03
Dec
2015
Potpourri
==> Gene Callahan sent me this very interesting piece on Bob Dylan and Christian Zionism.
==> Rob Bradley gets a letter in the WSJ about the Paris talks.
==> Apparently you can’t read the Senate torture report if you’re in the Executive branch.
==> Come see Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Jeff Deist and me in Houston in late January.
Tyler Cowen’s deleting all my comments and trying to block me. Since he gave me no formal warning or command, I persist in commenting. Thus we have a post that looks like this:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/12/that-was-then-this-is-now-4.html#comments
Petty of him, ain’t it?
I don’t know what you mean. Am I supposed to see people responding to a non-existent comment?
Yes. Lots and lots and lots of them.
There’s probably a market for some sort of metablog that allows a parallel stream of comments linked to someone’s article. I remember a few people tried it with browser plugins (highly unreliable) but browers have improved their scripty features since then, so might be worth a re-visit.
Implementation has been deliberately left as an exercise for the reader, although I’m open to collaboration.
I asked Sumner to email Tyler on this matter, but Sumner says he doesn’t intervene in other mods’ decisions.
Libertarians have a reputation for closing their ears and refusing to listen to dissent, Because property rights. As if property rights were relevant to the issue of whether one can handle debate and dissent. Sumner is currently on EconLog I believe. That is one of the worst. It’s remarkable how many comments and commenters get zapped there.
I am curious, what was your crime? From the pieces by Cowen I have read I conclude the thing he hates most is a simple declarative sentence. Did you write one of those?
Yep, definitely Ken B
Oh, I see what he did there, now.
Bob Murphy’s “craw”. Ken B sticks in it.
Welcome back, Ken B! Missed you, buddy.
Had a nasty spat with a commentor called Jan, posted a lot, and called people f*gs and condemned their f*ggotry. But the vast majority of my comments were highly productive.
Also, made comments pointing out Obama’s creation of the IS and the (extremely probable) genetic basis for low average measured test scores among various races.
Tyler deleted some of those, too, before he went on a full-scale deletion spree.
Also, was pro-Putin, though Tyler didn’t delete as many of those.
Wow… I think as a matter of courtesy if you are going to complain on a different site that someone has been deleting your comments, you need to mention this upfront. You may call them cowards, but rightly or wrongly most people would think that is pretty critical to the story.
Ah, but I also omitted the fact I promised to Tyler not to use profanity on his blog again, and, so far, haven’t.
This does not justify the deletion of dozens of really good and educational comments I’ve made (e.g., on the post on the Eric Cline book, which I’ve linked to here, the vast majority of which were deleted) on archaeology, ancient history, race, and FDA drug approval policy.
And Tyler’s seemingly fine with profanity: he used the word “bullsh*t” in one of his recent posts.
As saith Art Deco (quite civil, conservative):
“What’s the point of deleting a post which talked about some ancient stelae?”
and
“Seems pretty silly to ban ‘Harding’ inasmuch as the moderators tolerate several people who chase other commenters around offering nothing but stupid jabs and sour insults, especially since one of these has a history of sockpuppeting other participant.”
I mean, Tyler really takes the trouble to do this. He’s much tougher on me than he has been on spammers and people who’ve impersonated me when I was still on Tyler’s good side. What’s the point of that?
And I’m still complaining as to why, after all these years, there’s no timestamp on these blog’s comments.
E. Harding it must be annoying, having all these websites providing you with free stuff in a manner not to your exact specifications.
And then you have me on the religion threads complaining about the want of logic.
If it helps, Murphy’s above response was posted today.
That’s hilarious guest.
Yes, extremely so, especially when all the other websites I’ve been to have timestamps on these comments.
Also, any way to get past the WSJ paywall?
Yes. Paying.
Any other proposals on getting past the WSJ paywall?
Look it up in your search engine then when you select the article you go right on through.
In this case I clicked Bob’s link, went to the page but it was mostly blocked, so I copy/pasted the header; Armageddon Redux at Paris Climate Debate into my search engine(bing if that matters) then when it came up in my search I clicked on it and full access to the article. Hope that works for you.
It works!
Ha ha yeah, Rupert’s Overtly Evil Empire vs Google’s Pretend Not to be Evil Empire.
To use that trick properly you need to reset your browser now and then, clear out whatever tracks the number of times you visited.
I figure that time is money, and if the site seems a bit difficult to visit, and if I cannot feel that they are good enough to pay for, then just forget it, don’t waste either your time or your money. With most of those Main-Stream-Media news stories, I skim them very quickly, I dunno, every year I respect them a bit less.
Respect for the property rights of political opponents is optional for Austrians. Sign me up; I oppose everyone.
Information isn’t property, but rather it is meaning poured into observations always and only by the observer rather than by the communicator.
The communicator can try to impart knowledge all he wants, but unless the observer can pour meaningful ideas into the sounds or symbols observed, it is *not* information.
Therefore, all information is “created” by the observer. Information cannot be transferred, and therefore cannot be sold.
What *can* be sold is the *service* of expression with one’s voice or with one’s writing skills.
To my knowledge, Robert Wenzel has never addressed this point.
Ohhhhh. It isn’t that you don’t respect them. It’s that you don’t recognize them. Equally convenient. But we’re talking copyright here aren’t we? More than just information.
“Equally convenient.”
That’s not a rebuttal.
“But we’re talking copyright here aren’t we? More than just information.”
Copyright is a claim to have the right to prevent another person from using his own property as he sees fit.
Now, if we’re talking about a contract between two people, then breach of contract is the rights violation, rather than supposed “intellectual property”.
Okay so you do reject copyright. I can sell copies of Murphys books, under the name of my choice I assume, and keep the proceeds?
Tom Woods ‘s books too.
Not quite the same but it seems to follow that I can freely print their names, addresses, pictures.
I can print racist screeds under their names, with the LVMI stamp? George Soros might be able to make good use of this.
” I can sell copies of Murphys books, under the name of my choice I assume, and keep the proceeds?
“Tom Woods ‘s books too.”
Yes, absolutely; You own the ink and the paper you use to print copies.
They don’t have the right to tell you what you may or may not do with your own property.
Well, a clear unequivocal answer anyway, even if a loopy one, so thanks for that. I wonder what Regnery paid these men for if not the copyright, so I wonder if they agree. But you seem consistent.
“I wonder what Regnery paid these men for if not the copyright …”
It can be deduced from the fact that people are willing to pay for access to anothers’ writing, even under the conditions of copyright, that there is a genuine market for these men’s service of expression (It’s a service, not a good).
The amount of money that can be gained by the government coercively restricting access to that expression is that for which Regnery is paying these men.
Without copyright laws, the information would spread quicker because it would be copied by others.
Hey, Ken B is back.
Peter Schiff was Right: Pre-December-Rate-Hike-Decision Edition
From the comments section of EPJ:
“211,000 New U.S. Jobs All But Guarantees a Fed Hike”
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2015/12/211000-new-us-jobs-all-but-guarantees.html
“If RW thinks higher rates will not traumatize an economy with a labor structure, capital structure, and cash flows adjusted to and dependent on the embedded subsidy and distorted signals of artificially low rates, and RW thinks higher rates will not start to rupture artificially levered-up asset price bubbles, then RW implicitly endorses the effectiveness of artificially lowered interest rates at creating real and lasting improvements in jobs, productivity, and asset prices.
“In other words, if RW’s prediction is correct that the Fed can allow rates to rise and the economy will not turn for the worse, then Keynesianism is correct!“
A war could mask a downturn, though, so “heads up”.
If the Fed hikes this year, Schiff was wrong.
Nope.
Schiff has always acknowledged that the Fed *could* hike.
Here he is in March of 2015 saying as much:
Fed Fears Bursting Bubble “Too Big to Pop”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBhq6ncsV3o
What he’s saying is that it’s not in their interest to hike because it will pop the bubble they’ve created.
Assuming the Fed doesn’t want to take the blame for the bust that follows a hike, he reasons that it would be more strategic to hold off on a hike for as long as possible – which is precisely what they’ve been doing.
They certainly can’t one-and-done the hike. And if they try to do it slowly, like they seem to be flirting with the idea now (25 basis points), then price inflation is going to outpace them as the inflated money supply gets spent into the economy on the mistaken assumption that a rate hike implies economic recovery.
No, when all that money that’s been printed for the past 7 years gets spent into the economy (more than it already has), it will *reveal* the weakness of the real economy – which is measured in the goods that consumers want, rather than in phony paper claims.