Isaac Chan > Recent Status Updates

Note 1/2:
Some reflections on the so-called 'baronial age' of the House of Morgan: did sovereigns of the day not have public bond markets? Why did they have to go so far as to turn to a private banker - Pierpont? Sovereigns of some shitty 3rd-world country, understandable - but even King Edward VII had a relationship with Morgan? The global hegemony of the time had to get finance from a private bank? What was the ...

Note 1/2:
I read in the general introduction that Cicero, when he just made consul in 63 BC, in the 4 De Lege Agraria speeches (only 3 are extant), managed to successfully persuade the people against a land reform bill (land redistribution) proposed by Publius Servilius Rullus.

So they were already talking about land reform in ancient Rome. Fascinating. I have many jumbled thoughts about land reform - like, what ...

Note 3/3:

Some scholars use the term 'political' as synonymous with 'deliberative', so I note that although all the speeches in my edition are political in the normal sense of the word, only 4 are deliberative.

The companion volume, 'Defense speeches', contains 5 forensic speeches.

Note 2/3:
level in Cicero's time.

So my copy of 'Political speeches' contains 2 forensic speeches, 4 deliberative speeches, and 3 epideictic speeches.

In Catilinam I may count as epideictic, and II - IV may count as deliberative.

pg xii

Note 1/3:
Some fascinating context: Cicero was a master of the 2 main types of oratory, 'forensic' (the oratory of the forum, i.e. of the law courts, also known as 'judicial') and 'deliberative' (the oratory of the political assemblies).

A 3rd type, 'epideictic' (of display, or of praise and blame, so D.H. Berry says more technically, 'panegyric' or 'invective') was less important at the higher political...

Note 1/2:
What was M&E's conception of the state?

It is clear from the Manifesto that they view the state as a corrupted apparatus of the bourgeoisie. I can imagine where this is coming from (although they don't articulate it): the pre-industrial world was agrarian. If you were not a landowner, you were a peasant, and you could only rent land from the landlords at absurdly high rates, because modern labour ...

Note 2/2:

I get what you're saying: that rationalism in the Enlightenment, i.e. the birth of modern philosophy, destroyed medieval dogma by grounding all human knowledge on reason. But Christian ideas are deeply compatible with rationalism! Take Descartes. To understand the world with the reason imbued in us by God is a very Christian notion.

Note 1/2:
M&E passingly remark that Christian ideas succumbed to rationalist ideas in the 18th century.

What?

Note 1/2:
A point here about Pierpont's beliefs disproved my theory about work's capture of the rich - Chernow writes that Pierpont disdained the rich young men in the social clubs of New York for not working. Pierpont, supposedly, believed that the rich had some sort of duty. As superior members of society, they had a moral obligation to set a good example to not live lives of idleness.

Note 3/3:

the founder makes or breaks the young company. At this point Ishmael is already uncomfortable with the founder of the startup (Ahab), but I detect that he is forcefully suppressing these discomforts due to the sunk cost fallacy, which he himself admits to, right before boarding the Pequod for good. Ishmael may even be coping by focusing on Ahab's experience on the seas and his technical skill.

Note 2/3:
joining, and only then gradually picking up the idiosyncratic norms and unwritten rules of that specific firm (as Ishmael does and recounts), and finally learning more about the boss himself and what could be his fatal, irascible personal drives.

I work at a corporation so I am exempt from this particular dynamic, but what I feel from Ishmael is similar to a new hire at a startup, where the vision of ...

Note 1/3:
Captain Ahab reminds me a lot of Mr Yow - a moody, volatile boss who is best to leave alone and silently do your duty without crossing paths with him.

Also, I find Ishmael's notes on Ahab's motives and personal history to be deeply immersive. What I mean is that I can really feel the workplace dynamic - i.e., not knowing anything about the firm (the Pequod) and anything about the boss (Ahab) before ...

Note 1/2:
M&E's dichotomy of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie makes me think: was there not even a concept of the middle class in M&E's time?

2 things to think about:
i) M&E explicitly discuss the small business owner. This class owns capital, they hire labour, they are definitely capitalists in their own right. But M&E claim that over time, even this class will get subsumed into the proletariat, because they ...

Note 3/3:

Furthermore, M&E's sweeping, oversimplified narrative of how the totality of history's classes have now subsumed into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat seem as un-nuanced as Hayek's 'Road to Serfdom'.

Note 2/3:
ideas of liberty and equality. Without ideas, materialist forces (such as Piketty's r > g) can only form economic PHENOMENA (such as capitalists becoming increasingly richer than labourers) but cannot trigger class struggle. I also do not understand why Marx posited materialism when key Marxist concepts like class consciousness seem fundamentally idealist.

Note 1/3:
Marx and Engels (henceforth 'M&E') say that the history of mankind is the history of class struggle. If so, is it not clear that the history of class struggle is rooted in the idealist Dialectic? Do M&E think that class struggles are purely rooted in materialism? How is it possible for classes to struggle without priority in ideas? In my view, a slave will only revolt against his master if he first had ...

Note 1/2:
A thought just struck me: since my uni days I had been fixated on the concept that investment banks are the mightiest financiers of the economy - they are the institutions who financed corporations that directly create value for us in the real economy, e.g. General Electric, Apple, Honda and whatnot. They raise capital via ECM and DCM, and a company would go to an investment bank if they need funds either

Note 1/2:
I have finally gotten around to reading Moby Dick. So far, it is simply amazing. It serves the 1 thing that I want from a book, in this stage of my life where I am settling into possibly the most boring phase - that phase where the next 30 years of life will no longer change, and I can see them with a reasonable level of certainty: i.e., 30 more years of grinding out bureaucratic work in a corporation,

Note n/n:

On a side note, I find it utterly fascinating that Epicurus (and his ancient Greek predecessors whom he inherited the atomistic theory from) knew about atoms thousands of years ago ...

Note 7/n:
we cannot aggregate the causes in the social world, we cannot aggregate the causes of the divine creation of the universe: how can we prove that the omnipotent designer had no other intentions, that we cannot comprehend, at play? The designer could be omnipotent, but he could have created a universe with the existence of evil for the purpose of allowing human agency.

Note 6/n:
effect was because it was not the ONLY cause - many other counteracting forces were at play, like the American economy's slump in aggregate demand, which made banks unwilling/ unable to lend even when the Fed flooded them with cash. When one theoretically aggregates ALL the causes, then they would correspond to the effect (mild inflation).

To that, I say: that does not refute my argument. Similar to how...

Note 5/n:
causes are already not always proportionate to their effects in the social world, then, when I enlarge my view to contemplate the metaphysical and the divine, the magnitudes of causes and their effects must surely work in more complex and non-linear ways.

Of course, one may object right away to my argument: the reason why the cause I used as an example (the Fed's GFC LSAPs) did not correspond to the ...

Note 4/n:
proportionate to its cause: perhaps in the natural world yes, but in the social and economic sphere - obviously not. If I observed the mild inflation in the decade that followed the Fed's rescue operations following the GFC, and, following the doctrine of proportioning the cause to the effect, deduced that the Fed's LSAPs must be likewise mild, I would be hugely mistaken. It is obvious to me that if ...

Note 3/n:
10g ball balancing on one scale - the conclusion should be there is another 10g weight on the opposite scale: certainly not a 10kg weight! Thus one cannot add multitudes of other divine qualities, like wisdom, loving-kindness, omnipotence etc, to the designer one imagines just from observing the order of the universe.

But I'd have to push back somewhat. To me, it does not follow that an effect is always...

Note 2/n:
the cause - that's perfectly fine. You observe a beautiful universe which seems extremely unlikely to not result from design, hence you deduce an ultimate designer. Fine. But you cannot then go from the cause that you have imagined, to return and imagine other effects that may result from that designer.
ii) The magnitude of the cause you deduce must proportion to the magnitude of the effect. I observe a ...

Note 1/n:
I agree with all of Hume's atheistic arguments. However, as a theist, I still find myself unable to change my mind on this matter, nor do I want to. I readily admit my biases, and this is a race which I have a horse in. But there are still some things I wish to query Hume on.

To recap, I largely agree with Hume's main points. They are very reasonable.
i) To the theist who works from the effect to find ...

Note n/n:

Zena Hitz, Ruby Granger, Unjaded Jade, Jack Edwards etc who defend such activities.

Note 8/n:
garner surface-level lip service by others, but ultimately receives no sympathy under capitalism.

Thus my point is that there is an interesting turn from Hayek's prediction: that even in the individualistic society we currently live in, practically useless activities are still not valued as highly as those that generate monetary value. In fact it is the cringey modern left, such as ...

Note 7/n:
wisdom now: hustling is a virtue, idleness is a vice. Grinding in the office until the late hours of the night to hit bigger milestones for one's company and one's own bank balance is an admirable quality; clocking out sharp to go home to play video games or collect stamps is a waste of time. Devoting more time to highbrow or culturally nourishing activities like painting or reading philosophy might ...

Note 6/n:
deprecate activities done for their own sake, activities that do not fit the higher ends of society, or the ends of the state. Now this is a prediction by Hayek that does not seem to conform with the outcome: it is clear to me that the received opinion of our late-stage capitalistic society is that anything done purely for leisure is a waste of time. The Protestant ethic seems to be the conventional ...