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Reblogged:Friday Hodgepodge

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Blog Roundup

1. Philosopher Harry Binswanger has written a pandemic port-mortem in which he very clearly lays out his case that:
This was a nature-made disaster. But its harm was so magnified by government that one has to view the bulk of the suffering and deaths as due to disastrous government policy.
On that score, Binswanger elaborates on five things that exacerbated the pandemic:
  1. The FDA as such;
  2. The [abrogation by the] FDA [of the patient's right to make his own conclusions] on efficacy;
  3. The panic over hospital overcrowding;
  4. Capitalism non, socialism sí; and
  5. The FDA and testing.
Finally, although regulars here will see this coming, Binswanger names the ultimate cause:
Nature produced the virus. The philosophers and intellectuals preached the collectivism that barred free individuals -- patients, doctors, researchers, pharma companies -- from taking rational action to defeat it.
I think this essay deserves a full reading and wide dissemination: Please consider doing the former and passing the word.

2. At How to Be Profitable and Moral, Jaana Woiceshyn passes along a particularly stark demonstration of what "equity" means in practice:
HD.jpg
The left makes the version of Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass look like a paragon of reasonability. It's well past time to stand up to this folly. (Image by John Tenniel, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)
The recent abrupt resignation [under pressure --ed] of the CEO of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Mark Machin, came as a surprise to many. As reported by Financial Post, the 54-year-old Briton had achieved stellar performance for the $475+ billion pension fund since becoming its CEO in 2016. Machin was praised for "outstanding leadership" by the CPPIB. [link omitted]
And what heinous deed overrode this kind of record and regard?
[Machin] had the audacity to travel to Dubai, for personal reasons. While there, he got vaccinated against COVID-19. (The U.A.E. is among the top three countries in vaccination rates, while Canada trails all developed countries at less than 5% of people vaccinated).
It may seem incredible, but the egalitarian anti-concept of "equity" really is an attempt to elevate what sensible people would call the crab-bucket mentality to a moral ideal.

3. One notable economic consequence of our government's tyrannical actions during the pandemic has been increased persecution of housing producers. To get an idea of what I mean, refer to this blog post at the Texas Institute for Property Rights, which notes in part:
Moratoriums on evictions are only one example. Landlords are prohibited from evicting tenants for non-payment of rent, yet those same landlords must pay their mortgage, insurance, property taxes, and maintain the property while receiving little or no revenue. Fueled partially by Bernie Sanders' call for national rent control, municipalities around the country are enacting or considering restrictions on what landlords may charge. Groups like Black Lives Matter harass and demean those who bring economic investment into previously impoverished communities and gentrify neighborhoods.
The blog post provides a link to a a white paper that details this growing problem and elaborates on the methods being deployed against those who provide this essential good.

4. Over at Thinking Directions, Jean Moroney looks deeply at some common productivity advice that applies to taking on new commitments.
The standard advice we are given is, "Just say no." But when should you say no?
Moroney breaks this down into three broad "reality checks," including being okay with something being more difficult than you expect. I'll excerpt from that part since I let that happen to me recently:
How do you figure this out in advance? The Cold Test. Would you commit to doing this task even if you had a bad cold? If not, don't commit.

...

If a task fails the Cold Test, yet it's something you'd like to do, you can always make it a maybe. Maybe you'll fit it in if all goes well. A maybe is something you will do opportunistically if you have time and energy. It's not a commitment. That makes it easy to drop without breaking your promises to yourself or others when you need to adapt to unforeseen events.
This is turns out to be the most memorable of the three, but all are good advice.

-- CAV

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