ECONOMICS: Axiom — Rent control makes everyone poor except politicians!

Saturday, February 4, 2023

https://jeffjacoby.com/26719/as-any-economist-can-tell-mayor-wu-rent-control

As any economist can tell Mayor Wu, rent control never works
by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
January 29, 2023

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From the other side of the aisle, the renowned conservative economist Thomas Sowell agrees. Rent control policies, he said in a 2019 interview, turn everyone into losers:

“The tenants lose because they can’t find a place to stay. Landlords lose because they don’t make the profit they would have made otherwise. The builders lose because there’s no demand for apartment buildings if no one can make a profit on them.” By and large, observed Sowell, politicians are the only class of people who come out ahead. “They get the reputation of being for the poor and the downtrodden [and] preventing the evil landlords from raising the rent.”

As if that isn’t enough, rent control is infamous among economists for other negative impacts. It exacerbates racial discrimination in housing. It multiplies bureaucracy. It disproportionately hurts those it is intended to help. And what is true in America is true everywhere. When rent control has been tried in other countries, from Canada to Germany to Sweden, the outcomes have been dismal. Even communist Vietnam abandoned rent control after its destructive impact became apparent.

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Why do “we” have to keep reinventing the wheel?  “We, The Sheeple” should immediately give any politician or bureaucrat that mentions “rent control” the pitchfork and torches treatment.

Argh!

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GUNS: In Civil War 2.0, it appears that insurgents always win; war 5.0 will change the paradigm of war AGAIN

Tuesday, December 13, 2022

https://qr.ae/prp8Rx

Aditya Sharma
Moderator at the Munitions Annex2y

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If every US gun-owning civilians started rebelling against the government for some reason, how hard would it be for the US military to stop them?

With all due respect, good sir, I do suspect that you’ve framed this question incorrectly. Instead of saying:

“If every US gun-owning civilians started rebelling against the government for some reason, how hard would it be for the US military to stop them?

You should have asked this:

If every US gun-owning civilians started rebelling against the government for some reason, how long would the government last?

Why would I say this? After all, doesn’t just about every defense study from the post-war era rank the U.S. Military as one of the most powerful armed forces in the world? The answer to this question, you see, is really simple.

There are 100 million gun owners and at most 3 million members of the military and police[1][2][3].

Even if we round up the numbers of police and military to 5 million, it would still be quite a stretch to see them fighting a well-armed group that is nearly 20 times as large as they are. This is despite ignoring several facts that don’t look good for the military:

Supply chains largely dependent on civilians

If the reason for civil war is gun confiscation, it’s highly unlikely that the military, being mainly conservative, will support war against it’s own citizens[4]
.
Continous failures throughout history to successfully defeat insurgencies. Let’s look at three examples to prove my point:

  • Vietnam: The US entered a poor, devastated, war-torn nation. Should have been an easy fight, right? Wrong. After all those years, they had to pack up and leave – and we all know the result
  • Iraq 2.0: They should have taken this one easily – flat terrain, overwhelming firepower, willing politicians, and poorly-trained and led opponents. Yet after 20 years, there has been no result.
  • Afghanistan: Same as the last two. A nation of illiterate goat-herders pushed back the world’s strongest fighting force. This was, of course, only a short while after they kicked out the Soviets.

None of these three examples looks good for the US. However, it gets worse. American gun owners are better equipped, educated, and funded than any of Afghanistan, Vietnam, or Iraq ever were. Not only are American gun owners well equipped, but they are well led too, with 18.2 million veterans – many of whom are likely experienced with asymmetric warfare from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam[5]. They understand the doctrines and policies set in place to combat an insurgency – and how to work around said doctrines.

Ignoring all these drawbacks that the military faces, and negating any pragmatic and moral argument and simplifying this motion down to a question of numbers, the military still does not win. Under any circumstances. Sorry.

*** end quote ***

All politicians and bureaucrats need to run out in front of the parade and pretend to be leading.  If the parade turns on them, then they are toast.

‘If a battle can’t be won, don’t fight it,’ cautioned Sun Tzu, the revered Chinese warrior from 544-496 BC ”The Art of War’

“Let us hope our weapons are never needed – but do not forget what the common people of this nation knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny.” – Edward Abbey

“…if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”
— Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 1, The Gathering Storm (London: Cassell, 1948, 272, on the British guarantee to Poland in Spring 1939.)

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VETERANS: Project 100,000 died at ~3x the normal rate

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

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TIL about Project 100k, where LBJ and Sec of Def Robert MacNamara decided to lower the mental and medical standards to recruit more soldiers to fight in Vietnam. These soldiers died at ~3x the normal rate.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000

Project 100,000
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Project 100,000 (also McNamara’s 100,000), also known as McNamara’s Folly, McNamara’s Morons and McNamara’s Misfits,[1][2] was a controversial 1960s program by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) to recruit soldiers who would previously have been below military mental or medical standards. 

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Disgraceful!

I never heard this one or its results.

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PEACE: Hubris was our failing

Sunday, July 11, 2021

https://www.unz.com/pbuchanan/is-afghanistan-a-failed-mission/

Is Afghanistan a Failed Mission?, by Pat Buchanan – The Unz Review

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As in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973, the year our prisoners of war came home, America did not lose a major battle in Afghanistan.

Yet we did not win the war. South Vietnam was lost.

And contrary to the message awaiting President George W. Bush when he landed on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which was flaunting the banner “Mission Accomplished,” America did not accomplish its mission.

President Joe Biden said as much Thursday, when he responded to a reporter’s question, “The mission has not failed — yet.”

As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 impends, and with it our final exit from the Afghan war, the Taliban are overrunning districts at will, and Afghan troops are avoiding battle in what many see as a lost cause.

Monday, 1,000 Afghan soldiers fled into Tajikistan rather than face advancing Taliban forces.

Why did we not succeed? And what does our failure there portend?

We failed, first, because our initial mission, once accomplished, was altered and enlarged to where it became unattainable.

*** and ***

There never was a vital U.S. interest in Afghanistan worth a war of the cost in blood, treasure and time that we have just fought.

*** and ***

Many who cast their lot with us are going to pay with their lives, as will their families. And the enemies of the United States are likely to be energized by what they perceive, not wrongly, as a strategic defeat of the USA.

We did it to ourselves. Hubris was our failing, as it often is of great powers, the mindset exhibited by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when she declared: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.”

*** end quote ***

Unfortunately the “peace movement” of the 60’s and 70’s was astroturf against the R’s.

We, little L libertarians, are in that movement regardless of which side of the two-sided political spectrum.

Other than the Quakers, I don’t know who else we can count on to end the Hubris.  Certainly NOT the MIC (Military Industrial Complex).

Let’s cut the “defense” budget 20% and rethink the Dead Old White Guys desire to avoid a standing army.  Shut down the FBI and CIA while disarming the Department of Agriculture.  As a matter of fact, spin the Agriculture budget back to the sovereign States and shut it down completely.

What are the proper functions of the “central” Gooferment? At most “defense” and foreign relations.  Like the Swiss, no one messes with a neutral.

Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment (direct election of senators) and return the State’s power and get the money out of that layer of Gooferment.

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RANT: Open email to Jim Gearhart on Christie and pot

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Jim:

I was listening this morning about the Guv pontificating on enforcing Federal Pot laws.

Maybe at ‘Ask the Guv’, someone should ask him where in the Constitution’s enumerated powers, the Federal Gooferment gets to “regulate” drugs.

“We, The Sheeple” learn nothing — not from VietNam, not from Prohibition and on and on.

*** begin quote ***

I wrote this week’s KONK Life column yesterday. Got it out a day early. Don’t know where the energy came from.

The title is Portugal The Blueprint.

Portugal legalized drugs in 2001. All drugs. Even the real bad stuff like cocaine and heroin. Fourteen years later, the results are amazing. Drug problems significantly down in every area. Jails closing because there are not enough criminals to occupy them.

You will find the article interesting. Perhaps something the U.S. should consider. 

*** end quote ***

I am a little L libertarian and completely agree with ending the “(pseudo) War on (some) Drugs”. It’s a MEDICAL problem; not a legal problem.

My exemplar is Prohibition that created organized crime. (We got Prohibition because women regained the right to vote, but that it another rant.) Once Prohibition was repealed, there is no violence between Budweiser and Miller employees. And, “organized crime” had to move on to other prohibited substances.

Remember why Prohibition was repealed? Jury nullification.

Prosecutors could get a jury to convict any one on booze arrests; that’s why they had to get Al Capone on Tax Evasion.

So regardless of what the Gooferment, the politicians, or the bureaucrats say, American Juries can put an end to this nonsense all by themselves. No victim; no crime. Sorry. A juror doesn’t have to explain or even talk; just vote “not guilty” and this house of cards will come tumbling down. Argh!

What does an out of work Columbian or inner city drug lord do for a living?

AND, furthermore, the FDA should be in an ADVISORY role.

Leave “drugs” to the medical profession and people to figure it out themselves.

IMHO,
fjohn

p.s., I’ve left NJ because I couldn’t afford to die here. With no kids, the Pepuls Republik of Nu Jerzee would tax my estate 30%. Ask the Guv why it’s OK to rob the dead?

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