DOGE

Following on from my brilliant analysis of USAnian politics I feel inclined to write some words on DOGE and related matters; and Sabine's vaguely-related Science is in trouble and it worries me tips me over. Let's begin with her thesis; you should probably at least watch her graphs for context.

The exponential increase of people, money and papers in science is no evidence for an exponential increase in science being done, of course. Partly because if the proportion of scientists as a fraction of people is increasing, their average quality is inevitably going down, and as we all know the best produce a disproportionate amount of what is valuable. But also because - at least I assert this - science is increasingly a job, a career, and while the people doing it will undoubtedly be happy to discover wonderful new things it likely isn't their prime motivation; nor indeed is it the prime motivation of the people employing them. I may be falling victim to the hoary old trope of the Victorian gentleman-scientist motivated purely by curiosity; or I may not. Overall, on this model, there's probably a lot of decent science being done, but quietly, and not necessarily making Nurture. If so, then the vast reams of <stuff that isn't exactly junk, but is just low-quality career-science> isn't doing anyone any great harm.

From that, we move onto DOGE. There are two ways of looking at this, and I think most people are looking at the first and least interesting, which is saving money. And then immeadiately saying "it is pretty hard to save money". Which is true. Most science money, for example, goes on salaries; either of the scientists, or the admin and support staff; if you cut that you'll just have roving homeless packs of feral scientists doing drugs on the streets, which helps no-one. Similar hand-waves apply to social security or medical stuff.

The more interesting stuff is what kicked off Musk in the first place, as it inevitably must, to anyone actually trying to run a company: the vast reams of goverment gumpf that stand in the way of getting anything done.

But rolling that back is hard work, our society has come to love it so much, so many people are beholden to so many special interests who want it continued.

Perhaps if Musk could interest that nice Dominic Cummings he might get somewhere. So I wish him the best but fear for the worst¹.

Refs

* Climate chickenhawks.

* The energy transition will be much cheaper than you think.

* How Scientific American's Departing Editor Helped Degrade Science.

* How Industrial Strategy Killed British Industry.

* Link to Twit.

Notes

1. Consider DOGE Can Succeed by Scaling Back Its Ambitions.

Me on USAnian politics, 2024

So another election looms. I find my words from 2020 are weirdly recyclable: Well, there's an election coming up - you may have noticed - so it is Time to Opine, thereby fixing my words in stone for posterity to hold against me. Just like last time the presidential choice is unappealling. Trump is, obviously, horrible: personally, and in many but not all policies. By contrast Biden Kamala is a nice enough std.pol, or at least projects that as an image, but it is hard to get enthused over his her policies. Last time I continued Given his opponent I hope he wins; and given a choice I'd hold my nose and vote for him but I find that harder to do this time; read on.

As a reminder of how different things can look in retrospect, the Economist has Angela who? Merkel’s legacy looks increasingly terrible.

If you want to believe that the election is about character, then you'll vote for Harris, obvs. Here for example is Paul Graham saying so. Or in Supreme Court Refuses to Remove RFK Jr. from Wisconsin and Michigan Ballots I can find "I'm going to let [RFK] go wild on health. I'm going to let him go wild on the food. I'm going to let him go wild on the medicines," Trump told supporters at Madison Square Garden; and RFK is a nutter. Or you can listen to Arnie^3,4.

The case against Harris - as far as I am concerned - is that she is a low-grade generic Dem Pol with precious little to recommend her. You might well say - and you'd be correct - that in most respects that puts her far ahead of the Mango Mussolini. But all her policies and instincts are bad; see e.g. the price-gouging stuff.

The case for Trump is the one I need to make. And it isn't for Trump himself, obvs, no it is for the people he'd bring in. Not Vance either, obvs. It's effectively Richard Hanania's Hating Modern Conservatism While Voting Republican¹. Here's a bad answer to Hanania; if you want to say that again, please don't. I should also point out that many of Harris's stupid economic ideas require Congress to pass them, so will likely not happen; Trump's stupid ideas on tariffs can likely be done via executive action, so might happen. Trump is more hawkish for Israel, which is good, but less for Ukraine, which is bad and more important.

The point of this post, though, is to write down my thoughts now so I can't pretend they were different later, not to offer you advice that you'll ignore. In brief, I think it amounts to: Harris is a bland non-entity who will hopefully do very little²; Trump is everything you think he is, and unacceptable. In the end I would cast a vote, if I had one, against Trump and therefore for Harris.

A couple of other thoughts: firstly, I don't see much if anything said about Harris being female, or being "of colour". Which is good, obvs; such properties are irrelevant to the role. I also see little about abortion, which is similarly good; the much-reviled-by-the Progressives Dobbs seems to have had the desired effect of drawing some poison from national poitics. Secondly, I don't see anyone (credible) endorsing Harris as a good candidate; only as "Trump is worse". So we perhaps think about her selection process. I discard the last-minute nature of the choice, because I think we'd likely have had the same result regardless: so we're left with the totally unsurprising result that the Dem machine has chosen someone so unappealling. Which tells you a lot about the said Dem machine prioritising its own interests above those of the country.

Update: the result

Trump won, fairly strongly. To find out what this means we'll need to wait, especially in the Ukraine. If I were the MMs, I'd be keeping very quiet. Initial S+P reaction is up, modestly, by ~100 aka ~2% to 5900. I take that to be a good sign.

Refs

* Elon Musk's Story Highlights Harm Caused by Immigration Restrictions.

* Mission unaccomplished: The British budget combines large numbers and a narrow vision. A bigger state but an irrational way to fund it. Or, the govt as bandits (my take). But on the scale of USAnian politics, just a ripple; the AIM market even rose a little.

* El Econo explains why they (unlike WaPo) do endorse candidates. Their reasoning is somewhat obscure; in their words "To give opinions on policies but not politicians would be odd".

* Noah Smith is sad that "Trumpism systematically appoints the worst people to positions of power, since it prizes *loyalty to a personality cult* above competence and principle". But he doesn't really explain why it is a personality cult. Part is easy: thinking about policy is hard, supporting or hating people is easy. But the hard part - that he doesn't really want to talk about - is the people that see <someone, anyone, oh very well Trump> as a bulwark against the woke-that-is-evil.

* Living in a Post-truth World - Peter Woit.

* Conservatism in Crisis: Rise of the Bureaucratic Class; Kemi Badenoch.

* Johnny Cash - God's Gonna Cut You Down (h/t).

* Just one of many bad takes: Welcome to the American petrostate, Michael E. Mann. Or None of this is meant to imply that most progressive causes are mistaken... in the Graun. Stefan Rahmstorf: it's all the fault of the right wing meeja.

* A collection of great hang-wringing: Trump Didn't Deserve to Win, But We Deserved to Lose.

* Journal of Free Speech Law: "Corporate Speech and Corporate Purpose: A Theory of Corporate First Amendment Rights," by Sean J. Griffith.

* PG: Socialists... cherish the idea that the game is rigged so much that they'd rather talk about that than about how to improve their situation.

* The Graun flounces out: Why the Guardian is no longer posting on X.

* Sam Harris on why critique of the media and the establishment must not turn into nihilism, though I now rather regret linking because of his use of "coronated".

* Dear Journalists: Stop Trying to Save Democracy.

* Economath Fails the Cost-Benefit Test.

Notes

1. "Cut the applause and dim the light".

2. Although it is arguably in the spirit of the framer's intent, I find it... well, not amusing, but whatevs... that a better candidate than either on offer can be constructed by simply offering to do nothing. I should probably also point out that I've paid very little attention to anything she has said.

3. Or ACX Endorses Harris, Oliver, Or Stein. But that brings in some problems: it reminds me that Trump, if he won, would have had his two terms and not be up for re-election (if you doubt that you need to explicitly argue against it). And it also asserts that Repubs are typically-Trump, which I doubt.

4. Or A second Trump term comes with unacceptable risks: if The Economist had a vote, we would cast it for Kamala Harris.

Sound to hide the broken bone the sunken ship

My headline is a half-remembered quote from a poem read at school in childhood. And since I haven't had a poem or art here for a bit... good greif has it really been that long? I think I have to go back to Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I in 2018. Doesn't time fly when you/re getting old. Since then I've been to the Orsay, but fortunately that one isn't there, I'd have been sad to have missed it, if you see what I mean. Which you probably don't, but I no longer worry about that.

Aanyway, the point is that having searched the web in vain, I finally remembered that I probably still had the book - and it turned out that I did - and leafing through managed to find this, after some Betjeman complaints about Encase your legs in nylons.

Not quite the words I remember, and A. S. J. Tessimond turns out to be not-very-famous. Still I'm a bit surprised that "Sound like a sea to conceal the bone, the broken shell, the broken ship" gets me only one hit. Perhaps I can invoke more with this post. As to the meaning, ah well, see perhaps Old B+W speakers: I don't play music at home any more. But I do in the car.

As to the words, I kinda like mine more.

Refs

* The Progressive Moment Is Over.

* Kamala Harris is a Far Lesser Evil than Donald Trump.

* Illegitimate Attacks on the Court’s Legitimacy.

* Writes and Write-Nots - PG.

Reason and Morality

Having established - at least to my own satisfaction - The Foundations of Morality, I can now play the fun game of deconstructing other people's ideas. And by happy chance Reason and Morality by Alan Gewirth, falls into my hands¹. The contrast in language with Hazlitt is immeadiately obvious; this is academic philosophy. But casting that aspect aside, he's wrong, which is the important point. Wiki, naturally, can't bring itself to say this; partly because it just doesn't do that and partly because - all together now - philosophy doesn't do that, because philosophy is too scaredy-cat to make such sharp distinctions³.

AG is keen to found morality on rationality; to this extent he is part of the Enlightenment Project and that is good. Unfortunately... well, read his words:

...every agent must claim, at least implicitly, that he has rights to freedom and well-being for the sufficient reason that he is a prospective purposive agent. From the content of this claim it follows, by the principle of universalisability, that all prospective purposive agents have rights to freedom and well-being. If the agent denies this generalization, he contradicts himself. For he would then be in the position of both affirming and denying that being a prospective purposive agent is a sufficient condition of having rights to freedom and well-being.

This is (I think; don't let me claim to have read the whole thing) the core of his argument: that if you have F+WB, you're logically obliged to accept that others also have F+WB. And so:

...the statement that some person or group of persons has a certain right entails a correlative ought-judgment that all other persons ought at least to refrain from interfering with that to which the first person or group has the right. Since, then, the agent must accept the generalized rights-statement, All prospective purposive agents have rights to freedom and well- being, he must, on pain of contradiction, also accept the judgment, 'I ought at least to refrain from interfering with the freedom and well- being of any prospective purposive agent.' The transition here from 'all' to any is warranted by the fact that the 'all' in the generalization is distributive, not collective: it refers to each and hence to any prospective purposive agent.

And there we have it; we've deduced a general duty to behave nicely to people whoops I mean agents².

The problem though is that this isn't morality; the morality that we all know and use isn't found in an absence of contradiction or in logical reasonning. Worse, what he has deduced is essentially just the Golden Rule: do (or refraim from doing) unto others what you would have them do (or refraim from doing) unto you.

His error is to attempt to apply rigourous logic to morality, where it doesn't belong. In something more like normal language, he is attempting to found morality on benevolence: he wants us to behave well to others - implicitly, at some cost to ourselves - having logically deduced that we "owe" that to them. Hazlitt is closer to founding morality on prudence - the moral rules experience have taught us show that being nice to people is not only good for them, but for us as well, over the long term. Hazlitt is congruent to human nature; Gewirth isn't.

AG's scheme (like Kant's; like Hazlitt's) isn't actually a moral code but a schema that moral codes must fit. In chapter four he looks at what he can actually deduce. Do-not-harm-people is his first deduction, in 4.5, but with an exception for self-defence, in 4.6. This doesn't work well: the problem is that although he "knows" there must be such an exception, his schema doesn't really provide for it; nonetheless he tortures it into doing so. This is, incidentally, yet another hint that his proposed moral principle is wrong: he is not really deducing morals from it, instead he is desperately trying to make things he knows to be moral fit into it. Similar things happen with the duty-to-rescue in section 4.7. In chapter five he realises that we actually live by various social and moral rules; but he still prioritises his principles and does not as far as I can see, get to realising that those rules bind because they have "evolved" to, rather than because of his abstract principles.

Notes

1. I bought it second-hand for £15 from the Oxfam bookshop - it had been relegated (or stolen?) from the University of Lancaster philosophy department. If you're not from the UK, or are from some benighted part of the UK, Oxfam run a number of shops that are just second hand books; this works well in Oxford and Cambridge; though for Cambridge, Heffers is generally better for the heavyweight stuff.

2. But not to non-agents. Is animal cruelty bad, in his world? There's some whiffling around this (and mentally deficient persons) that I didn't have the patience to plough through; I sense he is uneasy on this point.

3. And partly of course because they don't even realise it is wrong, sadly.

Refs

* Reflections on United Arab Emirates.

* Do We Need Sports Betting to Get to Mars? Maybe.

* The flower of justice is peace.

Who knew what when, again?

WKWW refers. The shiny new Parliamentarians’ Guide to Climate Change says "Climate change is an area fraught with disinformation, creating a vital need for reliable, accessible and trusted data and analysis". How true. Naturally, it will hold itself to the highest standards, and rigourously eschew any misleading statements, such as That a warming planet is chiefly the result of human carbon emissions is extremely well understood. The greenhouse effect has been known about since the 19th Century and the first detection of human-caused warming was in the 1930s... oh, hold on. This "first detection" is Callendar's stuff. He did indeed make some kind of global temperature series, and he did indeed think It Woz Us Wot Dun It, but to present this as agreed upon or sure or even as "detection" is distinctly dubious¹; we have IPCC '90 saying Global - mean surface air temperature has increased by 0 3°C to 0 6°C over the last 100 years... The size of this warming is broadly consistent with predictions of climate models, but it is also of the same magnitude as natural climate variability Thus the observed increase could be largely due to this natural variability, alternatively this variability and other human factors could have offset a still larger human-induced greenhouse warming. IPCC '90 had not "detected" human-caused warming; claiming it for the 1930's is dodgy.

Don't ask me about the rest of it; I stopped at that point.

Notes

1. I'm pretty sure that calling it "the first definitive proof of rising global temperatures" is wrong too. We like it, now, because he turned out to be right (and British, too, which is nearly the same thing). As Spencer Weart puts it, It all sounded dubious to most meteorologists. Temperature data were such a mess of random fluctuations that with enough manipulation you could derive all sorts of spurious trends. Taking a broader look, experts believed that climate was comfortably uniform.

Refs

* Supreme Court allows EPA emissions rule to stand while litigation continues (Three Thoughts on same); actual text.

* Court Holds the First Amendment Bars Florida from Threatening Media with Criminal Punishment for Spreading Supposed Health-Related Disinformation. The ACLU’s wise decision to defend the NRA in NRA v. Vullo bears fruit.

* SpaceX is NASA’s biggest lunar rival.

The Foundations of Morality

The Foundations of Morality by Henry Hazlitt is an essentially correct analysis of morality; I recommend it highly². You can, if you like, read his Summary and Conclusion but that might be a mistake; it is better to start from the beginning.

Somewhat more precisely, it is a morality-schema; its main point is not pushing any one morality³, but in telling you what morality is.

And the schema is: morality is a system of general rules that ensure social cooperation in the long-term.

Other, failed, theories

There are many many wrong theories of morality. Hazlitt goes through various of these; I won't. That morality is divinely imposed, I consider not worth considering. Kant's ethics of Duty doesn't work, as everyone who reads it immeadiately realises, the only puzzle left being why people take him seriously.

Morality, Law, Manners

Morality is abstract rules that you should observe, for your own long-term good and the good of society, which in itself is your own long-term good. Law (as opposed to legislation) is similar, but enforced by coercion by the State when required; since it is enforced by coercion it should be the minimum. Manners are again similar, but enforced by disapprobation or honour.

The curious case of Haidt

There's a curious relationship to Moral foundations theory, which is essentially what went into The Righteous Mind. The curiousity is that much of the value of TRM is contained in FOM, and yet nowhere does Hadit show any awareness of prior art. It seems unlikely that he can genuinely be ignorant; that leaves rather less pleasant motives for the exclusion. Because whilst TRM contains quite a bit that FOM doesn't cover - Haidt is rather interested in explaining political differences - there is much that could be compressed into "read Hazlitt". The same goes for Morality as cooperation, 2024/03¹. Haidt has a slightly different focus, as the word "Righteous" implies, but that's not enough.

As a bonus, Hadit's definition of morality, viz Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible, isn't as good, since it omits the explicit "long term", which would have got him out of his cult and fascist problems.

One of Haidt's prize examples is the eating-a-dog. He struggles to fit that into his schema, because he struggles mightily to ensure that no harm is done. But everyone "knows" it is immoral, and in Hazlitt's version it is clear why: it is violating one of our taboos, which we know even though we don't know the reason we have it.

Notes

1. When we discussed that then, Tom complained that I'd omitted coercion in discussing cooperation. In retrospect I should have said that is simply part of it.

2. Although not unreservedly; he needs to read a bit more Popper; he wouldn't be so confused by Thrasymachus if he had. And his discussion of free will, like everyone else's, is a waste of space.

3. Although he correctly defends Capitalist morality and attacks Socialist "morality".

Refs

* A Kahnemanian Theory of Funerals.

* Kant's Dialectic.

* China's Upside-Down Meritocracy.

* Why Americans Should Die for Ukraine.

* A Fashionable Appeal to a Benevolent State (or read Noah Smith).

* Reflections on India.

* ACX reminds me how tit-for-tat fits into this (though why early-Christians weren't cooperate-bot is obvious: despite the fine words, they were effectively tit-for-tat with a high forgiveness factor).

* Bryan Caplan in Maximum Progress on Progressivism recommends Huemer's Ethical Intuitionism (also available for free via IA). A quick scan says I don't believe him, but I should look closer... the index has no entry for Hazlitt, which is dodgy.

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

By the sword you did your work and by the sword you die¹ will be recognised by all cultured folk as a quote from Aeschylus, spoken by Clytemnaestra to Agamemnon. My reference will confuse no-one I'm sure. But what are we to make of claims that this is a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty? Lebanon is not, I think, officially at war with Israel; and moreover claims to be a sovereign state; so we must ask why armed forces are, and have been for quite some time, firing missiles from Lebanon into Israel, with no apparent attempt by the Lebanese state to prevent this? The answer I think is that Lebanon is not, despite its claims, really a SovState². Instead it is a very weak state, whose chief problem is an infestation of Hezbollah. If they get really lucky, Israel may help them eradicate it. The real problem is Iran sponsoring all this nonsense of course; without their malignity, Hezbollah would collapse.

Re-reading my past, I find Torture and Terrorism from 2006.

Speaking of culture, you may care to test yours in my "identify the cathedral" test. Hint: it's in France.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellites an ‘existential threat to astronomy’ - predictably, all the ideas are "more regulation". There's not even a thought of cost-benefit analysis: is Starlink a better use than radio astronomy? Or even "would we be better off doing this from space?"

Mario Draghi’s best ideas are those Europe finds least comfortable (full report). But his answers are always things like "unify decision-making on public investments" so its all doomed⁷; the idea of dealing with over-regulation is still-born (he does manage to notice that "innovative firms that want to scale up are hindered by inconsistent and restrictive regulations" but his answer is to unify the regulations, not to think). And as the Economist says, the "recommendations are so numerous that policymakers will be able to pick and choose from among them"; this always happens. As an employee of a USAnian megacorp in the UK, I'm think I'm kinda insulated from the slow death of Yorp.

And then by happy chance, via Xitter, comes Foundations: Why Britain has stagnated. You'll notice, of course, that this compares Britain unfavourably with Yorp, particularly France, so is not perfectly in accord with me; nonetheless it is well-reasoned.

Update

[2024/10/02] Since I wrote the above the popcorn vendors have been making out like bandits. There's no shortage of talking heads proffering their foolishness, so I'll try to avoid adding much more. One notable theme has been of the "oh you know getting into these wars is very very dangerous" variety, written by idiots sat in comfortable arm chairs to be read by idiots sicac⁶, as though the Israelis who are actually risking their lives haven't thought of it; a sort-of variant on Dumb America. When done by e.g. Al-Jazmagi it's whistling in the wind / what their base want to hear; when done by the West it is more, I think, "intellectuals" desperate to be relevant in a time of soldiers (this seems to be a more decent assessment, though still somewhat pro-H; notice that what has happened wasn't on their list of possibilities). As I write this the Mad Mullahs have flung a pile of missiles at the kikes to little obvious effect⁵ but seems likely to provoke interesting consequences. I don't have a good feel for what will happen, but let me attempt a prognostication just to show how wrong I can be: the Israelis will hit Iran, taking out air defences (quite likely with US help), missile sites, and some of the nuke programme, and a token hit on oil facilities. And if they have any sense, take out their navy including the spy ship that helps the Houthis.

[2024/10/04] Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has vowed that Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza will emerge with new leaders and will not back down says the Graun; this is convenient if you were under any illusion that Hammy or Hezzy were independent entities; but no, Iran speaks for them. He continued "the brilliant action of our armed forces a couple of nights ago was completely legal and legitimate”... any nation had the right to defend its soil and its interests in the face of aggressors. And yet it isn't clear to me how flinging a pile of missiles at Israel was helping defend his Iran; since the near-inevitable consequence is Israel attacking Iran, it might be the reverse.

[2024/10/08] Astonishingly, the Beeb manages Siniora is unflinching in his assessment of Lebanon’s lost sovereignty. "Practically, Lebanon as a state has been kidnapped by Hezbollah. And behind Hezbollah is Iran. They make up for that brief interlude of sanity by hiding it under a blame-misattributing headline of "Lebanon abandoned by international community - ex PM". And another note: from the Economist, which tracks attacks in Lebanon, I see that Hezbollah attacks on Israel haven't gone down, counting raw numbers. The Israeli incursion won't be a success until it goes to ~zero.

[2024/10/18] 'Death of Hamas mastermind' and One Direction tribute to 'brother' Liam: another on bites the dust. And I love the irony that in the fat Cold West, we can't tell the difference between news and entertainment. With Sinwar, as the Economist notes, there is some hope for change. The Pales could even see sense and surrender; it can't be much of a life being Hamas, after all; even fanaticism must have limits. But hopefully not before Israel twats the Iranian nooks. Speaking of the Mad Mullahs, they say "the spirit of resistance will be strengthened", which is exactly what would be bad for the Pales, but then the MMs never had Pale welfare at heart, only their own weird theocratic objectives.

[2024/10/26] The Israelis seem to have gone for the minimalist reply against Iran; mostly air defneces, following step one in the std.us playbook; and some missile production sites. This is somewhat disappointing, especially for the popcorn vendors. And the MMs seem to have gone for "that didn't hurt much" instead of getting Really Angry so likely all will go quiet for a bit on that front. But it must gall the MMs that the only thing that keeps the Israelis off them is US pressure; they have no ability to defend themselves; consider for contrast the laughable idea that the MMs might try to bomb Israel from the air.

Notes

1. Absurdly, Wiki's article on "live by the sword" insists that the quote is biblical, despite the play preceeding the New Testament by centuries. I tried to correct them but they wouldn't listen.

2. Despite this being the bleedin' obvious, which I said in June, the fuckwitted meeja still haven't realised. Update: this is a fine example: Lebanon's economy minister Amin Salam says "It is very clear if we decide, or if Hezbollah decides, or the whole country decides to take a big risk and gamble more in this war, we will be paying a very, very, very big price that will take Lebanon to a very difficult place, and it will take many, many years to get back from that place". So, errm, why not decide not to take that risk? Why not decide not to fight? The answer, of course, is that he is unable to say "oh shit we have no control of Hezbollah we wish they'd all fuck off but if I say that they'll kill me".

I find, belatedly, "the one responsible for the fire from Lebanon is not only Hezbollah or the terrorist elements that carry it out, but also the government of Lebanon and the Lebanese state that allows the shooting from its territory" from csis.org/analysis/coming-conflict-hezbollah.

3. Holy Shiite Batman: the Graun actually quotes someone saying "Get the official Lebanese army on the ground on the Israel Lebanon border – not Hezbollah not Iran – get state authority back into the south Lebanon border." Admittedly, buried in other ideas and obvs the Graun doesn't take this up, but even a brief interlude of sanity is welcome.

4, More [2024/09/26] shitty reporting from Politico; the bit they're missing is the obvious: Hezbollah refusing to accept a ceasefire (and no, the fuckwitted tying it to Gaza isn't sane).

5. Ironically, the only reported fatality is "Sameh al-Asali, a 37-year-old Palestinian from Gaza living in the occupied West Bank". However - correctly IMO - people are regarding it as a serious attack.

6. There's plenty of that in The Economist; just recently they seem to change their tune somewhat with What Hamas misunderstood about the Middle East.

7. Others have also noticed this.

Refs

* Against Censorship and Its Academic Supporters.

* 2024 SAT Data Drop.

* Galileo Galilei vs The Holy Roman Catholic Church – Round: 5555555555…………

* Privatize Archaeology!

*Preliminary Milei Report Card - ACX.

* SLS is still a national disgrace.

* "In light of the wars and crises that threaten Arab and regional security, we have no choice but to restore the concept of the nation-state and respect its independence and sovereignty. The era of militias with its sectarian and regional dimensions has cost the Arabs dearly and burdened the region.  The future is for security, peace and prosperity with an independent Arab project reconciled with its surroundings" take that, Hezzy and Hammy.

* Who is really in charge of Lebanon?

* Conservatives Are Lying on Immigrant Crime.

* Compendium of Writings on the October 7 War and Western Reactions to it (including Far-Left Support for Hamas is not an Aberration).

* The Struggle / Polling Pales / Reporting of yer conflict.

When will climate change turn life in the U.S. upside down?

Having come back from France I guess I really ought to knuckle down and post some scintillating content, despite the lack of interesting things going on. Never mind, the children will be back soon, and it's Nines autumn regatta this weekend.

My pic is a gorgeous view of the Aiguille du Midi taken from about 4000 on the Gouter route; you'll notice it isn't a picture from the top because I didn't get there this time; I'll bore you with the full story at some point. Climate related hook: it had been a fairly snowy spring; the glaciers weren't obviously terrible this year.

So working through my backlog I start with When will climate change turn life in the U.S. upside down? Intensifying extreme weather events and an insurance crisis are likely to cause significant economic and political disruption in the U.S. sometime in the next 15 years. It's by Jeff Masters and features stuff like "It is inevitable that climate change will stop being a hazy future concern and will someday turn everyday life upside down. Very hard times are coming..." and you sense his deep disappointment that it hasn't happened yet; he is yearning to be able to say "I told you so" and would love it if life was already upside down, but alas it isn't and he can only promise it for the indefinite future.

Although only briefly, it appears. Because he also believes that "By late this century, I am optimistic that we will have successfully ridden the rapids of the climate crisis, emerging into a new era of non-polluting energy with a stabilizing climate..." Quite how he gets there I don't know; the chances of CO2 levels having gone down significantly are low, and I'd expect SLR to just be getting interesting at that point. Never mind, it is sufficiently far off that whatever he says won't be tested in his lifetime.

Continuing on we have the obligatory nod to wokeness: "the impacts of climate change will be apocalyptic for many nations and people — particularly those that are not rich and White...". This is bullshit. The only bit that matters there is wealth; colour of skin isn't a factor, except insofar as it determines your wealth.

We then move on to how insurance is going to be a disaster, but completely fails to mention that the problem is idiot pols meddling with the system which would work fine if only the evil capitalists were allowed to run it without interference. I gave up at that point.

Refs

* Aldred's Case (1610).

* The Road to (Mental) Serfdom & Misinformation Studies via Brazil as a Warning.

* Cheap at the price: Political donations are the highest grossing investments you’ll ever make.

* How Different Are the Trump Judges?

* Ranking Fields by p-Value Suspiciousness.

* Trump’s success is based on him being an avatar of what the American right has become. It’s angry, confused about all the numbers and facts liberals keep throwing around, contemptuous towards the airs they put on, not knowing anything with certainty except that they feel hostile to elites and foreigners and don’t like how the world is changing. It’s not that Trump simply knows how to appeal to these instincts. He personifies them, which is fundamental to the bond between him and his fans - RH.

* Top five placing for Perse School in Oxbridge offers table.

* New Essay: Coping With a Court One Disagrees With.

* Equality Act 2010 - why it is stupid.

* SCHUMPETERIAN PROFITS IN THE AMERICAN ECONOMY: THEORY AND MEASUREMENT; Nordhaus.

* Market Forces vs. Discrimination: What We Learn from Illegal Immigration.

* Pervasive findings of directional selection realize the promise of ancient DNA to elucidate human adaptation.

* The Conservative Case for Abolishing the Electoral College.

* Missing Fixed Effects Don't Justify Segregation.

* Designing The Perfect Tax System.

* Holy shit these people are stupid.

* Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated.

Good news on photovoltaics, perhaps

Trump, because he was a clown, put tarifs on imports of photovoltaics. Biden, because he was also a clown, maintained and extended this. However I now read A White House proclamation released late yesterday increased the volume of silicon solar cells that can enter the US tariff-free from 5 gigawatts (GW) to 12.5 GW. The tariff is currently set at 14.25%. I read through about 3 pages of the proclamation's tedious legalese before getting bored before it got to the point, so I'm taking the summary on trust.

But this does seem to be something of an improvement: govt flailing around has now, ants-carrying-a-leaf-wise, managed to make a step in the right direction. Of course fucking off entirely would be even more helpful but that's too much to hope for.

August is always a bit of a slow month. Here is a pukel-marmotte; can you guess where I am?

Refs

* Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are preying on political ignorance.

Book review: A Heritage of Stars

A Heritage of Stars by Clifford D. Simak is a harmless lightweight piece of SF-fantasy "pastoral" fluff. There is no particular pretension to literary quality, just a story told as well as he knows how.

We skate over various improbabilities, most obviously how the motley cast of characters come to be assembled. We quietly ignore the improbability of anyone not attempting to recreate tech. We just about manage to believe that pretty well all tech all over the world would somehow simultaneously be destroyed with no hold-outs, bar obvs the one Our Heroes are heading for. I'm dubious that the various "talents" that his party shows wouldn't have been noticed and studied and learnt from, but the book calls on us to believe in a vitiated huan race, somewhat like Tolkein's elves, so maybe.

Oh dear. This was meant to be on "the other blog". Well, never mind, it isn't as if it is crowded here. FWIW the dig about "literary quality" was a fling at John Harrison's Light. Since I ended up putting it here, I could add: reading the wiki biog of Simak, he seems  a decent likeable chap.

Refs

* Pre-bumps assessment 2024.

* Book review: Engine Summer.

* ALL FOR THE WANT OF AN EAR.

* Book review: Time and Again.

The Loper's so Bright, I gotta wear shades

You should probably start by reading SCOTUSblog's Supreme Court strikes down Chevron, curtailing power of federal agencies for a largely neutral view. In brief, By a vote of 6-3, the justices overruled their landmark 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which gave rise to the doctrine known as the Chevron doctrine. Under that doctrine, if Congress has not directly addressed the question at the center of a dispute, a court was required to uphold the agency’s interpretation of the statute as long as it was reasonable.

I discussed Chevron briefly in Kavanaugh’s views on EPA’s climate authority, without really focussing on the principle.

If you want to read someone wringing their hands about how terrible the decision is, you can try UnSciAm's A Supreme Court Ruling May Make It Harder for Government Agencies to Use Good Science. You should be cautious about believing the article though; for example "it was an unremarkable reminder of judicial restraint that had been the norm for a century" is doubtful; an attempt to prevent you thinking "but hold on this is just restoring things to how they were before". But inadvertently their A particularly important feature of Chevron deference, he says, is its nonpartisan nature. “It is a neutral principle,” Doniger says. “It lets conservative administrations cut back on the scope of these laws, and it lets liberal administrations do more with them” is quite telling: pretending that this is entirely or primarily a matter of scientific expertise is bollox: raw politics comes into it. And having the law change under your feet when the administration changes is not good. Another blow against the "scientific expertise" idea is the case actually under discussion, which amounted to who should pay for agency monitors on fishing boats. Oddly, the agency wanted the fishermen to pay.

To return to the basics: law (cough legislation cough) requires making, and that is down to the legislature; execution, and that is the job of the executive; and interpretation, which is what judges are for. Having the executive get to both execute and decide the law is dubious, and an obvious violation of separation-of-powers. Few people will object to the agencies resolving minor ambiguities; but major questions are a different matter. Speaking of which, the judgement helpfully points out that the Supremes haven't actually upheld Chevron for years. But as quite a few have pointed out, it will remain common for courts to actually defer, particularly in technical instances¹.

There's a fairly strong theme of people making up their minds pro and con on this matter based on the results they want, not the principles; vide UnSciAm, who correctly judge that the bulk of their subscribing readership come from amongst those likely to be in favour of regulators having more power. Another issue I've seen is defenders admitting that Congress routinely writes poor quality legislation that begs for interpretation. That shouldn't be a defence; if (but its unlikely) this acted to wake up Congress and get them to write better quality legislation, that would be nice.

Wiki quotes the NYT (arch) that this was the "cumulation of the current Supreme Court's efforts to weaken the adminstrative state as part of a conservative agenda against big government"; that seems to me to be typically poor thinking, since I see no reason why it should be the culmination (ah: I should have actually read the article: their point is that Chevron was the point, not Roe vs Wade; this is more plausible; it also rather nicely suggests that the left is easily fooled since it concentrates so hard on stuff like RvW and none of its people really care about stuff like C; vide the relative lack of coverage and the total lack of popular interest).

Refs

* Not to be mistaken for City of New York v Chevron Corp, again,

* WV v EPA.

* Why the End of Chevron Could Be a Win for Immigrants.

* Biden Won't Quit Because Being Old Sucks.

* Two quotes from Leviathan.

* Orange Man Running.

* A Cosmopolitan Case against World Government.

* Excessive Calls for Recusal Threaten Judicial Independence.

* Lifeboat Games And Backscratchers Clubs.

* GOP VP Nominee J. D. Vance is an Enemy of Free Markets; or mostly-alternatively Quick take on Vance: his appointment as VP suggests that the GOP is looking to make an appeal to anti-woke Silicon Valley or finance types to fill the void left by the Republican Party's competency crisis.

* Russia’s vast stocks of Soviet-era weaponry are running out.

* Biden to Propose Supreme Court Reforms.

* Change Pending: The Path to the 2024 General Election and Beyond - the people want ponies and rainbow-farting unicorns.

* Justice Kavanaugh Warns Against Over-Reading Loper Bright Decision.

Notes

1. The judgement prefers "respect" to "defer", and perhaps that's right: The Court recognized from the outset, though, that exercising independent judgment often included according due respect to Executive Branch interpretations of federal statutes. Such respect was thought especially warranted when an Executive Branch interpretation was issued roughly contemporaneously with enactment of the statute and remained consistent over time. The Court also gave “the most respectful consideration” to Executive Branch interpretations simply because “[t]he officers concerned [were] usually able men, and masters of the subject,” who may well have drafted the laws at issue. United States v. Moore, 95 U. S. 760, 763. “Respect,” though, was just that. The views of the Executive Branch could inform the judgment of the Judiciary, but did not supersede it. “[I]n cases where [a court’s] own judgment . . . differ[ed] from that of other high functionaries,” the court was “not at liberty to surrender, or to waive it.” United States v. Dickson, 15 Pet. 141, 162. 

Mayflies

Another year, another Mays. Somewhat wet this time; my pic is from Friday M2 which was especially rainy during the row-down; here we see, keeping up my shameless tradition, Caius M2. Watch the whole thing.

Fortunately Saturday was sunnier.

As to the results, the blockbuster was LMBC catching Caius on day one. I didn't see that, it happened halfway down the Reach; here's a vid. Congratulations to LMBC; commiserations to Caius, who also went down on Saturday to Magdalene. And also congratualations to Fitz on making it into div 1; I expect great things of the future. On the women's side, the widely-tipped Caius went down to LMBC to third on day one, got them back on day three, and then dramatically went head on Saturday.

As usual, this post is really just here to link to the full playlist.

Spinoza, Ethics

Spinoza, Ethics was recommended by Russell; that is recommended in the influence on thought sense. I "read" (browsed, skimmed, eventually gave up) this on Kindle during last summer's holiday; these are my notes from that reading.

You can tell from the title (Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order) that its going to go wrong, being another (but perhaps the first (no: the rather more successful Leviathan predates it by 10 years)) to ape geometry. It doesn't take him long to go wrong, he doesn't really understand definitions / axioms well: thus he defines finite (not rigourously, obvs) and then uses infinite without defining; he uses eternal before deffing it; etc. We get a pile of propositions that all depend on e.g. exactly what he means by "substance" so I didn't care.

Then, the ontological proof of god, which no-one believes, including him, because he immediately follows it with another proof variant (see wiki: by God he may mean Nature; which may or may not be the simple material universe (in which case why bother prove it exists?) or some pantheistic god).

Later, he proves that you can't cut an infinite thing in half because it would then be two infinities which is twice as large. Duh. He also neglects to consider one part being finite. I hope we get past this dull stuff soon.

Doesn't like free will (prop xxxii) since will needs a cause which must regress to god; similarly (xxxiii) the world could not be other than is, since it proceeds from god and god cannot be different it would be absurd. Confusingly (corr to prop xxxi, but another ordering of props) things are contingent.

There's very little actual ethics in there. In discussing good / bad (mostly in terms of desire / aversion in which he is close to Hobbes) I think he goes wrong (e.g. later: good-v-evil is nothing but emotions of pleasure-v-pain). He is missing the key concept of societies only existing if they have moralities that allow existence. This is unsurprising but means all his stuff is broken. Note: it is important to realise when things are broken. Not doing so, and endlessly chattering, is a key failure of most philosophy. Of his many propositions re emotions, some are kinda interesting aphorisms, and so of some value, but the proofs are all uninteresting.

Hazlitt

Hazlitt, in The Foundations of Morality, quotes Spinoza for "In no case do we strive for, wish for, long for, or desire anything because we deem it to be good, but on the other hand we deem a thing to be good, because we strive for it, wish for it, long for it, or desire it" (written between 1661 and 1675). That would make me think him worthwhile, had he originated it. But it is just a rip-off of Hobbes: "But whatsoever is the object of any mans Appetite or Desire; that is it, which he for his part calleth Good: And the object of his Hate, and Aversion, evill; And of his contempt, Vile, and Inconsiderable. For these words of Good, evill, and Contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them" (Leviathan, published in 1651).

Refs

* Two Federal Courts Rule Against Biden's New Student Loan Forgiveness Plan on the Same Day.

* France 2023 part four: Les Deux Alpes to La Berade; around; Dibona; and to Bourg D'Oisans.

In Defence of War

Before you get too excited, no, this is nothing to do with the current fracas in the near orient; instead it is a work of philosophy by Niglet Biggar. In terms of the examples he uses, WWI comes up.

I've read approximately a third of it, and eventually stopped, not because it is poor quality but because his analysis is almost entirely from a Christian, Thomist, Just-War perspective. Being a good atheist I reject reasonning based on an assumption of the correctness of the Christian perspective, of course. That could, though, leave us with the Just-War theory as of value because it has historical respectability; because it has been honed over centuries; because it has been considered and improved by fine minds.

But I don't believe that. I think Just-War¹ theory is a figleaf; a confection, devised to "allow" states to do what they would anyway. I can think of no examples of when states have said "oh hold on no we won't have this war because it fails test 3 out of the Just-War list of conditions". All the intellectual effort over the years has gone into disguising this.

The original problem is that Christianity is a blatantly pacifistic religion, which has been adopted as a state religion, and states need to go to war or at the very least credibly threaten to do so; and there has never been a shortage of intellectuals willing to provide words to paper over the problem.

Our Author does his best to get round Christianity's pacifism by noting things like "well, there are soldiers in the New Testament, and they are not ostracised, nor is there any suggestion they should give up their profession; from the Bible's silence on this, we can deduce that...". He is obliged to admit that deduction-from-silence is weak, but then immeadiately leaps over that.

Update: having just read Luke 3:14 where John instructs soldiers to do violence to no man I'm also dubious about either his honesty or his biblical scholarship.

Similarly - but here I am relying on my weak memory, and on sections that I didn't read carefully anyway - he has a tendency to bring up subject X, which has been brilliantly handled by scholar Y; but ah: he analyses scholar Y's analysis and finds it, whilst brilliant, quibblable; and so discountable.

My own defence of war, should I be obliged to make one, would align closely with Hobbes.

Notes

1. Somewhere - lost in the depths of wiki I think - I have a weak joke on this in which I suggest that Just-War should really be called "Just-Go-To-War, using the alternative meaning of the word Just.

Sherwood B. Idso suffers hard delete

Another one bites the dust; at least according to wiki. I'd tell you what the Dork Side thinks, but WUWT is giving me "429 Too Many Requests" at the moment². Perhaps it too has kicked the bucket¹.

I don't think I had much accasion to write about SBI; I can find a casual "one of the usual suspects" in Who were those masked men? and Patrick Michaels suffers hard delete.

Here's an obit for Sherwood Burtrum Idso.

Refs

* Science advances one funeral at a time.

* Houthis sank a ship with Russian coal.

* So Why Didn't They Borrow Trillions To Rebuild The Economy?

* France 2023 part three: Ailefroide to Les Deux Alpes.

Notes

1. My picture shows our faithful old bucket, which we acquired when we moved to Coton in 1995, as the old owners had left an ex-chickenshed full of stuff. It moved with us into Cambridge, until felled by a mighty blow from a pallet that delivered our new bench, a birthday present from my mother.

2. It's back now; no mention of the lateness of Idso that I can see. Archive.is is also giving me troubles; but here's an arch.

Polling Pales

Middle East news: both sides are trying to avoid giving a definitive answer to those nice USAnian's peace proposal, and are hoping they can blame the other side for rejecting it. Cue endless vacillation and death.

Meanwhile, there's a poll by the Palestinian Center for POLICY and SURVEY RESEARCH; see here; h/t RH. It makes grim reading for anyone hoping for peace⁴.

Before going on, it's worth noting the finding that A majority of 58% expected Hamas and Israel to reach a ceasefire in the next few days while 39% did not expect it. That's 58% delusional or reporting their hopes rather than actual expectations¹, which you should factor into your reading of all the other answers and my notes.

Most interesting to me is the figure below².

Yes that's right: slightly fewer people have been injured; and the number killed has increased by less than a percent. We could excuse this by sampling difficulties, perhaps, but the lack of increase of dead is weird. Of course it isn't the number of dead, it is the proportion of "families" with at least one dead, but still the lack of increase over the last three months suggests to me that these numbers just aren't reliable. Bizarrely, the report itself makes absolutely no comment on this oddity.

Support for Hamas's attack remains high, at 73% (fig 1), perhaps partly because only 3% think Hamas committed atrocities (fig 4) and 67% expects Hamas to "win" the current war. They carefully avoid explaining what "win" might be. 61% would prefer Hamas to control Gaza (fig 7); though if you prefer a slightly different perspective, Most Palestinians Don't Want Hamas Rule, Poll Shows³.

But what should be done? We have: When asked about its support and opposition to specific policy measures to break the stalemate: 66% supported joining more international organizations; 49% supported resort to unarmed popular resistance; 63% supported a return to confrontations and armed intifada; 62% supported dissolving the PA; and 22% supported abandoning” the two-state solution and demanding one state for Palestinians and Israelis. Three months /’, 55% supported a return to confrontations and armed intifada; 45% supported resort to unarmed popular resistance; 58% supported the dissolution of the PA; and 24% supported abandoning the twostate solution in favor of one state. Unfortunately they weren't offered the option of "surrender; stop fighting" which is my suggestion, but I doubt that would have been popular. Fig 22 provides another view on this, with 54% up for armed struggle 25% for negotiations; and 16% for popular non-violent resistance. "66% supported joining more international organizations" is amost sweet in its delusion; but more likely it indicates despair of other ideas. [Note: the weird "Three months /’" is in the original; I don't know what they've been smoking.]

It does seem that these people are motivated by hatred: The poll found significant opposition of three quarters to Saudi-Israeli normalization, even if it is conditional on Israel accepting a Palestinian state and taking concrete and irreversible steps toward that goal.

Somewhat more speculatively, I notice that the Palestinians invariably refer to their dead - all and any of their dead - as martyrs. That doesn't seem healthy. Whereas the Israelis usually call theirs murdered.

Update: Lebanon / Hizbullah

I'll write a few hasty words here before the world explodes, so I know what I thought (around 2024/06, I think).

The major oddity is that the Lebanese govt gets very sniffy about Isreal violating their sovereignty (example; notice that doesn't mention why the naughty Israelis are attacking, which is of course Hizbullah). And that would be fair enough, were they indeed sovereign in southern Lebanon. But if they are, then they're responsible for the rockets being fired into Israel from there (alternatively, they condemn the rocket attacks and would like to stop them, but can't, in which case they do not have actual sovereignty over the area). And if they're flinging rockets at Israel, they can hardly complain if Isreal bombs them back.

The answer, of course, is that the Lebanese govt is too weak to control Hizbullah in southern Lebanon, but doesn't want to admit it, and won't upset its people by telling Hizbullah to stop. The best solution would be for Iran to stop funding Hizbullah; that seems unlikely; second best is probably the upcoming Israeli attack.

2024/09: see me. But also see e.g. this, which shows zero evidence that the Lebs want Hezbollah gone, which makes them dorks.

Update: Hobbes

it is a precept, or generall rule of Reason, "That every man, ought to endeavour Peace, as farre as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all helps, and advantages of Warre." The first branch, of which Rule, containeth the first, and Fundamentall Law of Nature; which is, "To seek Peace, and follow it." The Second, the summe of the Right of Nature; which is, "By all means we can, to defend our selves." - Hobbes, Leviathan, CHAPTER XIV. OF THE FIRST AND SECOND NATURALL LAWES, AND OF CONTRACTS, The Fundamental Law Of Nature.

Notes

1. Speaking as a SWeng or mathematician, when people ask me a question I tend to answer it, and become unhappy when I can tell that my answer to their question, given literally, will mislead them; or when their question is so badly posed that no accurate answer is possible. But most people, I observe, treat a question more as an invitation to say whatever they like on a given topic. So I have no faith at all that survey reports are literally accurate.

2. I don't know why they've labelled that as "Jun 24"; the text says surveys between May 26 and June 1, 2024.

3. There's some wishful thinking going on there. Another way of saying it is Among those intending to vote, support for Hamas stands at 46%, Fatah 25%, third parties 6%, and the undecided at 25%.

4. But see-also my last comment re possible Hamas fakery.

Refs

* Reporting of yer conflict.

* The flower of justice is peace.

* Meritocracy, democracy and competition.

* Two views of democracy.

* Words for the word god: "He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees".

* France 2023: part two: around Vallouise and Ailefroide.

* Reflections on Juneteenth.

* ADHD Reconsidered.

* The Gap.

* Are the Rich Antisocial and the Poor Emotionally Intelligent?

* The parable of the Antheap and the Anteater.

* Has the war in Gaza radicalised young Palestinians?

The morality of not meddling in other people's business

Welcome to ye merie monthe of jun. Which is always a busy month of rowing - Mays is in swing as I speak - so perhaps that excuses my shameful lack of posting.

We're back to the olde feldes with Supreme Court preserves access to abortion pill at which all right-thinking people shout hurrah! Although one senses that the Graun isn't fully comfortable, or even cognisant, of what happened. The issue is one of Standing: just because you happen to care deeply and passionately about a given issue doesn't give you a right to stick your twitchy nose and grimy fingers into the legal pie. Which I link to my previous advice to care less.

This is a legal principle¹. But elevated - carefully - to a constitutional provision in some suitable fashion I would tout it as a solution to the Great War: in the sense that the govt really has no cause to be making laws about things that are best left to individuals. I've said this before to the inevitable great acclaim.

Refs

* Church and State.

* Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight / Where ignorant armies clash by night.

* The Supreme Court Inches Towards Liberty - Richard Hanania.

* Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18th.

* Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson.

Notes

1. For an opposing view, see The Case Against Restrictive Constitutional Standing Requirements; and for discussion of standing, see many comments on Murthy.

Why do we have so many bullshit plans?

Moans Sabine (5:25 in the video), in the context of GW. The answer of course is because that's what the system rewards; it's what the people demand. People want "to do something" about GW - or at least, that's what they'll answer in any survey you give them, because they know that's the right answer. But paying for it, in direct financial terms or by changing behaviour is a different matter. So "performative" politics - people saying nice things but postponing action into the indefinite future - is the default for any long-term problem¹. Hence, targets - which are targets for the future, not now - are popular.

The other issue is that these targets are always in the context of a command economy, which we don't have and don't want. Trying to do it amounts to pushing jelly. Tellingly, at the end (5:45) our hostess wonders what she would do if she were in charge, and decides she would step down: she doesn't have any actual ideas.

This is the Carbon budgets and carbon taxes stuff come again. And the answer is the same.

Addendum: based on a pub conversation today, I realised I've missed off "so what will happen, given that the plans are bullshit?". My best guess is that rather than a superheated hellscape, we'll end up with solar and wind becoming cheaper and us switching to that, not as fast as possible but faster than the no-govt-action plans predict. See-also footnote 4 at my review of Climate Schlock.

Notes

1. See-also national debt, pensions, and so on.

Refs

* The Freedom to Do What Sounds Wrong.

* Problems with progressivism and populism.

* RealClimate: New journal: Nature 2023?

* ATTP is A bit inactive… (yes, I trimmed his ellipsis. There are rules, you know).

* That’s the Style: Markets and Modernism.

* The 100th Anniversary of One of America's Worst Laws—the 1924 Immigration ActThe 100th Anniversary of One of America's Worst Laws—the 1924 Immigration Act.

* David Boaz's Final Speech: "The Rise of Illiberalism in the Shadow of Liberal Triumph"

* WATERFRONT PROPERTY ON THE HIGHWAY TO HELL.

Your right to lorenorder

Gangsters in El Salvador are terrified of strongman Nayib Bukele says the Economist, and after noting He protects citizens from crime it wonders But who will protect them from him? Before you accuse me of being interested in El Salvador, I defend myself by pointing out that this is merely a hook to hang a discussion of the balance between the govt's duty to provide Peace, vs the govt's duty to provide Due Process. Or, about the tension between Order and Law.

In the soft warm comfortable West we are so used to a generic background of lorenorder that we take it much for granted, and therefore prize due process without a great deal of thought. But perhaps this isn't true everywhere. Indeed TE notes that Leaders everywhere must decide, in tackling gangs, what is the right balance between respecting civil liberties and protecting the public. Completing the set of warring opinions, we may note that growing disillusion with democracy is fed by a sense that governments are not keeping the public safe, which can lead to growing populism, a desire for strongman leaders, and authoritarianism; but also that discarding due process in one place may legitimise said discard elsewhere, also tending to authoritarianism. 

Why does it seem that only strongmen be able to discard due process? Democracy should be able to as well, where necessary. And yet the inevitable softening and blurring of multiple opinions makes this hard; the regard that the West has taught all democrats for due process is so entrenched that it is hard for a democracy to show the necessary determination. Instead, TE offers the usual platitudes: leaders who care about civil liberties must do the hard, patient work of figuring out how to fight crime without trampling on them. Bryan Caplan, who will also supply you with some nice statistics if you want them, tries some kind of moral calculus to work out if all the imprisonment without trial is worth it, and concludes reluctantly that it is, at least in the short term. You may also like Blackstone's ratio It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer, though opinions seem to differ on what the ratio should be; Benjamin Franklin seems to prefer 100:1. I would though extend the thought: does 10:1 guilty-escapes to innocent-suffer being good imply that 100:1 is bad? The proverb is not just trying to tell you not to be too harsh; it is reminding you not to be too lenient.

Just as (per Hobbes) violent revolution is only permissible if it has a fair chance of success, discarding due process in favour of peace is only permissible if it is likely to work; TE (yes them again) argue that the experience in El Salvador may not be generalisable. However, I wanted to talk about when it does have a fair chance of success.

And my answer (per Hobbes, but also others) is that govt is constituted first to provide peace, and replace the private resolution of disputes by violence with common public law. The norms of due process that we in the West take for granted are desirable but secondary; we should not impose our values on them. The current war in Palestine also refers.

Note also that Peace, in the conventional model, is a matter of the govt ensuring that citizens are non-violent towards each other. Due Process is a matter of the govts relations to citizens.

Hobbes said it well: THE final cause, end, or design of men (who naturally love liberty, and dominion over others) in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, in which we see them live in Commonwealths, is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war which is necessarily consequent, as hath been shown, to the natural passions of men when there is no visible power to keep them in awe, and tie them by fear of punishment to the performance of their covenants.

Refs

* Is the Backlash to Universities Becoming Real?

* The Protest: A Socratic Dialogue.

* Setting Issue Priorities.

* The main opposition candidate on how to fight organised crime in Mexico. New leadership and outside help are needed, says Xóchitl Gálvez.

* Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus - but Mises "Let justice be done, lest the world perish" is better.