Month: March 2019

I was helping a friend run his booth at the show today.  Among other things, it got me comped admission and parking. (Plus the fact that I got to hang with my friend and talk about cool stuff.)

And, well, my daughter and I did some shopping.

One of the things my daughter wanted was a revolver.  After some looking around she selected this one, a single-action six shot revolver in .22 LR.

While we were doing the paperwork on that one, I said to the vendor. “I’ve been looking for a High Power, would you by any chance have one?”

As luck would have it, he did.  A Hungarian made, surplus High Power, with three magazines:

Next thing my daughter wanted was another rifle (I think I’ve created a monster) to add to the AR pattern rifle and the Remington Model 12 she has.  We found this one, a bolt action “Glenfield Model 25” (made by Marlin).

And it’s a gun and knife show and we did not go empty handed when it came to blades.

First, we picked up a katana we had on layaway with my friend the vendor:

The blade had been “stained” in a way that really brings out the layers of the pattern-welded carbon steel:

In addition, my daughter picked up a replica of a Chinese sword from the warring states period:

And, finally, after first looking at a cute little folder, my daughter once again fell in love with this fixed blade knife:

She particularly liked the “rough finish” of the blade.

You’ll notice there was a lot of “my daughter this” and “my daughter that” here.  The only thing there chosen what I specifically wanted was the High Power.  But you know what?  I’m happy with that.

Whenever someone rolls out a new program, they always talk about the intentions, the goals, of the program.  This new program will make our streets safer.  That new program will reduce the cost of healthcare.  This other program will improve education.  Another will make college more affordable.  Reduce poverty.  Improve the economy.  And so on and so on and so on.

However, as the late economist Milton Friedman was wont to say, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

Now, all too often, by the time we know what the results are, it’s far too late.  Thomas Sowell, however, gave us a key to helping predict what the actual results (as opposed to the intended results) a policy is likely to have.  That is, to look for the incentives that it creates.  What behaviors lead decision makers to benefit under a particular program vs. what behaviors lead to disadvantage.

I discussed a particular example of that before:  public education.  For a very long time now, the surest way for those involved in education to get more power, more funding, and more authority, was to produce excuses for failing to teach basic skills to our young people.  They were rewarded not for producing well educated, knowledgeable young adults.  They were rewarded for producing excuses for failure:  “We need more computers.” “We need bigger buildings with smaller classrooms.” We need to hire more teachers (and a lot more administrators).” “We need education to be a cabinet level post.” And on and on.  And we get what we pay for.  We get what we reward.  Given the incentives, the wonder, indeed, is that we produce children as well educated as we do.

It’s not rocket science.

In the private sector, this is something of a self-correcting situation.  In the ultimate extreme the incentive is to provide goods or services that people will part with some of their own resources (usually represented by money) in exchange.  If enough people are willing to part with enough of their own resources  for your product instead of for any of the other products they could purchase with those resources, your business prospers.  If they do not, you either have to find some way to make your product more appealing–either improving your product, offering it at lower cost, or some combination of the two–to more people or you’ll have to do something else.  If you attempt to press on without making those changes, bankruptcy awaits, forcing you to do something else.

Government, however, lacks such an automatic self-correction mechanism.  If a government program fails to accomplish its stated intentions, consider what usually happens.  How often has some government program failed and those in authority said “this isn’t working”, cancelled the program and tried something else?  You might find a few cases if you look hard enough but mostly, the response is “Oh, they just didn’t have enough money/resources/authority/power to do the job.” And, once again, we reward not success but excuses for failure.

Indeed, there is one perverse incentive that’s endemic to government programs of all types, and that is that by their very nature they reward those who seek power over others because that’s what government is–the license to forcibly exert power over others.  All government programs, by definition, involve force.  There’s no need to please the “consumer”.  Even elected officials don’t really need to please the consumer, to produce results in line with their stated intentions.  Entirely too many people are willing to vote based on the stated intentions and except endless excuses (there’s always someone at whom the politician can point the finger of blame).  Often times, the politician who implements a policy is long gone by the time the results roll around and it’s the new crop, who might even be trying to fix the problem, who then shoulder the blame. (City council imposes higher taxes on local industry in order to finance some “civic improvements.” A lot of businesses have rather immobile assets and can’t just pull up and leave but over time in the normal ebb and flow of business, fewer new businesses open to replace those that close.  Eventually, the drop in business starts pinching.  But by that time it’s a whole new city council who had nothing to do with the tax hike who are called on to “do something” about the struggling city.)

This kind of political “kick the can” is entirely rational for those engaging in it.  The immediate behavior is rewarded.  The longer term consequences are left for someone else.  It’s an inherent incentive of the political system and may well be insolvable.  There may well be no way to eliminate this kind of drain in any government structure.  Putting in new government programs to attempt to deal with it simply moves the perverse incentives to different locations.

Thus, we may have to accept that government, any government, is going to have perverse incentives that produce results far short of what we might wish.  Since it cannot be removed, the question is how to keep it as small as possible.  And, when stated that way, the answer also becomes clear.

The way to keep the perverse incentives endemic to government as small and innocuous as possible, is to keep government itself as small and endemic as possible.  National defense.  Minimal police and courts.  And, really, not that much else.  Only there do the benefits possibly counterbalance the very large millstone around ones neck that government has always proven, must always prove, to be.

So Freshman Congresswoman has apparently claimed that the majority of people in the US don’t benefit in our national prosperity.

What, is she smoking?  Seriously.  The stupidity of that statement stands out among a litany of stupid statements.

As it happens, I answered that ridiculous claim January a year ago when someone else was making equally ridiculous claims:

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People of a certain political persuasion say that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.  Let’s take a look at that.

Imagine if you could go back 100 years.  You’d have to live life 100 years ago but you would have the wealth of the richest American of the day.  As it happened, Forbes created its first “Rich List” in 1918, 100 years ago, and listed John D. Rockefeller as far and away the richest American with a net worth of $1.2 billion then (roughly equivalent to $21 billion today).  Number two on the list was Henry Frick at $221 million.

So, Rockefeller’s $1.2 billion but in 1918 instead of today.  Would this be a trade you would make?

For the vast majority of us you’d be a fool to take that deal.

Consider:  I’m diabetic not insulin dependent (thankfully) but still diabetic as are a lot of Americans.  Insulin to treat diabetes was not invented yet.  So diabetes meant an agonizing death.

I have cholesterol issues–diet doesn’t touch it.  Believe me, I’ve tried.  If not treated, that’s a quick route to high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, and an early death.  Medication to control cholesterol was still decades away.

Well, if we can’t control cholesterol perhaps we could control the high blood pressure resulting from the failure?  Nope.  Sorry.  It was an “essential malady” and not a treatable condiction.

Now, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones and diet and exercise can prevent these issues, or push them back as far as they can be for me with modern medicine, but are you really willing to gamble your life on that?

Wealth doesn’t do you a lot of good if you are left immobile from a stroke, or dead from a heart attack.

But, hey, with the wealth of Rockefeller  you could spend money on fancy, and fast, cars, right?

The Indy 500 was not held in 1918 (or in 1917 for that matter) because of World War I.  But if we peek ahead at 1919 we can get a look at what some of the fastest cars in the world could do and…

The winning car averaged just a hair over 88 miles per hour.  The cheapest beater I have ever owned (and I’ve owned some dogs) would have blown that car away, and do so with more comfort, more luxury than the fanciest Touring Car (air conditioning!).

And speaking of automobiles and medicine, a modern ambulance has more ability to keep you alive–saving only actual surgery–than even the hospitals of 1918.  And the only thing the ambulance would actually need to compete with those hospitals on surgery would be a surgeon and anesthesiologist–both of whom would be far, far more capable than the surgeons and anesthesiologists of 1918.

But…you could travel to exotic places with Rockefeller’s wealth in 1918.  Well, I’ll give you that one if you don’t mind taking forever.  You couldn’t hop in your car for a road trip down to Disney World (leaving aside that Disney World didn’t exist).  The modern network of highways with fuel stations every few miles did not yet exist.  Okay, there were a few airlines in operation but they were small and limited in operation.  Perhaps their expense wouldn’t matter with the wealth of Rockefeller at your beck and call, but there just aren’t that many places you can go by air.  Transoceanic flights don’t exist (Lindbergh is still years in the future) and neither do transcontinental.  The big thing in aviation at this time is “air mail”.  And that’s still chancy with things getting lost when the planes crash. (Look at that again and maybe think twice about that air travel.)

Train or ship, that’s pretty much your only option for long distance travel at any kind of speed at all, and those take days where in the modern day we travel in hours.

And if you want to just relax at home and maybe listen to music?  No Radio stations.  First commercial broadcast is still years away.  You can go out to listen to a live performance–in a public venue with neither adequate heat nor air conditioning (I’ll get to that shortly).  Or perhaps you can listen to a device like this:

If you’re lucky, you might actually have a couple dozen records.

I’ll take MP3’s [Ed:  and I have well over a thousand and growing now] on my cell phone, thank you very much.

Individual rooms in your house are probably heated with wood or coal burning stoves.  The first patent for central heating isn’t for another year and forced air central heating isn’t for another 17.

Air conditioning?  Yes, it’s been invented.  You, having the wealth of Rockefeller might have one of the early gigantic “air conditioners” that were just appearing but they really didn’t start getting into homes for another decade.

Well, I could go on and on and on, there’s so much available to the poor today that all Rockefeller’s wealth could not have bought him 100 years ago.

This is without going into the computer technology revolution, portable computers, and cell phones that contain within them more computing power than existed in the world as recently as a few decades ago.

Even many if not most of today’s poor in American know wealth that the John D. Rockefeller of 100 years ago could not even have dreamed that, if you were to describe it to him, would just be so much noise because the concepts were just too alien to the time.

The poor of today, far from getting “poorer” compared to the poor of times past, know wealth beyond the dreams of Midas.

I was really in a hurry when I knocked this one out.  I was running late and needed something to take to work for my lunch entree.

“No Cook” is, perhaps a bit of a misnomer since I used pre-cooked canned meat in the recipe.  Still, the results were surprisingly tasty.

Ingredients:

• 1 28 oz can “Keystone” beef
• 1 16 Oz jar Chi-Chi’s “thick and chunky” medium salsa
• 1 Tbsp garlic powder
• 1 Tbsp chili powder
• 1 Tbsp dried cilantro
• 1/2 Tbsp ground cumin

Mix it all in a bowl.

Really.  That’s it.

Heat it up (microwave is fine) when you’re ready to eat it.  Serve topped with a bit of cheese and with whatever side dishes you prefer (I usually use non-starchy vegetables–it’s a diet thing).

 

Why is it, that people who play pretend for a living, mouthing words that other people wrote for them, think that anyone should pay attention to anything they have to say on society, economics, or politics simply because they’re famous?

Yeah, I get it, you get lots and lots of money to dress up and play pretend on the screen.  That does not make you an expert in economics or geopolitics.  It just doesn’t.

But, they will prattle on.  Now, there are a few that are worth listening to but they’re not the ones whose arguments boil down to “do this because I’m famous and I say so” who generally promptly descend into name-calling in the face of disagreement. The ones worth listening to are the ones who can articulate the case well, make that case with fact and logic, and respond to disagreement by challenging the disagreement with fact and logic.

A rare breed indeed.

Now, some friends of mine just tend to roll their eyes and say that we should just ignore their spouting and “enjoy the movie” (or the show, or song, or whatever).  Well, maybe.  And sometimes, yeah.

But here’s the thing.  I have limited funds and time to spend on entertainment. I’d much rather spend those funds on things, and people, who don’t insult me and denigrate everything I love. And even given the massive bias in Hollywood, that still leaves more out there than I could ever afford to pay for either in money or time–particularly since Hollywood is not the only game in town.  It’s not the only way I can get entertainment. (I don’t have to just watch movies or TV shows.  I can, for instance, read books.)

So if they want my money, and my time, they’d better be damn good if they want me to ignore the insult to me and mine. “A good popcorn flick” isn’t, by itself, enough to do that. I’ll pick up one of Larry’s, or Sarah’s, or Amanda’s, or Dave’s, or…well, you get the idea…books first.  Or I might hit up a Bollywood flick (great over-the-top fun).  There are indie film makers.  There are streaming programs.  There are all sorts of places I can go and I shall not lack for entertainment.

I don’t need to support people who hate me.

The scrape of the door opening woke Keven. He rolled off the bed landing in a crouch, drawn sword in his hand.

“H…highness?” A female voice came from the door. Keven saw a shape silhouetted in the doorway.

“Move not.” Keven edged around the room until he could see the other person by the moonlight spilling through the door. He lowered the sword. “Shirn?”

She stood facing him, her face half shadowed in the moonlight, her hands clutched in front of her. She wore sandals and a simple shift that fell to just above her knees.

“Your Highness?”

“It is late, goodwife. What brings you hither?”

“It was thinking that his highness might be wishing company. I…”

“Goodwife…” Keven stopped, unsure what to say.

“Goodwife you call me.” The words dripped derision. “I was scarce married to Jeren before the King’s men came through and were taking him for the fighting.” She sank to a crouch, making herself small on the floor. “I never quickened from our brief time and now? You have been seeing the village. Children and old men. I will be dying old and alone.”

Keven closed his eyes and swore silently. After a moment he opened them and squatted next to Shirn.

“My father was a royal bastard,” Keven said. “Did you know?”

Shirn shook her head.

“He had two legitimate brothers. My father was the elder but being bastard he could not inherit. And so he apprenticed to a seaman, worked his way up to sailing master. Then one day his brothers made rebellion against their father. My father…thwarted their plans, some say killed them with his own hands.”

Shirn turned up her face at this, her eyes wide.

Keven smiled. “I know not what transpired, but the old King made my father his heir. And so, in his time, Marek became King of Aerioch.”

“I am not understanding. What is that meaning to…” Her eye turned sideways in the direction of the bed.

Keven sighed. “Suppose some day a young man comes to Aerioch from Shendar. He declares himself my son and demands to be made my heir. Am I to tell my father ‘it could be’?”

Shirn’s head tilted to the side. “I still am not understanding. A bastard cannot…”

“Did you not hear my tale? My father was bastard and became heir. How can he then say ‘no’ to another bastard?” Keven shook his head. “Someday I must marry both to secure the succession and to cement some alliance. How can I cement an alliance when some byblow might arise and throw the succession into disarray? I dare not allow that chance.”

Keven stood. “I will not shame you, Shirn. If you wish to remain the night, you have my leave. But I will not lie with you. Forgive me.”

Keven turned and strode to the far side of the small cottage. He sat on the floor, wrapped his cloak tight around him and lay down to sleep. He squeezed his eyes closed and wished he could close his ears to the sound of sniffling behind him.

Sleep was a long time coming.

One simple fact of mass shootings remains that 92% of them happen at “gun free zones”. Naturally, whenever an incident happens instead of looking at this simple fact, people start talking about more gun bans and expanding the kind of areas which are the spree killer’s target of choice (areas where no one else is armed).

Suggesting that simple ending these free-fire zones for madmen (i.e. “gun free zones”) is met with the claim that having armed citizens will “simply make matters worse” (worse than a massacre?).  Of course, FBI data has already dismissed that claim. The other claim is that teachers and staff (since schools usually figure prominently in these discussions) don’t have the training to defend their students with firearms.  Florida, infamously, established a program requiring 132 hours of firearms instruction–several times the instruction required by police officers or trained military.  Apparently, the folk establishing that program thing that teachers need the firearms training of super-elite special forces hostage rescue team operatives in order to defend themselves and their students with firearms.

This is utterly and completely ridiculous. Teachers armed to defend themselves and their students do not need to be SEALs or SWAT or even Air Force security specialists. Being armed for defense of self and others around you is a far simpler tactical problem.

They don’t have to go breaking into a room where the “bad guy” is, identify him out of a chaotic mix of the bad guy and the people he’s threatening. They don’t have to learn to do dynamic entry through a door, minimizing their own exposure in that vulnerable moment all while trying to find a bad guy whose location they don’t know, discriminate him from victims, get a clear shot, and pray they don’t make a mistake.

Armed teachers don’t have to do a dynamic entry. They don’t have to do any kind of entry. They’re already there. What armed teachers would do is give the _attacker_ all the problems that folk like SEALS, SWAT, HRT (Hostage Rescue Team), and others need all that training to deal with. The attacker is now the one who has to make the dynamic entry, identify and locate the “threat” that the armed defender represents, and do it before said defender–whose already in place and covering that entrance–can shoot him.

And he has to do it every. single. time. he makes an entry because he doesn’t know who is or is not armed. The mere possibility that someone might be armed means he has to take extra precautions every time he goes through a door. He has to assume every classroom he enters is “hot”. At the very least this slows him down and reduces the number of casualties before the police finally do show up. Best case the attacker runs into the armed teacher at the start and the only casualty is the attacker.

Actually, that’s not true. Best case is that they decide not to attack after all because they aren’t looking for a fight. They’re looking for sitting ducks.

All the teachers need in this situation is basic marksmanship sufficient to hit a torso sized target at a distance of 20-30 feet (from across the room, basically), Jeff Cooper’s four rules, and basic “when is it okay to shoot” training which amounts to reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury (which generally comes down to identifying expressed intent, ability, and opportunity to cause that harm). That’s it. Any basic CCW training course is more than adequate.

Simply let those who are properly licensed to carry do so and no more is really required.

If there’s one term I really wish people would drop into a deep, dark hole and bury it that would be “favorable” or “unfavorable” balance of trade.  And right alongside it they can bury “strong” and “weak” with respect to currencies.  Thee terms imply things about what is good or bad economically that simply do not match economic realities.

The idea of favorable/unfavorable balance of trade dates back to 18th century and earlier Merchantilist ideas of economics.  According to them, the wealth of a nation was defined by the amount of gold, and to a lesser extent silver, it had in its treasury.  Thus if it imported more (in terms of gold value) than it exported, its gold reserves would decrease and it would be poorer.  One effect of this measure of wealth was that it really only affected the upper classes.  The great unwashed masses and their standard of living was not something the Merchantilists worried about.

One of Adam Smith’s great insights was his defining the wealth of a nation not in the amount of specie that it retained, but in terms of the goods and services it obtained.  One effect of this measure is that it applies to everyone, not just the upper classes.  A nation wealthy by this measure will, generally speaking, have more goods and services available to everyone.

Once one realizes that, then one immediately sees that importing goods and services makes a nation richer.

Let me repeat that:  Importing goods and services makes a nation richer.

And, thus, it sees that if anything, the “favorable” and “unfavorable” balances of trade swap places.

“But we’ve got the money going out and what about domestic businesses and…” Or so the complaints go.

Let’s look at that.

Let’s take a simple case,  Two countries:  A and B.  Country A uses the Dollar.  Country B uses, let’s call it a Credit (a common science fiction term for future currencies).  One dollar equals 100 Credits.  Okay?  Now, Country B is able to produce everything Country A does, but cheaper so that anything that in Country A costs a dollar, they can get it from Country B for 90 credits (90 cents at the exchange rate).

Looks pretty bad for Country A’s merchants and manufacturers doesn’t it?  They can’t compete with Country B selling everything cheaper.  If we stop there, we seem to have vindicated the concept of “unfavorable balance of trade”with the extreme case.  If we stop there.

But we don’t stop there.  The result of this is that Country B has a bunch of dollars.  Country A has goods and services.  What is Country B going to do with those dollars?  They can’t eat them.  They can’t drive them around.  They make poor building material.  And, Scrooge McDuck to the contrary, they make a poor medium for swimming in.  I suppose they could burn them for heat, but that would mean they’re trading an awful lot of goods and services for what amounts to firewood.

Those dollars are only good to Country B if they can trade them, or invest them.  And in the end, they have to trade or invest them in Country A, where they are legal currency.

Let’s dismiss invest at this time–a subject for another day although I’ll make a further brief mention later in this post–and just look at the “trade” side.  How are they going to trade them when everything they want to buy in Country A is more expensive than the locally produced stuff at the current rate of exchange?

And there’s the secret:  at the current rate of exchange.  If the Dollar, instead of being traded at 100 Credits per dollar, were traded at 90 Credits per dollar, They would be able to buy from Country A at the same price as from their own Country B.  That would also mean that people in Country A would be able to buy from their own Country A at the same price as from Country B.  This “weakening” of the dollar compared to the Credit, means that Country A’s manufacturers and merchants are better able to sell their product both domestically and internationally although at the same time it’s making goods and services available to the buyers more expensive.  It’s not exactly obvious whether this is a good or bad thing on balance.   This despite the tendency of many to automatically consider a “weak currency” to be bad and a “strong currency” to be good.  Both have their good and bad aspects and great care must be exercised in looking at why a currency is weak or strong in making that determination.  And even so, “reasonable men may justifiably disagree.”

Voluntary exchange, both in goods and services, and in the currencies involved, would tend to quickly correct mismatches.  Going past the simplistic model of everything being cheaper in one country than the other by the same amount, the same principal still applies  The exchange rate (again, assuming voluntary exchange in the market) will tend toward an average and one country will produce some goods and services more efficiently with different goods and services produces more efficiently in the other.  Country A might import more steel (perhaps to the consternation of steelworkers) but export more grain (to the joy of farmers).

And, of course, we cannot completely ignore investment.  Instead of buying a country might choose to invest.  They have the same amount of currency:  Country B received some number of dollars from its sale of goods and services to Country A.  But instead of using those dollars to buy goods and services in turn, they might use it to invest in enterprises in Country A.  They might buy property in the hopes of reaping rents and appreciation in value (which will tend, through competition, to increase other properties values).  They might invest in factories, putting people to work producing more goods and services.  Sales outlets, again putting people to work providing their goods and services to others.  These things are beneficial when done by domestic investors.  They do not change their nature when done by foreign investors.

So people need to stop thinking in terms of “favorable” or “unfavorable” balance of trade.  A balance of trade is not favorable or unfavorable by itself.  It is only in the context of the larger economic picture that the benefits or detriments of the details of that particular balance can become known.  The catch is that the detailed effects are often not obvious, which can lead to heated disagreements even among those who do try to look at that big picture.

The one thing that history has shown us, though, is that interference with the system of voluntary exchanges rarely if ever works out better than allowing it to freely operate.

No time to do a full post so here’s some music.