I just came across a fascinating read this morning. I’ve been busy as hell, so the link and the analysis will have to wait, but I’ll give you a hint: it has to do with “neoliberalism” and the authoritarian state.
I promise I’ve got a bunch of good stuff coming up. It’s all just sitting in the ‘drafts’ file of the blog, waiting to be finished up. School is a bitch this quarter though, so forgive me.
I have a post I’ve been working on for like, three weeks now, and I just can’t seem to finish it. Stay tuned!
Fascists Arrest Woman Blogger
Links to the Spanish and English language blogs of a brave Cuban blogger have been on this blog for years. This courageous anti-dictatorship woman’s name is Yoani Sanchez. She was arrested recently by the Castro fascist police. Below is her communication from the English language blog. Notably, I was unable to reach her Spanish blog today.
Read the rest, and do your part to help spread the word. Thugs like Castro would have been gone a long time ago if more people like the arrested blogger had stood up and said ‘no’ the first time around.
It doesn’t help that thugs in DC put sanctions on the Cuban state, either, but I am digressing…
Self-described socialist Mike Beggs writes:
Academic survival is, of course, cold comfort. Does Marxism have a political future? Hobsbawm is clearly not optimistic […] Those of us who have come so very late to the party, so to speak, inevitably have a different perspective. We discovered Marx long after the flaws of Marxism and “really-existing socialism” had become obvious, in a period of protracted recession in the labor movement. And yet, we still found something of value. Many, probably most, of us learned much of our Marx at university, deeply impressed by that intellectual flowering of the 1970s which Hobsbawm sees as the high-water mark. The course of his life has followed an epic rise and fall which naturally shapes his conclusions. For us, there is a lot more future to come.
You can read the rest of the article here. EJ Hobsbawm was a prolific Marxist historian, and I have come across his own work in my studies on national identity. You can find a decent list of his books here. RIP.
Separatist agitations in Spain have prompted some observers to reconsider the concept of secession as a viable option in politics again. The BBC has a very good report here, and the Economist has an even better one here.
When I was taking an Honors course on Western civilization and we got to the European Union, a thought immediately came to my head and I shared it with the class: does the European Union mean the demise of the big nation-states of Europe?
My hope is that it will, but my Professor and my Left-leaning classmates either thought ‘no’ or had not thought about this question at all. One sexy girl did think it was possible, though I think she was just humoring me so that I would ask her out on a date (yes, I did, but she couldn’t get into UCLA, though, so she ended up at Berkeley!).
I thought about the confederation of states in Europe that the EuroZone has created, and remembered that many regions within the nation-states of Europe have harbored separatist sentiments since being absorbed into the nation-states of Europe (sometimes hundreds of years ago, sometimes decades ago), as well as the peaceful split-up of Czechoslovakia into two states within the EuroZone.
The purpose of the nation-states was to streamline trade between regions by standardizing trading policy and eliminating parochial tariffs that regions within the nation-states had erected over the course of centuries. So, in what is now Germany, for example, there were hundreds of small states that each had their own economic policies, and most of these states had erected protectionist tariffs, even on neighboring states. The German state standardized trading policy in what is now Germany so that a tariff-free zone of trade eventually emerged within Germany. The federal set-up of the United States accomplished the same thing.
Now, though, the European Union has essentially taken the place of the nation-state as the chief entity in charge of standardizing trading policies in Europe. My line of thought leads me to conclude that this political setup is a great opportunity for regions that have been absorbed into larger nation-states to assert more fiscal (local taxes) and political (local elections) independence because of these region’s new interdependence with a larger part of the European economy thanks to the elimination of tariffs between the larger nation-states currently in place. In short, the confederation has provided the opportunity for smaller states to emerge while at the same time eliminating the parochial and self-defeating aspects (trade policy) of small state polities that often accompanies “smallness.” The best of both worlds has the chance to flower: local governance and total participation in world trade.
I realize that the EuroZone shot itself in the foot with the creation of a central bank and the attempts to delegate to itself ever more political power, but with these two blemishes notwithstanding the European Union is a good thing for both peace and prosperity.
The question of secession in political science has recently emerged as a good one for many scholars, but unfortunately their focus has tilted heavily towards Europe and Canada (Quebec and Nunavut). If we apply this concept to other regions of the globe – especially China, Africa, the Middle East and India – then the notions of violence and despotism that Westerners largely harbor towards these regions disappears.
I hope this makes sense. If it doesn’t you know where the ‘comments’ section is!
Dr. Foldvary is renowned for his predictive capabilities, especially after calling the 2008 financial crash in 2007. However, I’d like to highlight his keen sense of direction and justice in regards to foreign affairs as well.
From a 2005 article on the situation in the Middle East, Dr. Foldvary writes:
Before Israel become an independent state in 1948, there were 150,000 Jewish citizens in Iraq. Israelites have lived in Iraq for over 2500 years. In 586 B.C.E., Babylon conquered Judea and brought many Jews to what is now Iraq. Baghdad later became a major center of Jewish thought. During the 1930s and 1940s, Nazi ideology infected the Arab region. In 1941, led by a mufti allied with Nazi Germany, there was a pro-Nazi coup, followed by killing, raping, and looting of Jews. Iraqi Jews call this the “Farhud,” or “violent dispossession.” The British army then came in and squashed the pogrom.
After World War II, the government of Iraq enacted Nazi-like anti-Jewish laws. Most of Iraq’s Jews fled to Israel. In 1952, the Iraqi government prohibited Jews from emigrating. Additional restrictions were placed on Jews in 1963 when the Ba’ath Party came to power. After 1967, Jewish property was confiscated and Jews were executed. Most remaining Jews were allowed to emigrate from Iraq during the 1970s.
This Jew-hating ideology still reigns in Iraq. There is also a concern that if Iraqi Jews are allowed to return and become Iraqi nationals, they will seek to be compensated for their confiscated property. Also, if Iraqis abroad are able to vote in Iraqi elections, Israeli Iraqis would be voting also, and many Iraqi Arabs don’t want foreign Jews voting in their elections.
Muslims, especially Arabs, denounce Israel for not letting Arab Palestinians return to their original places. How, then, can Arabs justify not allowing Jews to return?
Now Dr. Foldvary is not pointing fingers, mind you. He’s just trying to point out the intricacies of Middle Eastern politics and introduce a level of fairness in the whole damned process. Do read the whole thing.
We interrupt this program to bring you some awesome pop-cultural news:
And a tidbit of an old video:
Oh What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me
I knew I chose anthropology for a reason.
Conservative circles are celebrating a new, fairly courageous movie about fanatical, primitive Islamist Iran, “The Stoning of Soraya M.” It’s after the true story of the public execution by stoning of a young mother accused of adultery in a backward Iranian village. The movie sounds well made, affecting, but the story is a cop-out.
It turns out the young woman was framed. She was not guilty of adultery but the victim of machination by her evil husband and weak officials. No commentator or critic I have read has asked what are to me obvious questions:
First, I want to know what is the fate in backward areas of Iran of women who are correctly convicted of adultery. Is Iran a society where the penalty for a woman who has sex with a man not her husband is an especially barbarous form of capital punishment?
Second, I want to know whether or not the same could happen in Tehran or in some other of Iran’s major cities. Even the most civilized societies experience occasional barbarous acts in their backward areas. The question is this: Is the Islamic Republic an uncivilized society?
Third, I want to know how the kind of Islamic law that prevails in Iran defines adultery. I ask, because several years ago, in Muslim Nigeria, a young woman was sentenced to death by stoning for becoming pregnant after divorcing her husband. (Her sentence was eventually commuted and the rest of the world lost track of her.) Continue reading
For those of you who don’t know, co-editor Fred Foldvary is an editor for the Journal, and Warren Gibson is the math reader. From the website:
James Tooley on Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo’s Poor Economics: Banerjee and Duflo propose to bypass the “big questions” of economic development and focus instead on “small steps” to improvement. But, says Tooley, they proceed to make big judgments about education in developing countries, judgments not supported by their own evidence.
Why the Denial? Pauline Dixon asks why writers at UNESCO, Oxfam, and elsewhere have denied or discounted the success and potentiality of private schooling in developing countries.
Neither necessary nor sufficient, but… Thomas Mayer critically appraises Stephen Ziliak and Deirdre McCloskey’s influential writings, particularly The Cult of Statistical Significance. McCloskey and Ziliak reply.
Was Occupational Licensing Good for Minorities? Daniel Klein, Benjamin Powell, and Evgeny Vorotnikov take issue with a JLE article by Marc Law and Mindy Marks. Law and Marks reply.
Mankiw vs. DeLong and Krugman on the CEA’s Real GDP Forecasts in Early 2009: David Cushman shows how a careful econometrician might have adjudicated the debate among these leading economists over the likelihood of a macroeconomic rebound.
Rating Government Bonds: Can We Raise Our Grade? Marc Joffe, a former Senior Director at Moody’s Analytics, discusses limitations of the methods employed at the credit rating agencies and problems in trying to infer default risks from market prices, suggesting another approach.
Also, if you’re unsatisfied with the status quo in terms of political parties, including the Libertarian party, Dr. Foldvary has established the Free Earth Party for you to look at. Be sure to check it out!
I didn’t catch President Obama’s speech to the UN last night. I had other things to do (like stare at a brick wall).
I think the UN actually deserves credit for helping to avert nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States. The UN also did a good job of containing any French, British, or Chinese jealousies that could have erupted during the Cold War by keeping them included in the decision-making process. The diplomatic institutions it put in place were voluntary and had three clear-cut goals in mind: 1) avert nuclear war between the two rising superpowers, 2) avert rivalries between the two fading European powers not defeated by the United States, and 3) ensure that tensions in the Far East remained manageable.
The UN did all of these fairly well.
Today, though, I think the UN is a sham. The few good programs it has, such as the ones focusing on health and clean water, can be better run by various agencies in a decentralized manner. The goals of the post-Cold War UN are vague and paternalistic, which is why I suspect it attracts the curiosity, awe and respect of so many young Leftists. Continue reading
I have been struggling for three days to swim back to the surface and breathe again. Since the monstrous health care bill reform passed on Sunday, furor and something approaching despair have made me numb and mute. As people begin actually reading the 2700 pages, bad news cascade after bad news. I have been looking for the silver lining and found only one: It looks like the portability of health insurance will become a fact. That’s good. It was intolerable that people stayed in jobs they hated and refrained from entrepreneurship because they were too afraid to lose their health coverage. I think that’s all.
The rest of it is a disaster for our future. Note that every other political defeat does not make me feel the way I do now. Alternance in power is a good thing. When the other guys get their way with something I don’t want, I figure it’s the price I pay for stable and peaceful government. Certainly, I don’t want to live in a country where the losers routinely stage coups or start revolutions.
I don’t like most of what I know is in the law. I fear what else is in there that I will only discover later. I am sure the cost of the programs the law creates will undermine severely our future economic development. I suspect hardly anyone one will benefit. Instead, the overall quality of health care will decline. Most of all, I am aggrieved by the process by which the law became law, against clearly expressed majorities of opinion. The process smells of fascism and of the twisted parliamentary (ostensibly legal) methods by which the Communist Party gained control of Czechoslovakia in 1948. Continue reading
If a man tormented by starvation and civil war in South Sudan declares that he is “happy, no, very happy, a regular three, mind you,” we have learned something about the human spirit and its sometimes stirring, sometimes discouraging, oddity. But we inch toward madness if we go beyond people’s lips and claim to read objectively, or subjectively, their hearts in a 1-2-3 way that is comparable with their neighbors or comparable with the very same South Sudanese man when he wins an immigration lottery and gets to Albany.
From Deirdre McCloskey in the New Republic. It’s about the mismeasurement of happiness. Read the whole thing, but don’t you dare smile!
…so Tallahassee can develop a commercial spaceport.
This is both good and bad. Here’s why:
Liquidating NASA as a government entity will likely have the same type of effect on society that liquidating the computer industry had. There is a lot of technology in NASA that is just waiting to be developed by average, everyday geeks wanting to get rich.
Unfortunately, when I read that the state of Florida wants to buy up land and, presumably, technology from NASA I see a big problem ahead. It’s the same type of problem that always happens when “privatization” occurs. Instead of full-fledged privatization, as was the case when computer-based technology was passed on to the private sector, what we are seeing is a hybrid-type of privatization where the state still has a say in the process.
What’ll end up happening if Florida is any indication is probably nothing with big financial loses. “Nothing” by itself, however, is a bad sign, because again, there is a lot of potential bottled up in the NASA program. If the politicians in Florida really want a commercial spaceport, they would do well to heed to historical precedent and let the greedy geeks of the world make it happen with their own time and money being invested and potentially lost, rather than the taxpayers.
Many good economists have been talking about a “great stagnation” looming ahead for the West – a period where all of the available technology has been used up, as have all the available new ideas – and this stagnation may well come true, but I think that the de-socialization of NASA could help to alleviate this looming problem in a major way. It’s a shame that politicians think so lowly of their fellow citizens.
Also on the backburner: aside from the inevitable failure of a project like this, think of the ominous associations being created with ventures like these. Government and business working hand-in-hand to create a new niche in the economy for the citizens of Florida and the United States. This is the worst kind of fascism at work. The private sector could do much better, as could the American people.
Marxists’ Apartment A Microcosm of Why Marxism Doesn’t Work. From the Onion.
Slavic Feminists in Paris (Not Safe for Work)
Is Peronism back in Argentina? Pay attention to the Left’s rhetoric
I leave my newspaper on the table outside as I dart inside the coffee shop to get more sugar. When I return, three seconds later, a middle-aged woman is walking briskly across the street, holding my newspaper in her hand.
Hey, I shout fairly amicably, I was not finished with my paper.
She turns around and throws the paper on the table near me.
I don’t want your stupid paper, she says. What would I do with it? I am legally blind.
Fact is that she is wearing unusually thick glasses. Point well taken. What do I know?
I drive into an unevenly paved parking lot behind a woman in a big van. When she makes a right-hand turn, I spot a blue handicapped sticker on her windshield. Just as she is about to place her van in the reserved handicapped space, her engine stops. After several useless attempts to re-start it, she steps out of the vehicle and starts pushing.
I am a real sweetheart and also an old-fashioned nice manly man so, my first reflex is to get out and to give her a hand. I abstain because I soon judge her efforts to be fruitless. She is pushing that heavy van up a significant bump. I think there is no way the two of us can vanquish gravity and place the van in its spot.
Then, the woman braces herself; the back of her dress rises and her big calves become like hard river stones; she harrumphs once and the van ends up perfectly parked in the handicapped spot. I learned another lesson: Don’t judge a book by its cover, or even by its title. Continue reading
Notes On Liberty 