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Tuesday, July 23, 2002
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Something to relax about -- today the Dow Jones went down by less than 100 points. Meanwhile, famous Jewish author Chaim Potok died at 73; and the war in the Middle East is escalating. There's been much discussion why we hold Israel to a higher standard than others. The reason is that we're their closest ally, and our values must be reflected in their actions, if they want to continue to enjoy our support. [Scripting News]
Why must US values be reflected in Israeli actions, when US values are not even reflected in US actions? If the Israelis fought terrorists the way the US does, thousands of Palestinians would disappear overnight, never to be seen or heard from again. Instead of blowing up single buildings or cars, the Israeli Air Force would indiscriminately bomb entire towns where suspected terrorists had been seen. No thanks.
6:03:40 PM 
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Feds Charge 5 in Missionary's Death [AP World News]
Why is the US government still indicting foreign citizens for crimes committed in foreign countries? As long as this nonsense of applying US laws to the rest of the world continues, the government sounds rather hypocritical in its opposition to the International Criminal Court.
In any case, if the Feds want to put terrorists on trial for murdering a US missionary, this case should have precedence. There were even US citizens involved as conspirators.
5:58:01 PM
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Democracy. I found myself thinkning (as I often do) "good, if people vote for statism they deserve to get it - good and hard". However, the divine right of the 51% (democracy) is (as all libertarians know) quite immoral. There is no reason why those who vote against statism should suffer because of the people who vote for it.
Take the example of California. When I rub my hands with glee (which I do) at the latest example of California statism ("jolly good, the reckoning is brought forword and the collapse of California will be a warning to the rest of the nation to repent...") I am overlooking a few important points.
Firstly the innocent (those who vote against the increase in government spending and regulations) suffer at least as much (most likely rather more) than the guilty. And secondly there is no reason to suppose that people in other areas will understand that the suffering is caused by the statism. [Samizdata.net]
As a resident of California, I can safely say that even the majority of people in this area don't understand. Most Californians are perfectly willing to accept the line fed them by the media, which endlessly tells us that the problems were caused by the failure of deregulation and by evil out-of-state corporations. Never mind that we never had deregulation.
The blame directed at corporations is focused on those headquartered in other states, since they aren't as likely to have lots of employees voting in California elections. That's why Enron was the designated scapegoat--it's located in Texas, which has the added advantage of being the state liberals love to hate.
Nobody ever mentions government agencies such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which made a huge amount of money buying power at subsidized rates from big government agencies in other states and selling it at market price here. Strangely enough, all that money the supposedly non-profit government agency made never resulted in lower electric bills. In fact, I have no idea where it all went.
1:24:43 PM
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Making Your Bad Tunes Sound Good. The amazing technical capabilities of music software like Reason, Acid and Pro Tools brings professional music tools within the reach of even the most marginal of musical talents. By Mark McClusky. [Wired News]
Pro Tools is the standard for the people I've talked to in the music industry here in LA. It's very important these days, since many professional musicians (Britney Spears, for example) have marginal musical talents.
9:20:27 AM
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Inflation continues to fall as buyers keep the pressure up on sellers. This also means that a 3-4% wage increase this year and a 10% increase in housing prices will have a major impact on real personal income and wealth. Another three years of this and we will have replicated the gains in real personal wealth over the last two decades (for most Americans -- this is in contrast to the rapid stock market driven gains over the last 20 years for the nation's wealthiest individuals). Nice.
 [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
There are some problems with this theory. The most glaring is that he's treating inflation as synonymous with some vague statistic about consumer prices. In fact, inflation is an increase in the supply of money--this may lead to an increase in prices, or it may not, depending on other factors. The US has been inflating its money supply for years without prices going up much, because we send the money overseas to pay for import goods. That can only work as long as overseas sellers are willing to accept the dollars (or have no choice).
The housing price increase is the result of another bubble. The Federal Reserve is still inflating the money supply, but now instead of the money going into smoke-and-mirror "dot com" stocks, it's going into real estate. This is bad for anyone buying a house now, because when the bubble bursts, they'll be stuck with a house worth less than what they paid for it, but their mortgage payments will reflect the inflated price.
To me, that's even worse than losing money buying lottery tickets disguised as stocks. At least you can just accept your loss and move on, instead of being stuck either making excessive payments for 30 years on a house or else going through the hassle of selling it at a loss.
8:57:58 AM
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© Copyright
2006
Ken Hagler.
Last update:
2/14/2006; 6:51:29 PM.
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