The last century has pretty well demolished the idea that nation states have some inherent racial existence, as if there is a single “Portugese people” (to avoid Godwin’s Law) that has always been a unified linguistic and cultural entity. So why should the modern state of Portugal have a single genome, different from that of its neighbors? (Well, neighbor singular, in the case of Portugal.) Especially in Eastern Europe nation states arose as political-linguistic identities among elites; states were then created, and ethnic cleansing, with varying degrees of violence, brought the actual populations within a given state’s boundaries roughly into line with what the identity said should be there. So who lives in a given state now is largely a function of language, but the spread zone of a language is itself a historical creation…so why should it map to a genome? It shouldn’t.

My favorite example of how nation states are now geographical entities, is the wooden puzzle you can find where each piece is a country…as if national boundaries were tectonic plate lines. If you ask someone where Bohemia is, they’ll say “the Western Czech Republic.” Really, it should be the other way around: when asked where the Czech Republic is, we should say “parts of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia.” After all, those regions are a lot more than 15 years old.

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Average word count of top-ten songs during the 1960s: 176

Average last year: 436

That is from Harper’s Index, August issue.  I don’t think it can be a pure length of song effect.

I would also argue that the music itself has become more complex (different synthesizer modes and track sampling mean that there are more “instruments” to keep track of).  We could be finding a musical Flynn effect much like we’ve seen in television.

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-Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

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Another WaPo sob story about a firm desperate for more H-1B visas. The Baltimore company’s CEO says “We offer the same salaries and perks whether you’re from Baltimore or Bangladesh . . . but we simply cannot find enough qualified U.S.-born staff to fuel our growth.”

Well, John Miano, a Fellow with my Center, took a look for me at the “Labor Condition Applications” that the company filed with the Department of Labor to receive its H-1B workers. Lo and behold, the average H-1B wage for architects at this particular firm is about $45,000, compared with the average for all architects in Baltimore of about $69,000. So while it may be true that the company pays its foreign contract labor the same as its American workers, it seems to be paying all its architects 35 percent less than the market average. It’s no wonder they can’t find enough American workers. But why is it government’s job to help this business avoid adjusting to market realities?

It seems a little underhanded to refer to immigration restrictions as “market realities.” A better question is why is it government’s job to help Baltimore architects avoid adjusting to market realities?

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But there’s one big exception: Europe, which didn’t have nomads, aside from arguably the Gypsies/Romani, who anyway don’t seem to have played much of a role in Western Europe. This seems pretty important for the development of European feudalism (apologies to Dr. Moye), states, empires, commerce, and industrialization. So why didn’t Europe have nomads? Is it geographic?

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“I would see Constantine as a necessary precondition for Muhammad.”

“There is a significant difference between the obligations involved in aggressive and defensive jihad. In offensive jihad, provided somebody is doing it, nobody else has to bother. By contrast, with defensive jihad, anybody in the area that’s being attacked by the unbelievers — any adult male has a duty, prima facie, of participating in that jihad.”

[I think the implications of this or the War on Terror are pretty obvious.]

“Now, it’s not just that moderate, wishy-washy liberal Christians in this country don’t believe they ought to hate their parents; even the Christian fundamentalists don’t think they should hate their parents, and yet Jesus said it. I’m sure they have ways of getting off the hook in the same way Muslims can find all sorts of ways of getting off their hooks. The fact it’s there in scripture doesn’t have much predictive value — maybe none at all. So much comes down to the context in which people are doing things with scripture.”

“[Fundamentalism is] not just being pious or zealous, or for that matter fanatical; it’s specifically that you want to go back to the roots of your tradition. There are plenty of people who don’t want to go back to the roots of their tradition; they want the tradition as it came down to them. Hindus are typically like that. Fundamentalism is when you want to go back.”

[Among the more minor issues this raises: does this mean the KJV-Only movement isn’t fundamentalist…just conservative?]

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Now what to do? Why, slash interest rates to coax forth still more lending and borrowing. It’s the customary curative, seemingly as humane as it is politic.

And if recessions served no useful purpose, it might be. But recessions do. On Wall Street, they speak of “corrections.” What corrections correct are errors in judgment. So do recessions.

They allow the sorting out of boomtime error. They permit — indeed, force — the repricing of inflated assets. In a downturn, previously overpriced businesses, houses and buildings are made affordable again.

Think of a recession as the burn you feel when you first start working out.  Hitting the gym for the first time after you’ve been taking it easy and snacking too many “low-interest candy bars” is never fun.  But that initial pain is the price you pay for getting back in shape.  There’s nothing wrong with recessions in and of themselves.  The problem lies with the policies that led us to a point where a recession (or correction, or bubble popping, or whatever) was necessary.

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H.L. Mencken celebrates the end of Prohibition

On December 5, 1933 Utah ratified the 21st Amendment and repealed National Prohibition, allowing millions of Americans to enjoy their first legal drink in 14 years (With the emphasis on legal.  Prohibition was far better at driving alcohol production and distribution to the black market than it was at stopping consumption).  Interestingly, Prohibition’s passage and repeal may have had more to do with budgetary issues than shifts in ideology.  Boudreaux and Pritchard argue that the adoption of the income tax in 1913 gave governments an alternative source of revenue to liquor taxes and finally let politicians pander to the decades-old Temperance movement.  But with the drastic decline in incomes during the Great Depression the Federal and state governments needed to find new sources of revenue and the repeal movement gained momentum.  Of course, there are other, more humorous historical accounts too.  But whatever the reasons for ending Prohibition, I plan on celebrating my freedom tonight by raising an alcoholic beverage at 2100 hours in a toast to Repeal Day.  Cheers and Stay Wet!

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Mark Perry has a chart of those 20 cities and the countries with similar GDPs in the first part of a series on America’s ridiculously large economy. Check out parts two and three as well.

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