Utopia, you are standing in it!

From the Emperor’s Desk: I was going to post this yesterday but I needed a day off. Today, tomorrow and Saturday I will post on the life of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este and the outbreak of World War I.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este (December 18, 1863 – June 28, 1914) was the heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary.

Early life

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este was born in Graz, Austria, the eldest son of Archduke Charles Ludwig of Austria (the younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary and Emperor Maximilian of Mexico) and of his second wife, Princess Maria Annunciata of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, a daughter of King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies and his wife, Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria, eldest daughter of Archduke Charles of Austria-Hungary, Duke of Teschen (the third son of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II) and Princess Henrietta of Nassau-Weilburg.

In modern Britain, the death of a monarch has little political impact; the work of government continues uninterrupted, apart from a period of official mourning. But four centuries ago, when the king or queen actually ran the government, the situation was more complicated, as Dr Ben Coates of our Lords 1558-1603 section explains…

When the succession of Charles III to the throne was formally proclaimed on 10 September 2022, it marked the first appearance on television of an accession council. This body dates back to 24 March 1603, when a meeting of the lord mayor of London, assorted English peers and bishops, and those commoners who had served as privy councillors to the recently deceased monarch, Elizabeth I, proclaimed the accession of James VI of Scotland as James I of England. Forty-four years earlier Elizabeth had issued the proclamation of her accession in her own name, but a new procedure…

As Frederic Bastiat sagely observed nearly 200 years ago, a good economist considers the indirect or secondary effects of any action.

For instance, a politician might claim we can double tax revenue by doubling tax rates, but a sensible economist will warn that higher tax rates will discourage work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship.

And those changes in behavior (along with increases in evasion and avoidance) will result in less economic activity, which means lower taxable income. So tax revenues will not double. In some cases, they might even fall.

This analysis also applies to regulatory policy.

In an article for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, James Broughel explains how red tape actually causes needless death because of less economic growth.

Regulations can contribute to an increased death toll by imposing costs that eat into disposable income. As spending power dwindles, so too does the potential for spending on risk management…

Late yesterday afternoon the Minister of Finance issued a new Remit to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee (his statement is here, the new Remit itself is here). The Minister’s statement tends to minimise the entire thing (and nothing really about the inflation target changes), but – no doubt consciously and deliberately – gives not a mention to the most material addition to the Remit.

The lead-in to the more-specific targets section of the Remit is now as follows:

This was the backdrop to the additional words I’ve highlighted

$10 billion of so of losses of taxpayers’ money as a result of Reserve Bank MPC choices around the LSAP programme, choices that had the imprimatur of the Minister of Finance (and apparently no objection from the Treasury). As the bonds are being sold back to The Treasury, the realised component of the losses is mounting significantly each month…

Fossil fuels are consistent at 82% of the global energy cake, so to speak, but the cake is getting bigger. Someone wails that ‘overall global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased again’ as the so-called Paris climate agreement fades further into irrelevance. Time to stop clinging to pipedreams and admit realities.
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Record increases in solar and wind installations in 2022 failed to cut into the massive 82% share of fossil fuels in global energy consumption, says OilPrice.com, amid turbulent energy markets and energy security concerns, the annual Statistical Review of World Energy showed on Monday.

Moreover, despite the record growth of global solar and wind capacity additions last year, emissions rose again, to a new record high, and further put the world off track to the Paris Agreement targets, said the report, published by the Energy Institute (EI) and partners KPMG and Kearney, which earlier this year…

Tradition holds that Martin V was the first Renaissance pope, but it was his successor, Eugenius IV (or “Eugene”), who actually brought the flower of the Renaissance to Rome. After spending nine months with the Medici in Florence, he returned to Rome and began serious efforts to bring the city back from its medieval decay. He sought to emulate the magnificence of northern cities like Milan, Genoa, and Venice.

John Julius Norwich offers the following reflections on this exciting epoch, the dawn of the Renaissance:  

“Artistically and culturally, however, Rome was still something of a backwater when Cardinal Tommaso Parentucelli, the son of a modest physician in Liguria, was elected pontiff in March 1447, taking the name of Nicholas V. Of the previous 140 years the popes had been absent for well over half, and thanks to the consequent chaos the flowering of classical and humanistic learning that had…

It was so when humans lived in caves and remains true today.

It must be killed to eat it, It needs to be killed before it kills the hunter, it sometimes needs to be killed as a humane act, some killing can be a defensive act, most rural children learn lessons at a young age, although there will be protein on sale sometime that was never a living animal it remains a fact every bit of flesh on sale to eat was very likely once a living thing, ironically that is a fact of life.

A south sufffolk female sheep was reared by the Dodger Children in the seventies as a lamb, she failed to conceive as a hogget, again as a 2 tooth, and finally as a 4tooth at three years of age it could be accepted infertile was highly probable, A family group conference was initiated and quickly…

It is election year. Political parties are building candidate visibility – they are testing each other in the House before they clash on the hustings – they are refining existing policy and announcing new manifesto commitments.

Democracy requires free, fair and regular elections based on one person, one vote, and all votes are of equal value. It requires freedom of speech, open Government, a critical media, and the rule of law. It assumes human universality and therefore equal citizenship rights. It requires a secular Parliament and other Government institutions.

That is the way democracy is supposed to work in New Zealand. However, the reality is that radical change is now occurring with little scrutiny, and much electioneering is just a side show.

One change driver is the belief that centralization and Government control will give better outcomes than market workings, subsidiarity, individual initiative and local democracy. However, the major driver…

Having considered the matter of finding a new wife for King Henry VIII, his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell suggested Anne of Cleves.

Anne was born in 1515, on either September 22, or more probably June 28. She was born in Düsseldorf, the second daughter of Johann III of the House of La Marck, Duke of Jülich jure uxoris, Cleves, Berg jure uxoris, Count of Mark, also known as de la Marck and Ravensberg jure uxoris (often referred to as Duke of Cleves) who died in 1538, and his wife Maria, Duchess of Jülich-Berg (1491–1543). Anne grew up in Schloss Burg on the edge of Solingen.

In 1527, at the age of 11, Anne was betrothed to François, the 9-year-old son and heir of Antoine, Duke of Lorraine. But because François was under the age of consent (10 years old) at the time of the arrangement, the betrothal was…