Category Archives: Economics

How do you measure fairness/justice?

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In response to the QOTD here;



“How do you measure fairness/justice?”


It’s not terribly complicated.  First, you determine whether someone’s rights have been violated.  If so, you hold the perpetrator accountable, with restitution as a priority.


The statist will attempt to argue over what is and is not a right, and who possess the right (the individual or the collective, or some sub set of the collective).  Ayn Rand has a couple of quotes that nail it;



“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.” – Ayn Rand (copied from Kevin’s site)


I’ll paraphrase this next one from memory, because I don’t have the book handy;


“Any proposed ‘right’ that demands the violation of another’s rights is not and cannot be considered a right.” – Ayn Rand.


Next the statist will declare these truths to be too simple, that you’re being too simple-minded seeing the world in such black and white terms, and that only in navigating through complexity can we come to some semblance of economic and social justice, etc., etc.


Eventually it degrades into a contest of push verses shove, as the snarling, hate-filled statist is more than willing to start the pushing (or more likely to have someone else start the pushing for him, the typical statist being a coward as a rule).


There is no reconciling the two visions of society (statism, verses the property rights model on which this country was founded) and any attempt to do so will only delay the inevitable reckoning, prolonging and deepening the pain and destruction along the way (the traditional role of the Republican Party).  Our only sensible plan of action is to defeat the statists at every opportunity, relegating them to the woodwork of society where they belong (along with the cockroaches and spiders).


Our biggest problem is that the statist’s goal is much simpler than ours.  They want destruction and decline of civilization.  The free man wants to create and build over time.  He might spend a lifetime carving out his niche, and building a life for himself and his family, while the statist can wipe the whole thing out in a moment.  Building is difficult and time consuming, and it takes planning and creativity, while destruction is simple and quick, and most any idiot/loser can do it.


With that in mind, a more specific and urgent course of action is presented.  The leftist/statist power infrastructure needs to be dismantled, and the individual statist power brokers (perpetrators) have to be held personally liable.  They have to pay a price or they will not stop.  There’s your “Social Justice”.  Anything less will prolong the problem and deepen the pain.  Investing our hopes and resources in the traditional Republican Party model of going along and trying to run the statist system more responsibly, is nothing but a recipe for disaster.


We’ve too often accepted the leftist premises or their claims to compassion and justice, when their goals are just the opposite.  We’ve reached a radical situation by sitting back for generations, allowing the leftist radicals to have their way.  Closing a few dozen federal departments, including education, and shutting down hundreds of programs might seem radical or extreme to the inattentive.  So what?  The level of government intervention we’ve reached is in itself extreme or radical, compared to the vision of the founders.  The status quo is what’s extreme.  Getting back on track is not, even if means passing out a million pink slips to federal and state employees.

Coolidge Almost Got It Right

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In response to the QOTD;


Ah, but Mr. Coolidge, and the Republican Party leadership, apparently never understood the game.  The assertion that building up the weak is the Left’s goal is one thing.  Taking that assertion at face value is another.  It’s the Big Mistake of the 20th century, and has resulted in perpetual confusion (to say nothing of the stagnation, decay and destruction around the world).  The preponderance of the evidence regarding the Left’s goals points elsewhere.  Their objective is statism for its own sake, and the tactic, stated openly in some circles time after time, is to bring down “The System” so it can be remade– “Redistributive Change” in Obama’s own words, and it’s been said in other ways throughout the generations.


Republicans, as they occupy themselves trying to understand and argue the details, the costs and so on, of the “healthcare” bills, are demonstrating their utter cluelessness (or is it their complicity?).  “Why, this could end up funding abortions with taxpayer dollars, and that would be bad, and I’m not so sure we can afford this other bit over here…”


That’s not the point, Skippy.  The point is, the whole thing is a massive power grab.  What more do you need to know, for crying out loud?


Weigh down the economy with debt, entitlements and restrictions, then blame what remains of the private sector.  Take advantage of the chaos and the public demands for an altogether new approach that they hope will ensue.  They’re telling us every day; “Never let a crisis go to waste” is only part of it.  The other part is their understanding that they can manufacture the crises.  Chip, chip, chip, chip, and sooner or later even the hardest stone will crumble, after which (they believe) they can swoop in and take it all.


So far as I can tell, the Republicans have been playing along for decades.  “Oh, but you’re crazy, Lyle.  Look at the differences between Republicans and Democrats!  Are you willfully blind, or what?  Surely you must be mad!  Look!  Just look!  LOOOOOOOOOK, MAN!”


Uh huh, and there’s a world of difference between that “good cop” and that “bad cop” too.  The bad cop is a real, dangerously scary, out-of-control sonofabitch, but that good cop– why, he’s a sweetheart!  Look at him!  Just look!  He brings you coffee and food and he talks nice.  He doesn’t like that bad ol’, meany mean bad cop at all, either.  No Sir, not at all.  Such a nice fellow, and he really cares.  He listens.  He understands.  He’s my advocate in this time of uncertainty.  I want to work with him, by golly gosh oh gee.  Yessiree.  No doubt about it.  Without him, that bad cop would have beat the living shit out of me by now, for sure.  Man, am I lucky to have Good Cop!  Wow!  Thank God!  This must be an angel sent from Heaven to deliver me from despair!


Right.  Both cops are working to take you to the same place after they’re finished with your sorry, dumb ass.


OK; got that out of the system.  Now I’m all ears.

Quote of the day–Calvin Coolidge

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Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.


Calvin Coolidge
[It seems simple and obvious but politicians frequently have problems with both simple and obvious when it runs contrary to their agenda.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Dmitry Orlov

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So, what is there for them to do? Forget “growth,” forget “jobs,” forget “financial stability.” What should their realistic new objectives be? Well, here they are: food, shelter, transportation, and security. Their task is to find a way to provide all of these necessities on an emergency basis, in absence of a functioning economy, with commerce at a standstill, with little or no access to imports, and to make them available to a population that is largely penniless. If successful, society will remain largely intact, and will be able to begin a slow and painful process of cultural transition, and eventually develop a new economy, a gradually de-industrializing economy, at a much lower level of resource expenditure, characterized by a quite a lot of austerity and even poverty, but in conditions that are safe, decent, and dignified. If unsuccessful, society will be gradually destroyed in a series of convulsions that will leave a defunct nation composed of many wretched little fiefdoms. Given its largely depleted resource base, a dysfunctional, collapsing infrastructure, and its history of unresolved social conflicts, the territory of the Former United States will undergo a process of steady degeneration punctuated by natural and man-made cataclysms.

Dmitry Orlov
February 13, 2009
Social Collapse Best Practices
[I was reminded of this after reading Roberta post The Greater Depression. I snorted in laughter when I read the last line of her post but then it took me several minutes for me to give Barb the context so she could get the joke. She claims it was worth it.–Joe]

Central planning proves itself AGAIN

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If you remember I talked to a co-worker who grew up in East Germany. One of the things I wrote about that was:

His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. “You tell them I lived that. You tell them to go visit this town. Yah!”, and he showed me a town on a map of Germany. “Not one bomb was dropped on that town during the entire war”, he said. “There was no fighting in that town. But if you go there that town looks like it was all bombed out. When people don’t own their property they don’t care. The roofs, they are all falling down. Yah! You tell him to go there and look for himself.”

It turns out you don’t have to go to Germany to validate that condemnation of leftists, their central planning, and their hatred of capitalism. You could just go to Detroit. Or check out this video I found at Kevin’s place:

Obama’s real plan

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You knew he wasn’t going to let us gun owners get off easy, right? Things have been going more than a little too smoothly.

Here’s the scoop on the real plan:

Gun rights supporters have been shocked by the release of an internal campaign memo showing Obama planned to restrict gun access through fear and free market principles. The memo, drawn up in early 2008 with the help of Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, speculated that Obama’s election would lead to a hording of guns and ammunition that would raise prices.

…

“The people going out and spending thousands of dollars on guns right now aren’t the smartest and will spend beyond their means. We’ll see them have to hock their guns and ammo for food and soon we’ll be flooded with guns. This short term stimulus will come at a cost our children and grandchildren will have to bear,” claims the Brady Campaign, an anti-gun organization.

Sources inside the Obama administration say that a “Cash for Carbines” program was in the works. Unlike the previous “Cash for Clunkers”, it would simply use the gun buyback model to pay $40-$100 for guns that cost several times more, without encouraging buying more guns.

“We expect a “gun bubble” where prices crash after the market is saturated and gun owners put themselves deeply in debt. We’ll swoop in and offer to buy back the guns. With current credit card interest rates and payment schedules we expect more guns turned in than were bought, making for a net drop in total guns,” the source said.

The program would also include a “Cash for Cartridges” option where ammo could be bought cheap and distributed to police to ease the high cost of ammunition.

I have my doubts that Obama knows what the free market is, let alone is capable of using it to his advantage.

There is a conspiracy theorist for every data point–and almost as many satirists.

Quote of the day–John Kenneth Galbraith

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Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

John Kenneth Galbraith
[Being an economist himself he should know. Further evidence that other uses are somewhat questionable at best can be easily seen if you just look around a little bit (here for example).–Joe]

Quote of the day–Larry Summers

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Here is what I think they don’t get…It was their irresponsible risk-taking in many cases that brought the economy to collapse.

…

And they don’t get in some cases that they wouldn’t be where they are today, and they certainly would not be paying the bonuses they are paying today, if their government hadn’t taken extraordinary actions.

Larry Summers
December 13, 2009
White House economic adviser referring to the banking industry. He also chairs the National Economic Council.
White House Lashes Out at Bankers
[In the first sentence he hopes you won’t get it was Federal regulations which required irresponsible risk-taking. In the second sentence he hints that he knows this is true and that the U.S. government rewarded that same behavior.

If you think the government knows what it is doing in terms of the economy then you need to do more reading or if pictures and minimal words are all you are up for then check this out (via Linoge and John Lott):

–Joe]

Optimist or pessimist?

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I made a sarcastic comment at Snowflakes in Hell and Bitter came back with this comment:

Joe, you’ve hit upon the next biggest factor making me question kids. Seriously, I don’t know that I want to bring kids into the picture if they are going to live in a mostly government-controlled world. I realize that this country has survived many other changes in the past, and many other generations have survived well enough. But if we’re headed toward the government taking over even larger chunks of the economy, I’m not sure I’d be bringing kids into a better life than I enjoyed. And that just doesn’t seem right.

I understand her point but there is more than one way to view the problem.

Another way to view it is that sort of attitude is creating the problem. See the movie Idiocracy (wonderful premise, good start, but a poor movie overall) for an extreme view of this type of thing taken to the limit.

By tweaking the premise in Idiocracy just a bit one can hypothesis that high reproduction rates by those that believe government should provide “everything for free” will likely result in a cultural, if not genetic, disposition toward more dependency on and expectation of government control of the economy and personal lives. Low reproduction rates by those that believe in and desire freedom will exacerbate the problem. A slightly modified version of this argument is what Barb successfully used on me to convince me to have a third child. That is why we sometimes call Xenia our gift to the world.

But what of the individual? If freedom loving people are but a small minority of the population won’t their lives be miserable? Not necessarily.

It depends on what the outcome is during their lifetime. If it is George Orwell’s 1984 then I would agree with that point. But governments have a history of collapsing. Especially socialist and totalitarian governments. Food shortages, riots, and the break down of infrastructure favor intelligent and freedom loving people. My model of the world is that, ultimately, stupidity is self-correcting. And massive government intervention in the free market and free society is self correcting because it is so stupid. Those people demanding that government supply their every need and want will have higher death rates than those that are self-motivated and value freedom. It may be that within our or our children’s lifetimes the freedom loving minority will become the majority essentially overnight because of the much higher death rates among the anti-freedom people as society collapses. Even if they do not become the majority in actual numbers they may have the majority of power. This is analogous to the U.S. being the world’s sole super-power with just a small minority of the planets population. And that power came about for the same reason that I hypothesize it could happen again in a different context–because freedom creates prosperity and prosperity enables power.

If that comes about then those freedom loving people will be in a position to take over the world. It will be with an anti-freedom lesson extremely fresh in their minds that they form the next governments and economic systems.

I don’t know what will happen. We have never had a situation like this before. In the past there was always someplace new to live. The east coast of North America then migration to California and “The Oregon Territories” provided freedom for millions in the last 300 years. But the “New World” is now occupied by parasites that crave security more than freedom and ensure everyone will receive neither. Where can we move next and escape our oppressors? Antarctica, the ocean floor, and space all appear to be such harsh environments that economic prosperity would be difficult or impossible. This may mean we can do no more than wait for the parasites to starve, riot, and burn themselves out.

I don’t know if freedom has a chance of surviving and rising from the ashes and mankind will finally learn the lesson of why freedom is essential. But I do know that if we do not have children and raise them to value freedom then freedom will most likely be extinguished.

It boils down to “Are you an optimist or a pessimist?” The pessimist is more often right because they can easily fulfill their expectations. The optimist may be wrong more often but progress, prosperity, and happiness are always the products of optimists and never that of pessimists.

Which are you?

Interfering with the free market

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Sebastian points out the Washington Post reported yesterday:

A binational task force on U.S.-Mexico border issues will call Friday on the Obama administration and Congress to reinstate an expired ban on assault weapons and for Mexico to overhaul its frontier police and customs agencies to mirror the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

I just have to shake my head. These people just don’t get it.

First off by announcing this they just further cemented the fact that “assault weapons” of the type banned in 1994 will become even more common in the U.S. The sales and backlog had almost returned to normal and now this is going to create a fresh round of buying. If it hadn’t happened already the current administration, with their promises (so far unfulfilled) to ban “assault weapons” ensured they can never be banned. Why? Because in D.C. v. Heller the court decided the types of firearms protected are those “common use”. See pages 2, 55, and 58 of the decision.

The types of guns in highest demand just after Obama was elected were those most likely to be banned. There are now many millions of those guns in the hands of ordinary people and there will be hundreds of thousands more before the politicians could ever get something through congress. And then the inevitable court challenge will almost have to conclude that the guns are in “common use” and therefore cannot be banned. Not only is Obama the greatest gun salesman this country has ever known but he also may have driven the last “coffin nail” into the pointless “assault weapon” bans making them forever a dead issue–except for repeal of the existing ones in the various states after the Second Amendment is incorporated in the Chicago Gun Case.

And the Brady Campaign endorsed Obama for President. How’s that working out for you guys?

My second point is really the main issue. The problem is most people don’t really understand the big picture. Mexico is being destroyed by the same type of stupidity. People are trying to interfere with the free market and this can’t really be done. The free market can be pushed in different directions but it can’t really be fully suppresed.

There is a large market for guns and recreational drugs. Governments can’t really “ban” them. They can only raise the price. The price increase may include the risk of spending time in jail but the government passing a law making them illegal does not remove their existence from the planet or even the political jurisdiction of the government. When the price goes up it increases the profits. When the profit potential goes up more people are willing to risk going to jail in the process of getting a share of that profit. In the case of recreational drugs the profit is so great the people profiting from the drug trade has, essentially, brought down the Mexican government. I believe the only way order can be restored in Mexico is for recreational drugs to be made legal in both the U.S. and Mexico.

But people just don’t get it. Somehow they believe something that mostly works on the scale of an individual home when you remove medicines from the reach of small children can work at the larger scale of an entire continent or even the planet. It doesn’t and it can’t. You can only increase the price.

Our country learned this in the 1920s with prohibition and we now raise the price on the dangerous recreational drug ethanol via a tax rather than attempting a ban. If the governments of the U.S. and Mexico really wanted to solve the problem that is bringing down the Mexican government and resulting in the deaths of thousands in the “drug wars” they could turn the drug trade into a huge source of tax revenue. Instead of spending billions on trying to raise the price via jail terms and attempted “interdiction” they could raise the price via a tax and bring in billions of dollars.

But I don’t have any hope of a sudden attack of rationality striking people. Unjustified and demonstrably false faith in the power of government to successfully interfere with the free market has existed for hundreds of years and it’s not going away anytime soon. Expecting people to be rational is irrational.

Government forcing freedom

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Doug Pennington who is the Assistant Director of Communications at the Brady Campaign writes:

[I]sn’t it ironic how some libertarians want government to stay out of their lives, yet have no problem with forcing other people to live with loaded, concealed weapons everywhere they turn?  The grocery store; the park; the school; the airport.  Apparently, we have the “freedom” to live with what these so-called libertarians tell us to live with.  After all, they have the guns, right?

I heard sort of argument in the context of concealed carry of guns at least 15 years ago. It was some radio talk show host in San Francisco who asked why she didn’t have the right to walk down the street without people having guns hidden. I suspect this sort of argument resonates with a lot of people.

The thing is people use the same sort of argument with free speech and religious freedom. They ask why do we have to tolerate neo-Nazi’s parading down the street? Or why do we have to tolerate atheists, Muslims, or Jews in our neighborhoods and schools?

If that doesn’t bring my point home try using the argument to support segregation.

Governments don’t force freedom on their citizens. Governments can only infringe freedoms of their subjects.

Wednesday night Barb and I had dinner with Mike Brown of the Idaho Sport Shooters Alliance and his wife. His wife, a big Ayn Rand fan, encapsulated a point in a very compelling way. She said under a free, capitalist, system people are able to create their own little socialist or communist utopia societies and share according to need and take according to their abilities. Or they can give up all “evil” modern technology such as the Amish communities do. Free societies allow such communities to successfully co-exist just fine. If you can own property you can do pretty much whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone else or their property. The government still demands taxes but you don’t have to tolerate other religions, free speech, or people with guns on your property. The same isn’t true under a communist or totalitarian government.

But despite the clear problems of “government forcing freedom” there have been entire books written on the topic. Last year daughter Kim reported her economics class had The Shock Doctrine as required reading. One of the thesis’s of the book is that advocates (such as certain people within the U.S. government) of Milton Friedman are forcing (including using torture) free market economics on people. Kim was pissed and had trouble reading the book because of the anger it invoked. How does a government “force a free market”? A free market is one free of government interference! Force is required to have anything other than a free market.

And so it is with “forcing free speech”, “forcing religious tolerance”, and “forcing other people to live with loaded, concealed weapons everywhere they turn”. Pennington is telling us the true beliefs of his organization and the utopia they would like to create–freedom is slavery.

Update: I apparently got their attention. The post now has this tagged on to the end:

UPDATE: For readers referred from Joe Huffman, guns are not speech.

No one said it was free speech. But both free speech and the right to keep and bear arms are specific enumerated rights protected from infringement by the Bill of Rights. Hence the comparison is valid. For the Brady Campaign to claim a freedom from other people bearing arms is the constitutional equivalent of claiming the freedom from the speech of others. Of course it’s not the physical equivalent. But it is the legal equivalent.

Digressing a little bit I will admit that we probably will not ever have a constitutionally guaranteed right to carry concealed guns in public everywhere. If the Brady Campaign were to explicitly state it is only the carrying of concealed guns they get all uptight about but open carry is okay then I would be much more muted in my criticism of them. The carry of firearms in some form is probably going to be eventually upheld by the courts. Either the politicians have to make concealed carry permits “shall issue” and relatively quick and painless to obtain or they will have probably have to allow open carry without a permit. If some sort of carry for self defense in public is not allowed then the “bear” part of keep and bear arms will be infringed. I’m pretty sure the Brady people see that writing on the wall and are just dragging their feet or in denial.

After thinking about it for a long time and reading nearly all the blog posts and podcasts about the big open carry debate in the last few weeks I’m going to have my say on the topic soon. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow. Brady and company just contributed to my post on the topic.

Investing

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A guy at work, Chet, frequently stops by my office to take a break and talk about, among other things, the state of our economy. Are we going to have hyper inflation? Deflation? Should savings be put into stocks, bonds, precious metals?

I bought a few ounces of gold and silver in the late 1990s and that turns out to have been a fairly good investment. But as Chet points out, “You can’t eat it.”

If being able to eat it were the sole criteria for sound investing then a few tons of lentils, peas, and wheat from the farm be a good idea but my bunker can only store so many sacks before it starts getting in the way. And I’m pretty sure some of the sacks of food I sold to people worried about Y2K in 1999 (about 20,000 pounds total) are still in their closets unopened except perhaps by rodents and insects. The food stores fairly well but unless you were very careful how you stored after ten years it has noticeably degraded.

Dave Hardy points out there is an alternative to gold that is useful (I don’t recommend eating it however) and which has retained it’s value every bit as well as gold has for the last 136 years. When I bought my first gun the guy I bought it from pointed out that guns in good repair don’t loose significant value over the years. Even that SKS you bought for $65 back in the early 1990s kept pace with inflation. Ammo too has been a good investment.

So perhaps that is Chet’s answer. Instead of precious metals like gold and silver invest in steel, copper, brass and lead with a little bit of nitrocellulose thrown in.

More on the Practical Application of Principles

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It’s time to restate this.  I posted it last year, and I wonder if anyone really “got it”.  It cannot be overstated.  Reading Joe’s recent post about the open carry debate among the pro gun rights camp reminded me of it, once again.  That debate can be said to be between people with the same basic principles.  We’ll see how Rand’s “rules of engagement” as I call them, apply.  Last year I noted;

In the essay, Rand defines three rules “…about the working of principles in practice and about the relationship of principles to goals.” 

Wait.  What?  “the working of principles in practice”?  What’s that?  “The relationship of principles to goals”?  Sounds pretty juicy if there’s anything to it.  Well, there is.

 Leaving out her extensive lead-in:

1. In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins.

Open carry verses keeping it hidden so as not to scare or offend anyone.  Which position is more consistent with the basic principles of RKBA?

2. In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins.

It applies to any situation, but the idea of government “taking care of” the American people, shared by Republicans and Democrats, comes to mind.  Democrats win here.  Every time.  Republicans will never understand this.  It’s not in their DNA to understand this rule.  It’s in their DNA to deny it.  The NRA had a similar problem about 15 years ago, but they seem to be getting over it, like getting over a very long-lasting flu.  You cannot collaborate with someone who holds different basic principles and expect a nice outcome.  It’s better to do your own thing, unless you want to be the more evil and irrational one.

3. When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side;

Gun control debate.  Practicing rule 3, without fully understanding it, is the one and only source of our recent successes.  Understand it, Little Grasshopper, and you will go far.  Some of us think that we’ve been trying to appear rational as a selling point, or trying to get the opposition to think that we aren’t bad people after all, but it is by simply being rational, and by being rational in a public way, and sometimes in an in-your-face way, that we win.  There’s a fine distinction here, but a very important one.  Selling ourselves as people is what Republicans do.  That argument says, “I’m a nice, decent person, so you should agree with me.”  Blech.  Selling our ideas, on their own merits, and damn the torpedoes because we know we’re right and we can prove it, we know our opposition is wrong, disastrously wrong, and we can prove that, is what rational people do.

when they (principles) are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side.

Taking RKBA in light of that last bit; hiding your (our) position (that guns in public are a good thing) or evading it, tends to work in favor of the irrational side (gun restrictions).  We’re trying to coddle those who are wrong, trying to sell ourselves in a way tailored so as to appeal to their stupidity and bad behavior.  In so doing we lend them an appearance of credibility or legitimacy that they do not deserve.  Like it or not, that’s how it works.  We have to understand that there are some people who have no credibility, have no legitimacy and deserve no accommodation (anti gunners in this case, or people who are offended or “scared” by visible guns [I think most or all of the “fear” is a cheap act perpetrated for maximum drama]) and we have to be ready to point out why.

I believe there are enough examples in most people’s day-to-day lives that these basic axioms, Rand’s rules of engagement, will be seen as not only valid but very useful once you look at things with them in mind.  Working with institutions installing and troublshooting PA systems (I have an appointment tomorrow) I’ve run into all these situations.  They’re political events as much as anything else.

Carbine Credits and C.O.A.L. Pollution

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For someone who reloads metalic cartridges, I’ve done it very little.  Still, I’ve had problems, with several calibers, in seating bullets.  The seating plug that comes with the die set (you only get one plug) doesn’t fit every bullet shape ever made, which means it doesn’t fit the bullet you’re actually using, even if the dies and the bullet were made by the same company.  As a partner to this phenomenon, the loading manual (also written by the bullet company whose sister company made the loading dies) says very little about seating plugs, or the fact that a plug made for one bullet shape might be a real problem when seating a bullet of some other shape.

With some bullet/seating plug combinations, I find it impossible to maintain a cartridge OAL to within 15 or even 20 thousandths, yet the construction of the press should be capable of easily maintaining a seating depth to within a thou or two.

Another part of this cascade of problems is that depending on the bullet type, the bullet itself may be part of the problem.  Softpoints can be distorted in packaging and shipping, can mash during seating if the plug touches soft lead, or a jacketed hollowpoint match bullet’s meplat can be inconsistent to several thousandths.  The latter inconsistency isn’t all that much of a problem if the seater plug fits OK.  The bullet’s ogive is still being seated to the same position and the base is still seating to a consistent depth inside the case because the seater plug doesn’t touch the meplat (assuming it fits OK) and you can always trim the meplats.

Today I got the primers I ordered last April or May, so I decided to load some of the 110 gr “Varminter” HPs I’d gotten to try out in .30 Carbine.  Brand new cases, all prepped and flared the same, and I can barely hold C.O.A.L. to within 15 thousandths.  The seater plug was made for the round nose 30 Carb FMJ, and the HP’s round nose, made by the same company, has a distinctly different shape from the FMJ, which makes the seater plug impinge on the soft lead corners at the very tip of the bullets.  These HPs, by design, are very soft at the tip.  Some of the bullets get swaged inward at the tip, narrowing the hollow tip opening, raising a burr at the tip and lengthening the bullet.  Others don’t distort much at all.  The phenomenon is binary– either I get a distorted nose and the OAL is 10 to 13 thou over, or the nose stays intact and the OAL is within a couple thou of nominal.  Nothing in between.

Long story short; Die makers should be discussing seater plug issues a lot more, and they should offer a plug for just about every bullet shape, especially plugs that don’t impinge on the soft lead of hollowpoints and softpoints unless the plug is going to match the bullet shape perfectly.  Another plug/bullet mismatch I’ve had results in the mouth of the plug cutting a circle around the bullet like a sharpened punch– the extremely small contact surface area isn’t conducive to repeat accuracy.  As it is, I can always make my own seater plugs, but what a pain just so I can try out some different bullets as a lark.  On a positive note; standard reloading dies are priced unbelieveably low.  You may connect the dots.

We had a rep from Speer in at UltiMAK several weeks ago, setting up some M1 Carbines with our forward optic mounts and high-end combat optics for a LE demonstration of their new .308 110 gr Gold Dot loads (offered to LE only last time I checked).  I’ve thought for a long time that the M1 Carbine would make a good patrol carbine or “truck gun” if one were to use good HP loads in it.  Haven’t heard back from the rep about how the demo went, and I’d sure like to try some of those new Gold Dots.  I guess when they release them to the public they’ll be backordered eight months within a week.  I’ll take a thousand, please.

Quote of the day–Lew Daly

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We’d like to retire that word [redistribute] from the political vocabulary because you can’t redistribute something that is already highly socialized, and wealth and income in the “era of knowledge-based growth” (whoever ends up “owning” it) is indeed highly socialized. Most importantly (and more to the point), individual productivity is increasingly dependent on what can only be described as a collective good, a common inheritance of knowledge. No one deserves to benefit from this common inheritance more than anyone else, by moral definition, because it’s not created by any individual. So, to the extent that inherited knowledge (“technical progress in the broadest sense,” as Solow termed it) is increasingly driving economic growth, the fruits of knowledge—the wealth being generated by knowledge—should be more equally shared. Wealth that is commonly created should be equally, or at least more equally, shared.

Lew Daly
Via AmericanMercenary in the post What the hell is “Social Justice”?
[This is very scary stuff. Strip away just a little bit of the fluff and it’s, From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

Just reading the praise for the book you realize these people not only have zero respect for the right to own property but they don’t believe you even have a right to your own thoughts. This is what inspires thoughts of Atlas Shrugged. In this book the people of the mind went on strike. Those that contributed through the power of their creative minds declared those that demanded the product of their minds through the force of government had received their last handout. You can force someone to work but you can’t force them to think.

After reading of people like Daly I don’t just long for a John Galt but a Ragnar Danneskjöld as well.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Will Haun

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So no matter how the incorporation debate shakes out, an endorsement of originalism would be a victory for conservatives who prize intellectual honesty in constitutional interpretation.

Seemingly aware of these implications, the Left is trying to preserve the contrivances of “substantive due process” in an originalist guise. They want to define “privileges” and “immunities” as broadly as possible, to include what Doug Kendall of the Constitutional Accountability Center calls “very important progressive values,” such as abortion rights and same-sex marriage. The goal is to continue expanding “individual rights” while permitting restriction of property rights and economic freedoms.  So if the Supreme Court decides in McDonald’s favor, it could end the controversy over gun rights but begin a host of new battles in other areas.

Yet Robert Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute, is not afraid of opening a can of worms. He says that libertarians see McDonald as an opportunity “to resurrect economic liberties suspended by the Court under the post–New Deal version of substantive due process.” Conservatives should see this case as a rare opportunity to base any incorporation of the Bill of Rights on originalist grounds — an opportunity they should waste no time in seizing, for it may not come again.

Will Haun
June 08, 2009
[I find it very interesting that the phrase “conservatives who prize intellectual honesty” is used. What does this mean? Does it mean that most conservatives are not “intellectually honest” but liberals are? Or does it mean that no liberal can be considered “intellectually honest” but some conservatives are?

Regardless, there are those that have high hopes for the Chicago Gun Case to get us started on the path to liberty again. I admit to seeing a glimmer of that possibility but know that economic liberty is going to be a much tougher war than guns are and don’t have very high hopes. Even if the current system suffers a complete meltdown (and there are lots of indications that it will) there will still be strong resistance to liberty from those that will claim the collapse justifies even less freedom and a much great role for goverment to take in implementing a “planned economy” than it already has.

H/T to ubu52 for the link.–Joe]

The End Of An Era: Kalashnikov Maker To Seek Bankruptcy

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Via email from Chet.

What? Do they only have enough money for food or something? I thought they could always find money to fund their hate of capitalism and buy more Kalashnikov rifles. But perhaps not:

Russia’s largest small arms manufacturer, the Izhevsk Mechanical Works [Izhmash], could be declared bankrupt. It became know today that a corresponding petition has been received by the arbitration court of [the Republic of] Udmurtia from the enterprise.

…

This largest Kalashnikov assault rifle manufacturer now stands idle. No state order means no money to pay employees, nor to repay debts to creditors.

Sneetches, and Anti Capitalist Indoctrination

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This post inspired by Say Uncle’s post about bedtime stories.

Dr. Seuss was clearly a socialist, and the Sneetches story is but a minor example of it.  The Lorax is worse.  Maybe I’ll do a post about that later.

I’ve always wondered why the plain-bellied sneetches didn’t just host their own beach parties instead of being all butt hurt and envious over being excluded from the star bellies’ parties.  Ayn Rand would tell us that the star bellies were attempting a monopoly, which in a free market (that is to say, a market without some means of enforcing the monopoly through legislation or outright brute force) is merely enticing capital into start-up competition.  If the plain bellies’ started throwing really good parties of their own, some of the star bellies would eventually want to attend.  If the plain bellies let them attend, the plain belly organized parties would begin to dominate, or take over altogether unless the star bellies changed their discriminative ways.

A free market is self correcting in so many ways, and correcting against arbitrary discrimination is but one example.  We see this in real life just looking at music or sports pre civil rights era, where excluding black players meant missing out on some of the best.  By the time I was in middle school (late 1960s) Motown was well-represented, if not dominating, the top 40 on AM radio.

That’s what I tell my kids.  If their public school teachers can’t handle it, well, it’s their own problem that they choose to make fools of themselves.

Doesn’t he see the irony?

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Michael Moore has a new movie out. Capitalism: A Love Story. The LA Times says this about it:

“Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil,” the two-hour movie concludes. “You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy.”

What sort of economic system is he proposing? “Democracy”? That isn’t an economic system. And democracies (we are supposed to have a Republic) seldom last more than a few decades.

And the irony is that Moore’s wealth and ability to make whatever movie he wants comes from the opportunities afforded him by capitalism. If it weren’t for capitalism Moore would be making probably be required by the state to be making exercise videos (if such a thing as videos and fat people even existed) which no one would take seriously. Instead he is making “documentaries” which demonstrate he is totally clueless about any topic he cares about but yet enough people want to believe him that he is able to be a wealthy man. In that sense I suppose capitalism has allowed an evil to exist and prosper but that is hardly sufficient reason abandon an economic system that has improved the status of people more than any in the history of man–even though it has never really been fully implemented.

Stimulus package

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I normally probably wouldn’t have posted this. But after completing New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America it’s particularly relevant. The work programs of the 1930s were used as political tools to not only get votes but to punish those that weren’t “good Democrats” (I’m increasingly of the opinion that is an oxymoronic phrase).

In some cases when you called the phone number to get a Federal job the call went to the local Democratic headquarters. To get the job you had to be interviewed by them and demonstrate your party loyalty. In some cases up to 3% of your pay had to be given to the party.

Take your blood pressure meds then read the book.

Via email from Joe D.

When the Feds delivered the stimulus package they probably didn’t think that “package” would be interpreted in this manner.