Category Archives: Business
The Stakes On Tuesday
…here are six of them:
anyone who thinks it doesn’t really matter whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney wins next Tuesday is, to put it bluntly, delusional.
The court is very important, but here’s one that they don’t mention. If Obama is impeached and removed over Benghazi (and anyone who doesn’t think this is a possibility is also delusional), we’ll have a President Biden.
[Update a couple minutes later]
We are now in a surreal situation in which the administration, its congressional protectors, and the compliant media are all in a no-comment holding pattern until after the election, when the truth will come out, in the same way that Watergate could no longer be suppressed after the 1972 election. It is only a matter of time when those who told initial untruths leak information about who told them to promulgate such unbelievable narratives. And we still do not know exactly why the ambassador was in Benghazi, with whom he was meeting, what exactly was the U.S. doing or not doing in postbellum Libya, and why did Stevens so fear for the safety of his people in a country declared a model of U.S. and allied intervention.
The secretary of state is in a bind. Susan Rice was groomed to replace her, as she prepared to successfully bow out after the reelection of Barack Obama, ostensibly to ready herself for Clinton 3.0. Now she dares not leave, given that in her absence her directorship at State will be scapegoated by the administration and the Obama-fed media. So she stays, as Susan Rice recedes into the background after being used — and subsequently humiliated — in advancing a scripted administration falsehood about the video. Amid this chaos, there will be some officials, who warned of the danger, who knew Libya was not safe, who wanted to send help to our trapped contingent, who did not think the attack came from mere protesters angry over a video, who were enraged by the cover-up, who resented the blame-gaming — and who will ultimately not stay quiet.
If they’re true patriots, they’ll start talking before Tuesday.
Falling On Principle
Bill Whittle makes a plea to people who plan vote third party.
One other consideration is the number of SCOTUS justices who will turn 80 in the next four years.
Disasters Create Bigger Government
Space And Politics
As some may remember, I talked to Glenn Reynolds last week when he was in LA. Here’s the interview.
The Nanny State
The problem with nanny state governance isn’t just that it’s intrusive. It isn’t just that it stifles business with over-regulation, and it isn’t just that it empowers busybodies and costs money. It’s that it distracts government from the really big jobs that it ought to be doing.
Mayor Bloomberg has done an admirable job under great pressure as the city reels from Sandy’s attack. But an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure. The city needed flood protection for its subways and electricity grid—and it didn’t get it. If the Mayor had spent less time and less of his political capital focusing on minutiae, this storm could have played out very differently.
And the problem with big federal government is that it spends too many resources that aren’t its business, and it resultingly neglects the things that are.
Crazy Barry’s
This is great. I’d like to see ad buys for it in Ohio this weekend.
Welcome To New York
Economic Fallacies Of Disasters
As is always the case, the economically ignorant trot out the broken window fallacy. And you can bet that there will also be idiotic complaints about “price gouging” in the coming days. I dealt with that one years ago.
[Update a while later]
Amazingly, Matt Yglesias gets it:
…more price gouging would greatly improve inventory management. There is a large class of goods—flashlights, snow shovels, sand bags—for which demand is highly irregular. Maintaining large inventories of these items is, on most days, a costly misuse of storage space. If retailers can earn windfall profits when demand for them spikes, that creates a situation in which it makes financial sense to keep them on hand. Trying to curtail price gouging does the reverse.
None of which is to say that people should be greedy all the time. Disasters really are times when people pull together and we see large and small acts of kindness that rightly inspire us. But consider that declining to raise prices in the face of spiking demand and inelastic supply is a very odd form of charity: It doesn’t create any new resources, just allocates them arbitrarily to whoever shows up first. If you feel bad about the idea of earning windfall profits off the misfortunes of others, then donate the money to charity. If that seems too impersonal, give your employees a bonus for showing up under difficult circumstances. But storm or no storm, the best practice is to try to set prices that balance supply with demand. State governments shouldn’t be trying to stop you.
Amen.
Joss Whedon’s Worst Production
You have it, right here.
You have to wonder why he would want to alienate so much of his fan base. I guess that the notion doesn’t occur to people in the Hollywood cocoon.