The Mueller Report Fall Edition

Updates from the past couple months

Welcome to another edition of The Mueller Report!

Updates

It’s a new month and the Mueller Report is back!

I ended up taking a long unplanned hiatus in August and September. In addition to our normal crazy, July and August are our two busiest months at the Abbey. I also completed my first half Iron Man race in mid-September and managed work trips to FL, UT, and DC as well as a family trip to AK over July and August!

The half-iron man was a challenge, as you might expect. I trained the most of the cycling since that has historically been my weakest leg and one of my main goals of doing this race were to become more proficient at cycling.

I used clip-in shoes and pedals for the first time this summer and picked up an ultra-light used road bike. I felt the best about the bike leg. I averaged about 18.4 miles per hour over 54 miles, including 2250 feet of climbing.

The 13.1 mile run at the end was pretty miserable though. I managed to finish the run in two hours flat and I finished the whole race in 5:53.48, which hit my goal of being under six hours (barely)!

For the long course (half iron man), I was 28^th out of the water, 65^th by the end of the bike leg, and 53^rd overall (40^th out of 80 for the men).

Last weekend was our final busy weekend with some friends getting married here in Leadville. Our family was involved in several ways and we hosted many of the couple’s family as well. But now things have slowed way down at The Abbey – which is good because baby number six is due in just over a week!

I’m looking forward to settling in for the school year and the off-season. The first month of school has gone well for the kids, but there has certainly been some shuffling and disruption with travel and guests throughout September.

Writing

For October, I’ll just catch you up on the popular outlet pieces I’ve been writing over the past couple months. Here is what I wrote at the end of July and in the first couple weeks of August:

· States Should Protect Religious Liberty Like It Is 1993

· IOUs to Inflation: The Realistic Limits of Magic Money Theory

· The Gimmicks of Trump’s Trade Deals

Reflection

We hosted a second colloquium at The Abbey two weeks ago with Dr. Mark Hall on Christianity and the American Founding. It was a small group, but really interesting readings and conversations. Dr. Hall gave a talk at our church called: “Did America Have a Christian Founding?”

I drew a number of observations and thoughts from the weekend:

1) The colonies had explicitly Christian governments – in the sense that their laws and documents referenced the triune God, Scripture, and were set up to promote the flourishing of Christians;

2) Historically, taking oaths was seen as a religious act because they were always made before (and thereby enforced by) God;

3) Jefferson, while penning the line “a wall of separation between church and state” did not see a problem with holding Christian worship services in the Capitol building and attended some of those services himself while he was President

4) Benjamin Franklin, of all people, made a motion at the Constitutional convention that the delegates have a time of public prayer because they were struggling to make any progress

5) The establishment clause of the first amendment primarily referred to Congress not being able to establish an official church; not that it couldn’t address religious issues (like proclaiming days of thanksgiving or fasting) or setting aside federal land for religious purposes or providing funds for chaplains.

6) “Christian Nationalism” would be better termed “Christian Localism,” because it primarily has to do with infusing local communities (and public institutions) with Christianity

Our next colloquium is scheduled for November 15^th and will be focused on Augustine’s Confessions with Dr. Ian Clary from Colorado Christian University. If you happen to be interested in attending, don’t hesitate to reach out!

Bookshelf

I reviewed several books over the last month. I’ll post some excerpts for each review in my newsletter. The first review I’ll highlight, Industrial Policy: A Global Review, assessed a massive tome on industrial policy: Industrial Policy for the United States: Winning the Competition for Good Jobs and High-Value Industries.

I’m afraid I wouldn’t recommend this book to most people – both because I disagree with its primary message and because of how dense it is. But students of economics might benefit from reading it because the authors 1) do a great deal of case study research and offer 2) important criticisms of free market & free trade economic theory.

While some of the industrial policy tools they recommend might improve on market outcomes in theory, we have strong reasons to be skeptical. Knowing when and how to apply industrial policy is difficult. Even the authors of this book acknowledge that. Then there is the further difficulty of avoiding self-interested politicians and bureaucrats from distorting the ideal industrial policy to benefit themselves.

Alfred Marshall, one of the famous originators of modern economic theory, put it well when he said:

“I ​found that, however simple the plan on which a protective policy started, it was drawn on irresistibly to become intricate; and to lend its chief aid to those industries which were already strong enough to do without it. In becoming intricate it became corrupt, and tended to corrupt general politics. On the whole, I thought that this moral harm far outweighed any small net benefit which it might be capable of conferring on American industry in the stage in which it was then.

​Subsequent observation of the course of politics in America and elsewhere has strengthened this conviction. It seems to me that the policy adopted in England sixty years ago remains the best, and may probably remain the best, in spite of increasingly rapid economic change, because it is not a device, but the absence of any device. A device contrived to deal with any set of conditions must become obsolete when they change. The simplicity and naturalness of Free Trade—that is, the absence of any device—may continue to outweigh the series of different small gains which could be obtained by any manipulation of tariffs, however scientific and astute.”

Games

Well, it’s been a while since the last game corner! The most interesting new game I’ve played recently is called Scythe. It’s what one of my friends calls a “dudes on a map” game. The setting is post-apocalyptic eastern Europe. There are up to six different factions that people can play. Each faction has a unique ability and a unique initial resource allocation.

Then different production boards are distributed randomly. They all have the same activities but with different rewards and pairings. The game board itself is a bit like Catan in terms of being divided into different hexes with different resource availability. Unlike Catan, you have workers and “Mechs” that you move around the board. Production is a choice and not based on a random die roll.

Scythe is a resource engine-building game with a minor combat element. There are four basic commodities and then money (which also serves as victory points). The trick of the game is figuring out what order to take actions in and how to create good combinations. On the production board, you have a basic action and then a potential bonus action. You want to have the resources to take the bonus action whenever you can.

The scoring of the game is relatively simple. You get points for achievements (stars), territories controlled, and resources. How much you get for each of these depends on how high your “popularity” score is. You can aim for a wide variety of achievements: recruiting your full set of workers, building your full set of Mechs, enlisting your four recruits, winning combat, maxing out your popularity, maxing out your power, accomplishing an objective, etc.

Before playing, I was under the impression that Scythe was a 4-6 hour super intense game. This is not the case. There is a learning curve, of course, but I played several games that each lasted less than two hours. I wouldn’t rate Scythe as highly as Terraforming Mars, but I would certainly pick it over the basic Catan game and probably over many of the Catan expansions too.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!