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Book Review: Last Harvest, How a Cornfield Became New Daleville

Back in my undergrad days, I started putting up my papers online for people to see. So I decided, what the hell, I’ll keep the tradition alive in grad school as well with anything that may be interesting. Peer review is always good too, of course. For those curious, you can buy the book here and see the official New Daleville website here.

On to the review…

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Livonia’s Glenn Moon: Even Jesus can’t help but to Facepalm

Vermin Supreme giving an interview during the 2008 primaries

I can’t believe this went so long without me noticing it. Being involved in politics for as long as I have, I’ve seen some really screwball candidates. But at long last, I think I may have found a candidate who is even more absurd than the infamous Vermin Supreme.

Now, to Mr. Supreme’s credit, he can form coherent sentences in the manner in which the average Joe would say such things…he just says stuff that we would never say. But hey, he was running for president of the United States (and one of the few people I’ve ever met who was also a fan of Imperial Emperor Norton I). Livonia City Council Candidate Glenn Moon on the other hand, not only says things that no mentally competent person would ever say, but he says them in a manner in which prepositions are completely optional and has invented his own nomenclature.
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Detroit de Burgundy: The Worst flag ever discovered

For the longest time, I was convinced that the city of Detroit had the worst flag ever concieved by man. It’s an ugly mix of various parts of heritage centered around a city seal that leaves much to be desired. Due to the fact that the flag is so horrendous, most people haven’t known what it looks like. Very few places in the city have the balls to actually fly the thing, which I’m sure is a combination of shame and avoiding the question “what the hell is that flag out front”.

As you can see, the city desperately needs a new flag:

The Flag of the City of Detroit

The flag is divided up to represent French, British, and American rule over the city surrounding the city seal. There’s also some latin words, representing the mottos of the City of Detroit: “We hope for better things” and “It will rise from the ashes”. Despite the fact that the motto represents a fire from the 19th century, that motto has proven to become more and more true over time, sadly enough.

House of Burgundy Coat of Arms

As I said before, I was convinced that this was the worst flag ever concieved by man. It’s as though it was designed by committee, everyone had their own idea and nobody could decide, so all the ideas made it in. Putting the terrible city seal aside, it looks like an awful patchwork of scattered history. Nobody ever could be proud of this flag. However, history has proven me wrong: another flag exists that upon first glance one could assume that it was the inspiration for Detroit’s.

However, it does not.

It represents the flags of the territories of Charles the Bold of Burgundy. His flag was based on the family coat of arms, which we can assume was so absurdly elabourate as to distract the opponent in battle with an array of flying colors and as such, gain the upper hand. You can see it to the left. Tell me you can look at that and not be distracted?
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Welcome to Mt. Palmer: A look inside Detroit’s Most Dangerous Neighborhood

Welcome to Mt. Palmer

NeighborhoodScout.com is a fantastic resource for people looking to move. It as all kinds of fun stats on where want to live, how far your “neighborhood” goes, crime rates, school information, etc. No doubt it saves a Realtor a ton of time every year as they work to convince people to buy homes all over the country. Of course with this data, you can see where the safest and most dangerous neighborhoods are in the country.

Walletpop.com did a story recently analyzing the 25 most dangerous neighborhoods in the nation. Only one Detroit hood made the list, coming in at #23: The Mount Elliott / Palmer neighborhood. Within this small scope of streets there are a little over 150 projected violent crimes every year (or one every 2-3 days), the violent crime rate per thousand is almost 100, and the odds of you becoming a victim of such a crime if you live there is 11%, which is quite a bit by most standards (even the most dangerous neigborhood in America has odds of 25%).

The thing that makes the Mt. Palmer neighborhood interesting is that it’s a mix of residential dilapidation and an industrial wasteland: the neighborhood houses the Motor City Industrial Park, a massive complex that was once home to Packard Motors and now sits abandoned, with no clear owner, and is set on fire seemingly every couple of weeks now. As a Realtor, the only convincing point I could make to sell a home here is the price. There is nothing else that is even remotely inviting.

Mt. Palmer is located on the east side of the city, between Gratiot Avenue and I-94 to the east and west, as well as East Grand Blvd. and Mount Elliott to the north and south. You can view a map over at the Neighborhood Scout Website. It’s common knowledge that the east side of the city is more problematic than the west side, however while the residential parts don’t appear as bad on the outside, it looks as though this really is the place where anything can happen.

Here come the pictures. The sepia tone gives it a nice eerie feeling to it all, but of course you can see the full roll of pictures in full color over in the photos section. Click on any photo to view a larger resolution.
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A plea to my friends and collegues

These are the best of times, these are the worst of times. These are the times of highest hope, these are the times of greatest despair. These are the times of light, these are the times of infinate darkness. I’ve been going over this post in my head, should I ever have to write it, fearing that I never would have to. Yet, here I am. As I awoke today, I found that, despite my holding out for hope, the federal government has decided that it is somehow going to manifest more money than most of us can fathom to bail out someone that has failed at what they do.

I thought about explaining why this is a terrible idea. Why this can not and will not work, and how this is the beginning of the way things started to fall in Atlas (when problems get bad, government “solutions get worse), and what we can do about it. However, there are already too many articles about that subject online already (even the LA times knows this isn’t a fantastic idea), and most people have done it better than I ever could.

So instead, I’m making a plea. I am begging and pleading with my fellow Americans to learn what made our economy strong to begin with. What makes our economy different from others, and what makes our country strong as a whole. Strong economies aren’t build on money being manifested for the sake of helping failing entities. They aren’t build on investing in institutions that have failed. And they certainly aren’t built into scaring the American people into believing that something MUST be done, or else.

I implore my friends to look into Austrian Economics and at least the very basic principles that the markets work best when the markets decide the value of goods and commodities. That getting involved does more harm in the long run than help. There’s been a lot of talk about “wall street mumbo jumbo” and things that do not translate directly to “main street”. Which is their way of saying that people are too stupid to understand how things affect them, and as such say “Well if X happens here, Y happens there” without any real correlation as to how or why. And we are all expected to just eat it up and say “Ok, well as long as you are fixing it then we should be all good, right?”. Because we, as a people, no not know better. At all. We are expected to just say “ok” and have that be that and we’ll be all alrigtht. But we’re not all alright. Because we don’t know what they’re saying or what it means.

Discover why free markets work compared to command and government controlled markets. Learn that when not interfered with, the market will fix itself, since the market is CONSUMER driven. Why are so many houses selling for less than they were 5 years ago?  It’s not because the property is worth less, but because it wasn’t worth as much to begin with. It doesn’t take a seasoned economist to walk around many newly built homes and see that their quality does not warrent the high price. I can’t tell you how many $200,000 + homes in Michigan I’ve seen where I’ve just said to myself “there is no way in hell this house is worth so much money”. This is how the market works. When prices are too high for something, people will pay it if it is the percieved actual value. However, it is becoming more and more apparent that the percieved value is not the actual value, and that’s part of price fixing.

These big banks WANT to keep the price of homes high. Not only then do they make more money on the home sale, but they get larger comissions, higher closing costs, etc which all transletes into them making more money. Oil is also something that has a higher percieved value than an actual value, but we know that OPEC has been fixing oil prices for years now. If oil costs $4 a gallon, it’s because somebody wants it to cost that much, not because it’s worth that much. Same with the housing market. The difference between now and 10 years ago is simply that now, the economic situation as a whole is even more desolate than it was a year ago.

So my friends, find things out for yourselves. Look into this and see what is going on. Start here, at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute and go from there. Learn about markets. Learn about economic cycles. Learn about what causes depressions. Learn what people like Lew Rockwell have to say. But more importantly, learn the role of government in economics and learn what how economics really works.

Goodnight, and good luck. Just don’t be surprised if in years from now, thins are substantially worse than they are right now, despite the bailout.