Autoerotic Asphyxiation, Silicon Valley Style

Silverfiddle Rant!

Big tech doesn’t build anything. It’s not likely to give us vaccines or diagnostic tests. We don’t even seem to know how to make a cotton swab. Those hoping the US could turn its dominant tech industry into a dynamo of innovation against the pandemic will be disappointed.

Source:  Covid-19 has blown apart the myth of Silicon Valley innovation

Silicon Valley represents a textbook example of what economists call Opportunity Costs:  

You can't do everything, so you choose to do this over that, and there are always costs associated with that decision, most commonly, things that don't get built, achievements forgone.

Silicon Valley is a collection of smart, educated entrepreneurial people, but they have wasted their technological talents on toys, when the world needs intellectual firepower aimed at reimagined cities, transportation, infrastructure, preserving biodiversity and habitat, food production, safe drinking water, energy production, and medical technology.

The world is in need, and a vast pool of "American ingenuity" sits in California playing with themselves and making obscene profits off of Chinese slave labor. A few days after writing the previous sentences, I stumbled across this, written by David Rotman in MIT Technology Review

The pandemic has made clear this festering problem: the US is no longer very good at coming up with new ideas and technologies relevant to our most basic needs.

We’re great at devising shiny, mainly software-driven bling that makes our lives more convenient in many ways. But we’re far less accomplished at reinventing health care, rethinking education, making food production and distribution more efficient, and, in general, turning our technical know-how loose on the largest sectors of the economy.
Source:  Covid-19 has blown apart the myth of Silicon Valley innovation

We were in a hole before Covid-19 hit, and its going to take new ideas and smartly-focused efforts to position us for success going forward.  Economics professor John Van Reenen says "technological innovation is the engine of economic growth," and he describes how to do it. 

Can government incentivize industry and brainpower to steer some of its attention away from shiny (and financially lucrative) toys, and turn to more prosaic, practical pursuits?  Can we actually build things again here in America?

"Never Let a Crisis Go To Waste"

Silverfiddle Rant!

Big Government has ordered everyone to stay in their homes and has promulgated a gargantuan $2 trillion emergency spending bill.  These ukases have snapped the frayed ties that had moored us to reality and time-tested principles. We are in dangerous waters, and politicians, tastemakers and thought leaders of all stripes are preaching nostrums that just months ago would have gotten them laughed off the mainstream public stage. Doctrinaire leftists are also roaring back, eager to see if their unbalanced old ideas can gain traction in this new unbalanced environment.

Politico has assembled mini-essays from “more than 30 smart, macro thinkers” on what the outcomes from our corona virus experience will look like. This vapid, illogical quote sums up the entire project:

“It’s clear that in a crisis, the rules don’t apply—which makes you wonder why they are rules in the first place.”

Many of the missives are innocuous, giddy pie-in-the-sky platitudes heard in late-night college sophomore dorm discussions, but the underlying themes throughout include enforced solidarity and uniformity, obeisance to a leviathan government of infallible experts who will replace our fallible personal judgements, and an enforced end to those horrible old fashioned cultural practices that are not just stupid and un-scientific, but endanger us all.

There is also a common thread--squirming worm-like throughout--that names enemies of the Brave New Project: Donald Trump, petroleum industry, automobiles, eating meat, capitalism, privatized health care, personal liberty and autonomy, limited federal government.

A Brave New World

The authors envision a post-corona Brave New Future where government provides free college, free money, free health care and free child care, but for me their writings conjured scenes from a dystopian hellscape, everyone cossetted in their own sterile bubbles, peering out at fellow humans through plastic lenses and internet cameras while government instructions blare from social media outlets.

 Where the authors see an opportunity to force us all to eat soylent green (for our own good, of course) I see a totalitarian dystopia, sterilized of personal agency and genuine human love. I execrate almost all of the proposals in this article, except for improvements in medical care coverage and giving workers more resources to take care of themselves and their families, and I believe these goals can be accomplished without more government bureaucracy. Unfortunately, Republicans are not up to the herculean task of crafting intellectual and practical arguments against more big government.

Lost in all this is the fact that markets and freedom did not fail us—Big Government did

Please read the article and tell us what you think. Below I list a few of the best essays, the worst, and which ones I think are most likely to happen.

The Best

* The rise of telemedicine. Ezekiel J. Emanuel
* Regulatory barriers to online tools will fall. Katherine Mangu-Ward
* Congress can finally go virtual. Ethan Zuckerman
* Stronger domestic supply chains. Todd N. Tucker, Dambisa Moyo

Most Frightening

* Government becomes Big Pharma. Steph Sterling

The "brilliant thought leader" fails to realize that the private sector is not charged with planning for and fighting pandemics, government are, and they have largely failed. South Korea is an example of how a free market democratic nation successfully fights a pandemic.

Most Likely to Happen

* Expect a political uprising. Cathy O’Neil

But like any revolution, it will play out in wild and unpredictable ways, not how she predicts
* Stronger domestic supply chains. Todd N. Tucker, Dambisa Moyo
* A hunger for diversion. Mary Frances Berry

What say you?

Hecatombs

Silverfiddle Rant!

Life is all about trade-offs. If government action causes our economy to take a trillion dollar hit, with the goal of saving one million lives, that is one million dollars per human life saved.  One trillion dollars gone, and a shriveled economy now one trillion dollars less able to power the nation back to health.

Our economic engine is our strength to power through this, with technology, scientific breakthroughs, and everyday activity that produces wealth, but government has thrown the switch and the machine is now running on two cylinders.  It would be smarter and cheaper to take extraordinary measures to isolate and protect the vulnerable, while allowing the rest of us to get on with generating wealth by working and consuming, so we can fund the medical breakthroughs to beat this and prepare for future pandemics.

Below are excerpts from the WSJ article, WSJ - Rethinking the Coronavirus Shutdown.  The article is now hidden behind a paywall, which is why I have reposted whole paragraphs.

Thank you, CDC and public health officials.  We have learned much, and we have helped slow the disease by putting your lessons into practice:

The vast social-distancing project of the last 10 days or so has been necessary and has done much good. Warnings about large gatherings of more than 10 people and limiting access to nursing homes will save lives. The public has received a crucial education in hygiene and disease prevention, and even young people may get the message. With any luck, this behavior change will reduce the coronavirus spread enough that our hospitals won’t be overwhelmed with patients. Anthony Fauci, Scott Gottlieb and other disease experts are buying crucial time for government and private industry to marshal resources against the virus.

 At what cost?

In a normal recession the U.S. loses about 5% of national output over the course of a year or so. In this case we may lose that much, or twice as much, in a month.

The initial shutdown was supposed to last two weeks.  Let's adjust and try to do things smarter...

That will surely include strict measures to isolate and protect the most vulnerable—our elderly and those with underlying medical problems. This should not become a debate over how many lives to sacrifice against how many lost jobs we can tolerate.

But no society can safeguard public health for long at the cost of its overall economic health. 

 Even America’s resources to fight a viral plague aren’t limitless—and they will become more limited by the day as individuals lose jobs, businesses close, and American prosperity gives way to poverty.

America urgently needs a pandemic strategy that is more economically and socially sustainable than the current national lockdown.

Related:

Dear Congress: I’m A Small Business Owner. Here’s What My Business Needs To Survive

Hysteria & Panic: Counting the Cost

Silverfiddle Rant!

“This is not Ebola, this is not sars, this is not some science fiction movie come to life. The hysteria here is way out of line with the actuality and the facts.” *

I surveyed the bare shelves, and my mind kept turning to the working poor with children who perhaps only have a narrow opportunity to shop once a week, elderly and disabled people for whom a trip to the grocery store is a herculean effort of pain and worry...

And they find the store stripped by panicked hordes of healthy, able-bodied people, most of whom could miss a few meals and it would do them some good.

"We have 30,000 traffic deaths every year!  We're ordering all vehicles off the roads to save those lives!"

Heather MacDonald asks if governments' abundance of caution is worth the cost in her article, Compared to What?

Even if my odds of dying from coronavirus should suddenly jump ten-thousand-fold, from the current rate of .000012 percent across the U.S. population all the way up to .12 percent, I’d happily take those odds over the destruction being wrought on the U.S. and global economy from this unbridled panic.

Stimulate What?

Federal, state and local government have crashed the economy by ordering businesses to close and throwing tens of millions out of work.  Now, they are borrowing trillions to bail out the economy they wrecked.

How in the hell are people supposed to stimulate the economy with fistfulls of government cash when government has shuttered all the businesses?

I don't need a thousand dollar check.  I am still working, thank God.

Could government actions have been a little more targeted?  Lasers instead of meat axes and sledge hammers?

Now that the economic wreckage from government panic is in the trillions, here are two actions governments should immediately take:

1.  Unemployment checks to those millions of workers the federal, state and local governments threw out of work

2.  Financial assistance to small business owners the federal, state and local governments ordered shut down

These payments are not socialism.  This is government providing a small remuneration for the harm they caused, and states should foot their part of financial responsibility.  It is easy to decree broad, sweeping mandates when you don't have to pay for the disastrous consequences.


Related:
States Can't Shut Down Non-Essential Businesses Without Harming Essential Ones

Destructive Destruction

Silverfiddle Rant!

Apologies to John Prine…

Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County,
Where good jobs are boomin' and men get good pay.
I'm sorry my son but you're too late in askin'
Mr. Jeff Bezos' website done hauled them away.

You can’t bring those Sears jobs Back

Is retail dead, destined for the obituaries along with the whale blubber industry that was replaced by kerosene lamps, which were replaced by the lightbulb?

What kind of new economy will give people meaningful work as technology ends up doing so much of what humans used to earn their living doing?

Is free money for everybody a solution? How would that work if nobody is working and paying taxes to fund it?

Will the world end up Silicon Valley’s vast domain, with the giants handing out monthly vouchers for us to shop at their company stores?

Bust the Trusts?

Emerging China: the Dragon Awakens

by Sam Huntington

Even a shrew will attack when it feels as if there is no other way out.  China today offers the United States a daunting strategic challenge.  We haven’t actually cornered China, but our artless foreign policy may certainly give China that impression.

There are two aspects of our relationship with China that I’d like to discuss: military posturing, and economic strength.  Before I get to that, we need an appreciation of the history of Sino-US relations.

Older Chinese still recall the “bad old days” of China’s evolution from feudal state to a modern power.  Foreign subjugation began with the Opium Wars in 1848.  Western powers, including the United States, more or less helped themselves to Chinese resources.  At the beginning of the twentieth century, China suffered increasing frequency of internal upheavals; these were mostly the result of the central government’s inability to do anything about the presence of foreign powers that sought to enrich themselves at China’s expense.  On more than one occasion, the United States sent military and naval forces to China to protect its diplomatic legation and to demonstrate American power.

China achieved a republic in the early 1920s, but one that was politically unstable.  A civil war lasted from 1927 to 1937.  The civil conflict was interrupted by a Japanese invasion and World War II.  Civil war resumed in 1945, lasting until 1949.  Thus, from the mid-1800s to 1949, China experienced warlordism, internal upheaval, starvation, and national degradation.  The Chinese call this their century of humiliation. Twenty-four million people suffered and died.

The June 2018 G7 Summit

“We’re like the piggy bank that everybody is robbing,” Trump said. “And that ends.”

The United States will not allow other countries to impose massive Tariffs and Trade Barriers on its farmers, workers and companies. While sending their product into our country tax free. We have put up with Trade Abuse for many decades — and that is long enough.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2018

Related reading...Peter Navarro: 'There's a special place in hell' for Justin Trudeau after Trump 'stunt'.

Happy Days are Here Again!

** A Silverfiddle Post **

President Trump has unleashed the animal spirits of our economy. African American unemployment is at a record-low 6.8%.

Innovation + Productivity = Economic Miracle

Warren Buffett’s Time Essay gives us the most accurate and concise explanation of the economic miracle known as the United States of America. It is a message of hope that the greatest economic powerhouse the world has ever known will continue its unprecedented championship run.

“Two words explain this miracle: innovation and productivity. Conversely, were today’s Americans doing the same things in the same ways as they did in 1776, we would be leading the same sort of lives as our forebears.

“To all this good news there is, of course, an important offset: in our 241 years, the progress that I’ve described has disrupted and displaced almost all of our country’s labor force. If that level of upheaval had been foreseen–which it clearly wasn’t–strong worker opposition would surely have formed and possibly doomed innovation. How, Americans would have asked, could all these unemployed farmers find work?

“We know today that the staggering productivity gains in farming were a blessing. They freed nearly 80% of the nation’s workforce to redeploy their efforts into new industries that have changed our way of life.”

One of the many beauties of our nation is how our economy does organically “redeploy” workers to “new industries;” indeed that is one sign of a healthy, robust economy. Easy to do in boom times, but bad times leave cast-off workers mired in unemployment and despair. We are entering boom times, and we can’t allow all the hoopla to drown out the forgotten people.

Buffett closes his short essay with an optimistic challenge:

“The market system, however, has also left many people hopelessly behind, particularly as it has become ever more specialized. These devastating side effects can be ameliorated: a rich family takes care of all its children, not just those with talents valued by the marketplace.

“In the years of growth that certainly lie ahead, I have no doubt that America can both deliver riches to many and a decent life to all. We must not settle for less.”

I agree. How do we do this?

How do we "ameliorate" the "devastating side effects" and help those left behind catch up?

How do we build an America that will “deliver riches to many and a decent life to all?”

About 21st Century Sweatshops

As I was catching up on emails, I found this article in my inbox: Smug College Kid Shut Down After Professor Hits Him With a Truth Cruise Missile. A portion of the video below was embedded in the article. Please watch and, if you can recover from noting the cocky attitude of the students (Exeter University), offer your thoughts about what Yaron Brook said:

Interesting Times

Never thought that I'd live long enough to see a chart like this one:

Bloomberg (January 20, 2016): One Gallon of Milk Is Now Worth About Two Gallons of Oil.

Obviously, many investors are losing their shirts.

Quotation Of The Day: The Global Economy

Comment by Bocopro, who typed in the following to this post at Western Hero and particularly appropriate now that Greece has defaulted on a 1.6 billion euros debt payment to the IMF and has rejected the European Union's bailout offer:

Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Puerto Rico . . . these are the rumblings of what before long will be a great global Vesuviusing, with nationally fatal pyroclastic flows, intercontinental ashfall, planetary climate disruption, mass migrations, riots, starvation, hysteria, disease, and unending strife.

China, Russia, Europe, South America, and the US will flounder and drown in the morass of debt in the gazillions while their GDPs barely make it to the brazilians. Hurricanes of speeches and tons of promises won’t prevent a single balloon payment or cancel an ounce of debt.

Debts are like bastard children, begot in pleasure of the flesh, then brought forth in great pain and handicap. To promise fabulous socialist entitlements based on flawed arithmetic is to enslave the next generation who will inherit the budget shortfalls. And interest on debts grows without nourishment or watering.

The US central government seems to believe that a day will come when all debts are forgiven and everyone will live in some kind of utopia where self-replicating, self-repairing machines provide us with all our needs sans cost, where exactly-the-right-size Levis suddenly appear on shrubberies and meatball sandwiches flow from giant cornucopias in converted supermarkets.

At seven-point-five decades, I may already be safely under ground when the debt tsunami hits, but my grandkritters and their lot will be forced to pay for the mismanagement of thousands of politicians who tried to run cities on splenda, states on saccharine, and nations on nutrasweet.

Our entitlement systems, whether the leftistas choose to believe it or not, are not sustainable unless we discover the trick to turning hot air into gold. As Hamlet tells us: “I eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons so.”

Meanwhile in China: BROKERAGES ANNOUNCE PLAN TO PROP UP SHARES.

Also see this (Click directly on the graphic to enlarge it):

Please discuss in the comments section. Got a crystal ball to check so as to see what's coming next?

Recommended Reading

(This post will remain here for a few days because the material merits more than a casual reading)

See The Death of the American Dream in 22 Numbers by Michael Snyder. Can you dispute the points made? If not, do you have any ideas whatsoever for remedying this situation — or for protecting oneself and family?

For your convenience, most of Mr. Snyder's essay is below the fold:

Prices In Venezuela

From the March 23, 2015 edition of Time Magazine:

The government controls prices for imported essentials such as food and medicine, and the following examples show the result:

Bag of dry dog food = $316

iPhone 5 = $14,127

Jar of instant coffee = $190

So much for lifting up the oppressed worker class!

Furthermore, the rate of inflation in Venezuela is 68%, and the rate of exchange is 6.3 bolivares to $1. The minimum wage at that rate is approximately $890/month.

Recent video posted by the BBC:

Please read THIS ARTICLE. Worth your time.

Beware of all who promise any version of an earthly utopia.  It is the Road to Serfdom.

Amnesty Bonuses

From the Weekly Standard: ‘Amnesty Bonuses’ in Tax Code: Illegal Immigrants to Receive Earned Income Tax Credit: Could cost ‘more than $24,000 to those who receive deferred action’.

Excerpt below the fold (emphases mine).

Economic Realities

Obama supporters are promoting the idea of the Obama boom.

But is there really an economic boom?

Please see the following graphs, which seem to indicate that the Obama boom consists of smoke and mirrors (hat tip to The Flying Camel; click directly on the graphs to enlarge them):

So, what do the above graphs mean for each of us and for America as a whole? According to The Flying Camel, citing Charles Hugh Smith:

FEATURED QUESTION: Immigration

(This FEATURED QUESTION stuck here for few days. Please scroll down for other material)

Time and again, we hear the following: "These hard-working immigrants do the work that Americans will not do."

President Obama has characterized immigrants, particularly illegal immigrants, as "workers who pick our fruit and make our beds."  As if those are the only tasks undertaken by illegal immigrants!

Obamanomics

(with a hat tip to THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS)

The graphic tells the sorry tale:

Fifty States?

The United States still consists of fifty states, but they no longer have fiscal independence (hat tip to Asylum Watch):

Percent of budget coming from the feds went from 37% in 2001 to 45% in 2012. Federal money per person went from $1,352 in 2001 to $2,603 in 2012.  The darker the color, the more federal monies the state receives.

For more details, please scrutinize this. The graphic is interactive; see the legend at the bottom of the graphic.

At Asylum Watch, Jim writes the following:

Our nation, as constitutionally formed, is The Republic of the United State of America. In theory, a republic is where the supreme power is vested in the citizens who elect people to represent them. Do you feel that we are living in a republic? Do our elected officials really represent their electorate? And, what about the words: United States? Are we, a constitutional union of states, where all power rest with the states except for the enumerated powers constitutionally assigned to the federal government? Our nation may have started out as The Republic of The United States of America but it has evolved into something quite different. Some of the changes came about through constitutional amendments and, thereby, the citizens of each state did have a voice in those changes. Most changes, in my opinion, have come about by either judicial fiat or by congress passing laws that no one asked for or by Executive Orders of a sitting president. The laws passed by congress have often created federal programs, which states must implement with partial or full funding from the federal government. When states accept those funds, the find they must comply with the strings, which are firmly attached. Those federal funds and the attached strings have given the federal government much power over the states that was never envisaged in our constitution.

[...]

...Louisiana receives 44% of their budget from Washington and New Mexico 37% and Idaho 35%....

The destruction of the principles of federalism!

Your comment on the above data?

Cicero (?) Was Right

Nabbed from the sidebar of Diary of a Right Wing Pussycat (Kid's site):

The Cicero entry at Wikipedia

Cicero was exiled for opposing Julius Caesar's tyranny.

Authentic money quotes HERE. Worth considering.

Note (addendum): A commenter has rightly pointed out that there is no evidence that Cicero actually said or penned the words in the above graphic. See comments section of this blog post.

Nincompoopery — And Worse

(Weekend roundup post.   For the definition of nincompoop, see THIS in the Urban Dictionary. Commenters are encouraged to post links that tell of more nincompoopery)

Links to read (more possibly added as the weekend progresses):

IRS’ Lois Lerner Asks To Delay Her Congressional Testimony Because She Fears For Her Life

State Senator in New York Proposes Requiring Parents To Take “Parenting Classes” From Government

OECD: World Tax an Unholy Alliance, Obama Loves It – Requires Global Solution, a Single Global Standard