Just surfing the web when I came across this piece characterizing some of the more scientific explanations out there. Read over them and tell me they are no more crazy than Jesus being born from a virgin.
Diatribe comments about the federal acquistion of AIG:
I want to believe this bailout is a bad thing. But I cannot find one person who has come out to say this was bad and here is why. Everyone on all kinds of media outlets have talked about this was either a good thing or a necessary evil. Nobody and I mean nobody will say it was bad.
So I am guessing that nobody knows for sure if this will show to be a good thing or bad thing, therefore they are being cautious.
If you believe this averted a crisis, which I don’t, then in the short term this was a good idea. However, in the long term, this will most likely be a bad thing. Establishing a precedent in which federal banks are allowed to purchase companies is extremely undesirable from a economically fiscal perspective. It lays legal ground work for executive order of the nationalization of industries.
Perhaps if congress were to make a law banning this practice it will not be as problematic.
The claim is that AIG was going bankrupt and would cause a fire sale. Which means that the company would be liquidated in a very rapid and chaotic manner. It’s claimed that such a chaotic liquidation would be inimical to the economy. Thus lending AIG the money was an attempt to slow down it’s bankruptcy. Seems reasonable enough. However, the whole point of capitalism is to say that you are responsible for your actions. Government intervention on the behalf of the AIG sends the message that everyone is responsible for making bad decisions except for massive large corporations that when they make bad decisions can ‘affect’ the economy. Ideologically, this is problematic.
I don’t buy that the chaotic liquidation of AIG was going to affect the economy in a catastrophic way any more so than I believe that slight increases in world temperatures will hasten the Armageddon or adopting more liberal attitudes about sexual behavior will bring down the wrath of god. These doomsday scenarios are used rhetorically to make more palatable an obvious attempt at power grabbing by some political group.
In the case of AIG, what it really feels like is that the stock holders and executive staff knew they were going to have to file bankruptcy because of bad decision making in giving out loans. In filing bankruptcy, they knew they would lose a great deal of money. To prevent this they aligned themselves with some economic ‘experts’, aka soothsayers, who argued a chaotic liquidation of AIG would cause massive economic turmoil. Bureaucrats, honestly worried about a cataclysm in conjunction with unhealthy view that the state can be used as an agent of good extended a loan to the company. This allows the board and stock holders of AIG to sell off the company in a more ‘orderly’ fashion. I read this orderly to mean, for them to get more money out of the company then they should be able to given their bad decision making.
The way I see this, the AIG board wanted to get more money out of the company before they had to liquidate. By aligning themselves with prophetic visions of a crisis, they were able to get federal bureaucrats to give the money necessary for them to sell off the parts of the company at a price the board thinks is fair but the free markets do not. And in the process set precedent for the federal government to buy companies.
I think the reason why there is not a lot of negative coverage of this event is because the left leaning press does not see this as a bad thing. Since those on the left see government as agent of good, this kind of action, that is extend a loan to a failing company to save the economy, is perfectly consistent with state’s roll in society. Unlike say the patriotic act, or the Iraq war, this governmental action is perfectly consistent with left leaning view of how the state should behave, hence we don’t see top headlines about the dangers of this precedent. Left world view sees this as a positive and not a negative.
There are no words to describe the anger and frustration I felt when I read this:
In an unprecedented move, the Federal Reserve Board is lending as much as $85 billion to rescue crumbling insurer American International Group, officials announced Tuesday evening.
The Fed authorized the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to lend AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) the funds. In return, the federal government will receive a 79.9% stake in the company.
The whole fucking point of capitalism is that if you fuck up you pay the price. AIG should sit and spin. Even if their was a credible threat to the economy, which I find highly dubious, the state should lend the money without acquiring the controlling stock of the company. Why should the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT own the controlling stock of any company?!?!?!
This fucking, absolutely fucking reeks of federal financial bureaucrats thinking they can do a better job then those running AIG. If the federal bureaucrats are correct it will be the first time in the history of mankind that the nationalization of some entity will outperform entities in the private sector.
The only possible way this turns out good is if the state immediately liquidates AIG. That ain’t going to happen.
The onion knows how to be funny.
Economists Warn Anti-Bush Merchandise Market Close To Collapse
This one is absurdly funny.
Pre-Game Coin Toss Makes Jacksonville Jaguars Realize Randomness Of Life
Mark Hemingway, over at National Review Online calculates the paragraphs spent on various parts of a recent McCain Palin political rally.
Number of paragraphs in the Washington Post story: 14
Number of paragraphs about pro-Obama protesters: 8
Number of McCain-Palin supporters present: 23,000
Number of Obama protesters: about 30
You do the math.
There is not doubt in my mind that the journalist that wrote this story will vote for McCain in November. Seriously the Washington Post is not even trying to be neutral.
For most of the history of mankind, we have used a moral system of reasoning. Natural phenomenon are caused by some supernatural agent with free will, he normally goes by title of ‘god’. When natural phenomena harm people, god was called in to explain why it happened. Normally the stated reason is because the people did not do the will of the moralists and god was punishing them. This was an attempt to force people to do the will of the moralist. The moralist would admonish do as I say or face the consequence of god. By focusing on the consequence of the people’s actions, the moralist hoped to affect future behavior. Moral reasoning focuses on consequences.
Certain people found this kind of reasoning unconvincing. They began to develop another set of explanations for natural phenomenon. While moral reasoning places emphasis on consequence of an action, this new group of people started focusing on the antecedent conditions prior to the occurrence of a natural phenomenon. Over time, their explanations proved to be more effective than moral reasoning in many domains of knowledge.
As empirical reasoning has developed, comparing moral reasoning to empirical reasoning for explanations has turned into a joke. Empirical reasoning provides much better control over phenomena than moral reasoning in practically all domains of knowledge. This is to be expected because moral reasoning cheats. For thousands of years, challenges to moralistic explanation have been met with guilt, coercion, and obfuscation. A moralist’s explanations are true because he can inflict pain, incur guilt, or equivocate. Using any one of those tools the moralist can force a person to concede the veracity of his explanation. Moralist’s explanations are true only by force.
The empiricist does not have the ability to cheat. He searches for the explanation that he finds convincing, but that others may also find convincing. A person that accepts an empiricist explanation as true does so not because of force, but out of choice. That is the empiricist provides an explanation that the person finds valuable. The person affirms it’s veracity because he personally finds the explanation enables him to manipulate the phenomena causing harm. The empiricist’s explanations are true because they offer value.
In a previous post about the neural regions involved in generating wealth Dan responds:
“regions of the brain that are optimal at creating wealth”
What does this mean?
Let’s assume you are purchasing an automobile. There are many reasons why you might by an automobile. One reason you buy an automobile is because your father in law runs the factory and your wife wants you to support her family. Another reason you might buy the car is because the state controls the industry and only provides one kind of car for purchase. Another reason you might buy the car is because it’s cheaper and more reliable than all the other cars on the market.
The first two reasons are moral reasons. In one instance you feel guilty, and in the other you are forced by the state. Loosely defined, moral in the way I’m using it means doing something you don’t want to do. Hence, you don’t want to buy the car, but your wife or the state compel you. Compared to empirical reasons, moral reasons generate very little wealth. For the most part moral reasoning simply shifts wealth around. It doesn’t generate more wealth.
On the other hand empirical reasoning by its very nature must generate wealth. This is because empirical reasoning operates off of one assumption, motivating the action of others may not be done by force. In abiding by that rule, a car producer must generate features that excite the consumer to purchase the car. If successful, the consumer purchases the car because he wants to and not because he has to. By developing those features, the producer generates value and as that value aggregates wealth increases. By ignoring coercion, empirical reasoning generates value to make consumers want to purchase that car.
Problem solving in which coercion is forbidden generates value. Aggregating this value is what results in increased wealth. Thus I would say regions associated with problem solving are optimal for creating wealth.
The savvy reader will point out that using coercion is a form of problem solving and therefore, I can’t neurologically disassociate wealth generating regions from wealth squandering regions. I think it’s best to view what I’m proposing as the combined neural activity of two individuals. Thus we have a producer that uses the neural regions associated with problem solving to develop a exciting new feature on his automobile. At the same time, in the buyer another set of brain regions associated with a genuine desire to purchase the automobile activates. Economic systems that aim to maximize the activation of these neural regions between producer and buyer optimally produce wealth.
Economic systems that employ coercion might see similar activations in the producer, but the activation found in the buyer will be drastically different. The moralism endemic to a coercive economic system will disengage regions in the buyer crucial to maintaining the regions responsible for maintaining novel problem solving in the buyer. This will have an adverse impact on the problem solving regions of the producer as it is no longer a requirement to develop new features to make people willing to choose their product. Buyers are forced to purchase products instead of choosing to. Over time the problem solving system is disengaged and wealth generation begins to slow down and in some cases stop completely.
At the core of this theory is frustration. Regions of the brain that are optimal at developing novel solutions to a problem do so only under frustration. It’s only under novel problem solving does wealth get generated. A producer will experience frustration when an opposing producer provides a feature that causes many buyers to choose their product. This frustration will engage regions of the brain that are designed to generate novel solutions to problem. Its possible that one of these novel solutions will generate a new feature for the product. This will increase the value of the product, for the buyer, and in turn, increase wealth.
A coercive economic system disrupts the brain regions responsible for generating novel solutions and in turn reduces the capacity for that system to generate more wealth. By employing moralism, the coercive economic system reduces frustration for producers by forcing buyers to purchase their product. Producers are no longer frustrated by the loss of buyers which causes regions of the brain that generate novel solution to deactivate.
Thus a free economic system activates brain regions in the producer to generate novel solutions. To maintain this loop, the buyer must have regions of the brain that activate only when new features genuinely excites him to purchase the product. When the new features no longer excite, the buyer frustrates the producer causing him to engage regions of the brain that develop more novel solutions. One of these solutions turns into a feature that the buyer finds valuable enough to purchase and so the loop continues indefinitely. Here then we see that capitalism optimally activates the regions of the brain necessary for creating wealth.
Top headline at CNN:
Kid sometimes cries.
Can you guess what side the CNN editors are on in this political issue. Its hard to tell with such an impartial top headline.
By the way, influencing political will by by playing up the sense of injustice of this deportation is akin to the Bush Administration’s ‘use of fear’ to influence policy. Just like fear, guilt is an emotional response not a rational one.
Seriously, after seeing this blatantly left leaning headline can anyone honestly deny the notion that CNN leans left.
Apparently the American Psychology Association is interested in investigating the psychopathology of denying global warming.
Armed with new research into what makes some people environmentally conscious and others less so, the 148,000-member American Psychological Association is stepping up efforts to foster a broader sense of eco-sensitivity that the group believes will translate into more public action to protect the planet.
“We know how to change behavior and attitudes. That is what we do,” says Yale University psychologist Alan Kazdin, association president. “We know what messages will work and what will not.”
During a four-day meeting that begins today in Boston, an expected 16,000 attendees will hear presentations, including studies that explore how people experience the environment, their attitudes about climate change and what social barriers prevent conservation of resources.
This highlights nicely the danger of a professional organization having to many members of one political stripe. The APA is dangerously close to using politics as the justification for determining kinds of mental health. This is problematic for a variety of reasons but I think its largest repercussion will be to undermine the authority of this organization. Speaking more broadly, its also problematic because reminds people just how arbitrary the determination of psychological normality can be.
Hurricane Bound For Texas Slowed By Large Land Mass To The South
The graphic design in this one is exceptional.
