Fungible Commodities

 

There's this delusion making the rounds that buying Venezuelan oil is better than buying Russian oil.  The only people holding this delusion are those who fundamentally misunderstand economics.  In America, alas, that's 'nearly everybody'.

The notion of a 'fungible commodity' is that product from location A is largely replaceable by similar product from location B.  Let's use 'oil' as the base product for the sake of discussion — although the identical analysis is applicable to almost everything that fits within the ambit of 'commodity': diamonds, wheat, beef, silver, lumber, helium...

If we decide that we don't want to buy oil from place A, what happens?  We have created a local reduction in demand for A-oil.  This will cause the price to drop momentarily and other oil buyers will be drawn to it.  If those other oil buyers move away from B-oil and replace it with the now cheaper A-oil, this will cause the price of A-oil to rise as the price of B-oil drops.  We then swoop in to buy the now-available B-oil, driving its price back to equilibrium.  Everything is the same because the supply of oil (whether A- or B-) is the same, and the demand is the same.  Executing a preference for a fungible commodity from one place causes an automatic rebalancing of other people's preferences for a different place.

What causes the price of a commodity to change is imbalance in supply and demand.  If location A curtails the supply of oil but demand stays constant, the equilibrium price will rise.  If you're wondering why gasoline is suddenly getting more expensive, it's because supply has been reduced but demand has not.  The reduction in supply began when the U.S. government began making it harder for American refiners to obtain oil — by closing pipelines, by restricting certain production methods (e.g.: fracking), and other supply-chain-related causes.  President Biden has asked Saudi Arabia to pump more oil to backfill for the oil that U.S.-based pumps are no longer producing, and SA has declined because high prices are, to them, a good thing.  Now, Biden is trying to make a deal with Venezuela to buy their oil, but this, even if successful, won't change the equilibrium point.  Other oil buyers will simply get theirs from Russia.  The supply will still be low (and the price high) because we're no longer pumping.

There is a second cause for the high price of oil — the higher price for everything, actually — and that's 'inflation'.  We're seeing the same syndrome with inflation that we're seeing with oil: we're printing dollars that aren't backed by anything.  In effect, the supply of dollars is going up but the wealth that dollars putatively represent isn't rising at the same rate.  The value of each new dollar is zero, but paper money is a fungible commodity: you can't tell one dollar from another, so the average value of any given dollar is reduced until the total of all the dollars in circulation balances with the available product that they can be used to purchase.

This is what happens when you let people run your economy who don't actually know how to run an economy.

And here's the really bad news: nobody knows how to run an economy.  Only the economy can run the economy.

 

U.S. vs Guy Reffitt

 

(CNN) — The first trial for a January 6 US Capitol attack defendant won't have any members of the public, media or even the wife of the defendant in the courtroom to witness much of the proceedings, a federal judge decided on Monday.

Judge Dabney Friedrich decided not to allow any members of the public to witness the evidence presentation in person at the historic trial that's expected to last more than a week.  A few are being allowed to watch jury selection, which began Monday, and opening statements.
...
Friedrich cited space concerns due to stringent coronavirus protocols at the federal courthouse in Washington, DC, designed to ensure that jurors and witnesses at trials are spread out from one another.

Amendment 6

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

IANAL, but the text of the 6th amendment seems pretty plain to me:

• speedy and public trial — Refitt has been in the pokey nearly a year so 'speedy' this isn't, and it isn't going to be 'public', either, if the public won't be permitted to even see the 'evidence'.
• impartial jury — that hasn't happened in a federal court in well over a half-century.
• if the U.S. federal government's Judicial branch can't provide an appropriate venue for a trial, one that comports with the requirements of the Constitution, how is that an excuse for ignoring those Constitutional requirements?

It almost goes without saying that the defendant will not be permitted 'discovery' of the estimated 14,000 hours of video of the so-called insurrection.  These flaws alone are enough to ensure any conviction is overturned on appeal by anything like a fair court.

Then there's this: if such blatant injustice turns out to be the trigger for civil war, will Judge Dabney Friedrich object when his trial is likewise held in secret?  The Golden Rule tells us that how you treat others is how you, yourself, wish to be treated, so the judge can't have any objection to that, could he?

Will a Republican House and a Republican Senate, if that's the outcome of the 2022 election, have the intestinal fortitude to impeach and convict jurists like Friedrich, ensuring they never service (pun intended) the American people ever again?  Don't bet on it.

 

COVID Psychosis

 

We used to say about our parents (and some of our older siblings) that they had 'Depression Psychosis' as a result of having lived through such hard economic times between 1930-1947 that it warped the way they thought about how one goes about living.  Beyond doubt, those years were of such a nature that panic had to be an almost-daily experience.  It's the same syndrome that causes your dog to jump whenever a firecracker goes off on the 4th of July.  It's an automatic flinch when some event brings back bad memories.

Moderns don't suffer Depression Psychosis because they haven't experienced the kind of economic catastrophe of an earlier age, but we carry the training:

Use it up, wear it out. Make it do, or do without.

No, these days we have our very own psychoses, a relic of the insane push to get to 'zero-Covid' — which, it's probably worth pointing out, is unattainable short of sterilizing the planet of all traces of life down to the microbial level.

The Japanese have been inculcated to wearing surgical masks over their noses and mouths over a period lasting several decades.  This may be related to fears about radioactive contamination, but that's a guess.  I first noticed it as far back as the 1990s, but it might have been prevalent earlier.  For reasons that are not at all obvious, they 'mask up' when in the presence of others — especially outdoors.  That practice has now spread around the world, although people from most other countries only mask for indoor socialization.

In the United States, starting with the earliest days of Covid nuttiness, the CDC and Anthony Fauci at first advised that masks were largely unnecessary.  Later, they admitted that they had said this to avoid a run on PPE that medical professionals needed because — this is an important point — they dealt with sick people on a regular basis, and were thus at a heightened risk of exposure.  As soon as it was clear that adequate supplies of masks and the suchlike would be available, the CDC's advice changed to 'wear your mask at all times', then 'wear two masks', then 'maybe you don't need a mask outdoors'.  At no point did the CDC or Fauci say "We have these (peer-reviewed) studies that clearly show the benefits of masks".  They didn't say that because there are no such studies, and they would have been pilloried for saying it.

That is probably worth repeating:  There are no peer-reviewed studies showing masks as having any value as regards Covid transmission.  None.  There are studies that indicate masks may actually be detrimental, especially for children (who are, let's remember, at virtually zero risk of contracting or passing Covid).  Despite this, Teacher's Unions across the country demand that school children be masked at all times 'for the protection of the teachers'.  This is a nutty idea even by the standards of New Jersey and may constitute 'child abuse'.

Even so, those afflicted with Covid psychosis harangue the rest of us with constant demands that we wear useless masks for their protection.

Recapping:

1. 'Zero Covid' is unattainable.
2. Masks are essentially useless against Covid transmission.
3. Susceptibility to Covid is very highly correlated with age and co-morbidities.
4. National medical 'experts' cannot any longer be trusted.

Our grandchildren will probably snicker at us and our obsessions after we have passed on — just as we do to earlier generations — but they will understand what drove us.  Let's hope that Covid psychosis is not transmissible.

 

Even by the standards of New Jersey

 

On Tucker Carlson's show last night (1/28/2022), he referred to Congressman Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) as "not the sharpest knife in the drawer" and topped it off with "even by the standards of New Jersey."  I laughed so hard I was afraid I was going to have a bladder leak.  That is such a funny line that from now on, whenever I have to rip some stupid idea, I'm going to characterize it as such "even by the standards of New Jersey".

That opening monologue, by the way, was one of Carlson's best.  If you'd like to review it, it's at TCT 2022-01-28

 

Karl Popper on 'Tolerance'

 

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance.  If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

"In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies;  as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise.  But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force;  for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument;  they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

"We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."

 

In His Image and Likeness

 

Both Judaism and Christianity teach that humankind is made "in the image and likeness of God", but what that means, exactly, has always been something that has puzzled me.  What does that mean?  Since God is a spiritual being (I suppose), God has no 'image' for us to be made 'in'.  Alternatively, a spiritual being may be able to assume any image at all, but that makes the claim even more mysterious.  It could simply mean that we are created as spiritual beings ourselves.  In that vein, someone once responded to the statement: 'you have a soul', with: "You do not have a soul.  You are a soul; you have a body",  which I thought at the time was a very perceptive observation.

What if that original claim, that we are made in the image and likeness of God, is a promise rather than descriptive?  Instead of 'every man a king', perhaps we are working our way toward 'every man a God'.  Galileo famously quipped

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them." 

Since then, scientific knowledge and talent have grown by leaps and bounds at an ever-increasing velocity.  Moore's Law is a rule-of-thumb among the IT profession that posits 'technology doubles in 14 months'.  Were Benjamin Franklin asked 'how long does it take for technology to double?' he might have said '25 years'.  Carl Sagan would have answered '4 years'.  Now we say '14 months', and there is some speculation that it's now less than Moore's boast when he first made it.  In other words, progress is increasing exponentially.  At some point, the answer may become 'Well, it just did!'.  Our surgeons now do operations that, just a few hundred years ago, would have gotten them burned at the stake for witchcraft.  Clarke's Third Law (Arthur C., not me) stipulates that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".  The frontier of our knowledge is advancing so fast that we can envision a world in which Captain Jean-Luc Picard can command his wall unit to produce Earl Grey tea, hot, and fully expect that the requested product will appear in seconds, and that travelling from the Earth to the Moon is done not with loud, noisy, complex, and expensive rockets over the course of a week, but by stepping into a matter-transporter and being beamed there in the blink of an eye.

What if we are made in the image and likeness of God because God expects us to be like Him, to fashion ourselves into the Gods He gave us the capacity to become?  Perhaps being God is a lonely situation and He would enjoy having others of His kind — made in His image and likeness — to keep Him company... as soon as we earn the privilege by figuring out what that entails.

 

The Presidential Race — 2024

 

I am not a Republican.  I am not a Democrat.  I am a Libertarian.  In fact, I am a radical Rothbardian Libertarian.

Given that, I now propose a radical suggestion for winning the 2024 Presidential race.  For the Republicans.

Donald Trump cannot do for the GOP what he did in 2016.  He is 'old news'.  If he runs for President, although he has an elevated chance of winning, he has no chance of doing good things for the Republican Party as a whole.  But there is a slate that would radically transform the political landscape forever, and in a positive way.

If Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida can be cajoled into abandoning Florida for national office, he could not possibly choose a better running mate than Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI).

"OMG!" someone just gasped, "what kind of moron would suggest a Democratic Vice-President for a Republican President?"

That person does not know that in the early days of this nation, the candidate with the most electoral votes was declared 'President', and the runner-up was declared 'Vice-President', and their party was not considered.  It is a fairly recent modification that a 'slate' of President+Vice-President ran conjoined, and electors were pledged not to a candidate, but to a pair of candidates.

I have seen Ron DeSantis at work, and I approve his methods.  There is no one else within the GOP whose evident philosophy I approve more than the erstwhile Democratic Congresswoman from Hawai'i.  Were a DeSantis-Gabbard team sent to Washington, there could not rise against them any plausible opposition.  The GOP certainly would not.  The Democrats' only ploy would be to eject Gabbard from their party, cutting off their collectivist noses to spite their collectivist faces.

Pass the popcorn.

—==+++==—

Update (10-11-2022):  Aw, crap!  Tulsi Gabbard today announced that she is leaving the Democratic Party because of their abandonment of all the principles (!) that she thought they were committed to.  So, there goes DeSantis' chance to make history.  If he gets the GOP nomination in 2024, it would still be a good idea to tag Tulsi as VP.