Category Archives: Economics

A Redistributed Pie Shrinks, A Selfish One Grows

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Assumption: People change their behavior when the perceived incentives (cost and/or benefits) change.
Assumption: The world is not a zero-sum game.


Any arguments or dispute? No? Ok, then, a thought experiment.


A typical grading curve in school is 90% A, 80% B, 70% C, 60% D, less than 60% fails, where there are many standard point-earning opportunities, and occasional “extra-point” opportunities, where each person earns their own scores. Maybe everyone aces an easy class with all 90%+, maybe a herd of sluggards all fail. Any number of points might be earned in total.


Tell a classroom full of kids that the grading curve is to be changed. In order to help out the GPA of struggling students, points will be redistributed. After each test, project, or paper, any points above a grade cut-off will be shaved off as “extra” and re-distributed to the lowest scoring student. When the lowest scoring student has been brought to the level of the next-lowest student, then the points are shared between them, because they are both the neediest at the bottom. No “extra” points can be “banked” against future mistakes. If not everyone is brought up to passing by this method when just extracting “extra A” points, then more points will be extracted from the scores at the top, and the 80%-90% scores will get cut to 80%, and all the extra points re-distributed to those in need of points to pass. If some are still failing, then all the now-B students will get knocked down to C’s, and those points re-distributed. Etc.


Question: with the changes in incentives, how will students change their behaviors?


Some will keep doing what they are doing, because that is just who they are, and they want to learn regardless of grade. Likely it will not be many. Many near the top will see all their extra points being sucked away, and they will stop trying to earn more than 90%; indeed, I’d expect a competition to see who can come closest to 90% most often without going under. Those at the bottom will work even less, knowing they will be given some extra help, so they will need more points than ever. Those in the middle will get frustrated, because they are not doing well, but they are not getting any help, because it’s all going to those at the bottom, who are not helped in the end because there are not enough points to bring a dozen zeros up to 60% and passing. The total number of student points, reflecting the growing knowledge of the students in the class (at least in theory), will shrink. The number of people passing will shrink. The attitude toward the subject and teacher will deteriorate. In the end, a few will still be trying because they know it’s the right thing to do, but it will not be anywhere near enough to help out the grade situation, so learning halts, because no new teaching can start until a passing grade on existing material in achieved.Classroom average GPA will head to zero.


Compare that to progressive taxation, welfare, the economy, and government.


For those on the left that don’t get it, allow me to spell it out. The formerly high-scoring students grow too actively resent the low-scoring ones because they are dragging the high scores down. The failing students actively dislike the strong students because they COULD be working harder to earn more points to pass around, but aren’t. Those in the middle can’t help those at the top OR bottom, but get caught in the middle and accused of being “other” by both sides. It’s a toxic brew that sows discord, hatred, envy, and sloth. It destroys the incentives to succeed, shrinks the point-and-learning pie, and hurts everyone, regardless of the stated intention to help those in most need of a GPA boost, because it fails to recognize that GPA isn’t the GOAL, it’s a BYPRODUCT of the goal, learning. The goal of the government should not be to get everyone to a particular level of income & benefits, it is to provide place, laws, and opportunities for a person to be able to do that on their own.


On the other hand, change the grading system so that failure to earn a passing grade means you cannot get a free lunch, and continuing failure jeopardizes your families’ voting rights or welfare checks or eligibility for other government assistance or jobs. Failing has real, painful, consequences. Helping a struggling student to pass earns you extra opportunities, or classes, or money. Getting high grades in difficult or high-demand classes can earn college / trade-school tuition money or even a cash graduation bonus. Doing well for yourself has solid, immediate benefits. People can take as many classes as they want, and earn unlimited points or cash, and it’s not being taken from the low-performing students.


Which would return better long-term results?


Yes, I know this isn’t a new concept. It seemed like a good way to give a concrete example of how my basic assumptions and principles about people and how the world works, and perhaps shed light on the folly of current programs, and suggest a more sensible approach.

Winning the culture wars

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A few days ago one of the women I met online in my nine dates with six women in nine days adventure sent me an email asking information about a local gun range and instructor for a female friend of hers.

Yesterday I had my semi-annual eye exam (yes, my eyesight is quite good). I wore an Insights Training sweatshirt. As I walked in the door a female patient looked at me and said, “Insights! Are you an instructor?” “No”, I told her, “I’m just a student of theirs.”

It turns out she had worked at Weapons Safety Inc. (a gun shop and range) when Insights did a lot of their classes there and hence was quite familiar with Insights. The female optometrist asked the other patient a little about what it was like to work there and then it was back to business.

As I was waiting the female receptionist was talking to still another female patient about LASIK and told her that her ex had bad eyes and wore very thick glasses. He then had LASIK and the next year was able to win a rifle competition he had no chance of winning with his previous eyes. The woman she was talking to didn’t seem the least bit fazed.

This was all in the Seattle area. Historically Seattle is very anti-gun.

We have essentially won the culture war on guns. We need to keep taking new people to the range (I had another one scheduled for 2:00 PM today but she became ill and we are rescheduling) but short of a major screw up the worst case in the next decade or so is that progress toward our end goal is halted.

But there is another culture war that looks every bit as bad as things did for gun rights advocates 15 years ago.

We have long known something was very wrong with our country. The gun issue was/is just one symptom. TSA is a big deal. The war on drugs is a big deal. The government involvement in health care is a big deal. The welfare state is a big deal. The government involvement in education is a big deal. The national debt is a huge deal.

Looking at the bigger picture there are just so many things wrong that it is easy to want to just run away, create Galt’s Gulch, or encourage secession. 15 years ago the gun rights situation looked hopeless too. As Tam said if you arrived as a time traveler at a gun store in 1995 and told them the future of gun ownership in 2012 they would have found the time travel part the most believable part of your story.

I’m not saying “everything is going to be okay”. In fact in at least one way we have essentially a mathematical proof that it’s game over and we are just watching the clock run out. But the question is, what do we do about it?

Some people are buying gold and silver. Lots of people are buying guns and ammo. But you can’t eat gold or silver. You can eat a bullet, but one is your lifetime limit and few people consider the Smith and Wesson retirement plan the best they can do. Stockpiling food and water in the city, at best, will only get you by as long as your supplies last. And even if you join up with a like minded tribe deep in the woods it’s going to be at best a couple of generations until the latest fashion debate is about how to arrange which type of bird feather on your fur coat and there is talk of an “assault weapon ban” on crossbows with the real agenda of getting rid of all bows and arrows and maybe spears too.

I think there may be a better way. I have the big vision but I haven’t yet been able to figure out how to implement it. It’s sort of like I know I need a bridge across this dangerous ravine. I know a fair amount about different types of bridges but none of them seem to be feasible. I suppose it’s possible the “ravine” is actually the “Grand Canyon” and we simply don’t have the “technology”, money, and/or time to build such a bridge in the time we have left. But if you consider 1995 the darkest days in the gun wars and a win being clearly visible by 2003 (most people predicted the AWB probably wasn’t going to be renewed) then that only took eight years.

One way to look at that is those eight years is that they were essentially a politically delaying action until we got our culture war game on. I claim a similar situation exists today. I’m sure freedom has not yet reached it’s nadir but there is a fair amount of political action that will slow the descent. If we can get our culture game going for freedom then we might be able pull out a win before the clock runs out.

The problem is I don’t see how to win the culture war. I don’t see that we have effective weapons in this culture war. I don’t even see how to fight the culture war. People are certainly trying but we are rapidly losing.

With guns we could take people to the range and the anti-gun people didn’t have anti-gun ranges to compete with us. The anti-freedom people have “free stuff” and “security” to offer. It’s all a lie in the long, or even intermediate, term but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is here and now. The media shows the sick getting treatment, the hungry being fed, and the TSA proclaiming the world is a safer place when they find eight ounces of toothpaste in grandmas carryon luggage. The hidden costs and the cancerous belief that more government is the solution to every problem are difficult to see and in the “distant” future of a few years from now.

What are the freedom games that would be the equivalent of USPSA, IDPA, Steel Challenge, and Boomershoot? Something that quickly engages people and gives almost immediate feedback would be ideal. It is a video game? But maybe the definition of “immediate” can be stretched a bit. Perhaps it is an experimental city with no taxes on income, capital gains, or sales. Or maybe it is teaching philosophy in our schools.

The way I see it we can win the culture war in the next few years or we can say George Orwell was off by two generations.

Reflections on assumptions, principles, and world-view after a painful loss

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It is easy to argue with others and say that they must be
stupid or insane or whatever to vote a certain way. But, when you lose, you
have to confront the fact that you were out-voted, and therefore, in a
minority. Introspection to see whether you
made a mistake, or if they were
mistaken, or if there are other forces at work, must be done or you will keep
losing. We all have our assumptions and principles, and these form our basic
world-view, and it may be time to check out or investigate theirs, as well as
my own. Assumptions and principles are different, and should be evaluated for
clarity and reasonableness.

All of Euclidian Geometry follows from a very small handful
of postulates, common notions, and definitions. People are more complex, but
that doesn’t mean that our assumptions HAVE to be far more complicated or
vastly more numerous.

Some people have a very simplistic “if it feels good do it”
sort of worldview, because that sums up their principles, and their sole
assumption / value is “feeling good right now is what matters most.” If you don’t
agree with that basic assertion, then you see them as shallow, hedonistic, short-sighted,
etc. But you can’t get them to change their view, or see YOUR view, until you get them to formally recognize
and question those underlying ideas, and acknowledge yours. Similarly,
you can’t understand why they do what
they do until you recognize and understand what their fundamental principles and values are. Same facts, utterly divergent
views.

Simplistic example: Men generally value freedom more than
security, and women vice-versa. Men generally earn more than women. A
politician offering much freedom and low taxes, at the cost of limited
safety-net and therefore personal uncertainty, will attract more men than
women. Another politician offering an image of dependability and security (such
as free healthcare) at a cost of high taxes and regulation, will attract a lot more
women than men. Men see the cost in taxes and on their freedom, women see
benefits of not having to worry about it. Same fact, different values, different
votes. Looked at short-term, before the cost of the free health-care bankrupts the
nation, the female vote is perfectly
rational, and if she votes against it she’ll be accused of voting against her
own self-interests. OTOH, a man voting against it will be accused of being
selfish or uncaring. Looked at long-term, as the burden of it destroys many
other things and increases uncertainty, it’s
very self-destructive to vote for
the health-care pol. But one just calling the other stupid or callous doesn’t
help find common ground or resolve the dispute and decide the best course for
both short AND long term concerns.

My basic assumptions about the people of the world are:
A) People tend to change their behavior when their perceived incentives change (see “O” below).
B) People will work much harder for themselves (to make more money or improve
their situation) than for anyone else, i.e., they will work in their own best
interests (as they see them).
C) Most people are basically good, and want to do good, BUT
D) people tend to be lazy, and can be envious, spiteful, cowardly, have other
anti-virtues, AND
E) some folks just are not wired right (psychopaths, narcissists, psychotics, sociopaths,
OCD, idiots, etc)
F) People are people – any assumptions you make about the “common man” or
business leaders, you must ALSO make about people with a badge, or in elected
office, or any other government employee. (Corollary: If you don’t trust folks
to take care of themselves or run business, you can’t expect them give them a
monopoly on government force and expect them to act like angels.)
G) Risk can never be eliminated, and trying to do so creates other, much more
subtle and dangerous, risks (Corollary: you CAN’T save everyone. NON-corollary:
it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to save anyone).


My assumptions about economics are:
H) The world is not a zero-sum game.
I) TANSTAAFL- ALL choices are trade-offs, and better choices can be made if
consequences are clear, direct, and known to the chooser at the time of the
choice being made. (Related: Costs should align with benefits, preferably in an
obvious-to-the-beneficiary way at the
time of benefit)
 J) People tend to change their behavior
when the incentives change (yup, same as above – it’s important)
K) Things not earned are not valued properly or understood well. (Corollary:
giving people stuff, either “free stuff” or power, corrupts the spirit and
distorts values and other incentives).
L) Because people have different values, aiming for equality of outcomes is unwise.
M) There will always be relative winners and losers in ANY system, and changing
the rules simply changes who wins or loses most. (Related: the more rules there
are, the more people will attempt to game the system to personal advantage, and
the worse the side-effects)
N)  When incentives of self-interest are
aligned with desirable outcomes, there is little resistance to “good” action (corollary:
when they conflict, coercion will be required).
O) Failure is not a bug, it’s a necessary
feature, a feed-back mechanism. It’s not only an option, it MUST be a VISIBLE and
PAINFUL option, if people are to evaluate risk and reward to choose wisely.
P) What works best is usually what aligns self-interest with desired outcomes.
Q) Marginal costs can tell you a LOT about how well thought-out a plan is.
R) That which cannot be sustained, won’t be.


My principles and values are: more freedom is better than
less; private property is private, and that includes your body, your time, and
the product of your labor; I really don’t care that much about what you say about
the intended result of your actions –
I care much more about the actual
real-world results, effects, and side-effects; dependency is bad; coercion is
bad; coercion and charity are incompatible; clarity and accuracy are more important
than hurt feelings; things of value are best earned or given freely; a person
should do all that they promise to do; a person should not harm another, or
their property, without just cause (such as self defense); all people should be
treated equally under the law, BUT not all people are of equal worth; honesty
is good, even if it is uncomfortable.

Questions, challenges, any missing / contradictory /
redundant items? If I can get it concise – simple, clear, short, and complete
enough – whenever I get in an argument that I think can be broken down to
fundamentals, I can ask which ones they disagree with. If they DON’T disagree
with any of them, and don’t have any others, I could build up, like a Euclidian
proof, why my position makes more sense than theirs (or at least, why their
position doesn’t make sense to me), and if they DO disagree or have other
additional items, I can get a much better handle on why/how/if I can approach
the disagreement to find common ground.

Random thought of the day

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I was inspired by comments on a Facebook page (Annette Wachter’s) about considering moving to another state such as Idaho, Wyoming, or South Dakota and I added my random thought:

I’m thinking I would like to move a little further away. The moon sounds nice. Or maybe Mars. I wouldn’t need any wind doping skills on the moon but I think I want a little more gravity so my bones don’t weaken to the point I couldn’t return to earth if I really wanted to sort through the wreckage in a decade or so.

I had a rough day today. Not nearly enough sleep last night then some lawyer/divorce stuff to deal with on top of the election results. It’s time to go to bed and pull the covers over my head for a few hours. I’ll feel better in the morning.

Time for a serious conversation

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I received a text message this morning:

Are you free sometime this weekend? I feel the need for a long, serious conversation.

My first thought was, “OH NO! What did I do this time?”

Then I realized there was the potential for another reason. I responded with:

Topic? Politics? Personal?

I guessed right. It was the election:

Politics/survival

We will have our conversation. We’ll increase our odds and probably do okay. The rest of the world? I’m skeptical. As Thomas Sowell has said via Twitter recently:

Our economic problems worry me much less than our political solutions, which have a far worse track record.

The road to despotism is paved with “fairness.”

No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce.

Or as Say Uncle said:

Moochers gonna mooch.

And as I have said many times, the looters are soon going to run out of places to loot. And I don’t plan on hanging around when that happens. I just hope I can get most of my possessions and all of those I care about out of harms way.

Quote of the day—Margaret Thatcher

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And what a policy!

Yes! He would rather have the poor be poorer provided the rich were less rich. That is the liberal policy!

Yes it came out! He didn’t intend it to but it did.

Margaret Thatcher
November 22, 1990
From 1:15 in this video:

[H/T to Phssthpok from this comment.

As pointed out at the end of the video as soon as someone talks about “the gap” between the rich and the poor they have revealed themselves and their true nature.

It was over 20 years a friend of mine, Susan K., told me essentially the same thing as part of a pitch about her love of Ayn Rand’s work. I read Atlas Shrugged years earlier when I was in my late teens. I really liked it but I hadn’t really followed up with her other works. Susan got me started again. Susan’s explanation of the preference of the left for poorer people as long as the gap was less was effective on me but it wasn’t as simple and as forceful as the way Ms. Thatcher expressed it.

For a different and more rigorous approach read Thomas Sowell’s book Black Rednecks and White Liberals or one of his many of his other works. The gist is that a critical item overlooked by those that complain about “the gap” is that different people are in the category of “poor” and “rich” over time. Of course someone in their first job is going to be earning far less than someone who has been working and learning about their area of expertise for 40 years. And over larger time spans it is pointed out there used to be complaints about the “railroad barons” and the super rich oil tycoons and others in steel and automobile industries. Those have been replaced by people in new industries and many of those older industries are essentially dead in this country. And even within an industry those with a seemingly invincible grip in one decade can be struggling or gone the next.

Economics is about the optimal allocation of scarce recourses. Optimal allocation obviously increases the total wealth of society. But what the statists don’t realize, or perhaps don’t want you to know so they can obtain personal power or wealth, is that something much closer to optimal allocation occurs when markets and minds are free rather than when dictated by the central committee with their decisions backed up by guns.

Don’t ever be at a loss for words when someone whines about the rich getting richer. Don’t try to explain that it doesn’t or shouldn’t matter if some people get rich or that it means there is opportunity for others to get rich. Handle it as Ms. Thatcher did. Follow it up by forcefully making the case that if the gap between the rich and the poor is a valid cause for government and/or social action then they will never be satisfied until full equality is achieved. And there are those that admit what they demand is full equality in just those words. But what they cannot seem to comprehend is that full equality can only be approximated by everyone being in extreme poverty. Full equality comes with death. And it should come as no surprise the political left is well acquainted with death on a very large scale.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rivrdog

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What happened since the 1960s is that capitalism morphed towards socialism by accepting all those rules on enterprise which the gov’t wrote, and socialist governments got used to the capitalist bribes, and learned to relax the rules at the right times to promote “welfare capitalism”.

A third political force, libertarianism, sprang up to replace pure capitalism with it’s property rights-driven theory, and a fourth force, Marxism, arose to inject pure collectivism back into what used to be socialism.

The entire process is like watching clouds form and dissipate over the mountains.

Rivrdog
November 2, 2012
Comment to Capitalism v. Socialism
[I really like the metaphor.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Mark Alger

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I wish we In the Right could/would stop using the term “capitalism”. It’s a Marxian canard, founded in the notion that what we’re about is a system of belief, rather than free markets, and free commerce, which are the natural, self-organizing systems that arise spontaneously when individuals are left in liberty, each to pursue his own enlightened self interest.


Nor is “socialism” the only evil of the Left. Together, the lot of them all bear a single earmark: they are collectivist in nature and deny the sovereignty of the individual. The rest is just persiflage, allowing leftists to pettifog minor distinctions of no matter or moment, rather than getting to the basic point.


Mark Alger
November 2, 2012
Comment to Capitalism v. Socialism
[A very good point. The problem is, of course, that “free markets and free commerce” is not as succinct. And “Liberty” and “Freedom” are too vague. On the other side I think “collectivist”, “collectivism”, and probably even “statist” and “statism” work adequately.


See also his blog post on this same topic here where he says, “Joe is brilliant”. He forgot to mention that I admire myself for my modesty as well.—Joe]

Capitalism v. Socialism

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There are at least two ways to interpret Americans Aged 18-29 Have A More Favorable Response To Socialism Than To Capitalism. One is that the young are inclined toward socialism and as they age they will become more capitalist. The other is that capitalism is on it’s way out and as the current capitalist age out socialism is inevitable.

I’m inclined to believe the first hypothesis is more likely to be true than the latter. One of the reasons is that young socialists have been predicting the imminent collapse of capitalism for decades if not longer. Here is one example:

In the last week of May 1968, a rallying call to the working class to take political power into their hands would have tolled the death knell of capitalism on a world scale.

In rural Idaho at the time, and a bit too young, I was too far removed from ground zero of the socialist movements of the 1960s. But I know people who were near the center of those times and places. They too believed within a few decades capitalism would be dead and buried.

I won’t deny that capitalism is weaker and is more likely to be crushed now than at any other time in the last 50 years, but it is far stronger than its detractors of the 1960s thought it would be at this time. Many of those sympathetic to socialism at that time became more capitalist as they grew older.

Perhaps socialism will temporarily bury capitalism in the next few years or perhaps decades. But I believe the young will continue to mature and become more capitalist as they age. Socialism will succeed only because we grant them power based on their stated intention rather than based on the fruit they bring. And results versus stated intentions are becoming more and more clear with each victory the socialists make.

It is those stated intentions that are so seductive we can almost taste the sweetness of the candy. The candy that is laced, by it’s very socialist nature, with carcinogens. What the socialists don’t really understand, and why I say any burial of capitalism is temporary, is that as the cancer takes hold and destroys a society it destroys the great mass of the socialist advocates at a faster rate than it does the capitalists. The capitalists will move to protect their “capital” whether it is their tangible wealth or the intellectual and physical skills that made them more productive than the socialists to begin with. As the socialists rot from the cancer of their own making the capitalists will be the ones to recover and rise from the ashes of the civilization the socialists destroyed.

I don’t know the time scale. There are just too many variables. The elections next week, as important as they are, are probably a minor player in the big picture. The economic collapse of Western Europe and perhaps Japan and China will play a major role. Add in the price and availability of oil and the possibility of glass pockmarks replacing the cities of Iran and/or Israel and you have such huge variables that making such predictions is impossible.

But I believe that even if  it has to be resurrected from the ashes capitalism, particularly the right to property and all that derives from that, will rise because it is a natural law recognized and defended by nearly all animals and even our very young. I’ve talked to avowed Marxists and others who looked me directly in the eyes and said, “What’s wrong with socialism?” Their logic is non-existent, their data is cherry-picked, and their arguments are both fragile and brittle.

They can only succeed through deception and force. And at some level they know that too. This is why they have such violent tendencies. This is why they are genocidal. They can only succeed if they can kill off their intellectual competition. But as they run out of places to loot there is a “little problem” waiting for them. Their final, intended, victims are armed.

It is only as we humans go through the process of maturing in the teenage years that our brains turn to mush and advocate for socialism. Most recover but some do not. It is my belief that socialism is now making it’s final push to kill capitalism and although those with mush for brains might actually succeed in the end mush for brains will always lose to superior firepower.

Modern parables regarding self reliance

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My brother Doug sent me an email with a link. This gives you a hint of what it is about.

Professional trappers don’t catch fast-breeding and destructive feral pigs using hunting dogs and guns, or in little traps one or two at a time. The wily pigs quickly learn to evade humans after such fleeting contacts. So how do the pros trap entire feral pig herds, eliminating them all, from granddads to piglets, in one go?

They feed them, most generously. They kill them with kindness.

…

The moral of the story: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Don’t go inside the “free corn” pen, not even when all the doors are open. Free food is as dangerous as the sirens’ song to ancient mariners. It is all too easy to get used to being fed, and then to miss the exits closing one at a time.

I read the entire post and all the comments. Most will stop after the first parable which is probably enough to get the point across. Just to make sure read the second one also.

Atlas Shrugged II

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Barb L. and I saw the movie Atlas Shrugged II Tuesday night. There were only a few people in the theater. And after the movie I ended up spending a few minutes explaining bits of it to Barb and the three guys who sat behind us. None of them had read the book.

I liked the casting better than what they did for part 1. I liked that many scenes were essentially directly from the book. But I can see that it fails to get across the points essential to appreciating Rand’s message. And reading the book just doesn’t work for many people. I know several people that just couldn’t “get into it”. Whereas son James and I were spellbound by the book. It resonated with us like few books ever have.

Because the movie doesn’t resonate as well as I wish it did I almost think the movie would be better described as a documentary of our future with the script published in 1957. Judged from that standpoint it does amazingly well.

This is sad considering (from here) “Atlas Shrugged is the ‘second most influential book for Americans today’ after the Bible, according to a joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club.”

You think you’re a gunsmith?

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THIS is a gunsmith.  Watch all of them.  There are a bunch of vids all in a row detailing the handcrafting of an American longrifle.  They hand hammer a barrel around a mandrel and hammer weld it.  Awesome.  No “machine tools” of any kind.  The closest to a machine tool is the barrel drilling jig, which is hand powered and hand fed, using hand-made cutting tools, and having a wooden spiral jig for determining the rifle twist.


Hat tip; castboolits.gunloads.com


We are extremely pampered today by comparison, having rolled bar and seamless tubing of precise alloy to work with.  I once “restored” (though the word is abused in this case) a hand-made, lavishly hand engraved and gold plated trumpet that was made in the very early 20th century– for its original owner, who was over 80 years old at the time.  He had bought it as a kid and played it the whole time.  All of the tubing was wrapped over mandrels and soldered, including the piston valves– every tubular part had a lengthwise seam therefore, and some of the silver solder had corroded out, resulting in leaks.  I had to re-solder some of them, but others were too far gone and I replaced them with extruded, seamless tubing.  The curved tubing was made back then by filling the straight pieces with lead and bending them  by hand over a bending jig, then hammering out any wrinkles.  Now they are bent using an ice composition and then hydro-formed in molds.  Some curved tubular parts are now built up entirely through electrolysis over investment cores.  And they didn’t use a buffing machine back then, but instead hand-burnished every square millimeter of the instrument prior to plating it– you could still see all the tiny facets on that trumpet– one for each stroke of the burnishing tool.  But that all that was still short of the skills used in rifle making in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and I didn’t do any engraving, carving or inletting in my instrument repair career.


An instrument (or rifle) with that sort of craftsmanship today would cost you well in excess of fifteen thousand dollars (you find fine rifles for well over a hundred thousand) though we can get good ones, made by modern methods, for under one thousand.  But no one makes musical instruments like that anymore, so far as I know.


When I first started in musical instrument work, the most expensive saxophone, the Selmer Mark VI, was under a thousand dollars, or right around a thousand, and it was imported from France, but the much simpler concert flute could be found costing several times that much, made in America.  You know why?


Because a flute can be made by hand in a person’s basement, whereas it takes a rather large shop, with a tons of specialized tooling, to make a saxophone, that’s why.  There were exquisite hand-made flutes, but no hand-made saxophones.  You can’t hand build a large-scale integrated microchip in your basement.  It may cost millions to set up for making them but you can buy one for a dollar.

Quote of the day—Ry Jones

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Vultures gotta eat, too.

Ry Jones
October 18, 2012
Comment to Engaging in capitalism warrants death
[While this is true the situations where I advocate increasing their food supply are rare.—Joe]

Redesign not required

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Professor Antony Davis says a complete redesign of government is required and that the redesign must begin with determining the proper role of government:

I agree with nearly everything he says except for the claim that a redesign is required.

The original design of 1787 would solve this problem just fine. It also has no chance of being seriously considered in the foreseeable future.

H/T to Tyler Durden.

It’s a Model City alright

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Detroit, that is.  I’ve been thinking of a Model Cities post for a while, but PJMedia already has a nice one;


 



Hat Tip; Kevin.


It’s a Model City alright, for exactly the same reasons that North Korea and Cuba are Model Countries.  That video should be part of every right/left debate from now until all leftist ideas are shunned from polite society forever.

Quote of the day—Thomas

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When I go into prepper mode (which I occasionally do), some colleague will say, “Oh. I’ll just come to your house.” After I push back the bile, I usually say something tasteful like, “Bring your daughter.”

Thomas
October 9, 2012
Comment to Guest Post: Four Alternative Stores Of Value
[Similar thoughts have come to my mind as well but I had never found the words to express them so well.

If I put a bunch of effort and money into making life possible for myself and my family in an extreme hardship situation and you just assumed you could mooch off of me if you ever needed to then if such circumstance came about you are going to be surprised at the price you pay for a handful of lentils and cup of clean water.—Joe]

Economics 99 (Remedial)

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About this “(multi) trillion dollar tax cut” thingy; First, tax cuts don’t cost anything.  Taxes cost us, but cutting taxes saves us money.


That’s not the main point though.  The main point is that cutting taxes lightens the ball-and-chain that’s around our ankles, allowing us to invest and produce more, resulting in more income, which in turn increases revenues.  Taxing any behaivor reduces the behaivor while incentivising an underground economy (black market) in that behavior.


You might think that taxing something less dynamic, like property values, might be different– that you could actually add up the property values in your district, multiply that by the amount of change in the tax rate, and know exactly the difference in revenue that will result.  Simple huh?  Well you’d be totally wrong for several reasons.  Here in North Idaho we have a whole population of refugees from other states who fled high tax rates in their states, increasing our property values and presumably reducing the values in the areas they fled.


I could barely afford to get new siding on my house and resurface my huge deck, but since it would increase the assessment value, resulting in a higher tax bill, uh, maybe it’s not so important.  Not this year.  And there is why we have a lot of what I call “Tyvek Houses”.  A Tyvek house is one that remains in un-finished condition for decades at a time.  They are ugly, and unattractive to buyers, but if you plan to live in your house you don’t care about buyers.  You care about the assessed value, because you don’t want to pay out huge sums in taxes year after year, so you don’t want it looking too nice.


You lower the tax rate, and because the punished activity (punished by taxation) becomes more affordable it becomes more common.  The result is more tax revenue.  M’kay?  Reducing rates beyond some extremely low level that we haven’t seen in over 100 years will at some point start to reduce revenues, but in that case we will not only have no use whatsoever for 95+% of what government does today, we’ll have no time nor patience for it.


I needed the first paragraph because there is a plan that could be called a multi-trillion-dollar tax cut.  Dramatically slash the income tax rate, and you get trillions more dollars flooding into the treasury.  You get trillions more dollars flooding into the country from everywhere too, essentially, because investments in the U.S. (as opposed to investments in other countries) become that much more attractive.  Capital, along with the people who own it, moves to where it can be safe and free.  Better put it’s; “free and therefore safe”.


The “expert” economists on the left understand all of this perfectly of course, as any kid who ever ran a lemonade stand would.  That proves to us that their intentions are not good.  If they know that lower taxes will result in a better economy, and that ultra low low taxes will result in a super good economy, and they oppose all tax cuts, well, you figure it out. (hint; they think that America is too big and important already)  They want you out in the streets shouting “Eat the rich” while promising to pay for everything in your life through tax revenues.  Do you see the blatant contradiction there or has your mind been taken over?


Meanwhile, the Republicans can’t quite bring themselves to explain it, because they’re afraid.  That or they have brain damage, but I don’t think it’s brain damage per se.


I say that the American people deserve to have the case made, straight up, what it is that we face, verses what it is that America was meant to be.  If the Republicans can’t bring themselves to make the case, we’ll have to take over their stupidshitty, Progressive party and fundamentally transform it from the inside.

Quote of the day—Mostly Cajun

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Retire? I will probably get killed in the early battles of the coming revolution.

Mostly Cajun
January 27, 2012
Potpourri
[Via Kevin who posts about the violence in parts of Europe over the economic collapse in progress.

I can relate to this. Although I would like to think things will collapse slowly enough that I can retreat to a “bug out place” and avoid most of the bloodshed or worst case, as someone told me a few years ago, “You and I won’t have to worry about getting into an armed conflict with the government because they will pick up us on the first pass.” I would then hope I get released after the fighting, if any, is over with.—Joe]

Outlier detection

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As Tyler Durden said, “See if you can spot the outlier in the chart below.”

SeptemberChangeNSA20-24

And after doing the seasonal adjustment:

SeptHistorical20-24

If you can detect an outlier then feel free to draw your own conclusions. Those that cannot detect any outliers probably aren’t reading this, aspire to careers as fence posts, and vote for Obama.

But I only paid X for the gun!

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I’ve brought this up before, but I keep hearing that assertion.  It says you can never pay more to accessorize a gun that the price you paid for the gun.  It should always be less.  I’ve had people mention their free guns– gifts.  “I didn’t pay a dime for the gun, so how can I justify X?” or “I only paid 100 dollars for this Carbine back in the ’60s…!” (Never mind that it may now be worth 800 or more)


There are high-end optics that cost more than almost any firearm made, except for some of the fine double rifles, and you aren’t going to be using these optics on a fine double rifle.  Ditto for some of the hand-made flintlock longrifles and such, and a few boutique rifles.  There are also sound systems that cost more than a lot of used cars, so I guess you have suffer with an inferior sound system until you can afford a more expensive car to put it in.  A friend of mine once had a $50K sound system in his apartment, so I guess he was really breaking the rules.


The way I see it, if you paid some low price for your rifle, and it does the job you need of it, then you now have more money to spend on a good optic.  I don’t see a conflict here.  It’s all about the setup you want, not some spreadsheet of arbitrary rules based on relative prices of the components.


If it makes anyone feel better, I once had a 150 dollar stereo in a 100 dollar car, with a 500 dollar set Michelins under it.  Can someone make the case that I should have restricted myself to crapy tires because I only paid 100 bucks for the car?  I put over 100K miles on that car too, which included some rather long road trips – you want to me run retreads on it?  Uh; no.  It had well over 200K on it when it finally died a violent death, otherwise, 20 years later I might still be driving my 100 dollar 1963 Dodge 330.  What’s your problem?


ETA,  From comments;  “You are not accessorizing your rifle, you are accessorizing your SCOPE!”  That is a better way to look at it.  Get a great scope and find a rifle that’s good enough for it.  Then you have something.