![\"Messier](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2019\/04\/800px-Black_hole_-_Messier_87.jpg\")
<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is pretty astonishing, something that would have been essentially unimaginable not very many years ago:<\/p>\n
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New York Times<\/em>: \u00a0\u201cBlack Hole Image Revealed for First Time Ever:\u00a0Astronomers at last have captured a picture of the darkest entities in the cosmos.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Nature<\/em>: \u00a0\u201cBlack hole pictured for first time \u2014 in spectacular detail:\u00a0The Event Horizon Telescope\u2019s global network of radio dishes has produced the first direct image of a black hole and its event horizon.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But, with the help four articles from the 6 April 2019 issue of (appropriately enough!)\u00a0The Economist<\/em>, let\u2019s turn from extragalactic astronomy to a more difficult<\/em> science, economics.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The first article that I\u2019ll mention is a fascinating one that goes some distance toward justifying my tongue-in-cheek suggestion, just above, that the task of economics is more difficult than that of astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. \u00a0It also bears out the contention of many free market or libertarian-leaning economists \u2014 e.g., Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich von Hayek (the first and third of whom I was privileged to meet and spend just a bit of time with) \u2014 that the complexity of the economy is so great that it is mere folly and delusion (among other things) to imagine that it can be competently \u201cdirected\u201d by the managerial elite bureaucracy of an interventionist administrative state:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFree exchange:\u00a0<\/span>Simple interactions can have unpredictable consequences:\u00a0<\/span>How researchers are grappling with the fundamental complexity of economics\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The complexity and unpredictability of economic phenomena might help to account for the stunning fact pointed out in this article, which should also be read for its first paragraph\u2019s appalling description of the largely-forgotten racist horror visited upon the Greenwood neighborhood in Oklahoma back in 1921:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMelanin and money:\u00a0<\/span>The black-white wealth gap is unchanged after half a century\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It seems that President Lyndon Johnson\u2019s Great Society hasn\u2019t materialized, and that the much-touted War on Poverty has failed. \u00a0However, it should also in fairness be said, despite my comments above about \u201cunpredictability\u201d of economics, that many critics on the political right predicted the failure of the War on Poverty from its beginning. \u00a0We\u2019re not surprised. \u00a0We never thought that government welfare would really work.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But what can be done? \u00a0It\u2019s complicated. \u00a0And, although the idea of \u201creparations\u201d has suddenly become fashionable among certain Democrats, I don\u2019t believe for a moment that \u201creparations,\u201d even if one were to overlook their deeply questionable morality (see below)\u00a0and their political infeasibility, will fix the problem.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This article treats a related matter that may also have implications for the issue, both positive and negative:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe sons of slaveholders quickly recovered their fathers\u2019 wealth:\u00a0<\/span>A new paper quantifies how quickly Southern planter elites recovered from the civil war\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Also of some slight but slightly relevant interest:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNot keeping up with the Joneses:\u00a0<\/span>Rising inequality could explain tepid support for redistribution:\u00a0<\/span>The lessons of a new paper about welfare in Victorian England\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n To illustrate just one aspect of the moral difficulty with reparations:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I have no slave-owning ancestors \u2014 not even any who ever lived in a slave state.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n My paternal ancestors entered the United States from Scandinavia decades after the end of the American Civil War, and they settled in North Dakota, where there were (and are) very few blacks<\/a>. \u00a0So their opportunities to meet black people, let alone to exploit them or to profit illegitimately from their contributions to the local farming economy, would have been at most negligible.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Some of my maternal ancestors came first to Massachusetts, where they never owned slaves. \u00a0Then they came to New York, converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>, and were driven with it to Ohio and Missouri and Illinois and, finally, to the Great Basin, settling in Utah \u2014 where there were (and are) very few blacks<\/a>. \u00a0Others of my maternal ancestors came straight to Utah from England. \u00a0None of them owned slaves, and the slave contribution to the settlement and economic blossoming of Utah Territory prior to 1865, if there was any at all, has to be reckoned as virtually nonexistent.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But I\u2019m white. \u00a0So do I owe reparations? \u00a0If so, that would seem to me morally problematic.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But also, if so, to whom<\/em> do I owe reparations? \u00a0Potentially to the descendants of West Indians who were never American slaves? \u00a0But what about those of mixed descent, some of whose ancestors were slaves and some of whose ancestors weren\u2019t? \u00a0(Perhaps they\u2019re even partially descended from slaveholders!) \u00a0Either this would be done crudely and hamhandedly, which would be bad, or on the basis of a complex proportionate genealogical calculus that might be even worse. \u00a0Government involvement in adjudicating such matters \u2014 a kind of Perpetual Full Employment Act for Litigators \u2014 would bring us uncomfortably close, in my opinion, to the\u00a0Ahnenpa\u00df<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cancestor\u00a0passport\u201d) or\u00a0the Ariernachweis<\/i>\u00a0(\u201cAryan certificate\u201d) issued by the Reichsverband der Standesbeamten in Deutschland<\/i>\u00a0(\u201cReich Association of Marriage Registrars in Germany\u201d) under the Nazis.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 This is pretty astonishing, something that would have been essentially unimaginable not very many years ago: \u00a0 New York Times: \u00a0\u201cBlack Hole Image Revealed for First Time Ever:\u00a0Astronomers at last have captured a picture of the darkest entities in the cosmos.\u201d \u00a0 Nature: \u00a0\u201cBlack hole pictured for first time \u2014 in spectacular detail:\u00a0The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n