Official Innumeracy

Cutting tariffs by 115% means that everything gets a 15% subsidy, perhaps by a reduction in declared value. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent certainly must know the difference. He went to Yale and worked for George Soros. I have to wonder why he did not correct his speechwriter. 

In other reports, the number was given correctly as “115 percentage points” to highlight the drop from 145% tariff to a 30% tariff for a net change of 79% downward on the American side. 

The wrong number was repeated by many news copiers ...

"One hundred percent" means "all of it."

... but was given the correct context by others. 

See, especially, The Detroit News.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Success of the WEIRD People

Numismatics: History as Market 

The Art of Finance

Money as Press and Speech

Value and Worth

“What’s it worth?” Bill Bradford (Wikipedia here) asked me. That was about 1976 in his store, Liberty Coins, on Abbott Road in East Lansing. He continued: Is it worth what you paid for it? What you can sell it for? What it would cost to replace it? Over the years, I have considered the question. In 1990, I served on the board of ELFCO, the East Lansing Food Cooperative and chose the finance committee for my working task. There, I learned a lot from East Lansing entrepreneur Bruce Roth who sat on the board for many years and chaired the finance committee. Passed over for a job opportunity because I had no stronger experience in finance, I took a seminar in accounting for data processing at Lansing Community College. I do not remember if we did much with cost accounting but I do remember that you debit an asset to increase it. 

Some years earlier, the winter of 1972-1973, I sat in on a presentation on meta-ethics by Dr. William F. Schmidt in the home of Linda and Morris Tannehill. Bill Schmidt planned a futures trading company based on his algorithms for predicting change in the marketplace. He eventually had two satellite dishes feeding data. In 1993, I wrote computer programs for him because his IBM PC/AT computers (upgrades over the HP 9830s from too long before) were at their limit. (Necessary Facts here.).  I do not remember the content of his lecture that night and much of it was over my head at the time anyway. The essence was that in order to have values, you must have a standard of value.

 

To address that question, Ayn Rand posited an indestructible robot, asserting that as nothing could affect it, it could have no values. Any action or none at all would be equally consequential. (See “The Objectivist Ethics” in The Virtue of Selfishness. Ayn Rand Lexicon entry here: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/values.html)

 

Some years ago (2017), on vacation, I wrote out notes but never was able to wotk through the problems to a solution or a set of them. The essential problem is one of limits: by Rand’s standard, the farther you are from any threat, the more secure your life it, the less consequential your choices. She solves that problem with the open container of “Man qua man.”

 

The Objectivist ethics holds man’s life as the standard of value—and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man.

 

The difference between “standard” and “purpose” in this context is as follows: a “standard” is an abstract principle that serves as a measurement or gauge to guide a man’s choices in the achievement of a concrete, specific purpose. “That which is required for the survival of man qua man” is an abstract principle that applies to every individual man. The task of applying this principle to a concrete, specific purpose—the purpose of living a life proper to a rational being—belongs to every individual man, and the life he has to live is his own.

 

Man must choose his actions, values and goals by the standard of that which is proper to man—in order to achieve, maintain, fulfill and enjoy that ultimate value, that end in itself, which is his own life.

 

The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics—the standard by which one judges what is good or evil—is man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man.

 

Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.

 

“Man’s survival qua man” means the terms, methods, conditions and goals required for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his lifespan—in all those aspects of existence which are open to his choice.

 

("Standard of Value" paragraphs from "The Objectivist Ethics" in The Virtue of Selfishness. Ayn Rand Lexicon here: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/standard_of_value.html )

 

The statements are synonyms, tautologies, restatements in somewhat different words of the same assertion without evidence or demonstration. 

 

One of my favorite movie scenes (also in the book) is from 2010: The Year We Make Contact.  Curnaw and Floyd are homesick. “What I wouldn’t give for a hotdog at the Astrodome,” says Walter Curnaw. Floyd is taken aback “Astrodome?! You can’t grow good hotdogs indoors! Yankee Stadium. August. The hotdogs have been on the grill since opening day… The brown mustard.” 

 

But are they good for you? Are they pro-life? Are they appropriate to Man qua Man? Made from the lowest scraps of meat, spiced with artificial chemicals, each one is a cancer time bomb. 

 

An old joke goes that the doctor tells his patient that his health is at risk. Says the doctor, “Stop drinking, quit smoking, stop running around the bar scene chasing women.” The patient asks, “If I do that, will I live to be 100?” The doctor replies, “No. But it will seem like it.”

 

Aristotle’s Golden Mean offers some insight. Note first, that a problem underlies the concept of “eudaimonia” because it begs the question: What is the good life? In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle gives a shopping list of attributes that a good person will have, such as a measured walk and tone of voice. That being as it may, the Problem of the Stadium Hot Dog does speak to Ayn Rand’s Indestructible Robot. If you are 17 years of age having one hotdog at one game is not going to kill you: you are closer to indestructible than destructible in that context. At the other extreme, if you are 75 years of age, diagnosed with incurable cancer and given a few years (at most), as destructible as you are, the hotdog will not be your demise: you might as well enjoy it. 

 

Rand does indicate a productive line of analysis: “… for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his lifespan …” For Rand, of course, “rational” meant more than volitional or self-aware, though those are requisites to her deeper meaning. The inclusion may be redundant because, for example, rocks have no values. However, I assert that cats do have values. It is easy to assert (being unable to ask them) that cats are not self-aware. Like dogs, horse, etc.,, they do not "have" emotions because they are their emotions. (Unlike horses and dogs, though, cats have three different names.) 

 

Back to the question at hand: the Problem of the Stadium Hotdog can best be evaluated in the context given: through the whole of your lifespan. 

 

What is a hotdog worth? Is it a mistake, an error in judgment? If so, what does it cost to remediate the problem? The fact of future value indicates that any investment now correcting a mistake in the present results in tremendous costs in lost returns on investment in the long future. 

No matter how small the interest rate—the rate of return being some measure of how your life will improve—compounding will make the final answer consequential. 

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

 

Morality and Ethics 

Choose Your Virtues

Understanding Objectivism 

A Good Place with Inadequate Philosophy 

Virgin Galactic VX01 VX03 

 

The Mercury Dime

When I first was given the opportunity to choose my own username on a mainframe computer (actually, a DEC VAX super-mini) in 1989, I asked for Mercury, the Roman messenger god, the patron of merchants (and pirates, it being sometimes hard to tell them apart). Likely inherited from the Etruscans, Mercury is associated with the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian Thoth, and also, perhaps the Aztec Coyototl, the trickster who invented writing. 

I have been “Mercury” in one form or another on many systems since, and I have held my Gmail account, mike49mercury, for many years. It is true that 49 is my birth year, but to me 49 is the square of 7 for the Mercury 7 astronauts, having lost track of a mercury7 username some decades back. 

 

I sold several articles about the Mercury dime to the American Numismatic Association, the Michigan State Numismatic Society, and others. It does echo the Roman denarius of the Republic with the wings on Liberty’s head modeling the raised face guards on the helmet of Roma. And for better or worse, the coin is in the neo-classical style that was ubiquitous during the gilded age of American aesthetics between the Civil War and the Great Depression. 

As a numismatist, I am a writer, not a collector.
But I can’t make this up from thin air.
So, I do visit coin stores in my town to chat and learn.
And I found this one for myself. 
Very high grade examples like this are extremely common
from the war years 1940-1945
when these were struck in astronomical quantities. 

 

The wings on Liberty’s Phrygian cap (worn by a freed slave) represent freedom of thought. The reverse depicts the Roman fasces, a bundle of rods, the center rod an ax reflecting the absolute authority of the state. In ancient Rome, if found guilty of a felony, the prisoner would be beaten to death with the rods – unless granted the mercy of the ax. Perhaps the best way to resolve that seeming contradiction is to consider the words of the US Supreme Court (Reynolds vs. The United States) in affirming that polygamy is unlawful, regardless of sentiments in the Territory of Utah: You can believe whatever you want, but you cannot do whatever you want. 

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Music Makes You Braver 

Numismatics: the Standard of Proof in Economics 

Forgery and Fraud in Numismatics 

Numismatic Truthseekers 

Hallelujah 

The Audacity of Entrepreneurship

"What comes out of a team or a committee is the most daring idea that the least daring man can accept." John Arnold. "Space, Time and Education," Astounding Science Fiction, May 1953, pp. 9–25. Introductory remarks by John W. Campbell, Jr., editor, pp. 9–10.

Earlier this month, I (virtually) attended a conference of the American Astronomical Society. I participate in the History of Astronomy Division. One of the presentations was about Voyager. One of the presenters sighed that the government cancelled several follow-ups to include messages on deep space probes. I asked if they had any contact with Elon Musk. The expert replied that maybe some entrepreneur in the future might launch a mini-satellite with a solar sail, but no private firm can send a one-ton probe out of the solar system. After the conference, I sent him a link about Elon Musk's Tesla two-ton automobile orbiting the Sun. That is exactly the audacity of entrepreneurship. It radiates a fundamental optimism about what is possible in human achievement. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Entrepreneurship

Bob Swanson and Genentech 

The Public Good Be Damned

Politics and the Inverse Square Law 

Disruptive Diagnostics and the Business of Science 

Amateur Astronomy for Pay 

 

A Good Place with Inadequate Philosophy

We enjoyed The Good Place. We watched it on disc and look forward to the release of Season 4. The show’s chatty dialogs on moral philosophy were pleasant and satisfying. The characters were engaging. We cared about what happened to them. It would be nice if The Good Place brought philosophy into the cultural mainstream something like what Star Trek’s original series did for science fiction. Like ST:OS, The Good Place had its flaws. 

Although the show namedrops several moral theories, it reverts back to Platonic altruism: your actions can be judged good if and only if (1) the goal is to benefit others and (2) you are not invested in the consequences to yourself.  

“Todd May and Pamela Hieronymi [are] the show’s philosophical advisors. While The Good Place hewed to the demands of a network sitcom—there was hugging and learning and quite a few jokes about farts—it also centered an ongoing debate about moral philosophy, from Aristotle up to the present day, and May and Hieronymi made sure the show stayed true to its grander ideals. Hieronymi, a professor at UCLA, introduced creator Mike Schur to T.M. Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other, which would become an onscreen bible for the show’s in-house philosopher, Chidi Anagonye. May, who teaches at Clemson, starred in a series of short videos explaining concepts like existentialism, utilitarianism, and deontology…” (Slate, 03 Feb 2020 here.) 

In addition to Aristotle’s virtue ethics, the show tossed out references to consequentialism and Scanlon’s contractarian  theory. Egoism did  not even get a nod. More deeply, the intention seemed to be to find one absolute standard for all contexts. Although I personally subscribe to Randian Objectivism as the best solution, always bringing all decisions to what is best for me, the fact remains that secondary theories such as contractarianism are useful and important. It depends on the context. And secondary theories can reflect back on primary considerations. It is not generally in your self-interest to habitually break your promises—unless you want to end your life as a hermit, even within a metropolis. 

My first class in criminal justice at Washtenaw Community College in 2005 was Ethics in Law Enforcement. Our professor was Ruth A. Walsh. Once the term was under way, we were given challenges to write about. Ms. Walsh expected us to apply all of the theories we were learning in order to analyze each problem from several viewpoints. Later, at Eastern Michigan University, working on my bachelor’s I tallied about 50 different theories to explain crime. That holistic approach to challenges in morality came in handy in my last class in graduate school (2010), Ethics in Physics.

I accepted that as a validation of the operation of necessary factual truths. At least 300 proofs of the Pythagorean theorem have been published. If an action is moral, then it can probably be justified not only by egoism, but by Kantian deontology, utilitarianism, pragmatism, and other constructs. If attempting that leads to contradictions, then one or more theories would be false on that point. In other words, moral theories are tools. You need to use the right tool for the right job. Do not use your screwdriver for a chisel. 

Can you save the whales? Should you bother? The inverse square law says that I cannot be very effective at that (here). On the other hand, I recently twice spent $20 on five boxes of Girl Scout cookies for the office. Not only does bringing cookies make me popular with my colleagues, but the money supports a local organization that I approve of. And the acts had a contractarian aspect: my first wife was a Girl Scout; and she taught me to always leave a place better than you found it. That lesson prepared me to engage the same behavior when, as a member of the Texas State Guard, I was part of a group using the barracks of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Army National Guard, and Sea Star Base Galveston.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Integrating Criminologies  

20% of Scientists are Crooks 

Morality and Ethics
Michael Shermer's Moral Arc 

Teaching Ethics to Student Engineers

Markets Bring Fairness 

Modes of Survival 

The Big Whimper of Modern Philosophy 

Plato and Aristotle; Gates and Jobs

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Previously on Necessary Facts
Joy Hakim's "Aristotle Leads the Way" 
Science versus Common Sense 
The Science of Liberty 
That goddam Ayn Rand Book 

What is “Legal Tender”?

Once again, this time on the Galt’s Gulch Online message board, my conservative comrades displayed a disappointing though predictable ignorance about money. For people who claim to honor the bourgeois virtues of trade and commerce, they collectively guard a treasury of incomplete, incorrect, erroneous, and falsified assertions.  In truth, objective investigation demonstrates that the government has the right, the need, and the obligation to define and create legal tender.

 

Gold. Coin-shaped. Issued by Congress.
Not Money. Not Legal Tender.

Last week (about January 8, 2017), this discussion was launched:

Which is worse, government“printing” money or government “borrowing” money”

Posted by $CBJ 1 week ago to Economics

Several writers declaimed against “legal tender laws.”  So, I asked (rhetorically) for definition of “legal tender.” dbhalling, an attorney-at-law who specializes in intellectual property rights wrote this:

(cut and paste) Posted by  dbhalling 5 days, 20 hours ago [January 9, 2017 --mem]

Here is the exact statute. "Today the legal tender law in the US is 35 USC § 5103 which states: United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts. Why legal tender laws do not require government monopolies on money absolutely, they are almost always used for that eventually. You just wrong that any Legal Tender law is consistent with Objectivism..  (/cut and paste)

Of course, that is not actually a definition. As a lawyer, dbhalling only cares about what the law says. He does not need to investigate further. Moreover, he was not alone in claiming that an “Objectivist government” would not have the power to create legal tender. But if there were such a thing as an “Objectivist government” it would need to define legal tender, as does any government. 

Deed for Sale of Federal Land.
A valuable paper promise of the Government.
Perhaps negotiable. Not money. Not Legal Tender.

According to Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, and in line with much else on the libertarian right wing of American politics, the proper functions of government include operating courts of law. It is for the courts that the legislature defines “legal tender.” If the legislature did not define legal tender, there would be no way to know when a debt has been discharged, or when payment has been made.

 

One Dollar in Lawful Money.

Like much else in our traditional laws, the idea of debt is still mired in the agrarian feudal Middle Ages, and not yet enjoying the free air of commercial city life, i.e., civilization. In fact, very little trade is “cash on the barrel head.” It never has been. Since at least 2000 BCE, merchants have dealt at distances in both space and time, making and keeping promises to buy now and pay later. (See, for instance, The Kingdom of the Hittites by Trevor Bryce, Oxford University Press, 2005.) We now enjoy a vast global city. Cash is accepted – even preferred – on the street, but retailers buy from wholesalers who buy from manufacturers, all on credit and via debt.

 

One of the most valuable
coin-like objects issued by
the Federal government.
Not money. Not Legal tender.

Contrary to common myths, money did not evolve out of barter; and barter did not originate in the desire for economic gain. (See David Graeber’s “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” here.) Ritual gift exchange is the taproot of commerce.  For tens of thousands of years, including two ice ages from about 35,000 YA to about 10,000 YA, strangers became friends by exchanging gifts.  Finally, after writing was invented to keep track of commodity promises, we abstracted “money” as a safety to mitigate risk.  If you promise a sheep, but all of your sheep have died, what can you give instead? 

Wheat was first. Then after about 2000 BCE, silver was accepted. The astonishing attribute of silver is that it is useless.  It is pretty when polished, but it cannot hold an edge without being alloyed.  (The same is true of copper, which is why the Bronze Age is a demarcation along our common advance. And we have archaeological evidence of large “oxhides” of bronze offered in trade.) Silver served as “legal tender” i.e., money recognized by the “courts” (king or temple).  Gold is likewise useless, but has the added value of not tarnishing, and being far less commonly found. 

Code of Ur-Nammu
(fragment)

 18. If a man knocks out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out one-half a mina of silver. 

19. If a man has cut off another man’s foot, he is to pay ten shekels. 

22. If a man knocks out a tooth of another man, he shall pay two shekels of silver.

24. [...] If he does not have a slave, he is to pay 10 shekels of silver. If he does not have silver, he is to give another thing that belongs to him.
The Law Code of Ur-Nammu, about 2050 BCE at Real World History here.

In modern times, the governments of the British American colonies created paper money. Whether and to what extent the new Federal government would be allowed to do that was debated. The Constitution did not forbid Federal paper money, and the necessities of commerce almost demanded it. The Federal government had the power to borrow money. That created the power to create promissory notes under the Necessary and Proper clause.  

Coinage Law of June 28, 1834 recognized several foreign coins
as legal tender. Laws before and after this also 
defined the legal tender status of foreign coins.

Moreover, in the USA until 1857, several types of foreign coins were commonly recognized by law as being “legal tender.”  The Spanish Dollar was the foundation of commerce, both for international and local trade. Bank notes from the early 19^th century promise to pay fractions of a dollar, but display images of Spanish or Mexican coins.  (See “Spanish Coins on American Notes” here.)

Promises 25 cents. Offers 2 Reales.
(Hence, "2 bits" means a quarter dollar.)

Finally, all governments create a plethora of medals, medallions, certificates, promises, and warrants that may be valuable, negotiable, even fungible, but are not recognized in courts of law as legal tender. That is why a government must define the term in order for objective law to be possible.

  

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Money as Speech and Peacemaking 

Debt: the Seed of Civilization  

Industrial Medals: A Currency of Fame  

Tokens of Capitalism  

Why a Level Playing Field?

Why does the government have a responsibility to make the playing field level? 

Let us at least be on the same playing field. Starting with...

"In commerce, a level playing field is a concept about fairness, not that each player has an equal chance to succeed, but that they all play by the same set of rules.
In a game played on a playing field, such as rugby, one team would have an unfair advantage if the field had a slope. Since some real-life playing fields do in fact have slopes, it is customary for teams to swap ends of the playing field at half time.
A metaphorical playing field is said to be level if no external interference affects the ability of the players to compete fairly.
Some government regulations are intended to provide such fairness, since all participants must abide by the same rules. However, they can have the opposite effect, for example if larger firms find it easier to pay for fixed costs of regulation. It may be added that if the rules [affect] different participants differently then they are not actually the same.
Handicapping might be thought of as the opposite concept, of unequal rules designed to make the outcome of play more equal." -- Wikipedia "Level Playing Field."

But let us see how this works in practice. The USA recently sued India at the WTO because India requires a percentage of domestic content in solar panels, disadvantaging imported materials. In another example, the Netherlands does not grant special state subsidies to its ports, though Germany, Belgium, and France do. The Netherlands claims that this is not a level playing field. Dutch ports are disadvantaged by state subsidies given to other ports.

Those are arguments about "free trade versus fair trade." It is alleged that when a national government subsidizes home industries, it disadvantages imports. Other subsidies give advantage to local exports into foreign markets where they disadvantage the unsubsidized local businesses there. 

 

Sprinter Dutee Chand has been fighting regulations
that define her gender by the levels of androgen
in her blood. She is not accused of doping.
These are her natural levels of a hormone
present in all women and all men.
All bodies are not created equal.

I suggest a micro-economic analysis of households, individuals, employees, and businesses. Ms. Smith is an executive who earns $250,000 per year. Every Saturday, she takes out her riding mower and manicures the large lawns and gardens around her home. Billy Jones has a lawn service. He points out that he can do the work more efficiently for less. He is willing to earn much less than Ms. Smith, say $100 for the two hours to mow, trim, and rake. Moreover, if Ms. Smith went to the office - even just her home office - she would be far more economically productive than she is being her own lawn service.

Ms. Smith listens to him, and agrees that she has better things to do. She goes into the house and comes out with 8-year old Samantha. "Want to learn to drive? Do a good job, all neat and clean, and I will give you $50. It will take you most of the morning. You will clear about $12.50 an hour." Billy Jones files a complaint with the World Trade Organization.

The concept of a "level playing field" applies to sports because competitive sports are zero-sum games. Business is not. Businesses create unlevel playing fields all the time. They change the rules of the game. New products and new services create new markets. 

The speed limits on streets and roads are a perfect example of a legally mandated level playing field for delivery companies. UPS, FedEx, the USPS, and all the many independents, even the bike couriers, all are subject to the same rules of the road. Amazon wants to deliver packages with drones. Where is your level playing field now? It is in the wrong dimension - Flatland, visited by a sphere.

Moreover, in some games - golf comes to mind - knowing the field - slopes, traps, trees, and all - and playing it to your advantage is part of the game.

Now with the Boston Celtics,
Isaiah Jamar Thomas is 5'9"
and plays on the same courts
as everyone else.

As noted in the Wikipedia article, the remedy in some sports is to switch goals after half-time. That way if there is a natural slope, the advantage goes to each side equally. But does it? Is a football field the same after half a game? Heraclitus would have a lot to say about that. The assumption is that either team could take equal advantage of a sloped field. How is that known? And if it were a real consideration, would not the officials actually measure the field for flatness? And would not some of those sports actually be played on fields with officially regulated slopes? 

What about basketball, another sport where the goals are swapped. No one claims that the gym is sloped. 

Note that in American Football, the first kickoff is settled with a coin toss. They do not have two kickoffs and average them to distribute the result. They do not flip the coin ten times and average that. You win or you lose the advantage on the toss of a coin. That's life... And as for chance, as Louis Pasteur famously noted, it favors the prepared mind.

Finally, as Wikipedia pointed out, attempting to level the playing field may actually deliver a disadvantage to a firm that cannot afford the price of lobbying for legislation.  

The concept of a level playing field in economics is a floating abstraction, a logical construct without empirical validity.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Where All the Children are Above Average

An Abundance of Talent

Nerd Nation

Science vs. Common Sense

World Peace Through Massive Retaliation

The Ferengi Rules of Commerce

Intended as humor or parody, this little book offers a megagram of useful – if contradictory – advice.

Before the invention of the Ferengi in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Star Trek universe never had much room for trade and commerce. In the Original Series, Star Fleet dominated Earth and the Federation of Planets. It was a command economy. Whether mining colonies, exploration, war, or agriculture, the process of decision-making was hidden from the viewers, but it clearly was not via the market or bought with money.  

In the Original Series, the only traders we met were Cyrano Jones (who sold tribbles) and Harcourt Fenton “Harry” Mudd.  Neither was heroic, or dashing, or even especially intelligent. In the Next Generation episode The Neutral Zone we met a life ship of cryogenically preserved humans, one of whom insisted on checking on his Wall Street profits.  Captain Picard must explain that now, in our time, we do not care about the acquisition of things, but on improving ourselves.

Then came the Ferengi. Originally introduced in ST:NG The Last Outpost, they did not acquire any substance of character until Deep Space Nine. Armin Shimerman played the bartender (and bar owner), Quark.

It comes out in The Siege of AR 558 (Deep Space Nine), that planet Ferengeran never knew imperialism, racism, or slavery.

I confronted Armin Shimerman at a trekker con in Livonia, Michigan, in the early 21^st century.  He said that he had read The Fountainhead in college and was going to revisit the works of Ayn Rand in preparation for the up-coming season.

This book is presented as the distilled wisdom of Ferengi society. It is necessarily discontinuous because the rules were invented ad hoc by the script writers.

·       #1.  Once you have their money, never give it back.

·       #3.  Never pay more for an acquisition than you have to.

·       #8. Small print leads to large risks.

·       #13. Anything worth doing is worth doing for money.

·       #27. There is nothing more dangerous than an honest businessman.

·       #58. There is no substitute for success.

·       #62. The riskier the road, the greater the profit.

·       #79. Beware of the Vulcan greed for knowledge.

·       #109. Dignity and an empty sack is worth the empty sack.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Money as Speech and Press

Valentine's Day: Love and Money

Money Without Banks and Governments

Space is the Place: Come to the High Frontier