Posted tagged ‘Creative Destruction of The Market’

Must Reads For The Week 8/11/18

August 12, 2018

US Spending On Interest Hits All Time High As Budget Deficit Soars To $684 Billion, at zerohedge.com. Government spending and debt go up no matter which party is in control. The government confiscates over $4 trillion a year from the real economy. You would think that would be enough money to run are government, but you would be wrong. The problem is government spends too much. Government’s ability to borrow and print money allows it to fund its growth above what it can confiscate from its citizens in taxes. Our debt will never get paid off unless government spending is cut. What are the chances of that?

Scientist Blast Media “Misinformation” Linking Wildfires To Global Warming, at zerohedge.com. Environmentalists and their accomplices in the media blame global warming for everything. In this case it is wildfires. If you dig a little deeper into the issue you will find other factors could be possible causes of these fires. Global warming has all the trappings of science without all the rigor. Here is another article about the wildfires. You decide. Destructive Forest Fires Are Do To – What? by Paul Driessen at townhall.com.

New York City Approves Cap On The Number of Uber And Other App Based Companies, at zerohedge.com. Does the NY Taxi and Limousine commission ever consider the fact that their previous restrictions on the number of taxi medallions (licenses), was the reason for the artificial rise in the price of one medallion to over $1 million. This artificially high price created the conditions for Uber and other ride-sharing apps to enter the market. The bubble price of over $1million for a medallion has collapsed to under $200 thousand. Why?  Because the ride sharing apps could provide cheaper and better service. The market eventually corrected the artificial bubble price for taxi services, by allowing unforseen competitors to compete for market share. Simple supply and demand tells us that restricting the number of Uber, and other ride sharing drivers, will increase the price consumer will have to pay for rides. When you restrict supply the price moves higher. Read about the history of NY taxi monopoly in this article, ‘CAR WARS’ Return Of The Jitneys, at austrianaddict.com.

Visualizing The Print-pocalypse Of American Newspapers, at zerohedge.com. This is an example of the creative destruction of the market. The internet has changed the way we get information. Do you think news papers like the NY Times will ask for a government bailout on the basis that they are protected by the first amendment?

Worlds Biggest Toilet-Building Spree Is Under Way In India, by P.R. Sanjai, at bloomberg.com. We take the flush toilet for granted. While San Francisco is literally turning into a $#!t hole (read here), India is making a push to install more toilets. Excerpt from the article: “India accounts for more than half of the world’s 1.1 billion people who practice open defecation. Open defecation contaminates food and drinking water, and spreads diarrheal diseases that cause chronic malnutrition and childhood stunting. India’s push for more toilets is the biggest, most successful behavior-changing campaign in the world,” Many U.S cities, like S.F., are allowing open defecation. What are city leaders thinking?

Mob Targets Portland ICE Workers, Police Ignore Calls For Help – Under The mayor’s Orders, at theblaze.com. This is an example of the break down of the rule of law. The mayor allowed this siege to go on for 38 days. The mayor’s fidelity to his job was overridden by his politics. It is hard to believe this went on in the US. Or is it?

Angry White Atifa Mob Attacks Black Social Activist, Shouts, F^*+ White Supremacy!, at theblaze.com. They are shouting F^*+ your white supremacy to Candice Owens! Can anyone relate to the actions of the people in this mob? Let them keep doing things like this. It does nothing to help their cause. Whatever that cause is.

Federal Judge Rules That Albuquerque’s Asset Forfeiture Created An Unconstitutional Profit Incentive, at reason.com. Is anyone shocked that police would react this way to the incentives created by asset forfeiture laws?

Colleges Offer To Take Percentage Of Future Income As Alternative To Student Loans, at zerohedge.com. Students who got hooked into student loan debt now have a choice. Heads they win, tails I lose.

“Free, Independent” Boston Paper Urges Collusive National Media ‘War’ Against Trump, at zerohedge.com. Excerpt from the article: “Marjorie Pritchard, who oversees the Boston Globe’s editorial page, said the decision to seek the coordinated response from newspapers was reached after Trump appeared to step up his rhetoric in recent weeks. “I hope it would educate readers to realize that an attack on the First Amendment is unacceptable,” she said. “We are a free and independent press, it is one of the most sacred principles enshrined in the Constitution.”

Does a free and independent news paper collude with other free and independent news papers? The press wraps themselves in the First Amendment. I bet most journalists have probably never read the first amendment.

Here is the First Amendment: “CONGRESS shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof: or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

One quick question. Does freedom of the press rank behind freedom of religion and freedom of speech in importance because it is listed third in the First Amendment?

This amendment doesn’t protect the press from criticism. Every citizen, including the President, has the right of free speech. Every citizen, including the President, can criticize the press. Most citizens don’t have a big enough platform for the press to even worry about when criticized. But the President has a big platform if he so chooses to use it. The press has their panties in a wad because they have always been able to bully Republican Presidents. Trump doesn’t play that game, and the press doesn’t know how to deal with someone who stands up to their bullying. Although the press thinks that Trump is the bully and they are standing up to him. It will be interesting to see how this street fight turns out. Because Trump shows no signs of backing down from this fight and the press doesn’t seem to know how to handle it.

West Hollywood Passed Resolution To Remove Trump’s Star On Walk Of Fame, at zerohedge.com. Did they vote to get rid of Bill Cosby’s star?

500+ Renowned Scientists Jointly Share Why They Reject Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, by Arjun Walia, at lewrockwell.com. Darwin’s theory is not standing the test of the passage of time.

SATIRICAL HEADLINES.

Che Guevara Honored With Star On Hollywood Walk Of Fame, at thebabaylonbee.com. Mass murderer Che is lionized by the left.

Liberals Remind Nation Satire Only OK When Mocking Conservatives, at thebabaylonbee.com. This is how the rules of the political game used to be. No more.

World Health Organization Warns Against Eating Fish and Keeping Active Following Death Of World’s Oldest Woman, at theonion.com. Correlation is not causation.

Millennial Drops Support For Socialism After Learning How Hard It Is To Ge Avocado Toast In Venezuela, at thebabaylonbee.com. Socialism is only cool when it hurts someone else.

CNN To Launch Real News Spinoff Site, at thebabaylonbee.com. No comment necessary.

CARTOONS

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Must Reads For The Week 4/8/17

April 8, 2017

Some On The Left Now Criticize The Students They Created, by Dennis Prager, at townhall.com. Here is an except from the article: “It is the left that created the moral monsters known as left-wing students who do not believe in free speech, let alone tolerance. It is the left that taught generations of Americans that everyone on the right is sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, racist and bigoted. It is the left that is anti-intellectual, teaching students to substitute feelings for reason.

Snowflakes Demand University President’s Resignation After Refusal To Support Safe Spaces, at zerohedge.com. Here is a recent example of what the article above talks about.

New York Fed’s Dudley Admits Fed-Inspired Student Debt Bubble Is Headwind for Economy, at zerohedge.com. College Graduates are becoming debt serfs. This is similar to the housing bubble. When will this bubble burst.

South Korean School Teachers Who Earn Over A Million Dollars, at economicpolicyjournal.com. With the price of college sky rocketing, lower cost market alternatives to our current education monopoly will be viable.

IRS Seized $17 Million From Innocent Business Owners Using Asset Forfeiture, at reason.com. Innocent people are getting their bank accounts seized without being charged with a crime. This is not supposed to happen in America. This is an example of the break down of the rule of law.

Audit The Pentagon, by Ryan McMaken, at mises.org. Every government agency should be able to cut their budget by 15%. Shouldn’t they?

The Next Subprime Crisis Is Here. 12 Signs That The U.S. Auto Industry’s Day Of Reckoning Has Arrived, at zerohedge.com. Loaning money to people who can’t pay it back is a bad idea. We didn’t learn anything from the housing bubble. Did we?

3 Lessons Learned From Wisconsin’s War On Foreign Butter, by Ryan McMaken, at mises.org. People are fighting back against Government regulations on Butter. First they are going across state lines to purchase the butter they want. Some consumers are banding together to file a suit against the law which bans this foreign butter.

Creative Destruction: Thousands Of Traditional Retailers Close As Consumers Switch To Online Retailers Like Amazon, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog. Sears started as a mail order warehouse business. Now they are losing to Amazon which is warehouse delivery business. Everything old is new again.

Homeowner’s son Kills Three Would-Be Burglars With AR-15, at nypost.com. Who says AR-15’s aren’t good home defense weapons?

Some Econ Homework

May 11, 2016

How You Don’t Cure Poverty, by Henry Hazlitt, at mises.org. Here are some excerpts from the article:

From the beginning of history sincere reformers as well as demagogues have sought to abolish or at least to alleviate poverty through state action…..The most frequent and popular of these proposed remedies has been the simple one of seizing from the rich to give to the poor…… The wealth is to be “shared,” to be redistributed,” to be “equalized.” In fact, in the minds of many reformers it is not poverty that is the chief evil but inequality….. all schemes for redistributing or equalizing incomes or wealth must undermine or destroy incentives at both ends of the economic scale. They must reduce or abolish the incentives of the unskilled and shiftless to improve their condition by their own efforts, and even the able and industrious will see little point in earning anything beyond what they are allowed to keep. These redistribution schemes must inevitably reduce the size of the pie to be redistributed. They can only level down. Their long-run effect must be to reduce production and lead toward national impoverishment.”

This brings us to the subject of minimum-wage laws. It is profoundly discouraging that in the second half of the twentieth century, in what is supposed to be an age of great economic sophistication, the United States should have such laws on its books, and that it should still be necessary to protest against a nostrum so futile and mischievous. It hurts most the very marginal workers it is designed to help…..I can only repeat what I have written in another place…… We cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him less. We merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his abilities and opportunities would permit him to earn, while we deprive the community of the moderate services he is capable of rendering. In brief, for a low wage we substitute unemployment.

We come now to the final false remedy for poverty to be considered in this article—outright socialism. By “outright socialism” I refer to the Marxist proposal for “the public ownership and control of the means of production”…..Now the word “socialism” is loosely used to refer to…….the redistribution of wealth or income—if not to make incomes equal, at least to make them much more nearly equal than they are in a market economy. But the majority of those who propose this objective today think that it can be achieved by retaining the mechanisms of private enterprise and then taxing the bigger incomes to subsidize the smaller incomes.”

Why Private Investment Works & Government Investment Doesn’t, at Prager University.

When government tries to pick losers and winners, it typically picks losers. Why? Because in the free market consumers pick winners to leave the losers to Government.”

Another reason Government can’t out perform the free market is because it doesn’t have a tenth of the knowledge that exists in the free market. Also, in the market, when the individual takes the risk he knows he takes the loss if he is wrong. When the Government picks a loser it tries to keep it propped up by subsidizing it with tax dollars. The wasting of scarce resources is kept at a minimal level in the market, because the risk taker stops the unprofitable activity before too long. Resources are liquidated and put toward a more productive use according to consumers desires. Government has no such incentive to stop the nonprofitable activity. They continue wasting scarce resources long after the activity had proven unproductive. If Government bureaucrats were truly in the venture capital business, they would have gone bankrupt years ago.

Economics: It’s Simpler Than You Think, by David Gordan, at mises.org.   From the article:

“…. Skilled entrepreneurs succeed, but many in business fail. The market operates by sorting out of the successful from the failures by the test of profitability. Given this fact, it is as essential that the failures be allowed to fail as it is that those who succeed be allowed to keep their profits. Attempts to prop up failures disable the market.

This vital point can be used to answer a common objection to free trade. Many people object to free trade because, in some cases, foreign competition drives domestic companies out of business, causing unemployment. To the response that expanded trade creates jobs elsewhere in the economy, the reply often given is, what about the workers who do lose their jobs? They are often unable to secure new jobs as good as those they had previously. The fact that others are better off is small solace to them.”…….“In a free economy, capital migrates to talented entrepreneurs eager to pursue profitable opportunities. Innovations like the automobile, computer, and online retail services destroy jobs, but the process leads to better, higher-paying jobs … to create jobs in abundance, we must allow the free marketplace to regularly annihilate them.”

” According to Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and many others, only the massive bailouts of financial institutions in response to the collapse of the housing market saved the economy from disaster…in the financial crisis of 2008….. but it is essential to the proper working of the market to allow the businesses that had acted recklessly to fail. Had this been done, the economy could have quickly readjusted. “Capitalist societies can rebound from anything. In particular, they can bounce back from bank failures that do not exterminate human capital or destroy their infrastructure. An interfering government is the only barrier to any society’s revival, and that is why the global economy cratered amid all the government intervention in 2008.

 

Related ArticleHere is Some Econ Homework, at austrianaddict.com.

Related ArticleYour Economic Homework, at austrianaddict.com.