No Income Tax = Success

Burt Folsom:

Shortly after the Civil War, Congress made the income tax a flat tax; then in 1872 Congress abolished the income tax completely. The war was over, and the U.S. would continue to stress individual liberty and limited government as the best way to happiness, prosperity and strong national character. As a nation, the U.S. decided to limit the outreach of government and pay off most of our Civil War debt.

When the rest of the world saw the U.S. emphasis on liberty and fiscal restraint, America became a magnet for the wealth of Europeans seeking a stable environment for their capital. The rise of the U.S. as a major world power was just around the corner.

No American income tax from 1872 until 1913. 

Guess which period of time it was when America caught up with the economies of the rest of the world?

More from Burt:

Those who favor class warfare sometimes cite Mark 10:23, which says, “Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.’”

A closer look at the original Greek language clarifies God’s attitude toward the rich.

According to Greek scholar Kenneth Wuest, a better translation of Mark 10:23 shows that Jesus said, “How hard it is for those who keep on holding onto wealth to enter the kingdom of God.”

As 2 Corinthians 9:7 says, “God loves a cheerful giver.” Wealth is the opportunity to be a giver, and rich people can thus help people around the world.

A Map! of people!

Thanks to Carnivore's Cave, we find a map! of every person in the country:

 

Link!

I now wonder why so much time is spent on blacks in the media.  It seems that Louisiana, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., NYC, and Chicago are where all the blacks live.  You'd think that the news would be all about whites and some about hispanics.

I like maps.

Unemployment Rate

The Whited Sepulchre

Healthcare Spending Growth is Down

Obamacare is working!

The growth in healthcare spending is slowing!

In totally unrelated news, fewer people have full time jobs than they did before and therefore have less health insurance, and so spend less on healthcare than they did before.

In other words, success for Obamacare!

In 2011, national healthcare spending climbed 3.9 percent, the same as the year before. That was the slowest increase since the 1960s - See more at: http://lfb.org/today/obamas-2009-promise-of-cheaper-health-care-has-morphed-into-2013-price-hikes/#sthash.JAe7b9hf.dpuf

Quote of the Day, 8/25/2013

Fill your bath with ketchup and then bathe i was it. It is a most refreshing reward. Imagine your loved ones faces when they see you only wearing vinegar and tomato paste.

- N1GERI4GU3ST

Even "Good" Laws Harm You

Most people think that there is a purpose for having a government.  Most people also think that their government does some good.  Even libertarians think that some government should exist.

But all that government does is funded, one way or another, by first taking from those who produce things and then spending it as they feel like it.

And while that's not pointed out or criticized nearly enough, the point of this post is to explain that even when the government extorts taxes for its funds and then spends them in ways you think are good, it is still hurting, rather than helping you.

There are two ways the government hurts you with "good laws," by forcing you to pay for them, and by preventing you from being as productive as possible.

Let's look at the example of owning a car and the amount of your time that is wasted by the government.

Let's say you buy a car, after paying the government its cut, you need to buy a car license; that's about a half hour of your time spent getting one.  Then you need a new driver's license every ten years; that took me three hours a few months ago, and that comes out to around 1/3 of an hour a year.  Some of us are required to have our car's emissions checked yearly, that'll take me another two hours per year, plus another hour, and some money for an o2 sensor because mine always go bad.  Then you need to get car insurance, which will also take several hours.

Maybe you think requiring all of those things, drivers licenses, car licenses, emissions, etc, is a good thing.  Perhaps it is, but have you ever seen a study comparing the time wasted to the alleged benefits of having these laws?

A thought experiment for you:  Speed limits supposedly save lives.  Since saving lives is good, we want to do whatever saves the most lives, right? 

Speed limits are arbitrarily set.  If they were set, say, 10 mph higher everywhere, we could get from place to place a bit quicker.  If you drove 10 mph quicker to, and from, work each day, you might save 5 minutes per trip.  5 minutes per trip, times 2 trips per day, and 5 days a week, means that a 10 mph increase in the speed limits would mean you have 50 more minutes per week to be productive.  50 minutes per week times 50 weeks in a year equals, about, 42 hours wasted commuting each year because of speed limits.  42 hours per year times 40 years of working equals about 70 extra days of your life spent commuting merely because speed limits are not 10 mph higher.

That might be a fine rational for you.  Spend 70 more days of your life commuting than necessary, and a few lives might be saved. 

But everyone is slowed with our current laws.  1000 people slowed by speed limits at 70 days per year is 70,000 days per year not spent growing food, sewing clothes, inventing medicines, or other wise producing.  How many lives were lost thanks to this law? 

When we hit the point where the days lost to slow speeds exceeds the lives allegedly saved by the speed limits, shouldn't we reconsider them?

Have you ever even heard of a study comparing the lives lost becasue of a specific law compared to the alleged lives saved?

No one ever considers the hidden costs, we only look at the numbers of deaths each year and wish we could do better.

And we still haven't gotten to the fact that the traffic judge, prosecutor, cops, secretaries, etc, the materials, buildings, and cars they all use are not creating food to eat, clothes to wear, or homes to live in.  Each of those lives and resources is unproductive, and therefore wasteful.

The Elephant Whisperer

by Lawrence Anthony

Last year I listed my top ten favorite books of fiction.  A few changes may have happened since, but the top two books on my list are accounts of a pair of some of the most successful elephant hunters.

Commenter Vicomte wrote:

I take issue with your first two recommendations.

HUNTING ELEPHANTS?

Seriously, that's just messed up. If you like reading about that kind of crap, then you must be an awful person. Your obviously not aware of that elephants are kind, gentle creatures, and are very intelligent. Elephants have been known to cry and burry(sic) their dead loved ones. They even burry(sic) people that they find and think are dead. Sometimes they make a mistake and burry(sic) a person that is lost and has fellen(sic) asleep, but that's not there fault we're all human after all.

So if you want to go and read this garbage then I hope you enjoy being by yourself because thats(sic) where you'll be up in your IVORY tower because no one wnats(sic) to be with a jerk that murders animals because their sick and twisted.

If you want to read a good book about elephants by a decent and caring human being that truly appreciates the majesty of these beautiful creatures, I reccommend(sic) The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony.

Firstly, I'd like to point out that some people are just no fun at all.

Secondly, am I being rude, or grammatically correct, in noting his, or her, spelling errors?

But the purpose of this post is to be about the book recommended in his, or her, comment.

To give you an idea of how far behind in my reading list I am, let me point out that I had not planned on reading this book, perhaps just reading a few Amazon reviews of it.  And so when the book was recommended I added it to my Amazon.com "wish list."  Then, last Christmas, my mother was insistent on asking me what I wanted for the holiday.  "Nothing," was not the correct answer, apparently.  So I directed her to my wish list and forgot about the book I was going to read reviews about eventually.  (Fascinating story, huh?)

So here we are with my new book, and I started reading it.

The book is about a guy who bought a game farm in South Africa.  He and his French wife ran (run?) it to show off the animals to tourists.

The author starts by talking about poachers killing animals in his preserve, their selling of the meat, and his attempts to stop them.  And so on, and so forth...

One day he receives a phone call asking him if he wants a small herd of elephants (seven, as it turns out).  He says, "yes," and spends a few chapters talking about his preparations for fencing them in and their transportation, etc.

I've only read a few chapters past this point but I have enough to tell you that Vicomte's idea of elephants being wonderful isn't as rosy a picture as he, and the author of the book would like us to believe.

The author and his wife (did I mention that she is French?  The author is very proud of this fact.) seem to enjoy living amongst the animals of Africa, and he paints a mostly rosy picture of their park and the animals.

But if you merely read the book, you'll notice that not everything is as nice as he leads us to believe.  He tells one story about his dog being harassed by some monkeys.  And one day his dog kills one.  After he pulls the dog away the monkeys silently collect their dead troop member and carried him away.   "I have no idea what they did with the body," he ends the story with.  He leads to that line by pointing out how wonderful nature and the animals are.

Note an excerpt from Vicomte's comment:

Elephants have been known to cry and burry(sic) their dead loved ones.

If you read this story you'd be led to believe the monkeys took their family member always, had a funeral, and buried him with respect...

That's what our author and Vicomte seem to think.  I like their thoughts on the subject.  They make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Would you like to know what the monkeys almost certainly did, in reality?  They took their dead family member away, away from the dangerous dog, and...ate him.  You can't just go around leaving good meat to waste.

And that's much the story throughout as much of the book as I've read so far.  If you stretch you mind enough... and believe hard enough... you to can enjoy the wonderfulness of the world like Vicomte does.

I like the optimism and joy of that thinking, but to think that way you need to ignore reality.

The reason the relocated elephants need to be fenced in is because when they are not, they kill people and destroy homes and food.  "Conservation's Chernobyl," is how the book's author described what would happen if his elephants got out, again.

One more story from the book to more fully illustrate my point: The elephants are kept inside of an electrified fence.  They prefer to not touch it.  During one escape attempt the elephants pushed their least liked kin into the fence and tried to force him through it so that they would not get shocked.  That elephant wasn't pleased with the situation.

I like the pleasantness, too much is mean these days, but that pleasantness isn't reality. 

I'm not sure if I'll finish this book, The Odyssey is calling me.

Incidentally, have you heard about the elephants killing rhinos for fun?

Fish Pictures

Quote of the Day, 8/15/2013

I've been unable to sleep these past few nights, because of how a Swiss lady didn't show Oprah a $40k handbag. Is society even worth saving?

-Sonic Charmer

Knowledge

Its occurred to me recently that language, writing, the printing press, the computer, and the internet may well be the greatest inventions of mankind.

With language, and writing, the information gathered by one can be shared by all.  Without the transmission of ideas we'd all need to start at the beginning.  No one would have time for things like cars and coffee machines, becasue we'd all first need to individually learn how to hunt, gather, and make fire.

Our growth has come from the accumulation of of the knowledge of those that came before us.  The more that cam before us the more knowledge that we have.

We can look at the less prosperous societies and we can find that it is the places with written language which have advanced the fastest.

For a while I had wondered why the West was so militarily superior to the East.  With reading China: A History, I discovered that until very recently the literacy rate for Chinese males was around 40%.  With literacy that low, not many people could learn by reading.  All needed to learn everything themselves, and reinvent everything themselves.  The spoken word gets garbled written words less so.

We can look at the economic advance of the world and see that the places with written words and high literacy have advanced the most.  The printing press was invented in Germany, and Europe has led the way ever since.  Is that a coincidence?

Places like China and India have economically lagged behind Europe, despite their great numbers of people occasionally inventing marvelous things.  Lots of people gives them the odds to invent things, but they do not advance on it without writing.  A chinsese guy invented gunpowder, but hundreds of years later they could still only think to use it for fireworks.  I'll bet that you can find gunpowder's uses multiplying only with writing.

And the people of the world that were just overwhelmed by stronger countries, people like "native americans" and Africans are the places that took the longest to acquire literacy.

***

More people means more advancement in ideas.

More writing and more literacy means more economic advancement.

"Buy Local' is stupid

Lots of people support the idea of buying local goods and service rather than goods and services from elsewhere.  (Usually these people have Japanese cars; and their Japanese cars occasionally even have a "buy local" bumper sticker on them.)  This idea is stupid.

First some preparing thoughts.

Not all buying local is stupid.  If your only option is local, then no one will fault you for buying local.  And if your only option is something made a ways away, then that is your only option.

When the people who promote buying local seem to mean (excepting their own cars, and undoubtedly: their cell phones, tvs, computers...) is that buying locally supports your neighbors and is good.

There are many problems with this.

Buying local is not always an option, which means that you are either going to buy "distantly made" things or avoid that product altogether.

We can grow things like citrus fruits in places like New York, but the costs to do so will be nearly immeasurable.  We'd need heated greenhouses, sun lamps, etc.

Why is buying oranges from Florida worse than buying oranges grown in expensive (read as: required much electricity, manpower, and materials) greenhouses locally?

Why is are transportation costs worse than production costs?

Have you considered the transportation jobs lost by buying locally?

There are fundamental thoughts on economics ignored by avoiding the allowance of specialization.  Buy not allowing specialization (by not buying things made more efficiently) we would be made poorer by either not having many items or by producing them at much higher costs.

What the "buy local" crowd really seems to want us to do is to choose the local option when there is a local option easily available; shop at the local grocery store not Walmart, etc.  If they took their slogan literally they'd obviously need to give up their cars, tvs, cell phones, coffee, etc.

What this is is another way to feel good about doing good in a way that does not actually cost anyone any money or effort.  Or does it.

It seems to me that when comparing a local to non-local item, there are three options: the local item is better, the non-local item is better, the items are similar.

In the case of the local item being better than the non-local item, it makes sense to buy local, and so what is the point of a "buy local" slogan?

In the case of the non-local item being better, buying the local item instead means that a local producer is able to continue to make things worse, the better creator is not sustained, and you get a worse item.  The local producer is "helped," but everyone else is worse off.  In this case "buying local" is encouraging you to waste resources by buying worse items.

it is only in the case of the local and non-local items being of comparable quality and price that "buying locally" makes any sense.

***

Specialization is a wonderful thing.  It is by specializing one one, or few, things that we can all acquire the wealth generated when someone does not need to spend time doing lots of different things, and can spend all his time on one.

Buy whatever is best, at the best price, and resources won't be wasted making inferior products.

Manosphere Analogies Need Improvement

I was reading The Free Northerner's recent post, featuring links, and discovered a used car lot dating analogy.

Revisiting The Used Car Lot

exerpt:

If this was the case, the assertions above would be false since there would be enough supply to be a zero-sum game. To use the analogy in the linked post, the used-car lot is apt. Men are the buyers and women are the sellers. What we have right now is a car lot full of broken down rusted out vehicles that either don’t work or barely work with price tags that far exceed the representative value of each of those vehicles.

Now the price tags on these vehicles (women) are already much too high for their representative values. But the representative argument of these two posts is that men should work to pay MORE for these broken down rusted out vehicles. Perhaps another false assumption is at work: If men are willing to pay more, women will provide higher quality product. There are abundant proofs that this is not the case.

Many manosphere writers use analogies to explain points.  Comparing women to cars is a fine use of an analogy...if you are talking to a guy.

The purpose of an analogy is to say, "this thing you're unfamiliar with is very similar to this other thing you know all about."

I've bought cars.  Most of you guys have bought cars.  But how many women see "car" and roll their eyes and think no further?

(I like it that way.  I doubt that I'd have much interest in a girl who knows all about cars.  If she could take care of the cleaning, and I could take care of the cars, that would be much preferable to the other way 'round.)

If girls don't spend much time thinking about cars, and its been my experience that the subject is very uninteresting to them.  Much like when a girl brings up the pop musician of the month, and I lose interest in the subject.

On the other hand, the manoshpere, such as it is, exists to help men not women.   So the above example is fine, but i wouldn't use it in order to explain things to a chick.

Also, if you ever use a baseball analogy while talking to a girl, you are an idiot.

Windows 8 Stinks

I just built a computer, and I needed to decide between windows 7 and 8 for my operating system.

I went with 8 despite the claims that it was bad because:

• everyone seems to complain about every windows version
• All the complaints seemed to be much ado about nothing
• I figured that the newer version would last longer before becoming obsolete
• The new improved speed and security advertising sounded good

After using Windows 8 for a while I realize that those who do not like the fact that Windows 8 was clearly designed for touch screen tablets were correct.

This missing "start" button is more of a pain than you'd think.

The only ways I know how to turn the computer off are "Ctrl+Alt+Delete" or to hit the power button on the case.

I do not like all the stupid msn/ Microsoft windows for news and other Microsoft software cluttering the screen whenever i hit the "Windows" button.

I don't like how there are a handful of icons hidden along the right side of the screen that appear when I don't want them and I can never get them to appear when I want to see what they are.  After two weeks the best I can tell is that the top hidden icon is "search" or maybe "magnify", and I have no idea about the others.

I miss the start button more than you'd think I would.

But the worst part, by far, is the fact that I'm supposed to register my copy of windows.  A screen telling me to go to the screen to do so comes up whenever the computer turns on or returns from a screen saver.  When that blue screen of "Activate Windows" comes up Nothing works except to hit the button that takes me to another "Activate Windows" screen.

This second screen is white, the left half is full of all sorts of stupid "personalization" options I couldn't care less about, and the right side says something like "You can activate by internet or by phone."  This is followed by a perpetual "waiting to connect" [to the internet], despite the fact that I can hit the windows button and then the stupid desktop window icon, and then do all I want on the internet.

If these stupid screens wouldn't come up all the time I'd ignore them.  But every so often they'll close whatever I was doing and pop back up.

So I tried activating by phone.  I tried three or four times to type the million-digit product code (or whatever), but I am unable to hit the numbers fast enough to prevent the phone from giving me the: "is there a problem? Are you confused? Let's restart you're taking too long."

So I tried entering the numbers in by voice instead of hitting the number buttons.  I entered the first section of the product code "A" when prompted, then I did B, C, and D.  But before going to E it went to F without giving me the time to enter part E.  My options seemed to be start all over, or say, "to hell with this."

***

Windows 8 sucks.

Listen to the complaints about it.

Get windows 7 instead; it is fine.

To hell with you Windows 8!

Minimum Wages

Last week I noted that raising the minimum wage is a stupid idea.  Why not raise it to $1 million per hour?

But I wonder, is there any argument that you could make for increasing the minimum wage to $15 or whatever, that you could not also make for $1m?

Logical arguments:

Minimum wages are stupid
The minimum wage should be hugely high

If you are not going to make one of those two arguments, then Shirley you must be admitting that the reason you proposed minimum wage is not higher is because having it too high would hurt the economy.  And so you've settled on an arbitrary number.

Can it be any other way?  Are there any arguments for $15 that you couldn't use for $1 million without admitting that minimum wages harm the economy?

One more example of progressive politics being about the gain of progressives at the expense of someone else.  And to heck with everyone else.

Obamacare will be Awful: Links

No kidding, right?

Socialized medicine is bad in Canada.

Universal healthcare is bankrupting Japan.  Let the elderly die, says one politician.

And our politicians, who lovingly voted for Obamacare, have opted themselves out of it.

How wonderful.


"Everyone has a right to free medical care, but there is, in effect, no medicine and no care."

-Murry Rothbard

***

Also note that I was going to add a few select quotes from the linked articles, but Blogger was not allowing me to copy and paste.  Stupid Blogger.  Use Wordpress for blogging.

“everyone has the right to free medical care, but there is, in effect, no medicine and no care.” - See more at: http://lfb.org/today/a-cure-for-obamacare-from-canada-with-love/#sthash.XwMKTzFG.dpuf

A recent study on Canadian health care has been released late last year. In it, the authors examine the deleterious effects of socialized medicine on patient wait times and the delivery of care. It offers Americans a revealing glimpse of the future economic implications of Obamacare.
Released by the Fraser Institute, the December 2012 survey of specialists reveals that Canadians are now waiting 17.7 weeks between the referral to a specialist and the delivery of treatment. This is 91% longer than in 1993, when the institute began studying wait times.
In essence, wait times in Canada have doubled in the past 20 years. Sadly, the rationing of care that results in lengthy wait times for patients is a predictable consequence of government interference in the medical system.
- See more at: http://lfb.org/today/a-cure-for-obamacare-from-canada-with-love/#sthash.Zqh8Adkr.dpu

A recent study on Canadian health care has been released late last year. In it, the authors examine the deleterious effects of socialized medicine on patient wait times and the delivery of care. It offers Americans a revealing glimpse of the future economic implications of Obamacare.
Released by the Fraser Institute, the December 2012 survey of specialists reveals that Canadians are now waiting 17.7 weeks between the referral to a specialist and the delivery of treatment. This is 91% longer than in 1993, when the institute began studying wait times.
In essence, wait times in Canada have doubled in the past 20 years. Sadly, the rationing of care that results in lengthy wait times for patients is a predictable consequence of government interference in the medical system.
- See more at: http://lfb.org/today/a-cure-for-obamacare-from-canada-with-love/#sthash.Zqh8Adkr.d

A recent study on Canadian health care has been released late last year. In it, the authors examine the deleterious effects of socialized medicine on patient wait times and the delivery of care. It offers Americans a revealing glimpse of the future economic implications of Obamacare.
Released by the Fraser Institute, the December 2012 survey of specialists reveals that Canadians are now waiting 17.7 weeks between the referral to a specialist and the delivery of treatment. This is 91% longer than in 1993, when the institute began studying wait times.
In essence, wait times in Canada have doubled in the past 20 years. Sadly, the rationing of care that results in lengthy wait times for patients is a predictable consequence of government interference in the medical system.
- See more at: http://lfb.org/today/a-cure-for-obamacare-from-canada-with-love/#sthash.Zqh8Adkr.dpuf

A recent study on Canadian health care has been released late last year. In it, the authors examine the deleterious effects of socialized medicine on patient wait times and the delivery of care. It offers Americans a revealing glimpse of the future economic implications of Obamacare.
Released by the Fraser Institute, the December 2012 survey of specialists reveals that Canadians are now waiting 17.7 weeks between the referral to a specialist and the delivery of treatment. This is 91% longer than in 1993, when the institute began studying wait times.
In essence, wait times in Canada have doubled in the past 20 years. Sadly, the rationing of care that results in lengthy wait times for patients is a predictable consequence of government interference in the medical system.
- See more at: http://lfb.org/today/a-cure-for-obamacare-from-canada-with-love/#sthash.Zqh8Adkr.dpufecent study on Canadian health care has been released late last year. In it, the authors examine the deleterious effects of socialized medicine on patient wait times and the delivery of care. It offers Americans a revealing glimpse of the future economic implications of Obamacare.

Released by the Fraser Institute, the December 2012 survey of specialists reveals that Canadians are now waiting 17.7 weeks between the referral to a specialist and the delivery of treatment. This is 91% longer than in 1993, when the institute began studying wait times.
In essence, wait times in Canada have doubled in the past 20 years. Sadly, the rationing of care that results in lengthy wait times for patients is a predictable consequence of government interference in the medical system.
- See more at: http://lfb.org/today/a-cure-for-obamacare-from-canada-with-love/#sthash.Zqh8Adkr.dpuf

A recent study on Canadian health care has been released late last year. In it, the authors examine the deleterious effects of socialized medicine on patient wait times and the delivery of care. It offers Americans a revealing glimpse of the future economic implications of Obamacare.
Released by the Fraser Institute, the December 2012 survey of specialists reveals that Canadians are now waiting 17.7 weeks between the referral to a specialist and the delivery of treatment. This is 91% longer than in 1993, when the institute began studying wait times.
In essence, wait times in Canada have doubled in the past 20 years. Sadly, the rationing of care that results in lengthy wait times for patients is a predictable consequence of government interference in the medical system.
- See more at: http://lfb.org/today/a-cure-for-obamacare-from-canada-with-love/#sthash.Zqh8Adkr.dpuf

Another Stupid Idea

Were I still taking politics and economic news seriously, the idea of a $15/ hour minimum wage would sound awful.  I'd say, "how stupid are the people proposing this idea?  Why not make the minimum wage a million dollars an hour instead?  What arguments are there for $15 and not for $1m?"

Of course this idea is stupid and would harm the economy.  And of course the people promoting the idea are stupid and/ or evil.  (see RWC&G on the lying going on to support this stupid idea.)

Instead of being annoyed by the stupidity, my first reaction upon hearing of this idea was to say, "HA! HA! Do it! It'll be hilarious! HA!"

It would be funny to see the unemployment rate shoot up and to see prices rise, while the supporters of this stupidity blame the evil big businesses and 1%.

Before we raise the minimum wage however, it would be nice to know what the actual unemployment and underemployment numbers are.  We obviously cannot believe the government's numbers.  Does anyone know where we can find the actual numbers?

If you do believe in the government's unemployment numbers, do you also support the idea of raising the minimum wage to $1 million per hour?  Would you mind lending me a few grand while we're at it?

China: A History

by John Keay

This is a great big book on the history of China.

The first point that jumps out at me is the fact that if you are not an emperor, then you'll be almost completely ignored by history.  Even if you are an emperor you'll likely get no more than a mention, unless lots of important stuff happened while you were in charge.

Then again, if we wanted to remember everybody, we'd have no time for anything else.

Another point of interest is that the name we know people by are different from what we think they are.  Confucius was not some guy's name.  His name was Kong.  The way it works "in the East" is family name, then first name or title.  Master Kong is "Kong Master," as in Kong then something approximating "fucius" for "master".  

The first Chinese emperor is known as Qin Shi Huang.  This is a "name" he picked for himself.  (I hear many Chinese pick the name they are known as as an adult, themselves.)  It actually means "first emperor."  It would be like referring to George Washington as "first president," and mentioning him by no other name or title.  First President was born in...  First President was a military officer in the French and Indian wars. First President lead the revolutionary army during the war of independence.

Apparently, the next guy was "second emperor."  And after that other dynasties took charge and changed their naming ideas.

Another interesting note is how much of China's history occurs after around 300 BC.  There is a chapter, or two, before then, but I don't recall anything about the earlier times.

One of the early empires was known as the Han.  Today the largest, numerically, ethnic group is the Han Chinese.

The Han empire was divided by some events into the "Former" and "Later" Han.  One of the most important characters in between the two empires was known as Wang Mang.  He was emperor for a while and wanted to reform the country to make it more prosperous.

He instituted price controls, divided the land equally among the citizens, and so on.

Guess what happened when he improved the lives of the poor by taking land from the wealthy, gave it to the poor, and did things like institute price controls?

A.  Prosperity ensued, Wang Mang was widely admired, and his dynasty lasted hundreds of years.

B. Nothing good, starvation and so on, his line ended with him, and all historians from the time despised him.

If you've visited this blog before, you don't need to be told which was the case.

That is not the only economic fact I found interesting.  A while before 500 AD land ownership was banned and whenever there was a war the citizens fled to wherever there wasn't a war.  Around 500 AD the various emperors determined that they needed to incentiveize staying in place, so they allowed private property to accumulate.  And the book explicitly stated that this was the last time, until Mao that China attempted to progressivize the country.  They seemed to notice that it never turned out well and they avoided much of it for around 1500 years.

Anyway, from my perspective, it seems that the various emperors can be grouped into four parts, in somewhat equal measure: the well meaning, the mean and awful, those with no interest in running an empire, and those who were too young and had regents run things for them, often to take up the title themselves and join one of the first two parts.

The succession of emperors takes up a large part of the book.  Their numbers and even the empires that they ran are too numerous to mention, or even understand after reading such a book.

***

This is a good book.  Even though I'm not as interested in India as I am in China I would read Keay's History of India if I was not already so far behind in my reading.

Recommended for those of you who are interested in lengthy readings on the whole history of China.