December 2016 – Grey Enlightenment

Alt Right Power Struggle

The ongoing alt-right ‘civil war’ is an example how how activism fails in the absence of a unifying cohesive goal and or concentrated power. Between 2015 and 2016, thousands of anonymous posters on 4chan, Twitter, and Reddit collectively worked on the same goal – getting Trump in office. Although they were loosely organized, they were… Continue reading Alt Right Power Struggle

More Tooleb Nonsense Debunked

Nassim Nicholas Tooleb, the angry flâneur who blocks and insults people on Twitter, continues to demonstrate being the intellectual-yet-idiot that he is, in a recent Medium post Inequality and Skin in the Game: The author Joan Williams, in an insightful article, explains that the working class is impressed by the rich, as role models. Michèle… Continue reading More Tooleb Nonsense Debunked

Drugs and Tariffs

I saw this linked from Free Northerner’s blog: An Economist’s Cautionary Note on Free Trade Targeted tariffs won’t raise consumption. They won’t spur economic growth. They will lead to more expensive goods, and less consumption. David Ricardo was right on all that. Comparative advantage still exists, and be very wary of anyone who talks about… Continue reading Drugs and Tariffs

Thomas Sowell Retires

Thomas Sowell Retires: My Farewell Column Dr. Sowell was right about the inferiority of communism and the superiority capitalism (you didn’t have to be a genius to see either, as if mass starvation under communist regimes wasn’t evidence enough it was a bad ideology). But he is almost literally (given his age) a relic of… Continue reading Thomas Sowell Retires

In Defense of Millennials, Part 2

If you’re on the ‘right’, it’s temping to bash millennials, but it’s worth noting that alt-right millennials, thanks to postings on 4chan, Reddit, and Twitter, swayed voters and the ‘national dialogue’ and helped put Trump in office. Although millennials supported Hillary by a much larger margin than Trump (55% vs. 38%), Trump’s millennial base was… Continue reading In Defense of Millennials, Part 2

Time Management and The Celebration of the Mundane

It’s weird or interesting how certain stories go viral and what such viralness says about the state of American society, media, and culture today. On one extreme, stories about Trump and Aleppo go viral, being shared many times, but these are big stories involving important people and important events; such virnalness is expected. But then… Continue reading Time Management and The Celebration of the Mundane

Explaining America’s Economic and Social Stability, Part 2

In posts Explaining America’s Economic and Social Stability and The Trajectory of America, I outline a generally optimistic assessment for America as to why it has done so we compared to most countries an will continue to do so. Unlike many on the ‘right’, I don’t foresee collapse or upheaval anytime soon but rather a… Continue reading Explaining America’s Economic and Social Stability, Part 2

No paradigm shifts or changes to status quo

From David Brooks: Does Decision-Making Matter? It’s not a coincidence one of the world’s most overrated authors, Michael Lewis, is writing about two of the most overrated Nobel Prize recipients, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Behavior psychology is not the equal of a ‘hard science’, and Michael Lewis’ books all have a leftist slant to… Continue reading No paradigm shifts or changes to status quo

Fallacy of Composition

Between 2008-2010, during the depths and aftermath of the financial crisis, pundits envisioned that the ‘old’ status quo would be replaced by a more egalitarian ‘new’ one of less wealth inequality, as well as slower economic growth and asset price stagnation, which some called ‘the new normal’. With the U.S. stock market and and U.S.… Continue reading Fallacy of Composition