Maggie's Farm

We rarely miss an excuse to discuss this law of nature. From a piece by Rob Norton at the Library of Economics and Liberty, which begins:

The law of unintended consequences, often cited but rarely defined, is that actions of people—and especially of government—always have effects that are unanticipated or "unintended." Economists and other social scientists have heeded its power for centuries; for just as long, politicians and popular opinion have largely ignored it.

The concept of unintended consequences is one of the building blocks of economics. Adam Smith's "invisible hand," the most famous metaphor in social science, is an example of a positive unintended consequence. Smith maintained that each individual, seeking only his own gain, "is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention," that end being the public interest. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, or the baker, that we expect our dinner," Smith wrote, "but from regard to their own self interest."

Most often, however, the law of unintended consequences illuminates the perverse unanticipated effects of legislation and regulation. In 1692 John Locke, the English philosopher and a forerunner of modern economists, urged the defeat of a parliamentary bill designed to cut the maximum permissible rate of interest from 6 percent to 4 percent. Locke argued that instead of benefiting borrowers, as intended, it would hurt them. People would find ways to circumvent the law, with the costs of circumvention borne by borrowers. To the extent the law was obeyed, Locke concluded, the chief results would be less available credit and a redistribution of income away from "widows, orphans and all those who have their estates in money."

Read the whole thing.

Smart guy, that King of Pith Insty, who asks:

How come "human rights" are suddenly trumping Constitutional rights?

From Frank Furedi's The Truth about Music, at Spiked:

There is no ‘truer truth’ than that which comes through music, said Robert Browning. Which makes today’s transformation of music into a tool of social policy all the more tragic.

and

On loan from Theo:

Stolen from Conspiracy's jokes:

Three executives convicted under anti-trust law were sitting at the same table in the prison cafeteria. The first said, "I charged more than others and was convicted of price-gouging."

The second said, "I charged less than others and was convicted of predatory pricing."

The third said, "I charged exactly the same as everyone else and was convicted of collusion!"

What's the matter with Chicago? Stanley Kurtz at NRO

It's your mother's fault. Shrink Rap

Viewing the 1960s from my 60s. Prelutsky

Attack of the pre-school perverts. Steyn. The little devils are everywhere!

35 dozen oysters in 8 minutes. But did he fully appreciate every one?

Michael Harrington and the War on Poverty.

The economics of high-end prostitution

A liberal (fascist?) "Fathead".

Hillary is all over Obama's elitism. A quote:

If we are striving to bring people together — and I believe we should be — I don't think it helps to divide our country into one America that is enlightened and one that is not.

Pot, kettle. However, now Hillary reinvents herself as a gun-totin' churchgoer. Heck, everybody brings a gun to church, don't they? It's the bitterness, ya know? I always bring spare ammo, just in case my bitterness builds up.

Learned something useful about web searches from Dr. Mercury's post: using a - sign to rule out irrelevant searches.

Photo: Our Forsythia is coming into bloom. The big fat tree is a Copper Beech.

These two pieces attempt to address the "Why can't we all just get along?" attitude towards international relations:

"Diplomacy is not the Dr. Phil Show." Am. Thinker

"A cup of tea with a thug." Denver Post

Obama on Sunday:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Query for Barry: Are you, perhaps, referring the the Great Unwashed? Like me? To what should I cling, if not to guns and God? To you?
And a comment: Unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled manufacturing jobs have been disappearing for far longer than 25 years. In our parts, they disappeared 50-80 years ago. Barry has a short time-frame. New England is filled with old mill towns and old empty factories with broken windows. Things change, and I thought you were in favor of change. Anyway, I know the economic facts don't matter: it's just routine pandering, because those old jobs are never coming back and people have to learn how to do things for which there is a labor market.

Quote from Dalrymple on Coriolanus and related topics:

The first scene opens with the mob, the stage direction being ‘Enter a company of mutinous Citizens, with staves, clubs and other weapons.’ The First Citizen addresses the crowd:
   You know that Caius Marcius [Coriolanus] is chief enemy to the people.
The crowd replies enthusiastically that they know it.
   Let us kill him [continues the First Citizen], and we’ll have corn at our own price.

 

This idea seems a very one to the mob, who agree with him:
   No more talking on’t! Let it be done!
Then the First Citizen enunciates what might be called the first principle of socialist economics, upon which (implicitly, of course) Shakespeare pours scorn):
   What authority surfeits or would relieve us. If they would yield
   us but the superfluity while it were wholesome, we might guess
   they relieved us humanely; but they think we are too dear.
In other words, the fundamental problem of economics is one of distribution; and if it were sorted out, all would be well. The redistributionists have ye always with you.

We have officially termed the Obama campaign "The Teeny-bopper Campaign." (All Rights Reserved)

The money is not coming from the youthful masses, however. Rich guys in suits. Still, the question always does come up: Did the GOP lose the youth vote?

Well, for the yout', it's all about image and fashion. Grown-ups are past that nonsense. Is John McCain a cool MTV dude? I wouldn't know, but I prefer an adult - and I don't do childish dreams anymore: I try to do reality.

A quote from The Price of Ignorance at Captain Capitalism:

The most glaring source of ignorance is that 45% of the people (versus 35%) think the democrats will do a better job of helping the economy.

You have got to be joking. Political bias aside, let's just look at it from a purely economics perspective. Both major candidates for the democrat party are advocating tax increases. I don't care who they're for, but taxes slow down the economy. And Obama's outright idiotic statement that he would increase capital gains taxes by nearly 100%, and still didn't think that would hurt the economy, shows you his ignorance as well.

Additionally this also flies in the face of history. You may hate Bush, but he got this economy out of a recession after a Dotcom Crash and a terrorist attack. He kept it going the entirety of his administration and he did it with tax cuts (and an egregious amount of spending). Reagan the same thing. The best argument the left has is Bill Clinton, but there he was restrained by a Republican congress and if you were to look at government revenue as a percent of GDP it went down (thus a macro-economic decrease in taxes).

I am meeting John McCain at a fund-raiser this week, to which our Editor Dog-in-Chief, Bird Dog, has invited me and the Mrs.

In fact, several of the Maggie's Farm crew will drive there, with money in hand, regardless of our beefs with McCain. 

I have my sentence ready for the guy: "I am happy to meet you, and thank you for your service." I want to say "Global warming is BS," but the Mrs. will not let me say that to him or there will be hell to pay.

I disagree with him on about 30% of the issues of the day (eg immigration, McCain-Feingold, global cooling). But what the heck, I disagree with everybody about something or other, being a difficult, cantankerous, opinionated Yankee.

We have warnings that the AFL-CIO might be protesting something or other, along with other lefty loonies. Good on 'em. A free country.

But are they aware that the employment rate right now is higher than it was during Clinton? No, and they don't care. They have their agenda.

Update:  Got a photo with him. Thanked him for his service to the country. He is solid, somewhat of a tough guy, enormously likeable, and uninspiring. Those are all probably good qualities for a president.

Obama comes out against concealed carry. What a jerk.

Does he expect me to walk around Hartford with a visible holster like I was Wyatt Earp?

Of course, unlike John McCain, this Obama guy chooses to be surrounded by armed men who carry, concealed, on my nickel. So why not me? Is he more important than me?

Maybe, in his dreams.

Sen. Clinton was the establishment candidate running in a party addicted to novelty (in candidates, that is; its policies remain mired in the 1960s). Hill calculated that, given the Dems' deference to identity politics, her gender would give her enough novelty to sail through. But Obama trumped that, and now it's eternally three in the morning, and the phone doesn't stop not ringing. She's like Frank Sinatra in Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer's all-time great saloon song:

"It's quarter to three
There's no one in the place except you and me … "

Read the whole thing.

From George MacDonald Fraser's (RIP, George) Burma campaign memoir Quartered Safe Out Here (those north Brits talk funny):

There was a formula for the password, which always consisted of a seven-letter word, Victory, for example. In theory, the patrol, when challenged, the patrol would prove its bona fides by responding with whichever letter of Victory corresponded with the day of the week using the Morse alphabet. Thus, if it was Sunday, the correct reply was the first letter of Victory, which was Victor. If Monday, Ink, if Tuesday, Charlie, and so on. Who thought this up, I don't know. But if he could have heard Grandarse who seldom knew what day it was at the best of times and couldn't spell anything longer than "pint" trying to persuade Forster that he was not a Japanese White Tiger, he would have thought of something less sophisticated. You may imagine the exchange:

Grandarse: (hoarsely from the dark): Is that thoo, Marra? It's me.

Forster (being awkward): Victory.

Grandarse: Ye wa'at? Awm shit, aye...Victory. Haud on, noo. (to a fellow patroller) 'Eym Wattie, w'at day is't? Thoorsdeh - awreddy? Girraway! Aye, weel, let's see...Moondeh, Choosdeh, Wensdeh, Thoorsdeh - v....i...c...aye, t, that'll be reet! Tock! 'Ey, thoo on stag, Ah'm sayin' Tock! Are ye theer?

Forster (knowing it was Thursday when the patrol left, but that midnight has passed): Booger off, yer a fifth columist!

Grandarse: Bloody 'ell! Whee the 'ell's that? Thoo, Forster, ye git! W'at ye playin' at? It's me, sayin' Tock!

Forster (relenting): It's Friday, ye daft sod!

Grandarse: Ah, the hell! W'at is't then? Orange?

Forster: Awreet, bollock-brain. Coom in if yer feet's clean.

Bob Brinker noted on the radio today that many Americans would find themselves in the 64% tax rate in some states, such as NY, MA, and California, with Obama's Social Security and tax plan.

Brinker said, correctly, that few Americans are willing to work for 36 cents on the dollar unless they are desperate. The entrepreneurs and job-creators would go fishin' or golfin', and cut back hard on their expenses. Thus, on the tax income, job-creation, charitable donation, and consumer sides, the economy would go into an ugly spasm and a downward spiral. "It's nuts," says Bob (who is a political "moderate"). I, for one, would retire immediately and remove my income from the tax rolls: I enjoy my work very much, but I won't be a chump, or a serf or slave to the Federal government. I thought we left feudalism behind us...I think we already had a war about that.

Russia now has a 13% flat tax on everybody, on all income. I would be OK with that. How can they be ahead of us?

Off topic, Charlton Heston said, before his decline, "I'd like to be remembered as: American, husband, father, actor."

I take a good hammer and pound a 1" dowel into the ground about 12-18" deep, 2-3 holes per shrub (including roses), and fill the dowel hole with a cheap all-purpose fertilizer. I make the holes within the drip-line of the plant. It seems to work well. Fertilizer thrown on the surface just washes away and never gets to the roots.

I do it now, before the leaves emerge in Yankeeland. Roots wake up and start getting active and growing at least 4 weeks before you see any greening - and the roots are the root of the matter. I repeat in June, if I remember and if I feel like it. Definitely twice for the roses, though. They are hogs.

If I don't want a plant to grow more vigorously, I don't fertilize it. Incentives, you know.

Speaking of outdoor chores, I am working on an update of my Maggie's Farm Exclusive Lawn Care post. I did lime my lawns today, too, despite the icebox weather. The "poor man's fertilizer" adjusts the soil pH around here. It's good that it comes in pelletized form now.

A quote from Ed Kaitz' excellent Doublethink and the Liberal Mind at American Thinker (my bolds):

George Orwell claimed that there was something more calculated at work when politicians begin to claim for example that "Slavery is Freedom" or that "Hate is Love," or in Mao Tse Tung's words, that "Compulsion is Voluntary."  The new and improved Democratic Party version seems to be that "Diversity is Unity."  Orwell called this "doublethink" and he claimed that it was a condition endemic to the totalitarian mind.  It meant the ability "to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory" and "to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies."  For example, a liberal socialist political platform usually involves "liberating" us from our attachments to property, families and nation in the name of "freedom." When the State chooses for us, however, the result is slavery.  Doublethink in Mr. Obama's case ("Diversity is Unity!") gives him the luxury of defending not only the divisive and intolerant Reverend Wright and his party's divisive policies over the years, but it also allows him to be seen as the savior who will finally make America whole. 

Texas Throw 'Em. Video at Reason TV

The Politics of Poker and online gambling, also at Reason TV. I do not know how the gummint can try to control online gambling, but leave the casinos alone. Besides, isn't the gummint in the sinful gambling business itself? Lotteries, etc?

Excellent basic info for the new cigar-smoker (yes, we are always ten years behind the fad curve, here at Maggie's. Next post: Fun With Hula Hoops.)

Good advice on cigar storage. (Including Don't use analog hygromofisticators - they are inaccurate. In the old days, they used apple cores as humidifiers, and no hygrometers. I like that idea - a nice apple smell.) Like an earthworm, a decent cigar out in the air will begin to lose its vitality in two hours unless it's a muggy day.

All this post needs is a bit on Port and Cognac, but I won't do that. They are delicious, but give me a headache if I consume them in a masculine volume.

Re photo: Not to worry. I unwrapped those Montes before I put them away.