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This week on America’s Most Trustworthy Podcast®, we talk about the meaning of the word “spying” and try to determine exactly what the definition is. Then, a bracing and brilliant discussion on reparations with the great Shelby Steele, who unlike most candidates for President, actually knows something about it. Then, our long time amigo Arthur Brooks calls in to talk about his new book, Love Your Enemies; How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt. Actually, come to think of it, we really don’t like Arthur. Finally, some thoughts on the newly photographed Black Hole, and tomorrow is Record Store Day and to celebrate, we asked the hosts what the first record they ever bought was. What was yours? Tell us in the comments.
Music from this week’s show: Supermassive Black Hole by Muse
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Let’s say you did. There are still markets for these products – even if the customers and uses cases change. Whips are still made – there is still plenty of betamax tapes out there to be digitized.
Look at the Ford Motor Company. Some say it was the interstate highway act that made Henry Ford rich – except that he died 9 years before it passed. It was the inexpensive availability of motor cars that destroyed the established horse based transportation model – and made the highway system possible. It is both an example of supply creating demand, and of a successful disruption of a well established industry.
No. You owe it to yourself to have a Krispy Kreme donut at least once in you life.
The December, 2017 issue of Scientific American includes Catherine M. Cameron’s “How Captives Changed the World”, which is chiefly concerned with the hair-raising story of slavery in pre-Columbian America.
Archaeologists are only beginning to learn how to recognize slavery in preliterate societies; for example, graveyards full of young women with signs of abuse. (In primitive warfare, men of an enemy tribe are usually killed and sometimes eaten.)
I just don’t find them appealing. I like several other kinds of donuts, such as lemon-filled, raspberry-filled, maple frosted… As far as I’ve seen, Krispy Kreme doesn’t have any of those. Plus I go to Kroger at about 7:30pm and get them for half price or less.
Seems like “demand” is being confused with actual “consumption.” They aren’t exactly the same. Anyway motor-cars existed before Henry Ford, so it could be argued that the “demand” in that case also preceded “supply.”
One point I found in the various articles on Say’s Law, that seems obvious, is that Say dismisses the concept of money itself as a “commodity.” In some ways, all “commodities” are stored value, and so is money. That money hasn’t been spent or exchanged – yet – doesn’t mean it has no value. Say’s Law seems to argue otherwise.
Motor cars did exist before Henry Ford, it was his innovation of the assembly line that allowed him to radically lower prices, expanding the market to whole new possible class of customers. The Iphone and Ipods are also examples of production driving demand, nobody knew they wanted one until they saw it demonstrated on stage by Steve Jobs.
Jean Baptiste Say, died in 1832, he would have only known currencies as being on a gold standard, money as a commodity would have been a foreign concept to him.
If anything, isn’t gold-standard money even more of a commodity than fiat currency? So even though he’s dead, he doesn’t have that excuse.
No, because its value is pegged by the central bank, it has a stable value over years – if not decades. Its far less of a commodity.
Demand is unlimited. That’s why it meets a supply curve.
Demand is unlimited? Really? That sounds pretty ridiculous, except as some kind of economic theory taught in/from ivory towers but never actually practiced. One of those “An idea so obviously ridiculous, only someone with a Ph.D could believe it” things.
Except Say apparently dismissed any kind of money as having value other than when turned into something else – i.e., spent. “Commodity” or not, gold-standard or not, unspent currency is not value-less.
Demand is unlimited. This why when government provides it for “free” it needs to be rationed. Like Healthcare. If the user is no longer footing at least some of the costs the services he uses demand spikes. Like all curves it ends in ridicule. At $0 cost there is infinite demand, at infinite cost there is no demand.
Almost everyone would like being handed a billion dollars so they could buy everything they have ever wanted.
@kedavis I get that it sounds like regressive taxation, but you end up with more output at lower prices. That’s all that matters.
If you want to “progressive-ize” it, you simply mail a check to everyone equalizing it for a poverty level, but it isn’t really necessary.
Nope. A billion isn’t nearly enough. A trillion isn’t either. It costs way more than a trillion $ to get to Alpha Centauri, which is what I Demand. And which is part of why “demand is unlimited” makes no sense. Because demand IS limited, by what is affordable, and what is possible.
I just find it interesting – and amusing – that people would be so sure of something like that, when it’s never really been tested. There’s good evidence that socialism/communism doesn’t work even when done “properly” largely because PEOPLE. I think the same reason(s) would doom your (Say’s) theory too, if actually implemented in some serious way rather than just looking for “symptoms” in the current world situations. Just as returning the US to pre-industrial levels wouldn’t solve “global warming”/”climate change” because China, and India, and… and mostly because THE SUN!!!
Who is winning this debate? REACT!
If the price of everything is zero, everyone’s demands will be met. The idea is to lower the cost of production while increasing output, given scarce resources. It takes capital formation to do that.
Who is this “some” that says that?
Only for things that already exist, or can be currently produced. Who’s going to get me to Alpha Centauri, for free? That’s what I Demand.
Anyway even the simpler example breaks down on closer examination. That’s one of the problems with theories versus reality.
Well it will wrap up the black or anybody that can claim to be black vote.
You are a Keynesian. Swell.
But they always have it. It’s all but irrelevant without white voters.
The Democrats learned how to buy off and corrupt the black leadership, who then abuse their trust to tell the rank-and-file to vote against their own interests; e.g., on school choice, or against Trump’s immigration policies.
The Democrats’ failed attempt to prevent Clarence Thomas from being appointed to the Supreme Court illustrates this. The matter was too high-profile for the corrupt black leadership to pull the wool over the eyes of the black rank-and-file — who naturally preferred to see a black conservative on the Court instead of a white conservative. (To maintain their racial narrative, the Democrats want there to be as few prominent black conservatives as possible.)
They learned from their mistakes: when another Republican President appeared to be grooming another black conservative for the Supreme Court, they launched their attack when she was nominated to the Court of Appeals, to lower the profile, and attacked a few white judges at the same time, to muddy the waters.
Spaghetti eyes? I think AOC has a black hole behind her head . . .
You can start with Robert Smalls of Beaufort, SC, a former slave who freed himself during the Civil War (in an adventure which ought to thrill Hollywood storytellers) and later founded the Republican Party of South Carolina.
Why no statues of this guy, why no Black History Month stories?
Nothing! Send your family information to your local Democratic Party headquarters, and ask them to calculate how much money the children from your first marriage would receive under the Democrat proposals out there. Tell them your vote depends on it. Subsequent children (step-kids, biological children from second hubby, or grandkids) don’t count unless they have Authentic Slave Blood ™ too, so don’t even try unless you have more proof.
But if there are slave owners in your ancestry as there are in mine, shhhhhhh! Don’t say a word. Make them do the research before they deny benefits . . .
I want to know how we plan to destroy wandering black holes . . .
I don’t know, but whatever it is, will be racist.
A special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets turned tense and bizarre this afternoon. …
Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections “has become a black hole” because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.
Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud “Excuse me!” He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a “white hole.”
That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy. …
dallasnews.com, July 2008