Einsteins Legacy/Mr Elliots Uncle.

Sometimes when I was very little, instead of going across the road after primary school, to the Bird/Macquarie citadel……. I’d walk towards the way out of town along Church Road, and I’d come to an old house where an old lady would teach me how to play the piano a little bit.

That old lady was a pretty chubby and hobbitlike old lady and she had a pretty chubby and hobbitlike husband and they lived in a dark and hobbitlike house on the side of a hill but they did have a piano.

Now kids can be cruel. And when you get them together in some numbers they can be even more cruel. And the husband of my piano teacher was the butt of many jokes amongst us neanderthal-like kiddies.

Old people.

I had no use for them at that age. Maybe i was five or six. I think I could play “Lightly Row” with my chubby little fingers. But we never did respect that husband of the piano teacher and we talked about him as if he was some crazy old coot.

Then one day this other old man came to town.

This other old man was a big fat old man and his name was Selwyn Toogood. And Selwyn came with a camera crew and he had this television show called THE MONEY OR THE BAG.

Now I don’t think Mr Elliot won anything on the show THE MONEY OR THE BAG.

He got selected as I remember. Because he whipped everyone else in the initial culling. He whipped them and got all these general knowledge questions right. But I think thereafter that the story was that he would likely have wiped everything , and sorted it out and won prizes with a little luck.

But he missed out on account of some mixup. Perhaps some ’senior moment’ when all is said and done. I don’t know. But I think he missed out on the chance to kick ass. Which it transpired he had a great chance of doing.

I was astonished. This old guy who we had been dissing had been a man of substantial intelligence or at least general knowledge. But then it was mentioned to me that he was the nephew of a famous scientist.

Now this scientist had been dead at least three decades before Mrs Elliot had ever given me a piano lesson.

But one day Mr Elliots uncle may have greater prominence in the kiddies minds, when they think of great scientists, than Albert Einstein now does.

Because the academy was inadequate to Einsteins genius. And we now know that what he turned in was a work-in-progress.

Its a great tragedy really. Because clearly if the people and culture around Einstein had been up to the task, they would have recognised his system as a first draft, and recognised the Lorentz system as a worthy contender, and the development of this science could have continued without getting bloody ridiculous.

But its my contention that it was all doomed in the socialist era in any case.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

There is likely to be a great deal of bitterness and accusations about Einsteins legacy now that his system has proven to be defunct.

I’m not going to be a part of that because I think he did a great job at a young age and was lead astray by the avalaunche of publicity and spontaneous conversions to his system.

But its pretty inevitable, in the fullness of time, that Mr Elliots uncle will be assumed to be the greater scientist. Even now we can see that Mr Elliots uncle was the greatest experimental scientist at least since Sir Isaac Newton.

The Fragility Of Electricity Generation/Atlas Shrugging In South Africa/Australia Next/The Total Energy Picture/The Real Goal Of The Energy Deprivation Crusade As Explained By Peter Singer

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In the book “Marathon Man” the narrator explains that  a great athelete like can be easily distracted. I think I remember mentioning Careem Abdul Jabah. He explained that though the assasin who killed with his hands alone was a finely tuned athlete that all such athletes can be thrown off for an instant. Sometimes it just takes a tap on the hand.

In the movie this was the most striking scene where the Lawrence Olivier character turned the tables on the Rod Steiger character.

From “Thoughts On Freedom”:

Lets talk about South Africa for awhile. Energy-rich country. Ran its transport systems on liquified-coal which was synthesised by a company called Sassol. This gave them energy independence and they would have been able to fight under conditions of embargo since liquified coal can go straight into diesel engines. I speak of Apartheid South Africa that would have been almost impossible to defeat had they wanted to defend their position.

1. Whats happened in the last few years is reminiscient of the dying days of Atlas Shrugged. The South Africans have been having forced promotions of black people and a lot of the dudded skilled people have left. So the power engine is running down. Instead of throwing their hopes behind John Galts engine they are now hoping to get hold of French nuclear energy. There are blackouts the whole time. Every time there is a blackout this must cost millions in lost production.

   Once you get to such a dire situation there is no innovating your way out of it. There is no substitution towards different non-carbon technologies to get out of that sort of mess because energy and capital are one. Capital takes energy to build and energy to run and cheap enough energy to make the lengthening of the structure of production worthwhile.

   A progressing (growing) economy grows by the lengthening of the structure of production. The Gross Domestic revenue must grow a great deal faster then the Gross Domestic Product. This means that growth implies DISSPROPORTIONATELY increased per capita energy consumption. With any energy efficiencies an afterthought.

   Fortunately we have abundant energy. We just need the capital to gather it. Capital needs energy. Energy needs capital. Hence no talk of the vanity of solar, wind and other nutball bean-sprout-munching energy methods ought to be condoned as a way of dealing with a looming crises.

   These vanities are to be invested in only when we are back under conditions of cheap energy. Which we won’t be for some decades thanks to the environmentalist movement.

   Now supposing that the South Africans, who appear doomed by the way, suppose they didn’t get this French nuclear power to bail them out. And instead they engaged in endless chatter about seaweed-biodiesel and carbon taxes? Supposing whenever an investor thought of sticking up another coal-electricity generator alarm bells went off in his head at the contemplation of the harrassment, legal costs, and political hurdles he would encounter. And supposing the South Africans starting madly subsidising solar power, wind farms and solar towers?

   Each of these measures would hasten their econonmic collapse. If their total economic collapse was fated for 5 years time, which is realistic from where I sit, instead that collapse would come in two years lets say.

   Because Humphreys feels he is allowed to and within his best behaviour to merely DODGE rather than BEST arguments against his arguments …………. he has therefore not seen fit to educate himself in the understanding of the capital structure or of energy economics.

   THE CAPITAL STRUCTURE

   The amount of money spent between and within businesses vastly dwarfs GDP. And the whole thing runs on energy. I won’t address the issue of Keynesians here because they are lunatics who don’t understand economics at all. But neo-classicals have put GROSS INVESTMENT into the too-hard-basket. They think of capital as one big undifferentiated blob. They have to work hard in their mind to untangle physical capital spending with whatever it is a Hedge Fund is doing. Its a big confusion to them and they prefer to brush up on otherworldly theories of the firm and assure people of their credentials.

   GDP=C+I+X-M

   Now notice something strange and entirely bogus about GDP.

   We have these gross figures lumped together. But I is NET investment. Which is something of an accounting fiction since it contains highly processed notions of retained profits and depreciation.

   What if we were dealing with GROSS INVESTMENT?

   As it turns out Gross investment is the whole deal in econonmics. The figure of Gross investment vastly dwarfes the other figures. It is internal spending within and between business. Its a massive figure. Its where all the important economic action is. Its where the vast bulk of the energy is consumed AND NEOCLASSICAL ECONOMISTS ARE TRAINED TO VIGOUROUSLY BLOCK IT OUT OF THEIR MINDS.

   So they cannot see the economy as such. They cannot think about it properly. They do not register the importance of so many things. And so the notion that you could run 1000 households with some solar tower sounds like relevant information to them because they vaguely see the shops and the ships and they see the households in their minds eye….. but they are trained not to see most of the economy most of the time.

   So thouroughly are they trained not to see the bulk of the economy, that they come up with all sorts of daft notions like the “service economy” and the “information economy” and they imagine we can all be landscape gardeners, fast-food franchise operators and hedge-fund managers.
   >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

   THE FRAGILITY OF ELECTRICITY GENERATION. EXCESS CAPACITY IS CRUCIAL.

   Now you have a turbine running. Its turning through a magnetic field which is creating a resistance. You have all these transformers all over town.

   That giant turbine cannot be let slow down because it will take hours to fire it up again. So if its slowing the resistance must be eased. The strength of the field must be reduced. Hence electricity generation must be reduced if the giant turbine is losing momentum.

   The transformers are all over town. They might be dealing with 132000 volts or something. ACDC. And they cannot allowed tot drop below about 49.95 Hertz or they will do just enourmous damage, screwing up everyones electrical equipment.

   So if demand for energy exceeds what the system can handle one of the transformers must be shut down causing millions of dollars in lost production.

   So supposing we open up a lot more land for housing development or we have some sort of investment boom, double digit GDR growth and all that. The energy production must always be the first tent in the peg. We must have an investment environment that leaves us with massive overcapacity at all times.

   If the new suburbs and economic growth goes ahead without this overcapacity we can bugger ourselves up.

   I have anecdotal evidence that our system doesn’t have much excess capacity. In wartime a single bombed coal-electricity plant could screw us up bad. Could make it near impossible to conduct sane econonmic activity while our boys got on with the butchering.

   >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
   A MANY AND VARIED CAMPAIGN.

   The environmentalist movement has been pushing us into a situation of energy stress for three or four decades now. They have made everyone frightened of nuclear and coal. This energy-deprivation-crusade predates the global warming lying campaign by two decades at least.

   We cannot be reinforcing their lies. It doesn’t take a total ban on nuclear, coal-to-electricity or coal-to-liquified-coal to set us up for disaster. Money is a coward.

   MONEY IS A COWARD. Investors are easily discouraged. And for no reason at all Humphreys wants to discourage them more.

   There is no alternative to coal and nuclear that can be put up in an age of energy stress. Post-war up until the 1970’s was a cheap energy age. It didn’t need to stop but we had to move to coal and nuclear. And the environmentalist movement wouldn’t let us.

   Before 1973 when we left a room we’d leave the light on. Wouldn’t even bother to switch it off. Those were the good days when even mind-blowingly stupid Keynesian practices couldn’t stop economic growth. We can only get those days back with massive expansion of coal and nuclear use.

   So we have to start talking differently, we have start taxing differently, and we cannot have policy which reinforces lies.

   The plan of the energy-deprivation crusade is and always has been global energy rationing as spelled out this very day on Late Night Live. To promote carbon tax literally is not to promote carbon tax actually. To promote carbon tax is to promote a global scheme of per capita CO2-rationing. Which means energy-rationing, global governance, massive payments to socialist countries and on and on.

   Why on earth does Humphreys imagine that if he promotes his policy he also gets to nuance it?????

   This is a childish delusional fantasy that Humphreys and Soon entertain. You cannot both push and nuance policy. This was the one devastating anti-war point that Humphreys made against me on another subject. You push an idea you don’t get to nuance it.

   But the Humphreys policy itself is typical neoclassical economic illiteracy. Since it fails to see the economy entire and its just one more nail in the coffin for energy investment.
   >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
   (Tapping the hitman on the hand like the nazi in marathon man.)

   The environmental movement did not kill tens of millions of black children through a total DDT-Ban. They killed them by a variety of methods including just simple discouragement.

   DDT-discouragement. DDT-bureaucratisation. And a closed factory there. A price increase here. A ban here and there. And that was enough to get the job done. Millions of wailing Mothers screaming all night long. 300 million chronically sick people on top of the kiddie-killing.

   And so it goes for this current campaign. Its a tax there. A stupid misconception there. Somebody over here is convinced to be fearful of nuclear power. Some kids are taught to be bigoted about CO2. Its a Lamberting campaign. And there is some nutball out there that keeps wanting a carbon tax. He’s a nutball whose out there and he refuses to fucking LISTEN!!!!!!!

   This nutball that keeps wanting a carbon tax. We say why we cannot-must-not have one. And he just ignores our argument, waits another freaking month. And he springs it on us again.

   Now what is going on here?

   Now the other thing is this. All our readily profitable non-nuclear energy sources are hydrogen-poor and carbon-rich. So much so that they are solids. Hence the next move is towards heavy carbon fuels. And carbon tax will get in the way of that. Our vehicles will be dieselised. The gasoline is on the way out and diesel has to come in.

   THIS MUST HAPPEN. Because of the basic hydrogen-dearth. Its got to happen. But money is a coward. And another tax sitting directly on this transformation will hobble us horribly. Its a total disaster that Humphreys is talking about here.

   We will go to heavy fuels everywhere they can be applied. That means diesel and liquified-coal.

   And this must continue until such time as we have saturation nuclear power, which will provide the extra hydrogen atoms that will progressively lighten the fuels towards the methane end of the spectrum.

   Now all of you must understand everything I’ve said here. Just keep reading it, and reading it, and reading it until you understand it all the way down to your blood-and-bones …….marrow-and-mitochondria. You must understand the energy landscape viscerally to fight this ugly ugly environmentalists looming disaster. They have replaced a make-believe disaster in the space of the real one they are pushing us towards.

   This is a matter of the utmost seriousness.

Reismans Book: The Curse Of The Delayed Scorn Effect.

Fully understanding Reismans book leads to something which starts as a mild annoyance. And grows more and more aggravating. And that is the scorn which it can engender at the financial commentators and economists of a non-Austrian background.

Be warned. 

More on the weekend.

Raheem Attempts To Add Perspective To The Reisman Principle.

“1. I’d presume there’s an optimal temperature for farming. If it’s too cold or too hot then the crop production would go down. “

Sam. There is no optimal temperature for crop production except to say that it is a warmer temperature than what we have now. And we must ask ourselves what is the cause of this increased temperature in this fabled scenario? Is this increased temperature here because of extra solar brightness? Or because of increased greenhouse gasses?

The best situation would presumably be a slightly lesser solar brightness and massively more greenhouse. Since it is greenhouse which reduces temperature differentials.

But thats in the realm of fantasy.

What is NOT fantasy, as far as crop-growing is concerned however, is the potential for higher levels of atmospheric-CO2.

Plants that are well-cared for in other ways continue (on average) to gain benefits from higher CO2 levels even if the CO2-levels are 600ppm and rising. That is to say the gains from extra-CO2 don’t even begin to flatten out in the general sense until the CO2 is above this level.

The gains from extra-CO2 for plants somewhat more stressed don’t even begin to flatten out until CO2 levels rise above 1500ppm.

So if you wanted to geo-engineer things in a sort of fantasy thought-experiment it would be about 1500ppm that you were looking at.

Now I don’t think that would have any effect on world temperatures. But still it might do from where I sit. It might stall the next destructive ice age somewhat. It might, at that level mean a slightly higher air pressure or something, that over many hundreds of years, coupled with some tiny amount of greenhouse effect, coupled with serendipity, well its at least possible that it could slow down the cooling trend.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

But if you are talking a fantasy scenario for maximum crop-growing what we would want is this 1500ppm coupled with acknowledged overheating.

Because with acknowledged overheating we could then start a voluntary campaign of accumulating these little SO2 missiles. And every time a jumbo took a flight over the equator we could have them shoot this little SO2 missile into the upper stratosphere and explode and have all this SO2 up there. We would explode these things over the open water for maximum effect.

What this would engineer under this fantasy scenario is a more even-temperatured world. Taking that edge off at the equator to stop cumulative warming. And the plants there getting easily enough sunlight as it stands.

Hence the alleged nightmare that the no-evidence-campaign is putting before us is actually our best daydream for crop-growing, if we are so inclined as to daydream about such matters.

I myself am not so inclined and will be happy for any mitigation against the coming cooling as what any potential human effect could have.

And none of us should look the gift-horse of enhanced CO2-levels in the mouth. Since its just narrow-minded and nasty to not be happy about the CO2 enhancing the natural world and helping with crop yields and therefore food prices.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“P.S. I did throw the question out to Raheem & co. - ‘So what if Global Warming is shown to be non-existent (or virtually so) how would this necessarily negate the rest of concerns towards the environment.”

It doesn’t.

Anti-capitalism is extremely bad for the environment. And this is an anti-capitalist
world.

Although in my version of capitalism there is relentless homesteading, but there are always buffers around newly privately homesteaded properties. And there might be many millionaires getting about trying to patch up the (in my view) mistakes of prior generations by, in many cases, trying to buyback land to put these buffers, also known as nature corridors, back into the scene.

The point was that the environmentalist movement is currently an intensely evil movement. The point wasn’t that there were absolutely no environmental concerns.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Sometimes to understand natural phenomenon its helpful to use personification. Like when Hunter Thompson had this essay on electricity where he described very well how electricity worked by giving it two human characteristics. Electricity is very homesick. But its also very lazy said Hunter.

Well conversely, we can get some sort of working understanding of these HUMAN movements, involving HUMAN persons if we DE-personify the human-movement.

DE-PERSONIFY THE HUMAN MOVEMENT.

If we liken the environmentalist movement to a natural phenomenon, like a Hurricane for example, this might help us get a better working-and-predictive-model of the movement.

So thats what I will do right here. I’ll depersonify the environmentalist movement and treat it, in an extended analogy, as if it were an impersonal natural phenomenon. To be specific an hurricane.

You see you are not taking the same perspective as Professor Reisman. He is looking at this hurricane-most-vile from a vantage point akin to a satelite photo. And in this analogy he has identified that what motivates the air molecules in the calm centre and in that first outer violent circle is the evil human-negating principle of the INTRINSIC VALUE OF NATURE.

But supposing you have a different vantage point. You are not seeing a hurricane from the satelite point of view. And lets jump back to a real hurricane to further this analogy.

And in this story you are a farmer in the far West of the US in the 1870’s. You are in an area that does not yet benefit from the telegraph. Well there is this hurricane on the east coast doing all sorts of damage. But what you are seeing is that your farm, which has been suffering from drought, is now getting plenty of beneficial rain. So you are not going to understand the damage that has been done, and the nasty nature of the centre of the storm.

Likewise if you focus on this repulsively evil environmentalist movement from a different perspective, from a different time-frame, and a different vantage point, you are not necessarily going to perceive the intense evil that is there in the eye of the storm ,and in its activist first-circle.

You might be on the ground away from the storm seeing some businesses cleaning up their act and not making the river dirty. You might be seeing some people getting out there and picking up litter as volunteers. You might be seeing people donate money for some crowd helping a particularly beautiful endangered species of the parrot.

In these instances you are like that Western farmer thinking that the storm is a good thing.

But you need to know about the evil driving the environmentalist movements direction, since you need to be able to predict what it will do.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Had we fully understood the intensely evil nature of this environmentalist movement, we could have predicted where it was going, and we could have at least ATTEMPTED to stop the malaria-bureaucratisation holocaust, as well as this now decades-long energy-deprivation campaign.

We could have had some immunisation against their non-stop lying and spin. And we could have warned the future victims.

There is no going head-on against the Reisman principle. If you want to retrieve anything of value from this movement, that in its totality is clearly evil, then your job is the task of DIFFERENTIATION.

I wish you all luck in retrieving some value from this evil movement in terms of biodiversity heritage. But your first duty is to understand this psychopathic movement, to understand where it is headed, and to warn its future victims.

Its a bit too late to say NEVER AGAIN!!!!

WORD!!!! Jimmy Jam Lays The WORD On Stupid White Kids At Mises

From Mises:

“One thing you and Professor Reisman neglect to take into account is that among the general populace Nazism and communism are considered
to be bad.”

Thats not really true is it. I mean the Nazis did tend to alienate foreigners. But communism had a lot of cache. And certainly facist Italy was popular around the world. I don’t see that there’s a real big difference here.

Perhaps its the indirect nature of environmentalist mass-murder which gives some truth to what you are saying.

So they bureaucratise DDT and kill tens of millions of people indirectly. Or they just inhibit economic development and property rights. And particularly they inihibit energy production, which will kill millions down the track… But since the killing is indirect they may not have soured their reputation like the German facists tended to, pretty early on in the piece.

So I’m just labouring some, to get your point of view and your strategy.

If you want the environmentalist lable you’ve got to wrench it off the others and give them another name. And if you don’t want to do that you better get another name for yourself, one that denigrates the current environmentalist movement just as much as it pushes your own alternate wannabe movement.

“If you bothered to learn anything about me then you would have known that I am skeptical of anthropogenic global warming and I don’t believe in the alarmists claims that catastrophe is looming over the horizon.”

SKEPTICAL??????

Isn’t that a bit of a tepid word to be using at this late stage of the game? This is the problem here. Either you are going to muster some stridency against what these ritualised mass-liars are up to, or you will merely be adding legitimacy as to what they are about.

It wouldn’t be so bad if your first salvo as a voluntarist-biodiversity-fetishist ,was to immediately pick a fight with the mainstream criminals by being in favour of extra atmospheric CO2.  and if you are authentically into this biodiversity caper you cannot BUT be in favour of higher CO2 levels. Since it is higher CO2 levels that stimulate net primary production.

Taking this approach would immediately put you at odds with the mainstream, and you might stand the chance of acheiving some good work. In taking this position you could also be in favour of the homesteading of so-called government land, and of the oceans. But with nature corridors for the feral animals. Since it is surely nature corridors that in the long run which would assist in the stimulation in the variety and diversity of the feral plants and animals.

That would be the strategy surely. To steal their name and give the facists another name, or find a new name for yourselves, and to promote those things that are immediately going to start a fight with these energy deprivers and anti-capitalist goons.

Commenter name: Jimmy Jam

now you’ve just heard….. THE WORD.

Radio-Raheem Throws Down The Gauntlet To The Mises Institute.

Hey Radio-Raheem. You is alright! 

From Mises: 

Its pretty easy to see where Tokyo Tom is coming from. He’s a spammer whose been trying to neutralise the message of Reisman by recourse to relentless cyber-stalking. Which makes me think that the mises institute has gone soft on environmentalism and in fact has, since the death of Murray, developed a fear of the C-word. That is they do not wish to be called “cranks” with regards to global warming.

Its pretty easy to see where the fanatic, crank, and cyber-stalking spammer Tokyo-Tom is coming from.

But this Goeffrey fellow and this Allex Peak fellow. Where on earth are they coming from?

I guess the kids are spineless. They don’t wish to call out evil for what it is.

The Mises-institute has to tackle this science-fraud head on. I’ve seen people make jokes about the warmers. But I’ve only seen Reisman and Higgs talk about this science-fraud as if it were simply another governmental racket of some sort.

Take me off moderation, ban the multi-year spammer Tokyo Tom. And let me fight it out with these kids.

What you older Miseans might not realise is that some of the youngsters amongst you have been brought up with this nonsense along with Mothers milk. Its quite likely that Geofrey is a CO2-bedwetter with a superstitious fear of Mother Natures revenge.

Lets take the gloves off and sort it all out now. But leave the spammer outside.

Posted by: Raheem at February 25, 2008 8:36 AM

Condemnation Of Alleged Voluntarist-Environmentalists At Mises

I cannot get this condemnation through at Mises.org since I’m moderated there. So If you wish to link to it be my guest.

 One alleged Misean and some others who have jumped the fence, have been giving George Reisman a hard time over his strong opposition to the hated environmentalists.

Reisman claims, and I think rightly, that the environmentalist movement is rotten at its core. That it is evil on first principles because of the doctrine of the INTRINSIC VALUE OF NATURE.

Now the thing is this. They cannot oppose this claim head on because it is right. This is in fact the environmentalists doctrine and it is in fact an evil doctrine.

So what they face here is a problem of disaggregation. If they want to retrieve some scintilla of validity from the great bulk of baseless evil that is the environmentalist movement, they then have to disaggregate to find where that value might be. They have to do so in such a way as to not take the Reisman principle head on.

I have tried to lead these kids by the hand in this matter. One of them is doing a philosophy PHD at Lousianna, so you’d think he would have gotten the point.

So I have suggested that perhaps nature corridors around newly homesteaded property titles may be in accordance to natural law. I’ve suggested that they look for a different name. I’ve suggested that there may be some value in the natural world that one could philosophically derive from its value as our oldest museum.

But the kids don’t want to go in for any of this and I suspect they may well be actual, full-blown, environmentalist nutballs. Certainly Tokyo Tom is. And thats but one of his handicaps.

But this Goeffrey fellow eludes me since he’s taking a bigoted anti-philosophical approach to the problem though he’s a philosophy student.

Anyway here’s the last comment I couldn’t get through:

This is just incredible. You guys cannot wrest the title of environmentalism off the evil mainstream. And you do not want to try. You don’t want to oppose these guys head on, and you soft-peddle their criminally-insane behaviour. Yet you don’t even feel it necessary to describe yourselves with different terminology.

Voluntarism is not good enough. Its insufficient. Necessary but insufficient. Because we have a grave crisis these environmentalists have forced us into with regards to energy production. And we don’t need to voluntarily convince investors not to put up coal-fired electricity plants, nuclear power plants, and coal-liquification plants besides those nuclear power plants.

We don’t need to convince people not to invest in deep-sea oil exploration and we don’t need to sap peoples enthusiasm for deregulation in this regard and for setting clear homesteading rules.

So many aspects of environmentalism (contemporarily understood) are just NOT ON…. voluntarily or not.

I can go in for nature corridors, and other buffers around newly homesteaded private property. I can go in for concerns over biodiversity. But what I cannot go in for is naieve kids projecting their own naievete onto others.

If you call yourself an “environmentalist” you are giving your weight to this criminally-insane movement, as it stands here today, in the present, in the real world. Not as you would want the movement to be.

 Get yourself another name or get used to the condemnation that you will have earned.

USING GOLD AS A MONETARY-POLICY INDICATOR: RISKS AND ADVICE

From Catallaxy:

“Gold is headed up*. If the RBA is smart they will ensure that the aussie dollar is following it.”

They might take your advice Terje but they must not, they CANNOT take it blind.

They might take the general idea that you have that one ought to tighten when gold and commodities loosen, and that a sudden softening of commodities and gold might be one clue amongst many that monetary policy could be too HARSH.

I’ll buy that as a general proposition. But really, all the commentators are flying blind here. And such omens as you suggest, though admittedly they tend to backtest pretty well except in extremis……….. well they may be of some assistance in this blind-flying but they are not enough.

If gold keeps going up perhaps we should say that this gives us a BIAS-for-tightening. I’m with you so far if that is what you are saying.

BUT YOU CAN NEVER TIGHTEN SO MUCH AS TO LET “PRODUCTIVE EXPENDITURE” ACTUALLY FALL.

If you have a fiat currency you might toss up between having productive expenditure grow in nominal terms 0.5% per quarter or 1% per quarter or yet even 0% and just let it flatten for awhile.

So if you were trying to follow gold, as you say,…………well you might flatten the growth in productive expenditure out for several quarters.

But you ought never let PRODUCTIVE EXPENDITURE actually fall (in my view) if you are on a fractional-fiat currency.

Because COSTS-OF-GOODS-SOLD follows PRODUCTIVE EXPENDITURE in its trajectory with a lag.

Therefore if you let PRODUCTIVE EXPENDITURE actually take a dip, you are setting up a potential disaster, as you can in the next time period, have a situation where even the best run businesses, producing desperately needed gear, are running at a loss.

But I accept your general bias. And I just want to add this friendly amendment of not flying blind with it.

Always remember that our greatest living economist, with not even a single close contender, is George Reisman.

MY!!!!!Country: Live Free Or Eat Sand.

From Mises.Org:

If we get to a situation, as a JUST God would have it, of ubiquitous and saturation nuclear power, in my country and in the USA………………..If we get to that situation.There will be immense opportunities for people interested in preserving certain aspects of biodiversity, and evolutionary culture…….to do so…….. AT CUT PRICE RATES!!!!

My country…..MY COUNTRY!!!!! is virtually all desert. People are prevented from buying the sort of 5 acre blocks that would warm their hearts, and make them feel good about bringing young children into this world, because some busybodies think that subdividing farmland, in this way, would leave the driest continent bereft of agricultural land (!@#$%^&*).

My country MY COUNTRY!!!!!! has more energy resources close to hand, than the Middle East, and every other politically brokenassed, American-hating nation, in the world, put together I shit you not. 

Probably by many orders of magnitude.

We make Saudi Arabians look like really feeble, poor cousins, when it comes to energy.

Think about THAT!!! when people criticise Ron Paul. 

 

Think about THAT!!!!

 

when another American soldier dies in that repulsive Middle Eastern Mordor.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

But the environmentalist movement has lied to us (and I fell for it TOO by the way) in so many ways. So as a result the upshot is that we are not exploiting these energy resources to the extent that we could be, for the benefit of ourselves,  and for the benefit of our good, good mates…. the American people.

Had we been allowed to exploit these resources……. and if you Americans had of been allowed to exploit your own energy resources……. than not one American soldier would have needed to die in the Middle East.

 

Not one American needed to die.  And the Arabs would have either had to live free or eat sand.

LIVE FREE OR EAT SAND I SEZ!!!!

 

The Arabs would have had a stark choice. And that choice would have been to live free or eat sand.

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The thing about nuclear reactors is this: THEY ALSO CAN SERVE AS WATER-DESALINATORS.

So if the environmentalist movement had not of stooged us about nuclear energy….. and if we had taken Murray Rothbards ideas to do with HOMESTEADING…. If we had taken these HOMESTEADING ideas seriously…. (and with my friendly amendment of having buffer-zones around newly homesteaded private property)……………

….. Then the inevitable result is that the inland deserts of my country would become a new frontier.

A NEW FRONTIER!!!!!!

And if any of you guys had some sort of fondness for the diversity of nature, there would have been unlimited opportunities for you to exercise your righteous liberty, in this regard, in my country, and on the cheap.

 

Because all a fella needs to possess…… in order to follow such interests…. 

……is a few gold coins

…… some fuel and electricity……

…….. and LAND, LIBERTY, CO2 AND WATER.

Australian Defense Review:Principles Of Kicking Ass In A Fully Nuclearised World.

From Catallaxy:

Right. We musn’t let Tillmans hardcore spamming get in the way of the long-run defense plank.

People have wrongly contended that the invention of nuclear weapons is the end of war. That it makes war unthinkable. This is extremely dangerous nonsense. Genocidally dangerous.

Even if nuclear weapons were so spectacular a weapon, fundamentally different from all other military innovations, it would still be the case that we could not let our minds glaze over.

Rather if this weapon were so very very special, it would then mean that nuclear intimidation, or its potential, was the new enemy that we devoted most of our defense planning, spending and doctrinal development towards.
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We have a defense review coming up and many people will be throwing all sorts of make-believe security risks in to the mix which will obscure real threats.

For example they may say that instability in the pacific islands is a security risk. This is NOT a security risk and would not become one unless a nuclear power set up a base on one of these islands.

Some people might say that instability in the Middle East is a security risk for Australia. This is also hogwash. In fact a jihadia civil war would be immensely beneficial to our security because it would keep the crackers from spreading their murder further afield.

Sorting our problems in the Pacific Islands has a military component to it, but problems in these islands are no security risk for Australia. Rather when we act in the Solomons or elsewhere this is quite clearly A FOREIGN AID PROGRAM.

Other lunatics will claim that climate change is a security risk. Shake them down for some evidence. You won’t get it but shake them down for it anyhow. They are a terrible security risk since they will cripple our ability to produce energy. But climate change is no security risk for Australia. Since Australia is a warm country the coming cooling won’t hurt us too bad.

I tend to think mitigation against China is the best way to define our strategic challenges. Because if we can keep on an equal footing with China and our people not be intimidated by her then no other problems ought to be too insurmountable..

But it can sometimes be impolotic and undiplomatic to keep mentioning one country that we don’t necessarily have a personal problem with. I mean this can be taken the wrong way.

So really all our plans ought focus around China. But if we wanted to “depersonalize” it we might well use the alternative bogeyman of NUCLEAR INTIMIDATION from any or all potential sources as being the thing we would use to frame our plans around.

The plans would be much the same in any case.
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The nuclear threat can be overcome. Nanu was trying to blame JFK for a bunch of problems upthread. What criticisms I have about JFK are to do with him not being Catholic enough. When Robert McNamara went to change doctrine to purposely target civilians with nukes and to purposely allow ones own civilians to be targeted…… Well a good Catholic President ought to have known that this outrage was against Just War Theory (to put it as mildly as I can) and against all decency. But a good soldier ought to have known that this was also idiocy from a military point of view.

This McNamara thinking was the typical sort of JohnZ logic. That one step thinking, that one-step pseudo-syllogistic idiocy that a Reynolds or a JohnZ will try on once and a while.

Civilians are the last thing in this world you want to target and especially with nukes. Its a totally redundant thing to do in the first place since a war, forcefully prosecuted, kills enough civilians for even the sickest, most perverted, FDR fan to be pleased with.

And a war prosecuted without enough force tends to kill even more civilians.

Well what (if any) changes do nuclear weapons make to warfare???? This is what you will find out with great certainty if you keep reading:
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In the time of Clauswitz the idea was to mass your forces and keep them together as one unit. And the great fear was a two-front war. Naturally enough a multi-front war was the worst thing imagineable.

You wanted to have the superior massed force and destroy individual subsets of the coalition ranged against you sequentially.

In World War II allied bombers darkened the sky.

Neither massing all your forces together nor filling the sky with bombers is a worthwhile idea in a nuclearised war. Rumsfeld was right not to mass too many people in Kuwait, before the war, since two or three backpack nukes could then have gotten rid of a great deal of American power for an entire generation.

Whereas pre-nuclear war meant you had to mass your forces and deal with enemies sequentially, war in a nuclearised world means you can never mass them to the extent that it becomes worthwhile for your opponent to use one of his precious nukes to take them out.

So whereas pre-nuclear war meant avoiding a two-front or multi-front war……. Nuclearised war means embracing multi-front warfare. It means spreading yourself out and using as many pressure points as one can.
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The other big difference to war in a nuclearised world is the absolutely magnficent premium there is to be had in defensive measures.

This is something the Americans don’t realise yet. The have all sorts of holes in their defense. Yet they maintain these 700 bases overseas when probably a dozen would be more than sufficient. Because the nukes themselves are so heavily offensive there is, for the first time, a real imbalance between offense and defense.

Traditionally it has been thought that having these good defensive measures was delusional. Wars must always be fought on the offense went the reasoning.

That only offensive threats can prevent the beligerent crowd from going to war. Well thats all true. But with nukes, they are so powerfully offensive, that diplomatic cache will instead tend to come to people who have their defensive position so well sorted that they can deal with other nuclear powers with a sense of confidence.

Decisive strategic measures can only really be taken by people with excellent defensive investments in a nuclearised world.

The third difference in a nuclear world is that your population layout cannot involve extended high-density living or a great deal of medium-density living at all.

It ought to be ultra-high density in short bursts and then semi-rural most of the rest of it.

So that the poor people live in bursts of massively spacious skyhouses and the buildings are skyscrapers…. But most of the rich guys have at least an acre or two to make do with.

In other words you would have the setup we probably would have under free enterprise (in my view.)

A burst of Gotham City highrise surrounded by semi-rural living means that the tall building can usually be protected …… but that if a nuke did get through, most of those that survive the initial blast will likely be able to make it through the aftermath and survive.

I have maintained earlier that newly homesteaded land titles ought to have buffers around them. A buffer that can be used for infrastructural goods and nature corridors.

If this cityscape were carved out of reclaimed desert land under the above formula……….you can see how buffers around all private property would allow people to quickly high-tail it out of the built-up area, if they got wind of an incoming nuclear missile.
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Look people. Thats about it. Those are the only FUNDAMENTAL differences in a nuclearised world. We can live with this reality if we put our minds to it. And in fact we have no choice even if we decide to hide under the covers and tell ourselves its the other fellow who is the scared one.

But if we believe these insane lies about there being no way to defend against nuclear weapons then we almost deserve to wind up as second-class citizens.

And we stand a pretty good chance of a premature death.

Lets get cracking on all three of these fundamental differences right away.