They're starting the creative round of layoffs at work.

They didn't get me on this round, but it's early yet. I noticed some preliminary leading indicators of an upswing coming (I forget what, I just remember having the thought - somebody's buying something or other). But it all depends on how the gov't - intentionally or not - screws things up.

The Mises guys are predicting hyperinflation.

Well! We can get on with that bourgeois lifestyle, then!

My piece of the stimulus bill:

wireless and broadband deployment grant programs

(including transfer of funds to Al Erkkila for the Al Erkkila Personal Economic Stimulus Program)

For necessary and unnecessary expenses related to the Wireless and Broadband Deployment Grant Programs established by section 6002 of division B of this Act, $2,825,000,000, of which $1,000,000,000 shall be for Wireless Deployment Grants and $1,825,000,000 shall be for Broadband Deployment Grants: Provided, That an additional $365,000,000 shall be paid directly to Al Erkkila in the form of subsidized loans that do not require repayment. Provided Further, That the funds be used by Al Erkkila to retire to the Bahamas or for whatever. Provided Even Further, That Al Erkkila will receive free Green Bay Packers tickets for life. Provided Even Further Still, That Al Erkkila shall be treated as a cabinet-level appointment for the purpose of income tax reporting, and therefore no taxes shall be paid on any of the aformentioned benefits. And one more thing: Barney Frank is hereby expelled from Congress, effective immediately upon enactment.

H/T Mr. Pt.

Get yours here.

Hazlitt's One Lesson

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

Nine-tenths of the economic fallacies that are working such dreadful harm in the world today are the result of ignoring this lesson. Those fallacies all stem from one of two central fallacies, or both: that of looking only at the immediate consequences of an act or proposal, and that of looking at the consequences only for a particular group to the neglect of other groups.

It is true, of course, that the opposite error is possible. In considering a policy we ought not to concentrate only on its long-run results to the community as a whole. This is the error often made by the classical economists. It resulted in a certain callousness toward the fate of groups that were immediately hurt by policies or developments which proved to be beneficial on net balance and in the long run.

But comparatively few people today make this error; and those few consist mainly of professional economists. The most frequent fallacy by far today, the fallacy that emerges again and again in nearly every conversation that touches on economic affairs, the error of a thousand political speeches, the central sophism of the "new" economics, is to concentrate on the short-run effects of policies on special groups and to ignore or belittle the long-run effects on the community as a whole.

The "new" economists flatter themselves that this is a great, almost a revolutionary advance over the methods of the "classical" or "orthodox" economists, because the former take into consideration short-run effects which the latter often ignored. But in themselves ignoring or slighting the long-run effects, they are making the far more serious error. They overlook the woods in their precise and minute examination of particular trees. Their methods and conclusions are often profoundly reactionary. They are sometimes surprised to find themselves in accord with 17th-century mercantilism. They fall, in fact, into all the ancient errors (or would, if they were not so inconsistent) that the classical economists, we had hoped, had once for all got rid of.

It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. It is often complained that demagogues can be more plausible in putting forward economic nonsense from the platform than the honest men who try to show what is wrong with it. But the basic reason for this ought not to be mysterious. The reason is that the demagogues and bad economists are presenting half-truths. They are speaking only of the immediate effect of a proposed policy or its effect upon a single group. As far as they go they may often be right. In these cases the answer consists in showing that the proposed policy would also have longer and less desirable effects, or that it could benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The answer consists in supplementing and correcting the half-truth with the other half. But to consider all the chief effects of a proposed course on everybody often requires a long, complicated, and dull chain of reasoning. Most of the audience finds this chain of reasoning difficult to follow and soon becomes bored and inattentive. The bad economists rationalize this intellectual debility and laziness by assuring the audience that it need not even attempt to follow the reasoning or judge it on its merits because it is only "classicism" or "laissez faire" or "capitalist apologetics" or whatever other term of abuse may happen to strike them as effective.

Time Will Run Back, a couple excerpts

"But I'm still bothered, chief, and I'm sure most people are still bothered, by the huge profits made by a few enterprisers. Surely such huge profits aren't necessary in order to get them to produce the right goods!"

"Your trouble, Adams, and the trouble of these people you speak of, is that you and they still persist in looking only at the winners of the biggest prizes. You assume these to be typical; you forget about the offsetting losses of the losers. Let's look at a lottery. Let's say that the man who runs the lottery sells 1,000,000 goldgrams worth of tickets, and hands out 900,000 goldgrams in prizes, keeping 100,000 goldgrams for himself."

"Very reasonable of him," said Adams sarcastically.

"I'm not interested in him for the moment," continued Peter. "I'm talking about the subscribers to the lottery. Collectively they must lose money."

"Collectively they lose 100,000 goldgrams."

"Right, Adams. But each individual who subscribes dismisses this collective result from his mind, if it ever occurs to him. He subscribes precisely because he hopes that he, individually, will be a winner. He is not interested in the fate of the other subscribers. Now if the people outside of the lottery looked only at the winners of the huge prizes and thought these were typical, and forgot about the huge mass of losers, and if they began to talk as if these winnings were made at their - the outsiders' - expense, they would be talking the same way you are talking about profits under our new free enterprise system."

"But aren't these big profits, chief, at the expense of workers?"

"You will usually find, Adams, that the enterprisers who make the biggest profits pay the highest wages. If the profits of the successful enterprisers are at the 'expense' of anybody, I should say that they were mainly at the expense of the unsuccessful enterprisers who made the poor guesses and misdirected labor and capital....And why should you assume that the high profits of the successful enterprisers are any more at the expense of their own workers than at the expense of the owners of their borrowed capital, or of the consumers?"

Adams seemed lost in thought.

...
These two quotes come from different conversations. I felt the need to mention that. BTW, Adams is uncomfortable with calling Peter Uldanov, dictator of Wonworld, by his first name, as but he feels comfortable with "chief." Once you've read the book, you can point out how the previous sentence is inaccurate, but then you'll also know why. Shh.

"...Then it wouldn't be very accurate, chief, to call your new system a 'profit' system?"

"Certainly not in a declining or even in a stationary economy. It is of course, a profit-seeking system. But then I suppose there is a sense in which all of us are seeking 'profit' under any conceivable system. We speak. We speak of spending a 'profitable' evening when we mean merely that we have enjoyed ourselves. We say that reading a book has been 'profitable' when we mean that we have been instructed by it. 'Profitable' action of any sort is merely action that achieves, or partly achieves, the end we are seeking, regardless of whether that end is self-regarding or not.... I can't understand this unpopularity of 'profit' except as envy of the successful. Why should there be any more stigma attached to the word 'profit' than to the word 'wage' or salary'? Why should one form of income be considered less honorable than another? Why should the people who are afraid to take risks begrudge the rewards of those who have taken them successfully?"
...

I mentioned that you can download the book for free from Mises.org, and that I'd tell you how to buy a copy after the excerpts. Actually, I forgot that I can make the title into a link on this blog, so that's what I've done.

I don't suppose the boys would mind if I posted the blurb from the Mises Print on Demand Store:

A novel by Henry Hazlitt, first published in 1951 and revised in 1966. The plot line explores the economic theories of capitalism and socialism. It begins in a fully socialist society in which the new leader begins to rethink the economic basis of the system. Slowly, piece by piece, he dismantles central planning and replaces it with a market system. All the while, the characters engaged in a Socratic-style discussion about the implications of money, exchange, ownership, markets, entrepreneurship, and more. Hazlitt was well equipped to be a fiction writer. He was literary editor of The Nation for 3 years and the successor to H.L. Mencken at the American Mercury. This novel is an excellent introduction to the problems of economic systems, and can be a great benefit to young people who are curious about the meaning of economic analysis. It is, in fact, suitable for all ages.

There was one other bit that I thought was awesome. Let's see if I can find it...

Oh, here! From page 290-1 of the pdf:

"Precisely, Adams. We must absolutely forbid coercive monopoly. Perhaps that was the central evil of state socialism. The state's monopoly of power, and its monopoly of production. But we must do more than fight monopoly and encourage competition. We must draft our laws in such a way as to raise the level of competition. We must so draft them that a man who seeks his personal profit cannot attain that selfish goal except by promoting the public welfare."

"And how are we going to do that?"

"We must forbid him, Adams, to do anything that injures the public welfare. Therefore we must forbid theft, fraud, deceit and all misrepresentation of goods. We must illegalize every form of force violence, extortion, intimidation, coercion. We must compel men to keep their contractual promises, to pay their just obligations and to fulfill their contracts. The corollary to private property is private responsibility. We must not allow a private industry to thrive at the cost of killing or maiming its workers, or injuring consumers of its products, or menacing the public health, or polluting public streams, or polluting the air, or smudging whole communities with the residue of smoke. We must force every industry to pay the costs of the injury it inflicts on the person or property of others."

That's actually the earliest of the excerpts. Perhaps it would be better salesmanship on my part to place that one first. But I'm just too lazy.

The Gospel According to Clayton Makepeace

I’m amazed that so many folks have a hard time admitting they like money. I love money. In fact, I believe the guy who first translated I Timothy 6:10 needed glasses: I’m sure it should have read, “The LACK of money is the root of all evil.”

If money is evil, time is evil … freedom is evil … your very life is evil. Because all money is, is a physical manifestation of time.

You’ve got two choices of how to spend each day. You can spend it doing what you want to do, or doing what someone else – a client, for example – wants you to do.

So when you work, you’re selling your scarcest resource: Chunks of your life. You only have so many minutes on this planet and you’ve agreed to trade some of them in return for money.

Now, you can sell your life for peanuts if you want. Me? I’m looking for the highest bidder. That means making sure every minute I spend working brings me the maximum number of simoleans possible.

That lets me provide a great life for my wife, kids and grandkids. It lets me donate to charity. It lets me BUY BACK chunks of my life later on and have the freedom to do whatever I please. It means when I’m 96 years old and pooping in a diaper, I won’t be a burden to anyone.

Awesome! Genius!

Oh, before anybody goes off on me, let me include his next paragraph:

So my goal list has only one item on it: Make more money. So long as I’m not violating a personal ethic, or a law, or a regulation, or hurting someone else, I’m going for the moolah.

Kinda reminds me of "...And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

I'm really looking forward to that lightening bolt, aren't I?

Wisdom for entrepreneurs from Mises and Masterson

Mises quote from The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, an exerpt of which may be found on the Mises Blog:

...[T]he human mind has always been deluded by the image of an unchangeable existence. The avowed aim of all utopian movements is to put an end to history and to establish a final and permanent calm.

The psychological reasons for this tendency are obvious. Every change alters the external conditions of life and well-being and forces people to adjust themselves anew to the modification of their environments. It hurts vested interests and threatens traditional ways of production and consumption. It annoys all those who are intellectually inert and shrink from revising their modes of thinking.

Conservatism is contrary to the very nature of human acting.
...
The moral corruption, the licentiousness and the intellectual sterility of a class of lewd would-be authors and artists is the ransom mankind must pay lest the creative pioneers be prevented from accomplishing their work. Freedom must be granted to all, even to base people, lest the few who can use it for the benefit of mankind be hindered.

Amen, brother.

And Michael Masterson, from his ETR article, "My Door Is Open, But Nobody's Coming In," "Yes, you can succeed by doing it alone ... but why bother?"