My weekly reading for September 1, 2024

by Brad Templeton, ForbesAugust 21, 2024.

Extract:

The numbers mean that Caltrain burned about 25 million gallons of diesel annually. But today, Caltrain has about 590,000 boardings/year and an average of 24,600 on weekdays. This means an average of 3.5 liters of diesel per entry, which corresponds to 4 liters of petrol. So the equivalent of 8 liters of gasoline per person was burned on each return flight. A 30 mile round trip in a car with an average load of 1.5 people, which is less than 1 gallon per person in a Prius, and 2 gallons per person in a large SUV. Even if each passenger were given a personal Hummer H2 to drive, they would only burn 4.6 liters on that round trip flight. If diesel Caltrain were a car, it would be among the heaviest polluters per passenger.

by David Inserra, Cato at FreedomAugust 29, 2024.

Extract:

Brazilian courts have now formally threatened to shut down X (formerly Twitter) in Brazil because X will not provide information about individuals critical of the current government, including individuals living in the United States.

And:

There are also now rumors that Brazil may be targeting Starlink and SpaceX, which are only partially owned by Elon Musk. If true, it would mean that other unrelated US companies and investors would be targeted by Brazil’s judicial authorities.

by Timothy Taylor, Conversable economistAugust 29, 2024.

Extract:

Simon Newcomb (1835-1909) is largely unknown today, but he was a very prominent economist at the time: he was active in the disputes that led to the founding of the American Economic Association in 1885. In July 1893 he published an essay on ‘The Problem of Economic Education’ for the prominent (then as now!) Quarterly journal of economics. The essay argues that there are fundamental insights into economics – known since 1893 – that are largely unknown or ignored by the general public. What was thought-provoking for me was that some of these insights seem equally unknown to much of the public, as well as to many policymakers, here in the third decade of the 21st century.

And from Newcomb:

Before anything like the science of economics was known, the theory of the “balance of trade” arose. The basic doctrine of this theory was that trade was beneficial or detrimental to a country as the value of its exports exceeded or fell short of the value of its imports. Accordingly, an unfavorable trade balance or credit situation in the nomenclature of the time meant a situation in which imports would exceed exports, and a favorable balance the opposite. An immediate consequence of this view was that trade between two nations could not be mutually beneficial because the values ​​each exported to the other could not both be greater than those received from the other. …

For a century and a half the doctrine held and taught by economists has been that there can be no trade between two nations that is not mutually beneficial; that people do not buy or sell unless what they receive is more valuable to them than what they give in return; and that what is true of the individual man is, in this respect, also true of the nation. And yet the combined arguments of economists for a hundred years have not been sufficient to change the nomenclature or change the ideas of commercial nations on this subject. …The terms “favorable” and “unfavorable,” as applied to the supposed balance of trade, still mean what they did before Adam Smith was born. We may well tremble at the political fate of any statesman who publicly insists that our exports will in the long run substantially balance our imports, no matter what policies we adopt; and that, if this equality could be disturbed, the advantage would lie on the side of the nation which imported the greater values.