The Lovely Summer

Racist, Sexist, Exploitative Capitalism

1144 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:20:15 GMT

It was amazing to me how quickly she overturned the power structure within her family,” Leslie Chang writes in Factory Girls, her 2008 book on internal migration within China. Chang is marveling at Min, a 17-year-old who left her family farm to find work in a succession of factories in the rapidly urbanizing city of Dongguan. Had Min never left home, she would have been expected to marry a man from a nearby village, to bear his children, and to accept her place in a tradition that privileges husbands over wives. But months after Min found work in Dongguan, she was already advising her father on financial planning, directing her younger siblings to stay in school, and changing jobs without bothering to ask her parents’ permission.”

“Are Property Rights Enough?” Reason, November 2009

How could the noble communists let this happen in their country? They should have taken people off their family farms and put them into communal farms, so they could capitalize on - I mean, make the most of - their already communal culture, bringing to fruition the bounty of true brotherhood. Oh, wait, they did, and they starved by the tens of millions. (The people, that is - not the noble, selfless communists.) Does anyone remember that?

Those were the good old days. But now they’ve turned to the Dark Side. And it all happened because some greedy people wanted to get rich. May they all reap what they sow.

Wish they all could be Malawian boys

1144 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:50:27 GMT

Boy builds windmill, brings electricity to his village.

Help or Hindrance?

1144 — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:58:56 GMT

Obama is willing to spend political capital to shut down payday lenders. Never mind that the people will pay for his good intentions.

In a December 2008 working paper, [Dartmouth economist Jonathan] Zinman concluded that former payday customers in Oregon ended up using less desirable alternatives such as overdrafts and utility shutdowns, and that “restricting access caused deterioration in the overall financial condition of the Oregon households.” In summary, “restricting access to expensive credit harms consumers.”

A February 2008 study for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found similar results: “Compared with households in states where payday lending is permitted, households in Georgia [after a May 2004 ban on payday lending] have bounced more checks, complained more to the Federal Trade Commission about lenders and debt collectors, and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection at a higher rate,” wrote Federal Reserve research economists Donald P. Morgan and Michael R. Strain. In North Carolina, where payday loans were banned in December 2005, “households have fared about the same. This negative correlation—reduced payday credit supply, increased credit problems contradicts the debt trap critique of payday lending, but is consistent with the hypothesis that payday credit is preferable to substitutes such as the bounced-check ‘protection’ sold by credit unions and banks or loans from pawnshops.”

http://reason.com/archives/2009/09/25/payday-of-reckoning

May we all seek disconfirming evidence for our theories, especially when we have the power to enact them.

Food for thought for my favorite audience

1144 — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:12:59 GMT

Capitalism = voluntary trade

Humanity is benevolent to the extent humans have satisfied their own needs.

(Both empirical, as all good claims and concepts are.)

Objectivism 101

1144 — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:22:17 GMT

I recommend the Objectivism 101 website.

Scoff while you can, before we give the world back to the people who wrought it.

1144 — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:25:24 GMT

Atlas Shrugged selling better than ever since its year of publication.

Atlas Shrugged No. 1 seller in Amazon "classics" category.

Blagojevich Bliss

1144 — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:51:08 GMT

Hopefully you've all heard about and delighted in the arrest of a corrupt politician, the governor of Illinois. I delight in the mild irony that this man's bad luck brings joy to good people.

The FBI complaint, chock full of the most blatant corruption you may ever see.

Thanks to john_j_enright for the link to the actual complaint. It's a fun read over breakfast, if you skim fast enough.

Also, What the Fed Left Out, a parody.

Comedian Louis CK on Conan: "Everything's amazing, nobody's happy"

1144 — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:31:25 GMT

"Did you partake of the miracle of human flight you non-contributing zero!"

Hat tip to Stephen Hicks, who links to really neat stuff daily.

"Darwinian Conservatism"

1144 — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:32:34 GMT

What a great theme for a blog:

The Left has traditionally assumed that human nature is so malleable, so perfectible, that it can be shaped in almost any direction. Conservatives object, arguing that social order arises not from rational planning but from the spontaneous order of instincts and habits. Darwinian biology sustains conservative social thought by showing how the human capacity for spontaneous order arises from social instincts and a moral sense shaped by natural selection in human evolutionary history.

Well, it's a false dichotomy, between an infinitely malleable human nature and an arational, instinctual nature, but at least we're moving in the direction of a scientific foundation for considering basic human values. It's been decades since leftists could pretend to any moral authority on scientific grounds, but instincts and tradition aren't what got us out of our caves.

1144 — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:47:33 GMT

Communism and Starvation: the First American Experiment

1144 — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:14:45 GMT

The Real Meaning of Thanksgiving: The Triumph of Capitalism over
Collectivism
by Richard M. Ebeling Monday, 24 November 2008

...

The English Puritans, who left Great Britain and sailed across the Atlantic
on the Mayflower in 1620, were not only escaping from religious persecution
in their homeland. They also wanted to turn their back on what they viewed
as the materialistic and greedy corruption of the Old World.

In the New World, they wanted to erect a New Jerusalem that would not only
be religiously devout, but be built on a new foundation of communal sharing
and social altruism. Their goal was the communism of Plato's Republic, in
which all would work and share in common, knowing neither private property
nor self-interested acquisitiveness.

What resulted is recorded in the diary of Governor William Bradford, the
head of the colony. The colonists collectively cleared and worked land, but
they brought forth neither the bountiful harvest they hoped for, nor did it
create a spirit of shared and cheerful brotherhood.

The less industrious members of the colony came late to their work in the
fields, and were slow and easy in their labors. Knowing that they and their
families were to receive an equal share of whatever the group produced, they
saw little reason to be more diligent their efforts. The harder working
among the colonists became resentful that their efforts would be
redistributed to the more malingering members of the colony. Soon they, too,
were coming late to work and were less energetic in the fields.

As Governor Bradford explained in his old English (though with the spelling
modernized):

"For the young men that were able and fit for labor and service did repine
that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives
and children, without recompense. The strong, or men of parts, had no more
division of food, clothes, etc. then he that was weak and not able to do a
quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men
to be ranked and equalized in labor, and food, clothes, etc. with the meaner
and younger sort, thought it some indignant and disrespect unto them. And
for men's wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing
their meat, washing their clothes, etc. they deemed it a kind of slavery,
neither could man husbands brook it."

Because of the disincentives and resentments that spread among the
population, crops were sparse and the rationed equal shares from the
collective harvest were not enough to ward off starvation and death. Two
years of communism in practice had left alive only a fraction of the
original number of the Plymouth colonists.

Realizing that another season like those that had just passed would mean the
extinction of the entire community, the elders of the colony decided to try
something radically different: the introduction of private property rights
and the right of the individual families to keep the fruits of their own
labor.

As Governor Bradford put it:

"And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the
proportion of their number for that end. . . .This had a very good success;
for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted
then otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could
use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The
women now went willingly into the field, and took their little-ones with
them to set corn, which before would a ledge weakness, and inability; whom
to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression."

The Plymouth Colony experienced a great bounty of food. Private ownership
meant that there was now a close link between work and reward. Industry
became the order of the day as the men and women in each family went to the
fields on their separate private farms. When the harvest time came, not only
did many families produce enough for their own needs, but they had surpluses
that they could freely exchange with their neighbors for mutual benefit and
improvement.

In Governor Bradford's words:

"By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them
plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts
of many, for which they blessed God. And the effect of their planting was
well seen, for all had, one way or other, pretty well to bring the year
about, and some of the abler sort and more industrious had to spare, and
sell to others, so as any general want or famine hath not been amongst them
since to this day."

Hard experience had taught the Plymouth colonists the fallacy and error in
the ideas that since the time of the ancient Greeks had promised paradise
through collectivism rather than individualism. As Governor Bradford
expressed it:

"The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried
sundry years, and that amongst the Godly and sober men, may well convince of
the vanity and conceit of Plato's and other ancients; -- that the taking
away of property, and bringing into a common wealth, would make them happy
and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far
as it was) was found to breed confusion and discontent, and retard much
employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort."

Was this realization that communism was incompatible with human nature and
the prosperity of humanity to be despaired or be a cause for guilt? Not in
Governor Bradford's eyes. It was simply a matter of accepting that altruism
and collectivism were inconsistent with the nature of man, and that human
institutions should reflect the reality of man's nature if he is to prosper.
Said Governor Bradford:

"Let none object this is man's corruption, and nothing to the curse itself.
I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in his wisdom saw
another course fitter for them."

The desire to "spreading the wealth" and for government to plan and regulate
people's lives is as old as the utopian fantasy in Plato's Republic. The
Pilgrim Fathers tried and soon realized its bankruptcy and failure as a way
for men to live together in society.

They, instead, accepted man as he is: hardworking, productive, and
innovative when allowed the liberty to follow his own interests in improving
his own circumstances and that of his family. And even more, out of his
industry result the quantities of useful goods that enable men to trade to
their mutual benefit.

In the wilderness of the New World, the Plymouth Pilgrims had progressed
from the false dream of communism to the sound realism of capitalism. At a
time of economic uncertainty, it is worthwhile recalling this beginning of
the American experiment and experience with freedom.

...

Government Failure and Mary Ruwart's PWNing of Pharmaceutical Regulations

1144 — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:32:31 GMT

My, this is a skimpy Wiki article on government failure - each of these types of failures is so massively widespread and such an oppressive burden on the economy that without it, life would be so much better, under laissez faire political economy, that people wouldn't recognize it as their own world, would in fact be as stunned by the reality as if they were visiting a more technologically advanced alien culture.

My favorite example of this is Mary Ruwart's work on regulations' effects in the pharmaceutical industry, and how many hundreds of thousands of deaths in the American health care system are irrefutably caused by the precautionary principle (net difference in death rates from those that would happen under an unregulated, more risk-taking medical market). Thre are so many unintended consequences of the invisible foot of government on the market for health that it's shocking even to us in the choir leading the alto section.

For now I can only point you to her book, Healing Our World, Chapters 5 and 6. It'd be nice to think I'd find time to synopsize that here at some point, but for now, let us absorb the broad categories of destruction visited on us by political power taken too far.

Lord Leighton Parade

1144 — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:53:10 GMT

Continue on Google Image Search without me, I've gotta split.

Fruits of the Profit Motive

1144 — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:25:34 GMT

Imagine all your favorite products. They are made in profit-based organizations such as this one. Love it, or oppose it at your own risk and with no misunderstandings about your program of destruction by selflessness.

Regulate and Bail Out Approach Going Bankrupt

1144 — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:05:11 GMT

Fantastic entry on the the UAW's great contributions to humanity by kraorh.

I showed Jack. Jack responds:

Uncle Sam Goes Car Crazy
Your government gets into the auto business.

"Any business would be hard-pressed to survive if obliged to make consistently maladaptive choices. Any rescue mounted today in Washington won't be so much a "rescue" as a final admission that the industry can no longer bear its regulatory burdens without direct subsidies. Any life supports GM, Ford and Chrysler are hooked up to now, for that reason, will have to be permanent."

Fred:
A special component of our culture is the NGO. There were many
private organizations (like the guilds) in Europe, but they were
chartered monopolies. So our vast numbers of private orgs, including
unions, are fairly unique in the world. Unions are sometimes a positive
force, often not. But human rights considerations require that they
be voluntary and that, of course, is the crux of it all.

Unions have buried a goodly number of industries. They blocked
the steel industry from modernizing years ago, for example,
and we saw the result of that in Pittsburgh and throughout PA.
They killed many railroads. They destroyed San Francisco's
once thriving ports and drove the business over to Oakland.
The prison guard union right now is becoming one of the most
powerful lobbying forces in the country and they're pushing
laws to get and keep more people in business. Teachers unions
have failed, but they slow down alternative private education.
Construction unions chased blacks out of the industry years
ago at a huge social cost.

To top it off, the unions have been useless in protecting
worker health such as in the tire, vinyl, and other chemical
industries. Unions are often enough just a bought front
for management.

The biggest immediate negative of the Obama admin will
be the "union card" to replace secret ballot elections in
unionizing. It won't make workers love the unions, but it'll
add to the coffers for political activity. Keep an eye on that one
and we'll see if the Senate can scrub it with a filibuster.

If Right to Work laws in southern states get beaten down,
we'll have another serious jolt to the economy. May get
pretty grim after that, especially if feds also raise the
capital gains tax. We'll be in for a ten year recession
and the only way out of that will be war and a draft.

Regarding Kraorh's notes on GM, etc. There were hundreds
of auto and truck makers, as we saw in our museum visits this
year. Ford beat them all and others had to consolidate to
compete. In recent generations the big 3 hasn't been reluctant
to use political muscle to help block new contenders. Kaiser,
Crosley, Tucker. They tried to outlaw Japanese imports but
the Japanese foresaw that and blindsided them by setting up
their plants in the U.S. to employ Americans. That's how
Toyota is trying to stop the big 3 from blocking sale of plug-in
hybrids with a new factory down south. (The big 3 has just
managed to steal $25 billion from the US Dept. of Energy to
make imaginary hybrid electrics and fantasy hydrogen cars.)
Toyota will eat their lunch, as they say, unless the feds declare
a national emergency and put them out of business (as in Atlas).

Post-Election Bonding Meme

1144 — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:53:14 GMT

I'm mostly paying dues here, but if you want to, go for it.

Leave me a comment and I will reply with why I like you. If I don't know you, I'll either make something up or tell you why I like your LiveJournal. You must pay for the privilege by posting a message like this one on your LiveJournal.

The Obvious

1144 — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:47:40 GMT

Okay, now that I've done my dour duty in opposing our new socialist leader throughout the campaign, I can take a moment to rejoice: We elected a black person for President!

What part of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac don't you understand?

1144 — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:22:56 GMT

Some people are pretty incredulous at the causality cited in this chart. This I find very amusing. What part of it do you deny? That these things happened, or that they had any effect on the market?

Heavy lobbying by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac congress critters and power-lusting bureaucrats:

(Video link.)

More on what's happening to our beloved, usually-more-responsible, always-a-net-blessing, at-least-partially-free capitalist system. And a note on media coverage by the same author as the previous link, boffo. Thanks, boffo.

You can't blame the free market system (I don't mean the particular bankers, but free market principles) when the free market system was being raped at the time.

First-time Freedom via Web Ads for Foreign Hiring

1144 — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 13:50:09 GMT

Jobs uae
Top Recruiters In Dubai Will Send You Jobs That You Are Suitable For.
www.TeleportMyJob.com/Dubai._Jobs

I really enjoy the thought of high-skilled Americans working in wealthy but unfree countries, and the liberalizing effect that may have over the long term of a country's cultural life. There is always much hope for the next generation, if there is any seed of liberalism in a dominant or prominent culture within a repressive nation. People have overcome tyranny before, and they can do it even, someday, in areas where liberalism has never yet once been given a try by the people in power.

Bailout

1144 — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:24:21 GMT

I would never have guessed at the united support for corporate welfare from everyone left of far right - on behalf of the stock market. Do we believe in trickle-down now?

Update: So, we get the same deal, only with a whole bunch of political favors for unions and other special interests. Thanks for nothing, congressional Republicans.

The Subprime Mortgage Crisis, by Stephen Hicks

1144 — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:23:37 GMT

Initial situation (until 1980s):					

Lenders have profit motive 
|                       |
|                       |
|                       V
|       Lenders establish credit ratings
|               |                      \
|               |                       \
|               V                        V
|       Good-credit people      Poor-credit people
|       can get loans           can't get loans	          [Capitalism ends here. -K]
|					|
|					|
|	Meanwhile (1990s): 		|
|					|
|					V
|				Some politicians push		Poorer people are
|				for home ownership		disproportionately
|				and "affordable housing"	racial minorities
|					|				|
|					|				|
|					V				|
|				Gov't changes incentives		V
|				for Fannie Mae and 		Claims that lending
|				Freddie Mac via 		standards are racist
|				bailout insurance		      /	
|				/   	|	\		     /
|			       /     	|	 \		    /
|			      /		|	  V		   V
|			     V		|	Pressure on lenders to 	
|		Lenders can make	|	lower standards for
|		higher-interest loans	 \	poorer-credit people: 
|		to poor-credit people	  \	"Home Mortgage Disclosure Act"
|		and then sell those 	   \	& "Community Reinvestment Act"
\		loans to Fannie Mae	    \				|
  \		and Freddie Mac		     \				|
    \			|		      >	Fannie Mae and		|
      \			V			Freddie Mac officials	|
	\	Higher-interest loans		lobby hard to		|
	  \	to poor-credit people		prevent oversight	|
	    \	become profitable					V
	      \		  |					Higher-interest loans
   		\	  |					to poor-credit people
    		  \	  |				      /	become politically
    		    \     |				     /	necessary
      		      \   |				    /
			\ |				   /
			 V V				  /
Then (mid 2000s):	Lenders make	 <----------------
			many more loans
			to poor-credit people
				|
				|
				V
			Poor-credit people
			begin defaulting on
			loans in large numbers
				|
				V
			Ripple effect: Fannie Mae,
			Freddie Mac, and private lenders
			start losing big money	
					|
	Now (late 2000s):		|
					V
				Some politicians and pundits
				blame "greedy lenders"
				for making bad loans:
				"The free market has failed."
					/
				       /
	The government takes over     /
	Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac   <

Version 1
Stephen Hicks, 2008
http://www.stephenhicks.org/

Pittsburgh

1144 — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:42:09 GMT

1144 — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:15:39 GMT

South Side Veterans for Truth
By JAMES TARANTO
September 8, 2008

Last week we wrote that " 'community organizer' is to Barack Obama what 'war hero' was to John Kerry." We didn't know the half of it.

Kerry staked his claim to the presidency on the pretense that he was a war hero, notwithstanding his showy repudiation decades earlier of the war and his fellow veterans. According to a new exposé in the liberal New Republic, Obama, before embarking on a career in politics, similarly, albeit quietly, repudiated "community organizing," only to re-embrace it decades later, apparently out of political expediency.

TNR's John Judis tracked down Jerry Kellman, who in 1985 "hired Obama to organize residents of Chicago's South Side." Kellman describes a conversation the two "community organizers" had at a conference on "social justice" in October 1987:

"[Obama] wanted to marry and have children, and to have a stable income," Kellman recalls.

But Obama was also worried about something else. He told Kellman that he feared community organizing would never allow him "to make major changes in poverty or discrimination." To do that, he said, "you either had to be an elected official or be influential with elected officials." In other words, Obama believed that his chosen profession was getting him nowhere, or at least not far enough. . . .

And so, Obama told Kellman, he had decided to leave community organizing and go to law school. Another way of putting this might be that Obama left community organizing because he wanted a job in which he had actual responsibilities (and, of course, earned more money).

But Obama did not decide only that "community organizing" was not for him. Judis reports the future senator took part in a September 1989 symposium in which he "rejected the guiding principles of community organizing: the elevation of self-interest over moral vision; the disdain for charismatic leaders and their movements; and the suspicion of politics itself." Later, Obama "would begin to construct a political identity for himself that was not simply different from his identity as a community organizer--but was, in fact, its very opposite."

Judis offers the closest thing we've heard to a job description for "community organizers." What they do, he writes, is "unite people of different backgrounds around common goals and use their collective strength to wring concessions from the powers that be." To help illuminate this rather vague description, Judis also enumerates some of the tasks Obama and his colleagues undertook.

Before Obama's arrival in Chicago, Kellman and his "partner," Mike Kruglik, set out "to revive the region's manufacturing base--and preserve what remained of its steel industry--by working with unions and church groups to pressure companies and the city; but those hopes were quickly dashed." Apparently the presence of "community organizers" is not a strong selling point for companies making location decisions. Go figure.

Obama set his sights lower, but still missed the mark. He "got community members to demand a job center that would provide job referrals, but there were few jobs to distribute." Then "he tried to create what he called a 'second-level consumer economy' . . . consisting of shops, restaurants, and theaters. This, too, went nowhere."

These efforts at economic development having failed, Obama "began to focus on providing social services for Altgeld Gardens," a government-owned and -operated apartment complex:

"We didn't yet have the power to change state welfare policy, or create local jobs, or bring substantially more money into the schools," [Obama] wrote. "But what we could do was begin to improve basic services at Altgeld--get the toilets fixed, the heaters working, the windows repaired." Obama helped the residents wage a successful campaign to get the Chicago Housing Authority to promise to remove asbestos from the units; but, after an initial burst of activity, the city failed to keep its promise. (As of last year, some residences still had not been cleared of asbestos.)
It is both funny and scary that one of America's major political parties would offer this record of sheer futility as its nominee's chief qualification to be president of the United States. Even more striking, though, is how alien the world in which Obama operated was by comparison with the world in which normal Americans live.

Reader, when your toilet breaks, do you wait around for some Ivy League hotshot to show up and organize a meeting so that you can use your collective strength to wring concessions from the powers that be?

Or do you call a plumber?

As a "community organizer," Obama toiled within a subculture of such abject dependency that even home repairs were "social services," provided by government (or, in Obama's Chicago, not provided). It was an utterly bizarre intersection between the cultural elite and the underclass. By Judis's account, Obama's Columbia degree was useless. He would have been more helpful if he'd gone to vocational school instead.

Judis quotes an Altgeld resident as telling Obama, "Ain't nothing gonna change. . . . We just gonna concentrate on saving our money so we can move outta here as fast as we can." Certainly no one can fault Obama for doing the same thing. But what did Obama move outta there to do? To become a politician--specifically, an "idealistic" politician who wants "to make major changes in poverty." Guys like that created this mess in the first place.

In his political career, has Obama done or even said anything to suggest that he has a different approach to "poverty," one that would reduce dependency rather than promote it? His recent rediscovery of the glories of "community organizing" certainly isn't an encouraging sign.

Must Reading on Gender Differences

1144 — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:43:53 GMT

Is There Anything Good About Men?, presented at an American Psychological Association conference by the preeminent social psychologist, Roy Baumeister, is packed with objective psychological research and theoretical synthesis on gender differences. (Don't be put off by the title; it seems to have been set by those inviting the presentation.)

The thesis is that, due to the difference in reproductive reward of risk-taking behavior between men and women, women find more pleasure in intimate relationships, while men find more pleasure in a wider but interpersonally shallower network - and that the latter is more conducive to creativity and achievement.

(Particularly felicitious is that this understanding nullifies the conspiracy theory perspective on patriarchy.)

Highly educational. Via philosopher Stephen Hicks.

Conclusion

To summarize my main points: A few lucky men are at the top of society and enjoy the culture’s best rewards. Others, less fortunate, have their lives chewed up by it. Culture uses both men and women, but most cultures use them in somewhat different ways. Most cultures see individual men as more expendable than individual women, and this difference is probably based on nature, in whose reproductive competition some men are the big losers and other men are the biggest winners. Hence it uses men for the many risky jobs it has.

Men go to extremes more than women, and this fits in well with culture using them to try out lots of different things, rewarding the winners and crushing the losers.

Culture is not about men against women. By and large, cultural progress emerged from groups of men working with and against other men. While women concentrated on the close relationships that enabled the species to survive, men created the bigger networks of shallow relationships, less necessary for survival but eventually enabling culture to flourish. The gradual creation of wealth, knowledge, and power in the men’s sphere was the source of gender inequality. Men created the big social structures that comprise society, and men still are mainly responsible for this, even though we now see that women can perform perfectly well in these large systems.

What seems to have worked best for cultures is to play off the men against each other, competing for respect and other rewards that end up distributed very unequally. Men have to prove themselves by producing things the society values. They have to prevail over rivals and enemies in cultural competitions, which is probably why they aren’t as lovable as women.

The essence of how culture uses men depends on a basic social insecurity. This insecurity is in fact social, existential, and biological. Built into the male role is the danger of not being good enough to be accepted and respected and even the danger of not being able to do well enough to create offspring.

The basic social insecurity of manhood is stressful for the men, and it is hardly surprising that so many men crack up or do evil or heroic things or die younger than women. But that insecurity is useful and productive for the culture, the system.

Again, I’m not saying it’s right, or fair, or proper. But it has worked. The cultures that have succeeded have used this formula, and that is one reason that they have succeeded instead of their rivals.

The Spoiled Children of Capitalism

1144 — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:37:49 GMT

"People ask, 'Why is there poverty in the world?' It’s a silly question. Poverty is the default human condition. It is the factory preset of this mortal coil. ...

"The interesting question isn’t 'Why is there poverty?' It’s 'Why is there wealth?' ...

"Leaving religion out of it, no idea has given more to humanity than capitalism. And yet we hate it."