I’m not going to lecture you about Jeff Bezos either, although I do want to note that he came out of a hedge fund and he’s ostensibly a libertarian; these aspects of his background make me uneasy, because in my experience they tend to be found in conjunction with a social-darwinist ideology that has no time for social justice, compassion, or charity. (When you hear a libertarian talking about “disruption” and “innovation” what they usually mean is “opportunities to make a quick buck, however damaging the long-term side effects may be”. Watch for the self-serving cant and the shout-outs to abstractions framed in terms of market ideology.)
Emphasis mine. Jonah Goldberg, hit this guy with a cluebat.
The absurd and inconsequential nature of the General Assembly is reflected in the bodies and commissions that depend on it. Groups like the Commission on Human Rights are international laughingstocks and rightly so. At best they are irrelevant; at worse they actively undermine the causes they were, theoretically, established to advance.
…The Security Council represents a 1945 compromise between power realities and political correctness. That is, the UK, the US and the USSR were great powers in 1945. China and France weren’t, but it was convenient to pretend otherwise. Today, a majority of permanent Security Council members aren’t great powers, and there are significant powers (like India and Japan) who aren’t permanent members.
A majority of the Security Council’s permanent members are European states and ex-great powers to boot. This is farcical, and the Security Council’s growing weakness is the natural and inevitable result.
Like the UN, the Outer Space Treaty is outdated as well. In my talk at Space Access on Saturday, I pointed out the real problem with Article VI — its assumption that space activities, and particularly human space activities, would be performed by governments, for governments. Its nanny approach and demands that a government be responsible for anything its citizens do off planet is utterly impractical in a modern era of private spaceflight.
May be going to Congress: “In retrospect, his question, Obama’s answer — and in particular the vicious and law-breaking politico-media smear campaign launched against him in response — perfectly prefigured the Obama Presidency.”
And based on the Ann Romney attacks last week, it seems likely to continue until November.
Some thoughts on overcharging defendants. The Zimmerman case looks a lot like that to me. I like the idea of banning prosecutors from running for political office for five years after their last prosecution. It would have kept a lot of lousy politicians out of office (a former governor of New York comes to mind) and reduce grandstanding.
The other economically ignorant Paul (Krugman) loses a bet. It’s useful to note that Paul Ehrlich’s partner in economic ignorance was John Holdren, the current president’s science advisor.