If in doubt, kick 'em out...

[daveon]

Apparently used to be the view of British Intelligence about their Russian counterparts activities.  There is a movement growing to kick Ted Beale aka Vox Day out of the SFWA for being a racist, misogynist dick. He is.  Google him if you need to.  He makes Rand Simberg look like the sane face of Libertarian viewpoints.

I almost didn't get down to his really astonishingly offensive claptrap about N.K. Jemisin who wrote the rather good 100,000 Kingdoms which was on the Hugo list last year.  I tripped up reading his profoundly stupid claptrap about Japan.

The current Japanese PM, aside from his militant nationalistic chest thumping, is trying to kick the Japanese economy out of the doldrums it's been in since the late 1980s.  He's essentially doing this by dumping vast amount of money into the economy and saying screw inflation, we can live with some for a while.  Early indications have been good, Japanese growth is currently forecast at 4.1% for this year.  This has, to put it mildly, confused the bond and stock markets who don't know what to make of it.  Prior to a Bear Market from the last few days, the Nikkei index was up about 75% on 6 months ago.  It has lost about 20% in the last week, but is still up 30-40% on where it was.  He is very very certain that the economies of the world are going to collapse unless they go back to the gold standard.

Gold has lost 20% of it's value in the last 6 months....  go figure.

Comments

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

There is an amazing resistance to empirical fact in libertarian circles.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Given the number of them who hail from technical backgrounds it really does astound me.

[andrewducker]

There's a whole thing with engineers and fanaticism. More terrorists are engineers than you might expect.

They seem to think the world should run along nice, simple, lines.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I am delighted that the "gold bugs" who are certain that Zimbawean/Weimar Republic-style hyper-inflation is just around the corner are losing their shirts by over-investing in gold. There might be a place for gold or other commodities in a balanced portfolio, but putting 100% into it is just plain stupid.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

The terrible thing is no matter how patiently the reasons for this are explained (with graphs and data and historical evidence) they just keep repeating the same lines.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I sometimes get the impression that this is because the graphs, data, and analysis are not what they consider "common sense," and surely you're aware that many or most people distrust anything that disagrees with "common sense."

[daveon.livejournal.com]

The thing about this is some of the thinking does, in my mind, run counter to common sense. I've been discussing some of this with a UK friend who cannot get his head around where demand comes from. He keeps talking about reducing benefits and taxes and how that will spur the economy without any real thought of what people do with more cash in their pockets, nor the effect of replacing benefits of $X a day with a salary of $X-1 a day.

It's not hard.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I'll try to guess at his thinking:

1. Cutting benefits means you can cut taxes as well
2. Cutting taxes means I have more money in my own pocket
3. If I have more money, I will spend it

At least the above is vaguely logical. Probably on top of those sort-of-logical arguments are the emotional and non-factual-if-he'd-think-straight ones:

4. I will personally feel better if those lazy buggers who get government benefits are punished
5. I don't personally use any government benefits of any sort, so cuts won't affect me at all

[daveon.livejournal.com]

The steps people miss is the people on benefits are spending too, replacing the money they spend from the government with less money from the private sector actually can represent less spending.

I think Item 4 is what is driving most of this and the problem is people aren't honest enough to say so.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Expelling him might just give him more attention than he deserves. However, as I read elsewhere, if SFWA does decide to take such a step, it should be done for the right reason, such as "repeatedly abusing SFWA resources" rather than "the SFWA board doesn't like you." While either reason is legal, the latter is much more dangerous to the organization.