tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80949792024-03-07T19:16:19.638-08:00Critical MastiffWhen an idea grabs hold and won't let go...Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.comBlogger410125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-10315238628261171162015-10-03T19:24:00.003-07:002015-10-03T19:24:44.078-07:00Usury and the Conundrums of a Modern-Day Sabbatical YearI've been interested for many years now by the Biblical system of finance. As I briefly noted in my published Kindle book No More Foreclosures, when you look at the combination of the ban on lending money at interest ("usury") and the forgiveness of debt every seven years during the Sabbatical year, it seems clear that the Torah opposed for-profit lending altogether (with the possible exception Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-28419238329874753912013-11-20T23:48:00.000-08:002013-11-20T23:48:59.881-08:00Quote of the Day"To efficiently run a school, amplify fear (and destroy passion)."
—Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams.Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-17842771908148951182013-08-14T16:40:00.000-07:002013-08-14T16:40:03.760-07:00Thoughts on Third Parties and Elections as Theater
Thanks to our voting system of single-member district, first-past-the-post elections, structural forces pretty much guarantee that American elections will be between two major political parties, no more. (To political wonks, this is called "Duverger's Law.") There are ways to change the system to make third parties more viable—my favorite is called Instant-Runoff Voting—but for the most part, weMastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-181037809018281002013-05-17T18:21:00.001-07:002013-05-17T18:21:35.075-07:00Thinking About AlliancesIn my dissertation work, I'm attempting to develop ethical guidelines for when non-state groups have the right to go to war (that is, when they have Right Authority). My claim is that non-state groups can often represent their communities as well or better than state governments can, and the current argument that only states are allowed to go to war is absurd.
At the moment, my current obstacle Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-55744493871878587972013-05-02T16:57:00.000-07:002013-05-02T16:57:05.393-07:00When Hubris and Poverty Mix
I have just read a recent journal article by the brilliant scholar Peter Turchin, in which he elaborates on his theory of the dynamics of social instability over time and tests it on the United States from 1780 to 2010. Put briefly, his theory holds that one can expect a society to suffer greater social violence (such as riots or lynchings, as opposed to routine crime) in a relatively Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-7144326837799453752013-04-30T22:24:00.002-07:002013-04-30T22:24:33.187-07:00And Now, For Some Shameless Self-Promotion
There's been a slight change to the layout of this blog. As you look on the right sidebar, you can now see a new section titled "My Books," with a pretty picture just underneath.
As one might surmise, this is because I have published a book—The Best Congress Money Can Buy, a collection of short stories about political possibility. It is presently available on Amazon Kindle and will be availableMastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-69347532239731723122013-04-18T22:58:00.000-07:002013-04-18T22:58:44.584-07:00Investing in True Value
(I should preface this post by saying that nothing in here constitutes a recommendation to buy or sell securities, etc.)
Working in finance as I have for years now, I am growing more and more convinced that our societal attitudes toward saving and investing have gone haywire. We now assume automatically that when one saves, one is chiefly saving for retirement or for your children's college; Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-65756601023315585042012-11-25T10:52:00.000-08:002012-11-25T10:53:14.008-08:00Concerning Cooperatives
Thinking about how to make an economic system that is more humane, and less riven by class struggles, many thinkers have advocated for workers' cooperatives (the Distributists being one example). Cooperatives differ from the traditional capitalist firm in that workers share ownership and management of the company, as opposed to being salaried employees with no participation in the profits Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-32474849950097479972012-11-03T20:42:00.000-07:002012-11-03T20:42:03.446-07:00The Politics of Crowds
If the characteristic method of collective action for Libertarians is the free market, then I submit that the characteristic method of collective action for left-anarchists is the crowd.
By "crowd," I do not mean "mob"; I mean more in the sense of "crowdfunding," "crowdsourcing," and the like. In a mob, individuals lose their individuality, submerging themselves in an unstoppable group tidal Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-54344722080737332792012-10-05T14:23:00.001-07:002012-10-05T14:23:44.543-07:00Critiquing Progressivism from the Left?It will be no secret to the readers of this blog that I have strong sympathies for libertarianism and other positions usually called "small-government conservative." At the same time, I'm becoming more and more convinced that the libertarian Right is running up against serious limits to its ability to reach out to new voters. These limits are why the Progressive Left has has such electoral Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-52697876057451059672012-08-03T13:02:00.003-07:002012-08-03T13:03:51.192-07:00When Power Breeds Deceit
It occurred to me, as I was reading about yet another government official trying to downplay the poor economic reports that came out recently, that governments have very strong incentives to lie about nearly everything these days. And that is because government is exerting power over nearly everything, and therefore we expect it to perform well at nearly everything.
Let me explain by way of anMastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-5777146905379667942012-07-25T19:24:00.000-07:002012-07-25T19:24:00.905-07:00Standing Desks and Health PolicyI don't normally do this, but over on my other blog I've thrown up a post with some current-events political content. That blog is mostly focused on the theme of structuring your environment; today I wrote about standing desks and such, and couldn't resist discussing some implications for government health regulation. Go check it out.Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-54518597432405598372012-07-04T13:23:00.004-07:002012-07-04T13:24:20.450-07:00Happy Fourth of JulyAnything I might have said about Independence Day was said better by the MIT-educated Prime Minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu:
God Bless America.Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-69735540094501057452012-06-19T08:45:00.000-07:002012-06-19T08:45:53.011-07:00Greecing the SkidsIt is superfluous at this point to rehash the usual news bits about the Euro crisis. Suffice to say that states have consistently borrowed too much in order to fund their social welfare benefits, and now they are running up against the limits of such borrowing.
Yes, the immediate crisis was brought on by a fall in tax revenue, from the recent and continuing depression. However, we must ask how Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-65267021244914548572012-06-09T22:46:00.001-07:002012-06-09T22:46:35.262-07:00Obama the Moderate Republican?One of my father's coworkers recently said that he would vote for "the moderate Republican who is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination." It's certainly a clever line. And while most conservatives these days would be bemused at the thought that anyone could think President Obama a moderate Republican, given his interventionist domestic policy and disregard for the Constitution and so onMastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-19652683138003896832012-06-06T07:46:00.000-07:002012-06-06T07:46:20.417-07:00How Partisan Opportunism is Eroding Civilian Control Over National SecurityRecently, the Obama administration apparently cooperated with reporters working on a story about the Stuxnet virus inflicted on Iran, essentially confirming that the United States is now launching cyberattacks against other countries. The blowback from this has been immense, with even senior Senate Democrats attacking the leak as reckless and harmful to the interests of the United States. (Hat Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-48551249984643405902012-06-03T09:45:00.000-07:002012-06-03T09:45:05.349-07:00Being Paid to BorrowOn Friday, the 10-year Treasury yield ended up below 1.5%; shorter durations are even more ludicrous. At a time when inflation is something like 2% (and that's assuming you trust the official numbers, which I don't), what this means is that the Federal Government is essentially borrowing money for free, at worst—at best lenders are effectively paying real money to the Treasury for the Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-91394556552900773872010-01-11T13:48:00.000-08:002010-01-11T14:28:06.243-08:00Enlightened Regulation, or How Not To Do It(Whew! Need to blow the dust off of this here blog. It's been a while, but I hope to get back into the swing of things. Onward!)Lots of people have Employee Stock Option Purchase plans (ESOPs) through their employers. Have you ever wondered why companies provide them?I happen to have just sat through a presentation for one of our client companies on putting an ESOP in place. The short version is Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-9722441709064967062008-09-05T08:07:00.000-07:002008-09-05T08:16:25.613-07:00The Self-Sustaining Society, Part II: Procedural EqualityIn my last post, I argued that positional equality (i.e. equality of outcome) was unsuited to be a fundamental political principle for society. Unless positional equality is a secondary, subordinate principle to some other controlling principle, it provides no basis to choose between ends, leads to endless coercion, and goes against human nature in opposing the drive to better ourselves. Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-61892105561099958142008-08-18T19:00:00.000-07:002008-09-05T08:17:18.021-07:00The Self-Sustaining Society, Part I: Positional Equality[I'm ba-aaack... —ed.]A stereotype of the political controversies of our time envisions a conflict between those who favor freedom and those who favor equality. This formulation is imprecise: liberals and conservatives each claim to be motivated by both of these principles, applied in different ways. (In particular, the difference between “procedural equality” and “equality of outcome” is Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-19086154262379755622007-12-14T11:10:00.000-08:002007-12-14T11:12:49.094-08:00Quote of the DayThe mere fact that someone disagrees with one's judgement is insufficient grounds for opening one's mind. Most epistemologists forget that it is just as urgent a question to determine when we are justified in opening up our minds as it is to determine when we are justified in closing them.—Isaac Levi, "Consensus as Shared Agreement and Outcome of Inquiry." Synthese 62, pg. 3Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-60171406297635591652007-11-26T02:18:00.000-08:002007-11-26T02:36:36.551-08:00Externalities in TradeAt the blog of Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, he writes about a debate he participated in over whether one person should be allowed to sell his right to vote to another. Dr. Mankiw said no:It is true that both parties in the transaction must be better off if they agreed to the deal. Nonetheless, the standard argument for unfettered voluntary exchange does not apply because there are externalitiesMastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-71199242857190816912007-11-20T06:59:00.000-08:002007-11-20T07:02:38.312-08:00Quote of the Day"Cowardice" and "self-respect" have largely disappeared from public discourse. In their place we are offered "self-esteem" as the bellwether of success and a proxy for dignity. "Self-respect" implies that one recognizes standards, and judges oneself worthy by the degree to which one lives up to them. "Self-esteem" simply means that one feels good about oneself. "Dignity" used to refer to the Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-86545166636996953602007-11-12T07:28:00.000-08:002007-11-12T07:31:03.218-08:00Quote of the Day[Information Technology’s] revolutionary significance is not merely in that it is a brand new technology itself, but more in that it is a kind of bonding agent which can lightly penetrate the layers of barriers between technologies and link various technologies which appear to be totally unrelated. Through its bonding, not only is it possible to derive numerous new technologies which are neither Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8094979.post-44284158755790970442007-04-29T17:46:00.000-07:002007-04-29T17:50:44.838-07:00Quote of the DayIt is not generally realized that education can never be more than indoctrination with theories and ideas already developed. Education, whatever benefits it may confer, is transmissive of traditional doctrines and valuations; it is by necessity conservative. It produces imitation and routine, not improvement and progress. Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are Mastiffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08009663221665718199noreply@blogger.com0