Professor Eric Rasmusen

1. Please be polite. 2. Do disagree, but don't swear, blaspheme, or abuse. 3. I write as if my late parents are reading. Please do the same. 4. You always have control over how you conduct yourself. 5. A more civil society starts with you.

@annbauerwriter @mitchpberg You really support the rapist man hassling the young mother carrying her child? She used obscenities, yes, but she was provoked. I think anti-white sentiment has carried you away.

@mitchpberg You know what? Free speech. I'll defend it to the death. But this woman is soooooo loathsome and obnoxious I'm up for any punishment that preserves the First amendment. If I'd been on that playground, I'd have done anything I could get in her way.

People need to use better insults. Paraphrased from Shakespeare: "Your wit is as thick as a Frostie.” “I’d beat you, but I would infect my hands.” “You have not so much brain as ear-wax.” “If only you were clean enough to spit on.”

Mutton built Britain, and Britain can no longer buy it. For a thousand years the word for sheep meat here was mutton. Not lamb. The meat of a grown animal, two years or older, that had lived its whole life on grass and heather and come off it dark, dense and deep. It was the Sunday roast and the coaching-inn chop. On the Titanic, first class ate mutton and second class got the lamb, because mutton was the better meat and everyone knew it. Now walk into any supermarket and try to find a cut. You cannot. Lamb, and only lamb. Taste did not kill it. A fibre and a war did. The national flock was kept for wool as much as meat, so sheep lived for years, and a sheep that lives for years and then goes in the pot is mutton. Then synthetics replaced wool, the fleece stopped paying, and nobody kept a sheep to adulthood. On top of that, rationing served a whole generation grey mutton boiled to death in institutional vats, and they came out the far side loathing the word. Their children were raised on soft young lamb, and mutton was quietly buried. The meat that paid for the cathedrals, gone in forty years, finished off by a change of trousers and a decade of bad cooks. Now the hope, and brace yourself, because it is the single best argument against abolishing the monarchy you will ever read. The King has been trying to bring mutton back for twenty years. It is his favourite dinner. In 2004, having heard how little hill farmers got for their older ewes, he founded a thing called the Mutton Renaissance, with actual standards: forage-fed, over two years old, properly hung. Over a hundred producers and dozens of restaurants now stand behind it. A man born in a palace turns out to be the one person in the country doing something useful about the national sheep, which is either a stirring case for constitutional continuity or a damning indictment of everyone else. Possibly both. He is right, mind, because mutton wins on every count going. The eating is richer than anything lamb manages. The nutrition is better, because a grown animal that spent years on grass built up more of everything a baby never had time to. The ethics are better, because it lived a full life on a hillside rather than being hurried off to slaughter as an infant. And the environment is better, because these are native breeds turning upland grass and heather, ground that grows nothing else, into food without a ploughed field in sight. It is also the perfect partner to wool. Keep a sheep long enough to shear it for years and you get the fleece and the mutton off one animal. Rescue one and you rescue the other, and the upland farmer ends up with two products instead of none. The way back is two words at the butcher's counter. Ask for hogget, a sheep in its second year, the gentle way in, more flavour than lamb and still tender. Then graduate to mutton proper and braise the shoulder low and slow until it falls off the bone. Neither is in the supermarket, because neither suits a system built on identical young carcasses. Both sit in every proper farm shop and every butcher who buys straight off a hill farm, and both are cheaper than the lamb beside them, because the demand was killed and never rebuilt. Britain forgot mutton because wool died and the army boiled it grey. The sheep never forgot how to grow up. The King is asking nicely. You only have to ask the butcher.

@MattWalshBlog Influencers? How about Trump and Vance?

I’ve noticed a lot of conservative influencers not saying much about the Shiloh Hendrix case, even though it’s one of the most flagrant and clear cut First Amendment violations we’ve seen. I guess they’re afraid they’ll be called “woke right” or whatever. Really pathetic display.

@chrisbrunet According to your usage, the US army long ago merged with the British, French, West German, Italian, etc. armies, because they try to avoid duplication and agree on standard weapons. That's bad usage .

The bill doesn't use the word "merge" rather it uses the word "align to avoid duplication." That is the basic logic of any merger: eliminate overlapping functions, coordinate investments and divide responsibilities across a single integrated system. If Exxon merged with Chevron, the combined company would not maintain two separate accounting departments merely to preserve the appearance of independence. It would consolidate “duplicated” functions. The same principle is at work here. The Pentagon and the IDF will now “avoid duplication” in: - manufacturing - missile defense - Space Command - drone fleets - directed energy - quantum computing - artificial intelligence - cyber warfare - biotechnology - the overly broad category of “other Department of Defense entities, as appropriate” The merger becomes even more explicit when the bill turns to “network integration” and “data fusion.” Satellites, drones, radar systems, intelligence databases and battlefield sensors will now all be designed to exchange and process data across a unified architecture — hence the word: “fusion.” There won’t be Israeli or American satellites, there will simply be "fused” satellites. A military that depends upon another country’s missiles, satellites, technology, data, factories, supply chains and drones is no longer operating independently in any meaningful sense. It has merged into one component of a larger system.

I dont get the last GG comment, that mathy papers are getting unpopular because they're easy to reproduce. Easy to reproduce is a good thing-- it means easy to check for mistakes. The only problem I see is that maybe people who write mathy papers do it to show off, and the math parts have gotten too easy for that. Of course, it *should* be the questions and answers that are interesting, not how hard the proofs are.

We all conjecture tectonic forces are changing work and markets. Here's a day-to-day, where as economists we produce papers and compete in a crowded market for ideas. One datapoint with implications for how we work, but what's your own experience?

The Jason Arday story would make a wonderful drama. From learning to read at the age of 18 to a Cambridge professorship at 37. Combined with amazing athletic feats. And then the story starts to unravel... The plagiarism allegations are serious. But as a runner, the part that blows my mind is that Arday claimed to have run 600 miles in 6 days. If true, that would make him an international elite athlete. Yet UK athletics website Power of Ten doesn't register any times at all for Arday, not even a parkrun. Cambridge could argue that it doesn't matter if one of their academics has a rich fantasy life. And that would be fair as long as he was appointed on his merits and not for his inspirational/implausible life story. Could it be that academics are some of the most gullible people alive? telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/2…

@AttyAbdul @MaxForIndiana Must be one of the most boring stories ever. Campaign finance laws are complicated and the candidate may or may not have violated a rule so he returned some money voluntarily. Is it any more than that?

The $60,000 question concerning Republican Secretary of State candidate @MaxForIndiana . indypolitics.org/the-60000-ques…

@PhilWMagness He didn't say it was a conspiracy. Is it false that Republican donors tend to support less regulation, free trade, lower taxes, smaller government?

Here's an excerpt from an unpublished JD Vance speech at the 2022 Postliberalism conference he keynoted for Adrian Vermeule, Patrick Deneen, and Sohrab Ahmari. He genuinely believes there's some sort of donor-driven conspiracy to make Republicans support economic libertarianism and free trade: "That's why the donors and they do have too much influence in all politics. There was a study that was done five or six years ago, and I'm going to put you the results, so don't quote me perfectly on this, but it was really interesting. And what it found is that left-wing donors, donors to democratic causes, made democratic candidates far more left-wing on social and cultural issues, made them more vocal. And donors to Republican candidates made them far more libertarian on economic and trade issues. Shocker. Shocker, especially to the people in this room, I'm sure. But this is why it matters. And I'm telling you guys, if we, I wrote about this in the abstract. I wrote an article in I think 2018 or 2019 about the end of the globalization gravy train. The argument I made then is something I still believe, that the reason why there is so much influence of trade deals and trade policies that's bad for workers, and eliminating the social safety net that's bad for people like my mamaw, the reason that stuff is out there is because of the influence of financial supporters, both on the left and on the right. And I remember I wrote that article, and it was a pretty well, you know, in my view, it was a great essay. Best essay I've ever read, actually. And, you know, I remember that there were Republican friends of mine, and there were think tanks that wouldn't even put the article on their website because it might alienate their own donors or their own supporters, okay?"

@sfmcguire79 Economics professors do a lot of good sociology-- good methodology and statistical methods, with less politics. They're even largely liberal in politics. So just close down the field of sociology and the departments, and the topic will survive.

“Sociology’s relentless focus on race, gender and class, its emphasis on the need for social change over the benefits of social stability and its obsession with inequality amount to an abdication of scholarly duty.”

@sciencey274807 It was approximate. Something less than 10% were IV users and women. 1.2 million HIV, rounded to 1 million. The figures are estimates, and I don't know their accuracy.

@erasmuse Looks like I can’t trust AI. A lot of those victims are heterosexual men or women, and IV drug users.

From AI: there are 1 million people with HIV in the US, and 4 million male homosexuals. So 25% of them have a formerly fatal (now very treatable) venereal disease.

Grok says about 8% of male homosexuals worldwide have syphilis, but close to 0% in AMerica (tho that is still 1/3 of all cases in America).

Grok says about 8% of male homosexuals worldwide have syphilis, but close to 0% in AMerica (tho that is still 1/3 of all cases in America).

Grok says only 5% have gonorrhea. That is probably because it is treatable by antibiotics.

@AndrewJRParker @rightscholar That the person gets into drinking gradually does not seem a big difference. And sexual release is central to homosexuality.

I’m a psychiatrist with special interest in addictions. What you say is wrong. Homosexuality is not akin to an addiction like alcoholism or any other addiction. Homosexuality is rooted in strong attraction to same-sex persons. It is significantly determined by biological a pre-natal factors. Other factors likely also play a role. Primarily it is an attraction to persons, not to particular sexual acts. The attraction becomes apparent usually in early teenage years, and often years before any sexual encounters. It is usually a stable disposition through life, and like handedness, is difficult to force to change. The basic attraction is not something chosen. This is very different to an addiction like alcoholism, or alcohol dependence, in which a person usually begins drinking in a moderate way, but then gradually their drinking increases, becoming compulsive, often with physical withdrawal symptoms.

At least some evolution, though, is necessary to simply remain honest. We know that in most cases, homosexual orientation is not a disorder ("SSA") like alcoholism that can be cured, and is not sinful in itself. To recognize that is legitimate evolution.

@robinhanson Good question. I should think about this with respect to my own investments and donations. The hard part is to value the utility of the consumption resulting from the investment. Investments are good for dollar benefit, but I'm already consuming enough.

77% say median invest does more good than median charity. 70% say also true at 99th percentile of each.

@GeneralShermanH @WozzleBaby Somalis in Somalia have lower IQ than American Blacks.

@WozzleBaby He's black so yes, mentally handicapped.

Imagine a 9 year old needing an ankle monitor. Either he is severely autistic, defiant, or mentally handicapped. This is the child at the center of the Shiloh Hendrix case.

@suebridehead7 @WozzleBaby Thanks. I hadn't seen that before about the autism as a reason for the tracker. It doesn't excuse theft though, or inaction by his mother.

@WozzleBaby You guys are losing a lot of white followers who sympathize lying over the tracking device. It’s project Lifesaver. elopement is a common & tragic consequence of profound autism. the kid really was autistic then & the white lady should’ve gave him more grace. Terrible.

@WozzleBaby I thought he must be a criminal. That would explain why they don't say why he wears it-- juvenile confidentiality.

What Shiloh Hendrix's lawyer is reporting here is concerning. He raises many concerning issues, but what stands out to me most is that the judge repeatedly left the bench, interrupted him, or talked over him every time he tried to make a record. The fact that it happened over and over suggests that she understood he was trying to preserve an appellate issue and she didn't want him to create a detailed record about what evidence she had excluded and why the defence believed those rulings were wrong. Once or twice would be one thing, but when it happened every time, it comes across like she was trying to systematically prevent the defence from creating the paper trail that would be needed to challenge those rulings on appeal. I understand that Shiloh's team is working on getting the transcript of the trial made available, but it is extremely expensive, so please consider making a donation to (see pinned post on Tom Hennessy's page) to help get this done so we can have some transparency about what went on in the courtroom.