The Economist: "You have to marvel at America’s economy"

You have to marvel at America’s economy.  Not long ago it was widely thought to be on the brink of recession.  Instead it ended 2023 nearly 3% larger than 12 months earlier, having enjoyed one of the boomier years of the century so far.  And it continues to defy expectations.  At the start of this year, economists had been forecasting annualised growth in the first quarter of 1%; that prediction has since doubled.  The labour market is in rude health, too.  The unemployment rate has been below 4% for 25 consecutive months, the longest such spell in over 50 years.  No wonder Uncle Sam is putting the rest of the world to shame.  Since the end of 2019 the economy has grown by nearly 8% in real terms, more than twice as fast as the euro zone’s and ten times as quickly as Japan’s.  Britain’s has barely grown at all.

~ "America’s extraordinary economy keeps defying the pessimists: Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have ideas that endanger it," The Economist, March 14, 2024

John Tamny on conservative support for bill to force sale of TikTok

Contra crybaby conservatives, an app could never destroy the greatest country on earth.  On the other hand, the taking of freedom required to ban an app could destroy a country whose greatness is rooted in freedom.

~ John Tamny, tweet, March 14, 2024

Doug Casey on the green energy scam

Before the Industrial Revolution, the overwhelmingly major fuel source was wood.  After that, we went to coal, which was a big improvement in density of energy and economics.  Then, we went to oil, another huge improvement in energy density and economics.

These things happened not because of any government mandates but simply because they made both economic and technological sense.  If the market had been left alone, the world would undoubtedly be running on nuclear.  Nuclear is unquestionably the safest, cheapest, and cleanest type of mass power generation.  This isn’t the time to go into the numerous reasons that’s true.  But if nuclear had been left unregulated, we’d already be using small, self-contained, fifth-generation thorium reactors, generating power almost too cheap to meter.  The world would already be running on truly clean green electricity.

Instead, time, capital, and brainpower have been massively diverted to so-called “ecological” power sources—mainly wind and solar—strictly for ideological reasons.  The powers that be want to transition the whole world to phony green energy, like it or not.

I’m all for green energy in principle.  There’s no question that solar and wind are worthwhile and effective for select applications—generally small, isolated, special locations where conventional fuel is inconvenient or too costly.  The efficiency of solar has been tremendously improved over the last few decades, as has wind efficiency.  But neither make any sense for mass base-load power in industrial economies.

With further technological advances, they may become more economic someday.  Perhaps people will eventually put large collectors in high Earth orbit and microwave the power down to the surface.  There are all kinds of sci-fi possibilities.  But right now, “green” is just a nice word for “stupid,” “ideological,” or “government-sponsored.”

Doing things the green way takes power away from the markets, which is where people vote with their dollars. It instead places power in the hands of ideologues and bureaucrats.

In brief, wind and solar are being promoted at the very time, nuclear and fossil fuels are being damned.  It’s the opposite of what should be happening and a very bad trend from every point of view.

Put me down as liking the birds and the bunnies as much as anyone else, but I’m anti-green.  Anyway, ecofreaks don’t really care about the birds and the bunnies so much.  That’s just a veneer.  They actually just hate people and really want them to disappear.  At a minimum, they want to control them.  And the great global warming/anti-fossil-fuel hysteria is a great way to do it.

~ Doug Casey, "Why the Carbon Hysteria is a Huge Threat to Your Personal Freedom and Financial Wellbeing," International Man, February 15, 2024

Rick Rule on natural resource investing

In terms of natural resource investing, you're either going to be a contrarian or you are going to be a victim.  There isn't much by way of middle ground.  Everybody wants to invest in commodities where the price action has already justified the narrative, but the price action takes the value-added out of the narrative.  You have to look for commodities that are in liquidation, where the price is so low that the industry is liquidating and where if the price of the commodity doesn't increase, the commodity will become unavailable to humankind.  And finally, humankind needs to need that commodity.

Another way to put that phrase, in terms of the time value of money, is that you need to invest in things that are inevitable, even if they aren't eminent.  And you have to need to know the difference between those two words.

~ Rick Rule, interview with Dan Ferris and McLaughlin, Stansberry Investor Hour, 60:30 mark, March 4, 2024

Lew Rockwell on anarchy

Is it possible that we have likewise assumed that the state is inevitable only because we are used to it, and can hardly imagine a world without it?  Just as the menial tasks once performed by slaves are now distributed differently among free men, perhaps, as anarchists argue, the functions of the state could be distributed among voluntary agencies.

The Renaissance philosopher Thomas Hobbes thought that anarchy — the “state of nature” — would be “a war of all against all,” making human life “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  His solution was the state, which would quell quarrels among men.  He didn’t foresee that the state itself might aggravate conflict and make social order far more miserable than anarchy could ever be.

Hobbes’s near-contemporary John Locke offered a more attractive alternative: the limited state, which would have the power to secure men’s natural rights but would lack the power to violate them.  But such a state has never existed for long.  Once a monopoly of power exists at all, it tends to degenerate into tyranny; anarchists argue that this decline is inevitable, because tyranny is inherent in the very nature of the state.

~ Lew Rockwell, "The Heroic Joe Sobran," LewRockwell.com, March 4, 2024

Joe Sobran on government intervention

If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal. 

If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re a conservative. 

If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate. 

If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist.

~ Joe Sobran, 1995

John Templeton on idealism

The true idealist preaches not class hatred but universal love; not redistribute the wealth but multiply the wealth; not more regulation but more freedom; not security but opportunity. The true idealist is the missionary for individual freedom and competition.

~ John Templeton, January 1961