Doug Casey on college

The fact is that college today is not just a gigantic misallocation of four of the most valuable years of your life and a huge amount of money.  It’s much worse.  In the time he’s not partying at what amounts to a five-star resort, drinking and chasing girls, a student is being actively corrupted and indoctrinated.  He’ll emerge with a near-valueless degree, a bunch of bad attitudes, destructive ideas, and a mountain of debt.

~ Doug Casey, "Raising Free-Thinking Children Amid Societal Madness," International Man, February 29, 2024

Galileo on science

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. 

~ Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)

Phil Duffy on the ancient Jewish claim to Palestine

In the final analysis, the Zionists are asking the world, but particularly the United States, to issue them a license to commit genocide. 

I believe that the Zionist claim is that God awarded them Palestine.  I have seen various versions of this, and would welcome any Zionist to point to their version of the story.  It always comes down to this:

1. The Jews voluntarily left Palestine for greener pastures in Egypt (the story of Joseph).
2. At first things worked out but ultimately the Egyptians enslaved the Jews. 
3. Moses led the Jews out of Egypt and into the desert (Exodus). 
4. Moses died and was succeeded by Joshua who led the Jews against the Canaanites who had then homesteaded Palestine. 
5. The Jews massacred the Canaanites and took possession of Palestine.

I have some reservations about this account.  I don’t think Jesus would have recommended to his fellow Jews that they act similarly during his time on Earth, but I’ll accept the Zionist version, with a question – “Is that all you have as proof that Palestine belongs to you?”

The Jewish Diaspora (dispersion) presents a theological challenge for Jews.  After 70 AD when the Romans destroyed the Temple, huge numbers of Jews left Judea, leading to the claim by Zionists that they were driven off the land that was legitimately theirs.  The claim does not square with history.  Zionists are not claiming they have a right to Judea, but to the larger landmass that was occupied by Jews of Judea and the 10 lost tribes of Israel.  Those 10 tribes split with the two tribes of Judea after the death of Solomon and have been assimilated into other cultures.  Further calling into question the claim that Jews were driven from Judea is that many remained and lived side-by-side with Arabs.  Those who left after 70 AD and became a part of the Diaspora were probably only a fraction of the number of Jews already in the Diaspora.  A large number already had left Israel to live their lives elsewhere.

In summary, most of the Jews who left Israel did so voluntarily, and those who left after 70 AD, although feeling the pressure of having lost to the Romans in an unsuccessful uprising, did so voluntarily.

~ Phil Duffy, February 1, 2024

Hans-Hermann Hoppe on Walter Block's defense of Israel's retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attack

Grotesque.  If anything, this assessment of Block’s only indicates that he has lost any sense of measure and proportion...  [H]is call for total and unrestricted war and the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians is actually the complete and uninhibited rejection and renunciation of the non-aggression principle that constitutes one of the very cornerstones of the Rothbardian system.  To believe that Rothbard would have given serious consideration to his WSJ piece is simply ridiculous and only indicates that Block’s understanding of Rothbard is not nearly as good as he himself fancies it to be.  The Rothbard I knew would have denounced the piece in no uncertain terms as monstrous and considered it an unforgivable aberration and disgrace.

~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "On Open Letter to Walter E. Block," LewRockwell.com, January 31, 2024

Kevin Duffy on the difference between growth and value investing

Growth investing: Find companies where others underestimate how good things can get. 

Value investing: Find companies where others overestimate how bad things can get. 

Growth and value are just two sides of the same coin.

~ Kevin Duffy, tweets, January 28, 2024

Russ Greene on Unilever's ESG rollercoaster

Unilever's history is a microcosm both of the rise of ESG and of the challenges the ESG agenda is now facing.  The British consumer packaged goods corporation owns several successful brands, including Ben & Jerry's, Dove, and Magnum.  It has prided itself on its ESG credentials, particularly under Paul Polman, Unilever's CEO from 2009 to 2019. 

Under Polman's leadership, the company made a series of corporate commitments to environmental and social causes.  It supported sustainable agriculture at the World Economic Forum.  It helped create the United Nations' "sustainable development goals."  It "made a stand to #unstereotype the way men and women are portrayed in marketing."  Again and again, it filtered its corporate purpose through a progressive worldview. 

While it is now common for brands to advertise their commitments to such causes, Unilever took the lead in incorporating "purpose" into virtually everything it did.  Polman often called for CEOs to focus on creating value for a wider group of "stakeholders," as opposed to narrowly focusing on shareholders; he also campaigned for government efforts to fight climate change. 

At first, Polman's play worked.  In his decade atop the company, Unilever's stock price rose by about 150 percent—"well ahead of the FTSE [Financial Times Stock Exchange] 100 average," The Guardian notes—and it reported decreasing emissions from its factories by 47 percent from 2008 to 2018.  Perhaps it indeed was possible to achieve both purpose and profits, to serve both "stakeholders" and shareholders at once. 

Toward the end of his term, though, signs of trouble appeared.  Kraft Heinz, a firm closely associated with Warren Buffett and his holding company Berkshire Hathaway, made a bid for control of Unilever in 2017.  The company rejected the offer.  This event carried symbolic meaning, as Buffett has a long history of favoring profits over "purpose."  In the fallout, investors increasingly put pressure on Unilever to cut bureaucratic overhead. 

After Polman left the company in 2019, his replacement Alan Jope eagerly picked up the ESG mantle.  A 2021 Unilever blog post declared that there was "No trade-off between purpose and performance."  In 2022, after a backlash against ESG had begun, Jope declared at a Clinton Global Initiative event that Unilever "will not back down on this agenda despite these populist accusations."

Indeed, the populists did not prompt Unilever to back down from ESG.  After all, Unilever is a British company, and in Britain, even conservative politicians have embraced aspects of the ESG agenda.  Market forces, on the other hand, have had an impact.  Investor Terry Smith repeatedly ridiculed Unilever's "virtue-signaling," calling on the company to focus on fundamentals.  Why did Hellmann's mayonnaise need a purpose?  Didn't it already have one, as a salad and sandwich condiment?  Nor was Smith the only investor concerned with Unilever's flagging performance.

Within months of his promise not to back down, Jope announced that he was stepping down as CEO. His replacement, Schumacher, is the one who called the focus on ESG goals a "distraction."

~ Russ Greene, "Is ESG Already Over? CEOs are beginning to wonder what to do when environmental, social, and governance factors are at odds with performance.," Reason.com, February 2024

George Orwell on the pretense for war

Every war, when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

~ George Orwell