Max Borders

NPR: National Pederast Register?

Yikes.
Okay, so his former association with NPR is irrelevant... All in the interests of Shadenfreude.

Ants, Chaos and Economic Humility

Ant hills exemplify randomness. Of course, they are ordered in their own way. But as biologists will tell you, despite the relative few biochemical rules that govern individual ant behavior, the colony’s behavior as a whole is not predictable from a scientist’s point of view. Why? Because ant hills are chaotic systems. Such systems defy predictability.

Two ant colonies gathered around two food sources will grow and shrink between the sources in a kind of vacillating tandem. The swelling and shrinking moves back and forth in irregular fashion. Similar irregularities can be observed elsewhere in nature.  The weather, the human heartbeat and the economy are all good examples. Indeed, if you think ant colonies exhibit random properties, human arrangements are even more complex. Consider the track record of attempts by macroeconomists to make meaningful predictions about the economy—our human ecosystem. It is, well, abysmal.

“A great deal of the debate on economic policy, both in government and in the media, focuses on the short term” writes economist Paul Ormerod. “But it is based on illusions—the illusion that it is possible to make, on a consistent basis, forecasts which have a reasonable degree of accuracy; and on the resulting illusion that governments can use these forecasts to successfully control short term developments in the economy. Governments, like the rest of us, have a great deal to learn from ants.”

Fusionist or Liberaltarian?

Should libertarians stick with the fusionist coalition of Frank Meyer, or move left? My answer over at the Next Right.

Singularity University

I'm thrilled to learn about the formation of the Singularity University. If you haven't read anything by Ray Kurzweil - or ever heard of posthumanist or transhumanist thought - just think of this project as a consortium of visionaries who don't see limits.  

The basic idea: the pace of technological change means we are on the verge of solving lots of problems using information technology, networking, nanotechnology and advanced pharma. Think of it as a Moore's Law of human progress.

Now, what if you mixed the guy who saw the implications of such change and got him together withe the folks who carried out the Ansari X-prise? (Hopefully, since I'm in San Fransisco, I'll get to meet some of the folks setting up the Singularity University on Tuesday.)

Now the burning question... do they let in liberal arts types?

Update:

Ants, Chaos & Economics

Here's an excerpt from an upcoming piece:

Ant hills exemplify randomness. Of course, they are ordered in their own way. But as biologists will tell you, despite the relative few biochemical rules that govern individual ant behavior, the colony’s behavior as a whole is not predictable from a scientist’s point of view. Why? Because ant hills are chaotic systems. Such systems defy predictability.

Two ant colonies gathered around two food sources will grow and shrink between the sources in a kind of vacillating tandem. The swelling and shrinking moves back and forth in irregular fashion. Similar irregularities can be observed elsewhere in nature.  The weather, the human heartbeat and the economy are all good examples. Indeed, if you think ant colonies exhibit random properties, human arrangements are even more complex. Consider the track record of attempts by macroeconomists to make meaningful predictions about the economy—our human ecosystem. It is, well, abysmal.

“A great deal of the debate on economic policy, both in government and in the media, focuses on the short term” writes economist Paul Ormerod. “But it is based on illusions—the illusion that it is possible to make, on a consistent basis, forecasts which have a reasonable degree of accuracy; and on the resulting illusion that governments can use these forecasts to successfully control short term developments in the economy. Governments, like the rest of us, have a great deal to learn from ants.”

Just wanted to share a preview. Hell, I need blog fodder. No, I need more time.

Interesting Climate Change Debate

You be the judge.

Intentional Community

I recently met an interesting woman named Susan Love Brown. She told me about her research on intentional communities, which I found fascinating. Intentional communities can be anything from religious sects to cooperative sharing arrangements. But they typically share one feature in common: voluntarism.

Recall that in Ten Things Leftists Should Know about Libertarianism, I mentioned the fact that community and compulsion often get conflated, which is to say government power does not equal community, nor even is it terribly conducive to it in a Tocquevillean sense.

For me, it all boils down to a right of exit (and perhaps also a right of exclusion). We can have all manner of experiments with intentional communities (that include communal redistribution, work-sharing, cooperatives, and the like), but that are not based on compulsion. Nor must they be controlled by elites, which is counter to the spirit of egalitarianism anyway.

So the question I will leave for my leftish friends is: if in a situation that is far freer than what we have today both in economic and personal terms, why is it that a pluralism of living arrangements is a bad thing? Why must your idea of community and society be directed by coercive elites? In a libertarian system, all other systems can be subsumed. In a statist system, we must all live with the choices of the mob (democracy) or of state elites (oligarchy), or both. Why would anyone find this desirable unless the sole motivation for that position is guilt or envy relative to the economic station of others (and a fetishization of power)?

With intentional community, you can criticize by creating.

(Update: The founder of this intentional community was an Explorer's Foundation Cobden-Bright award winner in 2007. Explorer's is a small philanthropy devoted to understanding of "free order." Check them out.)

The People's Stimulus

Not special interests. Not politicians. The people. Big ups Michelle:

The People's Stimulus

Someone Else Sees the Value of Failure

Tyler Watts has given us food for thought. Failure is not to be abolished by legislative fiat, but learned from:

But we should realize, as the fine print always says, that prices are subject to change. Change is a defining feature of markets. Entrepreneurs make money by casting about for "wrong" prices and making bets on what direction particular prices will move in the future. Successful entrepreneurs, who correctly anticipate price changes, are rewarded with profits. Erroneous entrepreneurs, who do a poor job of estimating price movements, are penalized with losses. This is the essence of the market process.

Bailouts, then, attempt to erase the effects of losses, or economic failure. But such efforts inevitably undermine the loss aspect of "profit and loss." Profit and loss go together — like up and down, left and right, good and bad. If we try to do away with losses, we'll wind up diluting the meaning of profits. After all, why strive for profits if Uncle Sam will cover your losses with a bailout? Why bust your butt to compete and succeed if you can just clamor for a handout instead? Bailouts destroy the profit motive — and all the benefits of a competitive economy.

As you can see from this, this and this, I agree. - Max Borders

Keynesian Creationism on TCS

Hope you will check it out. Here's a slice:

What do you call someone who believes that the economy can be run, fixed or managed by intelligent design? What do you call the person who honestly thinks that, with a legislative pen-stroke, the government can "create jobs"? What is the name for the person who believes that raining largess from on high will result in some magical "multiplier effect" that will increase wealth geometrically, like loaves and fishes?

Enjoy.
- Max Borders