Scot Wick Blog

  Review of book The Hopeful Heretic: How Institutional Religions Have You Looking For God In All The Wrong Places. WJ Selert. 2024. Kindle online sample. Section 1. From introduction: Why do "peace-loving" religions so often cause instability, conflict, and violence? The Hopeful Heretic explores the HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF WESTERN INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION, providing the context, language, and arguments free societies need to understand and inoculate themselves against resurgent religious fanaticism in the 21st Century. … It examines the invention of institutional religion as a social governance operating system built around THE HUMAN NEED TO UNDERSTAND OUR PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE. … From pre-historic nature-based religions to structured polytheism to the main western institutional monotheistic religions, The Hopeful Heretic charts the history, innovations, key features, and inherent defects of those systems, demonstrating EACH RELIGION IS MAN-MADE, INHERENTLY DIVISIVE, AND PRON...

  Seems everything was better with Trump as president. Don't think he'll change much when he gets in again just more and better of the same. Trump will pause (hopefully leading to end of) the Dems’… -spend huge and inflation be damned -big government good big business bad -economic success (“greed”) is evil and must be taxed away - lest We All become rich and the perceived need for Dem politicians and socialism melts -assault on democracy and rule of law -ignore immigration laws -war glorification -climate alarmism -U.N.-empowerment -DEI, BLM and gender-blend … agendas and zei are in panicked meltdown.

  (repost of section 7, added part at end starting with “When a country allows”) Mostly summarized from Gregory Mankiw’s Principles of Economics, 5th Ed. PART 3 Markets and Welfare Chapter 9 of 36 Application: International Trade Section 7 of 20 ... Figure 3 - International Trade in an Importing Country This shows the reverse case where Isoland’s domestic price of textiles is lower than the world price. Once trade is allowed, the Isoland’s domestic price for textiles falls to equal the world price. The domestic supply curve shows the amount produced domestically. The domestic demand curve shows the amount consumed domestically. Imports equal the difference between the domestic quantity demanded and the domestic quantity supplied at the world price. With trade · domestic price decreases and domestic quantity consumed increases · buyers are better off, consumer surplus rises from A to A + B + D · sellers are worse off, producer surplus falls from B + C to C · total surplus rises by a...

  Just back from nearby OMG Pastries. Two loaves of fresh out of oven cheese-jalapeno sourdough bread, raspberry swirl cheesecake, and chocolate hazelnut tart. Get about once a week.

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  Finished this Audible overnight, enjoyed and learned much. From conclusion: “Isaiah Berlin was asked to compile an anthology of philosophical texts from the Enlightenment. In his introduction he repeats his view of Enlightenment thinkers as believing all the sciences and all the faiths, the most fanatical superstitions and the most savage customs, when cleansed of their irrational elements by the advance of civilization, can be harmonized in the final true philosophy which could solve all theoretical and practical problems for all men everywhere for all time.”

 

  Wassily Leontief economics, details ChatGPT: Wassily Leontief was a prominent 20th-century economist best known for his work in input-output analysis, which revolutionized economic modeling and planning. Here are the key details of his contributions and economic theories: 1. Input-Output Model: Foundation: Leontief’s input-output model was developed to understand the interdependence between different sectors of an economy. It shows how the output of one industry becomes the input for another. Economic Structure: His model represents the economy as a matrix, where rows represent industries as producers and columns represent the same industries as consumers. Practical Uses: This framework is used to assess how changes in one sector can affect the whole economy. It has applications in economic planning, forecasting, and policy evaluation. Leontief Paradox: Leontief applied this model to international trade and famously found the United States, a capital-abundant country, was exporti...

  The Laffer Curve – Lower Tax Rates Now Mean Higher Tax Revenues Later First, watch this short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqLjyA0hL1s Mostly summarized from the Mankiw book: At a meeting in 1974 economist Arthur Laffer drew a figure to show how tax rates affect tax revenue, looking like Figure 1 He said the United States was on the downward-sloping right side of the curve, point A. He argued tax rates were so high reducing them would raise tax revenue. The Laffer curve theory of too-high taxes was resulting in low tax revenues was accepted by Ronald Reagan. The views of Laffer and Reagan became known as supply-side economics. Supply-side economists contend the Reagan tax cuts and economy boom of the 1980s proved the Laffer Curve. … Per Figure 1 the goal of Democrat politicians is to be at point C. They want to set tax rates where current tax revenues are maximized. Employees and employers keep less money to spend and invest and government has more money to spend. Per F...