Hear how the bargain was made for the West: With her shivering children in zero degrees, Blankets for your land, so the treaties attest, Oh well, blankets for land is a bargain indeed, And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected From smallpox-diseased dying soldiers that day. And the tribes were wiped out and the history books censored, A hundred years of your statesmen have felt it's better this way.
A few years ago, I read Daniel Spulber's Famous Fables of Economics: Myths of Market Failures, an anthology of such misleading stories within the domains of economics and economic history. It had the Standard Oil case, and also the QWERTY case, for example. If you don't happen to have seen it I recommend giving it a look; it seemed good quality material to me.
Another one for you: In his essay "A Reply to Professor Haldane," reprinted in his book On Stories, C.S. Lewis quotes Ptolemy's Almagest (the standard medieval textbook on astronomy) as stating that in comparison to the distances to the fixed stars, the whole Earth can be treated as a single point (in contrast to Haldane's statement that in the 1400s it was not clear that celestial distances were much greater than terrestrial).
There is at least one published news story that asserts that Buffy St. Marie's claims to indigenous ancestry are themselves specious. See the Wikipedia entry for a short summary, or the link in endnote 2 for details.
I've most often heard the alleged smallpox blankets attributed to Jeffrey Amherst. A page on the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (the town is named after him) says the evidence is weak.
Yes, it appears both Churchill and St. Marie were "Pretendians. Along with Liz Warren and others. At my Alma Mater, University of Illinois, the leader of the very small group that managed to get rid of Chief Illiniwek (who was NEVER a mascot) was led by a young woman who claimed to be 1/16 Native American. I don't think anyone ever checked that out.
As a layman who has no grasp of the economics part, I have an honest question, likely below the desired level of discussion. I wonder if the modal economist would say that the depressions under Harding and Hoover were not comparable and cite the later stock market crash and bank failures as principal reasons, and add that government spending as a means of counteracting recessions is not disproven by what Harding did or didn't do but proven by other history and modeling etc. Is that bogus economics? Or "not even wrong"?
I did say "Insofar as that bit of history is relevant to current policy disputes about how to avoid a depression." The cases are not identical and they don't disprove the idea of government spending as a means of counteracting recessions, they are merely evidence against it. On the other hand, as best I can tell — it isn't my field — there isn't much evidence for it.
The part of the story that is clear is that Hoover did the opposite of what Frum and others claimed, hence that insofar as that history is evidence it's evidence against what they claim it is evidence for.
The other relevant point, which I suggest at the end of that part of the article, is that people claim what FDR did was the right approach judged by results when in fact FDR presided over an unusually long and severe depression, evidence if anything against his policies.
The most discomforting part of that whole situation is the apparent benefits of war on the economy. That was the real break between the depression and the post-depression economy, starting with Lend-Lease and growing significantly once America entered the war fully.
If that's true, then it brings up a lot of uncomfortable questions about the nature and purpose of war and the benefits or problems of a more peaceful future.
A good description of that which... maybe in a few days I will remember who made it... was that the war helped the economy only in so far as it made it abundantly evident that the New Dealers' ideas had to go if we were going to win the war. Truman was selected to replace FDR, and lots of the early FDR folks pushed out, as a result of this realization. So while war wasn't good for the economy directly, it indirectly helped people realize that what they were doing was so bad they couldn't keep doing it. Helped them recognize they were going to hit rock bottom shortly before they finished driving the economy into the ground, you might say.
Usually the economic argument for WW2 being the cause of the end of the Great Depression was the giant spike in government spending, not the highlighting of how bad the policies were.
Not to mention the fact that generally wars are really bad for long term growth. It isn't too often that governments realize their economic policies are wrecking their war efforts and improve. Usually wars just lead to a lot of capital and resources getting dedicated to being destroyed.
Mencken also claimed Robert E Lee was against slavery. This story was started by Mosby, (the Gray Ghost, the sneaky Confederate irregular cavalry soldier) during the 1872 election. (Smoothed R-Grant's win by giving southern men an excuse for voting for Grant.. Grant appointed Mosby ambassador to China and the R party kept him there for decades.)
Since Lee was a slave owner, managed slave plantations, and was a leading general for the slave cause, the claim that he opposed slavery seemed bogus to me. But it wasn't until I read 'The Authorized Memoirs of General Lee by his Chief of Staff', which formally support slavery, that I was sure. Mencken was a persuasive writer.
And Lee was on the liberal side in the slave cause. He opposed secession, on the sensible grounds that slavery was doing great without secession and abolitionists were widely despised as nuts even by those vile Yankees. Lee opposed secession strongly, until he faced serious threats of mob violence and backed down and supported Virginia when Virginia seceded. I would not have told him to his face that this was backing down, but in the circles he moved in, it was.
Lighthorse Harry Lee, Lee's father, a hero in the Revolutionary War, was tortured and broken by mob violence for opposing the 1812 war. He lasted a few years of fear and shame and pain afterwards, when his son was old enough to understand. The leading Lee of Virginia knew that when your father is tortured and broken you do something about it. So did the macho southern men who broke the father and threatened the son. 'Granny Lee', 'General Spade'- they never liked Lee.
In the war, commanding a stricken field of dead and maimed macho southern men and dead and maimed Yankees, Lee remarked, 'It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.'
According to 'Fighting Ships and Prisons; the Mediterranean Galleys of France in the age of Louis XIV', by Paul Bamford, galley slaves were used to hold down wages. Wages in a seaport went up: a galley would be stationed in port, and the slaves leased to work for less than free workers wanted. So the workers were being punished as well as the slaves.
By Louis XIV the cannon you needed to sink a ship were too heavy to stick in the bow of a galley and still be seaworthy, but unseaworthy galleys were still a threat in a calm.
A few years ago, I read Daniel Spulber's Famous Fables of Economics: Myths of Market Failures, an anthology of such misleading stories within the domains of economics and economic history. It had the Standard Oil case, and also the QWERTY case, for example. If you don't happen to have seen it I recommend giving it a look; it seemed good quality material to me.
I'm not familiar with Spulber's book but it seems to be mostly a compilation of articles I am familiar with.
I should have included the QWERTY story. It didn't occur to me.
Another one for you: In his essay "A Reply to Professor Haldane," reprinted in his book On Stories, C.S. Lewis quotes Ptolemy's Almagest (the standard medieval textbook on astronomy) as stating that in comparison to the distances to the fixed stars, the whole Earth can be treated as a single point (in contrast to Haldane's statement that in the 1400s it was not clear that celestial distances were much greater than terrestrial).
I doubt many people other than Haldane had an opinion on that question, however.
There is at least one published news story that asserts that Buffy St. Marie's claims to indigenous ancestry are themselves specious. See the Wikipedia entry for a short summary, or the link in endnote 2 for details.
Thanks. It sounds pretty clear. So she might not actually care whether the smallpox story she tells in the song is true.
Yes, that's the inference I would make.
I've most often heard the alleged smallpox blankets attributed to Jeffrey Amherst. A page on the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (the town is named after him) says the evidence is weak.
https://www.umass.edu/legal/derrico/amherst/lord_jeff.html
I think Amherst suggested the idea but there is no evidence he did it.
Yes, it appears both Churchill and St. Marie were "Pretendians. Along with Liz Warren and others. At my Alma Mater, University of Illinois, the leader of the very small group that managed to get rid of Chief Illiniwek (who was NEVER a mascot) was led by a young woman who claimed to be 1/16 Native American. I don't think anyone ever checked that out.
As a layman who has no grasp of the economics part, I have an honest question, likely below the desired level of discussion. I wonder if the modal economist would say that the depressions under Harding and Hoover were not comparable and cite the later stock market crash and bank failures as principal reasons, and add that government spending as a means of counteracting recessions is not disproven by what Harding did or didn't do but proven by other history and modeling etc. Is that bogus economics? Or "not even wrong"?
I did say "Insofar as that bit of history is relevant to current policy disputes about how to avoid a depression." The cases are not identical and they don't disprove the idea of government spending as a means of counteracting recessions, they are merely evidence against it. On the other hand, as best I can tell — it isn't my field — there isn't much evidence for it.
The part of the story that is clear is that Hoover did the opposite of what Frum and others claimed, hence that insofar as that history is evidence it's evidence against what they claim it is evidence for.
The other relevant point, which I suggest at the end of that part of the article, is that people claim what FDR did was the right approach judged by results when in fact FDR presided over an unusually long and severe depression, evidence if anything against his policies.
The most discomforting part of that whole situation is the apparent benefits of war on the economy. That was the real break between the depression and the post-depression economy, starting with Lend-Lease and growing significantly once America entered the war fully.
If that's true, then it brings up a lot of uncomfortable questions about the nature and purpose of war and the benefits or problems of a more peaceful future.
A good description of that which... maybe in a few days I will remember who made it... was that the war helped the economy only in so far as it made it abundantly evident that the New Dealers' ideas had to go if we were going to win the war. Truman was selected to replace FDR, and lots of the early FDR folks pushed out, as a result of this realization. So while war wasn't good for the economy directly, it indirectly helped people realize that what they were doing was so bad they couldn't keep doing it. Helped them recognize they were going to hit rock bottom shortly before they finished driving the economy into the ground, you might say.
But that is precisely the manner in which wars are good for long term growth.
Usually the economic argument for WW2 being the cause of the end of the Great Depression was the giant spike in government spending, not the highlighting of how bad the policies were.
Not to mention the fact that generally wars are really bad for long term growth. It isn't too often that governments realize their economic policies are wrecking their war efforts and improve. Usually wars just lead to a lot of capital and resources getting dedicated to being destroyed.
> It isn't too often that governments realize their economic policies are wrecking their war efforts and improve.
Those that don't tend to lose the war, and eventually get conquered.
Can find source if you like, but the wedding night one is associated with the family of Matisyahu in the Hanukkah story
Alex Tabarrok recently posted https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/01/no-ones-name-was-changed-at-ellis-island.html with some commentary on why people might believe it happened.
Mencken also claimed Robert E Lee was against slavery. This story was started by Mosby, (the Gray Ghost, the sneaky Confederate irregular cavalry soldier) during the 1872 election. (Smoothed R-Grant's win by giving southern men an excuse for voting for Grant.. Grant appointed Mosby ambassador to China and the R party kept him there for decades.)
Since Lee was a slave owner, managed slave plantations, and was a leading general for the slave cause, the claim that he opposed slavery seemed bogus to me. But it wasn't until I read 'The Authorized Memoirs of General Lee by his Chief of Staff', which formally support slavery, that I was sure. Mencken was a persuasive writer.
And Lee was on the liberal side in the slave cause. He opposed secession, on the sensible grounds that slavery was doing great without secession and abolitionists were widely despised as nuts even by those vile Yankees. Lee opposed secession strongly, until he faced serious threats of mob violence and backed down and supported Virginia when Virginia seceded. I would not have told him to his face that this was backing down, but in the circles he moved in, it was.
Lighthorse Harry Lee, Lee's father, a hero in the Revolutionary War, was tortured and broken by mob violence for opposing the 1812 war. He lasted a few years of fear and shame and pain afterwards, when his son was old enough to understand. The leading Lee of Virginia knew that when your father is tortured and broken you do something about it. So did the macho southern men who broke the father and threatened the son. 'Granny Lee', 'General Spade'- they never liked Lee.
In the war, commanding a stricken field of dead and maimed macho southern men and dead and maimed Yankees, Lee remarked, 'It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.'
According to 'Fighting Ships and Prisons; the Mediterranean Galleys of France in the age of Louis XIV', by Paul Bamford, galley slaves were used to hold down wages. Wages in a seaport went up: a galley would be stationed in port, and the slaves leased to work for less than free workers wanted. So the workers were being punished as well as the slaves.
By Louis XIV the cannon you needed to sink a ship were too heavy to stick in the bow of a galley and still be seaworthy, but unseaworthy galleys were still a threat in a calm.