HappySort

One of my business school friends comes from a wealthy Swiss banking family and lives in the ritzy part of Geneva where the average house is in the tens-of-millions range. When I visit, I stay in his guest room and sweat profusely at night because, for all their wealth, these bozos can’t understand the unmatched pleasure that is a nice, cool room to sleep in at night. Bunch of uncultured rubes.

When the mob was raging and rabbling for higher minimum wage, they were warned “this will raise costs.” “No!” they screamed, “that will never happen.” Which brings us to the present where the mob is raging and rabbling about how expensive fast food is… Surely no correlation.

The Soviet whaling fleet killed 180,000 whales between 1948 and 1973, delivering rotten carcasses that nobody wanted to eat. Soviet citizens had zero demand for whale meat. The ships hunted anyway, fulfilling quotas handed down from central planners who counted tons of dead whale as economic output. This was bureaucratic box-checking that nearly drove multiple whale species to extinction. Soviet whalers targeted endangered right whales and humpbacks specifically because they were larger, helping them hit tonnage targets faster. The meat rotted on deck during long voyages back to port, where officials dutifully recorded the numbers and sent reports to Moscow declaring another successful harvest. Central planners measured success in tons harvested, not consumer satisfaction or long-term sustainability. Factory managers got promoted for exceeding whale quotas, regardless of whether anyone actually wanted whale meat (they didn't). The feedback mechanism that normally connects production to human needs had been severed entirely. When bureaucrats replace market prices with administrative targets, you get mass slaughter with zero purpose. You still see this today every time politicians promise to "create jobs" in industries that lose money year after year. When government agencies measure their success by dollars spent rather than problems solved. When university administrators chase enrollment numbers instead of student outcomes. Remove the profit motive and price signals, and you get 180,000 dead whales rotting in the sun while commissars celebrate meeting their targets. You don't get rational planning. Socialism is fundamentally destructive to the environment and inevitably leads to ecological disasters.

Property crime on trains is down about 95% since BART installed tall fare gates that make it significantly harder to ride without paying.