Justice

[peterbirks]

Well, they can say what they like about this administration, but it's pleasing to see that they are taking a firm hand when it comes to law enforcement, and that attempted murder in the UK by a foreign national is now a deportable offence.

Firm, but fair.


++++++++

Pauly wrote something interesting about John Kalmer on his Tao of Poker site. Apparently John 'Skalie' Kalmer had not had a good run; his bankroll had been depleted so badly that he was on the verge of giving it up after a few years attempting to make it as a professional. But then came the run in the WSOP main event, and several hundred thousand pounds.

That set me thinking. How many 'other' Johns were there in that WSOP, who, if they failed to cash, would be jacking it in, and going back to the day job (if the day job would have them). We don't know. But if one of them made it to the final table, it would be fair to assume that he was not alone.

This game is littered with unpublicised failure. Blogs go silent, players "aren't seen again". The successes are rightly feted, and the failures understandably don't want to publicise the fact, but there must be an awfully large number of people who didn't make the cut.

Comments

Re: Larry Niven, man of the people

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

The "there are too many people" argument has always puzzled me. Not that it is necessarily wrong, but that the people who propound it seem to put if forward as a given fact, when it's far from given. As you say, the confusion is usually moral vs economic.

Population is a fascinating topic. The Black Death, for example, was the best thing that ever happened for the "working classes" in England, in that it shifted the economic value of a worker considerably higher (because much of the "supply" had died). Does this make the Black Death "a good thing"?

It's an interesting question, but one where the economic argument should not be confused with the moral one.

PJ

Tewkesbury? Drown the bastards!

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

I would absolutely love to have the time and the money to go back and research the comparative effects of the Black Death across Europe. For one thing, it probably postponed the end of the Byzantine Empire by fifty years. (And then a Mongol invasion added another fifty.)

Economically, however, there's a huge variance here. Complicated by "externalities," a lovely little term by which, as you know, economists are basically saying "this isn't a hard science at all. But we're going to hide that fact from you."

Peasant population down: good for remaining peasants. Also good for serfs, who could just walk off the land, and (if I remember my theory from twenty years ago) sheep. Lots more room for sheep. Thus, when the population bounced back, lots more reason for enclosures ... and ... well, it gets a bit messy after that.

A far better candidate for the Saviour of the English Working Class is, in fact, Bismarck. Otto single-handedly constructed the Prussian welfare state in order to fight Social Democracy. Lord Salisbury and the rest didn't have much choice but to follow, and hence we have, er, late period Gladstone, er, Keir Hardie, er, Lloyd George, er ... and so on down to Beveridge and the NHS.

Perhaps we have mislaid Bismarck's legacy somewhere along the way.

However, it's always nice to have someone agree with me that the claim that "there are too many people" is largely insubstantial. Or (not that you have agreed on this point) that the claim that we can solve the equally unquantifiable problem of global warming by, ahem, slamming economic growth in the Third World ... is actually morally indefensible.

When I hear the word "ecomomics," I reach for my Samuelson and Nordhaus...

PS: Title courtesy of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. And thank God Barnet happened soon afterwards.

Re: Tewkesbury? Drown the bastards!

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

One more thing (sorry). The Black Death was almost certainly responsible for the resurrection of the yeoman class, which ain't the same thing as the working class at all. It is, however, a more interesting study in how England got to be England. I could stretch a point and claim that it's what focus groups regard as "Middle England" these days. Middle England is violent, ignorant, and terrified of "the other."

Not a problem with mass emigration in the last three centuries.

Possibly mildly disturbing now.