Daily Archives: Dec 14, 2011

View 705 Wednesday, December 14, 2011

I’m behind as usual. I did want to call attention to “A Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism” (link) by Gore and Blood. It may be that I am losing my faculties, but I at first I did not comprehend it as a serious work. It seemed like a parody, especially when I saw that the authors were Gore and Blood, but apparently it is quite serious.

It is, in fact, a fairly good if dense statement of the liberal socialist view of the future, a command economy with all the results and goals set by central experts rather than consumers, owners, and the market. Private ownership remains, but it is managed by the smart people at the center. The central premises here are almost indistinguishable from peace time fascism as put forth by Mussolini. Benito Mussolini was a life long socialist who believed in industrial efficiency and growth, and given the Italian state and culture when he came to power was able to make some spectacular gains. He not only made the trains run on time, but he also built the railroads and airports. If you look closely at the cornerstone of Da Vinci airport outside Rome, or most of the better train stations, you’ll find a bronze plaque proclaiming this a work of Victor Emmanuel II, Rex, and Benito Mussolini, Duce. Mussolini meant well for the working people of Italy, and while he was ruthless in suppressing dissent, he was really not so much more so than many in the left liberal community have been in suppressing dissent in science and academia.

Of course Blood and Gore have different central goals from Italian Fascism, and unlike Mussolini don’t seem to worry about productivity and efficiency; but then Mussolini wanted efficiency so that he would have the goods to distribute. He was a socialist, after all. He also got sidetracked by visions of the former glory that was Rome, and experimented with Imperialism in Libya and Somalia and Ethiopia, whereas Blood and Gore have different ultimate goals.

Like Mussolini, Blood and Gore set their goals independent of the consumer and the market; they after all are the Enlightened, and it would be silly to consult the Benighted about such complex matters; even Blood and Gore don’t understand climate science, but they have their teams of scientists who do, and who will frequently explain what must be done and what it will cost. Blood is enough of an economist to describe regulatory measures to manipulate the values of the enterprises whose operations he wants to control, and by fiat will make pension obligations, which the market considers as liabilities, actual assets which add to the value of the company. At least I think that’s what they mean:

Because ESG metrics directly affect companies’ long-term value, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, foundations and the like—investors with long-term liabilities—should include these metrics as an essential aspect of valuation and investment strategy. Sustainable capitalism requires investors to be good investors, to fully understand the companies they invest in and to believe in their long-term value and potential.

I conclude that this Gore and Blood essay is far from being intended as a joke; it’s a picture of the future they want to make, a future that has no place for Schumpeter’s creative destruction. Of course Schumpeter had a rather gloomy picture of the future:

“ Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can.” Thus opens Schumpeter’s prologue to a section of his 1942 book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. One might think, on the basis of the quote, that Schumpeter was a Marxist. But the analysis that led Schumpeter to his conclusion differed totally from Karl Marx’s. Marx believed that capitalism would be destroyed by its enemies (the proletariat), whom capitalism had purportedly exploited, and he relished the prospect. Schumpeter believed that capitalism would be destroyed by its successes, that it would spawn a large intellectual class that made its living by attacking the very bourgeois system of private property and freedom so necessary for the intellectual class’s existence. And unlike Marx, Schumpeter did not relish the destruction of capitalism. “If a doctor predicts that his patient will die presently,” he wrote, “this does not mean that he desires it.” http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Schumpeter.html

What Blood and Gore prescribe is in fact the end of capitalism as it has been understood. The difference between them and Schumpeter is that Gore and Blood desire the end of capitalism without understanding what capitalism is, while Schumpeter understood it perfectly.

Another who understood capitalism described where thoughts like those of Blood and Gore had already taken much of the world before 1942 and where it was now taking them: Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, published in Britain and then the United States before World War II was over showed just what would happen if the regulatory state had its way.

Once again I remind you that freedom is not free, free men are not equal, and equal men are not free. But then you knew that.

= = = =

[NOTE: Italian fascism was not officially anti-Semitic until the alliance with Hitler. The Fascist State had a number of high ranking Jewish officials in its hierarchy, including the Minister of Information (who was also at one time Mussolini’s mistress).]

And now it’s lunch time.

President Obama: "Well, what we’re going to have to do is continue to make progress on the economy over the next several months. And where Congress is not willing to act, we’re going to go ahead and do it ourselves. But it would be nice if we could get a little bit of help from Capitol Hill."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/12/14/obama_where_congress_is_not_willing_to_act_were_going_to_go_ahead_and_do_it_ourselves.html

The usual solution to that sort of problem has been to replace the legislature, or “reform” its election laws to make the legislature more democratic. In Italy it led to the Grand Council of Fasces.

Subj: If Congress does not act, I will act – Obama channeling FDR

That bit from Obama reminded me of a Bonapartist piece by FDR, ordering the Congress to pass anti-inflation legislation, that James Burnham quoted in _The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom_:

[begin quote]

I ask the Congress to take this action by the first of October. Inaction on your part by that date will leave me with an inescapable responsibility to the people of the country to see to it that the war effort is no longer imperiled by threat of domestic chaos. In the event that the Congress should fail to act, and act adequately, I shall accept the responsibility, and I will act. At the same time that farm prices are stabilized, wages can and will be stabilized also. This I will do.

… When the war is won, the powers under which I act automatically revert to the people — to whom they belong.

[end quote]

Of course, since the Emergency under which Obama is acting will never end — *can* never end — Obama will not have to worry about his powers eventually reverting to the people.

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Limits of forecasting

TTAWA — Two top U.S. hurricane forecasters, famous across Deep South hurricane country, are quitting the practice of making a seasonal forecast in December because it doesn’t work.

William Gray and Phil Klotzbach say a look back shows their past 20 years of forecasts had no predictive value.

The two scientists from Colorado State University will still discuss different probabilities of hurricane seasons in December. But the shift signals how far humans are, even with supercomputers, from truly knowing what our weather will do in the long run.

Colorado State has been known for decades for forecasts of how many named storms and hurricanes can be expected each official hurricane season (which runs from June to November.)

Last week, the pair made this announcement:

“We are discontinuing our early December quantitative hurricane forecast for the next year … Our early December Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane forecasts of the last 20 years have not shown real-time forecast skill even though the hindcast studies on which they were based had considerable skill.”

The two will still make the traditional forecasts closer to hurricane season.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly said they were stopping all forecasts.

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Hurricane+experts+admit+they+predict+hurricanes+early+December+forecasts+unreliable/5847032/story.html#ixzz1gWm5kgH5

Tom Donlan

Which needs no real comment. The weather and climate are too complex for our models. That may not always be true, but it’s true enough now.  I gather that the Alps are having unusual weather now. Somewhere there is always a place with unusual weather.  And Europe is still nowhere near as warm as it was before 1300.

View 705 Tuesday, December 13, 2011

A Microgravity Experiment

The long knives are out for Newt Gingrich, but they don’t seem to have anything that hasn’t been known for years and years. Newt’s problem is that although he’s a professional politician, he doesn’t always act like one. When he gets a thought he generally expresses it, and since he generally surrounds himself with smart people who will argue with him if they think he’s got a wild idea, that often works out well – but it’s an awful debating technique. The immigration thing, for instance: there was no need for him to bring that up. It’s certainly true that the people of the United States are not going to insist on sending federal cops in to arrest the sextant of the local church who’s worked as a church janitor for 25 years, has no criminal record, and is father and grandfather of citizens. We’re not going to deport that man, and we all know it. On the other hand, we’re eager to find reasons to deport thugs and habitual criminals. Now we’ve tested the limits: do we have a rule that sort out those we deport from those we don’t?

Newt’s notion of a local commission has one defect that isn’t obvious until you look at it, but then stands out like a sore thumb: there are local communities that would love to grant green cards to every illegal alien, whether churchwarden or gang leader, and if the classification worked like conscription did, the local board’s decision was pretty well binding on the whole country – and back in Viet Nam days that was well known to some of those who didn’t want to be conscripted. The obvious remedy to that would involve restricting the effect of a local green card to the local community. That might be awkward. And this discussion could go on all night, and back when Newt and I were closer such discussions did go on all night. It’s the way he operates. He had no business acting as if the Republican Candidate debates were just good old bull sessions, but it’s probably as well for the voters to see him in that mode since he’s in it a lot. He likes spirited discussions. One thing you can be pretty sure of, if Newt ever becomes President he won’t fill the White House with yes men or stupid advisors.

Me, I will stick with my conclusion: there’s not a one of those six I wouldn’t prefer to Barrack Obama as President of these United States.

I have a lot of mail to deal with, and I’m working on it. Sometimes it works into View. As Samuel Johnson told us, men seldom need educating, but they often need reminding:

"The polls show no confidence in Obama’s ability to manage the economy."

And therein lies the problem. It is apparently accepted by both the pollers and the pollees that it is the job of the US Government, and more specifically the President of the United States, to ‘manage the

economy’. That in the face of all evidence that an overwhelming

majority of our economic problems are the direct consequences of the EFFORTS of the government to ‘manage the economy’. The argument is only about which individual or political party should do the managing.

Here, for example, is one recent example of typical government ‘managing the economy’ action.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20111212/D9RISCB00.html

Just where the government GOT the power to force a company to buy commercial time on a specific, government favored TV program was not stated, but it is apparently accepted by all concerned that they do HAVE that power.

Bob Ludwick=

Mr Ludwick reminds us that the concept of managing the economy was developed quite late in our history. The purpose of the Constitution was “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Nothing about managing an economy. To the extent that economies needed managing, that was the job of the States, with some hoping the states would be very active in such matters, others wanting nothing more than to be left alone. And don’t forget those blessings of liberty.

So long as the states compete there is a chance of liberty. Were I a younger and more ambitious man I would long ago have considered leaving California with its silly and mostly corrupt government and headed for some place that favored freedom and liberty. As it is I’ve been here a long time and I like the weather, and I don’t use the roads all that much (California in general and Los Angeles in particular appear to be running for the position of pothole champion of the civilized world). But since California can no longer serve as a good example – as our schools actually once did before the liberals reformed them – it will just have to serve as a horrible example, in education, and taxes, and waste, and potholes and – well, they also serve who only serve as awful examples. And here and there we find some remnants of civilization. Most of our schools are awful, but a few retain the old magic. We’ve got great art and drama schools. Out opera has an excellent chorus, and heck, starlets make great waitresses. I like it here so long as I don’t pay much attention to the politicians.

If you want an economic boom, the formula is well known. Cheap energy, and "…a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." We’ve known that a long time. It’s just that we need reminding.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free. And I have been having fun with a novel that sort of looks at that. What does happen after Atlas shrugs?

dosbox and battles

OK Jerry, now for the DOS illiterate, where are DOSBOX for dummies instructions to run battles? I have successfully installed dosbox, and downloaded battles (winrar file)

Now what?

Thanks for your help and understanding.

Roger

Actually, Roger figured it out before I could answer him. For those who don’t know, DOSBOX is freeware that allows Windows 7 to run most old DOS programs including abandonware. It has the drivers to get Windows to run most of the old DOS sound programs, and many old programs like Battles of Destiny run without any problem at all once you have DOSBOX installed. That isn’t terribly tricky but it will take an afternoon. I’ve long had it going, so in the case of Battles I downloaded the zip file http://www.holistic-design.com/?page_id=133&did=7, created a directory called BATTLES in DOSBOX, and expanded the zip in that folder. After that it’s open DOSBOX to believe the DOSBOX directory is C:\ (all explained in the stuff you get with DOSBOX), change to the BATTLES directory, and launch using the batch file that comes with the game. The game itself is tricky enough that you probably need the manual http://www.hotud.org/component/content/article/44-war/19797. It’s an old turn based strategy game that holds up pretty well if you like that sort of thing.

Here Kitty

Dog meets microgravity

This compilation has some short dog videos that range from funny to tragi-comic to "failure of interspecies communication," but the one I like best can only be classed "pilot error." It starts about 36 seconds into it. Pilot demonstrating zero-gravity parabolas in a small plane and forgot that he had a few loose items in the cabin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb92wQpPG-s

Gary P.

A long time ago at a Human Factors lab on an Air Force base in Texas, a group of human factors space scientists and Air Force pilots were sitting in the O Club and got to talking about cats and zero gravity. How would a cat orient in micro gravity? Visually? They always land on their feet. But what if they couldn’t feel which way was down?

A few drinks later we realized that one of the pilots wasn’t having a drink because he had to do a proficiency flight later that afternoon. And we already had a camera rigged in the cockpit of a T Bird, and if a couple of us certified this as a human factors experiment it wouldn’t cost the government anything it wasn’t going to spend on the proficiency flight, and it would be an interesting experiment, and — Well, it seemed like a great idea at the time, and the captain who’d be flying thought it would be a good idea.

We rigged up the body sensors – he did have to insert the rectal thermometer thermistor, and we put on the face and hand temperature sensors and the other polygraph stuff and turned on the recorders. Then we captured the O Club cat, a calico, and he carried her along to the T Bird, and with the cat sitting comfortably in his lap he took off with a flight plan that included a long parabolic arc that would produce more than 15 seconds of essentially zero gravity.

All was well until he got into the parabolic flight, at which point he took the cat off his lap and released her in zero gravity. The camera recorded it all. The cat looked about wildly, realized it wasn’t moving, rotated itself so that its feet were straight out toward the pilot’s chest, and teleported – that’s the best description I could make from seeing that film run several times – toward the pilot. Claws extended. It anchored itself, finding the opening in the flight suit from which the physiological sensor wires protruded. Claws out. Firmly anchored.

The rest of the film shows the pilot frantically trying to fly while trying to peel the cat off his chest. It held fast until after landing. Then the cat allowed the pilot to carry it off the airplane and back to the club, whereupon it vanished and wouldn’t speak to any of us for a week.

But we did learn that in zero gravity a cat will orient toward the nearest human, latch on, and never let go. I suppose that film is still making the rounds of USAF, but maybe not. It was film long before digitizing film was easy or even possible, and eventually that wears out. I haven’t seen it for years.

‘Tis the season:

Another halleluja chorus video

I think this one is the best I’ve seen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyviyF-N23A&feature=share

-d

It is certainly different.