If, as Daniel Henninger observes in The Wall Street Journal, Barack Obama's is shaping up as
a radical presidency, akin to those of FDR and LBJ, the US may be in for a dramatic expansion of government power not seen since those Presidents.
Considering that it took about 40 years before a President came along who challenged and at
least tried to roll back some of that statism, maybe the GOP should start looking now for that "new Reagan" to roll back Obama's programs when the time comes. It would be a shame to waste another 40 years. Granted, Republicans who spend money hand over fist like they have under George W. Bush will not have the credentials for that task, and neither will have those Congressman and Senators who voted for the bailout. Rather, the GOP should look to those state level leaders who have consistently and courageously spoken out against the new programs, even when those would benefit their states... I speak of Governors like Mark Sanford (SC), Bobby Jindal (LA) or Mitch Daniels (IN).
Clearly, once it becomes clear the outrageous extension of the government's reach has failed, a new dawn for fiscal responsibility will come. The GOP would do well to position themselves now.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Is doing something always better than doing nothing?
There are a few things that surprise and trouble me about the current financial crisis. One is that it appears to be used by politicians everywhere as a pretext for an unprecedented power grab. Sure, they involve themselves in formerly relatively free markets very reluctantly, they say. But the more honest statement is probably that attributed to new White House Chief of Staff Rahm Immanuel, who said (and I paraphrase), "It would be a shame to let a crisis go to waste."
The other things that really disturbs me is the hybris of politicians who feel they can micromanage the economy. But it may well be argued that the global economy of today is such an intricate web of interdependencies, that we just do not know what an intervention in one area will cause elsewhere. The strange mantra appears to be that doing something, or anything, is better than doing nothing. But the hippocratic rule of "first, no harm" may oftentimes imply that nothing be done, because any course of action may be harmful.
I think human beings in general, and politicians in particular, have a hard time accepting that there are forces better not interfered with. And by meddling, they invariably make things worse.
It is unacceptable to many that boom times are sometimes interrupted by bust times, such as always been the case in the history of mankind. It is a fairly recent development that economists, politicians, and central planners have tried to smooth out the business cycle. Yet, despite (or actually because of) the efforts of the best and brightest, this has never worked.
Historians today are beginning to debunk some of the Great Depression myths. Central to their thesis that the government's activity under Hoover and FDR may actually have prolonged the depression is the idea that individuals and markets abhor uncertainty. Having an activist government that produces hectic new approaches to managing the economy on a weekly basis creates uncertainty and we are seeing some of that again today.
In the 1960s, bright young economists began tinkering with the economy in the expectation that they could tame the business cycle. Ultimately, this led to the disastrous economy of the 1970s.
Both the 1930s and the 1960s are clear examples of government and presumed experts overreaching. Unfortunately, people do not seem to have learned from these experiences. And today, more sinister motives may also lurk behind those advocating a bigger government role in managing the financial system: these are people who are free market sceptics anyway, who relish what they perceive as market failures, and who see a chance to roll back the policies of the 1980s and 90s. By not accepting the intermediate pain of a downturn, and by vastly expanding government expenditures to combat it, they are laying the groundwork for worse problems in the none too distant future. But hey, then it will merely be time for more government intervention, right?
The other things that really disturbs me is the hybris of politicians who feel they can micromanage the economy. But it may well be argued that the global economy of today is such an intricate web of interdependencies, that we just do not know what an intervention in one area will cause elsewhere. The strange mantra appears to be that doing something, or anything, is better than doing nothing. But the hippocratic rule of "first, no harm" may oftentimes imply that nothing be done, because any course of action may be harmful.
I think human beings in general, and politicians in particular, have a hard time accepting that there are forces better not interfered with. And by meddling, they invariably make things worse.
It is unacceptable to many that boom times are sometimes interrupted by bust times, such as always been the case in the history of mankind. It is a fairly recent development that economists, politicians, and central planners have tried to smooth out the business cycle. Yet, despite (or actually because of) the efforts of the best and brightest, this has never worked.
Historians today are beginning to debunk some of the Great Depression myths. Central to their thesis that the government's activity under Hoover and FDR may actually have prolonged the depression is the idea that individuals and markets abhor uncertainty. Having an activist government that produces hectic new approaches to managing the economy on a weekly basis creates uncertainty and we are seeing some of that again today.
In the 1960s, bright young economists began tinkering with the economy in the expectation that they could tame the business cycle. Ultimately, this led to the disastrous economy of the 1970s.
Both the 1930s and the 1960s are clear examples of government and presumed experts overreaching. Unfortunately, people do not seem to have learned from these experiences. And today, more sinister motives may also lurk behind those advocating a bigger government role in managing the financial system: these are people who are free market sceptics anyway, who relish what they perceive as market failures, and who see a chance to roll back the policies of the 1980s and 90s. By not accepting the intermediate pain of a downturn, and by vastly expanding government expenditures to combat it, they are laying the groundwork for worse problems in the none too distant future. But hey, then it will merely be time for more government intervention, right?
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen
Just to get back in the groove of posting, here are a few pics from our recent long weekend in Copenhagen, truly a wonderful city.
Monday, June 18, 2007
The Hedgehog and the Fox
I'm not sure how many of you out there are familiar with the philosopher Isaiah Berlin..actually, I can't say I'm familiar with him myself, I keep mixing him up with the composer Irving Berlin is all I can say.
But he (Isaiah B.!) is credited with an essay that in turn is based on an ancient Greek fragment, "the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Berlin applied this nugget of wisdom to the world of writing and thinking, dividing famous poets and philosophers into two categories:
foxes, who divide their interests among a wide variety of experiences and thoughts and who can't be associated with a single big idea, and hedgehogs, whose view of the world is founded on such a single big idea.
In Berlin's view, examples of hedgehogs include Dante, Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Proust, whereas Shakespeare, Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, and Joyce are represented as foxes.
In the field of politics, my contribution would be that U.S. presidents Carter and Reagan also symbolize those two categories, with Carter a typical micro-manager who famously even involved himself in the scheduling of the White House tennis court, being a prototypical fox, and Reagan, who focused his Presidency on a few major goals ("lower taxes", "defeat communism"), set the agenda and then leaned back and let his staff do the work, standing out as a typical hedgehog.
Now, my literary and philosophical knowledge is not sufficient to analyse how fitting Berlin's categorizations are. The political example shows that you may expand the original saying somewhat to say "the hedgehog focuses on a few big things". The point I want to make is that all of us human beings have to deal with getting through this life successfully, given a limited set of ressources. And those who single-mindedly invest those ressources into a single goal or interest (the "hedgehogs") will likely go farther in that field than those who spread their ressources and interests far and wide (the "foxes"). Conversely, while they may end up more successful in their chosen field, the hedgehogs miss out on many of the joys of dabbling in various hobbies, interests and domains.
Still, the idea of hedgehogs being "better" or "wiser" than foxes (or vice versa) is certainly not true. Rather, as in many things, there has to be a "goodness of fit" among the individual's thinking style and his environment. There will be situations where it is adaptive to juggle many things simultaneously, whereas other situations may demand focus on one or two big issues. From a lifespan perspective, it would seem foolish to focus on too few things too early in life, before you had a chance to sample a wider selection of options and interests. Then, as life goes on, it may indeed be wise to focus on a few ideas and concepts that have turned out to make sense to you. Another possibility is that we need to be focused and goal-driven in our professional pursuits, while it will enhance our personal growth to have many interests in the private domain.
So, whether you see yourself as a fox or a hedgehog...or maybe as a mix of the two, I hope you have enjoyed these ramblings. Comments are always appreciated.
But he (Isaiah B.!) is credited with an essay that in turn is based on an ancient Greek fragment, "the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Berlin applied this nugget of wisdom to the world of writing and thinking, dividing famous poets and philosophers into two categories:
foxes, who divide their interests among a wide variety of experiences and thoughts and who can't be associated with a single big idea, and hedgehogs, whose view of the world is founded on such a single big idea.
In Berlin's view, examples of hedgehogs include Dante, Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Proust, whereas Shakespeare, Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, and Joyce are represented as foxes.
In the field of politics, my contribution would be that U.S. presidents Carter and Reagan also symbolize those two categories, with Carter a typical micro-manager who famously even involved himself in the scheduling of the White House tennis court, being a prototypical fox, and Reagan, who focused his Presidency on a few major goals ("lower taxes", "defeat communism"), set the agenda and then leaned back and let his staff do the work, standing out as a typical hedgehog.
Now, my literary and philosophical knowledge is not sufficient to analyse how fitting Berlin's categorizations are. The political example shows that you may expand the original saying somewhat to say "the hedgehog focuses on a few big things". The point I want to make is that all of us human beings have to deal with getting through this life successfully, given a limited set of ressources. And those who single-mindedly invest those ressources into a single goal or interest (the "hedgehogs") will likely go farther in that field than those who spread their ressources and interests far and wide (the "foxes"). Conversely, while they may end up more successful in their chosen field, the hedgehogs miss out on many of the joys of dabbling in various hobbies, interests and domains.
Still, the idea of hedgehogs being "better" or "wiser" than foxes (or vice versa) is certainly not true. Rather, as in many things, there has to be a "goodness of fit" among the individual's thinking style and his environment. There will be situations where it is adaptive to juggle many things simultaneously, whereas other situations may demand focus on one or two big issues. From a lifespan perspective, it would seem foolish to focus on too few things too early in life, before you had a chance to sample a wider selection of options and interests. Then, as life goes on, it may indeed be wise to focus on a few ideas and concepts that have turned out to make sense to you. Another possibility is that we need to be focused and goal-driven in our professional pursuits, while it will enhance our personal growth to have many interests in the private domain.
So, whether you see yourself as a fox or a hedgehog...or maybe as a mix of the two, I hope you have enjoyed these ramblings. Comments are always appreciated.
long time no blog
goodness how time flies! i guess i was waiting to see if anyone missed me. haha. anyway, i'm back and i'll try to post a few new mumblings and musings every now and then, even if only for myself :-)
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Sardinia, baby!
While I'm a little torn about the ecological implications of cheap air travel, I'll have to admit that it's great being able to hop on a plane and get yourself flown in no-frills style to some nice place at a reasonable cost.
Happily, easyJet flies from Berlin Schoenefeld to Olbia on the Italian island of Sardinia. We had booked ourselves into a cosy Bed & Breakfast place in the North of the island, and a snazzy little rental car to move around. While he had planned to keep our excursions to the Northern part of the island, it turned out we had underestimated the curviness of the roads. It was difficult to drive anywhere much faster than 40 mph or something (except on a few stretches of highway), so our action radius was somewhat curtailed. We did manage to see quite a bit of the rugged beauty and historic treasures, and it was a wonderful and relaxing 8 days.
Here's a few pictures that attempt to capture a little of what we saw:
Happily, easyJet flies from Berlin Schoenefeld to Olbia on the Italian island of Sardinia. We had booked ourselves into a cosy Bed & Breakfast place in the North of the island, and a snazzy little rental car to move around. While he had planned to keep our excursions to the Northern part of the island, it turned out we had underestimated the curviness of the roads. It was difficult to drive anywhere much faster than 40 mph or something (except on a few stretches of highway), so our action radius was somewhat curtailed. We did manage to see quite a bit of the rugged beauty and historic treasures, and it was a wonderful and relaxing 8 days.
Here's a few pictures that attempt to capture a little of what we saw:
How time flies when you're having fun
Oh my goodness, as Shirley Temple used to say so fetchingly... how time flies! Looks like I haven't blogged in month or so... thereby sorely trying the patience of my multitude of readers. ANd I hope they will accept as excuses any or all of the following:
- it was HOT here, and a sticky heat at that, so I hardly was able to function, let alone think up new blog entries;
- my birthday came and went, plunging me into midlife depression for a while;
- Andrea and I treated ourselves to a week of vacation on Sardinia, where I was blessedly away from the world wide web though not from the heat;
- upcoming exams kept me studying morning, noon, and night;
- did I mention it was HOT?
Anyway, I'll try to come up with some new stuff to share. First will be a few vacation pics.
- it was HOT here, and a sticky heat at that, so I hardly was able to function, let alone think up new blog entries;
- my birthday came and went, plunging me into midlife depression for a while;
- Andrea and I treated ourselves to a week of vacation on Sardinia, where I was blessedly away from the world wide web though not from the heat;
- upcoming exams kept me studying morning, noon, and night;
- did I mention it was HOT?
Anyway, I'll try to come up with some new stuff to share. First will be a few vacation pics.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Gold ships and silver ships
A line from a novel I read over 20 years ago remains stuck in my mind:
"There are gold ships and silver ships, but the best ship is friendship."
Corny, isn't it? And I don't even know if it's a well-known saying, or just something the author Joseph Heller made up. But I've been thinking about friendships and what they mean to me. Apparently, not a whole lot, because I don't really have a large circle of friends...and, as the recent high school graduation anniversary reminded me, I certainly don't have very many longtime friends, not from my school days, at any rate. Part of that is to be expected, I suppose, and not really specific to me. People tend to drift apart once they enter new spheres of life. When you enter university, when you start out in a job, and then again a new job, when you marry, when you have children, every new sphere brings new relationships, most often at the expense of older ones.
A lot depends on your personal definition (or, as I like to say as a card-carrying constructivist, your personal construction) of friendship. I suppose your relationships with other people could be plotted on a continuum that could have the poles of "enemy" vs. "friend", or of "completely indifferent person" vs. "really close and intimate friend", with loose acquaintances somewhere in between.
Another dimension is likely to be your personality. Are you an extravert who is outgoing and sociable, if perhaps a little superficial, someone who likes to have many friends around? Or rather an introvert who prefers few but deep friendships but who is just as happy not to have his friends around all the time?
When I look at my own preferences, I find that I want to be friends with many, but I also want to be left alone; I relish the lively exchange of ideas with other people, but I admit to preferring the company of a good book to a crowd of friends.
In all honesty, I also find that most friendships can turn boring all too soon. Conversations with longtime friends tend to be predictable; if you haven't seen them in a while and then meet them again, you mentally "check off" the relevant topics of discussion (family, job etc. ) but rarely cover new ground. But I realize that, much as marriage, friendship needs work, needs input. You can't expect your friends to be there for you if you never are there for them, even if just for listening. It has to be a two-way street.
So, to return to the trite phrase from the beginning, it may be that true and deep friendship is better than any gold or silver ship could be. But you have to work to keep that ship afloat; if you're not prepared to do that, you may as well leave the ship in the harbor. ((I think I now have flogged the ship metaphor to death) )
"There are gold ships and silver ships, but the best ship is friendship."
Corny, isn't it? And I don't even know if it's a well-known saying, or just something the author Joseph Heller made up. But I've been thinking about friendships and what they mean to me. Apparently, not a whole lot, because I don't really have a large circle of friends...and, as the recent high school graduation anniversary reminded me, I certainly don't have very many longtime friends, not from my school days, at any rate. Part of that is to be expected, I suppose, and not really specific to me. People tend to drift apart once they enter new spheres of life. When you enter university, when you start out in a job, and then again a new job, when you marry, when you have children, every new sphere brings new relationships, most often at the expense of older ones.
A lot depends on your personal definition (or, as I like to say as a card-carrying constructivist, your personal construction) of friendship. I suppose your relationships with other people could be plotted on a continuum that could have the poles of "enemy" vs. "friend", or of "completely indifferent person" vs. "really close and intimate friend", with loose acquaintances somewhere in between.
Another dimension is likely to be your personality. Are you an extravert who is outgoing and sociable, if perhaps a little superficial, someone who likes to have many friends around? Or rather an introvert who prefers few but deep friendships but who is just as happy not to have his friends around all the time?
When I look at my own preferences, I find that I want to be friends with many, but I also want to be left alone; I relish the lively exchange of ideas with other people, but I admit to preferring the company of a good book to a crowd of friends.
In all honesty, I also find that most friendships can turn boring all too soon. Conversations with longtime friends tend to be predictable; if you haven't seen them in a while and then meet them again, you mentally "check off" the relevant topics of discussion (family, job etc. ) but rarely cover new ground. But I realize that, much as marriage, friendship needs work, needs input. You can't expect your friends to be there for you if you never are there for them, even if just for listening. It has to be a two-way street.
So, to return to the trite phrase from the beginning, it may be that true and deep friendship is better than any gold or silver ship could be. But you have to work to keep that ship afloat; if you're not prepared to do that, you may as well leave the ship in the harbor. ((I think I now have flogged the ship metaphor to death) )
Friday, May 19, 2006
Apropos of the rainy weather
Biking through the pouring rain yesterday, it helped that a bouncy little song was playing and re-playing in my head... no, it wasn't the all-too-obvious "Singin' In The Rain", though that is of course a beautiful standard. (And I do have a Judy Garland, up-tempo version of it somewhere, which I really need to listen to again sometime)
It was a song from the Disney live-action classic, "In Search of the Castaways", from 1962, which also happens to be the year of my birth. The Jules Verne-based film had an eclectic cast including George Sanders, the bubbly Hayley Mills and... Maurice Chevalier.
Chevalier and Mills together sang the song I'm referring to, a buoyant little number by Walt Disney's all-purpose songwriters, the Sherman brothers.
I'm quoting from memory here:
Why cry about bad weather? Enjoy it!
Each moment is a treasure, enjoy it!
We're travelers on life's highway, enjoy the trip!
Each lovely twist and byway, each bump and dip!
When there's a complication, enjoy it -
you've got imagination, employ it!
A hurrican comes your way? Enjoy the breeze!
You're stranded in the jungle? Enjoy the trees!
(there's more, about seeing roses in the snow, and "joie de vivre" making them grow,
but I always sing that first part ;)
And you know what? It worked - I really enjoyed getting wet all the way to my unmentionables :)
It was a song from the Disney live-action classic, "In Search of the Castaways", from 1962, which also happens to be the year of my birth. The Jules Verne-based film had an eclectic cast including George Sanders, the bubbly Hayley Mills and... Maurice Chevalier.
Chevalier and Mills together sang the song I'm referring to, a buoyant little number by Walt Disney's all-purpose songwriters, the Sherman brothers.
I'm quoting from memory here:
Why cry about bad weather? Enjoy it!
Each moment is a treasure, enjoy it!
We're travelers on life's highway, enjoy the trip!
Each lovely twist and byway, each bump and dip!
When there's a complication, enjoy it -
you've got imagination, employ it!
A hurrican comes your way? Enjoy the breeze!
You're stranded in the jungle? Enjoy the trees!
(there's more, about seeing roses in the snow, and "joie de vivre" making them grow,
but I always sing that first part ;)
And you know what? It worked - I really enjoyed getting wet all the way to my unmentionables :)
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