5. At Tom Palmer’s urging, I created a speech, or at least a speech opening, around the theme that “Libertarianism is the application of science and reason to the study of politics and public policy.” That is, libertarians deal in reality, not magic. We know that government doesn’t have magical powers to ignore the laws of economics and human nature.
4. Inspired by Robert Fulghum’s bestseller All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, I like to tell people that you learn the essence of libertarianism — which is also the essence of civilization — in kindergarten:
Don’t hit other people.
Don’t take their stuff.
Keep your promises.
I never fail to be amused by the pretension of the Left that they’re the “reality-based community.”
At least they didn’t wreck the launch platform this time. But it’s not helpful for coming out of bankruptcy. I wonder if this is another symptom of the problems that the Russians have been having (yeah, I know that Zenit is Ukrainian, but as Marcia Smith notes, Sea Launch is mostly owned by Energia RSC)? Speaking of which, if Congress was really worried about safety (not to mention non-proliferation), they’d be accelerating commercial crew, and getting us off our dependency on the Russians ASAP.
Recently, many jurisdictions have implemented bans or imposed taxes upon plastic grocery bags on environmental grounds. San Francisco County was the first major US jurisdiction to enact such a regulation, implementing a ban in 2007. There is evidence, however, that reusable grocery bags, a common substitute for plastic bags, contain potentially harmful bacteria. We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find that ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increase by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar increase.
I’m never surprised when environmentalist policies kill people, because many of them hate people, but in this case, it probably is an unintended consequence. Because they never think these things through. Manhattan Beach passed one of these idiot bans recently, but at least they can still use paper bags. Of course, it didn’t affect Trader Joe’s at all. And I usually shop in Redondo, where Albertson’s still offers plastic.
And yes, I know that the problem is mitigated by washing the canvas bags each time. How many people want to do that (plus having to remember to take them)?
It will be interesting to see how the JOBS Act is implemented. It could be an opportunity for legitimate space startups, but there will be a lot of charlatans out there, too.
I’m wondering if rather than being tried and found wanting, Keynesianism hasn’t been found impossible and left untried. Whether the amount of stimulus needed to jolt the economy back to trend isn’t simply too large to pass political muster. It’s hard to see a situation short of total war where that kind of money could be authorized or spent in the requisite period of time.
That’s why Krugman wants the space-alien invasion. Works, but only in theory, is how Marxism works, too.
It isn’t hard to see why nobody is clamoring to take a job that offers low pay and lots of regulations and will make everyone in the country hate you.
But it’s been clear from the beginning that this is the kind of thing you get with a massive, centralized health care “fix” like Obamacare: 15 unhappy people in a room making enormously important but impossible to predict decisions affecting a broad and diverse industry (not to mention the lives and health of millions). It’s hard to imagine a centralized approach getting all the nuances of health care right—and we certainly haven’t stumbled onto the miracle cure here.
Techno-enthusiast Al’s discussion is interesting, if occasionally heavy-handed in its erudition. With so many facts on display, errors inevitably creep in: Bronze wasn’t chosen over copper in ancient times because copper is too brittle (it isn’t brittle at all) but because bronze tools could hold an edge under hard use, as copper tools couldn’t. Even so, Mr. Gore’s fans will find the book a useful introduction to the future, if not to the past. Yes, he does go on about climate change at some length, but that is hardly news. There is much, much more to the book than a rehash of the global-warming debate.
But then Savonarola Al intervenes, his fondness for high-toned scolding coloring every topic. It’s a pretty monochromatic color. After reading Savonarola Al’s sermons, one might be excused for thinking that all of the evils in the world come from corporations. There is a lot about what Mr. Gore calls “the domineering crimes of the robber barons” and the evils of capitalism, but the actual “crimes” that Mr. Gore mentions, chiefly lobbying efforts that thwart regulation, don’t seem all that bad in comparison with the things that governments are capable of doing. In much of the Third World—think Zimbabwe or Iran—people have far more to fear from the despotic regimes that misrule them than they do from private enterprise. And even in the free world, governments have a coercive power that no corporation can rival. Hence the need for lobbyists as a check on wealth-destroying intrusions into markets and abridgments of commercial freedom.
Want to get money out of politics? Get politics out of money.
available for pre-purchase that looks very interesting.