Thoughts

An Archive of sketches developing ideas.

Why Not Change Our Tax Structure To Punish Extra-Market Coercion?

Paul Krugman writes: Soros, Obama, And Me What do we have in common? We’re all small business owners, according to Mitch McConnell. Obama and I make our business income off

A Method For Moderating Dialogs

“The Cult Of Offensive Moderation” Note: I am in the process of creating a plugin for political moderation of debates, without censorship. There is far too much censorship on debate

The Child Of Democracy And Secularism Is Stillborn

(Posted in the comments section of the NYT) In response to the comments section of one of Paul Krugman’s articles: British Decline I felt that all the people that were

Anarchists and Elitism?

From The Liberty Defense League, an exceptionally intelligent posting on the weaknesses of anarchism. Some libertarian friends call for anarchy to prevail. While such a state of affairs may be

Privatization From Obama?

While the devil is in the details, and I have less than zero confidence in this president, he proposed a structural change in the way we ‘purchase’ infrastructure projects, that

Don’t Tell the Creative Department, but Software Can Produce Ads, Too

Software That Produces Ads? September 4th, 2010  The NYT “BETC Euro RSCG, part of the Euro RSCG Worldwide division of Havas, has developed software that can produce elementary advertisements. The

A Political Movement Pretending To Be A Religion Replaces A Religion Pretending To Be A Political Movement

From The Left’s Unlikely Alliance with Islam By Robert Eugene Simmons Jr. Most fair-minded Americans have no problem with people who wish to practice their religion. In addition, most fair-minded

An Analysis Of Freedom #2: The Economy Of Freedom

A Little History For Context The term ‘Freedom’, and its near relation ‘Liberty’, have a long heritage.   The babylonian words “ama-gi”, meaning “Return To The Mother”, written in cuneiform,

A Life Lesson – A Change In Approach – And A Thank You

Every day I read around twenty academic papers, a book, and something on the order of 300 blog postings on economics and politics, and a little philosophy. I have my

“Extend And Pretend”

I lost the source of this quote, but thought it captured the sentiment correctly: The government has been playing “extend-and-pretend” based entirely on the idea that pent up demand in

Review: Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo

“Why Aid Is Not Working And How There Is A Better Way For Africa.” We know: Aid is bad. It creates corruption. It harms the economy. It makes nice happy

Review: The Secret Of The West

I try to keep track of the ‘Grand Theories’. And I came across this one last week. I can’t find the book anywhere except online. I read what I could.

The Reality Of Freedom #1: Freedom Requires Coercion

Whenever something is scarce,  some concept of property (the exclusive use of a resource)  is necessary for the development of incentives, coordination, and production — even if the difference between

China And Defining Freedom – Easterly VS National Review

In William Easterly’s post “Why can’t leading conservative magazine understand freedom?” he refers to a National Review article “China Teaches US Lessons About Economic Freedom“. I replied in the comments:

The BiPolarity Of Class

In response to The Tea Party is a Marxist movement on Half Sigma, I created this diagram. The BiPolarity Of Social Class, And The Status Competition Between Them. I”ve posted

Hayek, Kling, Austrians And Providing The Libertarian Solution

From Arnold Kling, By way of the WSJ, By Peter Boettke: Mr. Hayek rightly warned of the dangers of central planning, Mr. Boettke says, but “he didn’t give a prescription

I’ll Counter Paul’s Prediction With One Of My Own

Paul writes: Predictions I Wish Had Been Wrong Looking for some other stuff, I found this post from October 2008 in which I predicted a level of right-wing craziness about

The Difference Between The Liberal And Conservative Mind?

From Education And Its Discontents About three years ago, a scientific study was undertaken to examine some of the differences between the conservative and the liberal mind. One of the

Egalitarianism (Insurance) vs. Status Seeking (Access To Mates)

Egalitarianism is an attempt to either: Egalitarianism is the passive and low-cost alternative to producing innovation, excellence and performing actions in real time.

Paul Krugman Says “No” To Responses To Critics. I Explain The Consequences

Would I Please Respond? I get a lot of comments along the lines of “Would you please respond to the criticism of your work in ______?” Um, no. Do you