But is it really a black swan if it is done purposefully? Of course, with this crowd, it’s hard to tell which consequences are intended and which are inadvertent.
Category Archives: Economics
Three Fallacies
…in Obama’s public-sector “stimulus” strategy. Not surprising, since he’s demonstrated himself on multiple occasions to be an economic ignoramus.
A Crowdsourcing Request
I’d guess that all of Obama’s speeches are archived somewhere. Could someone do a search on them and compare the number of times he’s used the phrase “create jobs” compares to the number of times he’s used the phrase “create wealth”? I’m guessing the number of uses of the latter is approximately, or exactly zero. If so, it will be fodder for a rant on his Marxist tendencies. You can guess the theme. In fact, here’s the Twitter version: You can create jobs without creating wealth, but it’s very hard to do the latter.
China’s Space Race
It isn’t with NASA, or any government. It’s with SpaceX and U.S. private industry. Though it’s amusing that the author actually believes that the SLS will be sending anyone to the moon or asteroids.
If The Young Knew What Was Good For Them
…they’d join the Tea Party. It doesn’t help that the kleptocratic collectivists have taken over both higher and lower education.
Losing The Universe
…with LOST. I have a piece up at Open Market about what a disaster ratifying the Law of the Sea Treaty could be for space development.
Tapping The Riches
…of space. Yes, what’s primarily been holding us back is risk aversion. Constellation was a perfect example of it.
Fighting LOST
So Don Rumsfeld testified against ratifying the Law of the Sea Treaty. This is a key point:
Rumsfeld called “an idea of enormous consequence” the fact that “anyone who finds a way to make use of such riches by applying their labor or their technology or their risk-taking are required to pay writ royalties of unknown amounts, potentially billions, possibly even tens of billions over an extended period, an ill-defined period of time, to the new International Seabed Authority for distribution to less developed countries.”
Saying that this principle has “no clear limits,” he mused that it could set a precedent for space exploration, too.
He shouldn’t just “muse.” It could be a disastrous precedent, completely undercutting the arguments we make against the Moon Treaty.
Perestroika
Is it coming to California?
We can only hope. The question is, is Jerry Brown Gorbachev in that scenario, or Andropov?
The Higher-Education Bubble
Why it will be worse than the housing bubble:
Once again government has created the conditions for wholesale failure, and failure is upon us.
From 1976 to 2010, the prices of all commodities rose 280 percent. The price of homes rose 400 percent. Private education? A whopping 1,000 percent.
In the end, this bubble will be worse than the last. Even when homeowners got hopelessly behind on their mortgages, two options helped. First, they could declare bankruptcy and free themselves of their crippling debt; second, they could sell their houses to pay down most of their loans.
Students don’t have either of these options. It’s illegal to absolve student loan debt through bankruptcy, and you can’t sell back an education.
I hope that it has a disproportionate effect on the academic left. In a sane world, the first thing to go would be diversity programs, with “studies” departments hard on their heels.