Major changes: To qualify as USMCA manufactured cars have to be (mostly) built by workers earning $16 per hour – in other words white workers, because mestizo and indio workers are generally not worth $16 per hour. Usually minimum wages are a bad idea, because they keep kids out of the job market and prevent them from gaining experience, but since you can place a car plant anywhere the major impact of this is that car companies are going to …
Category: economics
Poz, capitalism, and free markets.
Is there a connection between free markets and Poz. Is a sound reactionary polity somewhat socialist? In the comments some have been making the stupid argument that poz is the result of evil Jewish capitalists pursuing profit, that gay marriage was promoted to sell wedding cakes, which argument scarcely deserves a reply. But others have been making more sophisticated arguments, which arguments deserve to be promoted into a post. Obviously sound economic policy is trade with outsiders, which requires the …
Socialism
Leftism necessarily goes ever lefter. But what is “lefterâ€? Leftism has no essence, it is just a coalition to knock over the apple cart in order to grab some of the apples, so “lefter†is whatever direction looks like some apples could be knocked loose. “Lefter†could be almost anything, head off in almost any direction, depending on fashion, opportunity, and perceived vulnerability of people who have stuff. Leftism necessarily goes ever lefter, because having knocked over one apple cart, …
Inclusivity codes of conduct
When an open source software project adopts a “code of conduct†it slowly dies. Bugs don’t get fixed, new features break stuff, and it is unable to accommodate updates and changes in the environment. Over time, it gradually suffers bitrot – unchanging and unchangeable assumptions in a changing world, combined with “fixes†that introduce new bugs, and confusing new misfeatures that irritate old users, never quite work as they were supposed to, and are an obstacle to new users. And …
China passes the US
The most important, powerful, and effective weapon in the US arsenal is a fifty year old plane firing seventy year old cannons scoured from museums and looted from ancient forgotten overseas arms depots. Some people may say that the most important, powerful, and effective weapon in the US arsenal is nukes, but after all these years, who knows if they work any more? We can no longer make tritium, we can no longer make Pu238, why should nukes have fared …
Externalities
About twenty percent of a car is, or should be, high quality specialty steel which is not made in America. Because there are no local sources of such steel, it is organizationally difficult to make such parts in the US, so the parts tend to be made overseas. Or, disturbingly often, made out of crappy steel. When Jobs was creating the smartphone, he went to Corning to talk to the people who make specialty glass. If we had been importing …
Protectionism
Trump, in accordance with his campaign promises to the rust belt and flyover country, has just slapped a tariff on steel and aluminum. If you look at the Nucor product catalog, you can see that the USA has ceded high end steel production to foreigners. Ceding high end steel production to foreigners is militarily unwise. Ceding the high end is also likely to have externalities. A network of skills unravels. If company A does something high tech, it cultivates employees, …
The disastrous effects of females in power
Women cannot do men’s jobs, and the pretense that they can and are is doing immense damage to men’s work and the creation of value by men. Women in men’s positions subtract value. Women in powerful male positions subtract enormous amounts of value. Men at work get paid for creating value, and are forced to pay women for destroying the value that men create. The reason for female under representation among top engineers, scientists, etc, is that women are slightly …
Bitcoin and the May scale of monetary hardness
The current price of bitcoin is only justified if there is a significant probability of bitcoin taking over the world, and substantially replacing other assets that are less easily transferable and/or more subject to the caprice and violence of an increasingly disorderly, unpredictable, destructive, and anarchic state. If it does take over, will rise a hell of a lot further. For example, investing in real estate rental property is lucrative, with steady modest income and impressive capital appreciation – but …
A good time to invest in bitcoin
In 2013 I recommended investing in bitcoin. Quite recently I recommended not investing in bitcoin, because my cleaning lady who has no idea what to do when her computer freezes up, is investing in bitcoin. When the widows and orphans start buying stocks, it is time to sell. Lately I have heard tell of thought criminals opening bitcoin accounts, because they noticed “Nazis†getting their accounts blocked, and figured that come the terror, they would need some money that could …