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Bibi Ego and Superego

Netanyahu To Step Away From Politics To Spend More Time With Ego

A side-effect of the decades of nurturing that political and psychological symbiosis has been the prevention of any credible leader emerging in Netanyahu’s wake.

Caesarea, June 1 – Israel’s longest-serving head of government, forced to leave the position he has held continuously since 2009, announced today that he intends to take a break from the vicissitudes of the public, diplomatic, electoral, and legislative scene, in favor of a period of quiet reflection during which to focus on nurturing his inflated sense of self-importance.

Outgoing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told reporters today that he steps away from the premiership with an eye toward spending more time at home, with his ego, where the two can offer mutual support without the distractions or complications inherent in a public political life.

“My ego has supported me and sustained me my entire career,” explained Netanyahu, who held office for more time than even Israel’s founding father David Ben-Gurion. “I have of course reciprocated and fed my ego the entire time, but too often the demands of political life have not permitted me to devote proper individual attention to my ego, and I expect to remedy that deficit in the coming months, perhaps years.” He declined to indicate whether this hiatus from public political life represents a permanent retirement or a brief interlude.

Analysts have long noted the symbiotic relationship between Netanyahu and his ego. Numerous commentators have remarked since the 1990’s, when he launched his political career, that the interests of Netanyahu’s ego and the interests of the State of Israel as articulated by Netanyahu often appeared synonymous. The dovetailing of the two entities aroused suspicion among rivals, opponents, and occasionally allies, but Bibi, as he is popularly known, managed to shepherd both with considerable skill. Only in recent years, as his political fortunes and legal troubles have made his future in public life uncertain, has a large-enough swath of the Israeli electorate made the distinction between Israel’s interests and those of the Netanyahu ego.

Experts observed that a side-effect of the decades of nurturing that political and psychological symbiosis has been the prevention of any credible leader emerging in Netanyahu’s wake. “There’s been no room for anyone else on the Right,” explained columnist Nahum Barnea. “The Netanyahu ego demands exclusivity, a demand that rules out tolerance for any potential challengers within the political bloc. Only now, as Bibi steps out of public life to swell his ego in private, can we expect to witness the development of strong politicians elsewhere on that arc of the political spectrum.”

The experts and commentators failed to discern among themselves the same trait of confusing personal ideological interest with that of the state or society.

From PreOccupied Territory, here.

Is Slavery Economically Wise?

The Left Argues Slavery Was an Economic Blessing. Here’s Why They Are Wrong.

08/20/2019

The legacy of slavery in America is once again becoming a hotly discussed topic. The New York Times has launched The 1619 Project, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the first African slaves brought to the colony of Virginia. The project “aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.” One of the lead essays informs us that “in order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.” And over at Vox, an interview with historian Edward E. Baptist teaches us that slavery was a remarkably modern and efficient business practice, which helped the U.S. transform from a colonial economy into “the second biggest industrial power in the world.”

There are rhetorical and ideological concerns on both sides of this sensitive topic. The case for systematic reparations collapses, for example, if it turned out that slavery was an inefficient system that made blacks and whites—with a few notable exceptions—poorer. On the other hand, if the vision of The 1619 Project is correct, and modern America was built on slavery, then it would be silly for MAGA-wearing patriots to try to downplay the peculiar institution as an unfortunate footnote in the story of liberty.

In the present post, I am not going to weigh the historical evidence. For critiques of the “New History of Capitalism” (with its alleged reliance on slavery), see this article from Olmstead and Rhode, or this essay by Phil Magness.

Instead, I want to clarify the logical framework to show what it would mean to actually argue or demonstrate that slavery was an economically efficient method of production, which not only enriched those directly involved in the slave trade and labor sites, but also showered material benefits on the rest of (free) society at large. As we will see, in his Vox interview the historian Baptist doesn’t even attempt to make such a case.

Once we clarify the actual issue, it should be clear that slavery is like war: Yes, a few privileged elites can benefit financially from it, but it’s not “good for the economy.” Slavery, like war, is a destructive institution that reduces the welfare of most people in society, though a few beneficiaries can profit from the insidious system and thus have an incentive to sing its blessings.

Framing the Issue

To understand if slavery is an “efficient” method of economic organization, we have to ask the standard economist question: Compared to what?

There is no doubt that a healthy adult slave in a region with adequate natural resources can produce more than a subsistence amount of output, allowing for the owner to keep the slave alive and keep the surplus for himself, living up to the Marxist vision of how labor markets work in general. So if the question is, “Was US output higher with millions of productive slaves working, than it would be if those slaves suddenly disappeared?” then the answer is, “Yes, of course, slavery was ‘productive’ in this sense.”

But that’s not really the question. The question is, if all of the plantation owners in (say) the year 1850 had suddenly freed all of their slaves and turned them into free laborers, what would that have done to the course of US economic development? Is it really true that this change would have made the country as a whole poorer?

The issue isn’t whether cotton was an important export, or whether the expected future flow of labor of the slaves was a valuable financial asset (codified in the market price received in auctions). The issue is whether had the slaves all been freed, would that change have made cotton exports grow more slowly over the 19th century, and would it have made the productivity of the (former) slaves’ labor grow more slowly? Those are the types of questions we need to answer, if we want to know whether slavery was a boon for American capitalism rather than a blight that was not only immoral, but also inefficient.

Continue reading…

From Mises.org, here.

ארכיאולוגיה בהלכה: שיחה עם הגאון הרב זלמן נחמיה גולדברג

הכרעה הלכתית על פי הארכאולוגיה | הגאון רבי זלמן נחמיה גולדברג | כינוס ‘מתחת לפני השטח’ 3

Sep 9, 2019

הכרעה הלכתית על פי הארכאולוגיה | הגאון רבי זלמן נחמיה גולדברג | כינוס ‘מתחת לפני השטח’ 3

בכנס “מתחת לפני השטח -3” שנערך ע”י אגודת “מטמוני ארץ”, בחודש אב תשע”ט
הוקרן סרט ובו שאלות ותשובות של מארגני הכנס עם הגאון הרב זלמן נחמיה גולדברג שליט”א
הרב דיבר על היחס בין הידע המתגלה בכלים מדעיים וארכיאולוגיה לבין פסיקת ההלכה בזמננו
האם על סמך ממצאים של ימינו השיעורים ההלכתיים של ‘כזית’ וכביצה יכולים להשתנות?
האם להתייחס לממצאים ארכיאולוגיים כראיה חותכת?
על כך ועוד בסרטון המרתק שלפניכם
#ארכיאולוגיה_יהודית #תורה_ומדע
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מאתר יוטיוב, כאן.

Battling [European] Antisemitism Is a Useless Activity!

is the battle lost?

Sunday, May 30, 2021
Back in 2014, as Obama was dolling out an additional 50 million in funds to the Palestinians even as Hamas was launching rockets at Israel (history repeats itself, doesn’t it?), I wrote about an exhibit at the NY Historical Society about the Joint Distribution Committee:

Anyway, a telegram displayed in the exhibit caught my wife’s eye. This message was sent from someone in Germany in 1933 to the JDC in NY, and it said (I’m sorry we did not copy it word for word) that the situation was not salvageable – instead of relief for those inside Germany, all efforts should be focused on getting as many people out as possible. My wife could not believe that already in 1933 there was such certainty of impending doom. Her own father’s family did not leave Germany until a few years after that. I told her it’s no surprise. 20 or 30 years from now G-d forbid people will look back at the articles in the news that we read almost daily about the situation of Jewry in France and other European countries, the articles we dismiss as alarmist, as right-wing extremism, the calls to get out that people have begun to act on in small measure while others delay, thinking there will always be time to run when things get really bad, and we will wonder why more was not done sooner, why so many failed to act when the anti-Semitisim was so clear, when the barely repressed violence was already evident.

And so we turn to today’s news, where headlines declare that “prominent European Jews worry war against antisemitism is lost.”  The article notes:

In light of dozens of incidents in Belgium alone in recent weeks, Joel Rubinfeld, the president of the Belgian League Against Antisemitism, wrote that he doubts whether he will be able to continue living in the country with his wife and two children.

“I believed I could. Now I doubt I can,” Rubinfeld, a former leader of the CCOJB, the umbrella group of French-speaking Belgian Jews, wrote in an op-ed published Saturday in the Le Vif weekly.

Brigitte Wielheesen, a well-known journalist and counterterrorism expert from the Netherlands, wrote Thursday in an op-ed for the news site Jonet that after years of battling antisemitism, she has concluded that the activity has become useless. [emph mine]

At least in Europe they are slowly starting to see the truth.  Here in the US, we are even slower learners, unfortunately.