Infinite Monkey Theorems

Things worth reading…   

or at least pondering and forgetting quickly… 

So… how good is China’s new stealth fighter?  Not sure, but I’d start by asking this guy(here via MSNBC): 

HONOLULU — A former B-2 stealth bomber engineer was sentenced to 32 years in prison Monday for selling military secrets to China in the latest of several high-profile cases of Chinese espionage in the U.S.

US economics…

Businesses have not yet started hiring as UE claims are up.  Some of it is due to delays due to weather were people who would’ve claimed last week didn’t, but still not a good sign (here via BizTimes.com):

New applications for U.S. jobless benefits jumped by 51,000 to 454,000 last week, the U.S. Labor Department reported today, up from 403,000 during the previous week….

The four-week average of new claims, climbed 15,750 to 428,750, the highest level in two months, the Labor Department said. 

Additionally, the CBO reported this week, what all politicians have known for decades, but have consistently ignored…. social security is a looming and ever-growing problem (here via EpochTimes): 

In its Budget and Economic Outlook report for fiscal years 2011 to 2021, the CBO anticipates that the Social Security program will run a $45 billion deficit for 2011, and will be in the red for at least the next ten years. 

And…

According to the Associated Press, if present Social Security spending and funding levels are sustained and adjusted for the coming influx of Baby Boomers applying for and collecting Social Security checks, the program’s trust fund could be emptied by about 2037.

President Obama’s thoughts about this re: State of the union speech… no problems at all… full remarks here:

Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years.  (Applause.)  Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected.

Not “affected’?  I guess that doesn’t discount it from affecting us…. but why worry about that when we can spend more money on things we don’t need (speech cont’d):

Next, we can put Americans to work today building the infrastructure of tomorrow.  From the first railroads to the Interstate Highway System, our nation has always been built to compete.  There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains, or the new factories that manufacture clean energy products.

Tomorrow, I’ll visit Tampa, Florida, where workers will soon break ground on a new high-speed railroad funded by the Recovery Act.

That’s some vision there; to ignore the looming crisis and instead deflect to a new boondoggle.  & not just a boondoggle, but it seems this is the answer to so many of life’s troubles… the environment, traffic congestion, sprawl…. yes, this magical elixir that is so incredibly great, that it can’t possibly survive without federal government to operate.

But wait… it will create jobs!  (speech cont’d):

There are projects like that all across this country that will create jobs and help move our nation’s goods, services, and information. 

Of course if it’s a “jobs’ program” and not a new transportation program (look over here – shiny stuff)… well, let’s let Milton Friedman discuss jobs’ programs (here):

Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: ‘You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.’ To which Milton replied: ‘Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.’

Either way, here is a good response to the State of the Union from Cato.

Lastly, more great stuff from the Economist.  This time an Ideas Arena

As business leaders, politicians and journalists meet at the World Economic Forum’s annual summit in Davos to discuss the year ahead, The Economist will be inviting readers and guests to participate in a series of online debates questioning the future of global leadership. From now until February 18th, we’ll be examining the rapid emergence of a single global elite whose decisions, and opinions, affect us all.

The movie’s specific goal (here):

Amidst the strong and polarized opinions within the global warming debate, Cool It follows Lomborg on his mission to bring the smartest solutions to climate change, environmental pollution, and other major problems in the world.

& Considering the only other major films such as “Inconvenient Truth” are nothing more than fear inducing propaganda, Mr. Lomborg’s rational style and willingness to deal with the reality should make for a good film.

DA Posts on Bjorn Lomborg & The Copenhagen Consensus here & here

…At a time when America’s economy is still in bad shape and when we face numerous problems abroad, Obama has put the country through a shattering political battle—and, with legal challenges and promises of repeal, the fight may be just beginning.

This seems, at the moment, less a monument to idealism than to hubris.

Rep. Mike Honda, D-CA seems to think Fannie Mae knows their stuff (via Politico here).  In asking for more money to prevent legal foreclosures, he gives us this:

…In addition, Fannie Mae estimates that as many as 50 percent of the minority homeowners who received a subprime loan should have qualified for a prime loan. This clearly indicates the need for housing counseling services….

With all due respect to Mr. Honda, I think all this clearly indicates is poor critical thinking skills.  When a GSE which apparently knew nothing about the impending crisis and was proactively laying down on the job when it came to auditing loan standards gives you estimates on who might or might not have qualified for what kind of loan – laughter is the appropriate response.  Not regurgitation.

Cato on telephony deregulation, cell phone innovation, & ingratitude (here).  Discussing his memories as a child where phone line were costly and long distance was only slightly less expensive than actual driving as compared to today’s age:

Then came the breakup of the AT&T monopoly in 1984. Phone technology and competitive service provision exploded. In 1982, Motorola produced the first portable mobile phone. It weighed about 2 pounds and cost $3995.

Within a very few years they were much smaller, much cheaper, and selling like hotcakes.  Today there are some 4.6 billion mobile phones in the world, and counting, or about 67 per every 100 people in the world.

Then he moves forward to the ingratitude:

And to celebrate this incredible achievement, Slate and the New America Foundation are holding a forum titled “Can You Hear Me Now? Why Your Cell Phone is So Terrible.”

From the CEI (Competitive Enterprise Institute), we learn the EPA is about to expand its powers (here):

Washington, D.C., March 30, 2010 – The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) are expected this week to finalize their joint greenhouse gas (GHG)/fuel economy standards rule. This will make carbon dioxide an “air pollutant subject to regulation” under the Clean Air Act for the first time. The rulemaking, and the endangerment finding that is its prerequisite, will allow EPA to immediately exercise and continue to amass powers never delegated to the agency by Congress….

I suppose those supporting the decision know nothing about the EPA’s massive failure in just the Energy Star program.

Lastly, as a reminder, most places and people in the US did NOT buy homes they couldn’t afford (via WSJ here):

The U.S. still is feeling the effects of widespread housing bust, but a new report serves as a reminder that large swaths of the nation didn’t experience a boom in home prices and hasn’t suffered from the bust….

In fact, most of the insane double digit growth in real estate prices were in 5 main areas – NY corridor, Florida, Arizona, California, Nevada.  Make of it what you will that almost all flyover states never experienced the irrational boom, to be inevitably followed by the burst.

I know I’m unlikely to change many minds, but it’s always seemed to me that when trying to evaluate one country’s international progress on any one specific ideal, we end up narrowing the debate to such an extent as to make the question irrelevant.

In what seems to be a strong desire to answer questions objectively without respect to questions of ethics or other governmental policies, the intelligent ones among us miss the forest for the trees.

Towards that end – my two cents:

Dear Sir,

It seems maybe we should define leadership to an extent that either includes ethical behavior or can exist without ethics. For as long as the term leadership includes some notion of ethics, “ability to move fast” or the ability to put up light rail for the Olympics, simply can not matter in light of governmental policies designed specifically to limit the freedom of the individual and make the peasant serf work for the state.

Even *if* one wants to make the argument that ethics aren’t integral to the question, it’s still useful in evaluating “leadership”. For instance, when China starts implementing new green policies and initiatives, what’s the likely source of technology they will use? American? German? British? Swedish?

& Why? Because when people are allowed opportunities to flourish through a system that protects them with basic contract rights, innovation will flow much more easily. This is why China might manufacture most of the toys and basic electronic gadgets in the world, but the design process certainly came from someplace else.

An an example, they only recently successfully launched a satellite into orbit.  Prior to 1996, 2 out of 3 attempts ended in massive failures, meanwhile those freer countries had hundreds of them for various purposes including GPS, with even private companies using the technology successfully as well.

& lastly – it’s unlikely China would even admit a problem at all if they still retained the control that was possible just a few short decades ago. Today, they try to control press from earthquakes, the forceful removing of millions to make Olympic Village, their crime rate, and any number of other things they consider “bad” press.

Due to the explosion in the sharing of global information however, China finds it difficult to hide as much as they used to. Even the very closed off North Korea is finding this difficult as well.

So long as they continue to hide bad press, there’s no reason to think this “leadership” is anything other than a play at international recognition while hopefully strengthening their core domestic support.

In strategic thinking, this is known as a two-fer.

Either way – both goals have only one thing in common – staying in power and retaining as much control over the population as possible.

Removing ethics and the results of their standard operating procedure seems the only way to think of China as leading the world in anything.