Lockdowns — Part 3

Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Covid-19 pandemic resulting from the Wuhan virus has dramatically revealed state malfeasance amounting to criminality like nothing else has except for perhaps the world wars of the past century.

In the previous bits (Part 1 and Part 2), I made the moral argument against lockdowns and for freedom. In this final bit, I make the economics argument.

Governments across the world with some rare exceptions have imposed policies that are not only morally repugnant but have imposed enormous economic costs on billions of people. Especially for the extremely poor, those policies have had tragic consequences. They have probably killed (or will kill) millions more than the virus ever would have. Even in the rich populations, deaths of despair must have been devastating. Continue reading “Lockdowns — Part 3”

Enough

Joe Heller

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.

I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.” Continue reading “Enough”

Waking Sleeping Giants

The US is the preeminent economic and military power in the world today. But the US began as a small nation of only 2.5 million people when it declared independence from the British in 1776. At that time, the US economy was 30% that of Britain. But that all changed. By 1920, America Had Become World’s Top Economic Power. Continue reading “Waking Sleeping Giants”

Untested Simplicity of the Villages

by Ram Dass

Is the vision of simple living provided by this village in the East the answer?  Is this an example of a primitive simplicity of the past or of an enlightened simplicity of the future?

Gradually I have to come to sense that this is not the kind of simplicity that the future holds.  For despite its ancient character, the simplicity of the village is still in its “infancy”.

Occasionally people show me their new babies and ask me if that peaceful innocence is not just like that of the Buddha.  Probably not, I tell them, for within that baby reside all the latent seeds of worldly desire, just waiting to sprout as the opportunity arises.  On the other hand, the expression on the face of the Buddha, who had seen through the impermanence and suffering associated with such desires, reflects the invulnerability of true freedom. Continue reading “Untested Simplicity of the Villages”

Lockdowns – Part 2

In the previous post on lockdowns (July 25th), I made the ethical/moral argument against lockdowns. In this part, I make the economic argument against lockdowns.

The economy is a complex set of interlocking activities undertaken by an arbitrarily large collection of individuals and collectives attempting to achieve their self-selected ends as best as they can given the limited means at their disposal and their imperfect understanding of how to realize those ends. Continue reading “Lockdowns – Part 2”

Current Covid Hysteria

“Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.” That’s a truth that Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784) — the great English poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer — appears to have articulated long ago.

The vested interests of the few and the credulity of the masses conspire to kill whatever is the relevant truth. The war against the Chinese Covid-19 virus is no exception. The fake and the false have reigned with little opposition. Unsurprisingly, it’s the masses’ inability to reason and ignorance that is to blame for this misfortune. That sounds elitist but it is an unavoidable conclusion. Continue reading “Current Covid Hysteria”

Hi from Charlotte NC

Greetings from the Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT). I am on a long layover on my way to Austin TX. My American Airline flight was from Philadelphia to Charlotte NC. And now I am waiting at CLT for my next flight. 

According to the airport’s website, “CLT is ranked among the top 10 busiest airports in the world, averaging 1,600 daily aircraft operations. It serves approximately 178 nonstop destinations around the globe and welcomes more than 50 million passengers annually.”

As it happens, this is my first time in NC after several decades. Long time ago, I once drove through NC on my way from NJ to FL. It was during a very fierce snowstorm.

I will get to Austin TX late — actually past midnight my time but still before midnight TX time. Will write tomorrow.

UPDATE: CLT has been shut down for now due to a massive lightening storm. It is thundering like crazy. I am afraid that my flight will be late. I captured a bit of video that I will post when I get to Austin.

 

Lockdowns

The world has had to deal with the Wuhan virus of 2019 (aka Covid-19) for over a year and a half. Diverse policies have been tried to deal with it by various public and private entities. Of the lot, the worst is clearly the mandatory lockdowns — with varying degrees of severity — that most governments imposed on their populations.

Lockdowns are a terrible idea. Imposing them adds to the damage that the virus causes, directly and indirectly, and makes a pretty bad situation significantly worse.

There are two basic reasons for why lockdowns are bad. One is a moral/ethical argument, and the other is an economic argument. I believe the moral argument is sufficient by itself; the economic argument only strengthens the case against lockdowns — especially in poor countries. Continue reading “Lockdowns”

The Standard Model

“In 1967, Weinberg published a seminal paper laying out how two of the universe’s four fundamental forces — electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force — relate as part of a unified electroweak force. “A Model of Leptons,” at barely three pages, predicted properties of elementary particles that at that time had never before been observed (the W, Z and Higgs boson) and theorized that “neutral weak currents” dictated how elementary particles interact with one another. Later experiments, including the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland, would bear out each of his predictions.”

That’s from the UT News obituary to Steven Weinberg (1933 – 2021), who passed away in Austin TX on July 23rd. A bit more from it: Continue reading “The Standard Model”

Breaking up Monopolies

In a comment to a recent post on monopolies, Viveka wrote, “I will cheer the day a Google or Amazon is broken up into a bunch companies. That day is not far off.”

As the old witticism goes, be careful what you wish for because you may get it. Don’t assume that the breaking up of very large corporations because they have market dominance is necessarily a  good thing. Large corporations are large for reasons that we may not appreciate — especially if we think like engineers. Engineering is a fine and necessary profession, and engineers have enriched the world in countless ways. But it has its limitations. Continue reading “Breaking up Monopolies”