Lord Acton: Among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men, power is the most constant and the most active. [via CafeHayek] Donald Boudreaux: “Power is so persistent because it is the only means by which the greedy and the arrogant amongst us – of whom there are many – can get us to do their bidding without them having to give to us at least equal value in return. Even the private corporation that currently ‘dominates’ some industry classification must offer workers wages that workers find attractive, and offer its customers bargains that customers find attractive. In contrast, people with genuine power are able to get other people to do their bidding, not by offering to make these other people better off, but by threatening to make them worse off if they disobey the power-holders’ commands.”
FT: “Steve Ballmer…has made it his mission to build a better democracy with data. Ahead of next Tuesday’s US election, he has been trying to turn USAFacts, a not-for-profit civic initiative, into a source of dispassionate statistics to inform the country’s enraged debates. “I think of . . . the twin towers of America as democracy and capitalism — and they both have to work well,” the self-styled centrist said…“This is a small contribution we might be able to make on the democracy side.” USAFacts has its roots in Ballmer’s efforts to understand where his own tax dollars were going. He launched it in 2017 as an effort to “understand government by the numbers”.”
Oliver Burkeman: “In an attention economy, the truly valuable commodity isn’t the news itself but your eyeballs. Even the most responsible media organization, activist group or political campaign is incentivized to present each story or cause as even more alarming than the next, in an effort to win the attentional arms race. It’s easy to find yourself, metaphorically speaking, living inside the news cycle — treating the latest campaign developments or polling data as somehow more real than your home, career, neighborhood or friends. It’s a grim irony that many people thus mesmerized by the news feel themselves to be fighting for democracy’s survival, when the total colonization of inner life by politics is a traditional hallmark of totalitarianism. It would be one thing if this nervous fixation at least helped us make a difference in the wider world. And it can seem that way: Scrolling, sharing and refreshing on social media certainly simulates the feeling of efficacy, as if you’re acting on the news, not just watching it in slack-jawed panic. But the attempt to care about everything impedes taking concrete action on anything.”
Jason Lemkin: “So as we head into a New Year, it’s time. To build 3 fairly straightforward plans: Your base plan (C60), your stretch plan (C10/20); and a “worst case” plan (C90). C = Confidence You’ll Hit It.”
FT offers a tutorial on bonds: “Pretty much everyone involved gets a bit stressed by rising bond yields — both bondholders and bond issuers. How can rising yields be bad for both? It’s a jam today versus jam tomorrow thing. If you own bonds and yields are rising, the prices of your bonds are falling. So if owning bonds is your way to make a quick buck, rising yields are a bad thing. But if you don’t yet own bonds, rising yields offer the chance to lock in better future returns. If you have issued bonds and their yields rise/ prices fall on secondary markets, you may not care — especially if you don’t intend to repay the old bonds with new bonds. But for everyone else who needs to issue fresh bonds to repay maturing ones (like the, erm, UK government), rising bond yields will translate into higher coupons being set on the new debt. From this perspective, rising yields look like a bad thing.”
