Friedman, Sowell on greed

“Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system.” 
― Milton Friedman

From economist Thomas Sowell's "The Vision of the Anointed" (1995):

Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of "greed" is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned—never to those wanting to take other people's money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largess dispensed from such taxation. No amount of taxation is ever described by the anointed as "greed" on the part of government or the clientele of government. . . .
Families who wish to be independent financially and to make their own decisions about their lives are of little interest or use to those who are seeking to impose their superior wisdom and virtue on other people. Earning their own money makes these families unlikely candidates for third-party direction and wishing to retain what they have earned threatens to deprive the anointed of the money needed to distribute as largess to others who would thus become subject to their direction. In these circumstances, it is understandable why the desire to increase and retain one's own earnings should be characterized negatively as "greed," while wishing to live at the expense of others is not

Sowell and Borlaug quotes

Some of the most vocal critics of the way things are being done are people who have done nothing themselves, and whose only contributions to society are their complaints and moral exhibitionism.

• Thomas Sowell (2005-10-15)
• "some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels...If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things".^[62]
• Norman Borlaug

My understanding of the gold standard

     A gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. Consider every morning before work, one must kiss my golden ass. We would soon see, due to the finiteness  of my arse, a line up. This would slow GDP since only those skillful and lucky enough to pucker up on my heinie in a timely manner would carry on peak economic activity. If, however, we were to make replica's of my arse to kiss, we would soon see the line's dissipate. This replica can be metaphorically considered fiat money. Fiat money is currency which derives its value from government regulation or law. 

The weakness of social sciences

"Name me one proposition in all of the social sciences
which is both true and non-trivial."  -Mathematician Stanislaw Ulam to Paul Samuelson

Fat/smokers excellent citizens

Fat People Cheaper to Treat, Study Says
By MARIA CHENG – 1 day ago

LONDON (AP) — Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn't save money, researchers reported Monday. It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

"It was a small surprise," said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. "But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more."

In a paper published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, Dutch researchers found that the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers.

Van Baal and colleagues created a model to simulate lifetime health costs for three groups of 1,000 people: the "healthy-living" group (thin and non-smoking), obese people, and smokers. The model relied on "cost of illness" data and disease prevalence in the Netherlands in 2003.

The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run.

On average, healthy people lived 84 years. Smokers lived about 77 years, and obese people lived about 80 years. Smokers and obese people tended to have more heart disease than the healthy people.

Cancer incidence, except for lung cancer, was the same in all three groups. Obese people had the most diabetes, and healthy people had the most strokes. Ultimately, the thin and healthy group cost the most, about $417,000, from age 20 on.

The cost of care for obese people was $371,000, and for smokers, about $326,000.

The results counter the common perception that preventing obesity will save health systems worldwide millions of dollars.

"This throws a bucket of cold water onto the idea that obesity is going to cost trillions of dollars," said Patrick Basham, a professor of health politics at Johns Hopkins University who was unconnected to the study. He said that government projections about obesity costs are frequently based on guesswork, political agendas, and changing science.

"If we're going to worry about the future of obesity, we should stop worrying about its financial impact," he said.

Obesity experts said that fighting the epidemic is about more than just saving money.

"The benefits of obesity prevention may not be seen immediately in terms of cost savings in tomorrow's budget, but there are long-term gains," said Neville Rigby, spokesman for the International Association for the Study of Obesity. "These are often immeasurable when it comes to people living longer and healthier lives."

Van Baal described the paper as "a book-keeping exercise," and said that governments should recognize that successful smoking and obesity prevention programs mean that people will have a higher chance of dying of something more expensive later in life.

"Lung cancer is a cheap disease to treat because people don't survive very long," van Baal said. "But if they are old enough to get Alzheimer's one day, they may survive longer and cost more."

The study, paid for by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports, did not take into account other potential costs of obesity and smoking, such as lost economic productivity or social costs.

"We are not recommending that governments stop trying to prevent obesity," van Baal said. "But they should do it for the right reasons."

On the Net:
PLoS: http://medicine.plosjournals.org

start smoking day

Ten reasons to have a start smoking day.
1) It reduces health costs,"...healthy people live to incur greater medical expenditure subsequently on average, more than compensating for the earlier excess expenditure related to obesity or smoking." -McPherson K (2008) Does Preventing Obesity Lead to Reduced Health-Care Costs? PLoS Med 5(2): e37. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050037
2) It increases performance- Heishman SJ, Kleykamp BA, Singleton EG. Meta-analysis of the acute effects of nicotine and smoking on human performance. Psychopharmacology. 2010;210(4):453-469. doi:10.1007/s00213-010-1848-1
3) It increases IQ-"... nicotine acts to enhance physiological processes underlying performance on intellectual tasks".Smoking and Raven IQ Psychopharmacology (1994) 116:382-384
4) It reduces Parkinson's disease-"...This meta-analysis shows that there is strong epidemiological evidence that smokers and coffee drinkers have a lower risk of Parkinson's disease".-Hernán, Miguel A., et al. "A meta‐analysis of coffee drinking, cigarette smoking, and the risk of Parkinson's disease." Annals of neurology 52.3 (2002): 276-284.
5)  If you like slim, body weight tends to be lower among smokers than among nonsmokers-Chatkin, Raquel, & Chatkin, José Miguel. (2007). Smoking and changes in body weight: can physiopathology and genetics explain this association?. Jornal Brasileiro de Pneumologia, 33(6), 712-719.
6)  Smoking is a protective factor for total knee replacement as  nicotine promotes proliferation and collagen synthesis in chondrocytes.-Cigarette smoking and risk of total knee replacement for severe osteoarthritis among Chinese in Singapore – the Singapore Chinese health study.Leung, Y.-Y. et al. Osteoarthritis and Cartilage , Volume 22 , Issue 6 , 764 - 770) 
7) Smoking has been observed to exert protective effects on both the development and progression of ulcerative colitis.-Lunney, P. C. and Leong, R. W. L. (2012), Review article: ulcerative colitis, smoking and nicotine therapy. Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 36: 997–1008. doi: 10.1111/apt.12086

8) Smokers are less likely to develop pre-eclampsia (hypertension in pregnancy) than non-smokers-Karumanchi, S. Ananth, and Richard J. Levine. “How Does Smoking Reduce the Risk of Preeclampsia?” Hypertension 55.5 (2010): 1100–1101. PMC. Web. 6 Mar. 2016.

⁹⁾  The inverse relationship between cigarette smoking and endometrial carcinoma risk is well established.
-Felix, Ashley S. et al. “Cigarette Smoking and Endometrial Carcinoma Risk: The Role of Effect Modification and Tumor Heterogeneity.” Cancer causes & control : CCC 25.4 (2014): 479–489. PMC. Web. 6 Mar. 2016.
10) Most people will automatically assume you are an idiot which will save you the anxiety of them figuring this out later.

stock price analogy

Consider a exceptionally large jar of beans with inflow and outflow taps constantly changing the number of beans in the jar. Also consider a large group of people estimating the number of beans on a ongoing basis. I would conjecture that the guesses surrounding the actual number of beans in the jar at most any given time t would fall under a bell curve distribution. I say most because occasionally, when either of the taps behave in a gusher type condition (black swan?) the Gaussian distribution will break down as the information will outpace and overwhelm the large group of people estimating.