Tag: Quote

Some will argue that limiting financial institution leverage will render these businesses less profitable and less competitive with non-U.S. companies.  HCM’s response is – “so what?”  Perhaps less profitable investment banks will result in more of America’s talented students becoming scientists, engineers, doctors and teachers instead of investment bankers and mortgage traders. What would be so terrible about that?

~Michael E. Lewitt, Managing Member and President of Hegemony Capital Management, writing in the subscription-only Welling@Weeden newsletter for the clients of Weeden & Co. LP.  This excerpt of the article, which is not reproduced with permission but contains no advice or information that could be considered proprietary, is a long list of suggested regulations which Lewitt believes are needed in today’s financial markets.

The events which are taking place in today’s financial markets are bewildering to the uninitiated, and are only slightly less scary to those who are familiar with the concepts and terminology inherent to this world.  But it strikes me as significant to see so many people within the world of finance calling for drastic reform and desperately trying to demonstrate that the problems which are blooming now are the spawn of seeds planted in previous years and decades.  And one thing that a few such as Lewitt are saying is that perhaps it simply is unwise for us to pursue the sort of gains which have fueled Wall Street for the last quarter-century.

So corrupted indeed and debased was that age by sycophancy that not only the foremost citizens who were forced to save their grandeur by servility, but every exconsul, most of the ex-praetors and a host of inferior senators would rise in eager rivalry to propose shameful and preposterous motions. Tradition says that Tiberius as often as he left the Senate-House used to exclaim in Greek, “How ready these men are to be slaves.” Clearly, even he, with his dislike of public freedom, was disgusted at the abject abasement of his creatures.

Tacitus, The Annals, via IOZ.

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place[d] under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.

~Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century

The conspiracy is so thorough that most kids who discover it do so only by discovering internal contradictions in what they’re told. It can be traumatic for the ones who wake up during the operation. Here’s what happened to Einstein:

   Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies: it was a crushing impression. [2]

I remember that feeling. By 15 I was convinced the world was corrupt from end to end. That’s why movies like The Matrix have such resonance. Every kid grows up in a fake world. In a way it would be easier if the forces behind it were as clearly differentiated as a bunch of evil machines, and one could make a clean break just by taking a pill.

Paul Graham, from his essay Lies We Tell Kids.  The whole thing is worth reading.  Hat tip to Robin Hanson.

This quote is just beautiful writing, and a fascinating question I cannot answer about greatness.

I watched Springsteen very closely when he performed “Born to Run” toward the end of the show. I watched the close-ups of his face on the video screen, and I watched the way he moved around the stage, and I listened carefully to the pitch of his voice. My God, how many times has Bruce Springsteen performed this song by now? The album “Born to Run” came out in 1975, almost 33 years ago, and he performed the song even before the album came out. So has he performed it live 5,000 times? I’ll bet it’s been more. Maybe 7,500 times? Maybe 10,000 times?

There are certain professional things we have all done thousands of times. I know truck drivers who have driven more than three million miles. We all do. We know doctors who have delivered thousands of babies, and mechanics who have fixed thousands of cars, and chefs who have grilled thousands of steaks and all that. But Springsteen’s repetitions is a little different, and not just because Springsteen gets paid a lot more money to sing “Born to Run”, and not just because he gets many more perks and shrieking women and whatever. It’s because every single time Bruce Springsteen performs that song, there are thousands and thousands of people in the crowd that want a transcendent moment. That’s his song, but it’s also our song, it has meant something important to countless people. We will know if he means it.

“Mr. Cobb, how are you doing?” I asked James Cobb, a lawyer in New Orleans, Louisiana.

“It depends on what you mean,” Mr. Cobb answered. “If you mean how am I doing after losing my house and every fucking thing in it, and after being forced to live in a two-bedroom shithole with my wife and two kids and being told how lucky I am to get it, and after being fucked — and I mean absolutely fucked — by my insurance company and by the United States government (and by the way, just so you know, if anybody from New Orleans, Louisiana, tells you that they’re not getting fucked by their insurance company and by the United States government, they’re fucking lying, all right?) . . . if you mean, how am I doing after all that is factored in: Well, I guess the answer is that I’m doing fine. Now, how can I help you?”

Jim Cobb and I had never spoken before.

From the remarkable article, The Loved Ones, by Tom Junod, Esquire Magazine, September 2007.

I try not to be too cynical about government.  But I have to ask, at what point do all these cumulative failures become evidence of the inability of it to not fail?

In the Shreve High football stadium,

I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,

And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,

And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,

Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.

Their women cluck like starved pullets,

Dying for love.

Therefore,

Their sons grow suicidally beautiful

At the beginning of October,

And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.

James Wright, Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

In celebration of the renewal for a third season of Friday Night Lights, one of the best shows about many things, but particularly rural poverty, to grace television screens in America.

It is manifestly clear and has been proven in practice and by the facts of all revolutions that a struggle for ideals, for improvements of any kind whatsoever, absolutely must be supplemented with a struggle against some social class or caste.

My object is to create first-rate revolutionary upheavals, regardless of what methods and means I have to use in the process. Earlier revolutions were directed either against the peasants, or the nobility and the clergy, or against dynasties and their network of vassals, but in no case has revolution succeeded without the presence of a lightning rod that could conduct and channel the odium of the general masses.

With this very thing in mind I scanned the revolutionary events of history and put the question to myself against which racial element in Germany can I unleash my propaganda of hate with the greatest prospects of success? I had to find the right kind of victim, and especially one against whom the struggle would make sense, materially speaking. I can assure you that I examined every possible and thinkable solution to this problem, and, weighing every imaginable factor, I came to the conclusion that a campaign against the Jews would be as popular as it would be successful.

There are few Germans who have not been vexed with the behavior of Jews or else have not suffered losses through them in some way or other. Disproportionately to their small number they account for an immense share of the German national wealth, which can just as easily be put to profitable use for the state and the general public as could the holdings of the monasteries, bishops, and nobility.

Once the hatred and the battle against the Jews have been really stirred up, their resistance will necessarily crumble in the shortest possible time. They are totally defenseless, and no one will stand up to protect them.

~Adolf Hitler, as interviewed by Major Josef Hell

(Via Bryan Caplan)

I still haven’t managed to get my jaw off the floor after reading that.  The implications stagger me.

No one can force us to give up that culture-even the suicide bombers. There is a very clear polarization taking place…on one side those striving for peace, nonviolence, and a future of cooperation with the international community, and on the other those who stand for confrontation and hatred. They are men of violence, but we refuse to be cowed. We may lose, but we will make a stand.

Asfandyar Wali Khan, grandson of Ghaffar Khan, Muslim follower of Mahatma Ghandi.

When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don’t take are snuffed out like candles, as if they’d never existed.  At the moment all Will’s choices existed at once.  But to keep them in existence meant doing nothing.  He had to choose, after all.

~Phillip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass – His Dark Materials Book 3

Reading the His Dark Materials trilogy, the oddest thing about it to me is how as characters learn that Lord Asriel’s plan is to attempt to storm heaven and overthrow God, every character who learns about it finds it natural and is immediately willing to do what they can to help.   I find this shocking, as people in general are quite willing to find most governments to be evil, including their own, but instinctively recoil from any attempt to overthrown not only their own government, but nearly all governments.

This is today’s quote for discussion.  

Don argues in the book and in the podcast that to point to an American steel worker put out of work by imports of Brazilian steel and say that he is “harmed by trade” is to misunderstand the nature of trade and its winners and losers. He says it’s like saying that a man whose wife leaves him for another man is harmed by love. After all, the man married because of love. The man is the product of his parents who were touched by love. So it is with the steel worker. His steel job exists because of trade. His whole life is supported by trade of various kinds. So in what sense is he “harmed by trade?”

It’s a profound point. It forces you to see just how trade and specialization and the division of labor create the incredible lives we lead, lives of wealth and health unimagined by previous generations.

But having said that, I think there is something else to add, something about the way our self-worth and pride and satisfaction are tied up in our work. An out-of-work steel worker still has a very good life compared to generations past and the success of his life up until the loss of his job is indeed due to trade (and sometimes to the protectionism that worker would like to see made stronger). But there’s no denying that it’s very tough on a person who has invested most of his life in a particular skill to suddenly find that there’s no demand for that skill. Yes, it’s the price of progress and it’s a price worth paying. Yes, it’s not particular to foreign trade, as Don points out, but is the result of all kinds of economic change. But there is something deeply poignant about it, nevertheless.

It is a mistake to use protectionism to keep that worker from having to deal with change. But that doesn’t change the potential sadness of the situation. I’ve argued that the real consolation for that worker who loses his job and struggles to find another that is as satisfying is knowing (if he knows any economics) that his children and grandchildren will lead better lives because we tolerate economic change.

Russell Roberts, Café Hayek