Partial List of Best Last Meals

Perhaps which one you choose says a lot about you. Perhaps what I list and the order I choose says a lot about me. 

• Holy Eucharist 
• bread and water
• Nic’s burger and fries
• The French Laundry
• one hour at the Las Vegas buffet of your choice
• Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest
• liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti

I leave it up to the reader to consider why it is your last meal; be it choice (yours or someone else's) or unexpected circumstance.

Biden's Transformation Into a 1970s President

It seems clear that President Biden is well on his way to achieving his obvious goal of becoming a redux of a 1970s American president. This would be some combination of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

Consider the checklist below:

• Stumble repeatedly ✔
• Misspeak and garble words ✔✔✔
• Inflation ✔✔
• Malaise ✔
• Disastrously bungled Asian/Middle Eastern war retreat ✔✔
• Extreme tensions with Russia involving their invasion of a neighboring country ✔
• High oil prices ✔
• Olympic boycott ✔

Still waiting on:

Deregulation...

Have Your House And Rent It Too

Partial list of ways my neighbors like so, so many homeowners wish to have it both ways--despite the blatant contradictions. While many of these overlap with each other, they each are distinct.

• They want high property values, but they also want affordability--just maybe not near them? Affordability for thee but not for me.
• They want high property values, but they don't want "outside investors" much less "speculators!" to buy properties near them--presumably to rent them to undesirables (see below).
• They want a thriving rental market, but they don't want anyone to rent near them.
• They want diversity and inclusion, but they champion restrictions on development and rentals which make surrounding housing unaffordable and unavailable.
• They want diversity and inclusion, but they wish to make choices for their neighbors thwarting their personal preferences.
• They want the freedom to make their own choices about remodeling, etc., but they do not want an anything-goes policy for even their dearest neighbors. De gustibus non est disputandum for me; no way in hell for thee!

Well At Least We Can Agree On This, Right?...

Here is a partial list of some things people commonly get wrong (by my judgment at least) yet believe in them with strong conviction and desire. Therefore, these are just a few examples of times when I disagree with conventional wisdom. 

• Veterans are always human, sometimes (but rarely) heroes. I wonder how much mental anguish in veterans is caused by either an imposter syndrome (these people think I did something I did not do) or a guilt complex (these people don't know what ugly things I endured and perhaps contributed to). Veterans deserve reverence and sympathy, but we do a grave disservice to them when we dismissively and robotically admire them.
• Localized industrial policy is very bad. This includes tax-increment financing (TIF), direct subsidy, government/private partnerships, and other favored-interest actions. The local darling in my neck of the woods is M.A.P.S. Like so many cases of local industrial policy, it suffers from a server case of Bastiat's "what is seen and what is unseen--just look at all the shiny things! There are two crucial and high hurdles for these public (i.e., taxpayer-funded) endeavors to overcome before we can believe in them: 1) there must be a clear market failure preventing entrepreneurs from seeing and acting to realize the positive gains to be had, and 2) the government must be able to identify and execute on these supposed investment opportunities.
• There should be no government licensure for employment (especially law and medicine--those in particular are too important and nuanced to leave up to central planning). I've got strong economic and principle-based arguments against licensure while those supporting it typically rely on that it feels good and that an idealized government can correct a hypothesized problem (not even a market failure mind you). Yet my view is political poison because it takes the unpopular tactic of addressing people's fear through passive action rather than blatant pandering.
• Edward Snowden is an American patriot and hero.
• Almost all acts of state-level aggression (AKA, war) should be met with minimal retaliation if not appeasement and forbearance. This certainly cuts against human nature, but most secondary reactions in response to violent hostility are counterproductive. They make the world a worse place--overall, on net, all things considered. My follow up right there is not my attempt to qualify my view. Rather I am saying I am considering all the supposed benefits people offer as to why vengeance shall be mine! . . . we must stand up to belligerent aggressors. Too often the cost is not worth the cure, and the actions taken in response are just closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. The most I can say in defense of the typical defender of retaliation (too much play on words?) is that if one wants to maintain the world closer to how it is at the cost of how much better it could be, then fight every fire with fire. It is very hard to truly hold territory and control a people. And this difficulty grows more and more as human society advances. Initial victories for would-be rulers become short lived if not pyrrhic. The constant eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth state of the world keeps us in a local maximum, struggling to escape to higher peaks. I think Bryan Caplan says it well.
• The following should all be legal with minimal to no interference from government: prostitution, recreational drugs, performance enhancing drugs, selling/buying organs, prediction markets, actual gambling (games of chance rather than skill), and basically everything else under the sun of If you can do it for free…. The list is what makes this item fully counter-conventional--very few will defend all of these items.
• The motto “Safety First!” is basically nonsense. It amounts to trite virtue signaling. If it is your “highest priority”, then you are incompetent. It is simply not possible for this to be a goal. It is a constraint. Fortunately most of the time when used it is just there to help the naïve and fearful to be a bit braver. In this sense it is innocuous as far as a noble lie can be. But for God’s sake can we grow up and stop saying it or accepting it as a substitute for meaningful signal?

Things the major tribes actually do unfortunately agree upon: 

• There is lots of speech that needs to be censored (e.g., hateful speech, disruptive speech, unpleasant speech).
• We need to fund the police such that we have a strong and powerful police state
• Government can and should solve the "problem" of big tech.
• A safe world and a safe America requires a overwhelmingly strong, uber-engaged, and extensively involved U.S. military.
• American farmers are a sacred group who need constant support especially to maintain the status quo. They should enjoy private profits and be afforded extensive social insurance against losses. 
• The welfare and education and indoctrination of the young is a state concern and needs strong state intervention. Parents should only be left up to their own desires when those desires fully correspond to the state's interests (defined separately by the two biggest tribes, of course). 
• Incumbent firms and industries need and deserve deference if not extra support. It is wrong that they might be challenged by newcomers and new approaches. 

Three Things I Learned from My Favorite Podcasters

As a follow up to my favorite bloggers post, I select here a few of the many, many podcasters I have followed to identify those that I love the most.

Here are three things I've learned from my favorite podcasters (in alphabetical order):

Tyler Cowen (Conversations with Tyler):

• Ask questions driven more by genuine curiosity rather than an agenda. 
• Let the answerer answer and with limited exception let the answer stand without challenge.
• Explore and consider loosely connected ideas and hypotheses. There is often more to learn in doing so even in the actually rare event there is not a strong connection after all. 

Richard Epstein (The Libertarian, Law Talk, and Reasonable Disagreements):

• There probably is a conflicting precedent and there likely are anticipated consequences that a policy's advocate may not like.
• He continually reminds me that the Law is more nuanced than I or the common commenter appreciates. 
• The history behind a law, rule, or norm is very often fascinating.

Jason Feifer (Build for Tomorrow):

• When it comes to change and people's reaction to it, there is truly nothing new under the sun.
• Release your clutch of the pearls; whatever it is, it ain't that bad. 
• These are the good ol' days.

Tim Ferriss (The Tim Ferriss Show):

• High performers have a lot to share that you can profit from even if you cannot fully emulate it. 
• Thoughtful, honest questions of an open-ended nature are the best method for a meaningful interview-style conversation. There is no reason to try to impress an impressive guest, and he never makes this mistake. 
• There are always other methods to learning a skill or achieving an outcome including near mastery-level advancement. The obvious path is often not the best path to choose nor typically the one chosen by true masters. It isn't a "hack" in the derisive sense one should seek--you have to put the work in. Rather it is a constant questioning and willingness to find alternatives.

Kmele Foster (The Fifth Column):

• Race as a social construct should not be given special identification status or importance--doing so is harmful to all individuals and to disadvantaged groups in particular.
• Strong talk when backed up by strong reasoning is a persuasive and welcomed trait.
• Tell people what you think and leave it to them to have an emotional reaction (if any), and realize the emotional response is theirs to own not yours to manage.

Nick Gillespie (The Reason Interview & The Reason Roundtable) - in the second case credit goes to the entire group as they all demonstrate the qualities below:

• Postmodernism is a very useful way to view and evaluate the world with much to offer especially to libertarian or classical liberal perspectives.
• A mix of irreverent humor skillfully layered in does not simply lubricate a conversation, but it can actually succinctly add information content--a picture is worth a thousand words, and a well-placed comedic side crack is worth at least 250. 
• We are and have been in a Libertarian Moment. It is just taking longer to develop and be fully realized than he and Matt Welch originally projected.

Malcolm Gladwell (Revisionist History):

• We can hold in high confidence only our principles, but not so much our evaluations based on those principles. Time and again our judgements don't hold up upon closer and still closer examination.
• The overall narrative of a well-told story will stay with you long after all of the related facts of the story have faded from memory.
• We should always question the past.

Jonah Goldberg (The Remnant):

• The proper evaluation of a President while in office is not relative to the hypothetical Presidency of the most recent also-ran nor the upcoming opponent(s). Rather the proper evaluation is against the high standard of an absolute scale of desired quality.
• Humans must believe in something. If they do not have a traditional, formal religion, they will invent one or behave in a way that de facto creates one.
• There is still hope for the principles of conservatism to endure all the challenges it faces from within. Much like Colonel Jessep, deep down in places D.C. socialites don't talk about at parties, we want him on Chesterton's Fence. We need him on that fence. 

Tim Harford (Cautionary Tales, 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy, More or Less, et al.):

• A well-told story is one of the most effective ways to convey complex ideas and important truths.
• Statistics and data are underused and underappreciated.
• A devilish caveat: Beware simplistic answers when persistently offered; they are usually wrong. Beware complex answers when insistently provided; they are often hiding some important truth.

Andrew Heaton (The Political Orphanage & Alienating the Audience):

• Be of good cheer in all cases and including in political argumentation.
• A comedic approach to contentious positions (political and otherwise) can be very disarming if not downright charming as well as effective (meaning winning over the opposing side) when well executed through good-natured humor that is neither derogatory nor abrasive.
• You shouldn't bring your own horse to a horse-themed diner where the waitstaff all ride horses. There is a deeper metaphor here for those willing to face challenging truths--I'm sure there is . . . just keep looking.

Penn Jillette (Penn's Sunday School):

• You aren't just capable of being wrong; you are wrong. We all are. Our memories are wrong. Our explanations are wrong. Our viewpoint and narrative is wrong. But through all that, we can still get it mostly right.
• He is one of the wisest people I follow on understanding life. In this respect I have learned a lot about what to prioritize.
• There is no good reason to be emotionally dishonest--especially with yourself.

Conan O'Brien (Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend):

• Delivery is more important than content--this is by no means a knock on his content.
• Even comedy experts, masters of the craft, cannot always predict what will and what will not work in comedy.
• Smart balance including a great straight man is essential to a comedic performance.

Aaron Ross Powell & Trevor Burrus (Free Thoughts):

• Honest inquiry using the "devil's advocate" method is a useful way to interrogate one's own side.
• The motivation and arguments offered by both anti-gun and anti-immigrant proponents are very similar in their style and substance with both having the same problematic faults.
• Mindfulness can help heal our harsh political divide.

Russ Roberts (EconTalk):

• Be intellectually honest with yourself and others.
• A more fruitful conversation can come by allowing opposing views to lie unchallenged. 
• The point of economics and the desire for the good life is about happiness AND meaning--two deep, rich, nuanced concepts that are poorly understood.

P.S. Mike Munger is my favorite podcast guest. 

On a sappy note there is a bit of trepidation I carry considering the many podcasters that I follow and very much enjoy. There is a certain human connection to someone whose voice you often hear. While this would be true of any person you know in your everyday life, there are few of these people whom you seek out in a friendship-like regard. Some day one of my my favorite podcasters will suddenly be gone. Not through a proper retirement or move to a new thing, as much as that itself would represent a loss, rather I am thinking about ... well, . . . Do You Realize? . . .

Three Things I Learned from My Favorite Bloggers

There are many, many thinkers I have followed. Among the many, an elite few have earned the status from me of devoted readership. I don't always agree with them, fortunately. But I almost always find them some combination of insightful, provocative, and worthy of my attention. The lists below are certainly not exhaustive. While in many cases I learn things from those I follow that change my mind, in many other cases but equally as important I learn more about things I thought I already knew.

Here are three things I've learned from my favorite bloggers* (in alphabetical order):

Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten & formerly Slate Star Codex):

• Thinking out loud (in writing) can be a very productive way to both discover truth and convey good ideas.
• Embrace your mistakes and learn/teach from them.
• The realm of psychiatric conditions is vast, nuanced, and very much misunderstood.

Don Boudreaux (Cafe Hayek):

• There is value in repetition. (He even recognizes this and is, rightly, proud of it.) 
• There is always an audience for hearing arguments on first principles: free trade, trust in free markets, freedom of movement across borders, anti-cronyism, ...
• Liberty not only deserves a passionate and wise defense; it requires it for its preservation and advancement. A role for which he is very suited. Before COVID I did not appreciate this nearly enough. His continual presence in the space of defending rational positions and freedom has taught me much about what is needed.

Jason Brennan (200-Proof Liberals):

• Strongly expressed and even provocative facetiousness can very succinctly convey an argument. But...
• You don’t have to mince your words. Just come out and state your point of view. 
• If you may do it for free, you may do it for money.

Bryan Caplan (EconLog (UPDATED: and now Bet On It)): 

• Friendly curiosity is the most constructive way to engage disagreement and is a valuable route to learning. Test your arguments' strength by assuming the premises of your opponent and see if your position still stands (or at least stays strong with a minor need to relax the opponents assumptions). Also, focus on achievable goals. To change minds, one needs to work on minds with which one shares connections and communication--you need to speak their language. Therefore, work on your in-group despite your desire to focus on the out-group.
• Education is mostly about signaling, most of the value of it is captured by the individual, and as a result we have an economically destructive arms race. 
• Open borders is an enormously important idea that stands up against all attackers. 

John Cochrane (The Grumpy Economist):

• Don't be too quick to dismiss that which the market is pervasively and perpetually providing. There just might be a rational reason you are overlooking that explains the perplexity. Give heed to Chesterton's Fence. For me this would be investment active management (active stock and bond picking), real estate agents, extended warranties, etc.
• The market can (and in the past did) take care of the preexisting conditions concern in health care insurance.
• When it comes to the important issues of economic policy, economic growth IS IT. And it could very well be meaningfully higher than it persistently is.

Tyler Cowen (Marginal Revolution): 

• Be succinct. It is undervalued and under practiced.
• Be curious and take risks. 
• Read and write. Everyday and more than before. 

Robin Hanson (Overcoming Bias):

• Do not let the conventional wisdom or the fear of shallow sensibilities hold you back from exploring ideas and asking good questions.
• Prediction markets are an excellent method for discovery that are very much underused. As Alex Tabarrok says, "Betting is a tax on bullshit".
• The stories we tell ourselves are often not the full story or truth--X isn't about X. Robin better understands the human world than any one I follow or know of, and that is a high bar.

For a primer on Hanson see this.

David Henderson (EconLog):

• You can blog with a smile on your face (in stark contrast to Paul Krugman, who often writes as if someone is fiercely pinching his inner thigh).
• Always look for opportunities in everyday life to apply basic economic lessons (the economic way of thinking). For example, focus on the incentives, ignore the sunk costs, think on the margin, etc.
• Be optimistic about changing minds and give those who disagree with you the benefit of the doubt. As a corollary when you’re going to disagree with someone, look for points they make that you agree with at the same time. For instance if you’re going to disagree with someone’s arguments in an article, find other points in the article where you do agree. (I’m glad he didn’t lose his optimism in that 2007 fire.)

Michael Huemer (Fake Nous):

• The thinking and arguments of elite intellectuals can be as hollow and problematic as that for simple elites in general. In short, don’t fall for the appeal to authority fallacy.
• Don't seek expecting to find philosophical nirvana in any philosopher's arguments.
• Common sense is a strong and underrated pillar of sound thinking.

Arnold Kling (askblog & In My Tribe):

• He exudes the quintessential “on the other foot” point of view. He sees things from another dimension entirely. 
• Find a way to succinctly communicate your ideas—in his words, "Klingisms". For example, easy to fix versus hard to break, …
• Follow and emulate those who deliberately and consistently speak with the other side rather than about or at the other side. This goes along with his idea of being charitable in argumentation and debate.

Steven Landsburg (The Big Questions):

• Think deeply continually asking "why would that be?" and "does this explanation survive through last contact with the enemy?".
• Build simplifying models that give definitive answers—especially interesting when the answers are counter intuitive.
• Of everyone I regularly read, he posts the most things that are the most challenging to my priors in a way that leaves my priors in smithereens—and that is a very good thing even though it is quite frustrating for my contentment! And that is despite the fact that our views on the world, intuitions about morality, and priors generally seem quite aligned. 

Phil Magness (AIER):

• Persistent and thorough scholarship is the antidote to resistance and rejection of unpopular positions especially when the opposition is driven by social-desirability bias and mood affiliation.
• The wealth and success of the early United States including the Southern U.S. was not the result of slavery. 
• No one actually paid the astronomically high marginal tax rates supposedly targeting the highest earners in the U.S. during the mid 1900s.

Michael Munger (AIER, Kids Prefer Cheese, & EconLog - there is not always a consistent home base for his writings):

• There is often a more intriguing and insightful other, other side. He is a three-handed economist. 
• True open-mindedness is a wonderful but rare quality. He has it and conveys it splendidly. 
• Re-examined knowledge yields improvement--even third and fourth derivatives. His latest insight is always either a new, deeper wrinkle on a previous insight or a way he had been wrong all along in how he previously understood something.

Matt Ridley (Rational Optimist):

• Innovation is unpredictable, depends on trial and error, but once started, is so inexorable it looks inevitable.
• Human culture and technology grows through the magic of exchange, whereby ideas have sex creating offspring that are combinatorial advancements.
• The more you look, the more obvious and undeniable the relentless betterment of the world is revealed.

Scott Sumner (EconLog & The Money Illusion):

• Never reason from a price change.
• The market should guide monetary policy and the Fed needs to be (and can be) structured to follow the market’s guide.
• The middle class in America is not on the list of important things to be worried about.

Alex Tabarrok (Marginal Revolution):

• There is a very straightforward explanation for why the prices of many things today (health care, education, et al.) are so d*mn high--the Baumol effect. While I quibble with how complete this explanation is (70-80%?), it is obvious once [he makes] you think about it.
• We need more police. And better policing to be sure, but more police is an obvious answer once you look at the evidence.
• Dominant Assurance Contracts can solve the public good problem and "open the provision of public goods to entrepreneurship, innovation, and the market discovery process".

*I make no distinction for columnist or other such titling as I believe that the term blogger is the best all-encompassing word for those who write of their own opinions and expertise. 

P.S. Richard Hanania and the Resident Contrarian, relative newcomers to those I dedicatedly follow, will make this list once I learn 3 distinct things--it won't be long. They are both excellent.

How To Succeed In Business Trying Really Hard

I just stumbled upon something I wrote about 15 years ago--at least that was when it was saved last. I thought I would share it here. Many of these were things I learned and many of them the hard way in my first job as a financial analyst at the Oklahoma Publishing Company (OPUBCO) where The Oklahoman newspaper was the flagship product.

Some of these have a touch of Grayson Moorhead Securities to them, but you don't have to be that cynical. I have witnessed many times people roll their eyes at advice like this only to then make the very mistakes these are addressing.

How to Succeed in Business Trying Really Hard

1. Be a solution provider. While it is important to have the intellect and experience to identify problems, the ability to create and the courage to suggest solutions is a higher skill.
2. Make conscious efforts to avoid digressions into the minutia. Keep communications only at the greatest level of detail necessary for meaningful ideas.
3. On the other hand, don’t hesitate to consider the depth of an issue. Neglecting the full implications of the subject can easily lead to poor decisions.
4. Balance work and rest in the following manner. If you find yourself looking for excuses to take breaks often or find yourself taking long breaks and feel that you can’t focus on the work at hand, make strides to commit yourself to the work. In this case you are resisting the desire to avoid the work. However, if you find yourself unable to break away from the endeavor despite having toiled for a considerable period, force yourself to step away. In this case you are resisting the desire to trade quality for completion. The result could be an eventual disappointment and may require more work to correct. A well-placed retreat can pay dividends in the form of a new perspective and fresh ideas.
5. Don’t burn undeveloped bridges. It is easy to see existent relationships you would like to preserve. It is much harder yet still vital to long-term success that you develop and nurture relationships that you cannot yet foresee.
6. Don’t build a house in which no one will live. Don’t expend resources toward a goal with high theoretical promise but little practical use.
7. Don’t confuse clichés with sound arguments.
8. Don’t be a Monday-morning quarterback on Sunday afternoon. The time for second guessing is after the fact not during the game. Corollary: Save your nostalgia for Sunday morning brunch. Make today the good old days.
9. Take on the mentality of a librarian rather than a firefighter. Where a fireman does a heroic task in a place he has probably never been before doing the work of saving what he can only to leave once the need is extinguished, a librarian begins work everyday doing the same thing as the day before. A fireman eliminates the need for his services. The librarian creates and enables those needs. Business success is built with librarians not firefighters.
10. Idolize the objective not the process.
11. Continually work to find the right price. Consider the two major risks a salesperson runs. Both involve leaving money on the table. The first is the risk of selling too few for too much—a price point that is excessively high results in unnecessarily low sales volume and hence revenue. The second is the risk of selling too many for too little—a price point that is unnecessarily low results as well and obviously in unnecessarily low sales revenue. This all seems and is (or should be) obvious. Yet time and again businesses opportunities fail on the basic matter of getting price right including adjusting to new realities.
12. Don’t try to live in fantasy land. Good business decisions are bounded by practicality. However, don’t let this go so far as to stop trying things that will fail. Just put practical limits on the extent of the possible failures. Success is built on a thousand small failures. Complete failure comes from one or two unbearable risks that go bad.
13. Understand the Law of Categorical Gravity: Firms within the same industry or complementary industries tend to locate near one another in time and space. And as they get closer and closer they are attracted to one another with greater and greater force. In this way they act as immediate substitutes but long-term complements.
14. Don’t continue to bear burdens after they have been lifted: the analogue here is carry-over heat. When you cook a large rib roast, you might want to hit a target internal temperature of 140 degrees. If you wait for a probing thermometer to register 140 degrees before removing the rib roast from the heat, you will end up way past your target temperature. The reason is carry-over heat. After you remove the roast from the oven, radiation from heat stored in the outer layers of mass as well as from the cooking vessel will continue to cook the roast and can drive the core temperature up another 10-15 degrees. Similarly, we can let stress build in our systems even after the stress-causing burden has been removed or corrected. This is as much about internal morale as it is marketing.
15. Don’t bear burdens by proxy. Is this issue your burden, or is it a colleague’s?
16. You can’t live at the end of a one-way street: you must be consistent in your principles and actions. It is the only way to earn and keep the respect of your peers, followers, leaders, and rivals.
17. Learn to ask hard questions and to accept hard answers.
18. In business writing conclusions and recommendations should be reasonably obvious. A good test is: if removed entirely, could a reasonable reader surmise and write themselves in essence the same conclusion section that you yourself have written albeit hopefully more fluently.
19. Set aside time to meditate on the big picture. For any major project or decision, take some time to contemplate how the possible alternatives and the potential outcomes fit together with your overall goals. Consider the situation from a strategic viewpoint as many good tactical decisions have poor strategic results.
20. At the time when an issue arises, speak up sooner rather than later, and if not then, then later rather than never at all. Corollary: Speak in a measured manner and to the correct audience.
21. In an important respect problems and strengths have quite opposite characteristics. While it is easy to create problems, properly identifying them is a much finer skill. Conversely, the ability to create and foster strengths is always dear, but the knack for recognizing them is a common trait. The highest talent is the combined skill of determining the true problem and calling upon the proper strength as a solution.
22. A poor reaction to a mistake makes for a worse mistake.
23. The necessity of scrutinizing one’s own work is directly proportional to the work’s exposure and purpose.
24. Update! Don’t hesitate to reevaluate your position by modifying or even reversing if new information truly warrants that new appraisal.
25. Manage your image. No one else will manage it for you. In fact, others will create a caricature of your image—sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.
26. Try to distinguish yourself through your work (not your self-promotion) so as to be seen as an irreplaceable talent rather than a commodity.
27. Know how to argue, when to argue, and when to agree. Effective, successful teams argue thoroughly, critically, intelligently, passionately, and professionally, but they also know when and how to present a unified front.
28. Do not solve problems before they are problems. You cannot be a hypothetical firefighter.
29. You get what you measure. Corollary: Your value to the firm is how you are measured.
30. Don’t get married to inconsequential ideas. Don’t fight for worthless victories. You only get so much combat equity.
31. Consider if a fantastic goal deemed too impractical if not “impossible” is because you cannot imagine living there or cannot yet see getting there. Fortunes are made solving the latter problem while fortunes are lost chasing the former.
32. Completion is possible. Perfection is not.
33. Employers can mitigate ineptitude much easier than carelessness.
34. In business you are either surfing or drowning.
35. Know the source of your competitive threat. In the races we run sometimes we are overtaken from behind; other times the path we have chosen simply runs out with us left exasperated staring at a dead end.
36. The two fundamental questions in business are: What does the customer demand? How can my firm be the supplier? (i.e., What do you want? How can I deliver it?)
37. Don’t be afraid to be skeptical of a business practice, but don’t be surprised if there is a rational explanation for it.
38. It isn’t about where you have been; it’s about where you are going.
39. If you don’t know the cost of the marginal unit, you’re better off not “knowing” anything about cost at all. Knowing other bits of data like total cost, average cost, an example of cost, will lead to very poor decision making quite often. Those figures will deceive as much as enlighten—they anchor us to irrelevant comparisons.
40. Strategy is not the sum of tactics; strategy must be a whole unto itself; you cannot back your way into a good vision.
41. The four essentials of negotiation are: know what you want, understand what you can give, determine what you can take, be willing to walk away.
42. Just because you need more doesn’t mean you can get more: a revenue shortfall of goal or forecast/budget does not create a selling opportunity. Remember: Update!
43. Beware following “Best Practices”. Sometimes you are following a leader; sometimes you are following the proverbial lemming who happens to be in front of you.
44. A business decision’s probability of success is only partly dependent upon the ability of the decision maker. The best business leader in the world couldn’t have saved the buggy whip industry from the approaching avalanche that was the automobile.

Partial List of Political/Ideological Boogeymen

As an addendum to this list . . .

The Left (progressive minds):

• Voter ID
• For-profit corporations
• International trade - when it threatens union jobs
• Trump (for now at least)
• Populist uprisings - when they challenge expert consensus
• Traditional gender attitudes
• Social media "platforming" - giving voice to messages they don't approve of

The Right (conservative minds):

• Critical Race Theory (CRT)
• Illegal immigration - especially those who might use social services
• International trade - when it threatens national pride
• AOC (for now at least)
• Populist uprisings - when they challenge conventional practices
• Porn
• Social media "censorship" - exercising discretion within their property rights

The Rules of Investing Club

1. Stay invested - Don’t time the market. Timing the market is not just impossible. It is multiplicatively destructive in two ways: bad decisions compound mathematically and the likelihood of mistake compounds with attempts.
• Sub-rule - Know what this means. It applies when the market is “down” and when it is “up”. What makes you think you can define these? What makes you think you’ll both get it right on the exit/entry (at least twice) and have the nerve to make the proper moves at that time. Also, wouldn’t timing imply buying low? So why are you bailing after a crash?... oh, because even though you didn’t see the downturn coming up until this point, you now can see definitively that a further decline lies ahead.
2. Keep a cash reserve equal to X months expenses - X is up to you. A typical rule is 6 months, but mileage will vary. Be sure to include access to credit as a buffer as long as you also take into account that the event that causes you to tap into this safety reserve might also be damaging your credit access. Notice how this rule helps with adhering to the first rule.
3. Diversify - The only "free lunch" in investing as it allows for (some) risk reduction without return reduction (up to a point) when done properly.
4. Outsource - SPIVA. You ain’t special and just about no one else is either. Therefore, use well-run, low-cost, TRUE index funds. (Besides Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab are also typically good providers.)
5. Do what it takes to stay on plan - Employ dollar-cost averaging (DCA) or enroll in forced (passive) contribution increases or use a professional as a commitment partner.
• Sub-rule - Make sure the pro has incentives that are congruent with your own, has the right credentials (CFA and CFP being the gold standards but experience matters a lot too), and is cost competitive. 

Two Short, Partial Lists . . . More or Less

We don't just have wants; we have wants about our wants. 

                    -- The philosophy of Harry G. Frankfurt as channeled by Russ Roberts

Things I would like to like less: 

• Football
• Running errands
• Donuts
• Saving and salvaging old stuff
• DIY
• Collecting
• Piddling around the garden

Things I would like to like more: 

• Baseball
• Exercise
• Tea
• Live concerts
• Playing golf
• Attending church
• Math

This is a very partial partial list. I could go on and on. And it changes over time, but these items are fairly constant. 

One might say that I am yearning to be someone else, and that would be partly true. Such a yearning can be a healthy aspiration or a smothering burden. I don't think I'm deluding myself to believe I keep it on the healthy side. 

And this is more about how I wish I ticked rather than how I wish I acted. Any good economist rightfully responds to the statement "I want to have X" (where X is a new job, a Ferrari, more time to travel, etc.) with the terse reply "Obviously, no you don't."

While these are not desires I can completely bring about, I can work on them. Perhaps I should/will, but perhaps I'm partial to leaving aspirations as they are.

Timelessness of Seinfeld Rendered Untimely by Tech Changes

Seinfeld, the greatest  sitcom in history (a title I don't give lightly), has a humor that I believe is timeless. However, most of the episodes contain elements that are today impossible because of technological advances. Obviously this is applicable to a great many movies and TV series episodes of the past. 

Here are some examples from Seinfeld where the main premise is null in today's world--mostly because of mobile phones and the Internet:

• S1, Ep2 The Stakeout - Jerry and George stake out the lobby of an office building to find a woman Jerry met at a party but whose name and phone number he didn't get.
• S2, Ep4 The Phone Message - George leaves several awkward messages on a girlfriend's answering machine, then decides to steal the tape.
• S3, Ep6 The Parking Garage - The four get stuck in a parking garage for hours when they forget where they parked.
• S4, Ep14 The Movie - Jerry does a set at a comedy club, then goes to meet George, Elaine, and Kramer afterward to see a screening of Checkmate. However, a simple miscommunication causes the four to keep missing each other at two different theaters.
• S7, Ep8 The Pool Guy - Kramer discovers that his phone number is one digit off from that of a popular movie-finding service and offers help to those that mistakenly call his number.
• S9, Ep20 The Puerto Rican Day - Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine get stuck in standstill traffic due to the massive Puerto Rican Day Parade.

P.S. After creating this list I had the good sense to Google it. No surprise there has already been extensive research into this phenomenon. 

Fighting Words

This is a partial list and probably just a glimpse of the many ways in which I am unelectable as a U.S. Presidential candidate. I feel like I am part of a small minority advocating that the world is round in the midst of a powerful and vocal majority who dismissively says "No, quite obviously, it's flat".

• If you support government schools, you are part of the problem. Do whatever you can to get your kids out as well as help others to get out as well--especially the most needy, inner-city kids and others. Starve the beast. It does not serve its customers, children and their families.
• Social Security and Medicare = Welfare. And it is unsustainable welfare at that.
• (Related to the above) Baby Boomers need Millennials and immigrants (especially illegal immigrants) to bail them out of their financial peril. 
• Most news is entertainment and most of that is proverbial porn. Watching and reading popular news sources is entertainment with negative intellectual value--it is making you dumber.
• Support for the Pledge of Allegiance is virtue signaling, and recitation of it is an activity of un-American obedience.
• The national anthem being played before sporting events is state worship of dubious origin, and the rationale given for its continuance is awkward at best. 
• You don't own "your" culture. You are a part of a greater human culture and many, many subcultures. Hopefully you are contributing to them, and hopefully you are finding where they are and how they are changing beneficial to you. Regardless, to claim ownership is nonsensical. 
• The push for National service is motivated in large part on resentment. People resent how good life is for the young, and how bright and relatively easy their prospects are; therefore, they want to instill hardship on them, and they believe the only way for them to develop character is for them to be placed into a form of involuntary servitude. 

P.S. For those scoring at home, that is 2.5 points for Bryan Caplan as a fellow traveller reference. Perhaps I should formally outsource my thinking to him? Hopefully I have not subconsciously done so.

An Addition to My The Big Five

I hate having to do this, but I feel it is necessary to add to my list of the low-hanging fruit of public policy where 90% solutions (improvements) on these issues are several orders of magnitude more important than 99% solutions on a thousand others. In my defense this was always filed under "partial list", and it continues to be. I just hate making a tag and then needing to update it. 

Keep in mind that I did issue addendums to the list shortly after first publication. This will take one of those and elevate it to the new big list.

The Big Six:

• Drug Prohibition (end it--allow adults to make their own choices)
• Education (privatize it--give the government an ever-smaller role)
• Immigration (open it up--allow people to freely move and freely interact with other people)
• Taxation (simplify and redirect it--efficiently tax the use of resources not the creation of resources)
• War (move away from it--make postures less bellicose and violence less of an option).
• ***AND*** Housing Development (greatly reduce the obstacles and restrictions so that the owners of capital can buy, build, and reconfigure real estate as they see fit)

First because of Kevin Erdmann's work and recently because of Bryan Caplan's current discussion and forthcoming work, I have become radicalized to make this addition to my reform agenda canon. 

Living in a historic district with all its well-intended nonsense, I see this issue close at hand. The HD seems to be a classic case of people being nostalgic for a past that didn’t actually exist. The effect is expense for homeowners, self-righteous satisfaction for busybodies, a jobs program for the rent-seeking suppliers and regulators, and general exclusion for those who don’t fit in or can’t afford to. 

Every day I see stark examples of the perfect being the enemy of the good. 

It Depends . . .

One-dimensional thinking vs deeper-level thinking (AKA, solve for the equilibrium).

Considering this:	One-dimensional thinking concludes:	Deeper-level thinking concludes:
To arrive at a destinations sooner one should drive…	Faster	Slower
A risk-averse investor should consider taking on…	Less market risk	More market risk
A successful salesperson…	Knows how to get what she wants	Knows how to satisfy peoples’ needs
To increase revenues...	Increase prices	Lower prices or offer coupons
To reduce the damages of a dangerous vice...	Prohibit it	Normalize it
To better preserve competitive balance in sports leagues...	Restrict player compensation	Liberalize player compensation
To reduce the risk of gun violence there should be...	More gun restriction	Less gun restriction
To change minds...	Speak more	Listen more
To increase the income of low-skilled workers...	Enforce high minimum wages laws	Lower or eliminate minimum wage laws
A satisfied restaurant customer...	Cleans his plate	Leaves some food uneaten
Basketball teams who shoot poorly (have a low percentage of shots that go in) should...	Be highly selective with their shots	Shoot the ball a lot more
To help the children who toil in child-labor manufacturing we should...	Ban and boycott their products	Buy and enjoy their products

Sometimes the obvious is right, and fast thinking serves us well; sometimes the less obvious is right, and slow thinking serves us better.

Biden O/U Performance Predictions

Admittedly I’m being too vague to be falsifiable, but set some agreeable terms, and I’m willing to bet (#MoneyWhereMyMouthIs #TaxOnBullshit). 

Here is a partial list of what I predict the Biden Administration's performance will be in a number of important areas. Specifically where will it outperform (Over) and where will it underperform (Under) the conventional wisdom’s current estimation. To be clear this is where it will be better/worse from my desired perspective than the conventional wisdom’s current estimation. 

For example, I think the conventional wisdom is that Biden will greatly raise personal and corporate income tax rates, increase capital gains tax rates, and restore the SALT deduction. Mostly all bad items from my perspective. I think it won't be as bad as assumed. Likewise, it is presumed that he will user in a much better world of trade and immigration policy. I think it meaningfully won't be that good. 

Over:
Taxes
Environmental regulation

Other general business regulation

Minimum wage

Under:
Trade
Immigration
Drug policy

Health regulation
COVID

Foreign policy (not including hot wars)

Police reform

On Target (bettingwise = no action):
War (actual hostilities)
Education

Demagoguery and divisive politics