Life

From vikingvista on Cafe Hayek:

“‘aggregate demand’ is not a very good simplification for what makes a real economy tick.

The textbook aggregate demand story ignores how people view the future…”

It ignores how people must individually choose amongst trade-offs whose costs can only be revealed by their integration with the decisions of others in the resource network.

Massive government spending changes the appearance of those costs, causing people to make decisions that in the absence of government spending would be too costly and rationally avoided.

The result is the development of a network that cannot sustain itself without government spending. It also cannot be sustained with government spending, since government spending is necessarily limited.

Government spending can only interfere with economic recovery, because the economy it creates, is one dependent upon government spending.”

Right on! This should be so self evident that any politician who proposes stimulus spending is either lying or has never taken any type of economics course before. Anyone else have some thoughts?

Economics, Political Cafe Hayek, Keynes, Russ Roberts

The New York Times being shown to be inconsistent as usual in their quest to support more government regulation in every aspect of American society, except for their line of business.

Read about that here at Weblog Bahamas

Political

It’s called Getting Things GNOME!. Go try it out.

News

Over a month ago, I had ordered from Actel one of their brand new SmartFusion evaluation kits. It arrived this week and I finally get to experiment with it and return to experimenting and further honing my VHDL skills. I am pretty excited about this and hope to use this board, along with the hardcore ARM Cortex M3 microprocessor on board for my home automation project.

Here’s a link to the page on Actel’s website which contains information about the SmartFusion evaluation kit. Actel SmartFusion Eval Kit

From their site, this kit includes the following:

The SmartFusion Evaluation Kit board includes:

* A2F200M3F-FGG484ES
o 200,000 System FPGA gates, 256 KB flash memory, 64 KB SRAM, and additional distributed SRAM in the FPGA fabric and external memory controller
o Peripherals include Ethernet, DMAs, I2Cs, UARTs, timers, ADCs, DACs and additional analog resources
o Refer to the SmartFusion product page for full device information
* SPI-flash memory connected to SPI_0 on the device
* USB connection for programming and debug from Actel’s design tools
* USB to UART connection to UART_0 for HyperTerminal examples
* 10/100 Ethernet interface with on-chip MAC and external PHY
* RVI header for application programming and debug from either Keil or IAR Systems
* Mixed-signal header for daughter card support

User Inputs and Outputs

* OLED display with I2C interface connected to I2C_0 on the device
* First-order ΣΔ DAC (sigma delta) output with 12-bit 500 Ksps update rate
* Potentiometer used to vary voltage input for voltage and current monitoring
* 8 LEDs connected to the FPGA fabric for FPGA demonstration
* 2 user input switches connected through FPGA fabric
* Both LEDs and switches can be used with GPIO by connecting through the fabric
* Selector to choose between GNU SoftConsole or RVI-Header for debug
* Selector to switch between programming the device (fabric) and debug mode
* On-board 20 MHz crystal for system clock
* On-board 32.768 KHz for RTC
* 5 user I/Os for debug
* Option to use internal 1.5 V regulator

Having used the original Fusion FPGA and softcore ARM Cortex M1 along with their toolset, I can speak to the robustness, ease-of-use and rapidness of the whole design process. It’s integrated, easy and slick. I’m going to start out with a basic hello world VHDL and C combo today just to make sure my memory is refreshed and I get a feel for the differences in the upgraded tools since I lasted used it.

Engineering, Personal Actel, ARM, Cortex M3, FPGA, Libero, SmartFusion, SoftConsole

Klavan at http://www.andrewklavan.com/2010/04/29/christian-libertarianism/

Andrew sums up fairly accurately why I believe in the libertarian philosophy as a follower of Christ.

“Over at our much beloved Big Hollywood last week, filmmaker Leigh Scott had some thoughtful and entertaining comments on Kick-Ass, a movi…e he liked and which I haven’t seen. He says it’s a libertarian film and, as a side note, goes on to discuss what he feels are the differences between
libertarian conservatives and Christian conservatives: “A very conservative, religious friend once asked me to explain my views. He was stumped that we agreed on almost everything. But,
when a lot of the social issues came up, I kinda shuffled my feet and looked to the ground. I summarized it this way: He and I could spend all day Saturday agreeing about taxes, the role of government, and foreign policy, yet, on Sunday, he would be in church and I would be
nursing a hangover. Libertarians are the party boys and girls of the conservative
movement.”

Now there’s not only some truth to this but it’s a pretty common point of view. And yet, speaking in a broader sense, I disagree. I believe libertarianism is – or at least should be – the Christian
approach. When Jesus said all that stuff about judge not lest ye be judged, and don’t take the speck from your neighbor’s eye when you should be dealing with the two-by-four stuck in your own, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t just messing with us. I also think he meant something very specific. He did not – could not – have meant that we can’t make moral judgments, can’t say, hey, taking your kids to the park is good – telling them to blow themselves up to kill Jews, not so much. Of course we can. What we can’t judge, as I see it, is another person’s state of grace, his standing with God. (CS Lewis has some terrific stuff about this in The Great Divorce.) Our moral decisions about ourselves can be spiritual. Our moral decisions about other people can only be practical. I try very hard to live by my lights (informed by my understanding of gospel teaching). You want to argue about my ideas with me over a drink, I’m happy to oblige. But I don’t want you to interfere with me as long as I do no harm and, conversely, I don’t want to force anyone to do or love or live as I see fit. All I do ask is that you
don’t try to make me pay my children’s inheritance to clean up the results of your moral choices. Pay for them yourself.

There’s an idea going around that being a libertarian means not only not forcing your spiritual views on others but actually having no spiritual views at all. I would say it’s my strongly held spiritual
beliefs – and my desire to protect them from your interference – that make me want to leave you to yours. I’m a Christian Libertarian.”

Economics, Personal, Political

In response to the following comment from this story on Cafe Hayek by commenter Thomas M. Hermann:

I think you are expressing the biggest problem with the entire debate. It was framed in terms of a comprehensive overhaul or maintaining the status quo that everyone agreed was not acceptable. I blame the Republicans for letting the debate get framed this way.

What the opposition to ObamaCare failed to do was organize an incrementally applied set of reforms that would promote consumer driver health care. Granted, there were various ideas for promoting consumer driven health care thrown against the wall to see what would stick, but nothing coherent and coordinated.

So, the meta-question: Is it possible for those of us that advocate emergent order to centrally plan to counter the central planners and facilitate the conditions for emergent order to occur?

Kind of a contradiction in purpose, isn’t it? Explains to me why we find ourselves in this position, though. Maybe we should double down on emergent order and have faith that the central planners will collapse under their own weight. I’m not sure I’m ready to clean up the resulting mess, though.

Ugh.

Kind of a contradiction in purpose, isn’t it? Explains to me why we find ourselves in this position, though. Maybe we should double down on emergent order and have faith that the central planners will collapse under their own weight. I’m not sure I’m ready to clean up the resulting mess, though.”

That is exactly the conundrum that I ponder quite often. Do I just wait until the socialist system collapses under its own weight, or do I take an active, but hugely underrepresented view of trying to restore and go beyond what the founders of the U.S. setup? This is why I believe that a democratic republic is still a flawed system of government. It will never remain small forever. A great revolution in political thought is necessary to come up with a very bare-bones system (or systems that compete) that protects property rights and nothing more. I don’t have much faith that this will ever happen however because those who “lead” become increasingly more arrogant in their obtained knowledge that this time, humanity can be cajoled into a more respectable version.

Political, healthcare freedom, liberty, Obamacare

So I’ve been interested in trying out the P90X routine from www.beachbody.com for some time. They have an infomercial that I’ve seen several times. But who actually believes an infomercial about exercise or exercise equipment? Not me!

Recently I’ve run into people who have actually tried P90X and had a positive impression of it. None of these people seemed to have followed it closely, but enough to get me curious enough to order it. So I ordered the 12 DVD set from amazon.com along with some resistance bands and a pull-up bar. I bought a heart rate monitor from Dick’s which they also highly recommend.

I’m on day 6 of 90 right now and it’s been fabulous. Wednesday of this week is the only day that I didn’t have a moment at all to fit the exercise routine into, but that’s ok because I’m switching my scheduled day off with Wednesday. I will be posting my before shots here soon. I hope to see great results. I’m not really overweight, but I do feel like a have a bit more body fat on me than I’d like. My challenge is to see just how lean and ripped I can get and to vastly improve my flexibility, cardiovascular stamina and percent body fat to decrease. P90X is a 6 day on, 1 day off routine for 90 straight days. It’s very intense and challenging and I love it! Tony Horton is the trainer in the videos who leads the exercises. He’s very motivating and I think this is half of what makes P90X so great.

Stayed tuned for my progress over the 90 days. It’s only been 6 days so far and P90X has revolutionized my exercise world like never before.

Exercise, Personal Exercise, P90X, Tony Horton

I finally remembered to send off an email to the Monon Place apartments in Broad Ripple about their south Kessler Blvd. entrance/exit and the safety hazard that it posses. So this is what I emailed them. I’d like to get Indianapolis to improve Kessler Blvd. as well. Any advice for how to go about getting heard by the city?

I want to write you and let you know that I believe your apartment entrance/exit on Kessler Blvd. is very dangerous and posses a great safety risk. Just before Christmas, a girl who is a resident of your apartment complex, drove south on the main parking lot drive towards Kessler on a morning that had about an inch of slippery, wet snow. The parking lot had not been cleared or treated with salt at all. Due to the mounds of dirt that surround this entrance/exit, I could not see this girl heading down the drive towards Kessler. She was going way too fast, could not stop in time, and hit me as I was traveling towards College Ave on Kessler.

I would appreciate a response with your thoughts.

Personal accident, Indianapolis, Kessler, Monon Place

For the past three mornings I have woken up to Morning Edition on my local NPR station talking with some “experts” about the banking and medical industries in the U.S. I find it absolutely ridiculous how easily these experts speak of providing the correct incentives and punishments to these two industries to shape things for more efficiency and fairness. Who do they think they are, omniscient gods? The U.S. medical industry is over a $1 trillion industry annually and the billions, if not trillions of transactions are extremely complex and not able to fit under a one-size-fits-all command-and-control solution. I find it arrogant and very disingenuous to suggest that a small group of politicians (aka lawyers) can correctly design or even guide these industries into “what they should be.”

NPR, in general, has had a lot of recent programs talking to these types of people and the interviewers do not seem to press their guests as to why they are more capable than your average citizen in designing something that is not able to be designed. To think otherwise is to be part of an elite group of people who have their heads in the clouds. Or should I remind everyone that industry design on a national scale was tried many times with one of the most egregious examples being the U.S.S.R. It didn’t work, it still doesn’t work, and the U.S. is not any smarter or different. This type of thinking and action only takes away the freedoms of which the U.S. was founded on when the founders tried to escape from the design-crazy Europe. The government and their elite co-conspirators are going to lead the U.S. into a country that can no longer do anything. It won’t be fair, it will prop up certain minority groups who have the most money to lobby, and it will turn into a country of stagnation, low wages, little freedom, and a VERY powerful political class.

NPR, if it so desires to be comprehensive in its coverage of the healthcare debate, should also have reports questioning on whether the government is even capable of fixing rising healthcare costs. Investigate and report on the fact that most politicians are not trained in any of the industries that they seek to legislate and thus direct. Why not investigate from other experts like Prof. Russ Roberts of George Mason University whether staying out of the medical industry is a better idea? Maybe the politicians need to undo past mistaken legislation that gives skewed incentives to companies to provide health insurance only. Why not get rid of the entirely unfair laws that restricts U.S. citizens from buying health insurance across state lines? NPR is a somewhat tax-funded media source. As a tax-payer, I would like to see this kind of reporting. Please prove me wrong that publicly funded media is not an outlet for bigger government and government-favored solutions only. I want to hear all sides – government and the opposite of government.

Political design, elite, experts, healthcare, Morning Edition, NPR, politicians

From the website Cafe Hayek, Donald Boudreaux writes:

My old and very dear friend Kerry “Over the Hump” Dugas prompts me to post this letter that I sent to the New York Times on 12 December 2004:

John Horgan asks “How do you denounce dogmatism in others without succumbing to it yourself?” (“Keeping the Faith, in My Doubt,” Dec. 12).  The answer is to abandon the government-knows-best creeds of modern “liberals” and conservatives, and to join the likes of Milton Friedman, John Stossel, and your own columnist Virginia Postrel in championing individual liberty.

Champions of liberty tolerate the blooming of countless flowers – some beautiful, some horrid, many ordinary, but each growing in its own way, obliged by law only to avoid interfering with others.  Champions of liberty understand that our world’s complexity is best met, not with clever central plans, but with unleashing as much creative human energy as possible.

The phrase “Let the market handle it” is shorthand for “Because any one person’s or group’s ideas are too likely flawed and certainly incomplete, let anyone who wishes have a crack at identifying and solving problems – and let each person choose which solution seems best to him or her.”  Only by rejecting the rule of experts and scolds can we avoid dogmatism.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Do you agree with Don? Personally, I love that last paragraph that explains what people mean by the phrase “let the market handle it.” I think that we who uphold this view need to use this explanation more than the short phrase so that we don’t sound naive and dogmatic.

Economics, Political Cafe Hayek, dogmatism, Don Boudreaux, market