Comments on: For the Fourth: on liberty

By: Owen

Owen — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 09:01:47 +0000

David Foster @ 11:06: Thanks, yes, and I am a fan of “ChicagoBoyz.” Agree about fragility and its dependence on, inter alia, closeness of coupling. Maybe there is a rule that as systems grow more complex they implicitly couple more subsystems and the “average closeness” (interdependence? Lack of redundancy?) goes up, thus making the system tend toward greater fragility. IOW if you aren’t competent enough (experienced and canny enough) to keep designing-in more resilience and redundancy, the systems you build will get shakier as they get bigger. Something like that.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 03:06:27 +0000

Owen,,.re complex systems..competence is certainly essential for running a complex system, but, also the degree of fragility of the system is greatly influenced by its design. See my post Coupling:

https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/58361.html

By: David Foster

David Foster — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 03:04:23 +0000

JJ….thanks!

By: JJ

JJ — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 01:40:51 +0000

David Foster, thanks for your comment and link to your book review.

“I’m afraid we are going to find out the truth of this observation hard way.”
You understand the issue as well as anyone I have read or talked to. Kee trying to educate people. It might help.

By: AesopFan

AesopFan — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 01:38:16 +0000

@ Owen > “You can have competence or you can cater to identity politics, but you can’t have both.”

That was a frightening article, because it sets out the choices and consequences so plainly and persuasively.

It’s somewhat akin to the choices examined by Hayek: you can have socialism or freedom, but not both.

By: Snow on Pine

Snow on Pine — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 00:17:19 +0000

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

By: David Foster

David Foster — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 21:58:57 +0000

I reviewed the above book here:

https://ricochet.com/925949/running-a-factory-under-soviet-socialism/

By: David Foster

David Foster — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 21:55:35 +0000

JJ…”(corn processing is) a huge business, and without it, we would be much less well fed as a nation.” And there are thousands of such industries and subindustries. Yet politicians and their ‘experts’ do things that will impact these industries without any serious attempt to understand them or their interconnections. Too often, they believe that any overlay of planning (by them) will necessarily make things better.

Gennady Andreev-Khomiakov served as Deputy Manager of a Stalin-Era Soviet factory, a sawmill. The factory overcame many obstacles, but was ultimately strangled by difficulties in obtaining supplies, particularly raw lumber. Gennady, whose father had been in the lumber trade before the Revolution, was contemptuous of the chaos into which the industry had been reduced by the Soviets:

“The free and “unplanned” and therefore ostensibly chaotic character of lumber production before the revolution in reality possessed a definite order. As the season approached, hundreds of thousands of forest workers gathered in small artels of loggers, rafters, and floaters, hired themselves out to entrepreneurs through their foremen, and got all the work done. The Bolsheviks, concerned with “putting order” into life and organizing it according to their single scheme, destroyed that order and introduced their own–and arrived at complete chaos in lumbering.”

As Gennady says:

“Such in the immutable law. The forceful subordination of life’s variety into a single mold will be avenged by that variety’s becoming nothing but chaos and disorder.”

I’m afraid we are going to find out the truth of this observation hard way.

By: Mike K

Mike K — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 21:54:56 +0000

My favorite 4th of July was sailing to Hawaii and watching my young crew shooting off fireworks from the lee rail. 42 years ago today.

By: Cicero

Cicero — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 21:13:51 +0000

Celebrate the brave-hearted men, especially Thomas Jefferson, who declared themselves on July 4, 1776 against the world’s greatest and only superpower.

When I was in Charlottesville in the late ’60s as a medical trainee, locals spoke of “Mr. Jefferson”, the founder of the Univ. of Virginia, as if he’d just gone away for the weekend. With respect and awe.
Now, as a result of media race hysteria, his name seldom comes up anymore. One marginal sin trumps many enduring accomplishments for the Left only if not committed by them. And the rest of us are suckers for being sucked in. The Left can sin like Satan and get away with it.
Thank you, Mr. Jefferson!