Ten year update (December 2024)

1 BTC = US$100,811

All very salutary, but I remain curious to know what you think of Huemer's (relatively simple!) arguments about corporations and government. Do you disagree with any one of his numbered headings in particular?

For what it's worth, he hates Trump. I observe that The Trump Organization is a corporation, one I can avoid with ease, aside from seeing the name on large buildings now and then. Trump the politician, however, has gathered power using democracy (as it is practiced, which matters more than how one might wish it worked) and this power is harder to avoid.

DEC 21, 2018 Trump is your fault

I wonder how much left-wing intellectuals have contributed to the rise of Trump and the alt-right.

FEB 29, 2020 A Right-Wing, Populist Critique of President Trump

Trump does not encourage respect for our country.... President Trump does not make America strong. He weakens America, in several ways.... Trump’s trade war is estimated to cost average Americans about $1300 a year... When he dies, Mr. Trump will go to his grave laughing at all the people he scammed in his life, not least of all the American voters.

JAN 16, 2021 What's So Bad About Storming the Capitol?

What matters is, if they had somehow succeeded in getting Congress to install Trump as President (which I think had about zero chance of happening), the result would have been a collapse of social order in America. There is no way in hell that the other half of the country would have accepted it. There would have been a civil war.

DEC 30, 2023 Saving Democracy from the Voters

His remarks on January 6 were intended to intimidate Congress and Mike Pence into going along with his plan. Attempting to overturn an election using threats of violence sounds like “engaging in insurrection” to me.

JUN 24, 2023 Who Can Best Destroy America?

If you’re a Woke ideologue, antifa member, or member of ISIS, you should vote for Donald Trump in the next election, because he will do the most to accelerate America’s destruction.

I don't see the word "trust" in either of those articles, so I am curious to hear your thoughts.

There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity. I strongly disagree. No group has a monopoly on excellence. A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas. Achieving this requires casting a wide net for talent and then objectively selecting the best, without bias in any direction. We will not pick winners and losers based on someone being the “right” or “wrong” race, gender, and so on. It should be needless to say, and yet it needs saying: doing so would be racist and sexist, not to mention illegal.

Scale should be permitted to offer jobs to whoever they wish, but I don't think it's a a mistake to believe that merit (i.e. ability to contribute value to Scale) and diversity are somewhat in tension.

No age group has a monopoly on excellence, but would not be surprising if almost all of the Scale workforce is drawn from the 20-39 year old age bracket, which makes up 30% of the population.

If Scale hires solely on merit, staff will show some variety in various demographic dimensions, but it won't be a strictly population-balanced representation.

Philosophy Bro, as Hubski dubbed Michael Huemer, has moved to Substack.

I Love Corporations is archived.

This was a great discussion.

Further reading:

The Basic Social Problem

1 The Fundamental Social Problem

Humans are selfish.

Some actions harm others but benefit the agent.

Prediction from 1+2: There is going to be a lot of extremely net-harmful behavior.

2 Solutions

Individual Retaliation

The Fantasy Solution: Let’s just teach people to be nice.

Government

Anarcho-Capitalism

Now, what sucks about the first three solutions?

The Basic Problem of Government

The basic problem of government, from my previous post:

Government officials are selfish.

Some government actions harm other people but benefit government officials.

Prediction: There is going to be a lot of net-harmful government behavior.

Here are four solutions, from the same post:

Meta-Government

Separation of Powers

Constitutions

Democracy

Let’s think about why each of these are weak solutions.

If you would like to have a conversation about these, post one up here.

economists, who have prospered mightily over the past half century, might fairly be accused of having a vested interest in capitalism as it currently operates

The same could be said of its opponents; capitalism makes civilized life possible.

Our emphasis on the virtues of free, competitive markets and exogenous technical change can distract us from the importance of power in setting prices and wages, in choosing the direction of technical change, and in influencing politics to change the rules of the game.

Prices, including wages, are not "set" by market players. Prices come about as a result of buyers and sellers interacting. Sellers can choose any price at which they are willing to sell, and buyers can choose any price at which they are willing to buy, but a sale only occurs (and a market price decided) when the two sides meet and agree on the same price.

Customers are the primary driver of technical change. You can still buy a typewriter, but most customers demand keyboards and touchscreens.

Public choice theory is a discipline of economics that considers how political actors are influenced by incentives like anyone else.

In contrast to economists from Adam Smith and Karl Marx through John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, and even Milton Friedman, we have largely stopped thinking about ethics and about what constitutes human well-being.

I don't see ethics and welfare being neglected, but there are many new avenues to explore. In recent decades the abundance of data and software has enabled a boom in econometrics while Adam Smith had to rely more on intuition and almanacs.

We often equate well-being with money or consumption, missing much of what matters to people.

What other discipline tries to carefully measure what matters to people? How else could you do it, if not by paying close attention to how they spend resources like money, time and attention? The base of Maslow's pyramid is formed of goods consumed in exchange for money.

Many subscribe to Lionel Robbins’ definition of economics as the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends or to the stronger version that says that economists should focus on efficiency and leave equity to others, to politicians or administrators. But the others regularly fail to materialize, so that when efficiency comes with upward redistribution—frequently though not inevitably—our recommendations become little more than a license for plunder.

The opposite of efficiency is waste, from which no one benefits. A concrete example of upward redistribution (not the result of government action) would be helpful.

Keynes wrote that the problem of economics is to reconcile economic efficiency, social justice, and individual liberty.

Social justice and liberty? These are political considerations, not economic. Indeed, this is simply a misquote of the original essay:

The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: Economic Efficiency, Social Justice, and Individual Liberty.

Very possible, and hard to conclude anything based on unreliable self-reported data, apparently not even asking if the person is using a time restricted diet, but just guessing based on two days of reported eating habits.

Larger sample size would merely increase confidence in the misleading association.

• Wearing body armor linked to ER visits for gunshot wounds!

• Nicotine replacement therapy users 70% more likely to get lung cancer!

• Parachute owners die of massive impact trauma 10× as often!

O, Veni!

A study says intermittent fasting is making people drop dead. Oh, come on

From the poster:

“Eight-hour TRE was significantly associated with higher risk of cardiovascular mortality in the general population”

People who restrict their eating to eight hours per day may be more likely to have extra weight they hope to lose, and that extra weight may put them at greater risk of cardiovascular mortality compared to the general population.

“Surely they controlled for weight” one thinks, before clicking on the link…

The bird business is very memorable, but the work is somewhat spoiled by the very precise but implausible image of a tiny spider (and even the spider webs) casting distinct shadows from a street light, "Gigantically projected against the street".

From The Scholar's Library, a worthy collection of "required reading for the human race."

The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be trusted to man.

Davy Crockett, Not Yours to Give

Why the United States of America needs to vindicate itself in the eyes of the despotic and failing governments that make up much of the rest of the world is a mystery.

Thomas Sowell, Abstract People

When the baby boomers retire, that will be the moment of truth—or of more artful lies. Just like Enron.

Thomas Sowell, Government-Sanctioned Pyramid Schemes

That government is best which governs not at all.

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

there’s a very fashionable idea right now that each people, each culture, has its own integrity, has its own validity, which must be respected and must have its day in the sun. I don’t think anybody will bother to argue with that. But what I think you’re going to find fairly soon, as you head out into the world, are two things: first, that it’s irrelevant...

Tom Wolfe, Commencement Address at Boston University

Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on America’s campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who’re supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression?

Charlton Heston, Winning The Cultural War

"The Short Fiction Reading Room" section looks very promising, full of all-time classic short stores.

Agassi’s book suggests that a life of tranquility and satisfaction, “barbecues and ballgames,” is not compatible with high achievement. All the tennis stars are obsessed with their game, they never say “I’m good enough.” That gloom, the sticky paste of frustration and yearning to achieve our dreams, satisfy our absent fathers, make a lasting impact, be remembered, it can pull you down and it’s also what propels you forward. Onward!

Global temp is cruising up ahead of expectations

Depends on whose expectations you look at. One source says the "skeptic" forecasters "have generally done rather poorly, universally predicting less warming than has been observed" whereas "global warming predictions made by mainstream climate scientists have all fared reasonably well, with the exception of Kellogg's in 1979, whose linear nature we found puzzling."

I don't see any reason to think that we will lower CO2 emissions

Depends on who "we" are. CO2 emissions in the United States peaked in 2007. Global emissions were not much higher in 2022 than 2019, and the increase was smaller than global GDP growth.

China is by far the biggest contributor now, and per capita emissions remain much lower than in the U.S. and Canada. For a while I expect growth there will offset reductions elsewhere, but they face the same incentives as anyone to get away from coal. China is aggressively adding nuclear capacity.

Preliminary numbers are in for 2023.

Gun ownership is particularly high compared to other common items. For example, in 813 itemized male inventories from the 1774 Jones national database, guns are listed in 54% of estates, compared to only 30% of estates listing any cash, 14% listing swords or edged weapons, 25% listing Bibles, 62% listing any book, and 79% listing any clothes.

Counting Guns in Early America

First hit for query “ how many oeople.owned guns in 1787”