Source: post-partisan
Inequality is in; discrimination is out for Next Generation Left
02 Jul 2014 1 Comment
in applied price theory, income redistribution, politics - USA, Public Choice, Rawls and Nozick Tags: discrimination, inequality, Leftover Left, poverty, The Progressive Left
I loath bipartisanship
30 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in political change, politics, Public Choice Tags: bipartisanship
Firstly, the other side is wrong in their approach and often in their objectives. The voters finally put them on the opposition benches for the next 3, 6 or 9 years and that is where they belong: powerless and irrelevant and whose job it is to snipe.
Secondly, written constitutional arrangements dictate the proper extent of power sharing: two-houses of parliament elected differently, proportional and other methods of election, the length of terms, federalism, and parliamentary versus presidential executives.
Thirdly, knowledge grows through critical discussion, not by consensus and agreement
Fourthly, in a democracy, we resolve our differences by trying to persuade each other and voting at elections. The winners then form the government.
The biting wit of Winston Churchill
29 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in politics Tags: Winston Churchill, witty politicians
When disturbed by the Lord Privy Seal while in the toilet:
Conspiracy theories versus unintended consequences
29 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of information, politics Tags: Cass Sunstein, conspiracy theories, Karl Popper
Cass Sunstein defines a conspiracy theory as:
An effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role. Of course some conspiracy theories turn out to be true.
He goes on to argue that millions of people hold conspiracy theories: that powerful people work together to withhold the truth about some important practice or terrible event.
Sunstein also argues that many become extremists stem not from irrationality but from having little relevant information and their extremist views are supported by what little they know:
- Conspiracy theories generally attribute extraordinary powers to certain agents – to plan, to control others and to maintain secrets.
- Conspiracy theories overestimate the competence and discretion of officials and bureaucracies, who are assumed to be able to make and carry out sophisticated secret plans, despite abundant evidence that in open societies that government actions does not usually remain secret for very long.
- Conspiracy theories also assume that the nefarious secret plans are easily detected by members of the public such as themselves without the need for special access to the key information or any investigative resources.
Sunstein also argued that a distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories and look at these attempts as further proof of the conspiracy.
Karl Popper argued that conspiracy theories overlook the pervasive unintended consequences of political and social action. They assume that all consequences must have been intended by someone.
Must everything be the result of a grand plan – a secret conspiracy that ordinary people uncover with little effort? Whatever happened to unintended consequences and stuff-ups?
How Did the Prediction Markets Do?
26 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in market efficiency, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: prediction markets
Below is a map showing the results of the 2012 US presidental elections and the map of prediction market forecasts on October 1st.
Florida had not been called to Obama when the map was made.
via Thinking on the Margin: How Did the Prediction Markets Do?.
the beauty of proportional voting is that even if they don’t vote for you, you’ll probably still get in.
26 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
HT: Kiwiblog
The wit of Winston Churchill
21 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in politics Tags: Winston Churchill, witty politicians
"You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life."
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
"A lady came up to me one day and said ‘Sir! You are drunk’, to which I replied ‘I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly."
"A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject."
"A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen."
"Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result."
"If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy."
Unrepentant communists are not only out and about, they can still win elections
19 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in politics Tags: Twitter left
The remnants of the communist parties do well at elections in countries such as France, Germany (Linke or Left Party) and Japan and has large blocs of MPs in Greece and Cyprus.
- 53 communist and anti-capitalist parties have been elected worldwide to freely elected parliament in 39 countries.
- The Trots regularly get 4% in French presidential elections while the British SWP is still in the same league as the monster raving loony party.
The British Trots got only 20 more votes than the Monster Raving Loony Party in their only head to head contest in East Cardiff.
Hero worship in left-wing politics
18 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in liberalism, politics - Australia Tags: hero worship, Ludwig von Mises, The fatal conceit
It is the Left who hero worships its leaders and even have photos of them on the walls inside their houses. Right-wing party leaders are mostly forgotten 5 minutes after they left office.
Do you recall the wide smiles on the faces of Bob Brown and Adam Bandt when the parliament was addressed by the Drone Commander-in-Chief Obama.
Did Bob Brown interrupt Obama’s speech to ask about the war in Afghanistan and drone strikes? He interrupted Bush when he addressed parliament.
The Left is inherently prone to hero worship because the Left wants to reshape the world and the leaders of that movement have heroic missions. As Mises explained:
The incomparable success of Marxism is due to the prospect it offers of fulfilling those dream-aspirations and dreams of vengeance which have been so deeply embedded in the human soul from time immemorial. It promises a Paradise on earth, a Land of Heart’s Desire full of happiness and enjoyment, and—sweeter still to the losers in life’s game—humiliation of all who are stronger and better than the multitude.
The Communist Party in the good old days
16 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in politics, war and peace Tags: communist party
The Communist Party was a conspiracy controlled and financed by a hostile foreign power that recruited members for clandestine work and used that apparatus to collaborate with espionage services of that power. Communist party treason from 1939 to when Germany attacked the USSR is one of many examples.
A close contemporary analogy to the Communist Party in its heyday would be a Fundamentalist Muslim party running for elected office while partly funded by Al Qaeda, whose policies are dictated by Al Qaeda, and whose leaders and members have aided Al Qaeda via espionage activities. It is hardly clear that free speech requires a government to tolerate the existence of such a party, and that the government could not close it as a criminal conspiracy.
The Venona intercepts revealed Wally Clayton, a leading official within the Communist Party of Australia, was the chief organiser of Soviet intelligence gathering in Australia. It was Venona intercepts that led Chifley to set-up ASIO.
As Bob Carr recently recalled, Paul Keating, as president of Young Labor in 1968, always referred to the Left of the ALP as “the comms”. Important figures in the ALP Left were dual members of the Communist Party of Australia.
The Divided States of America
16 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in politics - USA Tags: political polarisation
The vast right wing conspiracy is done so on the cheap when you follow the money
15 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in politics - USA Tags: follow the money, JS Mill, Karl Popper, Peter Drucker, vast right-wing conspiracy
Much is made of how the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute are funded by the Koch Brothers to act as their propagandists. Greenpeace and Right Wing was good enough to follow the money:
- American Enterprise Institute: $350,000 in total between 2004 and 2011 as compared to an annual income of $25 million.
- Cato Institute $ 5.35 million over 14 years. Their last annual donation in excess of $250,000 was in 2001. Its annual income is $12 million.
Chickenfeed – on an annual basis, this financial largess would barely pay for a cheap research assistant in a small office out of the Cato’s 90 staff members and 60-adjunct scholars. An average congressman raises more than this in political donations each year. Romney and Obama each spent $1 billion on their presidential campaigns.
Karl Popper argued that who made an argument is of little value. What matters is critical discussion of what they said. Knowledge grows through critical discussion.
Peter Drucker made similar points about people with great strengths also come with great flaws. (Biography sales would be 1/10th of its size if the great were not flawed).
Drucker championed a business rule of never making a decision until there is disagreement; only then do you know the boundary of what you plan to do. Unless one has considered alternatives, one has a closed mind. This above all, explains why effective decision-makers deliberately disregard the second major command of the textbooks on decision-making and create dissension and disagreement, rather than consensus.
Decisions of the kind the executive has to make are not made well by acclamation. They are made well only if based on the clash of conflicting views, the dialogue between different points of view, the choice between different judgments. The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement
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