"Balance & Context in the Global Warming Debate" by Prof. Bob Carter

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What I take away from the lectures, among other things, is a reminder of the danger of one's thinking getting misled by imagery and semantics.

In the first lecture, Prof. Carter mentions homoeostasis, the self-regulating quality of a (complex) system. We like to think of mother nature as an equilibrating system and speak contentedly of nature being in equilibrium.

What is insufficiently appreciated is that what we mean by equilibrium is often a highly complex set of conditions, not just a frozen end state. Thus for plants and animals and our species to be capable of viable existence on this planet (a condition defining a complex and dynamic equilibrium), there has to be a lot of change going on, all the time, both within, say, our species and within its environment.

We can sensibly speak of a person being in equilibrium if there is air for her to breath and in disequilibrium if she suffocates; however, for equilibrium thus defined to exist, countless processes of change need to be operative, both in the environment and within the human being.

Hence, with a view to nature, the concept of "equilibrium" will tend to be such as to presuppose and summarise complex and significant change enabling conditions that may appear to be static, such as the abstract quality of "viability," when in fact they are requiring change and the ability to adapt to change.

The current fad of over-dramatising climate CHANGE seems to draw on the subliminal expectation that equilibrium is a condition of stasis.

Be this as it may, the below videos offer a good summary of the discrepancy between the evidence on global warming / climate change established according to valid scientific methods and the rendering of some of the most pertinent issues in the media and popular discourse:

For a more lengthy presentation and better video quality, see this equally spirited lecture of the late Prof. Bob Carter.

"Shadowland" and "Cold Heaven" — The Nature of Disappointment

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Recently, I have been reading two disappointing books, both being praised in the reviews. I will admit that both novels betray the author's exceptional skills. Among these I would emphasise in the first author: excellent descriptions and a knack for keeping scenes in a state of unobtrusive suspense— scenes, I must stress, as the overarching story is not suspenseful in my reading at all — for the reasons explained below. 

I.

I am talking about Peter Straub's Shadowland.

What's wrong with the book can be said in a few words: there is too much straining after effect. Any serious inclination of the reader to identify with the youthful protagonists is drowned and swept away thanks to a relentless avalanche of legerdemainist razzle-dazzle. The three youngsters one might otherwise begin to care for struggle to survive constant harassment by a magician who is contradictorily portrayed as far more capable of magic than an ordinary magician conceivably could be, appearing indeed almost almighty, while at the same time still being restricted in his ability to destroy his victims. 

In its second part, the book becomes just one enervating string of overdrawn conjuring tricks that are lacking in credibility as they refer to effects that a ghost may be able to execute but certainly not a mortal magician. 

I was struggling to get through the thickish book, feeling deceived most of the time. 

What kept me going, apart from discipline, was the descriptive power of Straub's, and his other strength: the masterful evenness of exposition. While the frame is unconvincing, the exposition of each scene is staggeringly realistic, pleasantly economical, and poetically resourceful—worth of great literature. 

But then, the story completely lacks organic coherence. The first part is dedicated to the adventures the two youngster-protagonists experience at a boarding school: an excellent literary report made up of excellent stories. Then, Straub sends the boys off to a summer holiday spent with a magician-relative. In this second part, purpose and theme of the novel change, turning it into a tiring sequence of badly motivated, chronically overdone magical fireworks. The magician is supposed to know that the boys will turn out even more capable magicians than himself, which prospect compels him to try to kill the dreaded competition.

Possibly, Straub was working against a deadline set by his publisher. 

Again the descriptive execution is superb, but the unfolding events are thoroughly unconvincing, not least because Straub simply transfers dazzling stage-effects that would be credible in a truly supernatural environment haunted by properly commissioned ghosts to the world in which we live, overstraining the credulity of the reader and the prowess of a mortal magician with feats of showmanship blatantly beyond the competence of the best tricksters among our species.

The novel is a waste of outstanding talent.

II.

The second novel of disappointment I have finished yesterday: Cold Heaven by Brian Moore. Incidentally, a book recommended by Peter Straub, whose other recommendations turned out to keep the promise.

I had bought the book during my last visit to Ireland in 1995, and have only now come to read it.

Technically Cold Heaven is weaker than Straub's books. The presentation of scenes is often simply unnecessary to begin with, or overly detailed and cluttered with superfluous specifics. This gets tiring after a while, but the flaw never ceases. In building suspense, the author avails himself of specious and dishonest means. The supposedly strictly anti-religious protagonist believes that some religious force is manipulating her like a puppet on a string. What grounds the lady has to think so, is never revealed. In fact, this contradiction has only a inadmissible resolution: the author's need to inject suspense into the book.

The story starts with a recently killed person escaping from a morgue. However, the novel never resolves the exact circumstances, motives and means that enable the fugitive to accomplish this feat. Apparently, the author hopes the reader will have lost interest in this question by the end of the story. Oh yes, the end: having forced myself to read the work of 200 pages to the last line, the conclusion comes over as a big disappointment. The atheistic protagonist feels relieve at the fact that a Catholic priest confirms her right not to share his creed (again that never probed contradiction of a believing unbeliever), and revels in the speculation that the unexplained need previously incumbent on her to act as witness to an apparition (of The Virgin Immaculate) has passed on to a nun. This, unexplicably, liberates the protagonist from being a mere puppet of some vague religious force whose motives and plans are not touched upon in the book.

Again, ultimately, we witness an author that is straining after effect and suspense — with half-baked ad hoc inventions as far as my testimonial goes.

The book is thoroughly dishonest. I can explain its existence only by surmising that Moore was writing for a captive audience (manly American Catholics) in the confident expectation that Catholics would be willing, perhaps even eager, to fill in the flabbergasting blanks that the chronic lack of decent explanations leaves behind on almost every page.

A Literary Advent Calender for Halloween

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For a great on-line selection of 31 classic ghost stories — click here, the link takes time to build up. Once you're there, it works well.

IPCC and the Politically Fabricated "Scientific Consensus" on Anthropogenic Climate Change

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Donna Laframboise on the results of her research into the political fabrication of "scientific consensus".

See also Intergenerational Justice, IPCC, Peer Reviewing and the Decline of Science, Evidence on Climate Change, and Climate Catastrophe — Klimakatastrophe?

The Signalman by Charles Dickens

Image credit. And an interesting comment on the tale.

I am interested in the supernatural—as an instrument of artistic accomplishment, a test stage of the imaginable. I especially wonder about its potential for philosophical inquiry. Can the plays of the mind that the supra-natural allow help us understand ourselves better?

Picked from here—a Kafkaesque ghost story by Charles Dickens:

The Signalman (1976) von OnlineTVez

Evidence on Climate Change

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A useful tour de force of the evidence available to us for assessing claims of anthropogenic global warming.

See also:

Climate Catastrophe — Klimakatastrophe?

The Canterville Ghost (1887) by Oscar Wilde

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Picked from here — The Canterville Ghost,  a delightful challenge to the ghoulish genre.

Okay, so this one isn’t all that scary, but it’s nice to have a bit of variation. It was the first of Wilde’s short stories to be published. An American family move into Canterville Chase and soon become acquainted with Sir Simon, ghost of the old owner of the manor centuries ago. But this is a ghost story with the Oscar Wilde treatment, so the family completely fail to be terrified by the presence of the ghost. Indeed, in a curious twist it is the ghostly Sir Simon who ends up terrified, when the twin sons of the American owners produce a mock-up fake ghost! ‘The Canterville Ghost’ is a satire on the social and cultural differences between the American and English people, as well as on the Victorian ghost-story genre itself.

Part 1

Part 2

A Fresh Look at De-Industrialisation

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Manufacturing is still the driver of productivity and thus of overall economic growth. We do not live in a post-industrial world. Decline in relative competitiveness of the manufacturing sector is bad for advanced countries and positively detrimental for developing economies.

Most estimates show that the rise of China as the new workshop of the world can explain only around 20 per cent of de-industrialization in the rich countries that has happened so far. Many people think that the remaining 80 per cent or so can be largely explained by the natural tendency of the (relative) demand for manufactured goods to fall with rising prosperity. However, a closer look reveals that this demand effect is actually very small. It looks as if we are spending ever higher shares of our income on services not because we are consuming ever more services in absolute terms but mainly because services are becoming ever more expensive in relative terms.

With the (inflation-adjusted) amount of money you paid to get a PC ten years ago, today you can probably buy three, if not four, computers of equal or even greater computing power (and certainly smaller size). As a result, you probably have two, rather than just one, computers. But, even with two computers, the portion of your income that you spend on computers has gone down quite a lot (for the sake of argument, I am assuming that your income, after adjusting for inflation, is the same). In contrast, you are probably getting the same number of haircuts as you did ten years ago (if you haven’t gone thin on top, that is). The price of haircuts has probably gone up somewhat, so the proportion of your income that goes to your haircuts is greater than it was ten years ago. The result is that it looks as if you are spending a greater (smaller) portion of your income on haircuts (computers) than before, but the reality is that you are actually consuming more computers than before, while your consumption of haircuts is the same.

[...]

... why are the relative prices of manufactured goods falling? It is because manufacturing  industries tend to have faster productivity growth than services. As the output of the manufacturing sector increases faster than the output of the service sector, the prices of the manufactured goods relative to those of services fall. In manufacturing, where  mechanization and the use of chemical  processes are much easier, it is easier to raise productivity than in services. In contrast, by their very nature, many service activities are inherently impervious to productivity increase without diluting the quality of the product. In some cases, the very attempt to increase productivity will destroy the product itself. If a string quartet trots through a twenty-seven-minute piece in nine minutes, would you say that its productivity has trebled?

[...]

But if de-industrialization is due to the very dynamism of a country’s manufacturing sector, isn’t it a good thing?

Not necessarily. The fact that de-industrialization is mainly caused by the comparative dynamism of the manufacturing sector vis-à-vis the service sector does not tell us anything about how well it is doing compared to its counterparts in other countries. If a country’s manufacturing sector has slower productivity growth than its counterparts in other countries, it will become internationally uncompetitive, leading to balance of payments problems in the short run and falling standards of living in the long term. In other words, de-industrialization may be accompanied by either economic success or failure.

[...]

De-industrialization also has a negative effect on a country’s balance of payments because services are inherently more difficult to export than manufactured goods. A balance of payments deficit means that the country cannot ‘pay its way’ in the world. Of course, a country can plug the hole through foreign borrowing for a while, but eventually it will have to lower the value of its currency, thereby reducing its ability to import and thus its living standard.

At the root of the low ‘tradability’ of services lies the fact that, unlike manufactured goods that can be shipped anywhere in the world, most services require their providers and consumers to be in the same location. No one has yet invented ways to provide a haircut or house-cleaning long-distance.

[...]

[I]t is a fantasy to think that a poor country can develop mainly on the basis of the service sector. As pointed out earlier, the manufacturing sector has an inherently faster productivity growth than the service sector. To be sure, there are some service industries that have rapid productivity growth potential, notably the knowledge-based services that I mentioned above. However, these are service activities that mainly serve manufacturing firms, so it is very difficult to develop those industries without first developing a strong manufacturing base. If you base your development largely on services from early on, your longterm productivity growth rate is going to be much slower than when you base it on manufacturing.

[...]

[M]any people think that Switzerland lives off the stolen money deposited in its banks by Third World dictators or by selling cowbells and cuckoo clocks to Japanese and American tourists, but it is actually one of the most industrialized economies in the world. We don’t see many Swiss manufactured products around because the country is small (around 7 million people), which makes the total amount of Swiss manufactured goods rather small, and because its producers specialize in producer goods, such as machinery and industrial chemicals, rather than consumer goods that are more visible. But in per capita terms, Switzerland has the highest industrial output in the world (it could come second after Japan, depending on the year and the data you look at). Singapore is also one of the five most industrialized economies in the world (once again, measured in terms of manufacturing value-added per head). Finland and Sweden make up the rest of the top five. Indeed, except for a few places such as the Seychelles that has a very small population and exceptional resources for tourism (85,000 people with around $9,000 per capita income), no country has so far achieved even a decent (not to speak of high) living standard by relying on services and none will do so in the future.

The source.

Intergenerational Justice, IPCC, Peer Reviewing and the Decline of Science

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What I or you owe to future generations is a philosophical question. It may be a moral and spiritual question. But it is not something that science can answer.

The IPCC wants it both ways ... On its web site it talks about science, science, science. But that's just the illusion. In reality, the people at the IPCC have another agenda. They think it's their job to decide philosophical matters: what we owe future generations. And if they are making those kinds of decisions, that means that the rest of us are being excluded from the discussion of what we owe future generations.

(Donna Laframboise in a stretch between time mark 15:30 to 16:40 in the below video presentation)

See some of my comments on "intergenerational justice" etc. at this excellent blog, here and here.

Also consider:

Last year, Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, admitted that “much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.” In his words, “science has taken a turn toward darkness.”

Medical research, psychology, and economics are all in the grip of a ‘reproducibility crisis.’ A pharmaceutical company attempting to confirm the findings of 53 landmark cancer studies was successful in only six instances, a failure rate of 89%. In 2012, a psychology journal devoted an entire issue to reliability problems in that discipline, with one essay titled “Why science is not necessarily self-correcting.” Likewise, a 2015 report prepared for the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve concluded that “economics research is usually not replicable.” Its authors were able to verify the findings of only one third of 67 papers published in reputable economics journals. After enlisting the help of the original researchers, the success rate rose to a still dismal 49%.

Government policies can’t be considered evidence-based if the evidence on which they depend hasn’t been independently verified, yet the vast majority of academic research is never put to this test. Instead, something called peer review takes place. When a research paper is submitted, journals invite a couple of people to evaluate it. Known as referees, these individuals recommend that the paper be published, modified, or rejected.

If one gets what one pays for, it’s worth observing that referees typically work for free. They lack both the time and the resources to perform anything other than a cursory overview. Nothing like an audit occurs. No one examines the raw data for accuracy or the computer code for errors. Peer review doesn’t guarantee that proper statistical analyses were employed, or that lab equipment was used properly.

Referees at the most prestigious of journals have given the green light to research that was later found to be wholly fraudulent. Conversely, they’ve scoffed at work that went on to win Nobel Prizes. Richard Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, describes peer review as a roulette wheel, a lottery, and a black box. He points out that an extensive body of research finds scant evidence that this vetting process accomplishes much at all. On the other hand, a mountain of scholarship has identified profound deficiencies.

Peer review’s random and arbitrary nature was demonstrated as early as 1982. Twelve already published papers were assigned fictitious author and institution names before being resubmitted to the same journal 18-32 months later. The duplication was noticed in three instances, but the remaining nine papers underwent review by two referees each. Only one paper was deemed worthy of seeing the light of day the second time it was examined by the same journal that had already published it. Lack of originality wasn’t among the concerns raised by the second wave of referees.

Anyone can start a scholarly journal and define peer review however they wish. No minimum standards apply and no enforcement mechanisms ensure that a journal’s publicly described policies are actually followed. Some editors admit to writing up fake reviews under the cover of anonymity rather than going to the trouble of recruiting bona fide referees. In 2014, a news story reported that 120 papers containing computer-generated gibberish had nevertheless survived the peer review process of reputable publishers.

Politicians and journalists have long found it convenient to regard peer-reviewed research as de facto sound science. If that were the case, Nature would hardly have subtitled a February 2016 article: “Mistakes in peer-reviewed papers are easy to find but hard to fix.” Over a period of 18 months, a team of researchers attempted to correct dozens of substantial errors in nutrition and obesity research. Among these was the claim that the height change in a group of adults averaged nearly three inches (7 cm) over eight weeks. The team reported that editors “seemed unprepared or ill-equipped to investigate, take action or even respond.” In Kafkaesque fashion, after months of effort culminated in acknowledgement of a gaffe, journals then demanded that the team pay $1,700 in one instance and $2,100 in another before a letter calling attention to other people’s mistakes could be published.

Which brings us back to the matter of public policy. We’ve long been assured that reports produced by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are authoritative because they rely entirely on peer-reviewed, scientific literature. A 2010 InterAcademy Council investigation found this claim to be false, but that’s another story. Even if all IPCC source material did meet this threshold, the fact that one out of an estimated 25,000 academic journals conducted an unspecified and unregulated peer review ritual is no warranty that a paper isn’t total nonsense.

If half of the scientific literature “may simply be untrue,” then half of the climate research cited by the IPCC may also be untrue. This appalling unreliability extends to work on dietary cholesterol, domestic violence, air pollution – in short, to all research currently being generated by the academy.

The source.

UF (19) — Freedom as Dipstick

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On UF.

Probing the threshold regions where the demands of the theory of liberty come into contact with the reality of politics and the state, practical jurisdiction and law, economic regulations and real economic activities one is liable to encounter a notion that may at first appear somewhat paradoxical.

Might it not be that freedom has a more important role to play as a benchmark for the (self-)examination of those either not particularly interested in liberty or recognising freedom as only one value among others, than as the beacon of the remoter and more radical ideals of those who hopefully conceive of liberty as a state of affairs that may once emerge in a pure and perfect form, or very close to such an end state.

Is it not true that even the most (classically) liberal societies still present us with a mixed system that absorbs elements both of a kind approaching the ideal-type of, say, the rule of law or capitalism, as well as elements that are at odds with these norms.

Does not the practical value of the criteria of liberty first and foremost consist in providing a method to evince and rectify the problems entailed in disadvantageous though avoidable transgressions and distortions of (classically) liberal norms.

And is it not the case that the claim that liberty is indivisible depends on the inadmissible notion that the conditions under which liberty applies form a monolithic structure which, in fact, does not exist in reality, just as the rule of law or capitalism will never attain the quality of perfection.

It is indeed a requirement of liberty that certain rules be strictly and generally adhered to; but if this desirable end cannot be fully achieved this does not necessarily imply the collapse of liberty, nor do efforts at ensuring a more complete application become valueless.

The present comment has occurred to me while reading the excellentbook by Stefan Kolev “Neoliberale Staatsverständnisse im Vergleich”, 2013, Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart.

Written in July 2013

German twin post.

FV (19) — Freiheit als Ölstab

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Über FV.

Die Freiheit als Ölstab

Wenn man sich eingehender mit dem Grenzbereich befasst, in dem Politik und Staat, Rechtssprechung und Rechtspraxis, Wirtschaftsregularien und Wirtschaftsweise in Berührung kommen mit den Ansprüchen der Freiheitslehre, beginnt sich ein zunächst paradox anmutender Gedanke aufzudrängen. 

Mag es nicht sein, dass Freiheit wichtiger ist als Maßstab für die (Selbst-)Überprüfung derer, die gerade nicht sonderlich interessiert sind an Freiheit oder sie nicht als den höchsten Wert, sondern nur als einen neben anderen anerkennen, denn als das Leuchtfeuer des entlegeneren und radikaleren Ideals jener, die sich die Freiheit als einen reinen und vollendeten Zustand erhoffen.

Haben wir es denn nicht noch in den liberalsten Gesellschaften immer mit Mischsystemen zu tun, die Elemente in sich aufnehmen, welche zum Teil dem Idealtyp etwa der Rechtsstaatlichkeit oder des Kapitalismus nahekommen und solche, die weiter davon entfernt sind.

Besteht der praktische Wert der Kriterien der Freiheit nicht vor allem darin, eine Methode zu liefern, abträgliche aber vermeidbare Überschreitungen und Verzerrungen freiheitlicher Normen kenntlich zu machen, zu problematisieren und zu korrigieren?

Und ist es nicht so, dass die Behauptung, die Freiheit sei unteilbar, ihre Geltungsbedingungen zu einem
Monolithen erklärt, den es in der Wirklichkeit nicht gibt – und zwar ebenso wenig wie den perfekten Rechtsstaat oder den vollendeten Kapitalismus?

Zwar ist es ein Erfordernis der Freiheit, dass bestimmte Regeln streng und allegemein angewandt werden, aber wenn dies nicht gelingt, ist damit meist weder die Freiheit zusammengebrochen, noch verlieren die Bemühungen, eine vollkommenere Anwendung zu gewährleisten, damit unbedingt schon ihren Wert.

Zu diesem Kommentar hat mich die Lektüre (besonders S. 198ff) des ausgezeichneten Buchs von Stefan Kolev angeregt: “Neoliberale Staatsverständnisse im Vergleich”, 2013, Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart.

Geschrieben im Juli 2013

Englischer Zwillingsbeitrag

The Woman in Black ...

Image credit. (Slow link)

... is a superb ghost story. I found this short novel by Susan Hill exceptionally captivating thanks to the author's skill in drawing the reader into the unfolding events. Rarely have I read a novel that has left me with such a strong sense of living through the described scenes myself. Again, I cannot find any intellectual or philosophical depth in The Woman in Black, as in all narratives of this genre that I have read so far; but the immersion in scenes and atmospheres and the experience of being part of the action was fully worth my while.

I found perusal of the book to be the equivalent of a holiday trip of unforgettable impressions to the North-East of England. 

See also More of the Spectral.

A View on Climate Alarmism

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An instructive overview of the seminal issues.

Recorded August 4, 1952, New York City

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A short playful break.

More of the Spectral

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I have just read Henry James' (link is slow) The Jolly Corner - the Germanic writing style (long, cluttered sentences) aside, I was rather impressed with the story. There is an insinuation of interesting philosophical issues in it that I rather miss in most of the Ghost stories I have read, which at the end of the day mainly go for effect, with little deeper insight of an edifying nature beyond an entertaining yarn with its gripping scenes, felicitous descriptions, memorable characters and enveloping atmospheres. While a well told story is a fine thing to enjoy every once in a while, I feel it should be possible to squeeze more than narrative effect from the possibilities of a supernatural scenario — which accomplishment, as yet, I have not come across in substantial measure.

Among the best ghost stories I have read are

Ghost Story,  by Peter Straub

and

The Man in the Picture, by Susan Hill,

The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel, by Neil Gaiman.

The best as yet is The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, and Bartleby by Herman Melville (though not strictly a Ghost Story).

I keep you posted.

That Was Then

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A ride through Rochdale in 1900.

His old friend lived with one maid and herself dusted her relics and trimmed her lamps and polished her silver; she stood oft, in the awful modern crush, when she could, but she sallied forth and did battle when the challenge was really to “spirit,” the spirit she after all confessed to, proudly and a little shyly, as to that of the better time, that of their common, their quite far-away and antediluvian social period and order.  She made use of the street-cars when need be, the terrible things that people scrambled for as the panic-stricken at sea scramble for the boats; she affronted, inscrutably, under stress, all the public concussions and ordeals; and yet, with that slim mystifying grace of her appearance, which defied you to say if she were a fair young woman who looked older through trouble, or a fine smooth older one who looked young through successful indifference... (Emphasis added. Henry James, The Jolly Corner, 1908. The quote is to be found in the fourth paragraph in the Gutenberg online version.)

Marx' Last Revenge

Image credit. Since I was a child, I have been told that man destroys the environment; in all the years since, I have seen nothing but a breathtaking improvement of the environment, except in countries based on totalitarian government. For many people, it is second nature to believe in environmental degradation, even when the world before their noses is getting cleaner, healthier, and at the same time more beneficial for us human beings.

The West is in the grip of a new religion: ecologism. In its pervasive, ideologically handy, that is in its naturally simplistic version, the cult of sustainability is a variant of Marx' vision of the apocalyptic end of capitalism. The radical green creed is the last refuge of the despairing communist in his frantic quest to retell the ballad of the capitalist apocalypse. And so he reveals to us that under the capitalist mode of production, nature, our planet, mankind are bound to perish in unspeakable turmoil. 

Under the spell of such ideological preconception, which has thoroughly conquered Western minds, people no longer look at the facts nor do they care to think their principles through — as indeed religious fanatics are apt to. As always, bigotry invites intellectual short-sightedness and laziness. 

I must admit, I am puzzled considering that "green" charlatanry seems to be able to trump and replace science at a time when access to the methods and insights of science has never been more widely available. The popularisation of science being among the great achievements of the left, it is startling that the modern regressive left is avidly dismantling science in order to erect its "green" theocracy.

Mind you, "green" is not green, i.e. nature-friendly, but a disaster for nature (witness the multi-pronged destruction of nature thanks to the wind power craze), the centre of which ought to be man, who, however, perversely is the main object of "green" hatred.

Educational standards may have declined, but they are still considerable, yet people seem simply to prefer a new religion to the sobriety of science. Even though it is still within the purview of most of us to understand that green mythology is contradicted by science right, left, and centre.

Even if one were to accept the many false "scientific" assumptions about climate change / global warming — appreciating for instance that CO2 is irrelevant to temperatures on earth, CO2 concentrations trailing temperatures rather than acting as their cause —, one would still have to own up to the fact that the radical and hugely costly measures by which Germany is trying to stop global warming do not add so much as a blip to the intended reversal of temperatures — in fact, they increase rather than diminish the country's carbon footprint. However, people do not care to take note of this, pursuing the destruction of the German economy for the religious fun of it.

What is perhaps most disturbing of it all, is the fact that the more level-headed do not dare to oppose the religious mainstream; professors tell me that doing so would be professional suicide; they defer telling the truth to the time when they have gone into retirement. 

See also Climate Catastrophe — Klimakatastrophe?

Let us take a step back and look at man's relationship with his environment over the full span of human civilisation.

Man could never afford to be a net destroyer of the environment vital to his well-being, and it takes a bogey tale of Marxian pedigree to mesmerise modern man with a sense of guilt and the sure prospect of a planet destroyed by our species.

Join Julian Simon in looking at the facts and taking a different view as a result:

A Brief Refutation of Marxism

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Marx has tremendous merits, both as a thinker and as a writer. But his errors are too large, frequent, and virulent for me to be able to admire his achievements on balance.

He was full of hatred and too willing, even keen, to embrace human carnage on a large scale for the sake of his vision.

These severe drawbacks are simply too weighty to be balanced out by the great contributions he made to a multifaceted analysis of social affairs.

He was scientifically outdated and made obsolete by social democracy even at the time he was writing, and tellingly became the prophet of history's grand infernal laggards, as represented notably by the world spanning communist movement.

Here is a very brief and readable refutation of Marxism by Lord Kenyes, who blogs under

Social Democracy for the 21st Century: A Realist Alternative to the Modern Left:

(1) the long-run tendency of capitalism, even in the 19th century, was to massively increase the real wage, which has soared above subsistence level, even for workers (see here and here), contrary to Marx’s theory that the tendency of capitalism is to keep the real wage at a subsistence level (which is the value of the maintenance and reproduction of labour-power).

The growing real wage and rising disposable income even of workers in capitalism also allowed a massive capacity for production of new commodities and new opportunities for employment (e.g., especially in services and middle class employment), which in turn has helped to overcome technological unemployment for most of the history of capitalism, contrary to Marx’s prediction of subsistence wages and increasing technological unemployment. Even if we do experience mass technological unemployment this century, it need not lead to disaster, with demand-management, a guaranteed income and government employment programs.

The size of the working class eventually stabilised and society was swelled by a growing and prosperous middle class and social mobility, contrary to Marx’s prediction of all people – except a small class of capitalists – being reduced to proletarians.

(2) Marx’s claim that machines, generally speaking, are an unmitigated evil in capitalism whose primary effect to increase the intensity and speed of work by labourers is an outrageous falsehood – a perversion of history and reality. In reality, machines have, generally speaking, tended to decrease the intensity, difficulty and monotony of human labour and often reduced to human labour to lighter work of visual inspection and overseeing of machine work, not physical labour. On this, see here and here. Advanced capitalist nations have also virtually eliminated child labour as well, and in our time have tended to pay women the same hourly wage for the same type of work as men.

(3) highly developed and advanced Western capitalist states like Britain and the US proved the most resistant to communism and Marxism (contrary to Marx’s theory), and when communist revolutions broke out it was in backward Russia and China.

(4) the business cycle of capitalist economies is better explained by Keynesian economic theory, in which the level of aggregate investment fluctuates with shifting subjective business expectations, and other instabilities are caused by an unregulated financial sector.

(5) in contrast to Marx’s failed predictions, the Keynesian and Social Democratic solution to the problems of laissez faire market economies produced a Golden Age of Capitalism (1946–c. 1973) and unprecedented prosperity.

Marx thought that the large industrial reserve army is a necessary consequence and necessary condition of capitalism, but this is incorrect. In the Keynesian era of full employment, where there was very low unemployment and indeed labour scarcity in the advanced capitalist world, capitalism continued and thrived.

(6) the end of the Keynesian period and the return to revived neoclassical theories from the 1970s brought with it a return to lower growth, higher unemployment, stagnating real wages, and higher income inequality, but, above all, a transnational globalised neoliberal capitalism, which has shipped a great deal of Western manufacturing and jobs to the Third World, and allowed legal and illegal Third World mass immigration into the West to lower wage costs.

(7) the renewed deteriorating plight of Western workers and even segments of middle class by (6) has not produced any renewed Marxist or Communist movements of any importance in the First World.

Rather, people have reacted with increased support for nationalist and protectionist conservatives, and Marxists and Communists – where they still exist – militantly support the disastrous mass immigration policies that more and more people hate and reject. In particular, modern Marxists are mired in irrational regressive leftist and cultural leftist delusions, such as Third Wave feminism, the idea that all cultures are equal and mass immigration is always a positive force.

Concludes Lord Kenyes:

So, all in all, modern Marxism has made itself largely irrelevant to the struggle of modern proletarians, and Marxism itself has become just one branch of the bizarre regressive left cult, which is itself largely a movement of middle class, university-educated leftists, who have pathological hatred for working class, especially for white working class men, who are subject at times almost to homicidal demonisation as racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic fascists.

 

The source.

A Translator's Challenge

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Translating the Harry Potter books written by J.K. Rowling, in over 60 languages around the world, was not for the faint of heart or vocabulary. Translators didn't have advanced copies of the books to get a headstart and these books could take months to adapt from English. They also had to be clever in their solutions because the books are filled with wordplays, invented words, puns, British culture references, riddles, and more.

The source.

Keith Jarrett — Solo

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Sounds very similar to a passage from the famous 1975 Köln concert. Enjoy.

FV (17) — Homesteading: ein Nachtrag

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Über FV

Beim Prinzip des Homesteading haben wir es mit einer Ergänzung zum Prinzip des Selbstbesitzes zu tun. Diese Prinzipien schulden sich einem schon eher angegrautem Ehrgeiz, grundlegende menschliche Institutionen als eine logisch geschlossene und widerspruchsfreie Kausalordnung zu deuten.

In Wahrheit sind die Institutionen des menschlichen Miteinanders oftmals Evolutionsprodukte, die viel Raum lassen für Kontroversen, Unbestimmbares und unüberwindliche Unzulänglichkeiten.

Es ist ein Zeichen ideologischer Verranntheit, die eigenen Überzeugungen auf diese Weise als apodiktisch wahr darzustellen und ihnen die Fähigkeit zuzusprechen, vollständige und endgültige Lösungen zu ermöglichen.

Nachtrag zu Grundirrtümer des Anarchismus (1 von 2) und Grundirrtümer des Anarchismus (2 von 2) 

Das Prinzip des Homesteading besagt, dass legales Eigentum durch einen Akt der Erstbesiedlung oder Erstnutzung entsteht – und zwar nur dann, wenn der Erstnutzer das betreffende Objekt (Land z.B.) durch eigene Anstrengung in produktiver Weise verwendet/nutzt.

Das Prinzip des Homesteading ist nur begrenzt hilfreich, selbst wenn man die Schwierigkeiten übersieht, die entstehen, wenn man versucht, Bezeichnungen wie “Objekt”, “eigene Anstrengung” und “in produktiver Weise nutzen” genauer zu bestimmen.

Was wenn sich ein Unternehmer und ein Bauer um ein Stück Land streiten? Woher weiß man, wer das Land auf produktive(re) Art verwenden wird? Was wenn der Bauer schon nach mehreren Wochen die ersten Früchte seiner Arbeit erntet, wohingegen der Unternehmer, wegen Vorlaufsinvestitionen, erst in zwei Jahren das Förderband in Gang setzen kann und erst in vier Jahren Gewinn erzielt oder vielleicht auch Bankrott erleidet?

Angenommen alles Land (alle in Frage kommenden Eigentumsgegenstände) sind durch korrektes Homesteading ihren Eigentümern zugeordnet worden. Für alle anderen daraufhin entstehenden Rechtsfragen sind wir auf das Kriterium des “absoluten Selbstbesitzes” angewiesen – das aber, wie wir sahen, undefinierbar ist.

Wie lässt sich feststellen, ob Eigentum, das seit vielleicht 2 000 Jahren, 200 Jahren oder 50 Jahren de facto besteht, durch korrektes Homesteading zustande gekommen ist? Und was ist zu tun, wenn keine ordnungsgemäße Eigentumsbestimmung im Sinne von Homesteading erfolgt war?

Wie nützlich ist das Prinzip des Homesteading, wenn Eigentumsansprüche sich historisch aufgrund von Vorgängen herausgebildet haben, die unter Verletzung oder nur teilweiser Berücksichtigung des Prinzips (schließlich aber) zu allgemein anerkannten Eigentumsverhältnissen geführt haben?

Es ist daher nicht klar, wie die Kriterien des “absoluten Selbstbesitzes”, der nicht definierbar ist, und des “Homesteading”, das mehr Fragen aufwirft als es Antworten liefert, eine universelle Ethik begründen.

Geschrieben im Juno 2013

Englischer Zwillingsbeitrag.

UF (17) — Homesteading: An Addendum

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On UF.

The homestead principle is an extension of the principle of self-ownership, which we have discussed here and here.

Again, what is at work is a rather outdated  proclivity to treat workable human arrangements as if they were relatively simple and clear-cut structures capable of being reduced to a perfectly consistent causal order.

In reality, human arrangements tend to evolve over time, often leaving much space for indeterminate, controversial and less than satisfactory outcomes. It is the hallmark of an ideology to deny such openness and advertise the strength of one's creed as providing apodictic truth and a complete solution. 

Homesteading  — An Addendum

The principle of homesteading establishes that property is legally created by an act of original appropriation or initial use, that is if the initial appropriator puts to use the object in question (a piece of land e.g.) by his own efforts and in a productive manner.

The principle of homesteading is of limited usefulness, even if one disregards the problems that may arise when one tries to determine the precise meaning of “object”, “own efforts”, or “productive manner”.

What if an entrepreneur and a farmer compete for the same piece of land? How does one know which of the two will be using the land in (more) productive fashion? What if the farmer harvests the first fruits of his labour already after a few weeks, while the entrepreneur depending on roundabout methods of production and lengthy preliminary work will be able to start production only in two years time and will be making a profit or go bust, as the case may be, in four years time?

Let us assume all pieces of land – indeed all relevant property – have been assigned to their owners via correct homesteading. All remaining legal issues then will have to be settled by reference to the criterion of “absolute self-ownership,” which, however, is undefined, as we have seen elsewhere.

How does one determine whether property established 2 000 years or 200 years or 50 years ago has actually come about in compliance with correct homesteading procedures? What to do, if the procedures of correct homesteading had been violated?

How useful is the principle of homesteading, if claims to property have historically evolved thanks to processes violating or only incompletely honouring the principle of homesteading, while having still attained general acceptance? Hence, it is not clear at all how the criterion of “absolute self-ownership” which is undefinable, and the criterion of “homesteading” which seems to produce more questions than answers, should be capable of establishing a universal ethics. An Addenbdum

Written in June 2013.

German twin post.

UF (18) — Equality before the Law

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On UF.

The point I am making in the below post is that it is erroneous to equate equality before the law with a law that makes everyone equal — as a prize-winning speaker did at the 2013 annual meeting of the German Hayek Society in Göttingen. I was rather taken aback that someone supposedly rather well acquainted with basic liberal concepts could commit such an elementary mistake, with no one in the audience protesting. Not even a renowned legal scholar, winner of the Hayek medal that years, who did not reply to an e-mail I later sent him — months later, it turned out the man had died not long after receiving the medal.

I was going to make a far more significant discovery in the following months. Libertarians and liberals are mistaken in believing that proper adherence to the principles of the rule of law, one of which being equality before the law, would ensure a world in which all major conflicts of interests and divergences of opinion have been overcome, at least from the standpoint of moral correctness. Law is an enterprise that by its very nature takes sides. Law is incapable of conjuring away the great conflicts among people of differing convictions and aims. It may improve the conditions of our rivalry, tending to make our contests more fair, peaceful, rational and less destructive of the circumstances that make for greater efficiency and less upheaval in the pursuit of the fundamental human ambitions; but, differing interests and diverging views and their divisive power will remain, if not even spread and multiply under better management of their potentially negative consequences.

Recently, I had the pleasure of listening to a lecture that struck me as valuable precisely because its basic thesis concerning a certain term was wrong, thus giving occasion to assure oneself of the expression’s genuine meaning. As a result, it turned out that although a number of people in the audience felt they understood the term, including the speaker of course, they were actually rather confused about it.

The speaker’s thesis asserts that the formula equality before the law should be replaced by a less misleading expression. The error underlying the thesis consists in the assumption that the sort of equality referred to in the term denotes an egalitarian conception of equality.
 

In truth, however, the expression equality before the law is an idiomatic compression, an abbreviation that in fully spelt out form reads: human beings are to be governed by the same rules (laws); or to put it perhaps more explicitly: may the same rules (laws) apply to all human beings in/ despite/ because of/ to better appreciate their disparity, their inequality (which inheres in them qua individuals in constitutive and irreversible manner).
 

The postulate in question does not at all assert equality as an attribute of human beings , neither as a fact nor as a desirable end.

“Baden” is the infinitive but also the imperative of “to bathe” or “to swim” in German; at the same time, there is a German city named Baden- Baden. If someone interprets the expression “Baden-Baden” as an invitation to have a swim, what this reveals is a gap in education rather than a problem with the term as such. The appropriate response is to educate the person, and not the introduction of a new term.

The same holds true with respect to the above thesis concerning equality before the law. He who does not understand the correct meaning of the term should be instructed about it. It would be inappropriate to introduce a new term – let alone the proposed unwieldy and certainly not self explanatory “insignificance of the individual before the law” – which would have to be explained to everyone, while the established expression is already known to many people.

Written in June 2013

German twin post.