- Implementing ObamaCare: “Grate” expectations
- Further problems with ObamaCare implementation
- US Health Care System Doesn’t Need Price Controls, It Needs Price Signals
- Australians of reddit: What North American Animal Scares the F*** Out of You?
- Distribution of train lines around the world
- The End of Europe’s Welfare States
Links
Around the web: class, work, and a call for the totalitarian oppression of servants
In the course of a recent internet search for “lazy millennials,” “entitled millennials,” “milliennial brats,” and the like (call it an effort at self-diagnosis, if you wish), I came across one of the most biting and clearheaded blogs I’ve found to date covering work and the workplace. Normally, everything that I find on these subjects in any medium is some combination of banal, derivative, sycophantic, foolish, and intellectually dishonest. Perhaps this is in part because, although I disclose this at some risk to my credibility, I follow John Tesh on Pinterest (but mainly to enjoy him ironically and hipster-like; he, and Wilford Brimley, are my PBR). Tesh, however, does not set the lower bound for workplace advice; browsing workplace-themed blogs at random or the book section of any office supply chain is weirder and more disgusting. Michael O. Church, then, is a welcome relief from the endless drivel, and a fine writer and political thinker to boot.
One of Church’s favorite concepts is “libertarian socialism.” Outwardly, this may sound as ridiculous as the UK being governed by a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, but what he proposes, a government safety net beneath a dynamic private sector, is exactly what most Western governments have attempted, with varying degrees of success, since the Second World War. Church’s proposal avoids by a wide margin the sclerosis of command economies (which, in extreme instances such as North Korea’s, causes an outright death spiral), but it also renders moot the sclerosis of large, ossified corporations, with their legions of marginal-to-useless bureaucrats, layers of political intrigue, and penchant for regulatory capture. His model is for an advanced sort of Jeffersonian yeomanry as an alternative to, and eventually a replacement for, the Hamiltonian model that predominates today. Here’s one of his critiques of the current system: Continue reading
Around the Web: Disappearances
1. Ron Unz, founder and editor of The American Conservative, skewers the mainstream American media for dropping the ball on all sorts of major scoops, including:
2. Richard Nixon’s abandonment of hundreds of surviving American prisoners of war after the end of hostilities, at a time when he had declared that all surviving POW’s had been repatriated; and
3. John McCain’s exceptionally weird and disturbing role in the decades-long stonewalling of investigations into the fate of these men and efforts to repatriate any survivors.
4. On a separate but similar topic, a discussion of some possible fates of Indian independence leader and Axis collaborator Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose, aka Netaji, officially died in a plane crash in Taiwan, but is widely believed to have died in the Soviet Gulag, to have disappeared into civilian life in asylum in the Soviet Union, and to have lived into his eighties as a “mysterious holy man” in Uttar Pradesh.
Around the Web
- Are you a liberal imperialist? Stephen Walt asks the question and lists ten signs that you may be one.
- Will Obama attack Syria in the face of so many domestic scandals?
- Libertarians care about more than just themselves. Bryan Caplan explains why.
- Big Country Blues.
- Great post on civil society and its work exposing police corruption. Don’t forget that police departments are now heavily unionized…
- Human Rights and Democracy Statistics. A short, informative video by a Swedish epidemiologist and statistician.
- Ha. Ha.
Around the Web
- Danny Huizinga riffs off of Dr Gibson’s article on mathematical models in economics
- Longtime reader –Rick shares some eye candy of another kind
- Shang Jun and Wu Xia, advocates for free trade in China, take EU protectionists to task
- French philosopher and economist Guy Sorman asks What is the West?
- Economist Scott Sumner on Swedish liberaltarianism
Around the Web
- A Brief History of IRS Political Targeting.
- Listen to the fascists sing.
- Philosopher Kevin Vallier’s response to a hatchet job on FA Hayek in a stale (and apparently desperate) Left-wing publishing outlet.
- Political scientist Samuel Goldman’s response to the same hatchet job.
- The aforementioned hatchet job (in The Nation).
- Monkey Gone to Heaven.
Climate Change Worse (No Matter How You Look At It)
In some places, it’s much warmer than usual. That’s so many instances of climate change, of course.
I some places, it’s much colder than usual. That’s also evidence of climate change.
Good technical article in the Wall Street Journal of 5/8/13 to remind us that CO2 is plant food. The more CO2 the more plants, and the more food for humans. It’s by NASA astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt and W. Happer, a professor of Physics at Princeton.
Words of Wisdom
From Tyler Cowen:
This is a post about Jamaica and also about macroeconomic inference. If you are tempted to write a post in response, criticizing me on the grounds that I am postulating a historical equivalence between the United States and Jamaica, or if you try to cover your tracks with semantics, by suggesting that I am “implying” such an equivalence, or implying some other mistake, or if you are committing any number of other fallacies or equivocations in response to this post, put on the dunce cap and go to the back of the class. Please consider this a general warning to be attached to everything written by me on this site.
I just liked this because Dr Cowen is usually very polite, and if there is one thing I enjoy in this world, it is watching polite people dish out some wholesome snark casserole for the masses to devour. Read the whole thing.
Around the Web
Hey all, I’m entering into a tough stretch at school, so my posting will be minimal for the next little while. Before I get to the cool links I’ve been reading, I thought I’d highlight Evgeniy’s recent piece on the chemical warfare taking place in Syria. If I am not mistaken, it is the rebels – al-Qaeda and Hizbollah – who are responsible for using chemical weapons. These are the same rebels that Dr Delacroix advocates the United States not only support morally, but militarily as well.
You can spot weak reasoning – morally as well as logically – when a person starts to hurl epithets like ‘isolationist’ or ‘pacifist’ around even after the other side insists that their position is anything but.
- Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware.
- China: Year Zero. 1979 and the Birth of an Economic Miracle.
- “Of the vast increase in the well-being of hundreds of millions of people that has occurred in the 200-year course of the industrial revolution to date, virtually none of it can be attributed to the direct redistribution of resources from rich to poor.”
- GMO Opponents are the Climate Skeptics of the Left. Not quite. Climate skepticism is rooted in scientific inquiry and politics, whereas the anti-GMO backlash is rooted in superstition. Nevertheless, a good read.
Y’all have a great week!
Interesting Thread on Reddit Between True Believers and the Devil
You can find it here. As always with reddit, pay attention to the dates and times.
Kareem, UCLA and Time Travel
I can’t believe I’ll be done with school in another five weeks. Time really flies by. I recently came across an interview of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Esquire and thought I’d pass it along to readers here. It’s kind of a wimpy interview, actually (as an alumni, I have access to much higher quality interviews with famous Bruins). Abdul-Jabbar lists twenty things he would’ve done differently if he could step into a time machine and become a young man again.
Two of them were interesting, and one of them not so much. First, the two interesting choices:
11. Cook more. After I got divorced I missed home cooked meals and the only person I had to rely on was the guy in the mirror. Plus, I found it impressed women if you could cook a good meal. Once, very shortly after I started cooking for myself, I had a first date with a woman I really wanted to make a good impression on.
And this:
16. Don’t be so quick to judge. It’s human nature to instantly judge others. It goes back to our ancient life-or-death need to decide whether to fight or flee. But in their haste to size others up, people are often wrong—especially a thirty-year-old sports star with hordes of folks coming at him every day. We miss out on knowing some exceptional people by doing that, as I’m sure I did. I think the biggest irony of this advice is that it’s coming from someone who’s black, stratospherically tall, and an athlete: the trifecta of being pre-judged.
These are both things I’ll be working on as I figure out how to live a proper middle class life post-graduation. One thing I can’t help but to disagree with Him (pay attention to capitalization, and bow down) on:
10. Being right is not always the right thing to be. Kareem, my man, learn to step away. You think being honest immunizes you from the consequences of what you say. Remember Paul Simon’s lyrics, “There’s no tenderness beneath your honesty.” So maybe it’s not that important to win an argument, even if you “know” you’re right. Sometimes it’s more important to try a little tenderness.
Nonsense! Every libertarian knows that it’s far more important to be right than to be popular!
Around the Web
- The Dream of Azawad. Azawad is a region in the Sahel that encompasses parts of Mali.
- The Many Faces of Neo-Marxism. A beautiful goodbye to Karl Marx and his system.
- Ten Thoughts on Civil Liberty and the Boston Bombing Aftermath. From a UCLA Law professor.
- Lies in Foreign Policy: Neoconservative Edition. Daniel Larison points out the lies peddled by imperial hawks.
- Lawmakers Exempt Selves, Families and Staffs from ObamaCare. I can’t imagine why…
Around the Web
- Against Seriousness
- When Food Isn’t the Answer to Hunger
- Fiscal Consolidation in Earlier British History
- *Must Read* HAP vs. RR vs. the Pundits: Scoring the Reinhart, Rogoff Dispute
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I’ve been busy.
Notes On Liberty 