Posts
Monday, June 29, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
The Invisible Hand of Population Control
A look at economic freedom, population growth, and the Tragedy of the Commons by Ronald Bailey at reasononline.
Hardin believed that Smith's metaphor of an invisible hand was contributing to "the dominant tendency of thought that has ever since interfered with positive action based on rational analysis, namely the tendency to assume that decisions reached individually will, in fact, be the best decisions for an entire society. If this assumption is correct it justifies the continuance of our present policy of laissez faire in reproduction." As the essay makes abundantly clear, Hardin is convinced that "rational analysis" will prove that Smith's invisible hand leads to inevitable population ruin.The inverse relationship between wealth and fertility is quite evident, however, it will be interesting to see how prosperous countries fare as time progresses. Can a society maintain its economic strength while declining in population? More specifically, can the immense welfare commitments of Western nations be upheld by fewer and fewer young workers? An equilibrium will be reached - either by increased fertility, immigration from lands with excess youth, or a decline in benefits and entitlements.
In fact, several recent studies suggest that Hardin might have it backward. Under certain circumstances, there may actually be an invisible hand that leads to an optimum population.
...
Norton persuasively argues that Hardin's fears of a population tragedy of the commons are actually realized when the invisible hand of economic freedom is shackled. Many poor countries have poorly specified and enforced property rights. Poor property rights means that many resources are effectively left in open access commons where the incentive is to grab what one can before the other guy gets it. Norton points out that in such situations, more children mean more hands for grabbing unowned and unprotected resources such as water, fodder, timber, fish, pastures, and for land clearing. Lacking the institutional incentives to invest in and preserve resources, this drive to take as much as possible as quickly as possible leads to perpetual poverty.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Alternative Sugar Names
Here's a list of various sweeteners that you may not recognize as sugar on an ingredient list. Some were quite surprising. (link)
Barley malt. A sweetener produced from sprouted barley that is mostly maltose. It is used in combination with other sweeteners and for cooking and baking.
Brown rice. A sweetener produced commercially by cooking brown rice flour or syrup brown rice starch with enzymes. It can be used for cooking and baking and is sometimes combined with fruit concentrates to be used in food products.
Brown sugar. A refined sugar coated with molasses.
Cane syrup. A very sweet syrup made from sugarcane.
Corn syrup. A manufactured syrup of cornstarch that contains varying proportions of glucose, maltose, and dextrose. It is used in salad dressings, tomato sauces, powdered drink mixes, fruit drinks and juices, and desserts like pudding and ice milk.
Crystalline. A sweetener that is made from cornstarch and comes in granules fructose like table sugar. It is used in dry mix beverages, low-calorie products, enhanced or flavored water, still and carbonated beverages, sports and energy drinks, chocolate milk, breakfast cereals, baked goods, yogurt, fruit packs, and confections.
Dextrose. Another name for glucose. A simple sugar that is less sweet than fructose or sucrose. It is used in many baking products like cake mixes and frostings, snack foods like cookies, crackers, and pretzels, and desserts like custards and sherbets.
Fructose. A sugar found naturally in fruit; also a simple sugar refined from fruit.
High fructose. A highly concentrated syrup of mostly fructose and some corn syrup glucose that is prevalent in soft drinks and other processed foods.
Honey. A concentrated solution of fructose and glucose, plus some sucrose. It is produced by bees from the nectar of flowers.
Invert sugar. A sugar created by heating sugar syrup with a small amount of acid such as cream of tartar or lemon juice in order to reduce the size of the sugar crystals. The resulting product is smoother and suitable for use in candies and some syrups.
Lactose. A simple sugar in milk.
Maltodextrin. A sugar made from maltose and dextrose in corn. It is used in a wide array of foods, from canned fruits to snacks.
Maltose. A simple sugar made from starch.
Mannitol, sorbitol, xylitol. Sugar alcohols derived from fruit or produced from dextrose. These sweeteners are used in many dietetic products. Sugar alcohols do not promote tooth decay, unlike sugar.
Maple syrup. A concentrated sap from maple trees, predominantly fructose. Molasses The thick syrup by-product from the processing of sugarcane or sugar beet into sugar. Blackstrap molasses, a popular health food, is a good source of calcium, iron, and potassium.
Muscovado or Barbados sugar. A British specialty brown sugar that is very dark brown and has a particularly strong molasses flavor. The crystals are slightly coarser and stickier in texture than “regular” brown sugar.
Sucanat. Nonrefined cane sugar that retains all of its molasses content.
Sucrose. Refined, crystallized sap of the sugarcane or sugar beet; a combination of glucose and fructose.
Turbinado. A less refined sugar that still has some natural molasses coating.
White grape juice. A highly purified fructose solution. Virtually no other nutrients are present. It is often used in juice concentrate blends.
Other Sugar posts:
Evaporated Cane Juice: Part I
Evaporated Cane Juice: Part II
Caramel Apples
Sugar and the Environment
A Look at Agave
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Peter Schiff on The Daily Show
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Peter Schiff | ||||
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More Peter Schiff here and here.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Francisco's Money Speech
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
(Link to complete passage from working-minds.com.)
Excerpt from Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
Friday, June 5, 2009
Mortgage Meltdown Overview
Here's a powerpoint presentation showing some interesting data on the housing market. It is produced by Whitney Tilson and Glenn Tongue, managing partners of T2 Partners and the authors of More Mortgage Meltdown. I haven't had a chance to check out the book, but the charts are quite foreboding. As I've examined before, the subprime mess is not the end of the mortgage/bank problems. There are many Alt-A and Option ARM mortgages still poised to deliver massive defaults, as well as commercial real estate and consumer debt.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Why Ethanol - Not Electric Cars and Hybrids - Is the Answer
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures explains why biofuels are the answer for fossil fuel replacement for personal transportation in the near term. As I have said before, liquid fuels are key to providing economical transportation. He also brings up the point that first generation biofuels (corn ethanol) are only stepping stones to more viable and efficient future fuels.
Also important to remember is the busted link between corn ethanol and American food prices. This "fact" was thrown around in the media last year as food and fuel prices soared. In hindsight, the sharp increase in corn prices had a much stronger correlation to the commodities bubble than an increase in ethanol production, which is conveniently overlooked.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Case-Shiller Index Monitors Continued Fall
The first quarter of 2009 saw a continued, dramatic slide in home prices. From cnnmoney.com:
Phoenix and Las Vegas continue to be hammered.The S&P/Case-Shiller National Home Price index, a bellwether of real-estate market direction, plunged a record 19.1% during the quarter compared with the first three months of 2008. That followed an 18.2% drop last quarter.
The Case-Shiller 20-city index dropped 18.7% year-over-year, also a record. It fell 18.5% during the last three months of 2008. This index has plummeted 32.2% from its July 2006 peak and has fallen 32 straight months.
Two cities have now have fallen more than 50% from their peak prices: Phoenix is down 53% since June 2006 and Las Vegas is off 50.4% from its August 2006 high. Dallas prices suffered the smallest loss from peak, just 11.1% since June 2007.Official press release from S&P/Case-Shiller with in depth charts and graphs can be found here.
Monday, May 25, 2009
The Housing Boom and Bust
Interview by Tomas Sowell on reasononline. Sowell's latest book is The Housing Boom and Bust,
"a plain-English explanation of how we got into the current economic disaster that developed out of the economics and politics of the housing boom and bust".
reason: What sort of reactions should the federal government have to the current situation?
Sowell: First, the government should not try to artificially keep up housing prices. The tremendous irony is that the very politicians who for years talked of affordable housing are fighting to keep housing prices from falling. How does housing become more affordable except by keeping prices down? They really have no interest in having housing become affordable by means other than their largesse.
reason: Do you think they need to be doing anything to ease the woes of people in foreclosure?
Sowell: Not at all. Foreclosure is not something that happens to you like being struck by lightning. Foreclosure is the end result of things people have done that they need to stop doing in the future. And the market can take care of that. California is one of those states where we’ve seen a drastic reduction in fancy no-money-down mortgages and all kinds of creative financing; we’ve seen those things drop sharply within just a couple of years as housing prices fell and foreclosures rose, as long as the government isn’t there to prop them up.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Is California Too Big To Fail?
Who is up next for bailouts? How about California?
Preliminary returns on Tuesday night show that voters soundly rejected ballot measures calling for higher taxes, meaning that the not-so-Golden State's politicians are likely to take hat in hand and head to Washington begging for a bailout.Where does this stop? How many other states have budget troubles? If you want to have government spending, you must have sufficient tax receipts to pay for it. The moral hazard of a federal bailout of individual states is staggering. Why would any state balance its budget?
Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger floated that idea months ago, as did Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, a Democrat. Schwarzenegger's visit to the White House on Tuesday surely didn't harm its prospects.
California does have enough cash to survive through June 30, but the state controller estimated in March that another $10.6 billion would be necessary to last the summer.
An article in Tuesday's Bond Buyer newspaper reported, citing congressional sources, that the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve are considering loan guarantees and "other assistance" to state governments. A House of Representatives committee is holding a hearing Thursday on a bill to provide federal guarantees; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, is in a position to make that happen.This is just a symptom of our greater national problems. We are spending more money than we make on nearly every personal and governmental level. This cannot continue.
Now, it's true that California's fiscal woes are serious, but they're the result of politicians' poor decisions over many years. No matter how it's concealed, a bailout could jeopardize the nation's AAA credit rating - and invite 49 other governors to queue up outside the Treasury building. (The incentive is perverse: The worse shape your state is in, the more cash you get from the Feds.)
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009
U.S. Electrical Grid
Here's detailed interactive graphical representation of the U.S. electrical power grid from NPR. It shows the grid and power generation facilities, as well as wind and solar potential.
The U.S. electric grid is a complex network of independently owned and operated power plants and transmission lines. Aging infrastructure, combined with a rise in domestic electricity consumption, has forced experts to critically examine the status and health of the nation's electrical systems.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Tragedy of the Commons and the Road to Serfdom
In this passage, Hayek touches upon the concept of the Tragedy of the Commons and negative externalities. He acknowledges a limitation of a pure capitalist system, yet posits that this fact is not reason enough to discard of the system outright. He then later describes that these responsibilites would fall to the state: "In no system that could be rationally defended would the state just do nothing. An effective competitive system needs an intellegently designed and continuously adusted legal framework as much as any other."
There are, undoubted fields where no legal arrangements can create the main condition on which the usefulness of the system of competition and private property depends: namely, that the owner benefits from all the useful services rendered by his property and suffers for all the damages caused to others by its use. Where, for example, it is impractical to make the enjoyment of certain services dependent on the payment of a price, competition will not produce the services; and the price system becomes similarly ineffective when the damage caused to others by certain uses of property cannot be effectively charged to the owner of that property. In all these instances there is a divergence between the items which enter into private calculation and those which affect social welfare; and, whenever this divergence becomes important some other method other than competition may have to be found to supply the services in question. Thus neither the provision of signposts on the roads nor, in most circumstances, that of the roads themselves can be paid for by every individual user. Nor can certain harmful effects of deforestation, of some methods of farming, or of smoke and noise of factories be confined to the owner of the property in question or to those who are willing to submit to the damage for an agreed compensation. In such instances, we must find some substitute for the regulation by the price mechanism. But the fact that we have to resort to the substitution of direct regulation by authority where the conditions for the proper working of competition cannot be created does not prove that we should suppress competition where it can be made to function.
Excerpt from The Road to Serfdom - Friedrich von Hayek, 1944
Sunday, May 3, 2009
The Defense of Hank Rearden
No, I do not want my attitude to be misunderstood. I shall be glad to state it for the record. I am in full agreement with the facts of everything said about me in the newspapers - with the facts, but not with the evaluation. I work for nothing but my own profit - which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense of theirs; I do not sacrifice my interests to them nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage - and I am proud of every penny that I have earned in this manner. I am rich and I am proud of every penny I own. I made my money by my own effort, in free exchange and through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with - voluntary consent of those who employed me when I started, the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product.Excerpt from Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
I shall answer all the questions you are afraid to ask me openly. Do I wish to pay my workers more than their services are worth to me? I do not. Do I wish to sell my product for less than my customers are willing to pay me? I do not. Do I wish to sell it at a loss or give it away? I do not. If this is evil, do whatever you please about me, according to whatever standards you hold. These are mine. I am earning my own living, as every honest man must. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence and the fact that I must work in order to support it. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it better than most people - the fact that my work is of greater value than the work of my neighbours and that more men are willing to pay me. I refuse to apologise for my ability - I refuse to apologise for my success - I refuse to apologise for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it. If this is what the public finds harmful to its interests, let the public destroy me.
This is my code - and I will accept no other. I could say to you that I have done more good for my fellow men than you can ever hope to accomplish - but I will not say it, because I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognise the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life. I will not say that the good of others was the purpose of my work - my own good was my purpose, and I despise the man who surrenders his. I could say to you that you do not serve the public good - that nobody's good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices - that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the right of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation - as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won't. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own - I would refuse. I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!
(link)
Friday, May 1, 2009
Pirate Party Vies for EU Seat
Sweden's Pirate Party (Piratpartiet) - whose platform consists mainly of abolishing copyright and patent law - appears to be gaining enough support to claim a seat on the European Parliament.
Hey, I'm all for burning a few mp3s here and there, but this really is amazing to me. Perhaps it is their candor that is surprising...most politicians wish to legalize stealing without your knowledge. These guys put it right out there for everyone to see. I wonder if their followers have thought through the consequences of the proposals, after all the free movies and music have lost their allure. Perhaps they simply do not care.
I believe in property and I believe in intellectual property. A world without property laws would have dangerous seas to navigate, indeed.
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