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Saturday, August 20, 2011

More Political and Economic Wisdom of Jerry Pournelle

  I last did these excerpts from his blog in Feb 2010. Here are some more They are mostly part of longer articles. I would like to think of them as distilled axioms. Emphases added by me and comments in italics are my own.:
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regulations from Washington are far more stifling, and thus far greater a cause of economic stagnation, than government spending and for that matter taxes. We have had economic booms in times of higher taxes; taxes impede and even stifle, but not to the extent that regulations do. The German Economic Miracle came about from liberation from stifling regulations, not from Marshal Plan spending (the actual amount of capital injected was quite small compared to the capital destroyed by the war and the early Morgenthau Plan implementations) but from relief from regulation. The United States is unlikely to have economic recovery until we eliminate regulatory impediments to economic growth http://jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=1371
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No representation without taxation: only those who pay something in taxes may vote. It has been proposed before. Indeed, for all of the early days of the republic, a forty schilling freehold was a pretty standard requirement for being a voter. http://jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=1344
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When the people can vote themselves largess from the treasury, and impose taxed they do not pay, those people are rulers: at one time a small aristocracy, but is it different if it’s just numbers?
I guarantee you that if Congress were elected only by people who have paid more than $500 in income taxes in the previous year we would have a lot more economic freedom. The only thing worse than taxation without representation is taxation with representation in which the people represented are entitlement consumers rather than those obliged to pay for those entitlements
We have already in place regulation exceptions for small businesses. Some are for businesses with ten or fewer employees. Others apply if your business has fifty or fewer. There may be exceptions for those with 100 or fewer, although I am not sure of that.
My proposal is simple: double the exception numbers. Regulations that apply only to businesses with more than ten employees now apply only to those with more than twenty. Those that apply to more than fifty now apply only to those with more than a hundred. Etc. The effect would be to let successful small businesses expand easily. Those that have been making do by using part time employees can now let them become full time. Regulations would remain in place, but now they apply to fewer businesses. This would take effect immediately and be in place for ten years.

I suspect that the effect would be dramatic. Possibly it would not, but it isn’t going to hurt the economy
http://jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=1297
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you can improve most schools by a factor of two by firing the 10% least competent teachers. This shouldn’t be surprising: it’s the case with most organizations ................................is a bit surprising that parents never catch on, and the best teachers, who are thoroughly aware of all this, almost never speak out. Of course they don’t dare. Teachers unions may claim to be professional associations, but many of them are more than willing to employ tactics that might shock even a mob-controlled garbage collector union.
http://jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=892
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Freedom produces prosperity. It takes more than just freedom, of course. It takes rule of law. But freedom and rule of law tend to work: note what happened to the barren rocks of Hong Kong as opposed to the far greater resources of nearby Canton Province. In China they had disorder, then Communism, a Great Leap Forward and a Cultural Revolution, and a stifled economy. In Hong Kong they had British Colonial Rule, few physical resources, but stability, rule of law, and economic freedom. http://jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=562
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California is doomed, of course. Everyone who can will flee, and certainly it is no place to start a new business in. The only new jobs are expanding state hiring to be financed by more taxes.....Democracies endure until the voters understand that they can vote themselves largess -- entitlements if you will -- from the public treasury. Eventually they run out of other people's money. The usual next step is a dictatorship. The dictator generally comes in as Friend of the People, although some of them, like Caesar, were not simply power hungry tyrants... usually when democracies collapse, the result is Chaos and Old Night. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2011/Q3/view679.html#Thursday
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There ought to be a prohibition against paying anyone in that department (useless piece of bureaucracy)written as an earmark into the next appropriation bill. It needs to be worded properly so it is not a Bill of Attainder, but perhaps they can eliminate a lot of people http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2011/Q3/view678.html#Thursday
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A totally unregulated market will end up with human flesh sold in the market place. Growth of regulation leads to concentrations of wealth and the kind of "Permit Raj" that kept India and China in the dumps for so long. All that is obvious -- but it's obvious to those who issue the permits, too. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2011/Q2/mail677.html#Thursday
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One of the long term trends in modern America is the increasing Federal transfer of funds from the younger generation to the older. ..... Another long term trend is the cost of health care, which has risen steadily as a percentage of national income to exceed 1/6 and is approaching 1/4. Since most health care expenditures go to older patients, this dramatically increases the transfer of income from younger to older. Note that it is also a transfer from productive to non-productive http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2011/Q2/view676.html#Wednesday in the UK it is about 10%, almost all state spending, which compensates for a higher % of GNP being spent by the state.
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The social sciences are also learning that many of their discoveries are based on faulty statistics. Science only works when crucial experiments are replicated; when a theory becomes a creed, it's no longer science and when it becomes heresy to experiment or question a theory, the results are seldom good. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2011/Q2/mail676.html#Tuesday
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Low cost energy and freedom equal prosperity. Interestingly, I find few who will argue against that statement. It's just that nothing is done to implement it. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2011/Q2/view675.html#Sunday
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Much of economics isn't difficult, or rather, the difficulty is in cooking up arguments to "prove" that common sense conclusions are wrong. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q3/view630.html#Thursday
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Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2011/Q2/mail675.html#Tuesday
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a project for those who have time: Government We Can Do Without Just Now

Specific people and offices doing things that perhaps need doing if we are rich, but which we can all pretty well agree are not necessary in an era of borrowed money. The more specific the better: a particular office, and even particular employees, doing things that it is pretty clear we don't need to be borrowing money to do. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2011/Q2/view672.html#Saturday
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the most important resource of a nation is its brightest students, and finding them and nurturing them is more important than all the special needs schools put together -- indeed, if we do not develop our intellectual capital, we will not be able to afford schools for special needs students http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2011/Q2/mail672.html#Tuesday
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The remedy to a lagging economy is low cost energy and economic freedom (meaning chopping out regulations that favor existing institutions over new ones so that start ups have a chance to compete). Capitalism's creative destruction will do the rest: look at the German Economic Miracle after World War II for a picture of what hard work and freedom can do. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q2/view620.html#Friday
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We cannot build a great world civilization without energy, and we can't get to that civilization without a period of dependence on nuclear fission power http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2011/Q2/view671.html#Saturday
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Parkinson concluded that if government disposes of much more than 10% of GDP, things will deteriorate http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2011/Q2/mail670.html#Saturday
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Note that China is not going to halt nuclear power construction. The major effect of Fukushima Daiichi may well be a very great Chinese comparative advantage. Cheap easily available energy and freedom are the keys to economic prosperity: the Chinese are moving toward both. The United States is moving away from both. The results are predictable .http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2011/Q2/view670.html#Tuesday
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"energy prices are a major factor in economic growth, and everyone knows it." http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2011/Q1/mail663.html I have repeated this thought several times - I think it worth it
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I don't like Gaddafi, but I didn't like Saddam either. I suspect that putting out a contract on Saddam Hussein would have cost a lot less than a $Trillion $Dollars. I would guess that a billion dollars and a US passport -- bring me his head or proof that you killed him, no questions asked -- would do it. Indeed, I suspect that offering a billion dollars to the first winner of a fair election might be a good old college try at nation building...
I have no idea what the mission is in Libya http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2011/Q1/mail667.html#Monday
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The goal in the US is to see to it that only the very rich will graduate without a crushing loan burden; thus there will be a number of educated bond slaves to work for those who graduate debt free. Of course the tax burden will make it nearly impossible for anyone to get into the class whose kids graduate debt free. A few will, by going to work for Goldman Sachs and such, but most professionals will no longer be middle class: they will be debtors who can be ordered about.
Welcome to the brave new world. England is used to that sort of thing. Americans are not. Yet.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2011/Q1/mail664.html#Wednesday
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democracy was not the object of the Convention of 1787. A republic that derived its powers from the consent of the governed was. The Venetian Republic was discussed frequently (Ironically the Serene Republic was ended and looted by Napoleon and his French Republic soldiers not many years later). Democracies tend to limit freedom and liberty, in favor of equality, particularly egalitarianism in property. Preserving the right to property under a democracy is one of the primary problems of political science. Democracies work best in small uniform countries and city-states. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2011/Q1/mail663.html#Sunday
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Much of economics isn't difficult, or rather, the difficulty is in cooking up arguments o "prove" that common sense conclusions are wrong. The fact is that many common sense conclusions are quite correct, and it takes a lot of education to get you to believe different. The LafferLaffer Curve is one such: It is obvious that if you have a zero tax rate you will get no income. It is equally obvious that in any kind of free society if you nave a 100% tax rate on income you will get no revenue, because no one will work unless enslaved. There is clearly some kind of curve connecting the two zero points ...............
Laffer's notion, that we use the borrowed money we threw into the Stimulus Plans to pay everyone's taxes, then stand out of the way and see what happens is stunning. I'd add to it: suspend all regulations that get in the way of hiring people. If you want to hire someone and that someone wants to work, let it happen. They work, you pay, and if you don't think they're working hard enough, you can fire them. (Does that remind you of the German Economic Miracle?) .http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q3/view630.html#Thursday
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The more regulation imposed the less competitive the market will be, and the more concentrated it will become. Economic freedom brings about efficiency. Energy plus freedom brings economic boom. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q4/view647.html#Monday
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I am rapidly reaching a conclusion, confirmed by a number of those in the rocket entreprneurial community, and also several Pentagon people: if we stay outside NASA, the technology exists to build a reusable orbiter for under a billion dollars; probably far less than a billion.
This could be done by prizes, and at the moment there are two prize schemes to consider: a single prize of $1 billion, or a first and second prize of $500,000,000 for first and $250,000,000 for second. The notion of a second prize is intriguing but harder to sell. A second insures that more than one firm can raise capital to compete.

Discussion invited. But the astonishing thing is that for a billion or less (with room for profit and operations) we can actually demonstrate reusable, savable orbiters.

&

$1 billion spent right would in fact develop the technology -- all engineering, no new science needed -- to build an orbital ship that would operate as airlines do. Fly, inspect, refuel, fly again. Once that ship is built, additional orbiters will cost about what big commercial airplanes cost, and operate about the way airlines do. Airlines operate at about 3 to 5 times fuel costs, with about 110 employees per airplane (half of those sell tickets). With orbital access at about the cost of a first class ticket from America to Australia, free enterprise and commerce will take care of the rest http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2008/Q3/view532.html#Tuesday
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Many years ago I took part in a study at the University of Iowa (SUI in Iowa City) in which we coached students from the drama department to go in for counseling and give textbook responses to see what diagnoses they'd get; the results were not encouraging. Only about half the diagnoses were "correct" in that the therapist came up with the diagnosis that the student was role-playing. In those days the therapy was almost all talk -- there were Freudians, Rogerians, followers of Karen Horney, Gestalt psychologists, Reality therapists, a Jungian or two, and some others I forget, and each had a different treatment for different diagnoses, and none of them knew much about what was really going on. The study made the whole process look farcical, and I think it was never published because it would have terrible effects on departmental budgets; http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2011/Q1/view657.html#Tuesday
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Transparency and subsidiarity -- i.e. local fiduciary responsibility: those are the keys to good government. See Jane Jacobs Dark Age Ahead for some details and more arguments on how to avoid the Dark Age Ahead -- assuming we can avoid it.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2008/Q4/mail547.html#educate
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The purpose of the US education system is to insure employment of bad teachers. It is well known that the efficiency of the system as measured by student performance will be about doubled by firing the 10% worst teachers and apportioning their students out among the rest; that is overwhelmingly to be preferred to "smaller classroom size", teacher pay raises, or anything else that might be tried. Of course this won't be tried because the purpose of the whole system is to see to it that the bad teachers are not fired and are allowed to go through ruining lives until they get large pensions.
The second purpose of the system is to insure full employment for professors of education, many of whom have never done any actual teaching, but whose imprimatur is needed to get the "merit pay" advances you can get from "workshops" and various courses in education. Some education colleges actually prepare teachers to teach, but many simply punch tickets; a lot of bad teachers who ought to be fired get "merit" pay for having accumulated credits from education professors. My suspicion is that firing about half the professors of education would greatly improve the efficiency of the system but I don't have any studies or numbers to prove that; but I would bet money that firing the worst 10% would instantly improve the colleges of education just as firing the worst 10% of classroom teachers would instantly improve the schools.

The purpose of the schools is to extract money from taxpayers and pay it in ways that insure that professors of education and bad teachers get paid. It is not to create citizens, or to teach anything; it is not to train future Legionnaires. If we are to have Legions, the first thing we need to do is cut all ties between the Armed Forces school systems for service dependents from the rest of the education system and run it in a rational manner as it has been done in the past. Alas the trend is in the other direction, with more and more of the poison that ruined the US public school system spreading everywhere else.
Schools no longer prepare students to be citizens or to learn the skills to be employed, even in the Legions. They have new purposes now, and they serve them well. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2011/Q1/mail656.html#Sunday
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The schools are awful. The remedy is well known: fire the worst 10% of the teachers, and we can increase school effectiveness by about 50%. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q4/view654.html#Wednesday
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Philby did monumental damage to the CIA, and it was his actions more than anything else that convinced James Jesus Angleton that the Soviets had moles in the Company. We can make the case that Philby prolonged the Cold War by a decade. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q4/view652.html#Friday as someone who feels that the NATO powers, were the aggressors in the cold war and the Soviet Union would have been happy to be left alone after the ravages of WW2 I do not cast Philby as villain
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If you want more of something, subsidize it. If you want less, tax it. If you want more risky investment, lay off taxing the returns from successful investments. If you want more highly conservative investment, tax hell out of anything risky, And so forth. If the purpose of taxation is to raise revenue it requires a different strategy from taxation to "spread the wealth." If you believe that the purpose of government is to protect private property, but you don't like great disparity in wealth, you need to have an open discussion about what you are trying to do. If your goal is to set up enduring bureaus -- well, we know how to do that.

Taxing income rather than taxing spending produces one result; consumption taxing produces another. None of the analysis can be static, either. What government does has a great effect on prudent behavior. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2010/Q4/mail653.html#Thursday
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(on 2010 allegedly being the warmest year) I do note that the places where it is said to have been very much hotter than it has ever been are also among the least reliable in past reports, but perhaps that is a coincidence.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q4/view651.html#Friday
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My last hard-work assessment of "green" energy technologies was done in the 1980's, when I rated their importance for the future as:
Nuclear Fission
Nuclear fuel recovery/recycling
Nuclear Fission (breeder)
Bio-mass waste product combustion (a booster for coal and natural gas, not stand alone)
Space Solar Power as a long term future
Fusion
In about that order. ....If we are forbidden to use nuclear energy to get out of the energy shortage, perhaps the best course would be a large x-project power plant (x-project: build the best we can build with technology existing a year after the contract is awarded; don't rely on something yet to be developed).....OTEC is a good idea, but it's not likely to save the world since the places you can use it tend to be places where it's hard to get the energy from there to somewhere that it's useful.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q4/view650.html#Tuesday
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the purpose of TSA is not security, it is to convince the American people they are subjects, not citizens. Salve, Sclave! [save yourself slave] http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2010/Q4/mail648.html#Saturday
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I do note that a great deal of innovation now comes from American corporation laboratories and think tanks in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Given the American school system this is likely to gain importance. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q4/view647.html#Thursday
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Many colleges consider The Federalist Papers to be too difficult to include in undergraduate non-major classes. They were, of course, originally letters to the editors of newspapers, intended for the general literate population. Were it my choice, I'd assign them in high schools, but I suspect that is unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment in today's courts. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2010/Q4/mail647.html#Wednesday to be fair in those days newspaper circulation was more limited, as was the number of article - nonetheless the comparison with today is frightening
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if you set up education programs designed in three or four syllibi -- one for the University bound (top 10%, say), one for the College including Community College bound (say another 25%), one for the "tech school" or Trade School bound (say another 35%) and the rest for all those not actually retarded, you will get far better outcomes than we get from any one size fits all education program; but you will also have what appears to be racial segregation, even though you do not choose students on the basis of race. Your top class will have some Blacks, but fewer than the Black proportion in the population; it will have far more Jews and Orientals than their proportion in the population; and more Whites than their proportion would predict. The next class will be the same, although the Black discrepancy won't be so obvious. The next down will have proportionately too many Blacks. And so forth. This will result in law suits
the education system can be raised by the simple expedient of firing the worst 10% of the teachers, with the result that some of the poor Black kids will start looking like success stories. The potential of an IQ 90 to 110 kid is considerably higher than the actual academic achievement of such kids in our present school system. But then our present system is designed largely for keeping bad teachers employed at the expense of the students in their classrooms
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2010/Q4/mail646.html#Tuesday
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The film (Richard Curtis' government funded film of a teacher blowing up children for questioning CAGW) was made by greens who actually thought it would help their cause. ... I have a PhD in Psychology and I was not able to imagine a group delusion of that magnitude. One or two people, perhaps, but an organization with no one able to see the folly of this? http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2010/Q4/mail643.html#Wednesday
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(on friendship with Vietnam & a US base) Had Kennedy pursued US interests and understood what he was doing, it is a result that could have been achieved without all the US casualties. But that's alternate history. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2010/Q3/mail635.html#Monday (Jerry was a supporter of strongly prosecuting the Vietnam war on the grounds that one should fight to win, but this shows he was not a knee jerk hawk)
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All our modern "smart cars" are vulnerable to wireless attacks that could stick the accelerator at full on, or lock the brakes, or disable all the cars on the road at rush hour. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q3/view636.html#Friday
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Long term observations of the [radioactive] emissions of some substances like silicon-32 (half life 172 years) show something very strange: the radiation emitted certainly adds up to that expected by a half life of 172 years, but there is seasonal cycle, a wobble, with radioactive output peaking when the Earth is at perihelion and at minimum when the Earth is as aphelion. The closer we are to the Sun, the more radioactive output. The variation is fairly small, but it's there. There are observations of other periodic radiation, some in periods of 7 seconds. Since no one has been looking for any such thing, there's no predicting what else may be found on closer observation.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q3/view637.html#Thursday
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I've been one of NASA's most stringent critics -- I am told that when the rumor went around that I was going to be appointed Administrator there was sheer terror at NASA headquarters -- but I am no advocate of leaving research and development vital to the future of the human race entirely to commercial forces. It is the duty of government to look into the far future long past the time when you can predict return on investments. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q3/view637.html#Thursday
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"corollary to your iron law- The half life of a new governmental program is 2 years. Every two years, half of your effective people leave. Half of the replacements are "typical government workers" who never leave. Within 10 years, the government program is useless since 3% of staff will be effective workers. ".

It certainly has the immediate look of truth...

We cannot do without state workers, but we cannot do without responsibility either, athe civil service system as it has evolved (or degenerated) from the original premise has not proven to be correct.

How can one have careers in civil service, get experienced people to do the jobs, be fair to them -- and avoid what we see as the result? http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2010/Q3/mail637.html#Wednesday
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Cutting taxes and spending won't bring back the economy, but it won't hurt, either. What is needed is cheap energy and more freedom. What is needed is an economic miracle. We are still capable of that. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q3/view641.html#Sunday
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I am no expert on monetization. I did advise readers to buy gold back when it was $400 http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2010/Q3/mail641.html#Sunday
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I have never met an architect who understood heat flow. Frank Lloyd Wright understood earthquake stresses, but his houses are notoriously hard to heat http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2010/Q3/mail642.html#Thursday
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IQ is the best single predictor we have for performance in tasks that use symbol manipulation and complex abstract tasks. Best single predictor doesn't mean it's all that good, and a combination of data such as was used in the University of Washington Grade Prediction Program is considerably better. Alas the court forbade use of the Grade Prediction Program because it predicted lower grades for certain racial groups http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2010/Q3/mail642.html#Sunday
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If we are to take back our government there must be people willing to take it back -- and to be part of a new government. One of the benefits of self government is that not many think of it as a full time job. They have other lives. Yes, there will always be professional politicians; what must not happen is that the professional politicians also control the party structures. Self government means that the people governed take part in the whole governing structure; some hold political office, some become major party officials, some become minor party officials, some simply work a few hours a month on party matters; and those who do none of this pay attention to what is going on. ,,,,
Machiavelli said that if Republics rely on mercenaries for their defense, they take great risks; better to have citizen soldiers. Today the danger is not from our Legions... but from our hired political class. We have opted to entrust our political lives to mercenaries: career politicians, political managers, paid operatives and organizers; what we used to call political machines. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q4/view643.html#Thursday
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Tribalists live on tradition and custom. Barbarians live on strength and conquest. Citizens live by rules. The three types of human civilization cannot coexist in equality in the same territory. Barbarians respect strength and fear retaliation; they have no other reason not to take what they can. They have shed the tribal customs, and they have not learned the self discipline of citizenry.

We have barbarians within the walls, and we do not require them to be citizens, yet we do not make them fear us. That is sowing the wind. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2011/Q1/mail659.html#Wednesday

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Comments:
From Sandy Henderson - re the anomalous radioactivity annual variation, it occurred to me that a possible suspect might be neutrinos.Like light the intensity of their flux will fall off with distance from the sun. Most of the time most neutrinos pass through matter unimpeded but they might interact with a radioactive atom, or molecule in a vulnerable quantum state. I wrote this suggestion to Jerry,( which he kindly posted.) Checking this phenomenon might involve checking the decay rate in the radioactive power sources of space probes. It could , if confirmed, give another way of retrieving the source and history of space rocks.This might be a significant result regards Sandy
 
Thanks Sandy - I have just read your contribution on Pournelle.

Jerry did say the reduction was very small (it would have to be not to be well known) but certainly for space rocks, which have been there for billions of years, it would have to be significant. It could tell us quite a lot about the history of the solar system - for example does the Moon come from Earth material or as the result of a collision with a Mars sized object from the outer system. - potentially it could even tell us when.
 
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