Book review: The Evolution of Morality

The Evolution of Morality by Richard Joyce: Goodreads; his website. This is only a partial review, as I DNF'd in chapter 2 because... well, for reasons I find somewhat hard to concretise. He is an academic (wiki²) and whilst the book is not a dry academic tome it does have all the whiffling and qualifications leading to pointless digressions and obscurations you expect from academia (see-also this review). Furthermore, he doesn't actually know what morality is, which is a bit of an issue for him; even more of an issue is that he attempts to get around this bijou problemette by nibbling around at the edges⁸; unfortunately this leads him into pointless digressions about moral judgements, which seemed like his main interest; at least, that's how it seemed when I gave up.

So I should explain why I'm bothering to review this: it is because I had thoughts that interested me while reading it, which seemed worth writing down.

Before I go on, you should read my review of The Foundations of Morality to make sure we're on the same page; and I should read it, to make sure I don't contradict myself... right, I'm back.

I see that there, I didn't commit myself to any comment on "evolution". In reviewing Reason and Morality I explictly said "those rules bind because they have "evolved" to"; by writing in that fashion - putting evolved into quotes - I meant to be ambiguous about whether they had genetically or culturally evolved. But clearly they have evolved, in that they were not simply imposed by fiat of law or god at some single time. Whether we imagine that people have some "moral organ" perhaps in analogy to a "language organ", or that it is all cultural, or some mixture, doesn't particularly bother me at the moment¹. Our Author is in favour of morality having evolved³, but perhaps somewhat weirdly or so it seems to me, it doesn't seem to be a major preoccupation of the book; perhaps it is in the bits I skipped.

Let's get to the shite bits. If you read his wiki page, there's a section on "Moral error theory" (this says OA is one), which contains "the moral error theorist maintains that moral judgments are truth-evaluable assertions... but that the world doesn't contain the properties (e.g., moral goodness, evil, moral obligation) needed to render moral judgments true". It is indeed true that the physical world doesn't contain moral goodness or evil; these are meta-properties imposed on it by humans⁴. Just as a story doesn't exist in the real world: in the real physical world, there exist books which are leaves of paper with squiggly black marks on them grouped into "words" and "sentences" and "chapters", but none of these things physically exist, they are organisational concepts; see also [[Popper's three worlds]] if these ideas are unfamiliar to you. But OA's problem is letting this language confuse his discourse: because he doesn't know what morality is, he gets lost in discussing "moral judgements" as an attempt to get close to saying something about morality - I think - but then goes all philosophy about moral judgements presuming a moral object to judge, which of course doesn't exist, objectively⁷. Moral judgements are the workings of our moral sense; they are the states-of-mind of people who have considered from a moral viewpoint a given situation.

In order to confuse things further, he then discusses Moore's paradox, which is a new one on me. It may be new to you, too, so go skim it; try to avoid your revulsion at the blatant philosophical wank. So the situation is of someone saying "P; but I do not believe P". And the gloss is that this is absurd, but not contradictory, because "It can be true at a particular time both that P, and that I do not believe that P". But the problem is that the setup is someone saying "P"; not the fact-of P. And saying P (in the course of honest discourse, which this is assumed to be) is equivalent to "I believe P". Because everyone knows that stating P does not make P happen and is not ironclad evidence for P, because everyone makes mistakes; by saying P you are merely expressing your belief in P⁶. And so the situation is equivalent to "I believe P; but I do not believe P"; which is not a paradox, it is merely a contradiction.

From a Goodreads review: A brilliant analogy Joyce uses is with the way we see color: I see my walls as red, even though the 'redness' is actually not as much in the wall as in the way lightwaves from the wall interact with my eye. But: the redness really is in the wall: the wall has physical properties that affect the way light interacts with it⁹. Compare: two men indulge in homosexual relations and are seen by a third, who "sees" immorality and judges it so: where is the immorality? It isn't in the real physical world, because we enlightened people of the cold west know that homosexuality is not immoral in our culture; but we are so enlightened we know that people of other cultures may say it is in theirs⁵.

A niggle: Kant [says] that actions motivated by prosocial emotions cannot be considered morally admirable... I am more than happy to side with common sense against Kant on this point... In fact, I am willing to endorse the view that on occasions a per-son whose motivations derive from explicit moral calculation rather than direct sympathy is manifesting a kind of moral vice. This is weird. We have, so to speak, two sorts of "moral organ": the quick instinctive moral judgements that we use constantly without really thinking about for everyday matters and is governed by the hypothesised "moral instincts"; and a slower harder thoughtful consideration of more difficult, less common issues; this you might say is governed by our general-purpose thinking engine. Most people are inclined to go with the quick results, even in situations where they really should be using the slow; certainly, the slow should be more reliable, and give better results, whenever it is invoked honestly and carefully. Why OA should consider this "moral vice" I don't know; he provides no explanation or example.

I think that's enough.

Refs

* Justice Kavanaugh turns down request from Missouri to use congressional map expected to aid Republicans.

Notes

1. Should I care? Do tell me why. OA spends some time explaining why even if we were sure morality was genetic, we shouldn't be bothered for free will type reasons, and I'm fine with that.

2. Which all turns up as a big blob by one user who does little else. I deduce either a fanboi, or the man himself. Either way, I'm going to treat it as accurate.

3. Minor aside: in the wiki article on Evolution of morality he gets barely a look in.

4. Or other moral beings.

5. Ours is better; obvs; but that's another post.

6. When discussing contingent properties of the real world.

7. Maybe he thinks morality is objective, and therefore there must exist moral objects? Probably not... actually I think that's one of my problems with the book, he presents many thoughts but rarely endorses any^7a. Moral objects seem weird to me, but then I'm not a theist, so I have no source for any desired objective morality. It is obvious that different cultures have non-identical moralities - indeed different people do. We observe that all cultures contain some shared morality - mostly, do no harm - but this is because cultures that don't put that into their morality fail to thrive. I've said this before, somewhere.

7a. This is, in my view, unhelpful, at least in the area of philosophy. There are zillions of different views, and philosophers are skilled at generating new ones, much in the way that Sabine Hossenfelder criticises mathematical physicists for pointlessly inventing new "possible" particles. The need is to eliminate old wrong views by considering them carefully; to clear away the deadwood that the philosophes so love.

8. The "nibbling at the edges" issue is interetsing, in that it reminds me of Popper's theory of knowledge: Conjectures and Refutations. You acquire knowledge of a thing by guessing, then trying to see if you're wrong. Not by doing what OA does, trying to understand tiny bits of it at a time.

9. This confusion about intrinsic vs accidental properties of things has been around since the antient Greeks. Descartes (see esp footnote 4) for example was not alone in thinking that the fundamental property of matter was extension and everything else was an accident¹⁰; but we now know about mass, charge, spin and so on.

10. Gemini agrees. But rather weirdly thinks this a good thing, ffs.

Checking up on Hazlitt with Gemini

While writing this, I had a terrible fear that my fanboi adulation of Hazlitt was vulnerable to some brilliant philosophical debunking that would point out his obvious crass errors. So I Googled it, and Gemini told me, and I paste it below. I feel that Gemini has done a fair job, and am happy with the answer, because all these criticisms are stupid. I'm also moderately sure that at least one of my commentators would have been happy to jump on any flaws.

Henry Hazlitt’s moral philosophy—primarily outlined in his 1964 book The Foundations of Morality—is considered "wrong" or heavily criticized by certain philosophers and economists primarily because it reduces all ethical systems to a form of rule utilitarianism centered entirely on social cooperation. [1] (https://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/03/question-to-the-non-ideal-theorists-of-justice-what-do-you-think-of-henry-hazlitt/)

Critics, including academic reviewers and rival political theorists, argue that his framework fails for several key reasons:

* Rejection of Natural Rights: Hazlitt dismisses objective natural rights or moral intuitionism, arguing that moral rules are merely utilitarian conventions hammered out over centuries to foster social utility. Critics who believe in inherent human rights argue this makes justice subordinate to collective cooperation.

* Economic Reductionism: Reviewers have chided Hazlitt (a renowned free-market economist) for tailoring his ethics to justify private property orders and classical liberal market frameworks, making morality look like an extension of abstract economics rather than an independent philosophical truth. (https://www.libertarianism.org/essays/review-foundations-of-morality)

* Overly Optimistic Harmony: Hazlitt claims that an individual's rightly-conceived long-term self-interest always neatly aligns with social cooperation. Critics argue this harmony is naive and fails to account for real-world scenarios where brutal exploitation or systemic injustice can genuinely benefit a ruling individual or group at the direct expense of others. (https://fee.org/articles/hazlitts-the-foundations-of-morality/)

* Dismissal of Metaethics: Hazlitt openly criticized modern moral philosophers for getting bogged down in linguistic and metaethical analysis, leading strict academic ethicists to view his approach as overly simplistic or evasive of deep philosophical complexities. (https://www.hazlitt.org/e-texts/morality/ch23.html)

If you would like to explore this further, let me know if you want to compare Hazlitt's view with Kant's deontology or look more closely at his defense of rule utilitarianism.

The Data Heat Island Effect: Quantifying the Impact of AI Data Centers in a Warming World

By Andrea Marinoni et al.. Coming to you and me via X. And of course, I begin by apologising for the intrusion of climate into this war-focussed blog.

The basic idea seems perfectly sensible: from a MODIS dataset, identify datacenter locations and look at the temperature change after they turn on.

A nit: as we see from their figure, the average effect is a temperature jump, which isn't surprising: you don't expect a trend, unless the datacenter is ramping up over time; from the figure, it looks like that isn't usually the case. And yet they say stuff like "the Bajio region a great hub for AI data centres¹. Nevertheless, it has been recorded [sic] a serious LST increase trend (in the order of 2°C) in the last twenty years in the region". But it isn't a trend, which they effectively admit by expressing it in degrees, rather than degrees-per-time. But this is just a carelessness of language, not a real flaw.

The flaw is in what they don't say: how does their datacenter heat island effect compare to the usual UHI? A random search for London and Paris says 5-10 oC compared to rural. So my suspicion is that worrying about the DHI is about as useful as worrying about their water usage. For bonus points, their "A way forward" section is comically silly; and their conclusion - " Our study shows a non negligible

and rather remarkable impact of the AI data centres on their local regions" - is simply not true; NN is correct, but RR is pure emotionalism and doesn't belong in a real paper. This is of course but a preprint.

Refs

* A hyperbolic and misguided article in the New England Journal of Medicine, prompted by the death of Jason Arday.

* US strikes Iranian launchers on Larak Island in first known attack in weeks.

* Scientific American on the skids, sold by Springer Nature to another company.

* The deputy leader of the Green Party, whose policy it is to “abolish landlords”, is a private landlord (though to be fair, while this is witty and amusing, the policy was only agreed last autumn and it isn't obvious he is bound by it).

* UK retailer Next wins appeal to pay warehouse staff higher basic pay.

* THE SIMPLIFICATION AND AGENCY OF GOVERNMENT (fine words but...).

Notes

1. It seems to me that they are rather casual about "datacenter" vs "AI datacenter". Obvs - no? - neither Bajio nor anywhere else has been an AI datacenter hub for the past 20 years. I doubt that much matters for the analysis.

Did you miss me (yeah) when I was a gay?

Last used in 2018, good grief, that was a while ago.

But like then, I'm back from the alps, keen and eager to leap back into the fray, as soon as I can think of anything worth saying or responding to. Don't hold your breath.

Once again, I'm struck by how the mountains are falling apart. The Gran Paradiso is still just about an F, but the slopes are getting less friendly and the crevasses are opening up. And most seriously - for my purposes - the Grand Couloir was deemed so dangerous that they shut the Tete Rousse and Gouter huts entirely (arrete; Gouter ref page arch), rather blowing my plans for Mont Blanc. See-also this video.

Otherwise, it was hot, but walkable, provided you got used to starting early and taking a midday break, preferrably in a suitable refuge where refreshments could be provided. And towards the second half the "afternoon rain" pattern predominated.

In due course a full travelogue of my exciting adventures from Modane to St Gervais - yes, again - will appear.

Refs

* Why Arday Splits Anglosphere Elites.

* The Foothills Of Bay Area House Party.

* UK Regulatory Burden.

* A Wall Of Separation Between LGB and T.

* Trump Imposes Harmful and Illegal Section 338 Tariffs Against Many Canadian Imports.

* Federal Court Rules Speech-Based Deportations Violate the First Amendment.

Arma Mangoque Cano

My attempts to wait for the end of the little tiff between the MM and the MMs¹ has failed: here am I.

My graph shows one measure of the state of play: some version of "the oil price" though I have come to realise that its all a bit more complicated than I first thought; nonetheless some features can be clearly read, most notably that all is not over, but that the market expects reasonable flow in the near future. Are they right? Spoiler: I don't know.

My expectation - which shows how little I know of fanaticism and stupidity - was that the MMs would take the vague unclear deal on offer and use the inclarity to boast of victory whilst quietly stopping any overt naughtiness², and everything would trail off. Unfortunately - unless you're a popcorn vendor or pundit, obvs - buoyed, quite likely, by idiot Western intellectuals telling them that they had won - they decided to keep up the attacks on random ships and got twatted in return. Neither side has any great regard for, or even it would seem understanding of, truth; so reading their words is of no great value. But the MM calling the MMs "scum" might turn out to mean something. Could it be that he has finally learnt that they have no intention of abiding by their words, and that Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength? The weird thing is that he is so desperate for peace either because he loves peace, or because he loves votes that he is prepared to repeatedly overlook transgressions; not a strategy that works well in this area.

Meanwhile, the situation in Lebanon continues, but that doesn't seem to be troubling either side at the moment, which makes sense, since it is no part of this conflict. Or at least, it shouldn't be. If the MMs insist on entangling it, I can't see that going well for them.

Singing³:

Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting-dogs fed full,

  And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;

And I wiped my mouth and said, "It is well that they are dead,

  For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong." 

Updates

Don't expect blow-by-blow stuff.

* 2026/07/16: US strikes oil tanker with missiles as it enforces new Iran blockade. And Iran tells Houthis to close Red Sea oil route if US hits power network - oooooh yes bring it on. 07/22: Trump says he’ll hold Iran responsible for future Houthi attacks on ships.

* 2026/07/23: US House passes war powers resolution directing Trump to end Iran conflict says the Graun. But the vote is party-partisan (as you can tell from the Graun quoting a lying pol (“This is not a partisan issue,” Jayapal said following the vote) and later on the Graun negates its own breathy headline by noting that Later on Thursday, the Senate rejected a similar resolution proposed by Democrat Chris Van Hollen in a 47-49 vote, largely along party lines. Having Congress try to run the war like this is bad.

Notes

1. I'm aware that sources suggest that the MMs are now sidelined by the menwithgunz; but that doesn't fit so well, and is anyway too new and doubtful to replace yet; and officially Iran remains a theocratic dictatorship. Wittily, I saw on X a re-translation into English of the Arabic version of some CENTCOM I think it was post, which started "The Supreme Leader has instructed US forces to...".

2. Given the obvious banal motive for Trump - that he wants peace so oil prices go down so that gas(oline) prices go down so that USAnians go back to sleep - I'm kinda baffled by the MMs thought processes. If they go around twatting ships and stopping traffic, yer MM is not going to be happy. Perhaps to try restating that: the MMs have leverage, by threatening to close Hormuz. But actually closing it, isn't leverage.

3. You will be wondering what I meant by that; I know I am. Reconstructing myself: firstly, I read it, and liked it. Second, I am gently mocking myself: the enthusiasm of the singer for the certainty of his cause is revealed as ill-founded in the next verse.

Refs

* Art for art's sake.

* The Best Thing About Wokeness.

* Biological Sex Is Binary and Rooted in Anisogamy.

* ...The socialization process is what makes it difficult for us to see the rules of our own society as rules – having grown up with them, we have acquired a desire to act in the way that the rules require us to act, and so typically experience the behaviour as voluntary, even though it is constrained...

* He's Got My Vote: An Atypically Productive Exchange on the UBI.

* ...a large portion of the population live in an alternative reality built entirely on words...

* Evidence we should sell the NHS for scrap.

* As U.S. Starts 'New' Iran War, Lawmakers Want Answers About Deadly Elementary School Strike.

* the "Gaza genocide"... the left-wing equivalent of the stolen election hoax.

* A police officer explains why ending rough sleeping is likely to be very hard.

* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has sacked the country's army commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi.

* Libertarianism Against the Welfare State: A Refresher.

* Moody’s Lifts Argentina Debt Rating in Fresh Boost to Milei.

* Saudis must recognise Israel for nuclear deal, says Trump.

* Will Courts Uphold the EPA's Rescission of the "Endangerment Finding"?

* We haven't got a clue if America will launch another “massive attack” on Iran - El Econo. Retitled for clarity (and it looks like they have retitled it too; orig).

* The rise of the deserving rich; and.

* Court Packing Is a Dangerous Gambit Best Avoided.

* Private Property: For Abundance and Diversity.

Book review: The Rise of the Western World

The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History by Douglass C. North and Robert Paul Thomas. First published in 1973, this is a radical interpretation, offering a unified explanation for the growth of Western Europe between 900 A. D. and 1700, providing a general theoretical framework for institutional change geared to the general reader. It looks like you can read it here, or here, for yourself rather than rely on my unreliable summary; it is fairly short, and not hard going.

It describes - in economic and political terms - the developments in the West, well in western Europe, but stops before the industrial revolution, saying "well there you go then: that's what laid the ground for the industrial revolution to happen in England". What it talks about is largely organisation; and how various rulers' desperate need for money in the short term lead them to a variety of expedients for taxation or other equivalent money-raising schemes; some of which were in the long term bad. So for example the Spanish crown favoured the Mestas because they were a ready source of income; but this worked against recognising property rights, and so was unfortunate in the long term.

Here's a quote, to give you an idea of their language and terms:

To understand the background, we must explain the functions of the state against a wider background than would be necessary in dealing with the feudal world alone. Even in our day, the government is primarily an institutional arrangement that sells protection and justice to its constituents. It does so by monopolizing the definition and enforcement of property rights over goods and resources and the granting of rights to the transfer of these assets. In return for this service, the state receives payment in the form of taxes. Since economies of scale in the provision of protection and justice make this transaction potentially worthwhile to the constituents, a basis exists for a mutually advantageous trade between the governed and the government. So long as economies of scale continue, the state's widened protection and enforcement of property rights increases the income of all constituents and this saving is divided in some manner between the constituents and the state. What determines the division of these savings? The citizens are interested in receiving as much of the incremental income as possible; but so is the state, since its very survival during this period often depends on the maximization of present revenues. Let us consider again the historical evidence of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as described in...

I find this helpful; it strips off so much of the gunk. But there's also some more fact-based stuff, if you're interested in population, or prices, of the evolution of the manorial / feudal systems.

We end up considering France, Spain (unfortunates) and the Netherlands and England (fortunate); I forget why Italy and Germany fall out of the analysis. But the end result, though they don't say it, is essentially trial-and-error, or Darwinistic: people try stuff, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, places where they do things that work well thrive, others don't. We and the Neds got property rights; the Frogs and the Spics got a strong crown. You may notice a certain vagueness of my part here: although I've only just finished reading it, the details are already fading.

The book is prone to say things like "progress was not possible until the private and societal rates of return were made to coincide". By which it means, that unless entrepeneurs and inventors could capture a significant portion of the return from newe thinges - which required new laws, or new systems -, they would not put in the time, effort and resources - the investment - required to produce those newe thinges, from which all benefit. This is I think a useful overarching perspective; a summary, which makes it easier to order and think about individual events. And yet it doesn't actually explain any of the individual events, obvs.

This - it occurs to me so I shall write it down here pending a better place - is a little like theories of history: there are a great many events; to turn them into history they must be grouped and ordered: a "great man" theory; as "economic"; as monarchs; whatever.

Disappointingly, there's nothing here on "why the West won": they don't talk at all about why anywhere else, perhaps most obviously China, didn't succeed. See-also The Grand Titration. Put into this framework, the answer is likely lack of competition; a lesson for our times. If you only have one go at getting the right answer, you'll probably fail.

Refs

* 1776 in the US and Latin America.

* We woz wrong about oil, sez El Econo.

* Europe's Weather Losses Keep Climbing; But a new loss normalization finds no trend after accounting for economic growth - guess who.

* The Declaration of Independence and the Case for Non-Ethnic Secession.

* The Causal Effect of Income is (Often) Zero.

* Rich World, Poor World: RCP 8.5, IPAT, and Climate Impacts Reconsidered.

* Why We've Been Thinking about the Fertility Crisis Wrong: Did humans evolve to seek solitude?

* A Conservative Court—Not a Trump Court.

* Airpower Did Not Fail in Iran — Simplistic Thinking Did.

* JD Vance's crusade against GDP is wrong and bad: Making Americans poorer won't make our society better. While I'm here: for me, see GDP impartially consider'd and links therein in particular Is Decoupling GDP Growth from Environmental Impact Possible?; and to Limits to Growth comments.

Peace in our time

This was going to be a post about the end of the MM-MMs war, but that doesn't seem to be quite over yet, so instead it is about the hopeful Trilateral Framework Between the United States of America, the State of Israel, and the Republic of Lebanon.

It contains most of the right kind of words and recognises the actual problem: the LAF will restore effective sovereign authority over all Lebanese territory, pending the verified disarmament of non-state armed groups and dismantlement of associated infrastructure... Lebanon reaffirms its resolute and irreversible commitment to restoring and exercising full sovereignty over all its territory. The Government of Lebanon will rebuild the State’s monopoly on the use of force, achieve the complete and verified disarmament of all non-state armed groups, and ensure that such groups will have no military or security role and no armed capabilities anywhere in Lebanon; you should read it. Sadly the Leb's can't quite bring themselves to say the H-word, though the Kikes can: Israel stresses that its military actions in Lebanon are solely a consequence of the attacks, threat posed by, and hostile intent of non-state armed groups, particularly Hizballah.

With Iran weakened, Syria broadly friendly, and it would seem the Leb's finally prepared to talk sense, maybe there is hope.

Refs

* By the sword you did your work and by the sword you die.

* RIP Judith Curry's Climate Etc (arch).

Mayflies

Another year, another Mays. They flow past like water. 2025; 2024; 2023...

With Inigo and the bucket gone I'm not really sure what image to use; I didn't take many, mostly vidz; but I guess this one of Lance looking bothered will do, photobombed by House. This was Thursday, because LMBC are ahead of Caius; but as anticipation suggested that didn't last the day. It did last a while though; see here; and while that's a long way down the course it is still a few hundred meters to the finish.

So Peterhouse are head and Caius, sadly, did not dent them. On the ladies' side, Jesus rowed over convincingly.

Full playlist here. Due to... errors on my part, and the lack of cannons on CUCBC's part, I dropped my drone in the river on day one; so there are two days of hand-held filming before Amazon delivered the replacement. See here for exciting details.

Refs

* Teachers: Value-Added and Social Desirability Bias.

St Gervais

I'm just back from a trip down to the Chamonix valley for some low level alpine type fun, but being now a retired gentleman of leisure, had time enough to spend half a week getting there and much the same back, visiting more cathedrals than I can remember along the way, as well as Meung.

Anyway, the wildly exciting story is available here, should you be interested.

While I'm here: some people are bad at taking hints. So to be somewhat more heavy handed: "You should ignore it" is a hint that the topic isn't welcome; I will only admit particularly illuminating comments that discuss it.

Refs

* Why Callais Doesn’t Justify Court-Packing.

* When It Really is Racist to Talk About Racial Gaps.

* Bruce Schneier is a fuckwit (see-also Ilya Somin, though Bruce's fuckwittery goes deeper than that).

* An Unconstitutional War Results in a Bad Deal - jumping the gun, in my view, but IS is worth reading.

* Second Amendment Roundup: Gun Ban for Pot Users Unconstitutional.

* Were 250,000 English Girls Raped by Grooming Gangs? Obvs, no.

* Foundations of Public Choice: A Primer by Michael Munger.

* Comedy headline time: Trump Singles Out Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP Over High Gas Prices.

* Europe's Deadly Aversion to Air Conditioning.

* I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup.

Book review: The Allegory of Love

I don't have a lot to say about this but want to record reading it. See some Goodreads reviews for things I might have said, if my memory were better. My picture, of the cover (FFS flickr on phone won't let me embed it, so for now I'll just reuse that image), is I see with amusement the picture I used for The Discarded Image; this may have been Hulme's fault. I found this harder going than TDI, perhaps because I do not have the congenial model in my mind. It has however inspired me to acquire The Romance of the Rose (Dahlberg translation), and to begin reading it in Meung sur Loire.

Just as TDI transformed or perhaps just informed how I saw ye olde folkes' views of that aspect, so I found TAOL very helpful in getting at least some initial hooks in... well, the bookes it covers: ROTR, Fairie Queene - which I haven't yet ordered - and others. However I am conscious how much of Lewis's thought slips my mind even as I read it; I am too unfamiliar with this stuff.

Here's a sample of Lewis:

In many periods the historian of literature discovers a dominant literary form, such as the blood tragedy among the Elizabethans, or satire in the eighteenth century, or the novel of sentiment and manners in the last age or in our own. During the years between Chaucer's death and the poetry of Wyatt allegory becomes such a dominant form and suffers all the vicissitudes to which dominant forms are exposed. For it must be noticed that such dominance is not necessarily good for the form that enjoys it. When every one feels it natural to attempt the same kind of writing, that kind is in danger. Its characteristics are formalized. A stereotyped monotony, unnoticed by contemporaries but cruelly apparent to posterity, begins to pervade it. Thus, even in times that I can still remember, the threadbare motives of the novel were not nearly so obvious as they now threaten to become. The monotony of Augustan satire, on the other hand, is easily felt; that of Italianate blank-verse tragedy more easily still; and that of late medieval allegory unescapably and with resentment. In the second place, a dominant form tends to attract to itself writers whose talents would have fitted them much better for work of some other kind. Thus the retired Cowper writes satire in the eighteenth century; or in the nineteenth a mystic and natural symbolist like George Macdonald is seduced into writing novels. Thus in the fifteenth and sixteenth century we have the Assembly of Ladies written by a poet who has no better vocation to allegory than that of fashion. And thirdly-which is more disastrous-a dominant form attracts to itself those who ought not to have written at all; it becomes a kind of trap or drain towards which bad work moves by a certain 'kindly enclyning'. Youthful vanity and dullness, determined to write, will almost certainly write in the dominant form of their epoch. It is the operation of this law which has given later medieval allegory and hence allegory in general a bad name. A recognition of the law will perhaps liberate our critical faculties to distinguish between good and bad work-between the poetic use and the fashionable abuse.

But there is yet another 'accident' to which dominant forms are liable, and it is one which much concerns the historian. Often, though not always, we can detect under the apparent sameness of such productions the burgeoning of new forms, and find that a tradition which seemed most strictly bound to the past is big with the promise, or the threat, of the future. I half suspect that such a process is going on about us while I write: that the novel, which we saw becoming so biographical in works like Sinister Street and so preoccupied with period in works like The Forsyte Saga, is even now transforming itself-has transformed itself, in the work of Strachey and M. Maurois and Mr. Herbert Read-into the imaginative biography, a genuinely new form standing at the same distance from biography proper as the Chronicle play stands from the 'just' history.

And on Courtesy:

We are to conceive of courtesy as the poetry of conduct, an 'unbought grace of life' which makes its possessor immediately loveable to all who meet him, and which is the bloom (as Aristotle would say) - the supervenient perfection - on the virtues of charity and humility.

Book review: The Handmaid's Wail

Dead famous, but also dead boring². The surface veneer is tolerable: La Atwood has clearly been to writer's school and learnt how to write words¹, but they forgot the bit about writing an interesting story; or perhaps that bit isn't teachable. There is a colourless cloying pallid dry dusty silence spreading over the prose⁴; this contrasts with, say, Moby Dick - another wildly popular-in-the-lists book that no-one except me ever reads - which at least has some salt and colour to its language and vigour to its speech. Proust can also be boring; but unlike LA, Marcel rewards you in the end with beauty. As well as some fascinating insights into the culture of his times. LA has no interesting insights into culture to offer, because her culture is entirely made up and not at all plausible³.

The woke left lap this stuff up because it is trying to be nasty to the religious right. And yet - as the epilogue obliquely admits - the target is really muslim society, of the Saudi / Iranian type; though naturally LA isn't brave enough to say this out loud: there are no plaudits from the left for saying that kind of thing. And although ostensibly about the evils of patriarchy, in fact most of the oppression is by women.

My edition has an Introduction, nominally by Naomi Alderman, which I hoped might be enlightening; but alas I rapidly discovered that it had been written by a Fembot-type AI given the prompt "say bad but implausible things about the USA and lay it on as thick as you can: these people aren't thinking". Oh, and lastly and trivially: this isn't sci-fi; it is politics.

Refs

* Trump's Iran War Continues to Violate the Constitution - and Now Also the War Powers Act of 1973 (see-also Yanquis and Kikes twat the Mad Mullahs).

* Court agrees to immediately finalize Voting Rights Act decision.

* Applying US Air Warfare Theory and Doctrine to Evaluate the Campaign against Iran, Part II: Iranian Missile Forces.

* Weasels electrocuted by particle accelerator honored in exhibit (via RS).

* IQ With Conscience.

* London by William Blake.

* Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Alvin Roth on Organ Markets.

* An Ode to Low-Skilled Workers: Version 1.

* A Modest Uptick in Supreme Court Popularity.

* European stagnation is real.

Notes

1. But see this review.

2. Confession - with which I had originally meant to open this review - I knew before reading the book that I was going to dislike it; nothing about the reading of it gave me cause to change my opinion. Partly because mainstream writers trying to write sci-fi is always painful; partly because it isn't sci-fi; partly because of the strain I knew would be there.

3. Leading - as this review says - to the reader being unable to suspend disbelief.

4. Towards the end the protagonist apologises for - I forget the exact terms - not being interesting, not being active, enough. This may resonate with progressive female youth-du-jour, if what one reads in the papers is true; though I lack contact with any such and so cannot say from personal experience.

There Is No Progress in Philosophy

There Is No Progress in Philosophy will be an idea familiar to us all; my particular text is taken from an article published in 2011 but brought to my attention by Twatter. And since I haven't ranted about the evils of philosophy for a while now, and nothing much else seems to be happening, I thought I would indulge myself.

Part of the answer is that of course there’s progress in philosophy, we just stop calling those topics that make progress “philosophy”. Although that isn't really progress in philosophy: that is progress in removing things from philosophy - cosmology, physics, most obviously - as they become science. In the same sense we could say there is progress in religion. As time goes by, philosophy is left with all the stuff that people can't agree on, whereas science is what works, bitches.

Part of the answer is that there is genuine progress, but most philosophers aren't interested; as Popper wistfully notes the problem of induction is solved. But nothing seems less wanted than a simple solution to an age-old philosophical problem. Hazlitt on morality provides another example; that he was an economist and therefore from out of field doesn't help. Professional philosophy is about publication count and tenure and talking, not about solving problems; no-one hires a philosopher to actually solve problems.

But a lot of the answer is that much of philosophy is not grounded in reality, unlike science, and so there is no final arbiter. So people are free to disagree, and retreat behind screens of words.

Refs

* Court unanimously sides with oil and gas companies in suit over damage to Louisiana coast (Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana).

* This Be The Verse.

* WHAT DO WE DO IF IT FOSSILIZES?

* The Missing Right-Wing Firms: Hanania's Plausible Resolution.

* Against Attribution Studies.

* United Arab Emirates to quit oil cartel Opec.

* Rethinking Conservative Approaches to Executive Power.

* The Origins and Influence of Zero-Sum Thinking.

* Former US officials criticise Pentagon silence on deadly Iran school attack.

* Anti-Communism and Anti-Racism.

Good news

It is always charming to be the bearer of good news, so I am pleased to reveal to you that Donald Trump is the war’s biggest loser, in the words of the Economist. Since the MM has been at worst mildly inconvenienced, those grieving for the dearly departed, and indeed the very shades, can take comfort that their losses are even less.

If only that were true. Sadly it isn't; instead, it is the sort of drivel people write when only the named people matter. And if you want drivel, there is much much more out there; see-also Yanquis and Kikes twat the Mad Mullahs.

The situation as I write: there is a ceasefire between the aforementioned Ys, Ks and MMs and US-Iran peace talks begin in Islamabad through Pakistani mediators. There is not a ceasefire in Lebanon, and the erstwhile "neutral" (ho ho) Paki mediators are siding with the MMs in asserting that is part of the "agreement". But there is no agreement; both sides have ceased firing for the moment but agree on nothing else.

My expectation, a few days back when this was announced, was that there would be no meaningful negotiation, just a pretence, and things would just stay as-is on the ground, and everything would quietly go back to normal. But the MMs have decided to play rough and keep Hormuz closed, and I'm doubtful that will fly. Or swim. If I was the Yanquis, I would be putting my pieces into place for re-opening Hormuz by force; and that would include non-military stuff like sorting out insurance (and demonstrating how safe it is...). El Econo has a reasonably decent article setting things out.

Based on past experience I expect the MMs to not give any meaningful ground in the talks, and to pointlessly insist on their Lebanese proxies being part of the ceasefire. Meanwhile the Lebs are - stupidly, performatively, but apparently no-one in our idiot meeja can see how dumb this is - refusing to talk until there is a ceasefire there. Brent crude is currently at $94, down from its highs but up from its lows, reflecting everyone's uncertainty about Hormuz; what the MM will do once it becomes clear the talks are a waste of time I don't know. Do you know the future? Then earn kudos by predicting it in a comment.

Most of the meeja seem to feel that the war has been pointless, which is just their disappointment at not getting a clear-cut result that their tiny minds can grasp. That the MMs have been "knocked back"¹ isn't something they can understand.

Update: I'm not sure I fully know how to interpret this chart, but it seems to show the market expecting happiness in the medium term. It will be interesting to see how it changes.

2026/4/12: witty and amusing developement is the US deciding to blockade Iranian ports. Such fun! I don't think that was on anyone's cards. Oil is mildly up, but whether caused by that, or the totally unexpected breakdown of negotiations², I don't know. And sharez iz up.

2026/4/17: the Economist's Mar 28th 2026 Advantage Iran hasn't aged well. Brent currently at $90 and S&P500 at an all-time high.

2026/4/29: Brent at $119 - though the S&P is happy at 7135 - and Trump says No More Mr Nice Guy. Popcorn time? The Economist thinks that Oil markets are still in La La land, though it does say it is loth to second-guess those who have the facts to hand and billions of dollars at stake (2026/07/01: We woz wrong about oil, they confess). UAE quits OPEC.

2026/5/6: Brent hovering just above $100; S+P at 7340; and rumours of peace though such are unreliable, and Aunty notes the problem of who would even approve such an agreement among the factions in Iran's leadership; and U.S. Forces Disable Vessel in Gulf of Oman Attempting to Violate Blockade, which is bound to make the MMs happy.

2026/5/11: The pattern continues: Brent above $100, but S+P rises, and the Iranians prevaricate - well, the MM has now rejected the MMs rejection of his plan; the US blockade continues as does the Iranian one; it is hard to see this ending peacefully. The MMs have nowhere to go; although Iran of course has excellent options, starting with getting rid of the MMs.

2026/06/10: low-level twatting continues, but Trump does genuinely seem to want peace, to the despair of the popcorn class. Hormuz closed seems to be normalised; who cares anymore? And the market cares more about possible AI froth.

Refs

* The War the Arab World Is Watching.

* The goal of the negotiation in Iran should [be]...

* What Iran Won - RH, everyone's favourite pundit - flip-flops like a lightweight.

* U.S. warships cross Strait of Hormuz for first time since Iran war began.

* U.S. Forces Start Mine Clearance Mission in Strait of Hormuz.

* Tis but a flesh wound.

* U.S. to Blockade Ships Entering or Exiting Iranian Ports.

* I've pushed for a blockade for over a month...

* Lead finals | Meishan 2026 (men's boulder; women's boulder).

* You Can't Feed The Poor By Taxing @JeffBezos ' Wealth.

Notes

1. A breadmaking metaphor; perhaps tasteless when applied to humans.

2. Actually I fully expected negotiations to limp along for ages. The breakdown is likely a sign that the USAnians don't want to piss about; good for popcorn futures, bad for Iranian infrastructure.

Book review: The Case Against Education

The Case Against Education is a book written by libertarian economist Bryan Caplan and published in 2018 by Princeton University Press. Drawing on the economic concept of job market signaling and research in educational psychology, the book argues that much of higher education is very inefficient and has only a small effect in improving human capital, contrary to the conventional consensus in labor economics. Caplan argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skills but to certify their intelligence, conscientiousness, and conformity—attributes that are valued by employers. He ultimately estimates that approximately 80% of individuals' return to education is the result of signaling, with the remainder due to human capital accumulation, as wiki says. Or you can try Goodreads. As BC himself notes, almost no-one changes their mind as a result of reading the book, so entrenched are everyone's opinions; so I'm not going to make any attempt to convince you he is correct: read the book if you want the details.

His data is almost all from the USA, but that hardly matters, because the same is true world over. Every government happily burbles that nothing is more important than education, and no-one amongst the elite - or indeed, anyone else - will listen to arguments to the contrary. Which is itself a meta-argument: how can so many fools all be right?

Another meta-argument: why is it that education is the only "good" that its recipients try so hard to avoid?

Anecdote: one of the gains to education is a strong societal, and indeed personal, gain at the lower end of male ability, because staying in education, and the minor gains to employability, tend to reduce criminality amongst young men. But there's no similar gain for young women, because so few commit any crime.

There are two sorts of gains: personal, and societal. The personal is improvements in your employability, future earnings, and the care and comfort of your soul. The societal is how much extra you'll produce as a result of what you learn, together with harder to measure stuff like the good of your soul and reduction in crime. If the bulk of the personal gain came from what you actually learnt, then the two types of good would be close to indistinguishable; BC's main argument is that they aren't, because the bulk - his estimate is 80% - of the personal good comes from signalling: completing your education signals to employers that you are intelligent, industrious, and conformist. But signalling has no societal benefit: it merely alters the relative ordering of people, it doesn't make people any more useful.

He produces exhaustive evidence for the effect of signalling, but I suspect this is much like evolution: you don't really need evidence, once the concept has been explained, unless your religion prevents you from believing. An example is that the rewards for education - as measured by earnings, in this case - are not linear with years of schooling; instead, there is a marked jump around graduation, from either high school or college. This would make no sense if the gains came from what you learnt; but makes perfect sense if what matters is the piece of paper saying you hae passed the course.

For what it is worth, BC happily accepts that reading, writing and arithmetic are valuable skills that we all need, and so doesn't trouble himself with junior school. Probably if you pushed him he would quibble that too, but never mind we need not go there. He also accepts that some of what is learnt in some courses - for example, engineering - is useful.

His remedy is austerity: the government should stop, or at least begin to reduce, subsidising useless signalling. He is perfectly well aware that this isn't going to happen.

I think that his arguments-from-future-earnings are unassailable, which means the easiest way round them is to argue for nurture-of-the-soul. This has the great advantage of being very hard to measure, so it is easy to apply wishful thinking, and people promptly do so. I - and I assume you, dear reader - are amongst the cognitive elite; and so our experience of education is rather different to that of the masses, at least I should jolly well hope so. I enjoyed school, and I enjoyed university. And I rather suspect that applies to quite a lot of elite policy and opinion formers out there; this may account for some of the bias. But nurturing the soul, and instilling a love of education, knowledge, and culture for its own sake, is not something that the bulk factory education system is going to do, except by happy chance.

If we were to accept his case, how much does it matter? The waste is then lots of money, but that translates into lots of time: all those people teaching stuff pointlessly, and all the students who could be doing something more productive. So, yes, it matters: the facile govt idea that at least it keeps people off the unemployment rolls for three years is silly.

Refs

* Congress more or less doesn’t exist, except as a social media operation. The institution has abandoned itself.

* The Vast Emptiness of Social Psychology.

* Our Amicus Brief in the Section 122 Tariff Case - Ilya Somin.

Another advancement of science

The classic Science advances one funeral at a time refers; and I swear I have at least one other riffing on the theme. And today brings us Population Doomster and False Prophet of Ecological Apocalypse Paul Ehrlich Has Died. Wiki tells me that "statistician Paul A. Murtaugh says that Ehrlich was largely correct" but that is drivel. Michael Mann says he "was a friend and a hero. He will be greatly missed" and whinges that Julian Simon said Ehrlich was an alarmist purveyor of doom and gloom. Sadly, shortage of electrons - could it be anything else - prevents Mann from noting that Simon won the bet.

I recall in the dim and distant past discussing Ehrlich on sci.env; and, miraculously, Google Groups turns up this thread, started by Baby Timmy. And I find:

David Friedman wrote:

>In article <3cc1...@news.nwl.ac.uk>, w...@bas.ac.uk wrote:

>> >...I get

>> >an estimated world total deaths due to nutritional deficiency

>> >during the 1970s of 5,061,129 or a nice round five million.

>> Well, you've done quite a bit of work on that: thanks.

>> I'll go with 5M, until something more definitive turns up. 

>But those aren't famine deaths. That's coming from an estimate of "deaths

>world-wide due to all nutritional deficiencies." Poor nutrition results

>in an increase in death rates long before anyone is starving to death.

So what. Its an upper bound. If correct, famine deaths were less than 5M,

and Erlich was wildly wrong (on this point).

Well, you've done quite a bit of work on that: thanks.

I'll go with 5M, until something more definitive turns up.

Which I think suffices for the distant past. My recollection of myself, at that time, was of being sympathetic to the kind of stuff the Ehrlich was saying - notice my parenthetical "on this point" -, but perhaps fortunately I was able to read what other people wrote; so many people can't.

I don't think I ever read Ehrlich. I did read the in-the-same-camp Club of Rome, and realised it was all wrong: they simply assume bad things increase exponentially but good things increase polynomially, and so even before the complicated modelling, those assumptions tell you that the bad will eventually overwhelm the good. Inevitably they plot bad-things-happening on a graph with time as the X axis; inevitably people read that time axis as meaningful; their defence is oh-dearie-me-no, the time is just expressive and so of-course-our-predictions-were-not-for-that-actual-time; but that just makes all the modelling even more pointless, because as I've said, the result is baked in from the start¹. David Henderson, in his My 1983 Memo on Population Growth, tells us that "This paper is premised on the idea that reducing population growth hastens economic progress. However, the author simply asserts the premise rather than documenting it" and I have a feeling that's true of Ehrlich's work. Malthus makes a similar mistake: to first order, more people will produce more stuff, so food production, as a first guess, should be assumed to increase in line with population.

2026/3/19: Ehrlich dishonestly claimed that all his work was peer reviewed. He was lying: popular books - indeed, books in general - aren't peer reviewed the way academic papers are.

Refs

* Why did Malthus assume linear increase in food?

* Craig Loehle stops speaking.

* Sherwood B. Idso suffers hard delete.

* Mistah Morner – he dead.

* Another one bites the dust.

* Me from 2023 reffing ACX on Ehrlich.

* The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Karl Polanyi).

* Limited Government as Insurance.

* Fewer Rules, Better People: What Lam Gets Right.

* Why Economic Freedom Matters.

* Adam Smith on the Labor Theory of Value.

* Capital maintenance requires real sacrifice. Under capitalism, private owners do it because they capture the gains. Under democracy? Public infrastructure tends to be neglected in pursuit of votes.

* Freedom of Speech and AI Output.

* Book review: Blitzkrieg.

Notes

1. Somewhere I believe I have a post saying this, but I cannot now find it.

Blue team goes up

We interrupt your war coverage for a struggle of a different kind, the Red team - (minty) Blue team wars. Last year the Reds were untouchable - I'm talking Men here, or rather Open in these Woke days; but one could call Jesus Red I think and they were certainly untouchable - but this year they were definitely Touched. Wednesday the minty Blues knocked the Yellows aside fairly trivially on First Post; Thursday saw the Maroons fly - what else could they do? -, and get within a length before dying on Ditton. So Friday was the day we were all waiting for, but didn't quite pan out as expected; suddenly, before First Post, a bump; close analysis of another video shows six crabbing. This wasn't quite how we wanted it to end; but it was surely no coincidence that this happened on the day the Reds were under most pressure. And Saturday brought no surprises.

This was my first year retired, so that I could watch it all. I found that rather pleasant, and didn't get the effect, as I sometimes have before, of getting a little bored with too much of it.

The full playlist is here.

Yanquis and Kikes twat the Mad Mullahs

So it finally happened: the MM ran out of patience and decided to twat the MMs, though this was perhaps a little late for the tens of thousands already killed by the regime⁴. There is of course a vast backstory on all this, see for example Reflections on recent events in the Middle East, but perhaps recent events in South America are also relevant.

Ilya Somin thinks Donald Trump's Iran War is Unconstitutional⁵;and he is likely to be correct, in principle. However both House and Senate have rejected stop-the-war resolutions, and the armed forces are obeying their commander, so there is no practical constraint¹. And as long as nothing terrible happens - a large number of USAnians killed, or the price of petrol staying high for too long, the horror - I doubt the public cares enough to matter.

I'm in favour of this war, at least, when compared to all other practical courses of action or inaction. Diplomacy was obviously a waste of time, no matter how many highly paid high status elites it kept in lucrative employment. I opposed the Iraq war at the time, by actually bothering to go and protest, but I think far too many commentators are too ready to relearn the lessons of the last war: blah blah quagmire blah vague objectives blah and so on. Richard Hanania suggests that Killing bad people is an achievable goal that the US is good at and probably has positive effects on the world. We should do it more often, and do much less of many other aspects of foreign policy, and that seems reasonable. The most likely outcome is a weakened Iran, left with essentially no missile stockpiles or production facilities for same, and less capacity to export terrorism. The good outcome is the MMs get overthrown. The bad outcome is... I dunno: we take out some more schools, a pile of Iranian drones get through and destroy major infractructure and kill piles of Yanquis, and we retreat in confusion? Perhaps you, dear reader, can think of a plausible bad outcome; da meeja certainly hasn't presented any. Note how convenient it is that the Ivans are stuck in the quagmire of their own creation and are far too weak to cause any mischief⁵.

Doing all this in violation of international law is something I covered in Reflections². But I'd add that coming from the lawyer-heavy UK, where nothing can be done, I feel that the time has come, if not to kill all the lawyers, at least not to leave them in charge.

It becomes ever more obvious to me - as I think I said in Poling Pales - how central the Iranian poison is to the problems of the Middle East and how much better off the region - and of course even more so the people of Iran - would be, if they just settled down to tend their own garden.

Updates

I expect things to continue to evolve...

2026/3/10: The Economist tells us that "Donald Trump must stop soon" and this is the kind of armchair-warrior stuff that is in a way amusing, in its combination of taking-itself-oh-so-seriously and total irrelevance. But it is a good source for the common complaint that Trump needs to "define what you want to achieve". I don't think that's true: the general direction is of course clear, and Trump has said that he'd like to end up with regime change, but I see no reason why that should be a firmly-fixed objective. If it turns out to be really hard, why should he really be obliged to keep pounding away? Continuing, "War aims direct the campaign" and this is true but pointless: the initial aim was to take out the top MM; then destroy Iranian military infrastructure, and so on and so forth; and these aims dictate the current actions, regardless of the final aims. "Strategically, his failure to say what Epic Fury is for is its biggest vulnerability" is bullshit.

2026/3/13: The Iranian regime has been the number one threat to peace and stability in the Middle East for years. U.S. forces continue to try to fix that, by pushing them into the number two spot. Well, that's how I read it on a first pass. Meanwhile, Brent crude is hovering around $100 per barrel, which is regrettable (nb: update: I realise that the thing I am looking at for this, "Brent Last Day Financial", may be futures not actual prices; but regardless, it is something related to the oil price). I think the Yanquis should, and likely will, do something about that. Mostly, twatting the bits of Iran likely to attack shipping.

2026/3/16: The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working. Here is why (by Al-Jazmagi).

2026/3/18: It’s getting to the point where if you’re an Iranian official and Israel hasn’t killed you yet it’s a bit insulting.

2026/3/23: the YK's are still bombing stuff, but the MMs or their agents are still flinging stuff back, though at a reduced rate. Most importantly, the Straits of Hormuz are not seeing a lot of traffic, leading to... volatility in the price of oil; cue panic from the meeja³. Personally, I go for the MMs running out of ammo before much longer, but perhaps that's an ill-defined time period. Let's say within a week.

2026/3/25: the Economist is sad that markets aren't melting down in the way el Econo thinks they should.

2026/4/8: Just as I was thinking it was about time for annother post, we have a ceasefire. As we see from the Brent price, the market thinks that it will re-open Hormuz, although being at $95 not $70 does indicate some jitters. However the public versions of the two sides conditions differ wildly, so some resulotion is required. If you care, you'll notice that my "within a week" didn't play out; the Iranians were more resilient, missile-flinging-wise, than I expected. And, obvs, were able to keep Hormuz closed, though I think more from intimidation than actual power.

Refs

* The Scientists Who Declared War on Half of America.

* Labor Freedom Is the Best Explanation for the US-Europe Income Gap.

* Cruising to Dubai.

* Liberty Justice Center Files Lawsuit Challenging Trump's Section 122 Tariffs.

* Wealth of Nations: This masterwork is turning 250. It’s needed now more than ever; 250 Years Later, The Wealth of Nations Still Has Lessons To Offer the Political Class; Smith and Jefferson at 250.

* Media Can’t Hide the Truth About Gracie Mansion Bomb Attempt.

* The Anti-War Argument Is Actually a Pro-War Argument: One does not wait to attack an irrational actor while it gets more powerful.

* War and Oil. With nice futures charts.

* Judge Concludes Grand Jury Subpoena to Fed Had Improper Purpose.

* Gulf states press US to neutralise Iran for good as Hormuz crisis deepens.

* Praise is due to all who respect justice more than their position compels them to do.

* How to turn a price shock into inflation.

* The Ugly Path to Peace.

* Miscellanea: The War in Iran - I include this as an unwise overly pessimistic take.

* What Iran Won: They raised the costs enough to make war unthinkable for future US presidents.

Notes

1. See-also "Law Is Irrelevant to the U.S. Attack on Iran," by Prof. Jack Goldsmith (Harvard).

2. Another attempt to "defend" int'l law comes from Alex Tabarrok: but notice his confused defence: Per the Constitution, treaties are the supreme law of the United States. International law is not liberal wishful thinking it’s US law.

3. E.g. "Oil back above $100 a barrel..." from Auntie; note that was "Updated 35 minutes ago" and yet they hadn't updated the (false at that point) headline.

4. Wiki insists that "thousands" is better but that is stupid.

5. But I don't notice any interest in whether the blockade is, or is not.

6. 2026/08: notice how my imagination did not stretch to "closing Hormuz".