Political Philosophy

Environmentalism and the Death of the West

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A comment on a New York Times story on the new Indian car, the Nano [h/t Instapundit]:

Somehow, we need to get the “developing” countries to quit copying our disasters in the first world. Showing real respect for the quiet life in villages would be a help. How about a Discovery Channel series on “The Truly Sustainable” – showing village life wherever it can be found, and not focused on “gosh, no plumbing”, but on – “this clan has lived here for 1,000 years…’ – and showing community dynamics.

Obviously, the writer has never had cholera.  The scary thing about this comment is that it showcases a school of thought more common than not on the far Left (25% most left).

Here we see the culmination of the Left’s evolution from technophiles to technophobes. Only a politically driven collective  delusion  could cause an educated person to believe that 1,000 years of cultural stagnation is more important than preventing the enormous suffering and death caused by sewage-borne illnesses.  

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Their Mistake Was Trusting the Government

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A story about  Maxine Waters    [h/t Instapundit] and Barney Frank’s intervention on behalf of a minority owned bank on whose board Waters sat, has this little gem:

In January, Ms. Waters acknowledged she made a call to the Treasury on OneUnited’s behalf. The bank’s capital, which was heavily invested in shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was all but wiped out with the federal takeover of the two mortgage giants, and the bank was seeking help from regulators. [emp added]

For leftists, OneUnited should represent the perfect bank. It’s small. It’s minority owned. The “socially responsible” Maxine Water’s invested in the bank and sat on its board. There’s no evidence it made predatory loans.  

Yet, it failed.

It failed not due to any short-sighted greedy  decisions  that the bank’s  management  made but rather because the bank’s management, including board members like Waters, trusted that the mortgage-backed securities issued by the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fanny  Mae and Freddie Mac were worth the paper they were written on.  

OneUnited is a microcosm of the entire financial collapse. Over the past 40 years the GSEs have piled up a vast store of toxic assets created by the attempt to get something for nothing by fooling the market about the risk of residential mortgages. Ratings firms gave the GSEs top ratings because of their implied government  guarantee  and oversight. Banks like OneUnited bought into the political myth and now they and everyone else are paying for it.  

Leftists need to explain why we shouldn’t regard the failure of OneUnited and other institutions as the results of government action. They won’t, of course.  
 

Quote of the Day

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The left wing of the Democratic Party is in power now and it looks like they will pass their budget and their agenda for the next year or two or four. There’s every reason to think it will be a disaster for the country. It’s not looking so great so far and the disaster may arrive ahead of schedule. I’d say there’s a nontrivial chance the country will be irreparably harmed by our American mid-life crisis. It’s going to suck, big time. All Republicans can do is be the party that says, this is a bad idea and we should return to what we really believe in. We should wear the label the Party of No as a badge of honor. No to higher taxes. No to soaking the rich. No to nationalizing health care. No to abadoning Israel (just wait — that’s coming). There will be a lot to say no to. No to tyranny. This whole country is founded on a No.
 
Obama’s ideas are a mushy rehash of tired ideas from the 1930’s and 1960’s packaged for an era of twitter users. We don’t have to hope they will fail. They can do that all on their own. Conservatives as they are called in this country remain attached to ideas that date back to our founding, ideas of limited government, virtuous citizenship and the worthiness of commerce. We don’t have to wait for anybody because they already got here some 200 years ago. We should say No to the revolution Obama wants to lead. We can certainly hope that enough people wake up soon enough that the country is not ruined first. But our job is not to find more sellable ideas. There’s nothing wrong with the ideas.

–Tom Smith

“Rational” Behavior

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This post and the subsequent discussion prompt me to make a point about the use of the term “rational” in economics and game theory.  

I think the people in the linked posts confuse the common definition of “rational” with the way that economists and game theorists use the term. Economists and game theorists axiomatically define a “rational” choice as one that will give the highest chance of accomplishing a previously defined goal given a specific set of parameters. That choice is defined axiomatically as the “rational” choice. Rational in this context does not mean wise, intelligent, most-good-for-the-most-people or any of the other concepts attached to the word in common speech. For example, in poker, game theory defines a different set of choices as rational depending on whether you want to make a killing, come out even or use the game as a pretext to transfer some money to a friend. Game theory does not comment on which of the three goals constitutes the most rational choice.  

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An intriguing little quiz …

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Top British conservative blogger Iain Dale has run an interesting little quiz to begin the weekend. Here’s his blog. Scroll down to the “Taking The Normblog Test”. It would be interesting to see some American perspectives …

[Jonathan adds: Here is a direct link to Dale’s Normblog post.]