SayUncle is getting all PSH over some gun nonsense, while missing the larger point: Pizza Hut’s pizza sucks, so their corporate policies are pretty much irrelevant. Of course, it’s possible he lives in Backwater, USA (His The City), and Pizza Hut may be his only choice (besides maybe Domino’s, which would be no choice at all, really…). But still, let’s get some perspective here. You don’t stop doing business with Pizza Hut because you don’t like their corporate policies. You stop doing business with Pizza Hut because they have shitty pizza.
April 24th, 2008
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Bloggin, Libertarian Problem Solving |
11 comments
Today is tax day, and that means that we’re bound to be “treated” to all sorts of anti-tax libertarian blog posts today about how horrible it is that the government rapes us, steals our money at gunpoint, takes “half” our money, etc., etc., whine whine whine, bitch bitch bitch. Now the part that these taxophobes don’t ever want to talk about is that while everyone hates paying taxes, people generally like most of the things that taxes pay for (unpopular wars aside). But I’ll let someone else write about that aspect. What I want to talk about, instead, is how horribly the anti-tax crowd exaggerates how much we’re actually taxed.
To counter that, without revealing too many personal details, I’m going to post a summary of my tax situation, and challenge the anti-tax folks to do the same. No specific numbers, just the generalities that I’m listing here.
To that end, for the tax year 2007: (Below the fold)
April 15th, 2008
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Politics, Economics, Libertarian Problem Solving |
29 comments
If you think predatory pricing and/or price gouging are bad, then you’re a dirty communist. Just thought you might like to know.
When you stop businesses from taking advantage of people and/or ripping them off, you’re destroying the American Way, comrade!
March 20th, 2008
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Economics, Libertarian Problem Solving |
21 comments
I was unable to watch this without imagining Uncle blustering angrily. That didn’t stop me from laughing my ass off, however:
Meanwhile, in other guns in bars news. Of course, if more people in the bar had been armed, I’m sure the situation would have been much more orderly, and fewer people would have gotten hurt. I mean, it’s just common sense.
March 14th, 2008
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Libertarian Problem Solving, Weekend Flame Bait, Humor |
10 comments
Waaah! Most people don’t have as much of Teh Crazy as I do!
Seriously, I wonder if it ever occurs to these folks that not everyone has the same bizarre definition of “freedom” that they do. At the risk of sounding like the “America, love it or leave it” folks, I’m not aware that anyone has taken away their right to leave if they think it’s so bad and so beyond hope…
February 26th, 2008
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Politics, Culture, Libertarian Problem Solving |
15 comments
Over at Tennesseefree (and also at SayUncle), #9 has his talking points all mixed up:
England is fast becoming the Orwellian nightmare that George Orwell prayed would never happen. It has now passed France as the one of the worst places for free people to live. In fact France is quickly changing and stepping away from the social democracy of the French past.
In England there are cameras everywhere and never a cop in sight. Citizens cannot own a gun or a knife for personal protection but criminals can. The insanity of social democracy has created criminal zones where the law abiding don’t stand a chance.
Now shop keepers are using sonic devices to drive away teenagers they don’t want as patrons.
There are people in America that believe this is the model for our country. They must be fought each and every time they try to take our liberties from us.
Hate to break it to him, but the “sonic devices” that Number 9 is complaining about have been sold, bought, and propagated exclusively through the free market. The “nanny state” government types are the ones who are trying to ban the devices. Basically, it is us (the modern liberals) who argue that businesses shouldn’t be able to get away with crap like this, and the government should step in to prevent that sort of nonsense. Libertarians are the ones who argue that the government takes away freedoms rather than protecting them, and that we should “let the market decide” and not worry about such nannyish regulation. Number 9, a self-identified libertarian type, is actually condemning something the market did, and siding with the government. The libertarian argument is that the business owners should have the right to drive off anyone they want with any sort of device they want.
I suspect that when he re-reads the story, and realizes what he’s done, he’ll change sides.
February 13th, 2008
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Libertarian Problem Solving |
25 comments
Glen Dean longs for a time when segregation was the norm, women weren’t allowed to vote, and minorities had few rights. He doesn’t exactly say as much, mind you, but he does make the risible argument, in a time when habeas corpus has been suspended and when the government can spy on US citizens without warrants or oversight, that the passage of the sixteenth amendment (the income tax) is “the greatest threat to individual liberty this nation has ever experienced.” Further, in comments, he argues that Americans had more liberty before 1913 than they enjoy today — a statement I don’t think is true even if you limit the discussion to white males.
Glen is of the somewhat curious opinion that government action of any kind necessarily restricts individual liberty, and I just don’t see how any reasonable person could believe that’s true. Best I can figure, he’s buying the tired, old “taxation is theft” argument that many [L/l]ibertarians like to parrot.
It is my opinion, however, that notwithstanding recent abuses of the justice system, Americans have more freedom now than they’ve ever had. And I’m not just talking about freedom from government oppression. I’m also talking about economic freedom, and personal freedom.
Think about it: If you could choose to live now or in 1912 (or even in, say, 1960), what would you choose? I’d choose now. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
February 5th, 2008
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Politics, Libertarian Problem Solving |
19 comments
Who slipped some sanity-ogenic drug into Joe’s drink? Not saying I fully endorse the idea, but it sounds unusually reasonable, coming from that source. 
December 20th, 2007
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Politics, Libertarian Problem Solving |
9 comments
Who would ever have thought that bottom-dwelling conservative hack shop Regnery Publishing was sleazily ripping off its own sleazy authors? Not those authors, apparently. Now the moral beacons who brought us Swiftboating and various hack jobs attacking Bill Clinton and praising George Bush have suddenly discovered that the press that was low enough to publish their bilge was also not above stealing their royalties. Forgive me while I laugh my goddam ass off . . .
In a suit filed in United States District Court in Washington yesterday, the authors Jerome R. Corsi [founder of the Swift Boat Vets], Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter state that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.” . . .
“They’ve structured their business essentially as a scam and are defrauding their writers,” Mr. Miniter said in an interview, “causing a tremendous rift inside the conservative community.” . . .
The press negotiated a standard advance fee/royalty package with the authors, but added a clause providing lower royalty percentages for books sold at discount. It then began selling as much as half their books at cost to its own subsidiaries, to use as incentive gifts or to re-sell at a profit. Because the books were sold at or just above cost, the authors got virtually no royalties on them, but the company got to keep the profits from the resale by its own subsidiaries. The authors got double-screwed because the giveaways don’t count in the standard industry calculations of sales volume, thus leaving them at a disadvantage when they later tried to negotiate deals with other publishers.
Now, that’s just straightforward fraud. But what’s delicious about it - aside from the fact that the authors so righteously deserved it - is that these writers seem so nonplussed that an explicitly conservative business operation would rip off the people who provide their saleable goods! What’s that? A privately-owned right-wing business is underpaying its workers and chiseling its contracted partners out of greed? There’s something about fuck-you capitalism that actually works to the disadvantage of the people under its thumb? That’s . . . amazing. Somebody should do something about this! Why didn’t anyone warn them?!
It really just sums up right-wing hackery in a nutshell. These tools, having made their careers on the fringes of the self-congratulation society that is right-wing “scholarship”, really believed that they’d be taken care of. They figured that the cushy deals and uncritical flattery that rain down on AEI think-tank lapdogs like Dinesh D’Souza would be guaranteed to them also, simply because they were equally willing to say what their overlords wanted to hear. They forgot that Regnery was a profit-making enterprise - and quite possibly they’d never been on the supply end of the profit equation before. Their dazed sense of injury is just priceless:
Mr. Miniter said. “It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance.” He added: “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”
Dude: because they can.
What a maroon. He actually believed they wouldn’t screw him if they got a chance. He really seems to think that capitalist companies don’t act that way - that there’s something unreal or cartoonish about it when they do. He stumbles to the obvious conclusion but still can’t bring himself to believe it: the company is making money off its workers and paying them as little as possible, just like critics of capitalism have always said they do. Somehow, he manages to call that a cartoon while simultaneously complaining that it’s really happening to him. He is obviously stunned that his preferred fairytale, in which companies gladly provide wealth and comforts to anyone who can build a better mousetrap for them, doesn’t actually work, but he shows no sign of abandoning that fairytale in favor of the descriptive narrative of capitalism that he himself provided, and which he himself states is actually true in this case, but he still implicitly insists is false. Well, he’s one step closer to seeing the light. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.
November 7th, 2007
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General, Politics, Legal Issues, Economics, Culture, Libertarian Problem Solving, News & Current Events, How Capitalism Will Ruin You |
7 comments
As if we needed any more evidence that the housing bubble is bursting, today we get this report:
The number of foreclosure filings reported in the U.S. last month more than doubled versus August 2006 and jumped 36 percent from July, a trend that signals many homeowners are increasingly unable to make timely payments on their mortgages or sell their homes amid a national housing slump.
A total of 243,947 foreclosure filings were reported in August, up 115 percent from 113,300 in the same month a year ago, Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac Inc. said Tuesday.
There were 179,599 foreclosure filings reported in July.
…snip…
The national foreclosure rate last month was one filing for every 510 households, the company said.
[Bold mine.]
I’ve blogged about this before, and it’s only getting worse. But what I wonder is, does this really surprise anyone? Further, is it really a good idea for the Fed to cut interest rates at this time, thereby encouraging even more borrowing in an economy that’s already too heavily loaded with debt? (Yes, I know that the prime interest rate doesn’t directly impact consumer interest rates, but it does indirectly, and a great deal of consumer debt is tied to it.)
In the absence of strict regulation, this is what laissez-faire economics gets you: irresponsible borrowers and predatory lenders potentially taking the entire economy down, all in the interests of short-term profits. There will doubtless be Libertarians who object that this is simply one of the risks of free-market capitalism, and that the borrowers and lenders should have known the job was dangerous when they took it. But with the whole economy potentially at risk, I fail to see how that’s supposed to be any comfort. In fact, I’m beginning to believe that this sort of Libertarianism is utterly incapable of concerning itself with anything other than short-term profit; anything beyond next quarter is irrelevant. Is that really good for the long-term health of our economy and our society? I don’t think so.
I stand by my previous remarks. A sizable chunk of the lending industry is just shy of a criminal enterprise, making a few billion quick bucks at the low, low cost of ruined lives and a ruined economy. But hey, that’s what “freedom” is all about, right?
September 18th, 2007
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Politics, Economics, Libertarian Problem Solving |
16 comments
For some reason, I always think of SayUncle when I hear this song, although I suppose Kevin Baker would be more appropriate.
(Ignore the video, which has nothing to do with the song — just minimize the window and listen to the song…)
June 7th, 2007
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I do too have a life, Libertarian Problem Solving, Weekend Flame Bait |
3 comments
In another thread, SayUncle says:
If you beat someone up, you beat them up. I don’t think motivation should matter in law. Someone was beaten up and there is a penalty for it.
Following that through to its logical conclusion, we shouldn’t have any special category for “terrorism.” If you set off a bomb in a busy market, you should only be charged for the actual people you killed and injured, and for the property damage. Simply charge the market bomber with murder, assault, and vandalism, and be done with it. That you intended to intimidate others not directly harmed, and/or to cause panic, is wholly irrelevant. Your motivation doesn’t matter.
Attempted murder is out the window, too: It shouldn’t matter that you intended to kill more people — your motivation doesn’t matter. Hell, if you shoot at somebody and miss them, the only crime you’ve committed is possibly violating firearms laws that Uncle would rather repeal anyway. What with criminals not caring about laws, and so forth.
May 2nd, 2007
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Politics, Libertarian Problem Solving, Weekend Flame Bait |
34 comments
The “Tax Foundation” wankers have issued their annual announcement, naming today “Tax Freedom Day” - the day that represents that percentage of the calendar working year corresponding to the national average percentage of personal income paid out in local, state, and federal taxes combined. Obviously, your pay isn’t sent directly to the government until that day - payroll taxes are taken out in increments throughout the year - but they like to characterize this as the day you can finally “pay for things other than government”. Naturally, they think paying for government is a bad thing: their press release is full of references to how large that expense is, and is headlined “America Celebrates Tax Freeedom Day®” (yes, with a trademark symbol, no less).
So, tomorrow represents the day the Tax Foundation, and their ilk, can begin celebrating “Abandon the Public Schools Day®”, “Libraries Are For Pussies Day®”, “I Believe What Drug Companies Tell Me Day®”, “Who Needs Pasteurized Milk, Anyway? Day®”, and “Pre-Natal Care = Communism: You Can’t Coddle ‘Em Forever Day®”. Thank god we can finally stop acting as a civilized community, hoard our resources solely for our personal indulgence, retreat to our gated communities and watch the weak fall by the wayside. When the sun dawns tomorrow on “National I Got Mine, Jack, Screw You Day®”, a new age of freedom will have begun.
April 30th, 2007
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General, Politics, Economics, Culture, Libertarian Problem Solving, Media, News & Current Events |
8 comments
Actually from [2001, originally published on] 2003-06-25, Berkeley Breathed:
I’d be a Libertarian, if they weren’t all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Ha!
April 5th, 2007
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Bloggin, Libertarian Problem Solving |
no comments
SayUncle sheds the last of his with this screed:
Bredesen is exploring toll roads to pay for TDOT. This is despite TN’s surplus. Let me be the first to say fuck that. Toll roads are inconvenient, delay traffic, require me to keep change/method of payment in my car, and are generally a pain in the ass. Here’s an idea: use the surplus or cut spending.
Dude, toll roads are a use tax, otherwise known as the only kind of tax libertarians don’t despise. Opposition to a use tax — especially because such a tax would be inconvenient — is about as un-libertarian as one can get. I mean, to think, someone who has sometimes self-identified as libertarian would suggest that pay-for-use is bad, and that a less representative tax is better, simply because of inconvenience? This makes no sense at all to me.
For the record, I oppose toll roads, for some of the same reasons Uncle does. But since I don’t self-identify as libertarian, and don’t reflexively oppose every tax proposal ever irrespective of merit, as he does, I’m allowed to.
As a side note, I always love how the anti-tax folks throw out “cut spending” as an easy solution, as if it were really as simple as that. Tell you what, have a look at the 2007-2008 budget, and tell me where you’re going to cut spending, and how you’re going to do it in a way that can (a) win approval, and (b) not piss off the electorate at large. Last I heard, we live in a representative democracy, not a monarchy. You don’t get to just cut entire programs by fiat. You have to gain majority approval in the legislature, get the agreement of the executive branch, and, if you want to keep your job, not violate the will of the people in the process.
So before you go on and on with the “cut spending” crap, stop and think for more than two seconds and tell us what spending you’re going to cut, and why the public will be better off (or at least not worse off) after the cut. Until then, saying “we should cut spending” is rather like saying “we should be doing better in Iraq” without giving any inkling as to how.
March 30th, 2007
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Politics, Libertarian Problem Solving, Weekend Flame Bait |
5 comments
As some here may know, I teach part-time in one of the great public university systems in the US. Lately I’ve been teaching in their adult night-school program - a BA-granting program aimed at the needs of full-time working adults who didn’t have a chance to go to college when they were younger. The enrollment is majority female and, this being a working-class New York City population, non-white by a huge majority. Being older, the students bring a lot more life experience and practical wisdom to the class with them, so I expect more savvy from them than from clueless 18-year-olds. But that’s not to say they can’t surprise you.
March 23rd, 2007
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General, Politics, Legal Issues, School, Culture, Libertarian Problem Solving, Privacy, Education, Race |
33 comments
UPDATE by tgirsch: It’s not just the left that thinks that Zumbo got the shaft. Here’s hoping the net minions don’t decide to ruin Faulk for failing to toe the line.
It hasn’t made a major ripple in the sane world, but in the insular and paranoid kingdom of twitchy gun freaks there’s been a shock-and-awe campaign against one of the best-known pro-gun figures around, because he deviated from jackbooted-thugs-head-shots-head-shots orthodoxy in a blog post (copied here).
February 24th, 2007
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General, Politics, Culture, Libertarian Problem Solving, Media, News & Current Events |
76 comments
Or just the ones with radio shows? Today I was riding in a car where the driver had conservative talk radio playing. The host (not sure who it was, but I got the impression it might be somebody filling in for Limbaugh) proceeded to spin a yarn in an attempt to explain why social welfare programs were bad. In the yarn, a 4.0 GPA student is asked to sacrifice one point so that she and her 2.0 GPA friend will both have a 3.0 GPA.
That has to be one of the most idiotic analogies I’ve ever heard. And they gave this idiot a radio show. Apparently, the “invisible hand of the market” likes to reward dumbasses…
UPDATE: Since it’s clearly not just limited to the ones with radio shows, you can find a good debunking here. The banner graphics seem to be messed up, so you’ll need to scroll down a bit.
Also, note to Uncle: Calling BS on obvious BS is not the same thing as criticizing an action plan without suggesting an alternative course of action.
February 19th, 2007
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Politics, Libertarian Problem Solving, Media |
53 comments
Like Kevin T. Keith before you, you’ve just had a comment promoted to a front-page post. (And if you follow in KTK’s footsteps, soon you’ll be a regular front-page blogger, sporadically posting profanity-laced rants about how Republicans suck ass. But I digress).
In the comments for this post, in response to my question of what happens when the market doesn’t provide, commenter Sailorcurt made the following claim:
According to the economists that I read (Friedman, Sowell, Williams et al.) the only time that the market doesn’t provide is when a) there is no demand for the product or service or b) when artificial constraints in the form of governmental regulation or illegal activity interfere with the normal functioning of the market.
Commenter Ted wastes no time smacking this down as the patently absurd claim that it is:
I am not aware of any serious economist who would agree with that statement. A partial list of circumstances that prevent “the market” from providing:
- markets that afford providers continuing decreases in marginal costs (ie natural monopolies) result in a far from optimal steady state
- markets that have very high initial costs can remain unexploited unless society foots the initial bill
- markets that rely on accessible but limited natural resources (petroleum for example) do not reflect the true cost of said resources, resulting in a distorted supply curve
- markets that are dominated by low probability, high impact futures, such as pandemic vaccine manufacturing.
- markets where social costs (example: pollution) are not reflected in supply curves
- markets characterized by high fixed costs and negligible marginal costs (for example airlines) are highly unstable and inefficient
- markets where aggregate social benefits (example: a well educated populace) are not reflected in demand curve
- markets that are at odds with the security of society (example: selling arms to enemies of the state)
I could go on at length. I am a strong proponent of a free market, but I understand that free markets are not perfect and in certain instances prevention, aid, or regulation are desirable.
Bravo, Ted. I couldn’t have put it better. And it bears repeating that this is only a partial list. If you set aside the lasseiz-faire Kool-Aid for a few moments, you can easily think of more.
January 18th, 2007
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Politics, Economics, Libertarian Problem Solving |
7 comments
I’m worried. I partly agree with Charles Murray about something, which makes me fear I’m becoming secretly stupid or racist. But, sadly, I have to admit he not only has a point, today, but it’s one I’ve long held myself. Murray, however, can’t help being Murray, even when he’s right.
Murray (author of the infamous and widely debunked The Bell Curve - the 1980s apologium for IQ-essentialist racism and classism) is in the midst of a three-day binge of yet more elitist claptrap about IQ and education. He has been given a platform for this by the Wall Street Journal, in their self-assigned role as completely shameless toady to the far right. Yesterday, he argued that primary education reform is misguided because IQ forms an unbreachable ceiling for the performance of large parts of the population - in doing so, casually dismissing the notion of different types of skill or competence, baldly re-asserting the wildly contoversial notion of IQ as a single measurable entity (”g“), and completely ignoring the question whether, even if there is a limit to performance, the expected standards for primary education are above or below that limit, and thus revealing himself to have remained the noisome tool he long has been.
Today, he gets going on college-level education, arguing both that many people are not suited for college educations (and thus that colleges distort and water-down their offerings to cater to unsuited students), and that those people, and society generally, would be better off placing less emphasis on college and re-valorizing vocational and technical training. Ignoring his tendency to attribute everything to “IQ”, it’s easy enough to observe that many high school graduates are not suited, by ability or temperament, to college (want to observe it? - try teaching a college class - you’ll observe it), though that does not have to be the result of a single, illusory, mental quality. And in light of that fairly obvious, and at any rate perfectly expected, fact, I’m inclined to agree with his other main points as well. From my experiences in higher education - on both sides of the chalk - I have long had similar beliefs.
January 17th, 2007
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General, School, Economics, Culture, Libertarian Problem Solving, Education |
3 comments
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