Nice graphic that complements our previous post.
When you bail out bad decisions, you get _____ of them.
a) more
b) less
Ron Paul discusses the administration's plan to forgive college student loan debt. The plan is an overt attempt to buy votes, of course. Who is being bought?
Indebted college students, naturally. Plus all those who benefit from government subsidies to higher ed.
The plan can be viewed as a wealth transfer to the elite class. The working man is being forced to subsidize the 'educated.'
Moreover, the plan is inflationary. Loans that are forgiven don't just disappear. The liability must still be paid for. The money that can't be raised through taxes or borrowing will be...printed.
One more thing. Those who have actually paid for college now feel like suckers. In the future, more will borrow under the assumption that they won't have to pay.
Moral hazard writ large.
The fiscal year for many institutional funds, e.g., pension funds and higher ed endowments, ends June 30. 2022 was not kind.
Public pension funds were down about 8%.
College endowments did even worse, losing more than 10%.
The worst performance for both since the credit collapse. To be fair, however, this down year follows one of the best years for both groups.
Down years hit pensions particularly hard due to their chronically underfunded nature. Drawdowns reduce fund capacity for meeting short and long term obligations. Making up for lost ground will likely require some combination of raising pension fund contributions, cutting benefits, and/or taking on more risk in hopes of boosting future returns.
As for the latter option, not sure how much more room fund managers have after years of pushing the risk envelope.
For more than a year, I've been wondering when the negative productivity effects of remote workplaces encouraged by pandemic regulations would show up. Coase's seminal work told us that organizations exist to reduce the transaction costs inherent to individual contractors trading on the market.
Stated differently, productivity tends to increase when people work together.
CV19 pulled workers apart. Consequently, transaction costs should go up and productivity should go down.
It appears that the data are finally starting to reflect this reality. For Q1 and Q2 of 2022, non-farm business labor productivity has printed in negative territory (FRED graph here). Parenthetically, the FRED graph seems to paint a more positive picture than the actual BLS data series, which currently indicates 4 negative prints in the last 8 quarters, including huge -7.4 and -4.6% YOY declines thus far this year. Not sure why the difference.
Some commentators are attributing lower productivity to increased 'sloth' associated with employees being able to get away with goofing off when working remotely. There is certainly some truth to this, as one way to cope with agency problems is increased monitoring. Monitoring is a type of transaction cost, one that certainly increases when distance between employee and supervisor increases.
But the larger point is that costs of trade among workers endeavoring toward the same end go up when they are not working in close proximity.
We're witnessing a large-scale example of this currently.
Harvard Crimson survey indicates 80% of Harvard faculty identify as liberal or very liberal. Check out the conservative sliver at less than 2 percent (with no 'very conservative' respondents).
Would they support hiring more conservatives to increase ideological diversity? 31% of the faculty said no. 56% supported stronger screening for former Trump officials seeking to join the faculty, while 30% were for banning anyone from that group outright.
More evidence that academic diversity has been firmly supplanted by academic perversity.
Pew study finds that the media generally does not agree with the 'fair and balanced' approach to journalism. While more than three quarters of adults believe all sides of an issue deserve equal coverage, only 55% of journalists do.
Political ideology moderates belief in 'bothsidesism.' Approximately 70% of journalists indicated that they worked for outlets that lean left.
Unfortunately, the survey did not ask respondents how they themselves leaned politically--or at least it was not reported. However, adults indicating affinity for the left were less likely to endorse 'bothsidesism.'
In a nod toward their increasingly progressive higher ed training grounds, younger journalists appear less likely to strive toward balanced coverage than older journalists.
It would be interesting to see some longitudinal data here. Has this sort of slant been on the increase? Or is it the same as it ever was?
Two marquee measures of consumer confidence are diverging. The Conference Board's measure (blue line) is on the high end while the University of Michigan's measure (orange line) is tanking.
Although, as historical data indicate, the two series track each other well, there are periods of divergence--primarily because the Conference Board's measure appears to lag slightly behind UMich.
When that divergence hits extremes, it is often noteworthy. Past instances where the difference between the two series has been this wide have corresponded to recessions.
It won't be too long before we find out whether history rhymes again.
Acute situations foster System 1 thinking rather than reasoned thinking. System 1 thinking presents opportunity for politicians to engage in emotional capture.
It should therefore not be surprising that gun grabbers are once again coming out of the woodwork following recent episodes of mass shootings. They betray any semblance of sincerity by their hysterical idiocy.
These pages have previously suggested that, if they really wanted to sponsor 'serious' conversations about the positions they advocate, anti-gunners would benefit from better understanding of the firearms they target, and of their utility in self-defense situations.
That gun grabbers consistently fail to do so suggests that they believe the calm, reasoned approach to be a losing strategy.
So they continue down the path of hysteria.
Last week 19 children and two teachers were killed by an 18 yr old active shooter in a Texas elementary school. Evidence is emerging that local police were on the scene early, but they did not enter the building to neutralize the shooter.
As shots continued to be fired from inside the school building, onlookers, including parents of the students, urged law enforcement to get in there. But they stayed put. In fact, some onlookers who attempted to breach the 'safe zone' in desperation to 'do something' were forcibly restrained by police.
It was not until a Border Patrol tactical unit showed up more than an hour after the initial arrival of local law enforcement that the school building was finally entered and the shooter taken down.
A former Border Patrol agent who trained the team in active shooter scenarios was disturbed by local law enforcement's lack of urgency. "You go to the sound of gunfire," he said.
"Somebody's going to get shot in these scenarios--I mean, that's the whole point of an active shooter. And when you are a law enforcement officer and your job in the situation is to prevent any more innocent people from being wounded or killed--then you've got to go. Hopefully everything turns out OK, but you've got to go."
Active shooter situations dictate that law enforcement has to find a way in and neutralize the threat.
"If you're met with a hail of gunfire, then you've got to work your way around and figure out another way. If that means you retreat and port a window and go in, OK. The doors are locked, we can't get in, we don't have the tools to get in, then we've got to break the windows and go in. Driving a squad car through the side of the building--when you've got children being massacred inside of a building who gives a **** about a $50,000 squad car? Drive it through the wall.
"Because every shot that's fired is somebody either dying or getting wounded, you've got to go."
He suggests that officers on the scene bear a heavy burden for their failure to act.
"As far as I'm concerned, if there was any shooting going on, and there was law enforcement there failed to act for whatever reason, anybody that was there needs to turn in their badge and their gun, and they need to go away and hope they can live with the deaths of these children."
Pray for all involved, including those officers. And resolve that if you ever face one of these situations, then don't hesitate. You've got to go.
A beautiful Mother's Day that doubles as a special Graduation Day.
I can think of at least three moms who are very proud today.
Leonard Read's Students of Liberty is a thoughtful compilation of remarks made to students at Pitt in 1950. I found several points particularly interesting.
Read proposes that the history of the world is largely a history of violence. These pages have proposed similarly. Some violence is direct, such as war, while other violence is indirect, such as the violence that manifests under the guise of democracy. For example, when people vote to raise taxes to pay for a particular program, those voters are principals of violence. They contract with the strong arm of government to shake down others for resources to fund their pet projects.
The alternative to violence, Read suggests, is love. Love refers to the kindly virtues in human relations such as charity, integrity, and not doing unto others what you would not have them do unto you. This is, of course, Christ's central message.
If we are to trends of violence toward love, then Read asserts that liberty is required. Love "generates and grows among free men; only with great difficulty among men ruled by the principles of violence. As violence begets violence so does one personal act of kindness beget another." (28)
How does liberty grow? Read dismisses approaches such as marketing campaigns, subsidized instruction, and fear mongering programs. Instead, he advocates for self-motivated learning and improvement. Only through personal search for truth and leading by example will liberty grow.
Read admits that his 'one-individual-at-a-time' notion lacks the speed of other, more aggressive proposals, but he argues that the Students of Liberty approach is the only one that will produce durable and lasting change.
Here we are 70+ years later, and most of the approaches that Read downplayed have been tried with marginal success. Perhaps it is time to put Read's proposal to work.
I personally plan to.
I just began my first of, I suspect, many online courses at Hillsdale College: Constitution 101. It is fantastic.
I began an earlier version of this course a few years ago but I'm glad that I didn't complete it then as Hillsdale's online content has become even more polished over time.
All of Hillsdale's online courses are free of charge. As such, this great institution is truly providing an invaluable service to US citizens.
Use it.
Large research study indicating increased risk of myocarditis in vaxxed men under 40 yrs old. For the Pfizer vaccine, risk doubled with each shot, meaning that after 2 originals plus 1 booster, risk was 8x normal (i.e., no vax). The Moderna mRNA was about double that.
Alex Berenson wonders why, in the face of this evidence, colleges and universities are requiring students to get a booster prior to returning for the spring term.
The larger question, of course, is why have policymakers of all stripes been ignoring evidence since the beginning of the pandemic period.
Studies continue to emerge that confirm what was readily predictable from the beginning, that CV19 lockdowns have been one of the worst policy disasters in civilized history. They have produced little benefit at the expense of immense cost.
Findings suggest that lockdowns have:
During this special Season, let us pray that God lightens the burden of these mistakes and helps us learn from them.
Interesting interview with Dr Peter McCullough, a pioneer in early treatment of CV19--both in terms of the general pandemic timeline and in treatment for individual infection. He explains his collaborative efforts to devise multi-drug treatments to CV19 cases based on matching symptoms with prior research and experience.
He also explains the tremendous pushback to these treatments by the establishment, including A-list journals such as New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet. It appears, from where he sits, that fraudulent papers on the issue have been published in both journals and that, based on his experience as a journal editor, the review processes were manipulated.
He also notes that 'risk stratification'--the notion that 'we don't have to treat everybody'--became apparent early in the process.
Meanwhile, prestigious medical universities such as Duke and Harvard lack treatment protocols for CV19.
It is also interesting to note that currently no random control trial work is underway to evaluate the long-term effects of various treatment options. We are now two years into the onset of this virus.
Obvious questions continue to surface about why the medical community in general, and particularly the academic medical community, continues to shun scientific principles and practices that have been successfully utilized in previous public health situations.
It is difficult to conclude that this malpractice has been anything but intentional.
This post shares an interesting video that discusses the theoretical concept of 'mass formation.' Mass formation can be seen as the emergence of large-scale narrowmindedness in a society.
Conditions for mass formation include lack of social connectedness and sensemaking as well as large amounts of latent anxiety and passive aggression. When inundated with a narrative that presents a plausible "object of anxiety" and strategy for coping with it, then many individuals group together to battle the object with a collective singlemindedness. By doing so, these people offload their problems to avoid the mental anguish of personally dealing with them.
As mass formation progresses, the group becomes increasingly bonded and connected. Field of attention is narrowed and unable to consider alternative points of view.
Left unabated, this groupthink supports totalitarian governance structure capable of otherwise unthinkable atrocities in order to maintain compliance.
Studies suggest that mass formation follows a general distribution:
30% are brainwashed, hypnotized, indoctrinated w.r.t. the group narrative
40% in the middle are persuadable and may follow if no worthy alternative is perceived
30% rebel against the narrative
The rebels, naturally, become the enemy of the brainwashed and a primary target of aggression.
An interesting note in the discussion was that the most 'intelligent' in terms of education level and IQ are commonly among the brainwashed.
Participants in the video suggest that the best was to counter mass formation is for the rebels to continue to speak out against it, which serves to help break the hypnosis of some in the brainwashed group as well as persuade some in the middle to choose reason over mindlessness.
It is relatively straightforward to integrate the concept of mass formation into theories of viral response discussed on these pages. In particular, there seems to be strong associations with social identity theory, cognitive dissonance, threat rigidity theory, and institutional theory.
Finally, I liked how the Belgian professor in the video confidently predicted that totalitarian products of the CV19-stimulated wave of mass formation would ultimately collapse--just like all totalitarian efforts do. An insightful, yet elementary prediction to make.
After all, what we're really talking about here is socialism--a system that always ends in chaos.
Previously we proposed that in societies that value credentials, people will be prone to outsource their brains to so-called 'experts'--i.e., those with important credentials. The greater the credentialism, the more likely people are to be misled.
An interesting corollary is that the more educated, and thus the more credentialed, a society becomes, the less able that society is likely to be at reasoned, independent, and integrative thought.
Because that kind of thought is critical for coping with novel, disruptive change, the implications are paradoxical if not ominous. As a society becomes 'smarter' via credentialed education, its capacity for adapting to major change declines.
In a society that values credentials, critical thought and reason will be prone to decline. A person with a degree, license, certification, etc is liable to be believed even if what they say is flat out wrong. Essentially, people outsource their brains to so-called experts. By not thinking for themselves, those people are likely to be played.
Proposition: The higher that a society values credentialism, the more that people will be misled by those with credentials.
Two hundred and thirty four years ago, 39 delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the document that would be debated among the states and, ultimately, ratified through supermajority approval nine months later.
Its contents remain exceptional and, unfortunately, unknown to most Americans.
If you count yourself among them, then it's a fine day to throw off your ignorance.
Rallies in Nevada today to protest CV19-related mandates in schools. Focal point is Clark County/Las Vegas.
Parents have pulled kids out of school and hundreds of school staff have 'called out' sick. Many have gathered on the Strip.
Have a feeling we're gonna see a lot more of this.
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