Utopia, you are standing in it!

I like cross-country comparisons – such as North Korea vs South Korea and East Germany vs. West Germany – because they can be very informative when comparing the results of socialism vs. markets.

One of the most dramatic examples is Cuba vs. Hong Kong.

More than 60 years ago, back when Castro took power, the two jurisdictions had similar living standards.

But as Cuba tried socialism and Hong Kong chose free enterprise, there was a stunning divergence. Cuba is a basket case and Hong Kong is rich.*

In a column for Human Progress, Neil Monnery compares the two jurisdictions.

As the world entered the turbulent 1960s, two men, half a world apart, one a doctor and the other a classicist, both foreigners far from home, were charged with bringing human progress to their adopted countries. …One, Che Guevara, the well-known Argentinean revolutionary, was the architect of Cuba’s…

In late January 1567, Queen Mary I of Scotland prompted her husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, King consort of Scotland to return to Edinburgh. He recuperated from his illness in a house belonging to the brother of Sir James Balfour at the former abbey of Kirk o’ Field, just within the city wall.

Mary visited him daily, so that it appeared a reconciliation was in progress. On the night of February 9–10, 1567, Mary visited her husband in the early evening and then attended the wedding celebrations of a member of her household, Bastian Pagez. In the early hours of the morning, an explosion devastated Kirk o’ Field. Darnley was found dead in the garden, apparently smothered. There were no visible marks of strangulation or violence on the body. James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray (the illegitimate son of King James V), Secretary Maitland…

If wind and solar power were truly competitive with conventional generators, there would be no need for even a nickel in subsidies. The fact they continue unabated says it all.

Claims that the cost of wind and solar generation are falling don’t stand a minute’s serious scrutiny. One group that has applied a blowtorch to the ‘wind and solar are free and getting cheaper all the time’ narrative is the Global Warming Policy Forum. Here’s Dr John Constable explaining why the true cost of unreliable wind and solar is always in the ascendant.

Fact checking IRENA: Ignore the renewables industry PR and turn to empirical data
Global Warming Policy Forum
John Constable
23 June 2021

In sharp contrast to claims by the renewables lobby, the costs of wind and solar energy are not falling, empirical data shows.

When soap bubbles burst they vanish in an instant. Financial bubbles by their…

Sweden

In contrast to its European neighbors, Sweden iswelcoming tourists. Businesses and schools are open with almost no restrictions. And as far as masks are concerned, not only is there no mandate in place, Swedish health officialsare not even recommending them.

What are the results of Sweden’s much-derided laissez-faire policy? Data show the 7-day rolling average for COVID deaths yesterday waszero(see below). As innada. And it’s been at zero for about a week now.

with Australia

Anti-lockdown protesters are marching shoulder-to-shoulder through the streets of Sydney despite NSW recording its highest number of daily infections since the Covid-19 outbreak started.

A shock photo emerged showing the brazen protesters huddled together as they walked through Broadway in Sydney’s innerwest chanting, holding signs and halting traffic.

The protest is one of about nine across the country as anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine protesters hold a “worldwide…

Remember when Amazon first came online in 1995, they would discount books by 33-40%. This pricing lasted for a good 10-15 years then the discounts were reduced under the theory that once they conditioned you as a customer, they could slowly increase their profit margins. After a year of Covid-19 restrictions Amazon’s popularity and bottom line boomed as people were sequestered at home. Today the discount on books is usually 10-15%, and sometimes less, reflecting Amazon’s commitment to the bottom line. Only speaking of book pricing, but I have noticed similar trends with other products. The question is how we arrived at the present juncture, who is responsible, what are the historic trends when it comes to Amazon, and lastly what role has Jeff Bezos played in the process. These questions are answered in full along with a partial biographical portrait of Bezos and how he built Amazon into the…