Category Archives: political-economy

With no respect intended for John Lennon…

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Imagine….

Imagine waking up one day in an alternative universe. Most things were the same. There was still a congress and an elected President who was the commander in chief and the leader of the free world. Democracy was still praised as the American way.

Oh… but the entire life of the nation was ruled by an economic dictator in a quasi-private banking institution who was appointed to office rather than having to ever be elected by anyone. Imagine one such dictator, once retired, willing to openly admit they spoke nonsense when questioned by Congress, and expressing outrage that an elected leader of the free world would ever dare try to impose his desires on his economic rule.

Yeah, that would be strange. Except you don’t have to imagine anything. No matter how dreamlike it seems, that is actually the system. We live in it.

Modern “Western Civilization” simply makes no sense at all.

J. Gresham Machen on the archaic world

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The real indictment against the modern world is that by the modern world human liberty is being destroyed. At that point I know many modern men could only with difficulty repress a smile. The word liberty has today a very archaic sound; it suggests G.A. Henty, flag waving, the boys of ’76, and the like. Twentieth-century intellectuals, it is thought, have long ago outgrown all such childishness as that. So the modern historians are spelling “liberty,” when they are obliged to use the ridiculous word, in quotation marks: no principle, they are telling us, was involved, for example, in the American Revolution; economic causes alone produced that struggle; and Patrick Henry was engaging in cheap melodrama when he said, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

Here is my source. Machen was the leader of the orthodox party against the liberal Presbyterian Church that was trying so hard to take over Princeton Seminary. The context of his comments was opposing the establishment of a federal Department of Education in 1929. Here are some other things he said in that speech:

Liberty, in present day education, is regarded as entirely out of date; and standardization has taken its place. If, it is said, we allow all sorts of queer private schools and church schools to confuse the minds of youth, what will become of the welfare of the state? How can we have a unified nation without a standardized school?

The bill establishing a Federal Department of Education, despite the powerful lobby working in behalf of it, has not yet become a law, but I fear that these setbacks to the attack upon liberty, unless the underlying temper of the people changes, are but temporary, and that the process of standardization and centralization will go ruthlessly on.

From such a slavery, which is already stalking through the entire earth today, in the particular form of the materialistic paternalism of the modern state, from such a world of unrelieved drabness, we seek escape in the high adventure of the Christian religion. There and there only, we think, is liberty to be found.”

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If McCain wasn’t so hawkish, this would persuade me

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I took out the last sentence since my social theory isn’t Lutheran, but I thought the stuff below was stellar.

I also think that McCain was entirely correct on the immigration issue. Sometimes I don’t understand my fellow conservatives. Aside from immigration laws being government regulations that prevent people from seeking economic prosperity — and when did support for regulations like that become a “conservative” issue? — American is about immigrating to seek a better life. I say we should welcome everyone, provided that they are willing to join in the American project as well. Besides, I can’t help but think that the conservative anti-immigration position will do for the GOP nationally what it did for the California Republican party — move it into a permanent-minority party. McCain is absolutely right on on the immigration issue, for both principled and tactical reasons.

Finally, there’s McCain’s mixup with the religious right in the 2000 election. Whatever. The Bush campaign was playing hardball, and some Christian groups got on board with Bush. McCain got mad, and slapped them on the nose. So don’t come crying to me when you’re trying to beat up on someone and he happens to punch back. Truth be told, I find most religious-right organizations (as opposed to individual Christians who are conservative) mostly to be embarassments to Christianity.

Also, I have to say I’m wondering if I’m being unrealistic about Fred Thompson’s virtues.

Health Care BS

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What an aptly named blog.

Duh, Libertarians oppose murder as an act of aggression and believe it should be stopped by government or by ethical people (since libertarian anarchists don’t believe in government at all–but that would not be Ron Paul’s position).  If a Libertarian believes abortion is murder he is quite likely to oppose it and he should oppose it.

For too many people “reasoning”involves rationalizing whatever sexual utopia they want no matter what.  They don’t even understand people who reason from principles and stick to them.  They can only assume such people have a perverse desire for something bad and are making up reasons to get there. Pure projection.

By the way:

Libertarians for Life

Atheist &  Agnostic ProLife League

ProLife Alliance of Gays and Lesbians

LeftOut: A Haven for Progressive ProLifers

Figuring out that you shouldn’t kill babies isn’t only within the abilities of “conservatives” or any other one religious or political group.  If you want to kill babies you’re going to have to explain your preference without leaning on your politics as your excuse.

The business model and dealing with the deviant customer

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  1. Promise unlimited service.
  2. Expect users to operate within undisclosed limits
  3. Feel free to call those customers who violate your limits bad names and terminate the promised service.

I remember hearing rumors that Netflix was “holding” the movies of users who were returning them too fast. They were expecting the average user to hang on to them longer.

But at least Netflix didn’t call them “hogs” and discontinue their service.

I can’t believe the story actually used the animal reference in the subtitle as if it was an objective claim.

Some AT&T customers use disproportionately high amounts of Internet capacity, “but we figure that’s why they buy the service,” said Michael Coe, a spokesman for the company.

I’m glad my provider talks sense.

The Silicon Valley Insider made a great point:

Comcast’s long-term problem: Internet usage is only going to grow. Media companies are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in streaming video projects like Hulu and Joost, which use a ton of bandwidth. An update to Adobe’s ubiquitous Flash software means that companies like ABC will be able to stream shows like Lost in hi-def to Internet users — which can eat up 4 gigs of bandwidth in a matter of hours. A lot of that video will be distributed over Comcast’s pipes. And the only way for Comcast to differentiate between legitimate file transfers like watching The Office on NBC.com and illegitimate transfers like downloading The Office from BitTorrent would be to monitor the content its subscribers are downloading — a scary concept. This could get nasty.

Hopefully, instead of nastiness, we’ll get objective allowances and the means to know how close we are to our limits. Businesses need to stop putting the word “unlimited” in their advertisements.

TechDirt: Ridley Scott the rioting tailor raging against the sewing machine?

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It strikes me as odd that this could come from the guy who gave us Blade Runner:

Famed director Ridley Scott has apparently stated that watching films on mobile phones and computers is killing cinema. Unfortunately, it seems that he has it backwards. He’s blaming the wrong thing when he says things like: “We try to do films which are in support of cinema, in a large room with good sound and a big picture. But we’re fighting technology.” As we’ve pointed out time and time again, people want to go out to the theater, but they want the experience to be enjoyable. They don’t want to be treated as if they’re criminals. So, the problem isn’t that people can watch movies on gadgets like mobile phones and computers — but that the theater industry has done its best to drive people away from actually wanting to go to the theaters.

Read the whole entry with comments at the TechDirt blog: “Ridley Scott Warns That Gadgets Are Ruining The Movies”

Another issue: this is a “world is flat” sort of triumph. If I had my wishes, every movie I see would be in the theatre. But do the math: I have four children. Watching a movie together takes a lot of money. I can rarely afford this place. So the people who can afford it, go to the theatre, and the rest of us use the falling costs of digital technology to compensate for what we can not afford.

By the way, movies started out cheap. That’s why people all got used to them. In fact, I think they were even more affordable during the Jimmy Carter stagflation era, though I’ve done no research to back that up. Theaters are increasingly out of reach for families with children. So they stay home and make do.

Webb, Halo, Wii, Wolfe, books, and the Thor Power Tool Co.

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Webb went into a funny rant today about Halo 3 and “remember when they used to make enough product instead of hype and hype and hype and then, ‘Sorry, we can only release twelve.  Fight amongst yourselves.'”

This struck me a little more seriously than it should have because I asked about the Wii at BestBuy the other day and was told that they never have them in stock.  Every once in a while they get twelve or so (same number, but that’s how I remember it) and they immediately sell out and then they simply have a display that advertises something they don’t have.

That makes no sense.  Shortages should motivate a company to raise the price, if they can’t increase production cost effectively (and, the way mass production works, it should be possible that great demand would eventually lower the cost because it is cheaper per unit).

So what gives?

Well here’s one possibility.  I have no idea if it is the reason or something like it is or not.  Someone with better resources will have to figure it out.  The bottom line is that if companies are taxed for holding items in warehouses then they have an economic incentive to not release more than they are confident they can sell.

Gene Wolfe in a self-interview in his book Castle of Days, p. 287:

Q: What do power tools have to do with writing?

A.: A lot as it turns out.  The Thor Power Tool Co. used to keep a warehouse full of parts for their old tools.  That way, if someone who owned one of their old tools needed a new part, they could supply it.

Q.: That sounds good.

A. Thor thought so too.  The reason they were able to do it–pay for the warehouse and so on–was that they depreciated the old partson their tax return each year.  In other words, they said each year that the old parts were worth less than they had been the year before, since they would eventually become completely obselete and would have to be scrapped.

Q.: That sounds reasonable.

A.: The IRS didn’t think so.  They said that if Thor wanted to write them off, they had to scrap all of them right away.  Thor fought the case in court and lost.  The IRS then applied the decision to every other kind of business, including book publishing.

A.: Publishers don’t warehouse old parts.

Q.: No, but they warehouse old books, and they had been writing them off in the same way, becaue they would have to be pulped when they stopped selling.  Now they have to pulp them or remainder them, right away.

Like I said, this probably is not a perfect fit.  But something has to be going on.  How can Nintendo afford for a consumer to walk into a store and find a product is unavailable?  Aren’t they worried that consumer might decide to opt for another product?

It doesn’t make sense unless there is some economic incentive not to have too many in stock.