Remedial Economics RE: Price Caps

At Reason, Veronique de Rugy warns us that we should be terrified of price caps.

Regulars here will already know that this is an immoral and impractical idea that would distort markets and lead to shortages if put into practice.

Same regulars might not know how popular this stupid idea is, though:

A new Wall Street Journal poll finds remarkable bipartisan support for government limits on prices, with 93 percent of Democrats and 83 percent of Republicans supporting capping prescription drug prices. Nearly four in five voters support capping credit card interest rates at 10 percent. And large majorities favor capping child care charges for working families. [bold added]

This news should be a clarion call for anyone with half a clue about economics.

Fortunately, de Rugy follows this up with a few brief paragraphs that might help any reasonably intelligent, thoughtful adult who isn't up to speed on economics realize why this idea is even worse than it is popular:

Consider credit cards. A 10 percent interest rate cap sounds lovely. Many Americans pay twice that. Why not simply tell banks that's the limit? Because an interest rate isn't an arbitrary number. It is the price of credit that reflects funding costs, administrative expenses, and, not least, expected default risks.

Congress can cap the rate, but it can't cap the risk. When the price a lender can charge falls below what the risk costs, lending stops. Lenders turn down applicants, cut credit limits, and close accounts. The borrowers the cap was supposed to protect still need the money. They end up at the payday lender or the pawn shop instead. In other words, interest rate caps hurt the economically vulnerable people they are supposed to help. [bold added]

De Rugy does the same quick analyses with two other areas that have politicians talking about price controls. Perhaps these walkthroughs will help people understand that price controls lead to shortages.

The piece is far from perfect, most glaringly in that it takes for granted the flawed idea that self-interest is predatory. This limits the usefulness of the piece to serving only as an economic lesson, although it is clear enough that the various price-capping measures out there will, in fact, harm the people they're supposed to be helping.

Price caps are not just stupid, they violate individual rights and, as such, they are also a moral outrage. But getting the word out about the former can be a decent place to start.

-- CAV

Vance Backwards on 'Socialism,' Foreign Labor

Writing at Reason, Billy Binion demolishes the Vice President's recent assertion that socialism "actually means ... that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers, and you want boys to play in girls sports"

You can go to the article itself for his quick demolition of the low-hanging fruit at the end of that ridiculous pronouncement.

The rest explains why Binion rather charitably labels J.D. Vance an "accidental socialist:"

[T]he Trump administration has complained about socialism while subtly embracing it. The government has, for example, taken stakes in dozens of private companies. "Federal ownership of private companies has become routine, and it is happening on the right even as members busily point fingers at the left for its socialism," wrote Reason contributing editor Veronique de Rugy in August. "The DSA [Democratic Socialists of America] at least tells Americans clearly what it wants. The danger on the right is quieter: a government acquiring the means of production one letter of intent at a time, and a political party acting as though socialism is something only the other side can do."

That's not to imply the White House is moving to abolish private property. Yet never before has a Republican administration exerted such control over the private sector while making "socialism" its primary bogeyman. Is irony dead?

Immigration is a particularly useful subject through which to examine this phenomenon. Which is closer to the concept of "socialism": when the free market decides whom companies can employ? Or when the government does? [bold added]

I am glad such a prominent commentator has finally made this identification.

In the same vein as I have said numerous times, "It is no business of President Trump where I buy my car from any more than it was Biden's what fuel it uses." It also isn't the President's business where my employees live. The Republicans' new anti-immigration/anti-free trade agenda is indeed much closer to socialism than it is to economic freedom.

-- CAV

Friday Funnies

A Friday Hodgepodge

I'm in the mood for some laughs this morning, how about you?

1. It can do many things, but can AI create inspirational posters? My favorite -- at least that holds up best without its background image -- from this collection is:

Glorious is the father who owns his quotes, for he also rejoices over his hut.

You be the judge. (HT: Paul Hsieh)

2. One of the more benevolent communities on the internet is the Bald reddit, which helps folks to "lose your hair, not your head."

People go there to get advice from "the council" on whether it's time to just shave the rest of it off, and may be jokingly told things like You're already bald! or (when they still look good with hair) Hold!

Recently, a guy who was sure it was time asked for confirmation, and his top-of-head shot inspired a Game of Thrones-themed map in reply.

For the record, I'm a hold, but barely, thanks to minoxidil. My wife and I joke about her letting me go bald, if I'll let her her go grey.

3. David Bushell doesn't just complain about bad software, he does something about it, as you will see in "Fine! I'll Build My Own Text Editor!":

Image via Know Your Meme.

"They don't make 'em like Sublime Text anymore" resonated with a lot of folk. Software these days is garbage. That got me thinking; I'm good at building garbage!

Why can't I build my own text editor?

VS Code is built upon Monaco Editor which is a <div> soup hellscape. I was late to the VS Code train because for years my Intel inside™ Mac was too slow. That issue was resolved when I bought Apple silicon. If that's the standard I have a lot of room to make mistakes.

I thank Bushell for the laughs, and for introducing me to an old meme, illustrated above at right, that escaped my attention back in the day.

The advantage of finding memes five-plus years older than your children is that there's a decent chance they don't know about them and you can get a laugh, as I learned the last time we did a family painting class outing.

4. Rob Walling's "How to Detect a Toxic Customer" is a humorous guide to early detection, and includes such signs as:

Warning Sign #3: Multiple Contacts, Often Through Multiple Channels

One of my favorites is to receive 3 emails (one each to our sales, support and info addresses), and a voice mail from the same person within a few minutes.

The request is not time-sensitive, the person just want to make sure someone receives it. And we do receive it ... four times.

I've never really understood this one; either they are really anxious to have their question answered, or they don't believe they are going to hear back. Either way, if you have to send four requests in order to hear back do you really want to buy software from that company?

Interestingly, the post itself shows the author practicing what he preaches, and still making a sale even after refusing to do business with a clueless, entitled person who tried to buy from him.

-- CAV

Live Through the Pain

Editor's Note: There is a small but nonzero possibility that weather associated with the hurricane brewing in the Gulf of Mexico will cause me to miss a post tomorrow or be offline for a day or so.

***

Someone responded to a Dear Prudence column with advice for dealing with chronic pain that struck me as worth keeping in the bank for any kind of similar problem that can't be solved:

Over time, I have come to see my migraines differently. My graduate school mentor, who studied healthy aging, would regularly say something along the lines of "Growing old is a privilege too few people get" when people, usually younger students but also the elderly study participants, would get a bit gloomy about the challenges older folks often face... I have done quite a bit of reading about the kind of head injury I experienced, and what I've learned is this: The vast majority of kids who get hurt as I did die immediately or shortly after. As one of the few who lived, I am one of the lucky ones. My migraines aren't going anywhere, but I have the privilege of being alive. I have an incredible wife, and a smart, funny, sweet, cool-as-could-be young daughter. My job, where I have too few days off to take leave when I get migraines, involves attempting to prevent people from developing chronic or deadly health issues. The price I must pay to have these incredible people and this meaningful life is frequent migraines. I accept that price.

That kind of perspective may not relieve that man's pain, but it puts him in a place of agency, which he otherwise would not occupy. He won that perspective by considering how things might have been different, and focusing on the values in his life.

This account reminds me of the sports saying, Play through the pain, except that it is constructive, rather than a foolish invitation to injury. Perhaps Live through the pain can leverage the familiarity to help one remember this positive alternative, if it is ever needed.

-- CAV

P.S. I would sound a note of caution about Prudence's mention of psychedelics. While they have helped some, they can themselves cause permanent, negative side effects.

An Upcoming Challenge for Secularists on Ethics

[T]hey've never faced the fact that while they've rejected so many other doctrines of their childhood preachers, altruism is the one they've never been willing to let go. -- Ben Bayer

***

While I cannot, off the top of my head, recall exactly where I first learned the above insight, I do recall seeing words to that effect by Ben Bayer and admiring what a great connection he had made.

Bayer elaborates on that connection at length in the upcoming Breaking Free from Faith-Based Morality, which will be published by Ayn Rand University Press in December.

In addition to its preface appearing at New Ideal, the book is available for preorder through Amazon.

Below is the conclusion of a look at America's "culture-wide religious fervor," which emphatically includes the secular part of the left:

I love the cover! (Image from Ayn Rand University Press, via New Ideal.)

Each of the other [left-wing] activist movements demands similar Abrahamic submission. Whether we are to sacrifice economic prosperity to Gaia's pristine wilderness or economic freedom and property rights to the classless society of the future, the activists demand we surrender ourselves and our values on the altar of the allegedly "higher" end of serving some Other. This moral outlook enjoins the virtue of humble self-sacrifice, and condemns heretics who commit the sin of prideful self-esteem. Even though many of the modern activists think of themselves as secular, they draw these core doctrines from none other than Judeo-Christian religion -- whether they know it or not.

More rational thinkers in the secular camp may agree there is something wrong with the religious fervor that motivates these activists, but concede that there is something noble about their (professed) ends. They may say that the Bible verses quoted by Talarico and Warnock are from a primitive mindset, but they motivate people to uplift the poor (etc.). But how do these thinkers know that their conception of the noble end is noble and not itself a product of that same primitive, religious mindset?

I think secular altruism -- the doctrine that morality consists in selfless service to others -- is in fact such a product, a holdover from Christianity's two-millennia monopoly over our thinking about right and wrong, good and evil. [bold added]

This will come as no surprise to anyone with more than a passing familiarity with Ayn Rand's critiques of altruism. What this book will do, I hope, is both to make it easier for Objectivists to apply that critique to today's cultural particulars and help some of today's secular leftists reach a point of being intellectually ready to consider that critique and thus learn of a much more practical and intellectually fertile way to think about morality.

I'm glad to hear about this book and look forward to reading it over the holidays.

-- CAV

Chris Wright Challenges 'Climate' Orthodoxy

One of the few good things about the current Administration is its pushback against bad energy policy. A recent piece by David Simon at the Washington Examiner focuses on a report by the Department of Energy that challenges "climate change" orthodoxy.

Its foreword is by Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy, and states in part:

Climate change ... is not the greatest threat facing humanity. That distinction belongs to global energy poverty. As someone who values data, I know that improving the human condition depends on expanding access to reliable, affordable energy. Climate change is a challenge -- not a catastrophe. But misguided policies based on fear rather than facts could truly endanger human well-being.

A regular here is likely to recall that Alex Epstein, author of Fossil Future, helped popularize the term energy poverty. And such a reader may also wonder why the name Chris Wright rings a bell.

I did, and remembered listening to Epstein interviewing him several years ago. The notes for that episode of Power Hour, as the podcast was then called, state in part:

In the past month Chris has done two very cool things.

One is that he has responded to the ESG movement with a report entitled "Bettering Human Lives" that highlights the amazing benefits of the oil and gas industry, and encourages rational thinking about climate.

Chris has also been making a lot of noise with a new "Thank You, North Face" billboard and video campaign.

In our discussion Chris and I cover:

• Why he chose to be an entrepreneur
• The response to his revolutionary ESG report
• The response to his "Thank You, North Face" campaign
• His role working with Mitchell Energy to bring about the shale revolution
• What Chris's activist successes can teach other energy CEOs
• Chris's plans for future activism
• Our common motivations for focusing our careers on energy
• How we think about criticism

The full interview is embedded below.

Chris Wright, proud Oil & Gas CEO

The Examiner piece is worth reading for an update on Wright's work, although the title is bombastic: While it is encouraging to see a government report like this one make rational arguments about a subject long dominated by hysteria, one must keep a broader perspective.

As good as it is to see this, at least compared to what a Democrat administration might produce, it fails to challenge the premises that the government should be weighing in on scientific arguments or that it has any business controlling the economy. This Administration's hostility to freedom of speech and its improper, constant, and corrupt meddling with the economy both severely undercut whatever good this report will accomplish. Furthermore, since there is no plan to dismantle the welfare/regulatory state, everything remains in place for the next leftist administration to reverse any reforms and reinstitute the previous messaging.

As welcome as this report is, it categorically does not "eviscerat[e] climate change hysteria." It offers counter-arguments, which many on the left will dismiss out of hand, if they hear them at all.

Fighting climate catastrophism isn't the government's job and doing do, as an intellectual campaign, is beyond the government's power, anyway. It is wrong to act like the battle is over just because "our guy" is in charge and got a government organ to produce a good report.

This is a battle won, but it is far from the end of the war.

-- CAV

Will: Spare Two GOP Senators

I generally agree with George Will's call for "carnage" for the GOP during the midterm elections, including his exceptions:

If Mike Rogers, former seven-term congressman and chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is not Michigan's next senator, Abdul El-Sayed will be. The Democrat is comfortable in the company of antisemites and Holocaust deniers.

If Sen. Susan Collins loses in Maine, this will be partly because she did something admirable and senatorial. Standing against manufactured hysteria, she voted to confirm Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. In 4,192 words spoken on the Senate floor, she examined his extensive judicial record and the sexual assault allegations against him. Demonstrating the complete lack of corroborating evidence, she concluded that the allegations could not meet even the minimal "more likely than not" standard. Read her statement and marvel at its sobriety about the Senate's "advice and consent" duty. This is vanishingly rare among incumbent senators of both parties. [bold added]

These and his hope, obiter dictum for just enough Republicans left to sustain a presidential veto sounds about right to me.

Will's rationale is spot-on:

If Republicans lose not only their House majority, but Senate seats they currently hold in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio and Texas, they might begin to wonder: Could we be doing something wrong? Such a resort to thinking is necessary to begin restoring legislative checks on the executive. And it is necessary if America is ever again going to have a conservative political party. [bold added]

Or, better than merely conservative, I would add, a pro-liberty party.

-- CAV

Housecat Update

A Friday Hodgepodge

I realized the other day that we've had our two long-haired Siamese cats, Lucinda and Seymour, for a couple of years now. Here's an update...

1. Lucinda, who likes to sit on my desk during writing time, has taken to announcing her arrival by stretching up, propping herself on my chair, and tapping me on the shoulder.

I then pick her up and place her on my lap, so she can hop up to her spot.

2. Seymour loves pets and belly rubs, but tends to roll over onto the ground quickly. That's not great for my back, so I've taught him to climb up to the top of the litter cabinet for a session after I say Pets?

No. This is not Lucinda. So far.

3. Lucinda isn't the pet fiend that Seymour is, but she will ask for a session now and then. It's usually at some optimally awkward point during my evening routine -- which she always follows me around to supervise.

She emits a quiet, gravelly and high-pitched meow that sounds almost pathetic when she wants her pets and back scratches.

4. Seymour is a wonderful cat, but he has some kind of skeletal or neurological deficit that affects his movement. (Our vet has said that pinning it down would be very expensive and that there would be little we could do for him. She added that, "so long as he does 'all the cat things,' he'll be fine.")

Fortunately, Seymour does do "all the cat things," but sometimes a little oddly, as if he has had to teach himself some of them.

He does a few of his own things, too. My favorite is that if he hears something unusual enough that he wants the lay of the land, he'll stand on his hind legs like a meerkat and look around.

-- CAV

Rescuing Clarity From 'Perfect'

Miss Manners fields a question about perfect, the latest word to get beaten to death from over-/misuse as a synonym for okay.

I found the wording of the question unclear, but the situation made sense: The questioner, being in charge of bookings for a client, ended up double-booking because the way many people use perfect could mean book it or okay, thanks in such a context.

I appreciate Miss Manners's commiseration, especially as I, too found amazing and awesome annoying in their heydays, but I have long taken to the practical solution offered by the first commenter:

No matter what waffling around is done on their part, you need to pin them down before the conversation ends: "So you would like to book for Oct. 13 at 9? I'll put you down for that, then." Leave no room for misunderstanding.

I did this myself just a few days ago when I was hiring movers for some heavy objects we need to move up- and downstairs at home.

My contact may have been puzzled by my need to clarify, but I now know I won't be waiting around on the day, wondering what some guy who said perfect on the phone actually meant.

-- CAV

Populist Tariffs Very UNpopular

Writing for the Washington Post, Cato's Scott Lincicome reviews polling data about Donald Trump's favorite economic and foreign policy cure-all, and finds that Americans don't care for tariffs.

These responses show that many voters willing to support tariffs in the abstract oppose them when asked to pay less than they're actually paying today. Republicans are no exception: Their support dropped from 70 percent to just 39 percent when asked to pay $1,000 per year to fund their guy's signature policy.

The Cato survey's results are hardly outliers. In nearly every major poll over the past year, tariffs drew 55 to 65 percent opposition or disapproval. Even more respondents, 70 to 75 percent, believed that tariffs raised prices. State battleground polls showed similar findings. This month, CBS-YouGov found that likely voters preferred a congressional candidate who opposed the president's tariff approach by a 26-point margin. And, per a September Fox News poll, GOP support for tariffs has declined 21 points since "Liberation Day" last year, with only "MAGA Republicans" still saying the measures help the economy. [links omitted, bold added]

It is reassuring to know that most adults have enough on the ball to want to put a stop to this policy, and it sounds like it is affecting congressional races. Lincicome quotes the Democrat in Iowa's toss-up Senate race as promising an "end [of] the chaotic tariffs that are sending farms toward a 1980s-style farm crisis."

Uh-oh.

Lincicome draws three lessons from the polling data, which I summarize as follows:

1. Trump's running on the economy and embracing tariffs was a colossal blunder;
2. Policies that sound good to voters in the abstract get rejected when their negative consequences become so apparent; and
3. The conventional wisdom that tariffs are popular and electorally necessary is wrong.

Lincicome ends with a rhetorical question about when the President and Congress will "catch up."

By the sound of it, the Democrats, of all people will help them do so some time after November.

-- CAV

Senate to Miss Regulatory Slam-Dunks?

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Senate has a rapidly-closing time window to pass what it aptly calls "The Save America From California Act," thereby preventing some onerous climate regulations from that state from hamstringing the rest of the country:

California's regulations have national scope since manufacturers typically design products to meet the state's standards. Other states can adopt California's standards, as many have its electric-vehicle mandate and quota regime. Cue the [Congressional Review Act (CRA)], which lets lawmakers overturn a regulation with a simple majority vote of both chambers and the President's signature.

As a bonus, the law also prohibits agencies in the future from promulgating rules that are substantially similar to those that are overturned. Republicans last year used the CRA to potent effect by overturning California's electric-vehicle and truck mandates as well as some 20 other Biden rules.

Now they have a narrowing window of opportunity to use the CRA to kill permanently the California rules blessed by the Biden EPA that require "zero emission" commercial vessels and small off-road engines, lawn mowers and so on. House Republicans passed a CRA resolution overturning the commercial vessel rule this month, and now the Senate can finish the job.

The clock is ticking down on chances to repeal another few other awful rules, as well.

Perhaps they could take a short break from freaking out about "furries" and pass this before they lose their majority, thanks to being dragged down this November by the loon they chose to keep around, instead of removing from office.

-- CAV

No. You Aren't Eating a Credit Card Per Week.

I will admit that I tend to tune out claims from certain quarters to the effect of Something you've been doing for decades is an imminent danger to your health!

Nevertheless, I am aware of at least a dull drumbeat about microplastics and their potential to cause biological harm. I see the subject as one worthy of further study, but not as one worthy of such measures as banning single-use plastics, a favorite cause of many leftists.

Plastic -- and individual freedom for that matter -- are so valuable that any such ban would require extraordinary, conclusive evidence as to the harm of plastic that, for example, its careless use would pose a negligent or reckless threat to other individuals. (And even then, banning it might still be the wrong anwer.)

Ridiculous claims about the amount of plastic we allegedly take in from our environment or the harm that it causes do not foster a careful consideration of the scientific facts or of what (if anything) to do about them.

Faye Flam debunked two such ridiculous claims about microplastics in a piece titled, "The Real Microplastics Problem Isn't in Your Brain."

My favorite was the way-too-easy-to-remember canard to the effect that we're eating the equivalent of a credit card's worth of plastic every week:

Before the plastic spoon image, there was another alarming statistic: that the average person ingests enough plastic each week to make up a credit card. That claim was based on a 2019 study that used several models to estimate that the average person consumes either a tenth of a gram, three-tenths of a gram, or 5 grams (the credit card amount) per week.

[Chemist Mark] Jones noted that other scientists questioned the assumptions in that model, and a couple of studies found that the 5-gram figure was about a factor of a million too high, meaning it would take roughly 23,000 years to consume the amount of plastic in a credit card. Nevertheless, the credit card estimate continues to be propagated in popular media, policy circles and other studies. [bold added]

I like to imagine that some of these other scientists started off from the same thought I did when I first heard that: "I think I'd notice if I ate that much plastic."

Joking aside, Flam asks the same question that too many fail to ask in similar circumstances:

Is it OK for scientists, science journals and journalists to be less rigorous or critical of extraordinary results if they raise awareness of serious problems or otherwise contribute to the greater good?

Flam doesn't directly answer, but she does allude to a cautionary real-life tale:

Mark Jones, a retired chemist who has independently studied microplastics, drew my attention to the Nature follow-up, which the journal did not publicize as heavily as it had promoted the initial findings with a splashy press release. Jones said he's deeply concerned about scientists and journals failing to maintain high standards of evidence. He is worried about eroding public trust, as evidenced by the rising resistance to essential vaccines. [bold added]

Good. Too many scientists and public figures whose advocacy depends on science have been happy to sow panic rather than appeal to reason. It is good to see that some are beginning to understand the value of credibility.

The public may not be as scientifically literate as we would like, but that does not mean they are stupid -- or that they will not notice they are being treated that way, forever.

-- CAV

Four Wins

A Friday Hodgepodge

Whenever possible, I list three wins at the end of each day. Here are a few from a recent review of my planner.

***

1. A few weeks ago, I suddenly became unable to back up my blog with a script I've used for that purpose for over a decade. My suspicion was that something had changed on Google's end, and that I might need to change the script.

But then I asked ChatGPT about what I was seeing and it raised another possibility: A change at Google caused a bug in the wget utility I relied upon to surface. A bit of digging around showed that I was indeed running an older version of wget that had the problem which manifested in my script failing.

Since the end of support for that version of Linux was coming up in April, anyway. I installed the latest version on an old laptop and voilà, the unchanged script worked again.

Hooray! AI saved me time figuring out what the problem was, and helped me realize I should go ahead and upgrade.

2. In an attempt to move my desktop to a newer OS, I had all kinds of trouble, including at one point having trouble installing even a very simplified version. (And, after I did, I wasn't able to use the machine for very long.)

AI really helped here, again. This time, it saved me time and research by finding log entries that indicated possible causes.

After performing some diagnostics, I concluded that a component integrated with the motherboard had failed and was corrupting data.

Ultimately, AI helped me identify a hardware problem that required me to replace my desktop, and guided me in finding a solid, inexpensive replacement.

3. I like using certain web pages like stand-alone applications -- Google Calendar and a weather site I like for example. The --app option for Google Chrome is a great way to get this effect with a display that omits the browser's UI elements.

It's been around for a while, but I migrated away from the browser I had been using for that purpose, so I was unaware.

4. Three cheers for antilock brakes! I was driving my son home on a rainy day when an incompetent driver swerved in front of me and came to an abrupt stop for a yellow light.

I am sure I would have rear-ended him without the help of that technology.

-- CAV

'It's really hard to leave your kids.'

At Ask a Manager, Alison Green pays tribute to her mother on the second anniversary of her medically-assisted death.

I recommend reading the whole thing because it's about an important issue, but perhaps in a private setting, because it is touching, especially if you have experienced or are experiencing a similar situation.

For now, I leave you with two excerpts, the first of which makes it clear that this was a very good person:

My mom had always lived life on her own terms, so it wasn't surprising to anyone who knew her that she was determined to die on her own terms too. From the time my sister and I were very young, she always taught us that you should think for yourself and choose a life path without concern for what other people thought, as long as you felt your choices were ethical ones.

She also taught us that when something is wrong in the world, you speak up about it...

The second is a clarion call:

When I think about how differently her final months would have gone if she didn't have the right to make her own medical choices, I'm so angry that she could have been forced to suffer. She had terminal cancer; it was always going to end with her dying, no matter what anyone did. Whose interests would have been served by forcing her to linger in pain for a few extra months?

She viewed her ability to minimize her own suffering as a great gift, one that brought her immense comfort, and so it brought us comfort too.

I hate that she is gone, but I love that she got to die exactly the way she lived: saying, "This is not right, and I'm going to work to change it" and making her own decisions right up until the end.

In honor of my mom's memory, I hope you will push your legislators to give terminally ill adults legal access to medical aid in dying, no matter where they live.

Having lost our own father to terminal illness, my brothers and I all support legalizing medical assistance in death, and as I grow older, and wonder if I will succumb to my grandmother's Alzheimer's, I would like to be able to exercise that option myself.

Our lives are our own. It is evil to force anyone to endure great pain or anything else they find intolerable ahead of the end of their lives, and it is a shame that the law does not already universally recognize that aspect of one's right to life.

-- CAV

Socialist Sees Truth -- for 17 Seconds

John Stossel reports that rent control -- a cause leftists embrace as steadfastly and baselessly as Trump does tariffs -- recently experienced a setback in St. Paul, Minnesota:

So what's happening now in St. Paul, four years after its clueless politicians imposed strict rent control?

There was so little new construction that the politicians rolled most rent control back.

This follows as the predictable climax to the earlier part of his column, where Stossel recounts why rent control fails.

Based on how many times this "experiment" has been run with unambiguous results and the simplicity of the economic laws at play, one would imagine that rent control does not work would fall into the realm of common sense.

Except that -- as Stossel demonstrates in amusing fashion even if he doesn't make the point explicit -- altruism unfortunately (albeit wrongly) holds that position and displaces the plain truth in the event of a conflict:

At least St. Paul has a "Twin City," Minneapolis, so frustrated builders could move just a few blocks and build something there. They did just that. Construction increased there.

Minneapolis politicians had also voted for rent control, but they were wary about imposing it. That was smart, since new housing collapsed in St. Paul.

But Minneapolis City Council member Aisha Chughtai was unconvinced. She wants more rent control, telling me, "You don't have a city" if people "can't afford to live there."

I pushed back: "The way you have a city is if people build apartments and houses. That's what eventually brings the price down ... Builders still build in Minneapolis -- building permits were up ... But in St. Paul, they're down 60% because of rent control! You're not going to get more apartments by pushing this."

Her response was something new for me after 50 years interviewing people: 17 seconds of silence! Finally, she said: "Guaranteeing housing for people and making sure that they can stay in their homes matters more than anything else."

Ayn Rand, who argued both that altruism is immoral and that capitalism is a moral system, would have felt vindicated by the socialist stopping dead in her tracks at that moment of clarity, and then reaching for what she viewed as a get-out-of-jail-free card -- namely that a profession of concern for others is a moral trump card that supersedes any concern with facts.

Until Rand's identification of the nature of capitalism and its moral defense become much more widely known, politicians like Chughtai will feel free to ignore obvious economic truths in the service of their immoral and impractical causes.

-- CAV

Lobbying the Quacks

Is a story a nothingburger if mystery meat is involved?

Based on a story about the corporate sponsorships behind the MAHA Summit in Washington next week, we're about to find out.

Politico reports (HT: Jasmine Nisar):

Walmart, America's biggest retailer and a leading purveyor of the ultraprocessed [sic] foods MAHA decries, is among the sponsors. So are two artificial intelligence giants, OpenAI and Anthropic, whose chief executives recently asked Washington to regulate them in order to prevent their tools from wiping out humanity.

In exchange, they'll get to attend a private dinner with summit speakers, which include Health and Human Services Department officials. Other sponsors are less well known, but also have interests before Kennedy's health department, including makers of psychedelic drugs, diagnostics technologies and peptides that need government approval.

We can borrow a phrase from Faye Flam to reflect the conventional view of the above as tainted by the influence of ... industr[y].

The conventional view is half-wrong and half-right, but everything bad about lobbying is a direct result of the government improperly interfering with markets via regulation.

First, here's where Flam and many, many others go wrong:

Honest companies facing government regulation sometimes have no choice but to lobby just to survive, as Ayn Rand once argued of the railroads:

The best illustration of the general confusion on the subject of business and government can be found in [Stewart] Holbrook's The Story of American Railroads. On page 231, Mr. Holbrook writes:

Almost from the first, too, the railroads had to undergo the harassments of politicians and their catchpoles, or to pay blackmail in one way or another. The method was almost sure-fire; the politico, usually a member of a state legislature, thought up some law or regulation that would be costly or awkward to the railroads in his state. He then put this into the form of a bill, talked loudly about it, about how it must pass if the sovereign people were to be protected against the monster railroad, and then waited for some hireling of the railroad to dissuade him by a method as old as man. There is record of as many as thirty-five bills that would harass railroads being introduced at one sitting of one legislature.

And the same Mr. Holbrook in the same book just four pages later (pages 235-236) writes:

In short, by 1870, to pick an arbitrary date, railroads had become, as only too many orators of the day pointed out, a law unto themselves. They had bought United States senators and congressmen, just as they bought rails and locomotives -- with cash. They owned whole legislatures, and often the state courts .... To call the roads of 1870 corrupt is none too strong a term.

The connection between these two statements and the conclusion to be drawn from them has, apparently, never occurred to Mr. Holbrook. It is the railroads that he blames and calls "corrupt." Yet what could the railroads do, except try to "own whole legislatures," if these legislatures held the power of life or death over them? What could the railroads do, except resort to bribery, if they wished to exist at all? Who was to blame and who was "corrupt" -- the businessmen who had to pay "protection money" for the right to remain in business -- or the politicians who held the power to sell that right? (from "Notes on the History of American Free Enterprise," in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand) [bold added]

It is wrong to tar a business for lobbying, completely devoid of context.

And when is it right? (And where is the conventional wisdom half-right?)

Any dishonest enterprise hoping to gain the appearance of legitimacy by obtaining a government imprimatur via lobbying does deserve the blame, from those that wish to sell nostrums -- like many sponsors at this "summit" obviously hope to do -- all the way up to regulatory capture.

As the sponsorship of Walmart indicates, there will be mixed cases. This is also unsurprising. So many American businessmen are pragmatists that they will not turn down the opportunity to make money off of fools if it is legal to do so.

None of the above is particularly newsworthy, but there is an interesting wrinkle: Until a crank was appointed head of the Department of Health and Human Services, a huckster had to hope for some kind of workaround to being held up to scientific standards. That is, he needed the government to help him pass as a legitimate actor. Now, those standards are being actively undermined. For a time, "peptide" pushers may well gain an unearned patina of legitimacy by courting the likes of Bobby Kennedy, Jr.

But just as professional medical associations are calling into question recent changes in the CDC's vaccine recommendations, so will others notice what is going on, and, unless sound standards return (or the government forces people to accept its garbage -- See the field of nutrition.) the value of lobbying the government in that area may well decline.

-- CAV

Yes. I Still Ignore Gov't. Dietary Advice.

Back in January, Faye Flam wrote one of the better assessments of the latest round of government dietary advice: a mess [but] still better.

What I like about this assessment is that it neither hinges on the alleged credibility of the crank who serves as Secretary of Health and Human Services, nor ignores the issue altogether.

Flam acknowledges that nutrition is a contentious field and that such guidelines are distorted by politics -- while also doing a good job of putting the change in a full historic and scientific context:

The new US dietary guidelines are distorted by politics and tainted by the influence of the meat and dairy industries -- but they may still improve Americans' health because they reverse previous nutrition standards that were themselves politicized and unduly influenced by the sugar industry.

The biggest change is a clear-cut recommendation to avoid added sugar and junk food. While nutrition is a contentious field, there's a rare consensus that eating too much sugar is harmful to our health.

And, in another tectonic shift, it's now recommended that Americans eat "full-fat" dairy products instead of fat-free versions. That recommendation is more controversial, but it's consistent with the results of recent studies showing that full-fat dairy may benefit some people by cutting the risk of diabetes and helping with weight control. [bold added]

That's the good news, such as it is, and we aren't just taking the word of Bobby Kennedy, Jr. or one of his lackeys.

This is good, not just because Kennedy has no relevant training, but also because he is dishonest:

[Pediatric endocrinologist Robert] Lustig was initially part of the advisory panel behind the new recommendations but quit after two days, he told me, because Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to cherry-pick which papers the panel was allowed to consider. Despite his concern about political meddling, Lustig agreed with the recommendation to limit sugar and highly processed foods and endorsed full-fat dairy products over fat-free ones. [bold added]

In other words, unlike the case with vaccination, affected Americans are somewhat fortunate that Kennedy happens to favor less-bad advice than before. That fact notwithstanding, there is no reason whatsoever to look to government guidelines if one wants nutritional advice, particularly today.

-- CAV

P.S. An interesting thing I learned about from Flam's piece is a phenomenon called healthy user bias:

Today, scientists know much more about food chemistry, but the field is still hampered by what researchers call healthy user bias. If you tell people not to eat full-fat cheese, meat or eggs, those most likely to follow that advice are also more likely to abstain from smoking, be more affluent, and have better access to health care. As a result, rule followers may appear healthier not because of the rules but in spite of them. [link in original, bold added]

It's part of the answer to the implicit challenge of how can you argue with someone so ripped that Kennedy's flaunting of his physique seems to raise -- or to anyone else peddling kookiness who seems to have "results."

Four Neat Things

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. Alison Green asked readers for examples of how their jobs followed them home recently and posted her favorites at Ask a Manager. Best of the bunch for me is the following example:

Back in the 90s, I volunteered at a zoo and I still scramble eggs the way the raven preferred them. [bold added]

Yes. I searched the comments in vain for how the raven preferred scrambled eggs, but only found a cute short poem in the style of "The Raven."

2. For fans of my "smart" car updates, I have found two lists that might come in handy the next time you need to buy a car. Both "Things That Annoy Me About Cars in 2026" and the "EV Stupidity Checklist" surprised even me with the ridiculous stunts automakers are pulling these days.

My favorite bit comes from the former, and reminds me of my annoyance with all the cute (but stupid) takes on the humble shower controller I encounter seemingly every time I stay in a hotel:

These door handle designs got so bad and unsafe in emergencies, that the Chinese government is mandating "the outside of every passenger door except the boot, to have a recessed space measuring no smaller than 6cm (2 in) by 2cm by 2.5cm to allow access to the handle" as of Jan 1st 2027.

Not only are these unconventional door handles awkward to use for passengers who are unfamiliar with your car - I got very tired of explaining how to open the door to anyone that got into my Tesla when I owned one - they are difficult for people with wrist, finger or other hand issues compared to a classic door handle.

We solved door handles 60 years ago, why are we fucking around with them!? [bold added]

Amen.

3. Hacker News gem of the day: the Wikipedia entry on wax motors, which use the expansion of wax during melting to do work. Here's an excerpt on one application:

Greenhouse Vents

Wax motors are widely used to operate the temperature regulating vents of greenhouses.

In this application, as the ambient temperature within the greenhouse increases, the wax melts, activating the plunger and opening the vents. When the greenhouse temperature has cooled sufficiently, the wax cools and solidifies, allowing the vents to close again.

The technology seems to be under a century old, albeit common in applications most people -- myself included until now -- are unaware of. The embedded video below is a time lapse of greenhouse vents opening via such a motor.

4. I don't play tennis, and you don't need to, either to be able to enjoy the creativity in design and setting on display in this pictorial of "The 30 Most Beautiful Tennis Courts Around the World at Architectural Digest"

-- CAV

Taking the Guessing out of Etiquette

Aside from the good advice, one of the things I like best about Miss Manners is how well she cuts through the fog to identify an issue, and then communicates that issue and the attendant etiquette effectively.

A good example of this is her reply to a self-proclaimed "accent nerd" who wonders if there is a polite way to ask someone Where are you from?

(I can both cringe and imagine a younger version of myself doing something like this.)

There are, of course, numerous contexts within an existing conversation in which that sort of question is a natural and good part of the flow. But also, in today's ridiculous, politics-saturated culture, it could be easy to get sidetracked. Both facts make this a tricky question, but Miss Manners explains quite well why it's a bad lead for the questioner, concluding as follows:

There are less intrusive ways to get to know people, but you have led Miss Manners to believe that friendship, or even acquaintanceship, is not your objective; rather, it is playing your little guessing game. Please stop.

Ouch!

She builds up to this well, but the sting will serve the good purpose here of advising how best to treat other people like human beings, and alerting the innocent of how easy it can be to send the wrong message about themselves.

-- CAV

GOP Stands by While Trump Sabotages Them

At The Hill, an alarmed Republican bemoans Trump's latest unforced error: His ridiculous trade war with Canada.

Surprisingly enough (for Trump, at least), slapping huge import taxes on the biggest international trading partner of many "red" states is harming their economies in ways voters will probably notice, and correctly blame on Trump and his party:

A recent assessment by the Visual Capitalist highlights 23 states that get most of their imports from Canada. Among the states with closely watched elections are Maine, which gets 68.7 percent of it imports from Canada, Alaska (40.7 percent), Minnesota (33.5 percent), Iowa (26.6 percent), and Ohio (18.7 percent).

But trade is a two-way street. It's not just the increased costs -- up to 50 percent more -- U.S. companies, small businesses (like farms) and consumers must pay for Canadian imports. There are also U.S.-made products and services that Canadians may decide not to buy from the United States because the of the tariffs Canada, in response, imposed on imports from the United States. The Visual Capitalist's newly released map outlines the states hardest hit.

The biggest state exporters to Canada are Ohio (exporting $2.3 billion a year) and Pennsylvania ($1.8 billion). Are there important elections in those states that could make the difference in whether Republicans retain the House of Representatives and the Senate? [bold added]

The piece will make gory reading for those of Trump's partisans who don't just assume Trump is playing 4-D chess, and understand why tariffs are a Bad Idea and why swing voters whose livelihoods are affected are going to live up to their name and swing away from their party.

But what the author takes to be the icing on the cake is the following paragraph:

The most puzzling part is that if Trump were determined to pick a trade fight with Canada, he could have easily waited until after November. He chose to do it weeks away from a critical election, which makes you wonder if the conspiracy theorists are right. [bold added]

Yes, the President who still, somehow, commands so much loyalty is a real idiot: Wouldn't it be nice if someone did something about it before the voters do?

And that question -- my question -- as an independent voter fuming about the Trump Party -- is the real icing on the cake.

I seem to recall that Congress could reassert its own constitutional authority over tariffs. Why hasn't it? And if I'm wrong, or there isn't time to do this ahead of the midterms, why not run an the premise of ending this mad effing around with everyone's costs, while insulting their intelligence?

I don't have an answer, but while this column doesn't fall into the disgusting line of sycophantic puff pieces so many conservatives are guilty of these days, it still fails to hold Trump's enablers in the party accountable.

Trump is: obsessed with tariffs, old and set in his ways, insane for all practical purposes, and floating about in an amniotic sac of constant praise and insulation from things he really needs to know.

The people who built that little bubble -- by letting him have his way all the time, and appointing crackpot "advisors" instead of rational adults to his cabinet -- will have reaped what they sowed if the scenario outlined by Merrill Matthews pans out.

And, unless they change course, by starting to restrain this lunatic, they will have deserved an electoral bloodbath and helped the Democrats win Congress.

-- CAV