THE MUSIC OF A HAPPY COUNTRY.

The WGN Radio Theatre airs Sunday evenings, featuring those radio dramas of days gone by, with the ominous music just before each station break.  Host Carl Amari wraps up each show playing the tune that topped the pop charts the week the show first aired.

Several episodes first aired when the national mood was "Cheer Up, Face, the War is Over," and it's time to go Cruising Down the River on a Sunday Afternoon.

Yes, popular songs used to be optimistic, and often celebrated love fulfilled, as opposed to today's hits that (even outside the country songs) call attention to love unrequited, if not betrayed.

It's possible that Serious Thinkers will lump the optimistic ballads of the late Forties and early Fifties, along with the tract houses and the family formation, as a collective suppression of post-traumatic stress disorder, and it took the Kingston Trio and Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley to call attention, in varying ways, to the fractures that were always there.

Dear reader, you deconstruct traditions at your peril.  "Is anybody surprised, when the aspirational Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best give way to reality TV and the tabloid culture, and bad behavior in some circles is transgressiveness or authenticity to be celebrated in other circles, that bad choices become the default?"

There once was an American High, only it occurred before the living memory of most of our fellow citizens and co-residents.  That it lives on only in radio archives stands in judgement of our culture choosing which monuments to destroy.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Democrats fear the testosterone.  Democratic men are stepping up for a woman president by stepping back.  And handing the reins over to the freakazoids.  "When you need to make a circle wider, and let more people in, you step back. That doesn’t leave you out of the circle. It makes your circle bigger.  The convention offered an expansive circle that includes gay dads raising strong-willed toddlers, blended families that attend synagogue and church, football coaches who bag pheasants and serve as faculty adviser to the high school’s gay-straight alliance club, and presidents who give up their power for the good of the country.  It also includes a presidential candidate who looks like no other president in U.S. history. That’s a big step forward for the country."  There's nothing about policy in there, which is par for the course for a gender studies professor at Baa Ram U.  At least she stayed in her lane, using faculty lounge language.  There was also this.  "The [press’] obsolete asses are being replaced and they hate it … The difference between us and you is that y’all are lazy and sensationalist.  You report on information and spin it to rile up groups of people in hopes to get clicks and views. We combat misinformation and raise awareness … clearly it’s more effective cause we got your motherfucking seats … and fucking good, more of your seats should be gutted until you get with the fucking program."  I guess that's relinquishing male privilege.  "There may be limited opportunities for Harris to allay the cultural concerns of manosphere members—I can’t see her promising mandatory companionship for incels, asserting that men are naturally better leaders, or getting Walz interested in looksmaxxing—but their biological concerns are real and should be fair game politically."

It's fake all the way down.  "Let's just have a huge party and forget all of our problems because the vibes are brat."

The valley girl had to bring her emotional support governor to an interview.  To face the most sycophantic cable news host, Dana Bash.  Got some ranch for that word salad?  Dishonest.  Trainwreckalicious.

Then there's Bidenomics.  "I quit my stressful job as an NYC teacher — now I make $1K in 2 days as a Hooters girl."  Money is money.

The weekly round-up of pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS TEND TO DO WHAT THEY D**N WELL PLEASE.

At the end of August, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans, after having crossed Florida from the Atlantic Ocean into the Gulf of Mexico, took a strong drink of warm water, and turned to the north.  My sole post for the first of September was a roundup of charitable causes, which I reiterated after the Labor Day weekend.

At the start of the northern hemisphere hurricane season, I put a pin in the dire warnings.  "The first day of June is the administrative start of the hurricane season, and the doom-sayers are doing what they normally do.  NOAA Predicts 'Extraordinary' Atlantic Hurricane Season as Ocean Temperatures Soar."

The season has been extraordinary, but not in the way the doomsayers anticipated.

National Hurricane Center graphic retrieved from MSN.

A Washington Post contributor, Matthew Cappucci, asks, "When will hurricane season roar back to life?"

YOU SAY YOU WANT SOME DEVOLUTION?

Reason's Robby Soave offers a back-handed compliment to Robert Kennedy.  "RFK Jr. Spread Some Libertarian Ideas, Then Sold Out to Trump."  That's one way of looking at what happened.

Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suspended his campaign for the presidency in 10 swing states, where he will seek to remove his name from the ballot. He said on Friday that he did not want to play a spoiler role and prevent former President Donald Trump from winning the election. RFK Jr. cited his agreement with Trump on the fundamental issues of censorship and foreign policy as the reason for his tacit support.

Earlier in the week, RFK Jr.'s running mate, entrepreneur Nicole Shanahan, suggested that they wished to avoid a victory by Vice President Kamala Harris at all costs; even though RFK Jr. was formerly a Democrat—and has a recognizably Democratic last name—recent polling suggested that his candidacy was hurting Trump slightly more than Harris. RFK Jr.'s main appeal was to disaffected, contrarian voters who lost faith in the elite consensus, especially with respect to the federal government's heavy-handed COVID-19 policies; these voters are more likely to pick Trump as their second choice than Harris.

The party of Governance by Wise Experts has been driving away more than a few people that until recently would be inclined to argue about Expertise and then vote the Democrat ticket.

Mr Soave's essay continues with the answer to the baffled donkey's question.

Unfortunately, the U.S.'s winner-take-all system tends to create elections that are competitive for just the two major parties. Independent and third-party candidates struggle to gain traction and end up accomplishing very little. This is a structural problem; by contrast, in a European parliamentary system, a candidate who receives just 5 percent of the national vote might expect to receive 5 percent of the representation in the government. Major parties must then work with smaller parties to form governing coalitions. In the U.S., only the winner matters.

This means that tacitly supporting one of the two major candidates in exchange for influence is actually one of the only ways for an independent to transmogrify their support base into actual power. It's not surprising, then, that RFK Jr. has chosen this path. Seeking higher office outside the two-party system is extremely difficult and Republicans and Democrats work tirelessly to make it even tougher. Democratic activists, for example, filed legal challenges to keep RFK Jr. off the ballot in New York state. While insisting that the health of democracy itself is the fundamental issue in this election, the Democratic Party hired operatives to counter third-party and independent candidates such as RFK Jr.

Republicans are as guilty as Democrats are about making it difficult for third party and independent candidates, whether for the presidency or for more useful offices such as selectman and dog-catcher.  A successful candidate for dog-catcher on the Free Soil or Libertarian ticket, though, might find some of his ideas co-opted by one or both of the major parties.

THE PRESIDENCY IS AN UNPRODUCTIVE CULT.

National Review's Charles W. Cooke, in the course of complaining about the two Republican parties, inadvertently stumbles on the real problem.

A little under ten years ago — before the rise of Trump, but after the 2014 midterms — I appeared on a morning cable-news show to discuss the transient politics of the day. I cannot, if I am honest, remember our exact topic of conversation, but, whatever it was, I ended up criticizing then-president Obama for his approach and then outlining in as much detail as the truncated format would allow what I would prefer the federal government do instead. Having done this, I stopped talking, leaned back in my chair, and waited patiently for the rebuttal. But it never came. Instead, I was condescendingly informed by one of the show’s ostensibly neutral co-hosts that, if I wanted the conservative moment or the Republican Party to have any say over public policy, then they would have first “to win an election.”

Recall, dear reader, that voters shellacked Mr Hope and Change in both of the mid-term elections, ousting Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House and the lying, conniving Harry Reid as majority leader in the Senate.  Mr Cooke's interlocutor might have been right about that "win an election," as Mr Obama had his vaunted "pen and a phone" to impose his will, and now his tool-kit includes puppet strings.  Mr Cooke grasps that argument in part and rejects it in part.

What [Washington Republicans] didn’t control was the presidency, and, for my interlocutor, this was all that seemed to matter. For him, it seemed, the president and “elections” were synonymous. The only government that mattered was the federal one, and the only branch that mattered was the executive.

I am reminded of this moment whenever I see a political commentator transmute his thoroughly reasonable criticism of Donald Trump into a wholesale condemnation of the Republican Party and the ideas that it exists to represent. It is true that Trump is a capricious, chaotic bore, and that, in their cowardice, many within the national GOP have allowed him to play with their convictions as if they were plasticine. It is not true, however, that this failing has infected the institution in toto. Indeed, if you can bear to glance past the psychodrama that is this year’s presidential election — and to search instead at the state and local levels at which American governance takes place — you will find a Republican Party that, far from being impotent, arbitrary, unmoored, or devoid of ideas, is sensible, focused, and busy contriving and implementing its plans.

In part, there is a presidential cult because Democrats do presidential cults so well, and it might exist to give those poseurs on the Sunday shows something to carry on about while the Militant Normals are paying attention to football or basketball.

The [Democrat] party has long been more focused on the presidency than it is on other offices, and what likely happened is get-out-the-vote operations mentioned the presidency, but didn't offer any advice on the auditor general, State House delegate, or dog-catcher. (Incidentally, let me throw a challenge flag on that talk of network decision desks suppressing votes with early calls. Decision desks focus on the presidency, the senators, governors, if there are any, and maybe the size of the House caucuses. They don't spend any time on state houses or auditor general or school board representatives, or the dog-catcher. Stay in line, if only for your neighbor's sake, or to convince your neighbor to chill.)

Mr Cooke complains, perhaps accurately, that neither the Sunday show poseurs nor the Trump organization managing the national campaign pay enough attention to what goes on in the state houses, the city councils, and yes, the dog pounds.

[L]ook elsewhere and you will witness enormous progress, too. In Georgia, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, Iowa, Tennessee, Arizona, and more, Republicans have taken their charge seriously and used the power that they have gained to advance the political ball. In those places, and more, they have cut taxes, reduced regulation, moved toward school choice, protected the right to work, resisted illegal immigration, passed restrictions on abortion, reformed public-school curricula, ushered in permitless carry, and more. Not every state has ticked off every item on that list, and the degree to which each has been able to reach its ideal has been tempered by the usual combination of electoral success and local differences in mood. These failures, however, are not for lack of care or lack of resolve. In Texas last year, Republicans were thwarted in their push for school choice. In response, they primaried the holdouts, and, per Governor Abbott, they now have the votes. That, right there, is how it ought to be done.

Perhaps, given that Mr Trump includes visual aids in his rallies, his team ought prepare charts showing where the net migration has been, and where the net private sector job gains are, during the Harris-Biden presidency. That might be the best riposte to any claim by Democrats that Bidenomics is working.

Not only are state-level elected Republicans serious; they are driven by an agenda that would have been easily recognizable as “conservatism” at any point in the last 50 years. Plucky little realist that I am, I remain as indifferent toward “vibes” in this realm as in any other. Credit is due where it is due, and, here, it is due — whatever else may be happening on Twitter and on TV.

What the national government mostly has to do is leave us alone, let us elect our governors, our state representatives, our mayors, our city councils, and our dog-catchers.  Let us bet on emergence.  That's not what Democrats, national or local. will offer us.

TEMPERING PRINCIPLE WITH PRACTICALITY.

Never change, University of Missouri.  "Mizzou student group made to rename 'Welcome Black BBQ' to be more welcoming to all students."

There has been no end of entertainment coming our way from Columbia over the years.  With classes again in session, does a student organization call attention to its intended audience, which is a way to be inclusive, or is such calling attention no longer inclusive?

A primarily black student group at the University of Missouri was recently forced to change the name of a back-to-school barbecue that it is planning on hosting.

The Legion of Black Collegians reportedly intended to name the event the “Welcome Black BBQ,” but was forced to change the name by the university administration. The event, which is scheduled to be hosted on Friday, will now be called the “Welcome Black and Gold BBQ,” a reference to the school’s colors.

Compared with previous identity politics kerfuffles at Missouri, this one is not as fraught, but the students caught short by the Diversity Weenies vow to persevere.

“We, the Legion of Black Collegians, are heartbroken to inform our constituents and supporters that the ‘Welcome Black BBQ’ will operate under the name of ‘Welcome Black and Gold BBQ’ this fall,” the group said in the post. “The Legion spent several months fighting this decision and finding a way to preserve the original title and message.”

The group continued to state that, when it was initially confronted, it preferred to cancel the event entirely rather than be forced to change the name. “When presented with the idea, we initially wanted to keep the original name or not have the event at all,” the group added.

The Legion of Black Collegians concluded that it will never again allow the university administration to interfere with its internal event planning and coordination.

“The Legion remains steadfast in combatting any further changes to our fundamental programming. We are looking into all avenues to NEVER allow this to happen again,” the group said. “The erasure of the names and visibility of our events will continue to erode our presence on this campus, and we plan to do everything we can to divest from that.”

Catch the invocation of all the old worship-words.  Now, though, might have arisen a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph.

In a statement provided to Campus Reform, university spokesman Christopher Ave said that the school supported the name change so that the event will not appear to exclude any students from attending.

”And clearly, in striving for an inclusive university, we must not exclude (or give impressions that we are excluding) individuals with different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives,” Ave said. “The name of this university-sponsored event was modified in collaboration with event organizers to reflect that our campus is open and welcoming to all.”

What was it, only four years ago, that the way to call attention to your campus being "open and welcoming" was to proliferate the special-purpose centers and the "studies" departments.

Our universities are still being run by terminally stupid people.

ON MY WORKBENCH.

The summer heat offers opportunities to repair down cellar and work on the railroad, with the earlier sunsets as the temperate evenings might return cutting into that read outside until sundown relaxing.  Look for more frequent progress reports.

While the temperatures are high, the spray paints flow more easily, and I'm getting several freight and passenger cars ready to be assembled.  That steel works we saw in a recent photo has to have lots of scrap delivered to the Open Hearth, which means there can never be too many mill gondolas.

Those will all roll out relettered for the home railroad.  I've held back one of those green Readings to repaint and reletter in the 1952 fashion.

I haven't let the passenger fleet go fallow, either.

I've always liked the Akron Canton & Youngstown boxcars with the large letters, even at the risk of creative anachronism, and decals are available for both the red cars with white lettering and the yellow cars with red lettering.  If they wind up billed to an implement mechanic in Centre Barnstead on a line that was already abandoned, well, so be it!

Pullman named their 28 seat drawing room parlors after women, often authors or painters.  I borrowed a name from the family tree.

Yes, a new Trains of Summer video is still in preparation.

BETTERING MANKIND BY ENSLAVING IT.

Do we understand freedom as individual agency leading to an emergent social order, or does the social order provide the material conditions and impose the constraints within which individuals exercise their agency?  That's one of the more contested topics in political philosophy, and Victor Hanson, in The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America, lays down a marker in support of the former concept, with a denunciation of the latter concept as being contrary to freedom.

Yes, that title is polemical and engages in more than a little question-begging, and I could keep Book Review N^o. 9 brief by noting much of the argument is about Donald Trump's tussles with the administrative state, with the role of citizenship being tangential to his argument.  Perhaps, though, that is the point: if freedom is, see p. 41, the Life of Julia, "proudly and perennially a ward of the state ... unable to become autonomous and independent without federal help," which might be the working out of Franklin Roosevelt's freedom from fear and freedom from want, that Julia is in effect a serf, only "dependent on the Washington bureaucracy" rather than the benevolence of the local earl, well, Mr Hanson would argue that she is neither free nor a citizen.

Along the way, Mr Hanson touches on a number of familiar themes, including approaches to immigration, where his position is close to mine in that assimilation is a two way street;  the political aggregation problem in that gridlock takes one form in presidential governments and another in parliamentary governments; the punishment cycles of a grim strategy outcome, with non-enforcement of immigration laws or non-enforcement of gun laws being a contemporary form of nullification; and suspicion of expert opinion, where a quarter century of expert failure of all sorts is the background music of our lives.

The review excerpts in the book and at Amazon tend to come from the populist right and the Militant Normals.  Dying Citizen provides intellectual ammunition for those inclined to diagnose what has gone wrong from the populist or Militant Normal perspective.  Understanding the arguments might prove productive in conversations with persuadable voters as the election approaches.  Whether someone inclined to be skeptical of the populist right or the Militant Normals will be convinced is another matter.  It is difficult to square "Millions of American citizens are, more than ever, determined not merely to stop the erosion of their rights and influences but to regain all that they have lost" as the closing sentence with "The Dying Citizen is a clarion call to rebuild our collective national identity," from the back cover blurb, as those differing beliefs about freedom and rights suggest a, singular noun, "collective national identity," does not exist.

Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.

A LITTLE TESTOSTERONE IS NOT TOXIC.

At least among Democrats, to the great amusement of Militant Normals everywhere.  Let's start with Twitchy's Sam J.  "Hey, it's not like we didn't know Leftist/Democrat men are softer than normal men, with their manicured nails, groomed eyebrows, man-buns, and tight-waisted hipster jeans but still."

Dana Bash explains that Democrat men are low testosterone and don’t identify with real men.

🔊
pic.twitter.com/dpmREPo5l7

— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) August 22, 2024

Sam continues,

So basically, Tim Walz and Doug Harris ... sorry ... Emhoff help men whose testicles haven't dropped yet feel included and ok with themselves. Or something. Yeah, we've watched this more than once and we laugh EVERY freakin' time.

Honestly, when we first saw this we thought WSS was being funny but no, she LITERALLY said it.

Well, yes, the beta smirk is a characteristic facial expression among Democrat men.  Miranda Devine of New York's Post isn't impressed.

After years of decrying toxic masculinity, especially of the pallid hue, Democrats now are inviting “white dudes for Kamala” to a seat at the table, although, as CNN’s Dana Bash pointed out, they are not “the testosterone-laden, gun-toting type of guy who wants to listen to Hulk Hogan” but subservient men who know their place in the matriarchy —like Walz and second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Meanwhile, the empty pantsuit, who has yet to schedule an interview even with friendly journalists, might be backing away from the Jarrett regency's open borders and electric car mandates.

Big deal.  Why should I be interested in Trump Light policies when the original is available?

JUST A LITTLE BIT OUTSIDE.

Look closely at this box score, from last night's visit by the Toronto Blue Jays at Fenway Park.

Yes, sometimes a note explaining which catcher threw the base stealer out is in order, and the Blue Jays made a change in catching in the second inning.  Then, there's a catching change for the Red Sox.

FREEDOM IS TAX SLAVERY.

During last week's infomercial convention in Chicago, Democrat orators, when they weren't asserting Donald Trump was the incumbent, rabbited on a lot about freedom.  It was all too much for Miami Herald contributor Ryan Rusak.

In the transcripts of speeches at the 2024 Democratic convention, every appearance of the word “freedom” should come with an asterisk.

The key should read: * — applies to abortion rights only.

Democrats have worn out the word freedom* all week, trying to convince voters that they are the party of America’s primary founding virtue. But they can only muster real enthusiasm for limiting government’s power and influence over the individual when it comes to what they euphemistically call “reproductive rights.”

He has a point, and New York's Times reports from Chicago in a way that reinforces his complaint.

“In 2016, people felt they had the luxury of equality in the law and reproductive freedom in the law, and I think many people didn’t see risk ahead of them,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

The Supreme Court’s decision to wipe out Roe two years ago unleashed a cascade of far-reaching abortion bans in many states across the country. Democrats quickly harnessed shock and fury over the decision into political momentum in key races that year and since. At the convention this past week, Democrats offered their clearest signs yet of just how central the issue will be to their fall campaign.

There might have been an offsetting cascade of laws and amendments expanding abortion as well, but don't expect Pravda-on-the-Hudson to acknowledge that.  Abortion is among the mixed bundle of freedoms the Walworth County Democrats touted on their bannerline a year ago.  It's that mixed bundle that I focus on this afternoon.

A constitutional republic is about citizens regulating politicians, and that idea has not yet died in These United States.  Richard Ebeling notes what can go wrong when politicians abridge freedom in the name of freedom.

The year 2020 demonstrated very clearly, unfortunately, the embeddedness of political paternalism in American society, in terms of both the arrogant presumption of those in government to impose nearly a comprehensive restrictive command and control system over the country, and the willingness of so many Americans to passively and obediently follow those in power down a road to economic disruption and destruction as long as politicians and government “experts” chanted the phrase “follow the science.”

The “science” has been found to be faulty and full of exaggerations and factual errors that have ruined the livelihoods and everyday lives of tens of millions of people. Shunted aside were any notions of “costs,” or “trade-offs” in the economic sense and meaning of these things. In the 20^th century’s central planning tradition, a one-size-fits-all response was imposed on people, and with all the usual irrationality and arbitrariness seen in the actual centrally planned societies of the last century. The irrationality and arbitrariness were seen in the fact that different state governments, all claiming to be following the same “science,” implemented patterns of shutdowns and lockdowns and restrictions on retail business different from the others, but often with the same inconsistent results in terms of Covid-19 cases and reported deaths.

And yet, national standards on school curricula or price gouging are all the rage.  But wait, Mr Ebeling notes, there's more!

[W]hether there is a Democratic-controlled federal government or a divided government with the Republicans holding a slim majority in the Senate, the worst of the collectivist fads and fashions will be pushed over the coming years. Climate change-based controls and centralized planning will be pushed aggressively; demands will be made for more regulation of business in the name of “social justice” and corporate “social responsibility;” calls will be made for increased taxes on “the rich” and not so rich to cover more of the redistributive plunder games that are the mother’s milk of political power and privilege; race and gender warfare will be ratcheted up on college campuses, corporate boardrooms, and the shop floors of private enterprises, great and small.

Pajamas Media contributor Rick Moran will have none of it.

Democrats allow the government to make everything their business that they don't much agree with. When the government makes it its business to shut down kids' lemonade stands or regulate garage sales, that's as intrusive as anything Democrats accuse Republicans of doing.

All elections are about "freedom" in some ways. Some definitions of freedom are more expansive than others. The Democrats' idea of "freedom" masks a cloying desire to control. It would be nice if someone at that convention said something about it.

Between Donald Trump being his worst enemy during the Georgia runoffs and his informercial convention in Milwaukee carrying on about security rather than liberty, the Donks had an opportunity to present their own version of freedom, and that was more than some Beyoncé bumper music.

Below the jump we will establish, dear reader, the basis for my gloomy post title.  The Wall Street Journal's editorial board correctly asserted, "Democrats in Chicago hijack the word to disguise a coercive agenda."  Power Line's Steven Hayward correctly characterizes their invocations of freedom as "positively Orwellian."

IGNORE THE ECONOMISTS AT YOUR PERIL.

Atlantic contributor and law professor Zephyr Teachout chooses to be irritating.  "Kamala Harris’s proposed price-gouging ban might irritate academics, but it makes sense to everyone else."

Why?

Although Harris has not specified the exact design of her proposal, one hopes that it would follow the basic outline of state-level bans: forbidding unwarranted price hikes for necessary goods during emergencies.

Price gouging in the popular imagination has a “know it when you see it” quality, but it is actually a well-developed body of law. A typical price-gouging claim has four elements. First, a triggering event, sometimes called an “abnormal market disruption,” such as a natural disaster or power outage, must have occurred. Second, in most states, the claim must concern essential goods and services. (No one cares if you overcharge for Louis Vuitton handbags during a hurricane.) Third, a price increase must be “excessive” or “unconscionable,” which most states define as exceeding a certain percentage, typically 10 to 25 percent. Finally, the elevated price must be in excess of the seller’s increased cost. This is crucial: Even during emergencies, sellers are allowed to maintain their existing profit margins. They just can’t increase those margins excessively.

Like so much else in polemical economy, "excessive" and "unconscionable" are emotionally laden terms devoid of empirical content.  Mx Teachout adds to the confusion by offering an explanation devoid of economic content.

Accordingly, prohibiting gouging leads to less production of essential goods and services. Plus, letting prices rise helps ensure that the product will be sold to the people who value it the most.

Here, regular people seem to understand a few things that economists don’t. During an emergency, such as a natural disaster, short-term demand cannot be met by short-term supply, setting the stage for sellers to exploit their position by raising prices on goods already in their inventory. The idealized law of supply and demand predicts that new investors would rush in, but the real world doesn’t work like that. A short-term price spike won’t always trigger the long-term investments needed to increase supply, because everyone knows that the situation is, by definition, abnormal; they can’t count on a continued revenue boom.

We start today's lesson, dear reader, with a passage from Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics, the first paragraph of which might still be giving nightmares to generations of collegians I had the opportunity to work with.

We might as reasonably dispute whether it is the upper or the under blade of a pair of scissors that cuts a piece of paper, as whether value is governed by utility or cost of production.  It is true that when one blade is held still, and the cutting is effected by moving the other, we may say with careless brevity that the cutting is done by the second; but the statement is not strictly accurate, and is to be excused only so long as it claims to be merely a popular and not a strictly scientific account of what happens.

In the same way, when a thing already made has to be sold, the price which people will be willing to pay for it will be governed by their desire to have it, together with the amount they can afford to spend on it.  Their desire to have it depends partly on the chance that, if they do not buy it, they will be able to get another thing like it at as low a price: this depends on the causes that govern the supply of it, and this again on the cost of production.  But it may so happen that the stock to be sold is practically fixed.

That "unconscionable" price?  It's the one your neighbor is willing to offer to secure that sheet of plywood, that roll of toilet paper, that case of bottled water that you consider "excessive," and you and your neighbor might be able to make common cause with local politicians to turn the vendor into the villain with rhetoric about windfall profits or price gouging.  It's nonsense.  The price scissors passage is on page 348 of the Eighth Edition of Principles, the continuation is on page 349.

Thus we may conclude that, as a general rule, the shorter the period which we are considering, the greater must be the share of our attention which is given to the influence of demand on value; and the longer the period, the more important will be the influence of cost of production on value.

Mx Teachout sort of understands some of this, and still manages to make a hash of his argument.

Price-gouging laws thus operate as a kind of poor man’s antitrust. They don’t address the lopsided balance of power, but they at least prohibit that power from being exploited in certain high-stakes contexts.

The other big problem with the textbook economics take on price gouging is the assumption that temporarily higher-priced products will find their way to the people who value them the most. That might be true in a world where everyone had the same amount of money to spend. In the world we actually inhabit, that is not the case. During a power outage, a working-class cancer patient who desperately needs to buy the last generator in stock to keep his medications refrigerated might not be able to outbid a healthy millionaire who just wants to run their air conditioner.

This is another way of saying that price-gouging bans are a form of moral policy. The laws recognize that consumers, not being the coldly rational Homo economicus of academic models, are going to be less price-sensitive during disaster; their desperation can be exploited. And people who lack the savings to get through a crisis or the resources to comparison shop are even more likely to suffer from price increases on essential items. In a pandemic, war, or major weather event, it seems morally repugnant to give an unearned bonanza to a big firm while denying essential services to vulnerable members of society. All parents, not just the wealthiest, should have an equal chance to obtain diapers even if supply chains are disrupted. Price-gouging laws represent a different set of market rules, grounded in fairness.

The law, in its majesty, prohibits the rich or the poor from being able to obtain any diapers or any toilet paper or any bottled water. Oh, and that dig about the rich guy, isn't he probably well-off enough to call in a favor and have that generator, assuming he hasn't already installed one, shipped in from a store at a distance?

THE PARTY OF DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM.

On Friday, Robert Kennedy sort-of suspended his campaign, taking steps to have his name removed from presidential ballots in the tossup states whilst leaving it on ballots in the less-contested states so as to offer voters there a protest vote.  He then endorsed ... Donald Trump.

STILL TRADING.

On the west side of Wabash Avenue by the Adams and Wabash L station is Central Camera.

The store got caught up in the Biden riots of May, 2020.  "Yes, when the protests following the death of George Floyd came to Chicago, the wilding followed the peaceful assembly.  It wasn't limited to the liberation of shoes and mobile phones from the Magnificent Mile or flat-screen televisions from the big box stores."  Central Camera was not looted, although its building tempted the firebugs.

The destruction came at a difficult time for Central Camera Company, which has faced adversity in recent years. Our basement was severely damaged by flooding following the ‘Polar Vortex’ deep freeze of January 2019, and we’ve faced a substantial rent increase by the store’s building owner. Central Camera has been closed since early March 2020 for the Covid19 public health emergency, which has severely impacted business.

However, our customers are extremely loyal, and the resurgence of film photography has helped business to remain strong. Central Camera Company celebrated its 121st year in business this year, and we plan to be around for many years to come with your help.

Wednesday, during the convention, it appeared a few old-school photojournalists were stocking up on film, and there were boxes of print paper for the darkroom wizards to buy.  I bought one of the fund-raising tee shirts.

The weather was fine for outdoor drinking, but I saw almost nobody outside, and no delegates with their credentials, the way they were enjoying Milwaukee.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

There was a Democratic nominating convention in Chicago, or at least the simulacrum of one.  "Have those who lectured us about democracy in danger now decided to save it by destroying it?"  Democracy only applies if it means Democrats win.  Thus far, though, the long emergency has not included a reprise of 1968.  "Recent years of degenerate USA life have produced a youth cohort with a staggering rate of mental illness."  Yes, and there might be enough of the freakazoids inside the convention to keep the lid from blowing.  The long con continues.  "Democrats are relieved that Joe’s out, but their enthusiasm for Kamala depends on keeping her a blank slate to most voters." Oh, we're noticing.  "The convention has been a testament to Sanders’ legacy too."

It is going to be on us, the Militant Normals, to call attention to what's on that slate, and to keep the Trump campaign on its messages, which should be borders, crime, inflation, and peace.  The Democrats are likely to help us, unwittingly.  "The Democrat-dominated establishment amounts to a coalition of insufferable narcissists with authoritarian instincts."  They're likely to huff their own supply. "The last 3½ years have been filled with nothing but an unbroken series of triumphs, to hear the president tell it."

Speaking of insufferable narcissists, "Watching Obama speak, I am always reminded why I dislike him so much. I resist his churchy cadence, his haughty tone, and his gauzy rhetoric — the gauzy rhetoric in which he buries his earnest leftism. He enunciates his words as though he is speaking to a slow child."  Tuesday night, he Just. Couldn't. Shut. Up.

The ditzy valley girl has her own annoying tics.  "Harris probably hates how they keep telling her to talk less nasally, smile more, and soften herself for the cameras."

It's nevertheless going to be necessary to make a Trump presidency, should one take office, behave itself.  "Harris and Trump represent variations on a theme of big, fiscally irresponsible, hyper-interventionist government."

Let us take stock of the ways things suck.  "The bar for the presidency is so low it's been buried."  It's Our Democracy^(TM) don't you know?  "Americans may be getting precisely what they want out of politics in 2024."  This contest has no redeeming features.  Be uncouth.

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

TODAY IN SERIOUS READING.

Donald "Cafe Hayek" Boudreaux put together an instructive "Some Links" today.  Go, enjoy.

FESTUNG CHICAGO.

Both major parties held their presidential nominating conventions within day-trip distance of Cold Spring Shops headquarters.  In Milwaukee, all the convention events were on the west side of the Milwaukee River.  I got wind of an event involving proper beer in the Third Ward.

There might have been such events set up for visitors to Chicago and I didn't get the memo.  That's fine, there's always the DePaul bookstore run by Barnes and Noble downtown.  They still sell real books.

YOUR BUSINESS IS REJOICING.

Last night's surprise celebrity guest at Chicago's Democrat Convention was local lady Oprah Winfrey.  Power Line's Steven Hayward was underwhelmed.  "Oprah? I thought billionaires weren’t welcome at the DNC. The least she could have done is say, 'And you get joy! And YOU get joy! Everyone gets joy!'"

I watched the convention so you didn't have to.  It is worth remembering exactly what genuine tyranny is.

I've fast-forwarded it to 13:49 where the sheep bleat.  The whole "joy" schtick puts me in mind of a socialist artist's response to just criticism.  "All that's missing is some Shostakovich music and somebody beating them with a stick and repeating, 'Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing.'"

A CAPSTONE PRESENTATION OF A HALF CENTURY OF DECEPTION.

Dementia Joe's handlers laced him with enough triple espresso to deliver a farewell speech to party loyalists in Chicago, and it turned out a lot like the last time he came out juiced.  "Iif your prior was that Grandpa Simpson would be yelling at the clouds about his empty Doritos bag, you would be correct."  Power Line's Scott Johnson continues,

Biden’s speech ran nearly an hour. He was pumped up on an overdose of hate and lies. Kept up way past his bedtime, he might have been angry about the midnight time slot, but Donald Trump must have have accounted for the dominant mood as well. Biden recurred to angry man shouting mode with Donald Trump the subject of the text and subtext of much of the speech.

Here's how it opened.

You cannot say you love your country only when you win. In that moment, I wasn’t looking to the past, I was looking to the future. I spoke to the work at hand, the moment we had to meet. It was, as I told you then, a winter of peril and possibility. Of peril and possibility. We’re in the grip of a once in a century pandemic, historic joblessness, a call for racial justice long overdue, clear and present threats to our very democracy.

And the sheep bleated, "Four legs good, two legs baaaaad!"  Well, almost.

The enthusiastic crowd proclaimed “We love Joe.” That was slightly misleading. They love Joe for accepting his defenestration without further ado. “[A]ll this talk about how I’m angry at all those people who said I should step down, it’s not true,” he asserted. If only he would have named the key actors we might have learned something. As it is, “Move on, Joe” would have been somewhat more straightforward.

That's fine, the tell-alls will be forthcoming, moreso should Team Trump keep their stuff together and get the win.

LEADING AS THE STRETCH DRIVE BEGINS.

At the All-Star break, the Milwaukee Brewers were leading the division, although by a slim margin.  "It's another of those seasons when the Central Division teams seem bent on playing for leaster, with the Cardinals' pitching looking sketchy at the beginning of the season, the favored Cubs unable to close out games, and the young Pirates and Reds still developing."

The Brewers just finished up their longest home stand of the season, Reds in for three, Dodgers for four, Cleveland for three, and now comes a road trip with the first three in St. Louis.

After losing manager Craig Counsell to the rival Chicago Cubs and trading 2021 Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes to the Baltimore Orioles, the Brewers have withstood numerous injuries to build the largest division lead of any team.

Milwaukee has won five straight and leads the NL Central by 11 games over the St. Louis Cardinals, who host the Brewers in a three-game series beginning Tuesday. Manager Pat Murphy says the Brewers are still “in the middle of a fight.”

“If you go back to your corner and look over and look at the scorecard, that doesn’t help you, you know what I mean?” Murphy said. “Go to the corner and put your head down. You know what’s going on. You know if you’re taking on water, pressure or whatever. You know the situation. You don’t need to look over your shoulder and wonder, ‘How many games?’

“You just need to stay the course. You need to stay in the ring, get some water, wait for the bell, go out there and try to win a decision every round you can.”

You have to play the game, and it sometimes helps to field players with the proverbial chips on their shoulders.

Colin Rea was pitching in Japan in 2022 after going 8-8 with a 4.90 ERA from 2015-21. He’s 17-10 with a 3.67 ERA for Milwaukee the last two seasons. Tobias Myers, in his sixth organization, has a 6-5 record and 2.81 ERA as a 26-year-old rookie.

The Brewers’ knack for getting pitchers back on track was evident Sunday as Rea, Bryan Hudson and Jared Koenig combined on a two-hitter in a 2-0 victory over Cleveland. The Dodgers designated Hudson for assignment in the offseason. The 30-year-old Koenig spent last season in the minors.

“That’s what this whole thing’s about,” Murphy said. “You’re thinking of a small-market team, you’re thinking of guys that have all been thrown away, guys who’ve been told, ‘You’re not good enough.’ That’s pleasurable, to see these guys then find an identity or find a way to be successful. It’s a beautiful thing.”

There's still, as the announcers say, a lot of baseball to be played.  There is Sprecher in the cooler for the good times, or the bad.

CODIFYING A COLLECTION OF DUMB POLICIES DOESN'T MAKE THEM LESS DUMB.

In "How price gouging bans really work," Axios contributor Emily Peck attempts a defense of the national price gouging policy the Jarrett regency hopes to enact.  She attempts to be funny.  "If banning price gouging is communist, then the U.S. went Marxist long ago. Most of us live in states that already have bans in place."  As she notes, those state bans take effect when a governor declares a state of emergency, and their most recent use was to protect people's right to buy unavailable toilet paper at no more than 10% above the pre-pandemic price rather than have the opportunity to buy toilet paper at some higher price, which might have been more effective at inducing people to leave some for others than limiting daily purchases to one package.  That works a lot better than relying on an allocation czar for toilet paper.

THE VAPIDITY OF VICTIM STUDIES.

On the lighter side, today's entertainment is provided by Common Dreams contributor Eman Abdelhadi, "an academic, activist, and writer who thinks at the intersection of gender, sexuality, religion, and politics."  Let's say that a speech outside the security fence protecting the United Center isn't Ronald Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate.

We are drowning, and our hearts are broken.

We are drowning in debt. In medical bills. In rising rents. In inflation.

We are under attack in this country. The right has declared war on people of color, on trans people, on women. They are trying to dismantle our systems of education, trying to criminalize teaching Black history and the realities of racism, oppression, and exploitation in this country.

They openly call for mass deportations and want to strip Black people of voter rights.

Every year, the climate crisis kills more people [because] of heat, of floods, of fires. Every year, the number of climate refugees at home and abroad climbs and climbs.

And in this moment of absolute disaster, of absolute crisis, the American ruling class—the people descending on this city for the Democratic National Convention—have seen fit to spend our money on killing children in Gaza.

She's leading a protest outside the United Center because the people inside the United Center haven't given the intersectional empty set everything they want.  That deregulation, trade-tested betterments and school choice might provide a way out of that debt, the medical bills, the rising rents doesn't occur to her.  Perhaps because that bundle means an end to the preferential option for victim studies the government schools have been offering, and for that reason Freakazoids for Palestine will argue with Democrats with one of three possible outcomes: the party accedes to all of their demands, the party accedes to enough demands that the protesters will hold their noses and vote, or they stay home.  There's a part of me likes that third outcome, as a presidential election in which less than half the eligible voters cast ballots might be the most meaningful objection to what the major parties are offering.

I have to chuckle, though, at these professional protesters claiming to be the reason the Donks eased Dementia Joe out and inserted the valley girl.

Genocide Joe would still be on the ticket if it were not for this movement, for all of us. Our movement is one of the main reasons that you are now the Democratic candidate for president in the most powerful country on the planet.

You, Vice President Harris, get to run for office because we ousted your predecessor right here in these streets. But it was never just about him. It was about the 40,000 Palestinians he helped kill.

And now we are telling you that “Not the other guy” is not a platform.

Well, no, it's not a platform, but that other guy was disciplined enough to let Dementia Joe face-plant, and I suspect, dear reader, that the polling data the party poobahs showed him to urge him into retirement involved voters receptive to the other guy, not to the Freakazoids for Palestine, who would never contribute to Trump pluralities in the several states.

LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER.

Liberty Unyielding's Hans Bader has the receipts.

In the 1970s, Kamala Harris’s father, a Marxist economist, advised Jamaica’s government to adopt price controls for food. The result was food shortages and people waiting in long lines for scarce food.

Kamala Harris is now backing price caps for food and groceries in the U.S., which could have the same harmful effect. She’s doing it as a way of deflecting blame for rising inflation under President Biden, which drove up grocery prices. As journalist Guy Benson notes, Harris “cast tie-breaking votes for the inflationary Biden-Harris agenda — and advocated for trillions in *additional* spending. She owns all of it, and then some.”

Grocery prices went up due to inflation under Joe Biden, not greedy grocery stores. Grocery stores’ profit is so small that even if they made no profit at all, grocery prices would fall by only a little over 1%. As economist Scott Lincicome explains, “the American grocery industry….had a 1.18% net profit margin last year.” But the Biden-Harris administration views grocery price increases as the product of greed.  As NBC notes, Biden has “spent more than a year … blaming corporate greed for consumer prices driven higher by inflation.” On Friday, Harris will “propose the first-ever federal ban on ‘corporate price-gouging in the food and grocery industries.'”

Ah yes, the ever-popular with populists, and eternally empirically empty, notion of price gouging.  (Fortunately the election will be over by Thanksgiving and we will be spared any Marxist wisdom about the predatory pricing of turkeys on Black Friday.)

SAN FRANCISCO FREAKAZOID FREAKS OUT AT THE FAIRGROUNDS.

This person sounds like fun company, nicht wahr?  "I took a trip to Trump country. It was more bleak than I could have imagined."  What, exactly, could cause such misery?  Why, it was last week's Boone County Fair in Belvidere.

Like a lot of folks who live in rural America, my extended family considers the local county fair in their corner of Illinois the biggest event of the summer. All year, they fantasize about the rides, the charcoal-kissed meat skewers and the stall that churns out fried cheese curds, those little molten pebbles enrobed in crisp chambers of light-as-air batter. They circle that curd stand like a menacing school of sharks as they take in the surrounding attractions, stopping over every so often to re-up on greasy, cheesy fuel. In recent years, they’ve even taken to entering the fair’s contests — the Olympics of Boone County. And they’ve since collected plenty of award ribbons for photography, cookies, crafts and giant garden-grown vegetables.

If this all sounds like a wholesome bit of Americana, I once thought so, too.

Ingratitude, just what you'd expect of someone who wants people to respect her plural pronoun. Probably put off at those 4-H displays thanking the businesses that buy the prize animals.  You won't read any of that, because she's distressed to discover a dissenting perspective.

I went back after two decades away to see what I’d been missing.

Everything was basically the same, from the cheese curds to the moaning herds of wooly sheep — except this time, the fair was feeling a little … weird.

Along with corny fair merch and anime ponchos, every, and I mean every T-shirt stall was draped with Trump flags: “I’m voting for the felon,” “F— Biden” and the relatively anodyne, “I’m With Trump.” While browsing the pet supply shop across from the local Republican Party’s stall, I saw GOP staff greeted with cheers and raised fists — echoing Donald Trump’s triumphant pose after the assassination attempt on him — by numerous fairgoers wearing red caps and “Ultra MAGA” shirts. “Boo, Kambala!” yelled a woman, laughing.

In packed queues for roasted corn, I squeezed past parents balancing their children’s plastic lemonade cups in their arms with “Trump/Vance 2024” lawn signs tucked under their armpits. “Nice sign!” one blonde, elementary school-age girl shouted above the din, with her thumbs up at a woman holding one of them.

Yes, the sales tents at the steam power shows and county fairs have provided opportunities for people who understand nose rings are for livestock to cock a snook at the weird freakazoids who think nose rings are a Statement.  "The more censorious the Perpetually Aggrieved become, and the more in-your-face the rainbow coalition is in the entertainment industry, the more Gadsden flags and POW-MIA flags and Confederate battle flags will sell. Subverting the dominant paradigm and being transgressive isn't for the critical studies people only."  These days the Trump flags are the modal insurgent expression, with those "voting for the felon" being scorn for the lawfare.

TROTSKYITE LUNACY.

There's generally a recent Common Dreams column available to provide comic relief on what is turning into an unedifying election season.

They're going to be too busy fangirling over ¿Que mala? this week, but have no fear, dear reader, there's always the World Socialist Web Site.  "Kamala Harris outlines pro-corporate economic agenda at North Carolina campaign stop."

THE TOYS OF MY YOUTH.

Remember these?

It transpires they are still in production.

The ants will live between two parallel sheets of clear plastic and you will be able to watch them build their tunnels and chambers. Complete with sand and instruction booklet on the care, feeding watering and watching of your pet ants. Stands upright on its own base and includes an escape proof cover. Assuming you want live pets, you just order them online using the included code and weather permitting, the ant man will ship a small vial of the little critters straight to you. Comes with clear plastic tubing to create your own runways or buy multiples and connect them for your very own ant city.

Something there is about kids telling their folks they want an ant farm for their birthday or Christmas that might better be left to the imagination.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Let us reclaim the culture first.  "it is time that we recognized that art need not be adversarial or 'transgressive' in order to be good or important."  Roger Kimball continues with a necessary fact-check of puerile transgressivity.  "Everyone is brought up on stories of how an obtuse public scorned Manet, censored Gauguin, and drove poor Van Gogh to madness and suicide. But the fact that these great talents went unappreciated has had the undesirable effect of encouraging the thought that, because one is unappreciated, one is therefore a genius. It has also made it extremely difficult to expose fraudulent work as such."  If it is difficult, better that the work of exposing it begin now.

Progressivism.  “Big government has failed us, so what we need is bigger government.”  We are being played.  Everything that can break is breaking.  The con is still holding.  "President Trump took a bullet while Kamala Harris can't handle a question."  Harris has failed to secure our border.

Disqualifying.  "Walz, who was a dues-paying member of the National Education Association during his years as a high school teacher, told AFSCME members at the union's 46th international convention in Los Angeles about his strong record of fighting for workers' rights as governor of Minnesota."  Less competent than Kamala?  "The only candidate who wouldn't upstage Kamala is a socialist drunk driver."

Donald Trump, put in the work.  "Trump could run a much better, much more persuasive, and much more effective campaign with much better chances of victory if he wanted to do so."  It is Donald Trump's job to stay steady.  Now is not the time to relitigate the past or to settle old scores.

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

LET PROFESSORS BRACE THEMSELVES TO THEIR DUTIES.

Registration week and move-in day approach, and Minding the Campus contributor Samuel J. Abrams reminds his colleagues it is time to make the students uncomfortable with their prejudices.

With colleges and universities reopening in a few short weeks, I want to remind fellow faculty that educating students is one of the most important tasks they are charged with performing. For faculty to provide a responsible college education today, we professors must help our students learn how to find and then embrace the truth even when that runs against biases, priors, and prejudices. Sadly, this task is easier said than done.

Finding truth in higher education is a challenge. As former American Association of University Professors President Cary Nelson noted, “Some academic disciplines are not devoted to the search for the truth. They don’t share that basic principle. They are largely devoted to the imposition of unified political belief.” Beyond academic departments no longer being committed to the truth and corrupted by a leftist and anti-Western ideological ethos, true liberal professors must work to break a real issue affecting so many students and their thinking: the availability heuristic.

The fault for that availability heuristic rests with the faculty.  "Yes, although for many years, professors understood the social contract obligated them to teach the controversies, to be careful about interjecting their own biases into class, to respect the discipline's discourse practices in writing up their thoughts. Thus, for example, could Hayek and Keynes work together to edit Economica."  I had already taken my pension, and therefore could bring the fire.  "Provide a rigorous curriculum, turf out the -studies departments and the lackeys in student affairs and housing, and perhaps the rest will take care of itself.  Or if not, well, I've offered lots of suggestions over the years about how next to proceed."

THE DEFLATING HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL.

No, this is not a scoop from the Patriots' training camp.  Rather, it's bad news from one of those all-high-school-sports, all-the-time Rockford television stations.  "Rockford Christian High School confirmed Thursday evening its 2024 varsity football season is canceled.  The Royal Lions couldn’t put together a roster for the season due to low numbers."

That's been going on in high school sports for some time.

And yet, the Rockford television stations, which would put the story of a Chicago Cub pitcher carrying a perfect game against the White Sox into the ninth inning hitting a walk-off home run (because they'd use the designated hitter on the south side) that breaks up the Sox pitcher's no-hitter behind a story involving a high school cross country team that's running in the state championship, have been, during their high school football training camp reporting, featuring teams that have gone from eleven to seven on a side, and there are some new teams reflecting consolidations among high schools. In both situations, it's fewer kids going out for football, despite the shot at more than fifteen minutes of fame on local television.

The way the things have been going with the Cubs and Sox of late, a few feel-good high school football stories might boost morale around the sports desk.  Some of the Rockford area high schools have been putting more money into sports.  Others, not so much, and in some smaller school districts rivalries of long standing have been put aside, the better to be able to put eight men on a field.  "Those eight player squads are becoming more common in Illinois, and some of those squads are joint efforts of more than one high school."

I wonder if the television stations will send crews out for homecoming night footie matches, which are replacing the traditional football games at schools giving up on football.

THE MEDIA ECHO CHAMBER.

"Clapping seals or North Korean propagandists."  Watch.

Link via Scott Johnson of Power Line, who concludes, "Rush Limbaugh used to love mocking the 'thing called journalism' on display in the video. Mister, we could use a man like Rush Limbaugh again."

In Rush's absence, we have to circulate the creativity as we are able, and bet on emergence.

DEMOCRACY IS SO PRECIOUS IT IS NECESSARY TO DESTROY IT.

Victor "Blade of Perseus" Hanson notes, "The already-long 2024 presidential campaign has become the strangest in modern history."  He frames his essay in the form of ten questions.  Focus, dear reader, on the behavior of the political party that is forever prating about "Protecting Our Democracy^(TM)."  Somewhere the shade of George McGovern is cringing as the inheritors of his reforms honor them in the breach.

Cancel by fiat their virtual nominee four months before the election when he sinks in the polls?

Nullify the outcome of a year of primaries and the will of 14 million voters?

Threaten a sitting president with removal by the 25th Amendment process unless he steps aside as his party nominee?

Anoint a replacement nominee before the convention and without a single primary—and then prevent any rival candidates from challenging her?

There is something amusing, not to say something appropriate, about the current generation of so-called progressives pragmatically seeing what is wrong with what previous generations of progressives gave us.  "That muted endorsement of the smoke-filled room is in a footnote."

If, once the campaigning season begins in earnest, after Labor Day, every Green, Libertarian and Republican isn't throwing that "protecting Our Democracy" stuff in the faces of every Democrat candidate at every opportunity, they're missing opportunities.

An employee of the Democratic National Committee filed a complaint Wednesday seeking to remove the Green Party’s presidential candidate from the ballot in Wisconsin, arguing that the party is ineligible.

It’s the latest move by the DNC to block third-party candidates from the ballot. Democrats are also seeking to stop independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in several states.

Yes, there are election laws, but the two major parties, with the Democrats being the more egregious, use the laws as a shield to protect voters from voting for anyone but them.

YOU HAVE TO DEVELOP YOUR INTUITION.

With the new academic year about to begin, let us consider constructive ways to study economics.

I consider myself fortunate to have learned intermediate price theory out of George Stigler's The Theory of Price and [Armen] Alchian and William Allen's Exchange and Production, rather than out of the Henderson-and-Quandt-stripped-of-Lagrangians canonical texts of the day.  I'm not sure my students agree, as it is my penchant to ask questions that require them to develop their intuition in quirky ways, rather than scribble a figure or calculate an elasticity.

And if you want to do well as an economist, the approach to developing your intuition is straightforward.

"Microeconomics is the mature, stable corpus of economic theory, and its continuity is a reflection of its innumerable and infinitely varied successful applications."

It doesn't matter what you call it.  Exchange, arbitrage, indifference, opportunity cost.  The economist who grasps these things better will write better and teach better.

Steven Landsburg expands on the way to think like an economist.

Economists know things that are true, important and entirely counterintuitive to anyone who hasn’t had the right kind of training—and at least for now, that includes the bots.

Economists learn to reason quickly, rigorously and accurately from facts to an important conclusion. That skill is usually taught in courses called price theory, or sometimes Chicago price theory in honor of the academic venue where it was developed into an art form by such practitioners as Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Gary Becker and Deirdre McCloskey.

A course in price theory covers much of the same material as a course in microeconomics, and college catalogs often use the two course titles interchangeably. But price theory puts far more emphasis on problem solving and real-world applications. A good microeconomics student can write an essay on monopoly pricing. A good price-theory student can solve my brain teaser.

Price theory seems to be fading from the economics curriculum. Surveying the course offerings of the top few dozen economics departments, I see a lot more coursework offered in theoretical microeconomics and a lot less in price theory than I did five years ago. I’ve talked to many economists who have noticed the same thing.

I’m not sure why this is happening. Maybe it’s driven by students who demand courses in which they can succeed by memorizing the textbook rather than learning how to think. But if economics majors aren’t learning how to think about economics, then who will?

Go, read his essay, tackle his imponderables (there are several, and if you have heard echoes of them in Cold Spring Shops, that, dear reader, is no accident) and don't let that Chicago price theory reference suggest some sort of ideology at work.  Robert Frank's Economic Naturalist is also about the imponderables, and a grasp of exchange, arbitrage, indifference, and opportunity cost will serve as well in working through his stories, or developing your own.

Robert "Bastiat's Window" Graboyes gets into the back-to-school mood with "The Economist's Mind as Beach Reading."  Yes, the basal readers skew Chicago, and many of the readings for deeper understanding skew Hillsdale, or George Mason: and yet, among those additional readings there will be insights that are not necessarily the libertarian, let alone the business community's conventional wisdom.

Grasp the fundamentals first.  Otherwise there will be no economic content.