If poverty is not a result of lack of resources or opportunities, but of poor institutions, poor government, and toxic politics, giving money to poor countries — particularly giving money to the governments of poor countries — is likely to perpetuate and prolong poverty, not eliminate it.
Angus Deaton, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality (2013).
Ogni giusto re primo servatore dee essere delle leggi fatte da lui.
A just king must be the first to observe those laws that he has himself prescribed.
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron (c. 1350), “Seventh Day,” Tenth Story (tr. G. H. McWilliam).
On July 19, 1817, Georg Anton Schäffer — unsuccessful in his attempt to conquer the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi for the Russian-American Company — was forced to admit defeat and leave Kauaʻi. The effort had begun in 1815 as a shipwreck recovery mission but escalated after the German physician in the company’s employ had been played by native politicians. Legal action against Schäffer — considered, after the fact, a bungler (his efforts cost his employer over 200,000 roubles) — proved unsuccessful.
In A.D. 64 on the 19th of July, the Great Fire of Rome began. It caused widespread devastation and raged for six days, destroying half the city.
One thousand seven hundred eighty-one years later, the last great fire to affect Manhattan began early in the morning and was subdued that afternoon. This “Great New York City Fire of 1845” killed four firefighters and 26 civilians, destroying 345 buildings.
President Donald Trump’s big speech on Thursday focused on election integrity. The gist? Elections are severely compromised in these United States. Highlights included his
The president disclosed reports and information that he said backed up his main points.
“Trump closed by once again pushing Congress to pass the Save America Act,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “which would restrict mail-in ballots and require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote.
“‘Every American, whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, independent or otherwise, should be able to agree that we deserve the most secure, honest and fair election system,’ Trump said.”
Press reports on the president’s speech tend to run strongly negative, as in this U.S. News and World Report headline: “Trump Says These Documents Prove His False Claims of Election Fraud. Here’s What They Really Say.”
We can scarcely conceive at first that the great effects . . . have no other cause than the sole reciprocity of services and the multiplicity of exchanges. However this continual succession of exchanges has three very remarkable advantages.
First, the labour of several men united is more productive, than that of the same men acting separately. . . .
Secondly, our knowledge is our most precious acquisition, since it is this that directs the employment of our force, and renders it more fruitful, in proportion to its greater soundness and extent. . . .
Thirdly, and this still merits attention: when several men labour reciprocally for one another every one can devote himself exclusively to the occupation for which is fittest, whether from his natural dispositions or from fortuitous circumstances; and thus he will succeed better. . . .
Concurrence of force, increase and preservation of knowledge, and division of labour, — these are the three great benefits of society. They cause themselves to be felt from the first by men the most rude; but they augment in an incalculable ratio, in proportion as they are perfected, — and every degree of amelioration, in the social order, adds still to the possibility of increasing and better using them.”
Antoine Louis Claude Destutt, comte de Tracy, A Treatise on Political Economy (Georgetown, D.C.: Joseph Mulligan, publisher; W. A. Rind & Co., printer, 1817) Thomas Jefferson, ed. of translation, from the section entitled “The First Part of the Treatise on the Will and Its Effects: Of Our Action,” chapter one, “Of Society.”
President Harry S. Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act on July 18, 1947. Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the United States Constitution authorizes Congress to enact such a statute, which Congress has done on three occasions: 1792, 1886, and 1947. The 1947 Act was last revised 59 years after passing, in 2006.
Reclaim the Net reports the finding that, as judged by looking at 408 Australian teens, some 85 percent “of Australians aged 12 to 15 were still merrily logging on three months after the ban supposedly cut them off from the world.” Maybe not merrily. Perhaps only sturdily or insouciantly. Anyway, rightly. Good job, guys.
The ban is failing because kids know how to draw a mustache on their faces or borrow somebody else’s login.
Their privacy and the privacy of all other users has been invaded; the Australian government achieved that part of its mission. But the assault on everybody’s rights has not accomplished what it was supposed to. The kids are still in grave danger of being texted a link to a critique of the Australian government’s awful policies.
Solution: throw in the towel and roll it all back. Get government out of everybody’s apps. Let parents rear their own children themselves.
No! answer gendarmes like Prime Minister Albanese. Must make it work. Somehow. Like by doubling the already outsized maximum fines — from $49 million to $99 million Australian dollars ($68.6 million USD) that the tech companies must pay for failing to defeat the young people. (When in doubt, loot. . . ?)
Online predators are a problem. But Australia’s social-media engineers won’t solve it by preying on the rights of all.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Sola la miseria è senza invidia nelle cose presenti.
In the affairs of this world, poverty alone is without envy.
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron (c. 1350), “Fourth Day,” Introduction (tr. G. H. McWilliam).
The Republic of Finland officially confirmed its form of government on July 17, 1919. For this reason, the Seventeenth of July is known as the Day of Democracy in Finland.
Now, it would be easy to eliminate budget deficits and to begin to make big and regular dents in the national debt, were it not for one teensy-weensy problem. Just hand me the budget (in electronic form, please) and a red pencil and I’ll hack away at the billions and billions. And trillions.
If that would take too long, I’d enlist a team of like-minded spending cutters to help.
We’d be doing something like what the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, tried to do early in the second Trump administration. DOGE didn’t go or wasn’t allowed to go anywhere near far enough, though. We know this because the big picture of runaway government spending hasn’t changed.
That’s what would thwart me and my team too: lack of political will. Or too much political will pulling in the opposite direction. Too many constituencies for all the spending and too many politicians, both parties, catering to the constituencies.
That’s the teensy-weensy problem.
The current U.S. national debt is approaching $40 trillion. This year, the federal government has already borrowed $1.4 trillion. These seem like catastrophic amounts. But somehow the U.S. still teeters on the edge of fiscal doom, yet to fall in.
Maybe when we get to a trillion trillions in federal debt and when a billion dollars won’t buy a dozen eggs, then we will surely see real reform.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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