a martial and charismatic monarch of a long established dynasty, is a stationary bandit. Unfortunately, not only are long established dynasties in short supply, but when you have one, the legitimate heir to the throne is seldom martial and charismatic. (more…)
Obamaphone
Saturday, September 29th, 2012This video is racist
Because reality is racist.
“Everybody in Cleveland got Obamaphone. You minority, you low income, you disability …”
The obamaphones are not paid by taxes, or printing money, or the US government borrowing from China. The phone companies are required to give obamaphones to people like this woman, so if you pay for your phone, you are also paying for someone like this woman, someone in the 47%, to have a free phone.
And similarly if you pay for a college education, you are paying for someone like this woman to have a free college education, probably in victim studies, which probably gives extra credit for beating up white kids.
And if you pay your medical bills …
You have probably seen a cascade of spam mail in your inbox announcing that Obama is giving away a great big pile of free stuff. Mostly, it is true, spam mail but not scam mail. He is giving away your stuff to people like this women.
Most of the programs under which the government requires numerous enterprises to give away nice stuff to the supposedly poor long predate Obama, but every year, they get much bigger and give away more stuff. The obamaphone program goes back thirty years or more, but under Obama, has given away far more stuff than under all previous presidents. And I expect that under Bush it probably gave away more stuff than any president previous to Bush, though far less than under Obama.
You are outvoted. Every election from now on is going to be decided by who is going to make people like you give people like this woman more free stuff. Hence Greece, Spain, and most of Europe. And if you don’t like it, you are racist.
Time to end democracy.
Inflation
Saturday, June 16th, 2012If we believe the official inflation figures, supposedly living standards in the US are rising: Yet the proportion of people with cars is falling, the proportion of households with a car is falling faster, and the amount of meat people are eating is falling – consistent with a cpi rising at about the rate that shadowstats claims, about six to ten percent (more…)
Inflation
Friday, February 3rd, 2012Total sales are rising ten percent a year in nominal terms. Surprise surprise, shadowstats estimates ten percent inflation per year if we use the measure of inflation that was used in the the 1980s. Hawaiian Libertarian reports that that is pretty much what he is seeing when he puts his money down.
So what is the true rate of inflation?
There is no one true rate of inflation, since to estimate inflation, one has to compare apples and oranges, and there is no one valid way of doing this.
But if inflation is substantially less than ten percent a year, we are consuming substantially more goods this year than last year. Do you think we are consuming substantially more goods this year than last year?
But whatever the true rate of inflation might be, it is increasing. It is not increasing fast as I expected, not increasing very fast at all. It is increasing at about two percent a year, so if this year inflation was not ten percent, but eight percent, next year it will be ten percent a year, and the year after that, twelve percent a year. The rate at which prices increase, is itself increasing.
This does not sound all that terrifying, but recall that hyperinflation begins as the collapse of a paper bubble. Everyone wakes up one morning realizing that inflation is a lot higher than they thought and will only get worse, so they all try to unload their paper at the same time for tangibles: Land in productive use, gold, ammo, guns, non perishable food items, alcohol, and suchlike, also overseas non tangible assets, paper assets regulated by solvent governments.
Only to discover that they cannot all unload their paper money at the same time.
If the rate of inflation is high and increasing, sooner or later, it suddenly starts to increase a lot faster. Suppose inflation this year was seven percent, then next year it will nine percent, which is not imminent doom. If people are not panicking today, they are unlikely to panic tomorrow. The end is not nigh. But the end, nonetheless, is in sight.
Stultum facit fortuna
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011Whom fortune wishes to destroy, she first makes mad.
Consensus leads to the madness of crowds, not the wisdom of crowds. As we move to a government ruled by consensus, and intrusively pervading every aspect of society with its power, madness and evil prevails. (more…)
The cause of the decline
Sunday, October 16th, 2011Lately there as been a lot of concern about the increasingly visible decline of the west, notably Peter Thiel on “The End of the Future”: (more…)
Ambac argues fraud committed for profit caused the crisis
Thursday, January 27th, 2011I of course, argue that government pressure to make mortgage loans caused the crisis. After all, the specific examples bad loans that Ambac lists in its lawsuit against Bear Stearns, are all loans that were made to poor people, though Ambac provides no information that would identify the race of these poor people. Ambac, however, argues that Bear Stearn made bad loans, lied that the loans were fine, and sold them on to the next sucker in order to collect fees. Ambac in its lawsuit against Bear Stearns explains the global financial crisis as caused by fraud conducted for profit, rather than caused by government policy.
It is, however, apparent that Bear Stearns kept a lot of bad loans, and took losses on them, even though it unloaded most of the bad loans onto various suckers by means of fraudulent warranties and representations. I argue therefore that Bear Stearns was under pressure to please regulators by lending to the supposedly poor and oppressed, which poor and oppressed are notoriously unable and unwilling to repay loans, and finding itself with a pile of bad loans, proceeded to unload as many of them as it could, by fair means and foul, many of them onto Ambac.
If, in the end, the government winds up compensating Ambac, and the Bear Stearns boys who made these fraudulent warranties and representations to Ambac go unpunished as individuals, we should conclude that Bear Stearns was carrying out government policy, that this fraud, like so many others, was committed out of political correctness. If, on the other hand, those who committed these massive frauds are themselves individually punished, for committing lucrative frauds that sank the world economy, then this will be evidence for the fraud was committed for profit.
Against the theory that the fraud was conducted for profit, is the fact that this is a civil lawsuit, even though fraud, and fraud that cost the taxpayer trillions, is a criminal offense. That there is not the slightest suggestion that any of these many acts of fraud will be punished criminally, suggests that these frauds were committed not for gain, but for political correctness.
Who called the financial crisis before it happened?
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011Among others, Ron Paul, in his speech to the house, proposing amendments to the laws that caused the crisis
… the government’s policy of diverting capital into housing creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing.
…
The connection between the GSEs and the government helps isolate the GSEs’ managements from market discipline. This isolation from market discipline is the root cause of the mismanagement occurring at Fannie and Freddie …
I hope my colleagues join me in protecting taxpayers from having to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when the housing bubble bursts.
… The flip side of regulatory capture is that mangers and owners of highly subsidized and regulated industries are more concerned with pleasing the regulators than with pleasing consumers or investors, since the industries know that investors will believe all is well if the regulator is happy. Thus, the regulator and the regulated industry may form a symbiosis where each looks out for the other’s interests while ignoring the concerns of investors. …
… the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. …
Needless to say, there was only one vote for addressing the looming financial crisis. Looking at the tea party candidates, I think if the Tea party did a clean sweep, if every single congressman had belonged to the tea party, I think there would have been two or three votes for addressing the looming financial crisis.
Gabrielle Giffords needed killing
Sunday, January 9th, 2011And so do most of congress, most of the regulators, and most of the businessmen in the revolving door between business and regulation.
All the conservative criticism of her seems to be disappearing off the web, but what the hell, she stank, critics pointed out she stank, so someone killed her. It might have been a leftist who did not think she was left enough, but chances are, was a conservative. Yes, chances are that unkind remarks by conservatives got her killed. Pity it was not someone who mattered more. Her platform was to create lots of high paying jobs in government and quasi governmental activities – in other words, to transfer wealth from productive people who mostly voted against her, to unproductive people who mostly voted for her, thus moving the nation generally leftwards.
As the nation plunges into bankruptcy, as the Cloward–Piven crisis approaches, we might kill enough similar wrongdoers to eventually get out of the crisis. I don’t really see any other path to resolving the crisis other than watering the tree of liberty in the usual fashion.
