So here's what got me thinking about this

I was reading this paper about a sociological study about morality and political ideology and what struck me was this paragraph:

Figure 8

"Previous research has shown that liberals are less disgust-sensitive than conservatives (Inbar et. al., 2009). The low level of disgust sensitivity found in libertarians could help explain why they disagree with conservatives on so many social issues, particularly those related to sexuality (e.g. MFQ – Purity in Study 1). Libertarians may not experience the flash of revulsion that drives moral condemnation in many cases of victimless offenses (Haidt, Koller, & Dias, 1993)."

The reference to "flash of revulsion" sounds physiological, and makes me wonder if there is some sort of biological mechanism here - sort of a nice way of saying that some people just can't help but try to impose their way of life upon you any more than they can help their skin pigmentation or gender.

I'm wondering then, if bigotry is biological, what could be the purpose and advantage to it since afaict it is simply an irrational belief in demonstrable falsehoods which I would assume to be a distinct disadvantage. 

More importantly, if it's biological in origin should their mental handicap qualify them for protection under the ADA?

More than mammals?

So I find this topic so fascinating because I have such a difficult time understanding the motives of those who disagree with me.  With most things, I can usually come up with some motive to assume of my opponent - but here I am mystified, though I recently read a few things about which I'll write later on.

To date, the most persuasive, convincing argument I've heard  in support of suppressing homosexuals is that homosexual activity is unnatural since the natural purpose for sexual intercourse is procreation, and homosexual intercourse is non-procreative.  There is an underlying assumption here that sex in humans is the same as sex in animals, so humans should be restricted to those activities that happen with other animals.

If we accept this assumption, then we cannot also argue in favor of monogamy, since that is not something naturally happens in the rest of the animal kingdom.  So to assert that human sexuality is the same as all other animal sexuality is an argument against all marriage.

Now, one may make an argument in support of marriage but against homosexual conduct and base this assertion on religious grounds, essentially saying that homosexuality is evil because God says so.  This may be true, but as it is wholly unverifiable via any process of natural science, I fail to see how this is an appropriate point to raise in any debate of public policy outside of a theocracy.

So if we believe that marriage is a good thing, then it follows that human sexuality is different from that of animals.  If we accept this assertion, then we no longer have any rational basis for discriminating against homosexuals OR homosexual behavior.  Now, it could be argued that promiscuity among homosexuals is destructive, but this only lends strength to the argument in favor of allowing (and supporting) marriage for same gender couples as this would strengthen homosexual monogamy.

Thoughts?

So what's so bad about deflation?

Some thoughts on the Federal Reserve, inflation, and deflation.  Please let me know if you find things that don't seem to make a lot of sense or there are things for which you want evidence. (I just don't want to go into too much detail because I could turn this into a small book.)

The theory explaining why  deflation is worse than inflation goes something like this:

• The price of goods and services will be less tomorrow than it will be today.
• Therefore the consumer will put off today's purchases until tomorrow because he'll get a better price then he can today.
• Since this will be the case every day, consumers will never buy anything, and the economy will tank.

The problems with this:

• It assumes that the only value of a consumer purchase is contained in the price paid.  This is obviously in error as a purchase is made to utilise.  Take computers as a concrete example of this.  The computer I buy today, I can be certain I will be able to purchase next month for less, and the month after that for even less.  Yet I still make the purchase because I buy it to use it.
• It also ignores a distinct counter example of this: the United states in the late 19th century.  During this period the purchasing power of the dollar was increasing and the economy was booming.

The most widely cited example used to back up the "deflation is bad" argument is the disastrous results of the Federal Reserve's monetary contraction policy during the Great Depression.

• The significant point here is that the deflation in this case was artificially introduced by government action, not by natural market forces.
• To understand why governmental meddling with the money supply is harmful to an economy, one must understand how the meddling takes place.
• If, for example, one day the government dropped a trillion dollars from helicopters, or mailed $300 checks to every person in the US, or magically added a zero to every dollar amount in the country, not much would happen - it would be a fairly meaningless gesture because the economy would be able to instantly adjust to the pecuniary alteration.
• This is not the way they do it.  What happens instead is they (basically) give a bunch of newly-printed cash to politically connected cronies and the financial adjustment happens slowly as the additional cash makes it's way through the economy.  During the time between it's introduction and it's saturation, many people are going to make incorrect assumptions about the relative scarcity of goods and services because of the new money.  This causes resources to be poorly allocated, and that is what detracts from the wealth of the economy.
• In the case of artificial deflation, again, the removal of cash from the economy does not happen instantly everywhere.  It occurs at specific points in the economy and ripples through, causing damage by inducing people to misallocate their resources.

So why does the government favour inflation over deflation, especially given the general public's dislike of inflation?  As always with government, follow the votes...

• Inflation transfers wealth from creditors to debtors by making the debt owed less valuable.
• Deflation transfers wealth from debtors to creditors by making the debt owed more valuable.
• There are more voters who are debtors than there are who are creditors.
• It is therefore in the self interest of the politician to pander to debtors by preventing deflation.

Science hijacked by.... Natural Science???

So I went on a little rant a while back about the improper use of the term "science" when one really means "philosophy."  Turns out I was a little inaccurate in my assertions.  Apparently the history of the word is that as recently as the 17th century it was used interchangeably with the word "philosophy."  Of course when I use the word I think of (and mean) those pursuits that utilise the "scientific method."

Anyway, I just wanted to acknowledge that I was somewhat in technical error in some of my criticism of the misuse of the term "science."

Lo teer tsakh

So words mean things, and sometimes words written in one language get a little muddles when they make it into another.  Sometimes, however the original source material is available.  Take the 6th commandment (or 5th for Roman Catholics.)  It is most commonly translated as "Thou Shall Not Kill" which seems to be kinda odd for a group of people who were omnivorous and engaged in periodic warfare which involved, necessarily, killing.  So how can these two contradictions coexist?

First, there are no contradictions.  If you find one, re-examine your premises, one of them is faulty.  The faulty premise here is the translation of the Hebrew word "tsakh" (also phonetically spelled "ratsach" I think) to kill - the more accurate translation is murder.

Production, not consumption drives economies

It is often said that we live in a consumer-driven economy, with the implication being that not only does the economy primarily serve the consumer, but there seems to be an implicit corollary to this statement that since consumer activity (or consumption) directs the economy, that a reliable method to increase the size of an economy is to increase the consumer activity of consumption.  This incorrect belief assumes that the correlation between an increase in a society's wealth and the increase in consumption of that wealth means that the consumption of that wealth is what created the wealth in the first place¹.

To enrich the members of our society we have to produce more wealth for them to be able to consume.  While being able to consume wealth may be the motivation for its production, but consumption itself does not create more wealth any more than consuming a bowl of oatmeal causes more of it to appear in your pantry.

People consume goods and services, and not money, so wealth is definable as the quantity of goods and services available, and this is the measure of an economy.  The only possible way an economy is grown is by increasing the production of wealth. I say only possible way, but it's simpler than that - since a growing economy is defined as one where wealth is increasing, the only real way to increase wealth is to increase the rate of its production, unless, of course, one believes that wealth may be increased by use of either magic or pixie dust.

• This requires capital investment in either new (higher output) equipment or research and development into more efficient methods of production.  
• Only those people who have been able to amass and manage large amounts of capital are able to afford to both make those investments and support themselves comfortably.
• Only if there is the possibility of reward will they risk the sure thing of keeping their money with the possibility of losing it on an investment that can go bad.  
• Only the threat of losing their investment will incentivize them to do the necessary work to be determine that their money and the resources that will be consumed by it's spending will actually produce more wealth than is consumed.

Getting more money into the hands of consumers by allowing them to earn the money through their production of wealth will improve the economy.  But the increase in consumer spending is an effect, not a cause of increased prosperity.  When more wealth is produced it follows that more can (and will) be consumed and not the other way around.

I admit that this may sound about as ridiculous a point to argue as arguing that the earth is a sphere or that 2+2 really is 4, but I keep hearing people arguing, in effect, that 2+2 may equal 5 for sufficiently large values of 2.  The explanations are always long and involved, but they amount to nothing more than hand waving to distract from their hollowness.

I therefore assert that when people start talking about how getting more money into the hands of consumers will help the economy, and when they propose that it be done by either first taking that money from others or by just printing it, then either they are ignorant or they are lying.  I suspect that either explanation is equally probable for the current political class today.

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Notes

1. ^For the purposes of my explanation of why this is a stupid idea, I am assuming the impossibility of time travel, the existence of which I am willing to concede would be a possible means for goods and serviced could be utilized prior to their creation.  Of course if you want to debate this point with me you should first debunk Hawking's chronology protection conjecture.

Bipartisanship for our lifetime...

So I heard Representative Eric Cantor (Virginia) state earlier this week his intention to repeal Obamacare and replace it with Cantorcare, which, apparently, means that only the "popular" provisions, i.e. requiring insurance companies to provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions AND requiring companies that provide insurance to children to cover those children to the age of 26.

I don't know if Cantor thinks he can compromise with Obama, and that maybe this will be a way to get a less-bad law in place of the current one, but this current batch of Democrats have proven time and again that they do not honor their commitments.  And if they do succeed, then their fingerprints will be on the destruction of our health care and health insurance markets.  Consider:

• Insurance for pre-existing conditions is not insurance, it is welfare.  Insurance is when you pay into a common risk pool to cover future (unknown) risks.  If it's something you already have, then it's not a risk, it is a reality, and to have someone else pay for your reality is welfare, not insurance.
• Children to the age of 26.  So what is already happening here is companies are beginning to refuse to offer policies on children.  Nevermind the classification of a 26 year old person as a child, but in our current nanny-state country, that somehow seems to fit.

The real problem here is that they are not "forcing" insurance companies to do squat, they are "prohibiting" me from entering into agreements with those companies under terms outside of what they "deem" acceptable.  Who are those idiots to decide for me?

I will never support any Democrat because of what they have collectively done to my country these past 4 years that they've controlled Congress.  For the Republicans to repeal the abominable restrictions on my freedom in Obamacare I expect and demand.  But for them to replace it with their own version will force me to refuse to support them either.  Ever.  Might not be a bad thing for me to give up my interest in politics.

to paraphrase Orwell, "The voters outside looked from democrat to republican, and from republican to democrat, and from democrat to republican again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."