Why does Boeing hate America? That’s not the idiotic title, but it might as well be.
[Via Katie Wickswat]
Category Archives: Business
The Metaphysics Of Theft
Thoughts on societal entropy:
Where does this all end — these open borders, unsustainable entitlements and public union benefits and salaries, these revolving door prisons and Al Gore-like energy fantasies?
We are left with a paradox. The taxpayer cannot indefinitely fund the emergency room treatment for the shooter and his victim on Saturday night if society cannot put a tool down for five minutes without a likely theft, or a farmer cannot turn on a 50-year old pump without expecting its electrical connections to have been ripped out. Civilization simply cannot function that way for either the productive citizen or the parasite, who still needs a live host.
I will make a wild leap and suggest that a vast majority of Americans are reaching the point where they accept that the blue statist paradigm is reaching its logical end and simply cannot go on any more, given that it is antithetical to human nature itself. There is not always a Germany for every Greece.
That which cannot continue, will not.
Spam
…hits the Kindle. It seems to me that this is the key:
Daffron of Logical Expressions said Amazon should charge for uploads to the Kindle publishing system because that would remove a lot of the financial incentive for spammers.
“This is why email spam has become such a problem — it costs nothing,” she said. “If people can put out 12 versions of a single book under different titles and authors, and at different prices, even if they sell just one or two books, they can make money. They win and the loser is Amazon.”
It would require a redesign of the Internet to eliminate free email, but it seems like Amazon could control this. Maybe they will soon.
Former Astronaut Bernard Harris
An interesting interview. He’s being a little too politically correct here, though:
…in the 21st century we need teachers who teach math and science to have expertise in math and science. So there needs to be an upgrade there, and refocus on how much we value those teachers. As you know, in this country, we don’t pay our teachers all that well. We need to rethink that.
The problem isn’t that we don’t pay teachers well, at least on average. The problem is that we don’t pay the valuable ones enough, and we pay the worthless ones far too much, thanks to the unions. We need to be able to adequately compensate the teachers who have actual useful knowledge to impart, and get rid of the ones who don’t. This would all start by eliminating the worthless, or to be more accurate, negative-value, “education” major.
Lemonade Stands
Some thoughts on their educational power.
And, actually, I suspect that this particular lemonade stand taught a particularly valuable lesson about the role of government.
The War On Texas
…by Obama’s EPA.
Can’t have it producing all those jobs and making the president look bad. Especially when the governor may be running against him.
Economic Ignorami
Such is the state of Obama’s America that a dismaying number of people think that banning ATMs would be good for the economy. It’s the new Luddism, led by the Ignoramus-in-Chief.
Fanny And Freddy
I’m not a big David Brooks fan, but he takes the political class to task much more than he’s usually willing to in today’s column.
Morgenson and Rosner write with barely suppressed rage, as if great crimes are being committed. But there are no crimes. This is how Washington works. Only two of the characters in this tale come off as egregiously immoral. Johnson made $100 million while supposedly helping the poor. Representative Barney Frank, whose partner at the time worked for Fannie, was arrogantly dismissive when anybody raised doubts about the stability of the whole arrangement.
Most of the people were simply doing what reputable figures do in service to a supposedly good cause. Johnson roped in some of the most respected establishment names: Bill Daley, Tom Donilan, Joseph Stiglitz, Dianne Feinstein, Kit Bond, Franklin Raines, Larry Summers, Robert Zoellick, Ken Starr and so on.
Of course, it all came undone. Underneath, Fannie was a cancer that helped spread risky behavior and low standards across the housing industry. We all know what happened next.
The scandal has sent the message that the leadership class is fundamentally self-dealing. Leaders on the center-right and center-left are always trying to create public-private partnerships to spark socially productive activity. But the biggest public-private partnership to date led to shameless self-enrichment and disastrous results.
It has sent the message that we have hit the moment of demosclerosis. Washington is home to a vertiginous tangle of industry associations, activist groups, think tanks and communications shops. These forces have overwhelmed the government that was originally conceived by the founders.
The reckoning started last November, but the real one is yet to come.
Stagflation May Be Here
You don’t say. Unexpectedly! too…
As Glenn often says, a repeat of Carter is a best-case scenario.
[Update a few minutes later]
Really? You don’t say. Stagflation creates a dangerous position for the economy.
A Rare Fit Of Sanity On The Hill
The Senate has finally voted to end ethanol subsidies. So what will happen in the House? And conference? And will the White House go along?