In the past, also, war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality.
(...)
In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.
“Great is Bankruptcy: the great bottomless gulf into which all Falsehoods, public and private, do sink, disappearing; whither, from the first origin of them, they were all doomed. For Nature is true and not a lie. No lie you can speak or act but it will come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on Nature’s Reality, and be presented there for payment, - with the answer, No effects.
Pity only that it often had so long a circulation: that the original forger were so seldom he who bore the final smart of it! Lies, and the burden of evil they bring, are passed on; shifted from back to back, and from rank to rank; and so land ultimately on the dumb lowest rank, who with spade and mattock, with sore heart and empty wallet, daily come in contact with reality, and can pass the cheat no further. [...] But with a Fortunatus’ Purse in his pocket, through what length of time might not almost any Falsehood last! Your Society, your Household, practical or spiritual Arrangement, is untrue, unjust, offensive to the eye of God and man. Nevertheless its hearth is warm, its larder well replenished: the innumerable Swiss of Heaven, with a kind of Natural loyalty, gather round it; will prove, by pamphleteering, musketeering, that it is a truth; or if not an unmixed (unearthly, impossible) Truth, then better, a wholesomely attempered one, (as wind is to the shorn lamb), and works well.
Changed outlook, however, when purse and larder grow empty! Was your Arrangement so true, so accordant to Nature’s ways, then how, in the name of wonder, has Nature, with her infinite bounty, come to leave it famishing there? To all men, to all women and all children, it is now indubitable that your Arrangement was false. Honour to Bankruptcy; ever righteous on the great scale, though in detail it is so cruel! Under all Falsehoods it works, unweariedly mining. No Falsehood, did it rise heaven-high and cover the world, but Bankruptcy, one day, will sweep it down, and make us free of it.”
--The French Revolution: a history, by Thomas Carlyle; as quoted by Mencius Moldbug
There is no greater joy than riding the words of Thomas Carlyle.
He may not always be correct (although his point above is a blow of hard-hitting truth as great as any ever written) but his phrasing, his metaphors, his analogy, are all magnificent.
But … but … what about bankruptcies induced by a liquidity crunch—the kind the political elite’s propagandists have have been telling me entitle a “too big to fail” company to receive perpetual government assistance?
In those cases, bankruptcy wouldn’t suck up falsehoods, would it?
No. But I think you* are guilty of affirming the consequent. If something is false, then it will end in bankruptcy—but that does not logically imply that everything ending in bankruptcy was false. So something true could still end in bankruptcy (for whatever reason, like a liquidity crunch).
* Or Carlyle, I suppose, but given the choice between accusing a famous thinker of an elementary fallacy and a quick off-the-cuff Internet comment, I’d rather accuse the latter.
If your business is structured such that a liquidity crunch will drive you bankrupt then some restructuring might be in order.
Now one can (and I certainly would be willing) to make the argument that it is almost impossible for a small to medium sized business to structure itself such that a liquidity crunch exacerbated by an inept political class and a rapacious bureaucracy (or a rapacious political class and an inept bureaucracy, whatever).
In that case it’s best to take your ball and go home leaving the enlightened revolutionaries with the society they voted for.
If your business is structured such that a liquidity crunch will drive you bankrupt then some restructuring might be in order.
Eh, that’s what I thought do, but the very idea looks to be beyond the pale. They tell me that we needed to make huge loans on terms no one else could get to prop up some large banks, and it’s “only” to provide “liquidity”. But my thought is: I find it extremely unsettling to be in an economy where such a huge fraction of it is based on business plans this brittle; and the sooner and more spectacularly they die off, the better a foundation future growth will be built on.
But current mainstream thinking doesn’t even allow such a thought.
I also saw people present, as “evidence” of a liquidity crunch, the fact that overnight lending rights spiked from 4% to 6% annualized. Considering that these are the annualized rates for loans with a life of a few weeks at most, this is a trivial increase in borrowing costs. A business so fragile that it can’t withstand paying a few extra pennies for ultra-cheap loans every once in a while … well, any economy dependent on such brittle business plans is living on borrowed time anyway.
-- George Orwell, 1984
--The French Revolution: a history, by Thomas Carlyle; as quoted by Mencius Moldbug
There is no greater joy than riding the words of Thomas Carlyle.
He may not always be correct (although his point above is a blow of hard-hitting truth as great as any ever written) but his phrasing, his metaphors, his analogy, are all magnificent.
But … but … what about bankruptcies induced by a liquidity crunch—the kind the political elite’s propagandists have have been telling me entitle a “too big to fail” company to receive perpetual government assistance?
In those cases, bankruptcy wouldn’t suck up falsehoods, would it?
No. But I think you* are guilty of affirming the consequent. If something is false, then it will end in bankruptcy—but that does not logically imply that everything ending in bankruptcy was false. So something true could still end in bankruptcy (for whatever reason, like a liquidity crunch).
* Or Carlyle, I suppose, but given the choice between accusing a famous thinker of an elementary fallacy and a quick off-the-cuff Internet comment, I’d rather accuse the latter.
If your business is structured such that a liquidity crunch will drive you bankrupt then some restructuring might be in order.
Now one can (and I certainly would be willing) to make the argument that it is almost impossible for a small to medium sized business to structure itself such that a liquidity crunch exacerbated by an inept political class and a rapacious bureaucracy (or a rapacious political class and an inept bureaucracy, whatever).
In that case it’s best to take your ball and go home leaving the enlightened revolutionaries with the society they voted for.
Eh, that’s what I thought do, but the very idea looks to be beyond the pale. They tell me that we needed to make huge loans on terms no one else could get to prop up some large banks, and it’s “only” to provide “liquidity”. But my thought is: I find it extremely unsettling to be in an economy where such a huge fraction of it is based on business plans this brittle; and the sooner and more spectacularly they die off, the better a foundation future growth will be built on.
But current mainstream thinking doesn’t even allow such a thought.
I also saw people present, as “evidence” of a liquidity crunch, the fact that overnight lending rights spiked from 4% to 6% annualized. Considering that these are the annualized rates for loans with a life of a few weeks at most, this is a trivial increase in borrowing costs. A business so fragile that it can’t withstand paying a few extra pennies for ultra-cheap loans every once in a while … well, any economy dependent on such brittle business plans is living on borrowed time anyway.
Well, I don’t know. The sort of gun you had before modern precision machining, 4.2 would be good enough, maybe 4.3 at a pinch.