Matthew

Software engineer 🦀🐍

[Kristian Niemietz @K_Niemietz]

Multi-tier policing is obviously real, and the Left deals with that in their usual way: by making it low-status to notice it, so that people will be too embarrassed to say it.

[Students For Liberty @sfliberty]

Thomas Sowell on Human Capital vs. Physical Capital.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

Many people, even self-described conservatives, think socialism would work if human nature were different.

No. Socialism cannot work, even in a hypothetical society of selfless genius saints.

Why not?

Because socialism centralizes economic choices. How much lumber do we produce? How much wheat? What should the hourly wage of a garbage collector be? How much should insulin cost? How about bread?

Socialists think that if you elect the right people, they will make these decisions intelligently and altruistically, and everything will be great.

But it doesn't matter how smart and benevolent you are... you can't make a good decision without the right information. The Socialist Central Planning Committee, however wise or benevolent, doesn't know what's wanted, or what's available, because that information is conveyed in prices, and accurate pricing is the very thing that socialist governments wipe away with the bureaucratic pen.

Capitalist networks are decentralized. They distribute decision making to where the information is.

A man selling metal doesn't know anything about desks, or lumber. He doesn't know how many desks people want, or whether they should be made out of oak, or folded metal.

But he does know how much it costs him to smelt iron ore into steel, and roll it into sheets. So he sets a price, and others decide whether, and how much, to buy.

That price contains the information others need to decide whether steel is plentiful, and should be folded into anything you can make out of sheet metal, or is scarce, and should be saved for things that can only be done with steel, and furniture should be made out of oak, or pine, instead.

Socialism works, or rather doesn't, by using the threat of force to set the prices of things, or take money from one person and give it to another.

But every time this happens, critical data on supply or demand is erased... data that you need to make decisions.

Individual prices are a decision, a guess at where supply and demand cross paths. But since free markets reward those who guess correctly, or copy a correct guess, aggregate prices are data on supply and demand.

For a socialist central planning committee to order the manufacture of the correct number of cars, or to correctly set the price of a car, they need to know a thousand thousand thousand things about steel and aluminium, welders and assembly robots, rubber and glass and lithium batteries and copper wire, which they must gather, along with trillions of other pieces of data, from literally everyone in their entire civilization.

Tesla only needs to know how much people charge them for the stuff they need.

At every transaction in a captialist society, vital data is compressed into its most compact and useful form, then passed along to the adjacent step, where abundant brainpower is waiting to make decisions with it.

Any defective node in the web that fails to make good decisions receives swift and automatic feedback, and either heeds that feedback or goes out of business, to be replaced by someone who will.

Yes, in a capitalist system, there are many undesirable results. But capitalism doesn't create these results. It discovers them. They are inevitable consequences of the state of technology, and will persist until something is invented that changes the terrain.

In socialism, no such solution is possible, because all the inherent problems you need to solve with progress are hidden from view by the far worse problems you created for yourself by separating the place where decisions are made from the place where information is known.

[ἐκον βρω @EconBreau]

Socialism is the theory that if you abolish profit, bread will somehow bake itself out of moral superiority.

[agustina vergara cid @agustinavcid]

Ayn Rand wrote this in 1966.

We’re seeing the same phenomenon in 2026.

[Milton Friedman Quotes @MiltonFriedmanW]

“The essential notion of a capitalist society is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force.”

— Milton Friedman

[Boring_Business @BoringBiz_]

The wage gap is literally just married men being ahead of everyone else

Single men and women earn roughly the same income

[Bobbie @bo66ie29]

“What is a Nation really? Only its people.” A really lovely old film about the British people. Narrated in 1954.

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

I've noticed a common phenomenon. Let's call it the boomerang effect.

Lament the rise of an opinion or policy without noticing how your preferred policies helped cause it.

Vaccination rates down - because you wrecked the reputation of vaccines during the pandemic by over claiming.

Anti-immigrant feeling leading to difficulties for legal immigrants - because you welcomed millions of illegal immigrants and prevented them being deported.

Prosecution of political opponents - because you did it too.

Dislike seeing people cancelled for their opinions - because you started it.

Rising climate scepticism - because you censored reasonable criticism of climate extremism.

Anger at trans rights activists - because you shouted down concerns about men pretending to be women in sports and prisons.

Government attacks on universities - because you turned them into ideological madrassas.

Patriotic nationalism turning uglier - because you told people flags were racist.

Criticism of judges - because they became nakedly political.

Defunding of biotechnology - because you failed to call out dangerous gain-of-function virology as the likely cause of the death of 20 million+ people.

Etc etc

[Basil the Great @BasilTheGreat]

🚨MUSLIM WHO TRIED TO MURDER MAN ON CAMERA SPARED JAIL

Remember this incident.

The man with the knife has just been given a SUSPENDED SENTENCE

No jail time whatsoever

But post something bad and you'll be locked up for years
I cannot believe this country is real anymore 😡

[Andre Silva @andresilvatw]

Productivity and the wealth of nations

[Matthew @mattbraz]

@creditkarma Your email unsubscribe webpage has been saying it is down for maintenance for months now. When will you finish this maintenance so i can unsubscribe? 😁

[World of Engineering @engineers_feed]

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
- Isaac Asimov

[Wall Street Mav @WallStreetMav]

Dave Portnoy's "Investing" Journey

"Anybody can do this game"
-- Dave 3/27/2020

🔊sound🤣

[Matthew Zeitlin @MattZeitlin]

Probably the greatest failing of Western Europe’s (and especially Britain’s) political economy is its failure to produce Phoenixes and Dallases, places with jobs, growth, and middle class housing.

[brexton @brexton]

Every crypto project the last 24 months:

[Matthew @mattbraz]

@trader_marky Many thanks.

[Matthew @mattbraz]

@trader_marky Sounds good! Have you seen any schedule or timeline for the event yet?