All Things Considered (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)

All Things Considered (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)
- Highlight Loc. 211-14  | Added on Saturday, October 15, 2011, 03:27 AM

For when we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility. Thus, for instance, when a man is in love with a woman he takes special pleasure in the fact that a woman is unreasonable. Thus, again, the very pious poet, celebrating his Creator, takes pleasure in saying that God moves in a mysterious way.

The Myth of Japan's Lost Decades

The Myth of Japan's Lost Decades
- Highlight Loc. 356-67  | Added on Sunday, October 16, 2011, 04:21 PM

It is critically important to understand that if a country does not continually destroy real savings and real capital through credit creation and inflation, it does not need to continually save and accumulate new funds for investment. The idea of seeking more and more savings for investment purposes each year in most countries is prevalent only because the current stock of monetary savings and capital is continually being diminished by credit creation and inflation (this aside from the physical capital which is destroyed via malinvestment). When credit is not diminished in this way, it remains intact, and its value increases through time as prices fall. In this way, the same capital can fund more investments through time, and new and additional capital is not constantly needed to replace previous capital.

The Myth of Japan's Lost Decades

The Myth of Japan's Lost Decades
- Highlight Loc. 415-17  | Added on Sunday, October 16, 2011, 04:26 PM

[8] New money and credit will simply create a relative overproduction in some industries (e.g., real estate) relative to others.

The Myth of Japan's Lost Decades

The Myth of Japan's Lost Decades
- Highlight Loc. 410-12  | Added on Sunday, October 16, 2011, 04:25 PM

Real demand can come only from goods or services actually produced, which can in turn be exchanged for other goods and services. What's needed are more goods, not more claims on goods, i.e., money.

Stephen LaBerge - Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming

Stephen LaBerge - Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming
- Highlight on Page 22 | Added on Monday, October 17, 2011, 01:30 AM

Each of us has his or her own individual dreamsigns, though some are familiar to most of us, like the case of going to work in your pajamas

The Myth of Japan's Lost Decades

The Myth of Japan's Lost Decades
- Highlight Loc. 239-54  | Added on Sunday, October 16, 2011, 03:53 PM

Though GDP growth of a single country does not tell us much, a comparison of GDP per capita between countries does. This is due to the fact that GDP is mainly a measure of money. Largely free-floating currencies, such as those of Japan and the United States, are adjusted by the markets so as to maintain relative prices between the two countries in order to keep purchasing power at parity.

The Myth of Japan's Lost Decades

The Myth of Japan's Lost Decades
- Highlight Loc. 95-98  | Added on Sunday, October 16, 2011, 05:50 AM

The misleading measurement of growth in question is GDP growth, because it is practically the sole indicator used by professionals to assess economic output. The problem is that GDP is in fact not a measure of real, physical production of goods and services, as it is intended to be. It is primarily a measure of inflation, which it is not intended to be.

All Things Considered (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)

All Things Considered (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)
- Highlight Loc. 237-41  | Added on Saturday, October 15, 2011, 03:11 PM

A hundred years ago we had the ideal of the Industrious Apprentice; boys were told that by thrift and work they would all become Lord Mayors. This was fallacious, but it was manly, and had a minimum of moral truth. In our society, temperance will not help a poor man to enrich himself, but it may help him to respect himself. Good work will not make him a rich man, but good work may make him a good workman. The Industrious Apprentice rose by virtues few and narrow indeed, but still virtues. But what shall we say of the gospel preached to the new Industrious Apprentice; the Apprentice who rises not by his virtues, but avowedly by his vices?

The Theory Of Money And Credit (Ludwig Von Mises)

The Theory Of Money And Credit (Ludwig Von Mises)
- Highlight Loc. 718-21  | Added on Thursday, October 13, 2011, 01:36 PM

On the basis of these estimations an exchange may take place in which three pears are given for two apples. Yet it is clear that the determination of the numerically precise exchange-ratio 2:3, taking a single fruit as a unit, in no way presupposes that A and B know exactly by how much the satisfaction promised by possession of the quantities to be acquired by exchange exceeds the satisfaction promised by possession of the quantities to be given up.)

All Things Considered (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)

All Things Considered (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)
- Highlight Loc. 146-55  | Added on Thursday, October 13, 2011, 01:35 AM

I can give two chance cases in which the common or Cockney joke was a much better prophecy than the careful observations of the most cultured observer. When England was agitated, previous to the last General Election, about the existence of Chinese labour, there was a distinct difference between the tone of the politicians and the tone of the populace. The politicians who disapproved of Chinese labour were most careful to explain that they did not in any sense disapprove of Chinese. According to them, it was a pure question of legal propriety, of whether certain clauses in the contract of indenture were not inconsistent with our constitutional traditions: according to them, the case would have been the same if the people had been Kaffirs or Englishmen. It all sounded wonderfully enlightened and lucid; and in comparison the popular joke looked, of course, very poor. For the popular joke against the Chinese labourers was simply that they were Chinese;

The Depression You Never Heard Of - 1920-1921

The Depression You Never Heard Of - 1920-1921
- Highlight Loc. 42-48  | Added on Thursday, October 13, 2011, 01:07 AM

Writing in 1934, Lionel Robbins first noted that during previous crises, the solution had been for central banks to charge a high discount rate to separate the wheat from the chaff. Those firms that were truly solvent but illiquid would be willing to pay the high interest rates on central-bank loans to get them through the storm. Firms that were simply insolvent, on the other hand, would know the jig was up because they couldn’t afford the high rates. Yet this tough love was not administered after the 1929 crash, as Robbins explained: “In the present depression we have changed all that. We eschew the sharp purge. We prefer the lingering disease. Everywhere, in the money market, in the commodity markets and in the broad field of company finance and public indebtedness, the efforts of Central Banks and Governments have been directed to propping up bad business positions.”

The Panic of 1819 (Murray N. Rothbard)

The Panic of 1819 (Murray N. Rothbard)
- Highlight Loc. 280-85  | Added on Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 09:37 PM

The consequent loss of confidence in the banks was demonstrated by the emergence of a premium for specie on the market. The discount on bank notes made it more difficult for the banks maintaining specie payment to retain specie in their vaults, since people could redeem their notes for specie, and sell it for bank notes at a discount. Specie came to be at a premium in terms of Bank of United States notes, even though the Bank was required to pay in specie. This reflected a lack of confidence in the Bank’s ability to continue specie payments. A premium on Spanish silver dollars—the major coin circulating in the United States—appeared in March, 1818, and reached 4 percent by June and 6 percent by November.

The Panic of 1819 (Murray N. Rothbard)

The Panic of 1819 (Murray N. Rothbard)
- Highlight Loc. 271-79  | Added on Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 09:35 PM

Obstacles and intimidation were the lot of those who attempted to press the banks for payment in specie.46 As the Philadelphia economist, merchant, and State Senator Condy Raguet wrote to Ricardo: You state in your letter that you find it difficult to comprehend, why persons who had a right to demand coin from the Banks in payment of their notes, so long forbore to exercise it. This no doubt appears paradoxical to one who resides in a country where an act of parliament was necessary to protect a bank, but the difficulty is easily solved. The whole of our population are either stockholders of banks or in debt to them. It is not the interest of the first to press the banks and the rest are afraid. This is the whole secret. An independent man, who was neither a stockholder or debtor, who would have ventured to compel the banks to do justice, would have been persecuted as an enemy of society.47

The Panic of 1819 (Murray N. Rothbard)

The Panic of 1819 (Murray N. Rothbard)
- Highlight Loc. 224-28  | Added on Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 09:31 PM

Bank of the United States and the Treasury to treat the notes of nominally resuming banks as actually equivalent to specie. The Bank thereby accumulated balances and notes against the private banks without presenting them for redemption. Many of these notes were original Treasury balances which had been deposited with the Bank but not claimed from the state banks. In New England, on the other hand, both the private banks and the branches of the Bank of the United States pursued a conservative policy. Indeed, they were forced to contract, as the New England branches of the Bank were continually forced to payout specie on the expanded note issue of the western and southern branches,

The Panic of 1819 (Murray N. Rothbard)

The Panic of 1819 (Murray N. Rothbard)
- Highlight Loc. 139-46  | Added on Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 04:18 PM

There was no uniform currency except specie that could be used in all areas of the country. Furthermore, the government, borrowing Middle Atlantic, Southern, and Western bank notes, had to make heavy expenditures in the New England area for imported supplies and for newly burgeoning textile goods manufactured in that region. The resulting specie drain and the continuing bank note expansion led inevitably to a suspension of specie payments outside the New England area in August 1814. The government agreed to this suspension, and the banks continued in operation—the exchange rate of each bank’s notes varying widely. The notes of the suspended banks depreciated at varying rates with respect to the New England bank notes and to specie. The suspension of the obligation to redeem greatly spurred the establishment of new banks and the expansion of bank note issues. The number of banks in the United States rose from 88 in 1811 to 208 in 1815, while bank notes outstanding rose from $2.3 million to $4.6 million in the same period.

Contos Fluminenses

Contos Fluminenses
- Highlight Loc. 698-701  | Added on Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 01:25 AM

Estêvão soube que fora ardente e entusiástico o amor de seus pais, na estação do noivado, durante a manhã conjugal; conheceu-o assim por tradição; mas na tarde conjugal a que ele assistiu viu o amor calmo, solícito e confiante, cheio de dedicação e respeito, praticado como um culto; sem recriminações nem pesares, e tão profundo como no primeiro dia.

All Things Considered (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)

All Things Considered (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)
- Highlight Loc. 45-46  | Added on Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 01:16 AM

If, for instance, there is such a thing as a vegetarian nation; if there is a great united mass of men who wish to live by the vegetarian morality, then I say in the emphatic words of the arrogant French marquis before the French Revolution, "Let them eat grass."

Contos Fluminenses

Contos Fluminenses
- Highlight Loc. 778-79  | Added on Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 01:33 AM

A carta dizia assim: Amanhã toma-se chá em minha casa. Se quiser vir passar algumas horas conosco dar-nos-á sumo prazer. Madalena C...

All Things Considered (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)

All Things Considered (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)
- Highlight Loc. 26-27  | Added on Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 01:11 AM

There are several maddening cases in which I took two or three pages in attempting to describe an attitude of which the essence could be expressed in an epigram; only there was no time for epigrams.

All Things Considered (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)

All Things Considered (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)

- Highlight Loc. 14-22  | Added on Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 01:09 AM

Their chief vice is that so many of them are very serious; because I had no time to make them flippant. It is so easy to be solemn; it is so hard to be frivolous. Let any honest reader shut his eyes for a few moments, and approaching the secret tribunal of his soul, ask himself whether he would really rather be asked in the next two hours to write the front page of the Times, which is full of long leading articles, or the front page of Tit-Bits, which is full of short jokes. If the reader is the fine conscientious fellow I take him for, he will at once reply that he would rather on the spur of the moment write ten Times articles than one Tit-Bits joke. Responsibility, a heavy and cautious responsibility of speech, is the easiest thing in the world; anybody can do it. That is why so many tired, elderly, and wealthy men go in for politics. They are responsible, because they have not the strength of mind left to be irresponsible. It is more dignified to sit still than to dance the Barn Dance. It is also easier. So in these easy pages I keep myself on the whole on the level of the Times: it is only occasionally that I leap upwards almost to the level of Tit-Bits.

Study Guide to the Theory of Money and Credit (Robert P. Murphy)

Study Guide to the Theory of Money and Credit (Robert P. Murphy)
- Highlight Loc. 146-49  | Added on Sunday, October 09, 2011, 06:50 AM

•   Even in modern textbooks, writers will list several “functions” of money. This can be confusing, because it makes it hard to pin down exactly what money is and why it so important. Menger’s approach—followed by Mises—is refreshingly clear: Money is defined as a commonly accepted medium of exchange, and this characteristic enables all of the other “functions” attributed to it.

The Theory Of Money And Credit (Ludwig Von Mises)

The Theory Of Money And Credit (Ludwig Von Mises)
- Highlight Loc. 699-702  | Added on Monday, October 10, 2011, 03:58 AM

From the point of view of the person making the valuation, the calculation whether a certain act of production would justify a certain outlay of goods and labour is exactly the same as the comparison between the values of the commodities to be surrendered and the values of the commodities to be acquired that must precede an exchange transaction. For this reason it has been said that every economic act may be regarded as a kind of exchange.

Contos Fluminenses

Contos Fluminenses
- Highlight Loc. 341-44  | Added on Thursday, October 06, 2011, 03:54 AM

CAPÍTULO PRIMEIRO Trocar o dia pela noite, dizia Luís Soares, é restaurar o império da natureza corrigindo a obra da sociedade. O calor do sol está dizendo aos homens que vão descansar e dormir, ao passo que a frescura relativa da noite é a verdadeira estação em que se deve viver. Livre em todas as minhas ações, não quero sujeitar-me à lei absurda que a sociedade me impõe: velarei de noite, dormirei de dia.

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Mary Sennholz)

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Mary Sennholz)
- Highlight Loc. 4675-80  | Added on Sunday, October 02, 2011, 06:24 AM

The effect of consumer demand upon capital is not demand for capital per se. Capital is always in demand as long as time-preference exists—as long as capital yields the reward of interest. Rather, the effect of “derived demand” will be, if strong enough, merely to change the form of capital goods, no more. If not otherwise impeded, capital will always flow to the most urgent of the least satisfied demands. The point is that capital accumulation—saving and investment—must come before “derived demand.” So-called derived demand merely shifts already existing productive resources from present applications to alternative but more rewarding applications.

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Mary Sennholz)

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Mary Sennholz)
- Highlight Loc. 4663-64  | Added on Sunday, October 02, 2011, 06:21 AM

According to Say’s Law, the source of purchasing power lies within production—i.e., supply creates its own demand—and therefore generalized overproduction or underconsumption is not possible.

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Mary Sennholz)

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Mary Sennholz)
- Highlight Loc. 4634-35  | Added on Saturday, October 01, 2011, 07:24 AM

Increased capacity is less of a calculated risk in response to increased current demand than it is to anticipated future demand.

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Mary Sennholz)

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Mary Sennholz)
- Highlight Loc. 4625-30  | Added on Thursday, September 29, 2011, 11:57 PM

3. Automaton role for entrepreneurs. Accelerationists share the danger common to all holistic and macro approaches to economic problems—namely, the submergence of individual and entrepreneurial decision (human action) to a constant factor within a pat formula. Such treatment implies on the part of entrepreneurs irrationality or sheer impulsiveness. Boulding described this situation thusly:3 The picture of the firm on which much of our analysis is built is crude in the extreme, and in spite of recent refinements there remains a vast gap between the elegant curves of the economist and the daily problems of a flesh-and-blood executive.

The Yield From Money Held

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Mary Sennholz)
- Highlight Loc. 4560-65  | Added on Thursday, September 29, 2011, 12:46 AM

107 Cannan made this point in a reference to the “disastrous confusions” which can arise through the “common mistake” of dividing currency into that which is “actually circulating” and that which is “idle.” (Modern Currency, p. 8.) The demand for houses, he said, does not depend upon the number of transactions in them, but comes from “those who want to hold houses: even the speculator wants to hold for a time.” (Money, 4th Edn., p. 72.)

The Yield From Money Held

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Mary Sennholz)
- Highlight Loc. 4256-59  | Added on Thursday, September 29, 2011, 12:46 AM

Hence money does not do its work by circulating. The common analogies of “the circulation of the blood,” or “the oil of a machine,” are both bad analogies. Because money units are exchange media, they just happen to change ownership more than other types of assets. If we imagine that the work of money is circulation, then we must conclude that money is always idle; for the transfer of money must be regarded as instantaneous!

The Yield From Money Held

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Mary Sennholz)
- Highlight Loc. 4246-50  | Added on Thursday, September 29, 2011, 12:45 AM

Indeed, the transfer itself occupies a mere moment whilst the services which flow from the possession of money are continuous over time. The essence of all these services is availability. In the terminology which I suggested in my Theory of Idle Resources,104 money assets are not unemployed or resting when they are in our pockets, or in our tills, or in our banking accounts, but in pseudo-idleness, like a piano when it is not being played, or a fireman or a fire engine when there are no fires.

Jack Kerouac - Os vagabundos iluminados

Jack Kerouac - Os vagabundos iluminados
- Highlight Loc. 3164-68  | Added on Tuesday, September 27, 2011, 01:12 AM

E para seguir o hábito de Japhy de sempre se ajoelhar com uma perna só e fazer uma pequena prece para o acampamento que deixávamos, para aquele em Sierra, e para os outros em Marin, e a pequena prece de gratidão que ele fizera para o barraco de Sean no dia que zarpou, quando estava descendo a montanha com minha mochila nas costas, voltei-me e ajoelhei na trilha e disse: "Obrigado, barraco". E depois acrescentei: "Blá", com um sorrisinho, porque eu sabia que aquele barraco e aquela montanha compreenderiam o que aquilo significava, e me virei e continuei seguindo a trilha que me conduziria de volta a este mundo.

The Yield From Money Held

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Mary Sennholz)
- Highlight Loc. 4244-46  | Added on Thursday, September 29, 2011, 12:43 AM

Surely the reality is that, although money is always held (except perhaps by misers) with a view to its being ultimately passed on to others, the act of passing it on is merely the culmination of a service (technical or speculative) which it has been rendering to the possessor.

All Things Considered (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)

All Things Considered (G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton)
- Highlight Loc. 9-10  | Added on Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 01:02 AM

I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them, and I do.

The Yield From Money Held

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Mary Sennholz)
- Highlight Loc. 4137-45  | Added on Thursday, September 29, 2011, 12:29 AM

Robertson (Sir Denis H.), in spite of his highly independent and original approach to the question, has never torn himself away from the tradition which regards “idle money” as unproductive. The following passage from the 1947 edition of his delightful textbook is not one of the “little bits of specially dead wood” which he cut out of the 1928 version. . . . The value of money is (within limits) a measure of the usefulness of any one unit of money to its possessor, but not to society as a whole: while the value of bread is also a measure (within limits) of the social usefulness of any one loaf of bread. And the reason for this peculiarity about money is the fact that nobody generally speaking wants it except for the sake of the control which it gives over other things.69 Again I ask, then why is the velocity of circulation not infinite?

The Yield From Money Held

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Mary Sennholz)
- Highlight Loc. 4096-99  | Added on Tuesday, September 27, 2011, 04:32 PM

“Some money may often lie untouched for years in the till, though it has not, on that account, ceased to serve as a means of circulation.”53 Here, surely, is an admission that money in the till is providing continuous services, that it is not economically idle, or “resting,” and that its usefulness is not concentrated into the moment at which it is spent.

The Yield From Money Held

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Mary Sennholz)
- Highlight Loc. 4038-40  | Added on Tuesday, September 27, 2011, 04:23 PM

Between Locke and Adam Smith, various writers perceived the usefulness of money, e.g., Cantillon and Hume, but they failed to see that “usefulness” is a mere synonym for “productiveness” or “yield.”

The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)

The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
- Highlight Loc. 1901-5  | Added on Sunday, September 25, 2011, 06:02 PM

Conventional wisdom holds that memory is like a serial recording device like a computer diskette. In reality, memory is dynamic—not static—like a paper on which new texts (or new versions of the same text) will be continuously recorded, thanks to the power of posterior information. (In a remarkable insight, the nineteenth-century Parisian poet Charles Baudelaire compared our memory to a palimpsest, a type of parchment on which old texts can be erased and new ones written over them.) Memory is more of a self-serving dynamic revision machine: you remember the last time you remembered the event and, without realizing it, change the story at every subsequent remembrance.

Action-based jurisprudence

Action-based jurisprudence
- Highlight Loc. 1130-36  | Added on Wednesday, September 21, 2011, 12:53 AM

Huerta de Soto likens the role of ethical principles to “automatic pilots” (173) that provide ex ante guides for action. He contrasts this with attempts to weigh each and every action in terms of perceived costs and benefits. He demonstrates how such an attempted pragmatic approach is actually a largely hopeless and ill-conceived task from the point of view of economic theory (170). Covey (1989) similarly reformulates traditional ethical principles in contemporary terms as “habits” or “practices.” Such habits have various degrees of likelihood of creating long-term patterns of individual and group success, patterns that are demonstrably superior to the results of attempts to weigh the “costs and benefits” of each action in advance in the absence of such guidelines.

Action-based jurisprudence

Action-based jurisprudence
- Highlight Loc. 1252-54  | Added on Thursday, September 22, 2011, 03:05 AM

Frederick von Hayek in 1949 restated Schumpeter’s observation that widespread state funding of education enables intellectuals to develop their worldviews with no practical experience of business or the management of property.

The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)

The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
- Highlight Loc. 1860-69  | Added on Friday, September 23, 2011, 08:58 PM

Consider a collection of words glued together to constitute a 500-page book. If the words are purely random, picked up from the dictionary in a totally unpredictable way, you will not be able to summarize, transfer, or reduce the dimensions of that book without losing something significant from it. You need 100,000 words to carry the exact message of a random 100,000 words with you on your next trip to Siberia. Now consider the opposite: a book filled with the repetition of the following sentence: “The chairman of [insert here your company name] is a lucky fellow who happened to be in the right place at the right time and claims credit for the company’s success, without making a single allowance for luck,” running ten times per page for 500 pages. The entire book can be accurately compressed, as I have just done, into 34 words (out of 100,000); you could reproduce it with total fidelity out of such a kernel. By finding the pattern, the logic of the series, you no longer need to memorize it all. You just store the pattern. And, as we can see here, a pattern is obviously more compact than raw information. You looked into the book and found a rule. It is along these lines that the great probabilist Andrey Nikolayevich Kolmogorov defined the degree of randomness; it is called “Kolmogorov complexity.”