Currently Reading

The Jews and the Gospel, A Re-examination of the New Testament ( Inscribed By Au an amazing book. I got it for a few dollars as a used paperback, IS THE NEW TESTAMENT ANTI-SEMITIC . I see it is hard to replace.

Just Finished

Not quite as intersting as Gregory Baum's Book (above) but very interesting and a better cover, Kandinsky. I've got an extra copy.

Hugo Chavez

I've been doing my own private mourning, thank you. I had heard the Hugo took property he wanted when the deed records weren't complete. Ahem, big deal of course. But Hugo insisted that deeds go back through 1821 through an interval where records for some reason were far from complete. Now I don't now about the oil development except to read from the Economist, and he seems to have shown the same interest in oil production at the state run oil company as the communists did on news gathering in their staffing of Isvestia and Pravda. As for stealing from the future, you do know that Argentina was the richest country in the world, per capita income wise, at the turn of the century. Puzzled? I guess, like me, you really don't remember 1900. No, what I am mourning about is that these largely Catholic countries can be such a mess while Israel with a little sand and Palestinian only buses can have such a dynamic economy. To his credit though, and clowns seem to be more in favor these day, Chavez didn't kill his opponents.

The Atlantic if I recall correctly had an interesting graphic a year ago. It showed that the Roman empire hit a nadir bushel of wheat earned per hour of labor in the middle of the third century. One of the error dynamics of the Roman derived states seems to be a struggle between syndicalism in control of property and redistribution on a base of static development of resources or TFP to coin a phrase.

Reflections on the Italian Election Debacle

You know there was that French sociologist who pointed out that French suicides went down during the Franco-Prussian war. 'We're all in this together' occurred anomie was relatively banished. Having a currency is something like that. 'Let a smile be my umbrella' the song goes, but we all know that is being a bit gay. It really is 'Let $3.98 be my umbrella.' When you have a little, you are part of the dollar society; you have choices. You belong. When Italy had the lira, similarly all Italians were 'in it together.' If the value of assets slid, they all slid together from the Mafiosi to the street cleaner. To reduce Italy's collective claim on the rest of the world and on each other is fractured more among asset classes when the government employee retains her Euro salary and the factory worker becomes unemployed and has to scuffle underground. - See more at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/27/italian-default-starts-to-look-more-likely-again.html#sthash.i74WrLiM.dpuf

That recent announcement of releasing the illegal immigrants set for deportation seems passive aggressive, Or is it not? Shall we expect more of the same?

I loved Penelope Trunk's article 'Universal Pre-K is Bad For Everyone.'

Health Care and Cost, in McArdle's* comments

But who is doing your biding? When you go to work, you get paid so you do the 'bidding' of the employer. So, as in the example I give below, if a surgeon could certify that an assistant could do an operation, then presumably the surgeon can do it for less because he could be doing something else. If the state rules that he cannot, then the state is raising your costs. Or is it when the state mandates a 'maximum wage' for a pharmaceutical or a procedure that it is doing our bidding. A part of our cost structure is mandated basically quality controls which may or may not be excessive but they certainly are costs. Could states do those differently, thus lower costs while still allowing people to own their labor, selling it at a market price, and be doing your bidding?

It wouldn't be hard to cut spending by 30%. You could allow PA's or NPs to do surgeries if a board certified surgeon said they had done that surgery successfully 15 times (under their 'supervision') for instance. But you run into an interlocking set of desired quality controls and cost factors. Former president Clinton's statement that abortion should be 'safe, legal, and rare' is something of an allusion to that. It wasn't that people couldn't get abortions but the quality control was poor.

*Link http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/04/the-technocratic-dilemma.html

The end* of Richard III and the War of the Roses. *http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-21245346

MosesZC in the second comment on this post has an interesting comment which makes the Chinese turn to successful production less mind bending.