Consulting by RPM || Free Advice Blog

What the American People Don’t Know

…is that Paul Krugman has secretly replaced their gourmet coffee with socialized medicine.

In a blog post that featured a stunning rainbow (I’m not kidding) to signify the impending passage of the health insurance bill, Krugman said something that I don’t recall him stressing in the run-up to the vote:

OK, nothing is sure in this world. Intrade is still giving Obamacare a 2.2% chance of failing, and I suppose Bart Stupak might have a Bwahahaha moment on the House floor. But it looks as if health reform has been achieved.

There is, as always, a tunnel at the end of the tunnel: we’ll spend years if not decades fixing this thing.

The one thing I’d always given credit to Krugman for, was his bluntness. For example he comes right out and says that the laws of economics get flipped upside down in a liquidity trap, whereas other Keynesians might not have the temerity to state it so baldly.

Yet was Krugman saying it would take decades to “fix this thing” when he was telling everyone how essential “health care reform” was? I really don’t remember that.

With Fans Like These…

Google Alerts brought the following to my attention:

When I saw Bob Murphy’s The Politically Incorrect Guide ™ to capitalism almost exactly two years ago, I said that it was a pity that the book would be as bad as it is. Ironclad proof of how bad I was just then that a new book by Murphy for the Great Depression and New Deal is necessary today.

The really funny thing is, if you click on the link you’ll see that this guy is promoting my book! (I think it’s an English-as-second-language thing.)

Should Christians Fear the Boom-Bust?

Two housekeeping notes: The blog is still under construction, and the post title is a geek reference to this.

Growing up I didn’t read the Bible much at all, especially the Old Testament. So although I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior (on April 16, 2002, if I’m reconstructing the date correctly), I still didn’t really know very much about these matters.

One of the series at Hillsdale United Brethren (our church when I was a college professor) centered on, “What do you fear?” So they showed clips of people saying standard stuff that Americans would say, and of course there were the obligatory funny things like some lady saying “I fear looking at the bathroom scale! aaaa!”

I don’t remember exactly what my opinion was at the time, but I imagine I would’ve thought something like this: “These are all petty, narcissistic things. You should be afraid of significant things like people dying, or better yet, people dying without hearing the gospel. Or, you should be afraid of being tempted into sin, and so you should fear the traps of the devil.”

But our pastor said that these types of things were the wrong answer, that the one healthy thing to fear was the Lord. At first this struck me as odd; isn’t Jesus supposed to be my good buddy? But the more I read the Bible (and listened to sermons from people who had studied the Bible a lot more than I have) the more it made perfect sense.

With that background, I was blown away by the following passage when I read the book of Job a few weeks ago. After he has lost everything, Job lectures his friends who originally came to console him but end up chastising him:

Job 28:12-28 (New King James Version)

¹² “But where can wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?

¹³ Man does not know its value,
Nor is it found in the land of the living.

¹⁴ The deep says, ‘It is not in me’;
And the sea says, ‘It is not with me.’

¹⁵ It cannot be purchased for gold,
Nor can silver be weighed for its price.

¹⁶ It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir,
In precious onyx or sapphire.

¹⁷ Neither gold nor crystal can equal it,
Nor can it be exchanged for jewelry of fine gold.

¹⁸ No mention shall be made of coral or quartz,
For the price of wisdom is above rubies.

¹⁹ The topaz of Ethiopia cannot equal it,
Nor can it be valued in pure gold.

²⁰ “From where then does wisdom come?
And where is the place of understanding?

²¹ It is hidden from the eyes of all living,
And concealed from the birds of the air.

²² Destruction and Death say,

‘We have heard a report about it with our ears.’

²³ God understands its way,
And He knows its place.

²⁴ For He looks to the ends of the earth,
And sees under the whole heavens,

²⁵ To establish a weight for the wind,
And apportion the waters by measure.

²⁶ When He made a law for the rain,
And a path for the thunderbolt,

²⁷ Then He saw wisdom and declared it;
He prepared it, indeed, He searched it out.

²⁸ And to man He said,

‘ Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom,
And to depart from evil is understanding.’”

Man at Work

Sorry kids, I’ve got a guy revamping the web site. (I will reveal his identity and promote his stuff etc. once everything is nailed down.)

It’s a long story, but I was unable to post for a few days. Basically I had to switch my Blogger account to a different blogspot URL in order to import it into the new WordPress thingie, but then once I did that (and WordPress wasn’t ready to go) I couldn’t post anymore from Blogger to my original URL.

Anyway, we should have things cleaned up by Monday.

Murphy Double Play

* At MasterResource I tut-tut Robert Frank’s NYT column on climate change that scared the children. I use the latest Economic Report from the President (as in Obama), as well as a chart from the latest IPCC report (aka “the scientific consensus”), to show that the world is not ending, at least according to our trusted government and association-of-governments documents.

* At Mises I show the hidden paradox in standard free market arguments for drug legalization and against union thuggery. Specifically, a typical economic case for drug legalization will blame gang violence on the lack of contract enforcement (e.g. a drug dealer can’t call the cops if he gets robbed), and free market economists will also usually say that unions can achieve above-market wage rates because the government doesn’t intervene to protect “scabs” from picketers.

On the face of it, aren’t these odd positions for a rabid free marketeer to take? In other words, s/he is arguing that there would be less gang violence, and a more coordinated labor market, if only the government would use its monopoly of courts and police more.

I resolve the paradox in my article.

Knappenberger Catches the IPCC With Its Pants Down

Over at MasterResource, Chip Knappenberger (who is a published climate scientist, though he is ABD I believe) has a great post documenting the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report’s treatment of Antarctic sea ice. Here is the intro:

Some climate scientists have distanced themselves from the IPCC Working Group II’s (WGII’s) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, prefering instead the stronger hard science in the Working Group I (WGI) Report—The Physical Science Basis. Some folks have even gone as far as saying that no errors have been found in the WGI Report and the process in creating it was exemplary.

Such folks are in denial.

As I document below, WGI did a poor job in regard to Antarctic sea ice trends. Somehow, the IPCC specialists assessed away a plethora of evidence showing that the sea ice around Antarctica has been significantly increasing—a behavior that runs counter to climate model projections of sea ice declines—and instead documented only a slight, statistically insignificant rise.

How did this happen? The evidence suggests that IPCC authors were either being territorial in defending and promoting their own work in lieu of other equally legitimate (and ultimately more correct) findings, were being guided by IPCC brass to produce a specific IPCC point-of-view, or both.

I warn you that Chip’s post is a bit long, and for full effect you need to read it carefully. But if you are at all interested in this issue–and you don’t want to reflexively say “hoax! hoax!” just because you are a libertarian–I think Chip’s post is well worth the effort.

Let me give one more hint: The post keeps getting better, the deeper you get into it, but you can’t just skip to the punchline. You need to read the whole thing as it builds to the climax, and the noose tightens around the IPCC authors who were in charge of this particular section.

Paul "W." Krugman

Krugman continues to outdo himself. In this article he somehow ends up saying: “In short, right now America has China over a barrel, not the other way around.” Right, just like I have my credit card companies right where I want them.

Here’s a fun experiment: Go through this Krugman column and replace “China” with “Iraqn,” and “import surcharge” with “bomb the crud out of them.” The Krugman op ed suddenly turns into a Max Boot piece.

Should Christians Support a Necessary Evil?

[CORRECTION within post, below.]

Kevin Clauson gave an interesting talk at the Austrian Scholars Conference concerning the apparent (but spurious in his mind) tension between evangelical political views and Austro-libertarianism. During the talk he described government as a “necessary evil” and cited Romans 13 to show that God had instituted civil authority, but that the sinful nature of men meant that government needed to be very limited.

Norman Horn in the Q&A raised a question along the lines of, “I happen to disagree with you that government is necessary, but let’s put that aside. I’m interested in your acceptance of the very concept of a necessary evil.”

Clauson reiterated his points about the sinful nature of man (making government necessary but at the same time very dangerous) and once again cited Romans 13. But then Norman explained that he wasn’t challenging the existence of government, but rather the concept of a necessary evil. Then he said something like, “But earlier in the book of Romans he says, ‘What shall we say then? Shall we do evil that God may work good from it? By no means!'”

[UPDATE: The following is wrong, I picked up the wrong passage when I tried to find what Norman was alluding to. Please read the comments to see a much better debate.] I think he was referring to Romans 6, and the translation here is not exactly how I remembered Norman making his point. In other words, the translation here (and the ones I’m used to) are not as clearly in conflict with someone who thinks there is such a thing as a necessary evil, i.e. that Christians could use an admittedly evil thing (the State) to effect a good outcome.

Anyway I am not sure myself how I feel about all this. According to my own arguments on this very blog, I think I would have to agree that the world itself is a necessary evil in God’s plan.

Note that Norman could still argue that humans shouldn’t use evil things as a way to effect good outcomes, even though God does that (e.g. Joseph’s betrayal at the hands of his brothers). But I think Norman was trying to argue that the very notion of a necessary evil is nonsense.