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
Author: smartistone
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
Identity, IQ, and Incoherence of the Alt-Right
‘Identity’, which not limited to just politics but also includes ‘BLM’ and the ‘big is beautiful’ movement, gives its members a stake in something, as being a part of a bigger ‘system’ or ‘process’, yet at the same time individualism and autonomy are retained. Identity is a way of signalling unity, with varying degrees obviousness.… Continue reading Identity, IQ, and Incoherence of the Alt-Right
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
Reaction, Pacifism, and Realism
On this blog there are posts about economics and finance, which falls under ‘lifestyle and investing’ but from a reactionary-realist perspective. The idea of reactionary realism is to be cognizant of reality without engaging in too much, yet participating at the same time, but still holding out for something better, within reason. One neither pushes… Continue reading Reaction, Pacifism, and Realism
The Left’s Favorite Books, Debunked
At the end of the post Understanding the far-left, I dismissed much of the left’s work on social science as ‘flimsy science’. The far-left tends to blame environment for inequality, because biological differences, such as IQ, that may engender inequality less tractable to state intervention. Stephen Jay Gould (The Mismeasure of Man) and Jared Diamond… Continue reading The Left’s Favorite Books, Debunked