Outside The Asylum

I had a reply to this but it either wasn't "fact based" enough or not economics enough. Or I messed up trying to post it. At any rate, it better belongs here than on EP anyway: Americans are weird creatures. Our liberals like progress, our conservatives like freedom. Between the two, we have no real liberals (who prefer status quo utopias that attempt to maximize freedom) or real conservatives (who prefer status quo utopias that attempt to maximize order). Our conservatives crave freedom more than order; and so support the chaos of the free market and think that getting the Chinese to float the Yuan will magically erase the trade deficit; where real conservatives would probably either ban Chinese trade outright or use a public corporation charter to limit imports from China to be equal to exports to China. Our liberals prefer progress- and thus are often for change regardless of who the change hurts, merely for the sake of change and trying out something new. Betwee...

Under what absolutely insane form of economics is 20% profit taking sustainable? All the clues were in these two videos from more than a year ago....

I'm sure many people will disagree with what I write in this blog, that's OK, it's your right to disagree, and I'm not going to censor anything. But my grandmother taught me to read Ann Landers- and when her daughter Amy took over the column, I started reading that too. Today's first letter completely missed the real worry- and mislabeled it as simple discrimination or homophobia. I give Amy and the University only 1/2 point though. Would you put a female lesbian in a dorm room with a straight 18 year old human male? Would you put a female heterosexual in a dorm room with a straight 18 year old human male? No, because in both those scenarios, the chance of rape is actually quite high. It might not happen still, but being forced to enjoy one another's company long periods will cause at least the fear of rape in the female. Either that or it will turn into a romance. So why would a straight male, roomed with a homosexual male, feel any different than the fe...

Once again I've been wrongly accused by Robert Oak of evangelizing on his blog , this time, oddly enough for Monsanto and the Catholic Church, in a posting where the studies quoted went against both (the WTO/OECD and FAO studies both recommended *against* genetically modified foods for development of these lands, and despite the near-agreement with the Catholic Church on overpopulation being a religious myth, the recommendation isn't so much charity and food for the poor (Classic Catholic response) as it is tractors and infrastructure and small farms for the poor (modern sustainable response). But even more interestingly is the claim that my last post, which pointed out the bigotry and prejudice clouding RO's judgement and that NEITHER of the studies quoted came from either Monsanto or the Catholic Church was labeled a "flame post" and deleted- despite his own last post being rather a flame rant itself. THAT is moral relativism for you- when you preach tolerance b...

I'm beginning to wonder if God's love is truly unconditional, for all of us. And how incredibly stupid it would be if it was- for in modern America at least, one cannot sin if one is loved unconditionally. Unconditional love erases sin. I prefer a loving father to that- and as a father, my love is NOT unconditional. My child experiences discipline from me at times, when necessary, and thus, my love is not unconditional. But I'd suggest that the discipline of conditional love is closer to the Greek of Agape, than the uncritical, unconditional love of modern America, where, to paraphrase Pope Benedict XVI in his latest encyclical, we have rights but no duty- and thus, have reduced right to mere license. Far too often, we go beyond forgiving sin, to encouraging sin, in modern America- and eventually, we all pay the price of that, economically and spiritually. ---- After a couple of comments on facebook, I realized that this might actually be a translation problem from the Gree...

Had to repost here just in case it goes away elsewhere: And now, the seven Papal documents, so far, on economics, so that you can get a feeling of the history of the Doctrine of Distributism: Rerum Novarum from Pope Leo XIII Quadragesimo Anno from Pope Pius XI Mater et Magistra from Pope John XXIII Populum Progresso from Pope Paul VI Centesimus Annus from Pope John Paul II Sollicitudo Rei Socialis from Pope John Paul II Caritas In Veritate by Pope Benedict XVI People think that Catholic doctrine never changes- but it's dogma that doesn't change, doctrine changes ever so slowly because of the concern for human error. The Doctrine of Distributism is as solid as any other form of economics I can think of, but unlike communism, which requires total subservience to the state, and capitalism, which requires total subservience to self, distributism is duty to protect other people's rights and justice to fulfill other people's needs. And in return- other people have a du...

But this is a bigger philosophical argument than should exist on the other blog, so I'm putting it here: religion may not be economics , in fact, most of it certainly is not, but economics is always religion. What do I mean by that? There are no hard set-in-stone laws in economics like physics- everything comes with assumptions. Those who believe in a given set of assumptions, such as "free trade is always good for both cultures engaged in it", or "socially beneficial risk is worth taking and should be encouraged", have a tendency to have a blind spot to other sets of values and other ways of thinking. In this way, much of economics is not only religion, but IRRATIONAL religion, as defined by Pope Benedict XVI in that speech that made the Islamics so angry. It's the difference between Thomas Aquinas and Bob Jones University- deep thought vs shallow adherence to theories even when those theories are wrong and do much damage. We'd be better off with t...

Benedict XVI has put out a new encyclical, now available on the Vatican Website . It's an update of the four documents I've linked to previously in this blog as being my basis for economic ethics; and what an update it is. Still doesn't address my basic quibble on illegal immigration, but it does offer a solution in chapter 5 that is more acceptable than the mere "right to migrate for work", for it now includes a "duty to become a productive citizen of the new country". However, it's chapters 3 and 4 I'd draw your attention to; for here, Pope Benedict XVI actually treads what is new ground for Americans- man's duty to each other limiting rights, and man's duty to protect the environment for the good of the poor and future generations. This is something we don't hear often enough from the pulpit, and I'd certainly like to hear it more often. For it is these two "new ideas to America" that we have lost in the last 150 ...

Protestants will tell you that Martin Luther was a Holy Man- doing the work of God when he came up with the five Solas and removed books from the Bible. But they also say you can judge a doctrine by the fruits that come from that doctrine. I charge that the Followers of Christ Church in Oregon City is an example of the fruits of the doctrines of "Bible Only" and "the priesthood of all believers" in spades. Not so much a united denomination as a collection of Protestant Biblical Family Traditions, their Bibles don't have the deuterocanonicals in them. They have no set theology, yet they are extremely conservative and strict. They have no minister since their founder died in 1969, they have no bishops or priests to keep them away from heresy. They are, in short, the dream of Martin Luther and John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli- a priesthood of all believers, no hierarchical control whatsoever. They are in short, a fine test of the Five Solas, for they are alo...