Friday Fun with New Math

Filed under: Uncategorized , Humor, Fun

Spread the Wealth

A new twist on a chilling phrase.

Last night I had the good fortune to attend a book launch for a new book entitled Spread the Wealth, authored by Mr. David R. Breuhan (The title is ingenious, sure to attract many of today’s coercive spreaders and spreadees).  I’ll have more details on the event later.  In the meantime, peruse the site and pick up the book.  Mr. Breuhan offers a prescription for our economic ills.  And you’re part of the medical team.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Austrian Economics, Books, Economics, Liberty

Friday Fun

Frankly, I don’t know whether to believe it or not.  Hat tip to Casey’s Daily Dispatch.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Fun, Humor

Frédéric Bastiat

Sophism is not a word often read or heard by the eyes and ears of the twenty-first century. It is a word, however, we would do well to become more familiar with. At its root lies wisdom, but the Sophists of the fifth century BC damaged that root for all time; so that rather than relating to wisdom, it is now used to indicate a “plausible but fallacious argument”. It is this fallacious meaning that Frédéric Bastiat had in mind when he titled his collection of essays Economic Sophisms (pdf version here). And while the term in modern use can also indicate an intention to deceive, Bastiat mostly thought the best of his intellectual opponents and assumed that they were not the authors, but rather, the victims and unwitting propagators of the deceit inherent in economic fallacies.

Sophisms, praised as the “…best literary defense of free trade available…” is a collection of two different series of essays defending free trade against the economic fallacies of mid nineteenth century France. In the First Series, a collection of twenty-three essays first published together in 1845, Bastiat examines free trade from many different perspectives employing a variety of writing styles. Most of the essays are written in a conversational prose with an occasional one being satire or story. The Second Series of seventeen essays was originally published in 1848. In terms of style this series differs from the first in that over half of the essays are stories, dialogues or satire with only a few being written in prose.

On the first read, the essays in Sophisms may appear to be repetitious. Even Bastiat admits as much when he says that repetition, “…the inherent defect of this little work…” is also “…its principal utility.” There is, in fact, much repetition, but it is intentional.  Bastiat is following the advice of Jean-Baptiste Say, who was a major influence on his economic formation. In his Introduction to A Treatise on Political Economy, Say states:

To obtain a knowledge of the truth, it is not then so necessary to be acquainted with a great number of facts, as with such as are essential, and have a direct and immediate influence; and, above all, to examine them under all their aspects, to be enabled to deduce from them just conclusions, and be assured that the consequences ascribed to them do not in reality proceed from other causes. [Emphasis added]

And indeed, Bastiat does examine the facts under all aspects. In every case, whether the satirical petition to the king to have the right hand of all his subjects cut off or the passionate warning of the perversion of the meaning of words, Bastiat examines the facts of protectionist economic policies and exposes the fallacies upon which the policies are built. In each case he follows more of Say’s advice to “…discover the chain which binds them [facts] together, and always, from observation, establish the existence of the two links at their point of connexion (sic).” In his own Introduction Bastiat echoes Say with an explanation of the complexities of mounting a defense against the simple half-truths of his opponents:

… we cannot limit ourselves to the consideration of a single cause and its immediate effect. We know that this effect itself becomes in its turn a cause. In order to pass judgment on a measure, we must, then, trace it through the whole chain of its effects to its final result. In other words, we are reduced, quite frankly, to an appeal to reason.

Thus his reasons for repetition.

Free trade is the obvious theme of the Sophisms, but it’s addressed through many different fallacies. Some of the fallacies include, imports destroy the country’s wealth; high prices increase the country’s wealth; a favorable balance of trade increases wealth; general welfare is incompatible with justice and peace; economics is based on theory, not real life, and more. His most famous essay in Sophisms, “A Petition”, is a fictitious request for a law to forbid sunlight indoors. To do so would increase jobs and industry including whaling, shipping, agriculture, manufacturing and more. Not a Frenchman would miss out on the prosperity. Of course, the request is absurd, but, as in many of the essays, he uses the absurdity to point out the harm brought to consumers in order to create or protect jobs and industry.

And it is the role of the consumer that is Bastiat’s main point through and through. His mission is to show the reader the many and varied ways that the sophisms bring him harm:

In regard to the question that I have been dealing with, each sophism doubtless has its own phraseology and its particular meaning, but all have a common root: the disregard of men’s interests in their capacity as consumers. To show that this sophism is the starting point for a thousand roads to error is to teach the public to recognize it, to understand it, and to mistrust it under all circumstances.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Bastiat, Books, Catholic, Economics, Jean-Baptiste Say, Liberty, Politics

What do you desire?

A nation is free, when it is bent on freedom; and the most formidable obstacle to the establishment of civil liberty is the absence of the desire for it.

Jean-Baptiste Say, from a footnote in A Treatise on Political Economy, Book III, Chapter VIII, Of Taxation

Filed under: Uncategorized , Economics, Jean-Baptiste Say, Liberty, Politics

Got flu?

“If you’ve been diagnosed “probable” or “presumed” 2009 H1N1 or “swine flu” in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn’t have H1N1 flu. In fact, you probably didn’t have flu at all.”

So begins the CBS report, Swine Flu Cases Overestimated? A report that all should read.  CBS reports that that fever and cough you or your child recently had not only probably wasn’t the H1N1 flu, it also wasn’t likely to have been the seasonal flu.  The report also reveals the sinking sand on which the government’s case is built: The CDC is not counting H1N1 cases, has recommended that states no longer test for the virus, and most cases tested before individual testing was halted weren’t even the flu, of any type.  (Of course, you should still get the vaccine.)

We asked all 50 states for their statistics on state lab-confirmed H1N1 prior to the halt of individual testing and counting in July. The results reveal a pattern that surprised a number of health care professionals we consulted. The vast majority of cases were negative for H1N1 as well as seasonal flu, despite the fact that many states were specifically testing patients deemed to be most likely to have H1N1 flu, based on symptoms and risk factors, such as travel to Mexico.

It’s unknown what patients who tested negative for flu were actually afflicted with since the illness was not otherwise determined. Health experts say it’s assumed the patients had some sort of cold or upper respiratory infection that is just not influenza.

Further galling is the stonewalling by the CDC:

When CDC did not provide us with the documents…

More than two months later, the [FOI] request has not been fulfilled.

The CDC did not response to questions from CBS News for this report.

One doesn’t have to believe in conspiracies to think something bigger than the flu is going on during this year’s flu season.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Leviathan, Police State, Politics

Say says it all

I’ve been reading A Treatise on Political Economy by Jean-Baptiste Say.  In a discussion on money and the “unfixing” of its value from silver Say notes (63) that at first the practice was opposed by the Law, saying, “Law strenuously opposed the innovation…”.  He continues, however, “…but principle was compelled to give way to power; and the crimes of power, when the consequences began to be felt, were confidently attributed to the fallacy of the principle.”

How’s that for a one sentence summary of 21st century political economy?

Filed under: Uncategorized , Economics, Inflation, Jean-Baptiste Say, Leviathan, Liberty, Politics

Gold and Economic Freedom

I was reading through some old notes in preparation for an upcoming economic discussion when I came across this essay.  It’s one of the best cases of, and explanations for, the gold standard that I’ve ever read.  I’m keeping the author a mystery.  Wait ’til the end to click the link to see who wrote it.  Simply amazing.

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Gold and Economic Freedom

An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense – perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire – that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other.

In order to understand the source of their antagonism, it is necessary first to understand the specific role of gold in a free society.

Money is the common denominator of all economic transactions. It is that commodity which serves as a medium of exchange, is universally acceptable to all participants in an exchange economy as payment for their goods or services, and can, therefore, be used as a standard of market value and as a store of value, i.e., as a means of saving.

The existence of such a commodity is a precondition of a division of labor economy. If men did not have some commodity of objective value which was generally acceptable as money, they would have to resort to primitive barter or be forced to live on self-sufficient farms and forgo the inestimable advantages of specialization. If men had no means to store value, i.e., to save, neither long-range planning nor exchange would be possible.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Economics, Gold, Leviathan, Liberty, Politics

Christian libertarian Blog Carnival

The Holy Cause has just released the September edition of the Christian libertarian Blog Carnival.  Be sure to stroll the midway and consider the thoughts and reasoning of each contributor as issues of the day are examined from a Christian libertarian perspective.  As always, they’re excellent.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Bastiat, Blogs, Carnival, Economics, Faith, Liberty, Politics

Prize and Pretence

I can’t help myself so back just for a moment.

Granted, the president can’t help that he won.  Granted, his prize is the Nobel Peace Prize, not the Prize in Economics.  And, granted, under the circumstances, he handled the situation well.  Here’s hoping though,  he’ll use this occasion to learn about past recipients of the Nobel prize and take to heart Friedrich A. Hayek’s lecture, The “Pretence of Knowledge”, and his acceptance speech, delivered, almost 35 years ago, upon his receipt of the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics.

An expressed apprehension from his acceptance speech:

…is that the Nobel Prize [in Economics] confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess.

This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to size if he exceeds his competence.

But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally.

And a few nuggets from his lecture:

…I confess that I prefer true but imperfect knowledge, even if it leaves much indetermined and unpredictable, to a pretence of exact knowledge that is likely to be false…

…In fact, in the case discussed, the very measures which the dominant “macroeconomic” theory has recommended as a remedy for unemployment — namely, the increase of aggregate demand — have become a cause of a very extensive misallocation of resources which is likely to make later large-scale unemployment inevitable. The continuous injection of additional amounts of money at points of the economic system where it creates a temporary demand which must cease when the increase of the quantity of money stops or slows down, together with the expectation of a continuing rise of prices, draws labor and other resources into employments which can last only so long as the increase of the quantity of money continues at the same rate — or perhaps even only so long as it continues to accelerate at a given rate. What this policy has produced is not so much a level of employment that could not have been brought about in other ways, as a distribution of employment which cannot be indefinitely maintained and which after some time can be maintained only by a rate of inflation which would rapidly lead to a disorganization of all economic activity. The fact is that by a mistaken theoretical view we have been led into a precarious position in which we cannot prevent substantial unemployment from reappearing; not because, as this view is sometimes misrepresented, this unemployment is deliberately brought about as a means to combat inflation, but because it is now bound to occur as a deeply regrettable but inescapable consequence of the mistaken policies of the past as soon as inflation ceases to accelerate…

…To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Austrian Economics, Economics, Hayek, Liberty, Politics