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PowerBook Macintosh See: After Seven Years, Is the WallStreet PowerBook Obsolete?
I am one of those people committed to getting computers cheaply. I fiddle with them. I make old ones work well. Or at least suffice. I am tempted by new computers, but their price somewhat dissuades me (to say the least). Besides, I write. And I make text files to put on the Web. These are my main activities. I hardly need the fastest and the biggest for that. I almost never play games on my computers. (What a waste of time.) And I haven't gotten into movies yet. Photoshop is the most intensive program I have, and, frankly, it never crashed even on my 80MHz Mac from a few years back! It's just Web browsing, really, and the glories of OS X, that keep me checking out newer computers.
My first Mac was a Mac Plus. I bought it for about $1900; it had no hard drive, just two floppy drives. My second Mac was another all-in-one Apple device (Apple has always liked all-in-one designs), the slightly uglier LC/Performa 5xx series. I think mine was a Performa 580CD or somesuch. A year later I sold it for nearly a thou and bought a PowerMac 6100/DOS device.
That's how I came to hate Windows, actually. I'd used CP/M before, and didn't hate it. But the Windows 3.x that came with the 6100's DOS side
was a horrible, horrible user experience. I remember now my DOS/Windows user friends and how they scoffed at Macs. Fools. Before Windows 95, Microsoft's operating systems were end-user primitive, no match for the Mac OS.
The last time I played as a regular user was when my 6100's power supply went out — on the same day that I got laid off from a job. After hemming and hawing, I actually spent about $200 for some guy to replace the supply. I could have bought a working used 6100 for the same price or less, at the time!
That's when I started looking around at the used market for Macs, extensively. I wanted to buy my mother a Mac. And an eBay purchase went bad, and I made do with getting a 7100 instead of the old Centris 650 I'd bid on. Some making do! A good machine, a fine Mac, I thought. It was pain to open it up, but it had more upgrade possibilities than the 6100 I was using. In a month of messing about at St. Vincent de Paul's and GoodWill, I had three monitors hooked up to a nearly-maxed-out 7100, on the Net with DSL, working better than ever. The set-up cost me less than the 6100's replacement power supply.
I loved the three monitor set-up. Unfortunately, well, speed was becoming an issue. The Web was just not very friendly to the 7100's 80MHz speed! So I went to G3 with a hybrid device: an 8500's logic board stuffed in a 7200's case, with an extra hard drive, more memory than I'd ever experienced, and . . . a G3 upgrade card.
Earlier this year, my hybrid went flaky. Instead of trying to fix it (it's still in parts in my office, helping make the mess that my office is), I bought a Blue and White G3, used, for about a $100. 100MHz faster, it still allowed me to use my ADB input devices, as well as my new USB and FireWire devices.With a Dr. Bott Moniswitch, I occasionally switch over to my Molar, a 266MHz all-in-one Mac that runs OS 9.1 pretty well. It's sort of a back-up device for me.
Well, there's one thing I lack: true portability. For several years I'd used a Duo 280c as my home device, and to take with me when I travelled. But as long as I've had it, it's never had a working battery. I replaced it as my main portable desktop
with a Wallstreet 250MHz 13.3" PowerBook G3 sometime back. It runs OS 9.1 pretty well, and none of the screen problems that this configuration of the Wallstreet allegedly suffers from has caused me to suffer one moment. But it, too, lacks a working battery.
When I go to coffee shops and see all the Macs lit up, each online, wireless, running on batteries, I must say my level of desire rises. Is this covetousness? Ha!
So I'm almost convinced (this article helped) that what I need to do is get the battery working. A new charger device inside, then a battery. Then — at long last — an Airport card. And then I could take my Wallstreet to the Seattle hot spots and work as I sip . . . not coffee, but tea. (Mac users drink different . . . ly.)
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | September 2, 2005 | Netizen permalink
central controlis confused. There is not, and never could be, a single directing mind at work; there will always be some council or committee charged with designing a plan of action for some enterprise. Though individual members may occasionally, to convince the others, quote particular pieces of information that have influenced their viewd, the conclusions of the body will generally not be based on common knowledge but on agreement among several views based on different information.
The Fatal Conceit,p. 87
Weak minds tend to think alike. In a crisis, the herd instinct becomes even stronger; even smart people tend join the marching crowd, and concoct or (more often) revive the simplest ideas to beat time for the lockstep march that humanity apparently prefers.
A friend is sending around silly articles (like this) about how the Katrina catastrophe disproves
the main theses of conservative folly,
while a participant on a list devoted to Social Darwinism . . . well, I'll let him speak for himself:
As you can see, this tradgedy [sic] only goes to reinforce my arguements [sic] calling for maximum state intervention. The anarchy is a direct result of 200 years of US Social Darwinism. Such an event would not be allowed to happen in England, or any of the Third World Caribbean countries such as Barbados which receive hurricanes regularly, and have good state services to deal with emergencies and precautionary measures to make sure people are in appropriate shelters before the storm begins.
The tragedy was a natural disaster, primarily. Since it was much worse than other such regularly occurring disasters, it belongs in the category of mostly unexpected,
and the primary blame for the event should go to . . . whom? God?
The lowly state of American blacks (the subject of the original quoted article in this string) has, in recent times, been worsened by the welfare state and the war on drugs, two things allegedly intended to help them. In the '50s, before the welfare state kicked in, employment of young black males was HIGHER than that of the employment rate of young white males. But with every notch raised of the minimum wage, every handout given to unwed mothers, every increase in food stamps and the like, the marginally employable uneducated population suffered horrendously in the market, dropping out altogether. It is no coincidence that, at the same time, African-American culture became a cesspool of violence, drug abuse, laziness, and sexual irresponsibility. And the poverty that such attitudes and habits necessarily produces.
None of this is the result Social Darwinism, an ideology that is not operant in American life.
As for the shoddy state of New Orleans's dike system, some of the pumps had not been replaced since the 19th century, and it is in those locations that the damage was worst. Why?
Probably because, as is so often in Louisiana (but also throughout much of America), the local governments are grifter-based.
The problems that exacerbated the horrible natural conditions of Katrina, etc., are not a failure to provide a maximum state. It's the problems of creating a maximum state, and not even fulfilling the basic functions of a minimal state.
It may be that some other countries would not allow a basic dike system to break down. This is not a result of Social Darwinism. This is America's trouble with grifter-government, and also (if reports I've read are true) a problem of the federal government siphoning off its Army Corps of Engineers funds to engage in a long, internecine war in the Middle East, something both Spencer and Sumner would have been aghast by, and would have repudiated in high moral dudgeon.
Of course, as Sumner himself said, having the federal government be held responsible for a local dike system is a silly extension of duties, and a bad signal to people. Build dikes, and more people move to the area behind the dikes:
Instead of going out where there is plenty of land and making a farm there, some people go down under the Mississippi River to make a farm, and then they want to tax all the people in the United States to make dikes to keep the river off their farms.
Further, with nearly any dike system, nature's handling of floods becomes much worse, because the excess water is given less room. Thus, dikes are a classic case of systems that have apparent good effects in normal conditions, but make the crisis worse when real crises hit.
Still, it would make more sense for local governments, with populations dependent on dikes, to contract out the maintenance and improvement of dikes with private contractors, in an open bidding system. Of course, with freebies offered by the federal government, this can't happen. And the people are hurt when the systems break down.
All of which are easily explainable according to economics and systems theories as developed amongst evolutionary social theorists, including Sumner, Spencer, and modern economists of the Coase/Alchian/Buchanan variety.
The maximum state, on the other hand, is a huge mess that can hardly coordinate anything. Even Sweden's giving up on this model.
I'm actually finding most of the political talk surrounding the event to border on vile exploitation of human tragedy. I almost hate to enter the fray. Most of the participants seem, to me, to expect too much of human capacity for concerted action. Mass cooperation is difficult. And to expect governments to behave perfectly (a good example is Drudge wondering why the New Orleans mayor didn't use school buses to evacuate New Orleans denizens in time, before the buses were all flooded), is to expect governments to behave like they very rarely behave:
Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies — unlike the shopkeeper who promptly finds the wherewith to satisfy a sudden demand — unlike the railway company which doubles its trains to carry a special influx of passengers; the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.
And if we want to have government do basic things well, like protect us from crime, and help us out in emergencies, perhaps we might limit the other things government does. Stretched thin, obliged to help us in every element of life, government bureaus and their directors (the politicians) of course have even greater difficulty doing the basics. Since absolutely no real priorities can be detected in the budgeting processes of Congress, for instance — trying to satisfy every conceivable expressible constituent interest — how can we expect our governments to react well when it comes to something as basic as managing a crisis?
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | September 2, 2005 | Netizen permalink
The Philosophy of Style,conclusion
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | September 3, 2005 | Netizen permalink
The Extended Order and Population Growth,p. 133
A niece, a cousin, and a friend have all recently got teaching gigs. The niece, a fine oboist, now teaches music appreciation at a community college. The cousin, a fine composer, now teaches two or three classes at a major university. The friend, a brilliant writer, has begun teaching at a private high school, for the first time, he said, where the students are both discplined and smart.
Quiz:
Which of these teachers in new positions is having trouble with a nose picker in his or her class?
If you guessed 3 you would be right.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | September 7, 2005 | Netizen permalink
economics cost See: Opportunity cost
Most people look at the cost of something as the money given out for it. But economists want to know the value of any choice. So they look at what's called opportunity cost. The opportunity cost of something is the value foregone by the choice in question. Let's say you spent $45 on a concert ticket and then went to the concert. What is the opportunity cost of the concert?
Well, we don't really know until we know what else you would have done with the $45 — or that time, for that matter.
It's really tricky figuring opportunity cost, so I was interested when Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution referred to the answers by economists to a particularly strangely worded quiz as a professional embarrassment.
I found the quiz itself weird enough to label the question embarrassing, not the answers:
You won a free ticket to see an Eric Clapton concert (which has no resale value). Bob Dylan is performing on the same night and is your next-best alternative activity. Tickets to see Dylan cost $40. On any given day, you would be willing to pay up to $50 to see Dylan. Assume there are no other costs of seeing either performer. Based on this information, what is the opportunity cost of seeing Eric Clapton? (a) $0, (b) $10, (c) $40, or (d) $50.
Now, I have no trouble with examples. But for some this example may be a bit of a stretch. It requires a person to think not merely abstractly, but against their actual preferences. If you'd rather go to Dylan than Clapton any day of the week, you might be a bit flummoxed by this example. Economists are trained to think of you
examples as abstract, and not actual, so they shouldn't be flummoxed. But I've never been trained as an economist, so, for me to figure this out, maybe (just maybe) it'd help me to change the example, since I can't imagine any occasion on which I'd spend money to see either Dylan (horrible voice) or Clapton (who's he, again?). New example:
I've won a free ticket to attend a Hilliard Ensemble concert of music by Arvo Pärt and Einojuhani Rautavaara; the ticket has no resale value. On any given night, I'd break the piggy bank and spend $50 to listen the Kronos Quartet, had they offered a good selection. I discover, after winning the Hilliard ticket, that Kronos is performing on the same night in a nearby theater, and for only one night; Kronos is playing the second Kirchner String Quartet, something I'd never heard by Milhaud, and a work by a contemporary composer. Wow. I go to the Hilliard Ensemble concert. Based on this information, what is the opportunity cost of attending the Hilliard Ensemble concert? (a) $0, (b) $10, (c) $40, or (d) $50.
I've not changed anything here that's important. I've just explained my demand schedule in monetary terms with slightly different phrasings, as well as switching to music options that make sense for me. But I've still left out the information left out by the quiz. I have no information there about what I'd be willing to pay for the Hilliard concert. How is this relevant?
Because this is a bizarro example with a strange complication. Normally, we'd frame a question of opportunity cost in a more direct way. Like this:
I just spent $50 on a ticket to attend a Hilliard Ensemble concert of music by Arvo Pärt and Einojuhani Rautavaara; I would likely have spent $55 for that ticket, had that been the ask price, but no more. The ticket has no resale value. On any given night, I'd break the piggy bank and spend $50 to listen the Kronos Quartet, if they are playing a good selection. I discover, after winning the Hilliard ticket, that Kronos is performing on the same night in a nearby theater, and for only one night; Kronos is playing the second Kirchner String Quartet, something I'd never heard by Milhaud, and a work by a contemporary composer. The price of a ticket? $40. Wow, great concert. Still, I go to the Hilliard Ensemble concert. Based on this information, what is the opportunity cost of attending the Hilliard Ensemble concert? (a) $0, (b) $10, (c) $40, or (d) $50.
From what I had understood about the discipline sometimes known as a science, I would have said none of the above to this example. The cost of spending $50 on Hilliard and missing Kronos? Here it is:
That'd be it. The true costs of my choice are subjective. What I gave up is not a matter of money, accept that money delimits my choices and helps me figure out the problems.
Now, the example given to us by economist Tabarrok does not have me spending any money to go to the primary choice concert (Clapton or Hilliard — you take your pick). So what is the opportunity cost of going to the concert?
And yet Tabarrok goes on about how horrible it was that 78 percent of economists gave an answer other than $10, which he says is the correct one:
The answer is b, $10. Your next best alternative to the Clapton concert is attending the Dylan concert which has a benefit of $50 and a cost of $40 or a net benefit of $10. The net benefit is what you give up by attending the Clapton concert.
It turns out that the quiz makers and Tabarrok hide (in plain sight!) an additional concept: consumer surplus. That's somehow supposed to determine the value of a foregone opportunity.
This strikes me as utterly nuts. This is an inappropriate use for consumer surplus, isn't it?
Further, in the example given us, we are not told any specifics of the demand schedule for the prime concert (Hiilliard/Clapton). Because it was a freely obtained pleasure, we don't know enough about the trade-off between the two to make monetary comparisons about the choice. We just know that I'd rather spend nothing and listen to Hilliard than spend $40 and listen to Kronos. I could fiddle with my second counter-example and alter my demand for Hilliard. It may be that Kirchner and Milhaud is just way more important to me than any amount of singing. Say I'd never spend more than $15 on any concert of the human voice. And still, I'd attend the free concert of Rautavaara and Pärt choral music. Why? Because it was free! The opportunity cost of going is missing the Kronos, yes. But I'd have to pay for the Kronos! By going to a free concert that I'd only be willing to pay $15, to miss a concert I'd be willing to pay $50?!? Does this make sense? Of course. Because now the $40 I won't spend on Kronos now goes to, say, seeing a movie, dining out for two, and attending a local concert featuring some unknown-to-me string quartet playing Beethoven.
The trouble with the example is that it, like most such examples, it is not robust enough to explain real-world decision-making. Oh, and it gets bogged down in consumer surplus, which is not related to opportunity cost at all. Different sort of concept for a different sort of problem.
After all, opportunity cost is value foregone by choice. Consumer surplus is a theoretical additional cost that would have been paid, in price terms, had it been asked for on the market. It is relevant to a number of problems, but not this. The ten dollar consumer surplus in the quiz is not foregone, because to obtain it one would have to spend $40. The need to spend $40 that night was foregone, making the hypothetical consumer surplus just so much vapor. The idea expressed by Tabarrok is that consumer surplus is the only benefit obtained by going to the second concert. This is just so absurd! The thing itself, the concert, is the thing valued. If one were choosing between a $50 concert with $5 consumer surplus and a $40 concert with a $15 consumer surplus, that would still have no bearing on the choice — if both tickets were free. The two concerts are valued evenly, barring cost. But I would go for the $40 concert because it would free up ten actual dollars (not fifteen) to spend on something else of value.
I didn't read all the comments on this, on Marginal Revolution, so I imagine that somebody else said what I'm saying, but more concisely. Oh, well. The cost of reading all those comments was just too high. It's easier writing.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | September 7, 2005 | Netizen permalink
Names,p. 210
economics value See: Opportunity costs vs. consumer surplus
Yesterday I expressed my surprise at the surprise of another. Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution had expressed shock at the whopping percentage of professional economists getting wrong what he said was an elementary case of opportunity cost.
Funny thing was, as far as I could tell, Tabarrok himself had got it wrong. The answer he said was the correct one was, in fact, quite wrong.
Surprise, surprise, but the quiz itself was poorly devised — unless it was intended to fool nearly everybody, in which case it did. The proper answer was not its supplied a, b, c or d multiple choice answers, but an unlisted none of the above.
I don't know what the quiz-makers intentions were, but the mention and talk of consumer surplus in the quiz was a red herring. Consumer surplus had nothing to do with. So I argued yesterday.
The error in Tabarrok's reasoning is so clear that it's hard to believe that an economist, trained at George Mason University or otherwise, would make it. He pretended that the net benefit of purchasing a good was its consumer surplus. Wrong, wrong, wrong. For the consumer, even had there been no consumer surplus, the net benefit would have remained the same. One chooses A over B, and the difference is the net benefit. Consumer surplus is the difference between A at the market price, and A at the price one would have paid over the market price had the seller asked for it and other consumers bought it. In other words, net benefit
is about opportunity cost, which is a real-world phenomena embedded in every choice, while consumer surplus is a counterfactual phenomena that has bearing on the consumer's choice only as it helps determine the scale of values (demand schedule) for that consumer. Opportunity cost is the cost understood in terms of a substitution actually made in the real world. Consumer surplus is a net benefit, yes, but understood only in terms of a counterfactual situation. The consumer does not choose attain a consumer surplus as such; the structure of the market is what determines the consumer surplus. Opportunity is real-world; consumer surplus is a counterfactual fantasy (nonetheless important to talk about in some circumstances).
But errors by economists are common, not rare. I was reading Amasa Walker's Money and Mixed Currency the other day. Walker, a prominent 19th century American economist loosely affiliated with the French Liberal School, starts his book well, with the difficulties of barter and the advantages of money as a medium of exchange. On the second page of his little treatise, he states that We learn the true nature of money, then, from its origin, and the definition from the offices it performs.
He then explains that, as money's first office,
or function, is as an instrument of exchange, and this may be conventional. All very well and good. But on the third page he comes to the second office
: Money as a standard of value:
Value is not conventional. It is absolute. It is the amount of labor contained in any desired object.
And here the author goes off on a tangent quite familiar to readers of pre-marginalist economics, but one that makes almost no sense to me. No amount of labor can be contained in an object. That must be a figurative, not literal, meaning. But even figuratively, it makes precious little sense.
Let's take something I know about. Hack writing. I write squibs and essays for a living. (For now, most do not appear under my name.) I also blog here. I wrote, yesterday, over 1400 words on opportunity cost and the consumer surplus. It took me about an hour or so to write it. The previous week I had spent the same amount of time to write about 900 words. The same amount of labor. And yet I'll be paid for last week's labor, but not for this week's. Why? The value is different. The one essay I sold to someone. The other I offered for free. Why didn't I sell it too, since it contained the same amount of labor and (therefore, according to Amasa Walker) value?
I submit that it does not have the same amount of value. Why? Because Amasa Walker — and hundreds of pre-Jevonsian economists — were wrong. Value is not intimately related to labor. And the value of an object certainly does not depend directly on the labor put into its construction. After all, I spent the same amount (if not more) of thought and effort into my blog piece. But the other piece sold, and the blog piece would have sold to no one.
I wrote one to be saleable. The other I wrote to be freely presented in a different kind of venue. The saleable item is much more polished. But I have this feeling that the blog piece, though rough and could have used more editorial work by me, after the initial draft, was onto something of greater importance. (Yes, I'm one of those fools who think the truth matters.)
Further, the labor theory of value espoused by Amasa Walker and hundreds of other economists missed the obvious elephant in the room: What is the value of labor? What determines labor's value? Mere time? Effort? Pain? Of course not. Labor is valuable only when its product is valued. It is valued more the more its product is valued. It is valued less, the less labor's product is valued.
Value is not absolute. Walker was wrong. Value is subjective, relational, perhaps intersubjective. It took economists a long time to realize this. Hundreds and hundreds of economsists made this error over and over. Even some of my favorite ones, like Destutt de Tracy. Only a few prior to Jevons and Menger resisted: Nassau Senior, Auguste Walras, to name two. Just so, I guess, it will take economists some time to realize the real import of consumer surplus and opportunity cost. These things are hard to figure, amazingly enough. The logic of choice is difficult, in part because it is not normative but explanatory, and we go by our everyday lives making decisions without benefit of its advice. It's something that inheres choice and action whether we will it or no. And since the explanation doesn't make a difference to our actions, really, it's not something of obvious advantage for us to know. So the explanations themselves appear arcane.
As is much of science, really. Finding the advantages is something only a few rare engineers or entrepreneurs can manage. The advantages of truth are lost on most.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | September 8, 2005 | Netizen permalink
Almost immediately after the hurricane, Bush-haters began dumping on the current administration and government. I didn't join, largely because the blame seemed to be unreasonably weighted. It was obvious that the local governments in the area did the worst jobs, with most shame going to the executives of New Orleans and Louisiana.
Since those initial forays into blame came out, some very interesting stories did surface. The general upshot seems to be that, after 9/11, our federal government has not exactly honed its ability to cooperate to help mass suffering of American citizens. So, by George W. Bush's own standards, he does deserve some blame. He's failed.
Of course, I still prefer not to cast stones at such easy targets. Governments have almost never done what we expect our government to do well. If we want our government to handle these kinds of crises, then we must provide the leadership that would provide priorities and a sense of urgency to maintaining those priorities to our ostensible leaders. But, as anyone who's watched Congress knows, these last four years have proved to be nothing other than a spending binge, a living demonstration of a complete lack of ability to set priorities.
I was most amused, however, at the reaction of two of my friends. They said things I haven't heard elsewhere. They expressed utter disgust at the remaining inhabitants of New Orleans. Why worry about people who wouldn't leave to save themselves? If they risk dying so easily, don't bother with them. Let them die already.
These weren't my card-carrying
Social Darwinist friends who said this. These were two Mugwumps who couldn't be more different — while at the same time be homosexual or bi- single males. I found their utter contempt for New Orleanites refreshing. I'm not saying I quite share their disgust, but I understand it.
As for me, I rather admire the survivors now in the city, the ones who trust their government so little that they won't leave a city now said to be on the verge of a major pestilence. Perhaps this is where government failure really exists. In the inability of the government to convince us that it's just there to help us.
Well, if anything shows our governments' inability to be sanely helpful, it's the governments' own roving bands of gun-toting looters and petty tyrants. As shown in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.
Oh, and by the way, don't you regard the blame game
as one of the most annoying rhymes of our time?
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | September 10, 2005 | Netizen permalink
this monstrous imposition upon Jesus; and Shaw was also wrong to attribute Paul's celibacy to his
terror of sex and terror of life.For Jesus and Paul, as for the Essenes, such drastic measures were not a reflection of sexual revulsion but a necessity to prepare for the end of the world, and to free oneself for
the age to come.
The Kingdom of God is at Hand,p. 17
libertarianism conservatism See: Libertarian aggression
I've numerous libertarian friends who read, and even contribute to, Chronicles, a paleo-conservative magazine. The Rockford Files, the magazine's blog, has engaged in quite a few debates with libertarians recently, where the magazine's officials attack, again and again, libertarian ideas. While I've occasionally found good stuff in the magazine and on the blog, there is this creepy element that crops up quite frequently. I sometimes ascribe it to xenophobia and hysterical fear. So I'm not, like my friends, a frequent reader.
A July post on the blog made this element of fear very clear. The author of the entry, Scott P. Richert, blogmeister and executive editor of Chronicles, tries to engage libertarians by imagining an anti-porn proviso in an elaborate community-wide covenant system:
Imagine a small town of, say, 2,000 people. All of the property owners in the town, in accord with the unanimous dislike of the residents for pornography, voluntarily agree to impose a zoning restriction on using their property to sell pornography. To forestall any philosophical objections, the restriction is revisited every time a piece of property passes to a new owner (by, say, sale or bequest). The vote is conducted by secret ballot, to minimize the possibility of the vote being skewed by the threat of violence; if any property owner votes against the restriction, the restriction is repealed.
So far, so good: I suspect that, with the exception of a few libertarians who believe that any gathering for even vaguely political purposes is illegitimate or that no property owner can impose voluntary restrictions on the use of his own property, the vast majority of libertarians would say that the situation I have described does not violate the principle of non-aggression.
Let's say, now, that the ownership of a piece of property at one end of the main street of the town, by the highway, passes to someone who does not subscribe to the moral consensus. The restriction is removed, and the property owner opens a business selling pornography, showing pornographic films, renting out hot tubs, and employing women from outside the town to . . . um . . . maintain the hot tubs. What recourse do the other 1,999 people in town have?
Well, none, of course. Not merely in libertarian theory, but according to the terms of the actual covenant system, as described by the blogger, there's no recourse. After all, he had set up a system which could have been made a bit more stringent, as far as I'm concerned. (I certainly did not read all — or even much — of the commentary on the site on this particular scenario; talk about overkill.)
The blogger's point, however, is interesting:
By the way, this is not an idle, abstract intellectual exercise: In all important points, this situation really occurred in my hometown, a small West Michigan village of 2,000, in the early 1980's.
As always, I welcome your comments, and I especially invite any libertarians to explain (a) any misrepresentations I have made of their position; and (b) why one man should be given the tyrannical power to undermine the moral consensus of my hometown.
Very polite. But hysterical nonetheless. One man doesn't go along with the community on a barely-restrictive restrictive covenant, and our blogger describes the business he sets up as evidence of a tyrannical power to undermine the moral consensus of my hometown.
Wow. What tyranny!
I remember that my parents refused to sign the local store's application for a license to sell beer and wine. They disapproved of such sales. But I always thought that their expression of their values was tyrannical, not the merchant's offering beer and wine to those who'd pay for it.
Of course, a community without drinkers has a very different complexion than a community with drinkers. But freedom puts some limits on our desire to create certain kinds of community, uniformity. I really have no trouble with this.
So let's change the example a wee bit. Instead of a restrictive covenant on porn distribution, it's a restrictive covenant on non-Christian religions that's at stake. Everyone agrees that no heathens will be allowed to set up worship within the boundaries set up by the initial agreement to the covenant.
Someone buys a property at the end of the road, at the borderline, and notices that its legal for him not to go along with the crowd — they hadn't really put many restrictions into that covenant. So he goes ahead and sets up a New Age Reading Room, and partitions off his land with the new property owner setting up a little mosque.
Both the New Age book service and the Muslim place of worship go against the grain of the moral consensus of the community. Both will tempt youngsters and oldsters to believe differently, and act in ways not prescribed by the original religious consensus.
Is it tyranny?
No.
To suggest such is to admit that one is a weak fellow, that one's religion or values are too weak to survive competition. And instead of cave in, if one wishes to remain fervently committed to one's previous values, then one either accepts that others are free to choose differently, or else one whines about the tyranny
of the competing ideas.
I'm amused by this conservative's idea of consensus.
For him, a change in consensus isn't supposed to happen. Someone breaking ranks has committed a gross error, or somesuch. In the real work, however, consensuses come and go. They are not that easy to achieve, actually, and so they do often break up. Do we all agree on what speed limit should be placed upon a road? No. So, much harder it is to determine the values that will work to prepare us for an Afterlife we have no access to, and a Deity Who does not deign to speak or visit with us. It's all guesswork, speculation, and bluster. It can't be anything else.
Which is why some religious folk resort so quickly to physical and legal maneuvers. Their faith is so weak that they have to increase it with the power of law or the state or coercion or what-have-you. Pitiful creatures, they.
Now, I find some Jewish and Christian notions just as repulsive as I find some New Age and Islamic notions. But I've no interest legislating — or even lawyering — the temptations
of such ideas away. Until physical threats are made against me or innocent victims, I've not much recourse. I'm not even interested in using legal clout to set up restrictive covenants for all sorts of things, though I certainly allow others to try to be restrictive where and how it can be done civilly. I suggest those who try this venue be a little more creative than Scott P. Richert.
And those who don't, and find themselves surrounded by heathens and perverts? Well, treat people peacefully, and work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Why should you let others do what they want, even if you don't approve? Because freedom provides limits, limits on your tyranny.
As for me, I neither fear nor tremble at the vile religious practices — or the distasteful sexual practices — of others.
I guess that makes me one rugged individualist. An uncaring libertarian, perhaps, not mindful of weaker brethren amonst the paleos. Sob, sob.
Frankly, I thought it made me, merely, a responsible adult.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | September 11, 2005 | Netizen permalink
The Two Streams of English,p. 29
evolution creationism See: The Daily Show
Last night Jon Stewart debuted the weeklong fake debate, Evolution, Schmevolution,
which mainly consisted of making fun of creationists and, well, modern life. He showed a nice illustration of human evolution using a gag almost identical to one I'd suggested months ago to my favorite cartoonist, Jim Gill. The Daily Show put it out first, and there's another gag whose time came and went.
I enjoyed Stewart's approach to creation science,
which emphasized the world's creation myths. These stories, Stewart says, allow people to laugh at and kill one another.
As one should expect, he balls up Darwin's arguments. He didn't mention Darwin's important concept sexual selection, and he didn't explain natural selection, instead imputing random mutations as the source for variation in Darwin's theory. Darwin did not write about mutations, at least not as the source for variation. (Darwin merely assumed that normal variation through breeding could account for, well, most new things, which then go through a process of natural selection.)
Perhaps Stewart will do better tonight.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | September 13, 2005 | Netizen permalink
more plotand thereby committed himself to a major fault in his novels, which are blemished by contrived incidents and too obviously planned coincidences. In thus directing Hardy's genius, Meredith curiously indicated a path that was foreign to himself. His own genius as a novelist was as nearly independent of story-telling as is possible in fiction.
The Closing of an Age,p. 256
sigh
Too busy to blog, as they say. But I've still a few things I've been meaning to say
on this blog:
criminal negligencecharge is a good instance of excessive interference in contracts by the state.)
main Macs.The one good thing about OS 9 is that it works with my old Wacom tablet, which provides a great method of pointing and clicking.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | September 18, 2005 | Netizen permalink
economics marginalism See: Mises in Defense of Edgeworth
The marginalist revolution of economics kicked off, in earnest, in the 1870s. Three books ushered in the new approach: W.S. Jevons's Theory of Political Economy, Carl Menger's Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre, and Leon Walras's Elements of Pure Economics. Of the three works, Walras's requires a high literacy in math. Menger's work contains almost no math, and is utterly clear, if not exactly a triumph of literary excellence. Jevons's work is the simplest of all, a breeze to read, and includes an elementary use of mathematics to explain the breakthrough approach.
Menger's book has held its value the best. Sticking so close to basics, it contains the least errors. Jevons's work, though, doesn't get enough attention. It's true, he runs afoul of the cardinalist error, the idea that utility can be measured. As a number of economists (including Ludwig von Mises) later explained, utility cannot be measured, and though Menger seemed to imply it could, he didn't go overboard in this direction.
Alfred Marshall is usually given credit for consolidating Jevons's work into a generally more classical appraoch. British economics advanced, we are often told, from Marshall.
Thankfully, that's not exactly true. As Ludwig von Mises noted in a newly translated short book review from 1919, it was F. Y. Edgeworth who really dominated English economics at the end of the 19th century. He was by far the better economist, as well as the editor of an important economics journal.
Mises's short review is now available in English on the Mises Institute website, with an introduction by Joseph T. Salerno. I can't say it's a very helpful review, since no doctrine of Edgeworth's is really explained or challenged. All Mises really does is the journalist's job — oh, and picks at the nagging problem of the value of mathematics to economic science. Interesting, but only mildly so.
It's my job, of course, to bring the discussion of Edgeworth down to my level. I've never heard anyone mention this, but, it seems obvious to me: Isn't it amusing that Edgeworth's name is a near-perfect translation of the key marginalist concept, marginal utility?
Margin = edge, utility = worth.
Or thereabouts.
With a name like Edgeworth, he almost had to be an economist of the marginalist school!
I'm afraid I've never read a lick of Edgeworth, though. I've studied Jevons, with profit, and Wicksteed, another economist who stuck to the Jevonsian approach rather than whore after classical concepts. It was surely the presence in England of these two that leavened the lump of British Political Economy in the first quarter of the 20th century, staving off the decline into Keynesian gibberish by, why, at least a year or two.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | September 20, 2005 | Netizen permalink
The Elementary Theory of Value,Chapter I,
The Origin of Value,p. 5
utilitywithout thinking of
costssimply neglects, in the utility of one production, the utility of the others. And whoever produces, in the individual case, at the least cost, produces, on the whole, with the highest utility, inasmuch as he thus saves all the opportunities of utility possible, and consequently in the long run utilises all these opportunities to the utmost extent.
The Natural Cost Value of Products,Chapter VI,
The Law of Costs and the General Law of Value,p. 183
Macintosh TCO See: OS 9 Forever
Since losing my main business Mac to burglars last week — along with quite a bit of other equipment — I've been working to bring up an older Mac to a level high enough to use OS X. I miss my Blue-and-White Panther box. I'd upgraded it almost to the level where it was perfect for me. All I was missing was a headset; with it I would have been up and running at perfect efficiency! And then: gone.
The burglars did not take my too-heavy-to-run-with Mac that was also on my desk, my Power Macintosh G3 All-In-One, fondly known for its odd look as the Molar.
(Yes, it looks like a big tooth.) Underpowered, with low memory (192MB RAM), that's what I've been working with since the theft.
And it's been working pretty well in OS 9.1. No major hiccoughs. No system freezes. Finder Mail, the only email program for the classic Mac OS that I trust, froze a few minutes ago, but it didn't take the system down with it, and it started up right again, immediately afterwards. It's almost like the heaven of OS X! Rock-solid reliable computing.
Since starting with OS X a few months ago (and by the way, the burglars nabbed my discs of OS X 1.x!), I've been a big fan. After upgrading to Panther, I've been in something close to ecstasy (X-stasy, I guess — just don't type in www.x-stasy.com). Still, I'll give OS 9 its due: it was and is a great system.
Here are a few things I really like about OS 9:
OS 9 is so good that I'm going to keep OS 9.1 running on at least one old Mac box in my office. I may not be quite in the OS 9 Forever!
camp, but hey: at least it ain't Windows!
On a not entirely unrelated topic, I downloaded Ubuntu Linux the other day. When I actually install it onto something, I'll no doubt log my progress, or lack thereof.
But back to Macs: Apple's approach has an obvious advantage over the Wintel approach. Its computers have a far longer useful life. This decreases the total cost of ownership (TCO) by allowing old computers to linger long after Wintel boxes have been rightly recycled. Macs are often more expensive to start with. This puts off poor people and fools. No doubt my burglars took what they took thinking they were grabbing equipment at high resale. Little did they know that even my best computer was six years' old and can be had in the used market for about $100. Still, it ran the latest software, and did it well. Flawlessly.
At the community computer center next door, the PC users were joking with me at how disappointed my burglars were going to be with my Macs' low pawn-shop value. One user tried to make a general anti-Mac argument, at that point, but I stopped him. My six-year-old Mac would run the latest OS without a hitch. Try putting Windows XP on a six-year-old PC and see what you get!
Case closed.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | September 22, 2005 | Netizen permalink
Constitution hermeneutics See: What's love got to do with it?
An interesting puzzle for hermeneuticians: do Mission Statements ever state actual missions?
I'm old fashioned. I believe the answer is Yes.
But I also realize that Mission Statements (or, as they are sometimes referred to, Value Statements) are mainly used to put one in the proper mind to read the rest of the document.
In a business plan, the Mission Statement comes early on. It's what gets quoted in company p.r. and on the website. But the business plan itself is what directs the enterprise — if anything other than the managers actually do.
And yes, sometimes Missions Statements are there just to blow smoke in our eyes.
Constitutional interpretation often gets bogged down in the United States' Constitution's Mission Statement, which we call the Preamble.
Paul Jacob, in his weekend column on Townhall, insists that the proper interpretation of the Constitution would have us concentrate on, well, the Amble. No Pre
about it. Witty, yes; and savvy, too.
His title quotes Tina Turner: What's love got to do with it?
About the Constitution, I'm sure we can all agree with him: nothing.
Why? It's not that love's "a second-hand emotion." It's a first-order emotion and sense of dedication and a whole lot more. But love's tricky to legislate.
Unfortunately, as Jacob relates, some kids aren't quite aware of this. They think that the Preamble should list some basic rights, and among these rights are entitlements to electricity, food, water, schools and love.
Who should have them? Everyone, apparently, including kids, pets and adults.
The kids are unaware that the easiest way to conjure mass love entails mass hate. How is it, again, that sociologists put it? Ah, here it is: In-Group Love feeds off Out-Group Hate.
And that's getting close to the business of government, the very dark heart of the worst of government.
We should laugh at this example of childishness, of course, just as we laugh at the darnedest things kids say. Jesus pours buckets of water from heaven to make rain
; Islands float on the sea
; Poop stinks so we don't step in it.
The trouble is, as Constitutional revisions go, the kids' version is pretty much in line with the mainstream of 20th century thought.
One might have hoped that a new direction for this new century was in the offing. But don't suffer the little children to point the way.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | September 25, 2005 | Netizen permalink
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