Ebooks

Advantages

• Minimal marginal cost
• Minimal financial risk - you can't print too many
• Lightweight. You can carry a thousand books in your pocket for less weight than a paperback

Disadvantages

• Harder for people to peruse your bookshelf, or see what you are reading. Less chance for serendipitous discoveries

Neutral

• Can't lend them to other people, no second-hand market (bad for readers, good for booksellers)
• Piracy much easier (good for readers, bad for booksellers)
• Authors don't need a publisher, can easily self-publish through Amazon. Good for authors, bad for publishers, risk of Amazon establishing a monopoly (bad for authors)

How is the left responding to new genetic discoveries?

We have long had circumstantial evidence that racial differences in intelligence are partly genetic. We know that the races differ in average intelligence, and we know that intra-race differences in intelligence are partly genetic, partly non-shared environment (random effects, measurement error), therefore it is likely that the same applies to inter-race differences.

No one denies that Tibetan adaptations to high altitude are entirely genetic, not cultural, and there are many other race-specific traits which are uncontroversially attributed solely to genetics. But when it comes to intelligence, the obvious inference is not drawn.

Genome-wide association studies are finally identifying specific genes for traits. We can now make accurate predictions about someone's traits from their genome. As individual genes are identified, and these genes are shown to have different frequencies across the races, how will the left react? How is the left reacting?

Denial will continue for a long time. We've had evidence for a long time; why should one more piece of evidence make a difference?

To some extent it doesn't matter. Philosophical obfuscation about the concept of race won't work any more. Ordinary people will be able to see the validity of the science with their own eyes. The leftist obfuscation will be ignored. Ordinary people already want to choose high-IQ, tall, good-looking sperm and egg donors; they understand the truth on an implicit level at least.

Eventually the left will have to adapt its theories to the reality of human genetics. I expect people will realise that "meritocracy" means "genetic advantages", and egalitarianism will attempt to equalise these, either with monetary redistribution, or genetic engineering (state-subsidised embryo selection for the poor, banning embryo selection for the rich, etc).

The Multiplier Effect: wrong in so many ways

The "Multiplier Effect" story goes like this: The state increases spending by £100. The person they pay this to saves 10% and spends the remaining £90. The next person saves 10% of that and spends the rest, and so on. An initial increase in state spending of £100 leads to an increase in GDP of £1000.

This is nonsense.

If it were true, all money would end up "saved" in vaults, and there would be no money circulating. In reality, money continues circulating indefinitely. Money that is saved bids up the price of money, causing other savers to withdraw their savings and spend. For every young person saving, there is an old person spending. There will be an equilibrium where a certain proportion of money is saved at any given time.

An alternative to saving is investment. Money that is spent on investment continues circulating.

The multiplier effect argument applies to all spending, not just government spending. Increases in state spending have to come from somewhere, whether it is taxation, borrowing or money creation. All three decrease purchasing power (i.e. spending) elsewhere.

A clearer way to look at things is to ignore money. An increase in government spending reallocates resources to the government. It does not increase the amount of resources available. It does not actually increase GDP.

So the above "multiplier effect" story is nonsense.

The real multiplier effect concerns productive, profitable investment. If an investment is profitable, it takes resources as input, and outputs a larger amount of resources. The multiplier factor is a measure of how profitable it is. Government spending, like private spending, only has a multiplier effect on GDP if goes into a successful, productive, profitable investment. If it goes into a foolish, loss-making investment project, or into consumption and spending, it has a demultiplier effect.

SJW rhetoric and free speech

Much of "social justice warrior" discourse is just rhetoric with the aim of getting the other person to shut up. The content is not the point -- there doesn't necessarily have to be any content -- the point is to shut the other person up.

For example, the idea that men should defer to women on "women's issues" and shouldn't talk about them. Whatever justification is given for this (e.g. "privilege") doesn't matter; the result is "shut up".

An effective defence against this technique is to point it out.

Such people often aren't reasoning with. Anyone who explicitly wants you to shut up certainly isn't. They have shown they are not open to reason.

Your aim with continuing speech (not shutting up) is not to speak to the person trying to shut you up, but to bypass them and speak to everyone else.

People who want to shut you up are not getting rid of you, they are just creating a parallel society which they are not part of. The same goes for people who want to deny you free speech, "no platformers" etc. This is not to deny that they pose a threat, but the response to that threat cannot be to reason with them; it must be to bypass them.

People and externalities

Immigration is sometimes portrayed as solely a matter for the immigrant and his employer, or his landlord. Why should anyone else have the right to stop the immigrant moving here to get a better job, or to stop the employer hiring the cheapest labour he can find, regardless of nationality? Why should anyone else have a right to stop a landowner selling or renting his property to a foreigner? In a previous post, I explained that when the immigrant has negative externalities, your neighbours do have a legitimate interest.

The libertarian viewpoint under which immigration is solely a matter for immigrant and employer, or immigrant and landlord, only recognises freehold property, and property derived from it (e.g. leasehold). If you want to sell your land to a foreigner, no one else should be able to stop you, or so the argument goes. But this argument assumes its conclusion. Why shouldn't your neighbours be able to regulate what you do with your property? Why shouldn't there be collective property rights, where your neighbours can deny you the ability to sell your property to a foreigner?

Some immigration has nothing to do with business and employment. There are some immigrants who have no intention of working at all: beggars, con-artists, etc.

Of course it is not just immigrants who have externalities. All people do. Immigration control prevents bad people from getting in, but what about the bad people who are already here?

People are negative externalities by default unless they can justify their existence to me. They take up space, cause pollution, and bid up the prices of scarce commodities like prime locations, oil and other commodities. This is called the pecuniary externality.

Some people are positive externalities: they are so productive and do not capture all the benefits of their productivity. Inventors and innovators seldom capture all the wealth they create. Garett Jones' book "Hive Mind" explains how national average IQ matters more than your individual IQ; your having a high IQ benefits your neighbours more than it benefits you.

Beggars and other unproductive people are attracted to cities for the same reason that unproductive people are attracted to nice countries. It is better to be a homeless beggar in Britain than in, say, Libya, particularly if you are a woman. Begging is an ecological niche that doesn't work outside cities; there is not enough footfall.

The same applies to crime. Criminals tend to move to cities because there is more opportunity for crime there. There is more crime and criminals in the cities. Criminals don't tend to travel much, hence "white flight" to the suburbs where it is safer.

War and cooperation

Kin selection is not a special case of evolution, it is the main case. Genes are types not tokens, and if you can benefit more than two brothers at the expense of yourself, it is the adaptive thing to do.

However, kin selection drops off exponentially: two brothers, four grandparents, eight cousins...

So kin selection does not explain altruism in societies. It is not adaptive to die in war for your society, only for your brothers (grandparents, cousins...). Group selection does not occur, because a selfish person can benefit by not going to war while his neighbours so.

But group selection appears to occur. Societies must cooperate to win wars, and the losing, less cooperative society is often eliminated entirely. (Melanesian men conquered Vanuatu and Tonga, killed all the previous male inhabitants and took their women.)

So what is going on? The answer is that the only feature which is selected by group selection is cooperation. Cooperation is not altruism, it is done selfishly to benefit you and your kin. That it benefits the other party is incidental. Ability to cooperate is a property of individuals, not groups, though it only makes sense in a group setting (you need other people to cooperate with).

You die in war to benefit your kin. You devise social enforcement mechanisms to ensure your neighbours contribute to the war effort.

You need a minimum number of cooperators in your society to win wars. Societies which are better at cooperation will outcompete societies which are not. Asabiyyah matters. In-fighting at the expense of out-fighting will bring down a society. Clearly, if a cooperative society exterminates a non-cooperative society and takes its land, genes for cooperation will spread.

Group selection cannot occur if it conflicts with individual/kin selection. Group selection does not occur often enough to build features such as cooperation, it only increases their number/propagates them.

Why is cooperation the only feature selected by group selection? Because the group is the unit of cooperation. That's what a group is.

Rent belongs to no one

Natural rents cannot be eliminated; they must always accrue to someone. From the point of view of economics, it does not matter who.

If they accrue to an owner-occupier, he can spend them on himself. If they accrue to a landlord, he can spend them on himself!

If they accrue to the state, it can spend them on what it likes. Once essential expenditures are taken care of (costs necessary to preserve the income stream: security, infrastructure, parks...), there will be a large surplus. In an ideal society, much of this would be spent on beautifying the area. Pavements would be made out of brick, maintained in perfect condition, washed daily; bins would be polished and emptied regularly; there would be no litter; gardens and planting would be immaculate; buildings would be given new façades.

It doesn't all have to be spent on space travel and welfare.