Marx’s Defenders Should Explain Why His Ideas Never Actually Work

From FEE.org:

If an Idea Is Good, It Will Survive Imperfect Implementation

That is all fair enough. But it is not, and should not be, a Get Out of Jail Free card. If your ideas require impossible standards of purity in implementation in order to work, then maybe your ideas are not as great as you think they are.

A good idea will still work out OK even in a distorted and poorly-implemented version. That, arguably, is a big part of what makes a good idea good. The question is not whether Karl Marx, had he come back to life a century later, would have been a huge fan of the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, or the Hungarian People’s Republic.

He almost certainly would not have been. He may well have stayed in London, writing grumpy articles for the Guardian and the New Statesman about how politicians in those countries were disfiguring his ideas. So what? Political and economic theories are never implemented in pure form, and their adherents are rarely impressed by politicians who claim to be inspired by them. That’s just par for the course.

Marxists, however, are pretty much the only thinkers who accept no responsibility whatsoever for real-world approximations of their ideas. Third-Way advocates may have despaired over Blair, Hayekians can—and do—rant all day about Thatcher’s shortcomings, and ordoliberals* have written scathing condemnations of Konrad Adenauer. But ask them whether they think those respective governments did more good than harm on balance; ask them whether they think those governments were preferable to the next likely alternatives—and you will get an unambiguous and unqualified “Yes!” as an answer.

In contrast, hardly any contemporary Marxist would accept that whatever "real" socialism is, surely, East Germany was at least closer to it than West Germany, North Korea is at least closer to it than South Korea, Venezuela is at least closer to it than Peru, Maoist China was at least closer to it than Taiwan, etc.

And why would they? It works for them. Every other idea is judged by its necessarily crude, incomplete and imperfect real-world approximations, warts and all. Only Marxism has the luxury of being judged purely as a set of ideas, which something as mundane as real-world experience could never blemish. [read more]

The reason why Marxists can’t explain why Marx’s ideas never work is because most of them have never read his works. They think he was “cool.” If Marxists like earning interest on their back accounts or investing in the stock market these would be banned according to Marx and they were banned under Communism. Why? Because according to Marx these products do not have value. Only products a person makes by hand is valued. It’s called the labor theory of value. Marx actually called it the law of value.

Socialists can never really explain why Socialism doesn’t work either for the same reason—they don’t know really what socialism is. It just sounds “cool.”

Another article on Marxism: “Karl Marx and Marxism at Two Hundred.”

*Ordoliberism- an economic school of thought which tried to combine free-market economics with an active competition policy.

Nanomaterials that mimic nerve impulses (spikes) discovered

From Kurzweil AI.net (July 13):

A combination of nanomaterials that can mimic nerve impulses (“spikes”) in the brain have been discovered by researchers at Kyushu Institute of Technology and Osaka University in Japan.

Current “neuromorphic” (brain-like) chips (such as IBM’s neurosynaptic TrueNorth) and circuits (such as those based on the NVIDIA GPGPU, or general purpose graphical processing unit) are devices based on complex circuits that emulate only one part of the brain’s mechanisms: the learning ability of synapses (which connect neurons together).

The researchers have now developed a way to simulate a large-scale spiking neural network. They created a complex SWNT/POM molecular neuromorphic device consisting of a dense and complex network of spiking molecules. The new nanomaterial comprises polyoxometalate (POM) molecules that are absorbed by single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs).

Unlike ordinary organic molecules, POM consists of metal atoms and oxygen atoms that form a three-dimensional framework that can store charges in a single molecule. The new nanomaterial emits spikes and can transmit them via synapses to and from other neurons.

The researchers also demonstrated that this molecular model could be used as a component of reservoir computing devices, which are anticipated as next-generation neural network devices.

Source:  “Nanomaterials that mimic nerve impulses (spikes) discovered.”

Russian hackers targeted conservative think tanks prior to midterms

From Fox News.com (Aug. 21):

Microsoft on Monday said it seized websites created by Russian hackers to imitate conservative American think tanks, but instead redirected visitors to websites where their passwords could be stolen.

The New York Times reported that some of the sites that were targeted were the Hudson Institute and the International Republican Institute, think tanks that have disagreed with President Trump on ending Russian sanctions.

Three other fake domains were designed to look as if they belonged to the U.S. Senate.

“To be clear, we currently have no evidence these domains were used in any successful attacks before the DCU [Digital Crime Unit] transferred control of them, nor do we have evidence to indicate the identity of the ultimate targets of any planned attack involving these domains,” Microsoft said on the blog. [read more]

I thought the Russians were in collusion with President Trump? I mean it’s the conservatives that are more likely to be in favor of Trump’s agenda than the Left. Hmmm. Doesn’t sound like the Russians are treating their partners in crime very well.

Income Equality Is No Measure of Human Progress

From FEE.org:

Following the Great Recession of 2008, income inequality became a focal concern of those who feel that market economy has let them down. In 2011, “We are the 99 percent” became a unifying slogan of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In 2013, the U.S. President Barack Obama described income inequality as the “defining challenge of our time.”

A year later, Pope Francis called for a “legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the state*,” while leftwing economist Thomas Piketty tried to supply the movement for greater income equality with intellectual ammunition in his book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The elevation of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency impeded the movement’s momentum, but concern over income inequality did not disappear. Just this week, for example, The New York Times ran an article entitled "Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!"

According to Jason Barker, an associate professor of philosophy at Kyung Hee University in South Korea and author of the novel Marx Returns, “educated liberal opinion is today more or less unanimous in its agreement that Marx’s basic thesis—that capitalism is driven by a deeply divisive class struggle in which the ruling-class minority appropriates the surplus labor of the working-class majority as profit—is correct.”

No, Agreement with Marx Is Not Unanimous

To start with, it is crucial not to confuse income inequality and poverty. Standards of living are increasing, albeit unequally, in most of the world. Developing countries, in particular, have benefited handsomely from declining barriers to trade and movement of capital. That’s why inequality between countries is actually shrinking. As for inequality within countries, enrichment at the top has not caused mass impoverishment.

The market economy is not a zero-sum game, where someone’s gain must come at someone else’s expense. “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” is a synopsis of the socialist critique of the market system, implying the perceived inevitability of what Marx called the Law of Increasing Poverty. It is also a myth unsupported by empirical evidence.

The Evidence Is Not There

Another set of arguments proffered by those who are worried about income inequality revolves around a variety of psychological theories, which claim that a person’s happiness depends on his or her relative position vis-à-vis other members of the community. This critique of income inequality includes concerns over “social comparisons,” “reference groups,” “status anxiety,” and
“relative deprivation.”

Again, evidence in support of the critics’ arguments is scarce. “Contrary to an earlier belief that people are so mindful of their richer compatriots that they keep resetting their internal happiness meter to the baseline no matter how well they are doing,” Pinker writes, “richer people and people in richer countries are (on average) happier than poorer people and people in poorer countries.”  [read more]

*Pope Francis should know better. Socialism is not only anti-capitalistic but also anti-Christian. Then again the Left has corrupted Christianity like it has corrupted many other institutions.

This Magnetic Wire Could One Day Pull Cancer Cells from Your Blood

From Live Science.com (July 17):

Scientists think that magnets could be utilized in the body to detect tumor cells that other diagnostic techniques might miss.

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine created a magnetic wire that could, in theory, be inserted into a person's vein, where it could snatch up tumor cells that had been magnetized by special nanoparticles.

The device hasn't yet been tested in people, but the researchers found that, in pigs, the magnetic wire detected 10 to 80 times more floating tumor cells in the blood than a typical blood draw could. The results were published July 16 in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

The tumor cells that the magnetic wire picks up are known as circulating tumor cells. These are cells that split off from tumors and float through the bloodstream. By drawing blood and looking for tumor cells, doctors may be able to screen for cancer. (This type of cancer screening is called a liquid biopsy.) [read more]

That’s good news. Hope it works in people too.

How the woman who identified Hitler's dental remains ended up in prison

From Fox News.com:

Berlin’s ruins still smoldered as three Soviet military intelligence officers questioned a tall, lithe blonde in 1945. A Red Army lieutenant, the group’s translator, opened the burgundy satin cover of a cheap jewelry box and showed her its contents.

Nestled inside were charred human teeth, gold dental crowns and a complete lower jaw.

“I took the dental bridge in my hand,” Käthe Heusermann wrote decades later. “I looked for an unmistakable sign. I found it immediately, took a deep breath and blurted out, ‘These are the teeth of Adolf Hitler.’ I was showered with expressions of gratitude.”

Within weeks, Heusermann was in solitary confinement in a notorious Moscow prison — her reward for telling Josef Stalin an irksome truth.

When Berlin fell on May 2, 1945, front-line Allied troops were desperate to find Hitler. Years of fighting Nazis convinced them that nothing less than Hitler’s death would vanquish the Third Reich. [read more]

What a bastard Stalin was! Not only hiding the truth made the FBI believe Hitler could be still alive but made the team on History Channel's Hunting Hitler show waste their time investigating Hitler’s death. The show was interesting to watch though. I wonder if the Hunting Hitler team knows the news. Of course, putting the woman in prison who gave Stalin the truth was a travesty too. Then again that’s what dictators do.

Responsibility Is the Antidote to the Poverty Mindset

Commentary from Barry Brownstein on FEE.org:

Recently a psychologist friend was singing a familiar refrain: "My clients want their problematical circumstances alleviated, but few want to change how they see the world.”

Most intransigent among his clients are those with government benefits and mandated weekly therapy. Some have been coming to him for years. Their mindsets are characterized by hopelessness, but they have shelter and food and seem to be averse to change.

Going to therapy is a big event in their week. Qualifying for benefits is important to them. An oft-repeated question is, "Can you get me eligible for more benefits?" They were unlikely to take steps to hold a steady job, since doing so is at odds with keeping their benefits. 

My friend’s caring for his clients and concern over the waste of human lives is palpable. “People aren’t meant to do nothing,” he laments.

With a defensive tone, he adds, “and the poverty mindset I see has absolutely nothing to do with race.”

A Poverty Mindset Is a Choice

Dr. Anthony Daniels corroborates the observations of my psychologist friend. In his many books and essays, Daniels, writing as Theodore Dalrymple, describes the mindset of the underclass in England.

Dalrymple is no armchair theorist. He is a retired English physician who spent his career working in the inner-cities and prisons of England and also in sub-Saharan Africa. His hard-hitting observations of the poverty mindset are not without respect for the humanity of those he sought to help.

Having truly known the plight of the poor, he reflects upon what he learned about poverty mindsets. Dalrymple describes English poverty:

I never saw the loss of dignity, the self-centeredness, the spiritual and emotional vacuity, or the sheer ignorance of how to live, that I see daily in England... the worst poverty is in England—and it is not material poverty but poverty of soul.

This poverty of the soul is by choice. Dalrymple observes, of the English underclass, in his book, Life At The Bottom, “It could scarcely occur to you that they are other than fully conscious agents, in essence no different from yourself.”

Capable of making choices, those mired in poverty choose self-destructive patterns. “Day after day I hear of the same violence, the same neglect and abuse of children, the same broken relationships, the same victimization by crime, the same nihilism, the same dumb despair,” he recounts. Dalrymple then seeks to understand, “If everyone is a unique individual, how do patterns such as this emerge?”

Dalrymple rejects “Economic determinism, of the vicious cycle-of-poverty variety” as an explanation for ruinous choices made over and over again. Escape from poverty is possible. He writes, “Untold millions of people who were very much poorer have emerged from poverty within living memory in South Korea, for example. If being poor really entailed a vicious cycle, man would still be living in the caves.”

…………………..

The Self-Deception of the Underclass Is Aided by Intellectuals

Dalrymple points out that there are advantages to the underclass to pretend that they are innocent victims:

When a man tells me, in explanation of his anti-social behaviour, that he is easily led, I ask him whether he was ever easily led to study mathematics or the subjunctives of French verbs. Invariably the man begins to laugh: the absurdity of what he has said is immediately apparent to him. Indeed, he will acknowledge that he knew how absurd it was all along, but that certain advantages, both psychological and social, accrued by keeping up the pretense.

Pretending to not have the power of choice is not natural and has to be taught.

Dalrymple writes:

The idea that one is not an agent but the helpless victim of circumstances, or of large occult sociological or economic forces, does not come naturally…. On the contrary, only in extreme circumstances is helplessness directly experienced in the way the blueness of the sky is experienced. Agency, by contrast, is the common experience of us all.

Dalrymple heaps scorn on academics and intellectuals who theorize that the underclass doesn’t have agency. He writes, “In fact most of the social pathology exhibited by the underclass has its origin in ideas that have filtered down from the intelligentsia.” One example is the use of “the term ‘addiction,’… to cover any undesirable but nonetheless gratifying behavior.”

These academic ideas have pernicious consequences:

Not long after academic criminologists propounded the theory that recidivists were addicted to crime… a car thief…asked me for treatment of his addiction to stealing cars—failing receipt of which, of course, he felt morally justified in continuing to relieve car owners of their property.

Dalrymple’s deep dive into the poverty mindset encourages us to challenge those who would assure us that poverty has everything to do with capitalism and racism. Dalrymple would tell us those theories are wrong and to rely on them will not alleviate poverty. What is essential is for the poor to experience a mindset shift towards taking more responsibility for their lives. Is it not time to approach the poverty problem believing that the poor are able to make this essential change? [read more]

Even though the author doesn’t say so, but the “intellectuals” are mainly on the Left. Whatever the Left touches they inevitably destroy. If people are responsible for their income (ie saving their money and being mindful of their spending) then they are less likely to need the gov’t which makes the Left nervous (takes power away from them).

Does Trump embody the 10 essential traits of an alpha male?

From The Blaze.com (July 11):

Kriz Cruz and Doc Thompson layout 10 essential traits of alpha males and wonder: are these Trump? Justin Trudeau certainly didn’t come to mind for Doc or Kris…

Here are the ten essential traits of an alpha male discussed by Doc and Kris:

1. They lead.
2. They’re confident.
3. They can handle themselves during a conflict.
4. They’re masculine.
5. They have a certain amount of style and charisma.
6. They’re strong.
7. They’re risk takers.
8. They’re independent.
9. They’re competent.
10. They’re dominant.

See Doc and Kris break it down above and read the full list here.

Source: Does Trump embody the 10 essential traits of an alpha male?

I would say yes. And so do I. All kidding aside, I think so does President Ronald Reagan have these traits.

How Congress Can Reduce Obamacare Premiums

From Doug Badger & Edmund Haislmaier on The Daily Signal.com (July 5):

In 2019, Obamacare premiums are poised to become even more expensive. New York, Washington state, and Maryland are requesting to raise their rates for the individual market by an average of 24 percent, 19 percent, and 30 percent respectively. Nationwide, the Congressional Budget Office predicts premiums will increase an average of 15 percent for the Obamacare benchmark plan.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Earlier this year, we co-authored a study examining how Obamacare regulations raised premiums.  We reviewed dozens of prospective and retrospective actuarial analyses of Obamacare’s premium effects on both the state and national levels.

We found that premium increases for Obamacare policies were attributable to a maze of new federal insurance mandates, combined with a flawed subsidy design. That unhappy concoction produced disproportionately older and less healthy insurance pools, requiring insurers to price policies beyond the reach of many families and small businesses.

…………………….

Last month, a group of conservative policy experts, including us, and grassroots organizations unveiled a proposal that would exempt states from many of the federal requirements that our study found had led to higher premiums.  The Health Care Choices proposal would replace Obamacare premium subsidy entitlements and Medicaid expansion with a new program of grants to states.  The proposal would reduce premiums and enhance health care choices by allowing states to:

1. Eliminate the single risk pool requirement.
2. Use a portion of their federal allotments to establish risk-mitigation programs.
3. Escape the federal “essential health benefits” mandate.
4. Allow insurers to sell more affordable policies.
5. Allow insurers to charge young adults fair premiums.

[read more]

Character, Not Control, Is the Antidote to Evil

From FEE.org:

Humans are dangerous creatures capable of great evil. This inescapable truth bombards us every time we turn on the news. The weight of this knowledge bears down on every human soul, and with every tragedy, we are starkly reminded of it. We cry out for someone to save us from our inherent capacity for evil. Or perhaps we say to ourselves, “I could never do that.”

But you’re wrong, you could do that.

Humans can kill. We can harm, we can steal, we can commit grave atrocities. Why? Because we are free.

Being free means that your choices are your own. There is no government agency capable of monitoring our every action, our every violent thought, our every evil instinct. No government organization can prevent every act of violence because every act of violence is an expression of human power. There is no bureaucracy that is more powerful than the actions of individual humans who are free to choose to be evil.

With every tragedy—every school shooting, every act of terrorism, every high profile murder—we as a species ask why this is happening. How could any human choose to do harm? Yet perhaps the question isn’t why it happened. Perhaps the question is why more of us don’t commit atrocities.

We Cannot Be Good if We Cannot Do Wrong

Psychologist Dr. Jordan B. Peterson says that we can have no insight whatsoever into our capacity for good until we understand our capacity for evil. I think he’s right. Until we acknowledge that humans can be evil, we cannot choose to be good. If we did not possess the ability to do great harm, there would be nothing commendable about not doing so. If we could not sin, there would be no virtue in not sinning because it would not be a choice. We can only choose not to do things that are within our power to do. Otherwise, it’s a default, not a choice.

If people are free to determine the courses of our own lives, free to make our own choices, that inherently means that we are free to choose to do terrible things. The dark side of being free to be good people is that we are also free to be bad people. That scares a lot of people, both personally and societally. The darkness within our species is only a fraction as terrifying as the darkness within ourselves. Nothing is more terrifying than when we feel the darkness rising within our own hearts and we face the choice: do I give into evil, or do I rise to good?

It’s frightening, but it’s necessary for us as individuals of strong character to face our capacity for evil. Otherwise, we could not choose goodness. And if we can’t choose goodness, we float powerlessly in a vacuum of moral impotence, unable to hone the swords of our character on the whetstone of difficult choices. We have to be able to choose goodness to be good. Because you could do that, but you don’t. You have chosen not to.

………………..

Oppression and Character

There are only two ways we can prevent violence: oppression and character. We can empower the government to oppress us beyond the means of choosing violence, or we as individuals can choose to be nonviolent. Many cry out for the former, but should we choose that path, we are robbing ourselves and others of the ability to be good people. If we cannot choose evil, we cannot choose good. If good is a default derived from powerlessness, there’s nothing truly good about it.

So that leaves the other option: character. Character is something that starts in the heart of an individual. It is the state of facing one’s infinite options for action and choosing only those actions which do not deprive others of their lives, property, or dignity. Character is, above all, choosing to be vessels of benevolence rather than servants of evil. [read more]

Why Capitalism Is Morally Superior to Socialism

From Walter E. Williams on The Daily Signal.com (May 30):

Several recent polls, plus the popularity of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., demonstrate that young people prefer socialism to free market capitalism.

That, I believe, is a result of their ignorance and indoctrination during their school years, from kindergarten through college. For the most part, neither they nor many of their teachers and professors know what free market capitalism is.

Free market capitalism, wherein there is peaceful voluntary exchange, is morally superior to any other economic system. Why? Let’s start with my initial premise.

All of us own ourselves. I am my private property, and you are yours. Murder, rape, theft, and the initiation of violence are immoral because they violate self-ownership. Similarly, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another person, for any reason, is immoral because it violates self-ownership.

Tragically, two-thirds to three-quarters of the federal budget can be described as Congress taking the rightful earnings of one American to give to another American—using one American to serve another. Such acts include farm subsidies, business bailouts, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, and many other programs.

Free market capitalism is disfavored by many Americans—and threatened—not because of its failure but, ironically, because of its success. Free market capitalism in America has been so successful in eliminating the traditional problems of mankind—such as disease, pestilence, hunger, and gross poverty—that all other human problems appear both unbearable and inexcusable.

………………

A much larger and totally ignored question has to do with the brutality of socialism. In the 20th century, the one-party socialist states of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Germany under the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and the People’s Republic of China were responsible for the murder of 118 million citizens, mostly their own.

The tallies were: USSR, 62 million; Nazi Germany, 21 million; and People’s Republic of China, 35 million. No such record of brutality can be found in countries that tend toward free market capitalism. [read more]

Can Scientific Discovery Be Automated?

Commentary from Ahmed Alkhateeb on Next Gov.com (Apr. 25, 2017):

Science is in the midst of a data crisis. Last year, there were more than 1.2 million new papers published in the biomedical sciences alone, bringing the total number of peer-reviewed biomedical papers to over 26 million. However, the average scientist reads only about 250 papers a year. Meanwhile, the quality of the scientific literature has been in decline. Some recent studies found that the majority of biomedical papers were irreproducible.

The twin challenges of too much quantity and too little quality are rooted in the finite neurological capacity of the human mind. Scientists are deriving hypotheses from a smaller and smaller fraction of our collective knowledge and consequently, more and more, asking the wrong questions, or asking ones that have already been answered. Also, human creativity seems to depend increasingly on the stochasticity of previous experiences—particular life events that allow a researcher to notice something others do not. Although chance has always been a factor in scientific discovery, it is currently playing a much larger role than it should.

One promising strategy to overcome the current crisis is to integrate machines and artificial intelligence in the scientific process. Machines have greater memory and higher computational capacity than the human brain. Automation of the scientific process could greatly increase the rate of discovery. It could even begin another scientific revolution. That huge possibility hinges on an equally huge question: Can scientific discovery really be automated?

I believe it can, using an approach that we have known about for centuries. The answer to this question can be found in the work of Sir Francis Bacon, the 17th-century English philosopher and a key progenitor of modern science.

………………………

Bacon’s insights also revealed an important hidden truth: the discovery process is inherently algorithmic. It is the outcome of a finite number of steps that are repeated until a meaningful result is uncovered. Bacon explicitly used the word “machine” in describing his method. His scientific algorithm has three essential components: First, observations have to be collected and integrated into the total corpus of knowledge. Second, the new observations are used to generate new hypotheses. Third, the hypotheses are tested through carefully designed experiments.  [read more]

In 1981, programmers Patrick Langler and Gary Bradshaw wrote an AI program called Bacon that made scientific discoveries using experimental data. So, yes it maybe possible to automate scientific discovery.

What Happens When an MBA Student Raised in Communist China Reads Hayek

Commentary from Barry Brownstein on FEE.org (April 19):

Imagine being born during the bloody Cultural Revolution in China and growing up in a country with little economic or personal freedom. Few Chinese citizens had the knowledge that human rights are not granted by government, and those few who knew could not say. Few knew that government is not the source of economic progress; and again, those who knew could not fully share their understanding.

Now imagine you’re thirty-something years old, traveling to the United States to begin your MBA studies. In the spring of 1999, I taught an MBA economics class to a cohort of 30 such Chinese students.

The class was split between students from Beijing and Shanghai. Students from Shanghai—having more experience with the beneficial impact of liberalizing markets—were much more willing to embrace the ideas of classical liberalism.

Beijing students were more likely to believe in a larger role for government. This split between the Beijing and Shanghai students was most evident in a class discussion after the class read Hayek’s The Use of Knowledge in Society; the reading led to a discussion of central planning.

A student from Beijing was emphatic, “This theory is not applicable to China—China is a relatively poor country, and in a poor country the government needs to plan.”

An exasperated Shanghai student responded, “You miss the point, central planning is precisely why China is comparatively poor.”*

Hayek’s ideas were so provocative that soon the entire class had joined in; the two factions began shouting at each other in Mandarin. Someone, concerned about the din, called campus security. The students lowered their voices, but Hayek’s ideas had left their mark. I feel certain those students carry an indelible memory of that class. [read more]

*Bingo! The Shanghai student is right. Not only is he right about China but same could be said about N. Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and the old Soviet Union. Now Mexico is included in this group since they now have a socialistic president. Keep in mind Marx called communism scientific socialism. In China’s constitution they say they are a socialistic country.