Category: Philosophy

Charlie Munger on a Long and Happy Life

Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger, is worth a couple of billions dollars. He gives his advise on living a successful and happy life.

“You don’t have a lot of envy. You don’t have a lot of resentment. You don’t overspend your income. You stay cheerful in spite of your troubles. You deal with reliable people. And you do what you’re supposed to do. And all these simple rules work so well to make your life better. And they’re so trite.”

I find it interesting he actually pointed out envy and resentment since my last post discussed envy . I consider envy the most vile of all mankind’s emotions. Don’t underestimate the role envy plays in society. Helmut Schoeck book, “ENVY: A Theory of Social Behaviour”, sums up my view on this subject. Make no mistake about it. Envy played a very important part in the dominate philosophies in the 20th century. I am reminded of Henry Hazlitt’s, “Marxism in One Minute”:

The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others.
Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects — his laziness, incompetence, improvidence or stupidity. Never believe in the honesty or disinterestedness of anyone who disagrees with you.
This basic hatred is the heart of Marxism. This is its animating force. You can throw away the dialectical materialism, the Hegelian framework, the technical jargon, the “scientific” analysis, and millions of pretentious words, and you still have the core: the implacable hatred and envy that are the raison d’etre for all the rest.

Envy, Taxes and the Green New Deal

Thoughts from the envious:
“I can never achieve what you have achieved. Therefore, I want to destroy you.”
A lot of chatter has entered into the national dialogue about raising taxes on the rich. Individuals know that raising taxes on the rich will not provide any benefit to their life one way or the other. The government is going to spend what it is going to spend, regardless of its revenues. Interestingly, most of these people calling for increasing taxes on the rich also believe that government debt does not matter. There is an irreconcilable  contradiction in these two thoughts. If government debt does not matter, why should the government tax anyone? Why can’t the government just keep borrowing more money to pay off old debt and initiate new spending projects. Envy plays an important part in this thinking.

Climate Change is the new WW II.
We are told the human race is facing extinction in less than 12 years unless action is taken by federal governments around the world. We heard this 12 years ago. We heard this from Bill Mckibben in his book, “The End Of Nature” written in 1989. When I glance outside my window, I take note that nature has not ended. This racket changes every few decades. Global cooling , global warming and now climate change. The arctic was also melting in 1922.

To combat climate change requires a mobilization not seen WWII. In order to pay for this, taxes have to go back to WWII levels. Never mind that the math doesn’t add up! If “we” can pay for WWII than we can pay to fight climate change!

The highest tax bracket was above 90% during WWII, the 1950’s and 1960’s.
They never talk about the lowest tax bracket.

It went from about 1% to 23% to pay for WWII. This is left out of the debate. WWII was paid for with massive tax hikes across the board, inflation, and blood.

Why I am not worried.
I am going to tell you a secret. No matter how high the income tax rates have been, the US federal government never, EVER, has collected much more than 20% of revenue in GDP. EVER!

The individual income tax collected hovers around 8% of GDP since 1944.
Total from 1974 is shown below:

There will not be any massive tax hikes that actually collect taxes. The American public does not let the government take more than 8% of GDP from them. There is not going to be any green new deal.

The video above shows the case for optimism. The students reject it once the content of the bill is revealed. It has almost 2 million views. 30 years ago this video would have not seen the light of day. The guard keepers of information would have never aired it on NBC. For less than 100$ worth of equipment, anyone can become a journalist and post videos on YouTube for millions of people to view. I am not worried about the college girl, the green new deal or massive tax hikes.

The Federal Register

The army of bureaucrats continue to crank out unreadable laws every year. In 2017, there were 61,949 pages published. This is the lowest amount since 1990. Does anyone know what these 61,949 pages contain? No.

These bureaucracies take on a life of their own. They do not care who the president is. The president is powerless to stop this. The only thing these bureaucracies understand is cutting funding. This is not happening. These bureaucracies can generate a lot more regulations than can be destroyed by executive order. Ignore the noise.

What the State is Not

With all this talk in the current political environment about what “we” should do, here is Murray Rothbard in “Anatomy of the State“.

The State is almost universally considered an institution of social service. Some theorists venerate the State as the apotheosis of society; others regard it as an amiable, though often inefficient, organization for achieving social ends; but almost all regard it as a necessary means for achieving the goals of mankind, a means to be ranged against the “private sector” and often winning in this competition of resources. With the rise of democracy, the identification of the State with society has been redoubled, until it is common to hear sentiments expressed which violate virtually every tenet of reason and common sense such as, “we are the government.” The useful collective term “we” has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over the reality of political life. If “we are the government,” then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also “voluntary” on the part of the individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that “we owe it to ourselves”; if the government conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident opinion, then he is “doing it to himself” and, therefore, nothing untoward has occurred. Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered; instead, they must have “committed suicide,” since they were the government (which was democratically chosen), and, therefore, anything the government did to them was voluntary on their part. One would not think it necessary to belabor this point, and yet the overwhelming bulk of the people hold this fallacy to a greater or lesser degree. We must, therefore, emphasize that “we” are not the government; the government is not “us.” The government does not in any accurate sense “represent” the majority of the people.1 But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority.2 No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that “we are all part of one another,” must be permitted to obscure this basic fact. If, then, the State is not “us,” if it is not “the human family” getting together to decide mutual problems, if it is not a lodge meeting or country club, what is it? Briefly, the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion. While other individuals or institutions obtain their income by production of goods and services and by the peaceful and voluntary sale of these goods and services to others, the State obtains its revenue by the use of compulsion; that is, by the use and the threat of the jailhouse and the bayonet. 3 Having used force and violence to obtain its revenue, the State generally goes on to regulate and dictate the other actions of its individual subjects. One would think that simple observation of all States through history and over the globe would be proof enough of this assertion; but the miasma of myth has lain so long over State activity that elaboration is necessary.

How to Lower Salaries for Everyone

Mayor de Blasio wants NYC to become the first city to mandate Paid Personal Time (PPT) for workers. Let’s put aside the moral aspect of this:
A group of people (called the government) use the threat of violence to make a mandate between two parties- employee and employer. If you are an employer and you know you have to give the next hired person PPT of 10 days, what would you do?
The salary offered by the employer would factor in this 10 days off. The salary would be lower than it otherwise would have been. This hurts people who favor a higher salary rather than the days off. The same way mandated maternity benefits hurt women who do not plan to have children.
A good negotiation practice when trying to get a higher salary is to tell your potential employer that you do not want time off, medical benefits and/or 401K matches. You will be surprised what a good negotiation chip this could be in commanding a higher salary.

A Message From One Criminal to Another

You have committed hundreds of felonies this year. The book “Three Felonies a Day” and “Go Directly to Jail” detail this issue. The CFR is about 150,000 pages last time I checked (2013). Below is one of these laws reprinted to give you an idea of how it is written. (12CFR1.100-Indirect General Obligations).

“(a) Obligation issued by an obligor not possessing general powers of taxation. Pursuant to §1.2(b), an obligation issued by an obligor not possessing general powers of taxation qualifies as a general obligation of a State or political subdivision for the purposes of 12 U.S.C. 24 (Seventh), if a party possessing general powers of taxation unconditionally promises to make sufficient funds available for all required payments in connection with the obligation.”

From these little paragraphs in the CFR, come hundreds of pages of other regulatory guidelines on what this mean and how to follow it. Some of these laws have court cases which also interpret these laws. I have not even touched state and local laws. I have not even touched contradictions between state and federal laws. This is why it is impossible not to be a criminal in the eyes of the law. This is why when someone says, “it’s the law”, and you ask for specifics, you get a blank stare. No one bothers to read it. No one cares. No one can understand them.
The Federal Government goes after low hanging fruit. These are very wealthy individuals and corporations. Ninety-eight percent of the public is out of the view of the government. They do not have the time or resources to interpret the data they collect on individuals.
The Mueller probe proves that the federal government can put you in jail forever because you did not dot an “i” on some form you signed in 1995. This rarely happens though.
Jermone Corsi was put in the government cross-hairs. The first ten minutes of this video is worth watching on what the government can do to you.

Mistake 1:  He handed over all his information willingly. Make the bureaucracy follow the rules exactly. Make them work for the information they need. Bureaucrats do not like extra work. The less you give them, the better.
Mistake 2: He cooperated. He sat down and spoke with them. Always plead the fifth.
I don’t know the lawyer he is getting advice from, but he should be fired.
I disagree with commentators who tell us the United States is turning into George Orwell’s 1984 dystopia. This is the story line of the right wing. The exact opposite is happening. If the Federal Government ever started to target common people on a grand scale, the internet would shed light on this. Individuals would post YouTube videos and share their story on Facebook. Bureaucrats hate negative publicity. Over the years, this has already happened. This is why police now wear body cams. This is why ACORN no longer exist. The Mueller probe has low approval ratings among the public.  Jermone Corsi has the ability to post his video on YouTube for the public to see and decide for themselves. This was not possible 20 years ago. His story would have been filtered through the MSM and the message would have been lost. The Mueller  probe is one indictment away from a public relation disaster. The all seeing eye works both ways. It is working in the way of freedom.

Perceptions and Expectations

A surrey was conducted by the University of Michigan Survey Research Center on what people perceived inflation to be in the past and what they expect inflation to be in the future. Surprise, surprise. Overall, what people perceived in the past is what they expect in the future.

People think in a “linear” fashion. They take their past experiences and project them out to infinity. Most people miss the trend change. Whether these trend changes be the stock market, housing prices, government rule or crime dropping is irrelevant. Inflation can change very rapidly. Empirical data from the past shows this to be true. When you discuss the impact of the improbable, the question should be asked, “improbable to who?”

Democracy in Action

Voters in San Francisco went to the polls to vote on Proposition C, “Gross Tax for Homelessness service.” Voting yes meant you were in favor of raising taxes on certain businesses.
In the true spirit of democracy, it won by about a 60 to 40 margin. What do you expect when two wolves and a sheep have a vote on what’s for dinner? Tyranny of the majority.
I can summarize the philosophy of the western world in one statement:
“Don’t steal… except via the ballot box”

Men and Women in the Workplace

Tyler Cowen reports via a Harvard study:

Even in a unionized environment, where work tasks are similar, hourly wages are identical, and tenure dictates promotions, female workers earn $0.89 on the male-worker dollar (weekly earnings). We use confidential administrative data on bus and train operators from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) to show that the weekly earnings gap can be explained entirely by the workplace choices that women and men make. Women value time and flexibility more than men. Women take more unpaid time off using the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and work fewer overtime hours than men. Men and women plan to work similar overtime hours when they are scheduled three months in advance, but men actually work nearly 50% more overtime hours than women. Women with dependents value time away from work more than do men with dependents. When selecting work schedules, women try to avoid weekend, holiday, and split shifts more than men. To avoid unfavorable work times, women prioritize their schedules over route safety and select routes with a higher probability of accidents. Women are less likely than men to game the scheduling system by trading off work hours at regular wages for overtime hours at premium wages. Conditional on seniority, which dictates choice sets, the weekly earnings gap can be explained entirely by differences in operator choices of hours, schedules, and routes.

This is true by observations in the real world. In general, women prefer more leisure than males. Women rather spend time with the family than work overtime. Whether this is a biological trait or a result of tradition and culture, I don’t know.
Further,  there are many studies that discuss the pay gap between women and men. Many have sloppy methodologies (or intellectual dishonest). Some studies do not even bother to normalize the difference in hours worked. For instance, person A and person B both get paid 50K per year. However, person A sacrifices weekends and holidays to work overtime. The end salary for person A is 60K because of all the extra hours worked. Aggregating salaries, a false conclusion would be person A gets paid more than person B because of (fill in the blank- race, gender, attractiveness). The reality is person A just works more hours and is willing to sacrifice leisure. Males work more hours on average than females. Studies that do not take this into consideration are misleading. Statistics and facts are useless without the proper philosophy looking at them.

The Irrelevant Presidents

US presidents are irrelevant. Actual changes that affect peoples everyday life are marginal. The only big change is the rhetoric and the so called “national dialogue”. The national dialogue is the conversations you have among family, friends and the hot debates you have on Facebook with trolls.
I will make two points that prove the above statement.
First, imagine if I had the ability to block out who won election night. I somehow had the power to redact everything you read with regard to who won the presidency. If I was to ask you, based on your everyday life two years into the presidency, “who won”, you would not know.

Second, I am going to discuss the current national dialogue. This is the hot topic known as immigration, both legal and illegal. All of the information below is from the “Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2017”. I am aware that people debate the absolute numbers. What is more important is the trends are consistent between all these different studies.
Illegal immigration peaked in 2006-2008 time frame. It has been on a steady decline since that time period.


Those talking about the “flood of illegal immigrants” are about a decade late to the conversation. The trends are changing. They show people are going home.
It wasn’t more than a few years ago we heard Obama was “flooding the US with refugee’s”. No one every defined what they meant by flood.

The above chart shows no flood.
What about deportations and aliens removed?

It shows a steady increase from the mid 90’s. This trend cuts right through the Clinton, Bush and Obama years. Obama was depicted as a softy on illegal aliens.

The US government is not some top down command center. These government departments take on a life of their own. Think about the drastic difference in rhetoric between Trump and Obama. Now reflect on the above charts. If Hilary would have won or Obama would have lost in previous elections, do you think these numbers would be different? Behind the scenes, these bureaucracies chug along, regardless of the presidents rhetoric and stated goals. The only way to inflict damage on these bureaucracies is to cut their funding. This is not happening. It rarely ever happens. Each year congress sends a massive spending bill to the president. It is usually over 2,000 pages. Politically, the president has little choice in signing it. The president has little power in cutting funding to any of these bureaucracies.
If Hilary would have won, we would all be discussing LGBT bathroom rights or climate change. The national dialogue would be drastically different. Newspaper headlines would be drastically different. But for the bureaucracies, it would be business as usual.