*frappáns klisé cím itt

The more things change, the more they stay the same

‘Big G’, your wish is my command.  Hence, *frappáns klisé cím itt is back on its old stomping grounds.  Tumblr, dead and shat upon.  Blogger, like Lazarus, raised from the dead. 

Eva's Apology for Communism

Eva Balogh has deigned to respond a comment of mine on her blog.  My response below:

An excerpt from my comment:

Varangy/Toad: “Eva, I would like to ask you as to your view of the Communists and ex-Communists? I believe massive injury has been done to Hungary, Hungarian society, and Moral Principle as there was no high-level purging undertaken in 1989/90 for the sins against humanity committed by the Communists.”

She then responds:

I must confess that I didn’t get much further than that, but I’m quite glad to answer this question. First and foremost, I’m not looking at this question from the narrow point of view of my family’s history. My grandparents and my parents had lost everything they ever worked for as a result of the communist takeover.

First off, I very much apologize if I dare view Communism through the lens of my family’s, relatives’, friends’ and compatriots’ experiences.   I suppose some might call that ‘narrow’.  I don’t agree, for many a reason, but I will intellectually indulge you.

Let’s look at Communism from a ‘broad’, historian’s POV — I can think of a couple things to start with.  Namely, the massive number of deaths due to:

*extreme hardship conditions in slave labor camps

*deaths due to man-made famine, usually closely connected to forced collectivization of agriculture

*straightforward executions.

Not to mention torture and the intentional strangulation of innumerable individual social and economic freedoms.  These all varied in intensity and application by geography, regime and time. 

It is estimated that worldwide approximately 100 million + people died as a direct result of Communism democide.  Do I really need to waste more pixels in persuading you (or anyone else) that it is perfectly reasonable to persecute, indict and condemn Communism?

If so, please be explicit as to why.

But I’m not foaming at the mouth as some others do who most likely lost less or nothing.  

Forgive me for being afflicted with Communist rabies.  It seems to be that your view is that if one lost less than your family, one’s view regarding Communism is less valid than yours?  Is this so?  If so, this makes no sense whatsovever and is clearly wrong. 

I have also held that although my family suffered, there were many who suffered much more than we did — so therefore do you think a pissing contest between the two of us regarding who lost more and who lost what makes any sort of intellectual sense?  

As a historian I take a larger view: all this was unavoidable because Hungary ended up among the countries which were occupied by the Soviet troops. It was a historical inevitability what followed. The Rákosi period was awful: the Hungarian people suffered incredibly.

Ah, such condescension…  With all due respect, I don’t think you take a larger view.  You make no mention as to the 100 million or so who lost their lives to Communist democide.  Whether or not Communism was ‘historically inevitable’, in your opinion, is completely irrelevant and nothing more than an oddly shaped strawman. 

I could make many an argument as to why German and Italian fascism was ‘historically inevitable’ and all of them would shed no insight into the morality of Communism. 

After Stalin’s death there was a political thaw and as a result came 1956. The Kádár regime’s first few years were almost as awful as the Rákosi regime’s darkest days, but after 1963 the dictatorship became more and more bearable.

Sure things got somewhat better.  But ‘bearable’?  I suppose that depends on whom you ask, don’t you think?  Might be insightful asking a political prisoner of the time.    

Eventually, most people didn’t even realize that they lived under a dictatorship.

This could be one the most outrageous and most condescending and most false thing you have ever managed to write.  First of all, I completely dispute it.  Everyone I have ever known knew it.  Secondly, let’s try this thought experiment:  if I keep someone prisoner, but she does not know, have I commited a crime?  In your mind, people do not have natural rights. 

After all, I have not held her against her will as she did not know she was even being held.  This, again, makes no sense and is utterly false.     

I’m almost certain that if the Kádár regime managed to keep up the standard of living people would have lived under the regime happily ever after.

You are correct.  There are, more than a few, who would happily go back to the Kadar days.  A man who plays on the same recreational sports team as I do, confessed to me that he would gladly give up some of his freedoms to go back to the days of what he deemed ‘secure Communism’.

So what?  I am fairly confident that the involuntarily lost freedoms by far outweigh those who would willingly and stupidly give up theirs. 

But it couldn’t. Plus the Soviet Union lost its grip on the satellite countries. Thus came the change of regime.

That change of regime was based on a negotiated settlement. The politicians of the new democratic regime couldn’t say that “you negotiated with us about a peaceful transtion, but now we turn around and will put everybody in jail whoever collaborated with the former regime.”

The politicans of the new democratic regime were the same politicans of the old dictatorial regime.  Why would you expect them to punish themselves? 

That is exactly why some blood should have been spilt and purging undertaken.  Today’s Hungarians would have more ‘skin in the game’.   

And a lot of collaborated to some extent, including József Antall who became a director of a museum. And there were millions like him: doctors, engineers, members of the academy, who knows who else. There were 800,000 members of the party. No one suspected until the very end that this regime will come to the end. They had to live, they had to make a career. They didn’t have to do anything awful.

I have never advocated punishing the scummy minor Party members, like for example, those who are morally tainted with their association with the Communnists but had not actually spilled blood.  Some were even forced into the Party, just as some were forced to inform on their family and friends. 

But you are wrong as to claiming the necessity of Party membership.  I know many who never joined out of principle.  Perhaps in your social sphere, you really don’t? 

Out of my, rather large family, no one on both sides of my family, save on joined the Communists.  She was not pressured to, she simply and selfishly wanted to further her career.  She nakedly and unabashedly admitted to it.  Ironically, both her children became dissidents.  One is raising her children in the States, the other in Germany.  

My father also recounts how many did join out of principle (!), one of their neighbors in the village he grew up in was the local Nazi chief, after the war, he became the local Party chief. 

Can you still not condemn a movement that openly accepted and courted former Nazis?

They didn’t have to kill anyone, they didn’t have to put other people to jail. Therefore, I simply cannot see how how earth you could punish the so-called communists. Everybody was part of the system.

Would you excuse, say, KKK members who don’t kill anyone?  I have just shown you that not everyone was part of the system.  Many fled and became dissidents exactly because they did not want to be assimilated by the system.  

As József Antall said to the people who wanted to “punish” everybody: “tetszettek volna forradalmat csinálni.” Meaning in English difficult to render with its subtlety, but basically he meant: “You didn’t make a revolution. So what are you talking about.”

You don’t have to translate this into English for me.  Second, there was a revolution in 1956 that was cruelly suppressed and resulted in the fleeing of 200,000 odd people.  Third, is he claiming that because the Hungarians did not successfully revolt, that they have no moral high ground?

Do you really believe that?

I would like to say the same to you and your relatives: you didn’t make a revolution! So, what are you talking about?

How dare you insult my family like that?  What do you know of my family?  Unbelievable.  I will hold my tongue for now.  Do you accuse Jews who suffered in the Holocaust of the same?  After all, Jewish uprisings in Germany before, during and after the war are, well, non-existent, to say the least. 

First things first, I do have close relatives who were intimately involved in 1956. Ők tetszettek forradalmat csinálni as you would dare to say.  I do have relatives that fled to the West and have relatives that stayed.  Of the relatives that stayed, only one became a Communist Party member. 

And even if I had no connection to any revolutionaries, I would still be well on top of the moral high ground to condemn Communism from every which way I choose.  

Why do you, who should know better, continue to justify the evils of Communism? 

Fitna

As anyone who has ever read this shittiness that I call blog knows, I absolutely treasure and delight in irony.  This time it rears its oh-so beautiful head in Indonesia.

Short story:

Dutch politican, Geert Wilders, released a 15 min film critical of Islam.  The Dutch government did all it legally could to censor the film due to the de facto appeasement policies it employs when engaging the Muslim world. 

One of Geert’s points is that Islam is a violent religion.

So how did some Indonesian Muslims respond today?

With violence!

Does no one else see the sweet, sweet irony in this?  Hahhahhahhahahha. 

From CNN:

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) — About 50 students broke into a Dutch consulate compound in Indonesia Wednesday to protest a film by a Dutch lawmaker that many Muslims consider anti-Islamic. 

The protesters tore off the gate of the embassy in the city of Medan and ripped down a flag, said Dutch Embassy spokeswoman Gonneke de Ridder.

Local television carried pictures of police dispersing and rounding up demonstrators. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Indonesian police cannot stop 50 students from tearing off the Dutch consulate’s gate?  Hhhhhhhm, the government couldn’t be complicit in this?

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Beter Balkanende has said his government worried that Geert Wilders’ film could provoke a violent backlash.

The film has prompted protests in other parts of the Muslim world.

Soon after its release last month, hundreds of angry Muslims rallied in Pakistan, where the government temporarily blocked access of YouTube over a trailer for Wilders’ film. The protesters burned the Dutch flag and called on Pakistan to cut ties with the Netherlands.

 

Censorship.  Burning of flags.  Appeasement.  Wanting to cut diplomatic ties.  Sounds all so reasonable. 

To be honest with you, if anything, The Netherlands should cut diplomatic ties with Indonesia —- as they cannot guarantee diplomatic immunity.  Insane.   

The Dutch government and others, including the European Union and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, have rejected the film.

If George Bush were to ‘reject’ any film, even one less inflammatory than Fitna, people would go batshit insane and accuse him of being anti-free speech etc etc

The EU and the Dutch government should be defending the right to free speech instead of offering any sort of official opinion on it.   

Let’s see what the Organization of the Islamic Conference has to add:

The OIC has 57 member states over four continents and claims on its Web site to be the second largest inter-governmental organization, after the United Nations. In its statement, it urged the international community to condemn the showing of the film and asked the Dutch government to prosecute the author of the documentary under Dutch law.

Look, I believe in (peaceful) protets and satire of all politicans, but this placard above makes Wilder’s point. 

Check him out in cross-hairs with two guns pointed at his head.  The not so subtle message here:  We want to fuckin’ kill you!   

More on ethnicity and race

Long rambling, poorly written and spelled, but hopefully, ultimately persasive post ahead.   Some of this will overlap with what I have written here.  You are warned. 

So over at Hungarian Spectrum, Eva blogged about violence in Hungarian schools.  I was taken aback and irritated because, clearly, no one wanted to address the 800 lb. gorilla in the room.  That is, the perpetrator was, most likely, an ethnic Gypsy and this is not merely coincidence.  Hungarian Gypsy behaviour is generally highly correlated with anti-social behavior.  Be it unadultered violence, coercive begging, theft, verbal intimidation and whatnot.  I also posit, but cannot confirm, due to lack of punlished statistics, except anecdotally, that Gypsies account for a disproportionate amount of Hungarian crime.  In other words, they are, I dunno, 2% of the population and probably, again, I do not know, generate maybe 20% of total crime in Hungary.  These numbers are just supposition, but I think we can all agree that Gypsies account for much more than their ‘fair-share’ of crime in Hungary.

We know, for example, in places where criminal behavior is tracked by race, ethnicity, and religion, certain associations and correlations occur.

Most famously and well-documented are the blacks of the United States.  (I will employ the States in many of my examples, simply because of the unmatched availability of such data.)

Approximately,  50% of the approximate 15,000 or so murders committed in the State every year are committed by Blacks.  Blacks make up about 12% of the US population.  On a pro-rata basis, they should only account for 12% of the murders, assuming that all ethnic/racial groups murder at equivalent rates. 

The inverse is also true, Southeast Asian are notably absent from American prisons and, most likely, have murder rates far below their share of in the population.  My guess is that Jews also murder at rates far below their occurence in any population.  I should also add their many accomplishments include:

 

…the extravagant overrepresentation of Jews, relative to their numbers, in the top ranks of the arts, sciences, law, medicine, finance, entrepreneurship, and the media.

  

BTW ironically, tracking criminal behavior by ethnicity/race works so well, that in some places it has actually been discontinued because of the undeniable, and politically sensitive, patterns that emerge!  Most recently, in the case of first generation Muslims in Sweden, who happen to account for much more than their ‘fair-share’ of rapes, if I am not mistaken. 

Moving on…

Like I mentioned before, Tay-Sachs and Jews:

  

A number of years ago, five families in Brooklyn who had had babies with a devastating disease decided to try what was then nearly unthinkable: to eliminate a terrible genetic disease from the planet.

The disease is Tay-Sachs, a progressive, relentless neurological disorder that afflicts mostly babies, leaving them mentally impaired, blind, deaf and unable to swallow. There is no treatment, and most children with the disease die by 5.

The families raised money and, working with geneticists, began a program that focused on a specific population, Ashkenazi Jews, who are most at risk of harboring the Tay-Sachs gene. The geneticists offered screening to see whether family members carried the gene.

…

Thirty years later, Tay-Sachs is virtually gone, its incidence slashed more than 95 percent. The disease is now so rare that most doctors have never seen a case. 

How about sickle-cell anemia?  Well, as Wikipedia puts it:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease“>Sickle-cell disease occurs more commonly in people (or their descendants) from parts of the world such as sub-Saharan Africa, where malaria is or was common, but it also occurs in people of other ethnicities. 

Is it an advantage to know in what races/ethnicities sickle cell anemia, or any disease for that matter, occurs and how frequently?  I am not a physcian, but I think we can agree on that, that it does. 

But why does it?  Well, first and foremost, it offers us insight into prevention and cure.  Segundo, it gets us closer to the, Platonic, Truth of whathaveyou. 

What I find most irritating, hypocritical and ironic is the tendency of people, who tend to think of themselves as quite enlightened and intellectual, to refuse to consider and/or confront what are clearly uncomfortable facts for many of us. 

They prefer intellectual, ergo, emotional comfort over truth.  I should also add, many have a limited understanding of genetics and race, and its implications in society. 

So allow me to address, in the most reserved and diplomatic manner I possibly can muster some of the objections to my comment on Eva’s blog.  Ready?

 Eva simply states:

I cannot accept that some people are genetically determined to be criminals.

While you may not accept it, I believe that their much evidence that suggests some people may not be genetically determined, but perhaps predisposed for criminal behavior.  No serious thinker on the matter believes that human behavior is fully determined by genetics.   

Take, for example, psychopaths/sociopaths.  It is believed that some may be genetically predisposed to be criminals.

 

Twin studies can help distinguish between genetic and environmental determinants of violence, said Essi Viding of the Institute of Psychiatry in London. In antisocial 7-year-olds with callous and unemotional traits, Viding found, the antisocial behavior was strongly genetic in origin (a group heritability of 80%).

Compelling, no?  Why is this important?

If these youths can be identified early, perhaps with a genetic test on cells from a cheek swab, one could target programs for them. “Genes are not a blueprint that determines outcome,” said Viding. “Rather, they act together with other risk or protective factors to increase or reduce the risk of disorder.”

Let’s look at dyslexia.  If I am not mistaken, dyslexics are overrepresented in prison populations around the world.

 

To even suggest that the Gypsies have a preference for, say, leisure over labor, or that they suffer a lot from dyslexia would be racist and thus unthinkable. (By the way, their apparent tendency toward dyslexia is balanced by their musical skill. The late classical pianist Balint Vazsonyi told me that in the top Budapest conservatory where he studied, there were numerous Gypsies who never learned to read music, but somehow made their way through this rigorous course of training on sheer musical ability.) 

 

If Hungary could apply better teaching methods aimed at identidying dyslexic Gypsies (and non-Gypsies), perhaps, we might see some better educational and social outcomes…

I should also add, behavior that we have labeled criminal for the last, oh I dunno, say 3,000 or so + years since the Code of Hammurabi, was most likely behavior that at one point in our evolutionary history was succesful.  Those who employed violence and other anti-social behaviors at least sometimes, left more descendants behind them.  Thus, all of us, are hard-wired for violence.   

We also know that phenotype and physical ability is strongly correlated with race.  Look at the performance of West Africans in the sprinting events, and East Africans in long distance events. 

 

John H. Manners is writing a book called “The Running Tribe” about the amazing Kalenjin tribe of Kenya. They make up 0.05% of the world’s population, but win 40% of the highest honors in men’s distance running.

Is it a stretch to hypothesize that we are genetically predisposed for other human characteristics?  I don’t think so. 

Onto Vándorló who asks:

You are no believer in tabula rasa, then, Varangy?

I very much like that Vándorló quickly gets to the heart of the matter.  And no, tabula rasa is clearly false, and I should add, the source of much unspeakable pain and evil when taken and actively applied to social engineering such as the Communists did.  Steven Pinker wrote a fabulous book about exactly this topic, The Blank Slate.  

Steven Pinker defines “Blank Slate” early in his book: It is “the idea that the human mind has no inherent structure and can be inscribed at will by society or ourselves” (2). He begins his last chapter by saying, “The Blank Slate was an attractive vision” (421). But it was a false vision. Those who believe human nature can and should be changed, logically, don’t like human beings the way they are. In order to change humanity, says Pinker, tyrants - and even parents - have introduced totalitarianism into the world. Echoing Hannah Arendt, Pinker reminds us that totalitarians can exist on the left and the right: “Nazism and Marxism shared a desire to reshape humanity” (157). We must add, however, that the Nazis did not believe in the Blank Slate. They did not feel Jews could be reshaped. They had to be killed.

 

Do I really need to go into the manifold and specific examples of why tabula rasa is, on the face of it, silly and patently inaccurate?

Finally, I get to Lars the Viking:

Varangy,

… 

So to conclude your argument - If a white guy is violent, there is a reason (mental illness etc), if a gypsie/black/ is violent, it is in the genetics. Seems like a very intellectual and logical argument, but what is I, a dyslexic primary school product, to know about intellectualism and logic?

Please point out and quote where I made such an argument.  I made no such argument.  BTW my take on human violence is rougly the following.  Humans, of all races and ethnicities are predisposed to violence.  It is part and parcel of our evolutionary history.  That noted, I do believe that, at least, some part of human behaviour that leads to violence is strongly effected by one’s genes.  This is NOT to say that cultural factors do not play a large role.  They most certainly do. 

If your theory of genetics would be correct, why does it only happen to some gypsies - you said yourself that “I KNOW NOT EVERY GYPSY IS VIOLENT”. Why does this gene only happen to certain gypsies?

I can’t answer your question b/c it is not a vaild question.  Your implicitly refer to what is called the ‘One Gene, One Enzyme (Trait) Hypothesis’, long disproven.

Contrary to what most people believe, one gene does not equal one trait — single genes undergo multiple expressions, producing numerous outcomes, while interacting with other genes.    

I have never said that Gypsy violence is solely determined genetically —- without a doubt, it is a construct of the interaction between nurture and nature, most likely constantly in flux. 

However, this does NOT mean there is no genetic component.   

I do also not subscribe that some people are genetically determined to be criminals, but environment, nutrition and upbringing/culture do affect people a lot. That was my point with the story of my home town.

I have never argued that environment, nutrition and upbringing/culture do not affect people a lot.  But what irks me is that people, some of them even intelligent, automatically preclude genetics from the equation that determines human behavior.     

We applied it on Roma and similar groups until the middle of the 60-ties, with forced sterilizations and lobotomy.

I have never advocated forced sterilizations, lobotomies nor any of their ilk for anyone. 

Let me end this overly long post with:  Intenionally ignoring genetic factors is at best, silly and intellectually dishonest —- at worst, perhaps criminally irresponsible.   

Brainwashed

The Chinese are not only shitty drivers, but perhaps far less intelligent (or far more brainwashed) than I have previously considered.

[I]n a new survey, most Chinese say they approve of internet control and management, especially when it comes from their government.

According to findings from the fourth and most recent of a series of surveys about internet use in China from 2000 to 2007, over 80% of respondents say they think the internet should be managed or controlled, and in 2007, almost 85% say they think the government should be responsible for doing it. 

Since 2005, the percentage of users who say that online content about “politics” should be controlled or managed jumped from 8% to 41%, by far the biggest increase of any items tested.

fig-leaf

Erik nails Adam LeBor:

 

… 

But what really is the difference between this “award” and the ones handed out by the Socialists or (hypothetically) by Fidesz? Okay, there’s the fig-leaf of it coming “from the city” rather than from Demszky and the SZDSZ. But if you or anyone else really believes that makes a difference, I’ve got a bridge I can sell you. And again, I find it hard to believe you wouldn’t have had second thoughts - or even pulled a Blaszkó - if it was Tarlós (Demszky’s most recent opponent) giving out the gongs, and the other hacks lined up all worked for Magyar Nemzet, Hír TV and Demokrata.
So the net-net is that this “award” actually dishonors you and your fine body of work (especially now that whenever anyone googles “Csengery Antal award” this article will come up first) and you should just buck up and post it back to Demszky with a polite note saying you’re honored but not quite comfortable with the gesture - or (even better) chuck it into the river with all the other cheap medals handed out by previous discredited regimes trying to buy or pay people off. I will not, however, demand that you give back the wine you drank at the ceremony, which is on the house.

Audit

I go to a bank for a loan for my business. They tell me that they could loan me money at 10%. I say that is great and I show them my financial statements that I just had audited a few days ago. The audit shows a few irregularities that I hadn’t mentioned in my conversation with the bank managers. The bank then says, alright, we can still loan you the money, but now at 15%.

The audit didn’t cause my interest rate to go up —- it just provided an accurate and timely report of the true financial conditions of my business. Until the bank saw the audit, they had made some assumptions about the state of my busiess and now had official reports showing them they were mistaken.

This is exactly the case with the referendum. The referendum was an auditing of the Hungarian people. You may not like the results (I don’t) but it reflects the true state of their thoughts on healthcare - irregularities, if you will.

The referendum didn’t cause the downgrading any more than the audit of my business caused my interest rate to go up. The irregularites in my business caused my interest rates to go up.

The referendum itself was the medium

Two very incisive comment by vtballs:

 

Do entity specific financial statements cause changes in entity specific unsystematic risk? No! Are changes in market values attributed to the publishing of information? No! The changes are consequence of financial data and the relative underlying economic performance of the entity (contained in the report) within the market that the entity is OBLIGED to report to competitively participate. Stating that the referendum itself is the cause of the downgrade goes against the fundamental logic of financial markets as well as democratic principles. Referendums occur in democracies just as elections and financial results and statements for governments and business entities. Timely and accurate information is the key input to solid risk assessment. The referendum just made the information official, and it is in fact an report of the underlying performance. Your implications are alarming. Don’t report economic results (accurately… Gyurcsany has already played that card), don’t exercise democratic rights (referendum) so you don’t get downgraded! WTF?  

 

 and

 

What do you think your “perceptions” are based on? Information! (hopefully legitimate) My intention was to point out the fallacy in the argument that the referendum is the cause of the downgrade. The referendum itself was just a medium to convey the information to the market that the current course of reforms or the incumbent politicians who proposed them have lost the electorate legitimacy. 

 

I, stupidly, overlooked this now abundantly clear point.  Whether or not you agree with the referendum —- I, in broad principle, agree with the Hungarian Left on market-based healthcare reforms —- you cannot blame the referendum on the downgrading as many would like to simplitically think.  

 As vtballs astutely points out:  The referedum itself was just the medium.  

vtballs 1, everyone else 0 

The 'Mystery' of Global Warming's Missing Heat

Fascinating piece on NPR — which, if I understand correctly, is a taxpayer funded organ of the American Left.

 

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren’t quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

Nothing like a little confirmation bias. 

Let me tell you what else it might just mean - it could mean ostensible ‘scientists’ may have to re-evaluate the validity and robustness of AGW theory. 

 

… 

Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it’s probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.

That can’t be directly measured at the moment, however.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they’ve been playing during this period,” Trenberth says.

An admission of uncertainty?  A bit of scientific humility?  Unbelievable.  However, I am sure the Goracle would not approve. 

 

It’s also possible that some of the heat has gone even deeper into the ocean, he says. Or it’s possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don’t know about. It’s an exciting time, though, with all this new data about global sea temperature, sea level and other features of climate.

I love that sentence:  Or it’s possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don’t know about. 

But ‘science’ knows all!   

“I suspect that we’ll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis,” Trenberth says. “But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board.”

I suspect those ‘scientists’ scurrying back to their drawing boards will be doing their damndest to make the facts fit the AGW story.   

NWO and Vándorló

Two of my anonymous brethern drop me a line.

NWO: 

Varangy-
 
A couple observations on your two recents posts.
 
(1) I am sure you remember a year or so ago the uproar by FIDESZ and the various chambers (pharmacists and doctors) against the “liberalization” of the Hungarian pharmacies.  If you recall, competition was deemed to be bad for a profession and Hungary would be rife with overdoses and other horrible consequences from selling cough medicine at a DM.  Your little story from the U.S. shows again why competition is a good thing.  It is also obvious why self-interested trade groups like these odious chambers might oppose something that benefits  the consumer and increases competition.  Interestingly, a year after the minimal liberalization, no one seems to have any real objection.  It is just too bad a similar time was not given to make the various “visit fees” work.  Instead, now, FIDESZ can celebrate what will be a short-lived victory (assuming they return to power in 2010 and need to figure out what to do next) and the Drs. can stew in their monumental screw up.  It is time for the Government to teach everybody a lesson in responsibility.  They should not make up from the budget the lost revenues.
 
(2) On the Tax Wedge Post.  We could not agree more.  Hungary’s tax system is choking the economy.  Hungary’s demographic situation is a medium term time bomb that will completely destroy this country (welcome to Moldova on the Danube).  To lower taxes, however, requires that the country immediately lower spending and address long-term strucutural problems, especially in the retirement system, health care system, and the size of the overall government apparatus.  [I do not believe the Hungarian economy is sufficiently flexible that a “Lafer curve effect” would occur if taxes were lowered but spending remained the same]. The best way to foster these reforms would be to encourage a significant level of immigration. In this way, the burden of the dying Hungarian population can be balanced out by a growing working population.  Immigration can come first from “hataron tuli” Hungarians (the very few who might actually want to really move to Hungary) and second from other foreigners-including, yes, Chinese and Turks.  The key is the people must be young, and the conditions must be right so they can become gainfully employed or better yet start their own businesses.  Of course, there is almost no one in Hungary really ready to face up to the problem and honestly tell the Hungarian people what must happen.  Sadly, those who should most understand the problem and the solution-a conservative opposition-are the most at fault at sullying the debate.

The Laffer effect in the short- and mid-term is certainly debatable ——- but I think everyone sees the problem.  Tax too much, spend even more.  

Vándorló: 

News germane to your latest…. errr.. rant (Healthcare, Pharma and the
Free Market)

350 százalékos gyógyszerdrágulás

Áprilistól újabb 21 gyógyszer kerül ki a támogatotti körből a gyógyszer-gazdaságossági törvény következtében. Közöttük hat népszerű vérnyomáscsökkentő található, amelyek átlagosan 350 százalékkal drágulnak.

Az egyik legismertebb készítményért a jelenlegi 128 helyett 854 forintot kell majd fizetni. A drágulás háromszázezer hipertóniás beteget érinthet. A minisztériumi propaganda szerint azért hatékony az új gyógyszer-gazdaságossági törvény, mert így féken tudják tartani a térítési díjak folyamatos emelkedését.

I just wanna know one thing —- since when has Vándorló been reading/watching Hír TV?

Healthcare, Pharma and the Free Market

WSJ Health Blog: 

Wal-Mart’s doing a bit of chest thumping this morning, claiming that its $4 generics program has saved consumers $1 billion — $1,032,573,012.61 as of March 10, to be precise.

The company says the $4 drugs now account for 40% of all prescriptions filled at its stores, adding that nearly 30% of the cheap prescriptions are purchased without insurance.

Wal-Mart breaks down the program by state, with the top savers being Texas ($132,628,224), Florida ($72,443,467) and
North Carolina ($48,241,530).

The baseline figures the company used to calculate total savings are the average Wal-Mart price of each generic drug before the program launched. The calculations don’t include the prices of branded (and much more expensive) drugs, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman told the Health Blog.

The ripple effects of the program may have driven additional consumer savings, the company pointed out. Competitors including Kroger and Target followed Wal-Mart with their own $4 generics programs.

Competition among retail pharmacies — who would have ever thought that it might lead to a drop in prices?  Wow.  Totally unpredictable.  Wonder how a regime based on a single-payer system and executed through a highly regulated, government granted monopolist retail pharmacies would do? 

Great service, great prices and great selection?  Just like you don’t get in Hungary.    

Tax Wedge

I have been harping on about for the past few weeks on taxation in Hungary, as Eva Balogh, inanely, seems to think that Hungary is under-taxed!

See my comments here and herefor some flavor.  

Clearly, Eva doesn’t understand two very important things:

1)  Taxes, incentives and economics

2)  Hungary

Let’s see what RealDeal.hu has come across: 

 

Among OECD countries, Hungary imposed the second highest tax wedge – including income taxes and social security charges – on a single person earning average wages last year, behind Belgium and ahead of Germany, according to the OECD’s latest annual study on taxing wages.

The tax wedge is the difference between an employee’s net take-home pay and the cost of their employment, including income taxes and social-security contributions.

 

Hungary is 2nd.  Who benefits from this?  Not businesses.  Not consumers.  Not employees.  The Hungarokrata benefit.    

Not that I ever had any doubt in myself, but I stand vindicated, for lack of a better term.  I will repeat, once again:  Hungary has too-much-tax-and-spend-even-fucking-more problem.  Combine that with the upcoming Hun. demographic meltdown and you realize something.  Namely, Hungary is fucked.  

scandalette

Georgie notes: 

2. A letter from east-central Europe proposes that the right to vote of welfare recipients should be suspended for the duration of their dependency. Indeed, parties advocating re-distribution seem to disburse so as to bind and to gain clients. “Vote for the dole” is not an openly used slogan but it fits the practice. So the newest (Hungarian) “scandalette” is no surprise: Gypsy leaders traded their controlled votes for Socialist hand-outs. 

 

Miklós Zágoni, Ferenc Miskolczi and AGW

All three of you that actually read this dogshit of a blog are most likely weary of reading my douchebaggy thoughts on anthropogenic ‘global warming’. Well, tough luck, cuz today’s post pleasantly combines two of my favorite frustrations: Hungarians and aforementioned AGW.

New derivation of equations governing the greenhouse effect reveals “runaway warming” impossible

Miklós Zágoni isn’t just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was.

That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA’s Langley Research Center.

After studying it, Zágoni stopped calling global warming a crisis, and has instead focused on presenting the new theory to other climatologists. The data fit extremely well. “I fell in love,” he stated at the International Climate Change Conference this week.

…

NASA refused to release the results. Miskolczi believes their motivation is simple. “Money”, he tells DailyTech. Research that contradicts the view of an impending crisis jeopardizes funding, not only for his own atmosphere-monitoring project, but all climate-change research. Currently, funding for climate research tops $5 billion per year.

This is almost burying the lede and merits another post soon —- the stupid among you, yes, you reading this, think that ‘scientists’ have no financial incentives to skew their pure, unalderated ‘science’, while the Big Bad Corporations are incented otherwise.

If you believe this, you are fucking stupid and a fool. I will do a post on this soon, but suffice to say, there is more money and more at stake and more financial incentives in promoting the false AGW myth than there is in being skeptical.

Miskolczi resigned in protest, stating in his resignation letter, “Unfortunately my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results.”

Bu-bu-bu-but ‘science’ welcomes skeptical inquiry and new hypotheses! Well, no. No, it doesn’t, does it, Dorothy?

His theory was eventually published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal in his home country of Hungary.

The conclusions are supported by research published in the Journal of Geophysical Research last year from Steven Schwartz of Brookhaven National Labs, who gave statistical evidence that the Earth’s response to carbon dioxide was grossly overstated. It also helps to explain why current global climate models continually predict more warming than actually measured.

The equations also answer thorny problems raised by current theory, which doesn’t explain why “runaway” greenhouse warming hasn’t happened in the Earth’s past. The new theory predicts that greenhouse gas increases should result in small, but very rapid temperature spikes, followed by much longer, slower periods of cooling — exactly what the paleoclimatic record demonstrates.

More on the money in AGW and ‘scientists’ as the new and very real high priest class coming soon.

PS Pestiside, you might consider this a scoop of sorts. 

Blow and AGW

This is one of those truth is stranger funnier than fiction moments in life. I must admit, I fuckin’ luv it.

Ana Maria Caballero, adviser to the vice-president of Columbia, attended the conference to encourage those who take the drug [cocaine] to consider the impact on global warming.

Hey cokeheads! Stop doing blow for global warming, maaaaaaan.