Ever wonder what a libertarian is and what one stands for? This is an excellent new site that is trying to be heavy on these details in history, current events and articles talking about the philosophy and principles. The introductory article on the history of libertarianism is a particularly excellent piece of work. Check it out and report back to me what you are learning. Libertarianism is an amazing philosophy that enables people to be free and grow and learn into the best human beings they can possibly be.
I’d like to know what you all think about this opinion piece on CNN from Penn Jillette. His point is to say “I don’t know” when he really doesn’t know. Not to have shame or doubt one’s self in such a situation, but an honest admission that one does not know. I especially like the parts about the government, charity and force. Please leave some comments.
Click for the article
I intend on playing around with this amazing development from Google referred to as their native client (http://chrome.blogspot.com/2011/08/building-better-web-apps-with-new.html). The intended goal is to allow a C/C++ developer to bring their lower level code into the web sphere for client side HTML5 interaction for better performing and more immersive web experiences.
Nothing less than amazing. A politician that means what he says and does it too. What a concept!
Watch it now.
Posted in News, Political
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Just read a ridiculous article by Matthew Tully of the IndyStar: http://www.indystar.com/article/20110703/NEWS08/107030331/Matthew-Tully-Foreign-made-goods-cheap-they-cost-us-dearly
Here is part of my reply: This article is absolute lunacy. Let’s take Mr. Tully’s argument to an extreme for a moment. Let’s say that every American, and for that matter, every citizen in every nation only purchased products that were made in their countries. What would the result be? Complete and utter poverty. It doesn’t take much to realize this. Sure, larger nations with better natural resources would fair better than others, but not by much. America could not produce everything that the sum total of the world produces and trades. Not only that, but the things that we do make here would cost so much, that even something like a pencil would be a luxury.
Now, not using the extreme example anymore, what is Mr. Tully’s argument? That we just buy a little bit more of products made in America? How much more? How do we know how much? Do we buy a product that is made in America that is clearly inferior to something made in Korea, or China? What if I buy a product made in America and that company’s customer service treats me poorly? Should I not punish them by buying from their foreign competition so that they improve their business or go out of business?
The real subject of this article should be a call for American companies to continue to become more innovative which will create more jobs which will result in more taxes collected (but I think less taxes should be collected and the government should spend less too). Then, and only then, does buying made in America make any sense; ONLY when a product is clearly better and fulfills the desires of the customer as they see fit. If it doesn’t, then you are wasting your time and your money and you are keeping incompetent companies from going out of business and no longer cursing us with inferior products.
I know my blog has been down for quite some time, but no longer…it is back up and running! I have a few more configuration tasks to do to it to bring it back to it’s previous running state, but to you the reader, it is fully restored.
Paul Gregory, of the Principle of Economics textbook fame, takes a look at whether we need a new set of economics theory to properly describe the current odd recession that has ended the “Great Moderation.” A link to the story.
I like the final analysis of what caused the recession:
We already know the immediate cause: the abrupt end of the housing price bubble and the associated collapse of mortgage and security markets worldwide. Some one half of private wealth in the United States was in home equity. The collapse of this wealth would inevitably bring the entire economy down with it. But were these events the result of market excesses or policy blunders? The argument for market excesses rests on the failure of asset markets to properly value risks. The argument for policy failure rests on the deliberate use of public institutions to underwrite high risk mortgages with the aim of making Americans home owners whether they could afford it or not. For a long time, we were warned that public lenders (Fannie and Freddie) were technically insolvent, but few law makers were willing to pay attention, on either side of the aisle. The textbooks of the 1980s introduced moral hazard. Applied to financial markets, moral hazard rears its head when lenders assume that a lender-of-last resort will bail them out. They therefore take risks they otherwise would not have. With moral hazard, it becomes extremely difficult for private markets to value risk because of moral hazard and the fact that the outcome depends on unpredictable government actions and reactions.
Personally, I believe the analysis of policy blunder and moral hazard are spot on. Yes, it still could have been partially an over exuberance on the part of eager investors investing in financial vehicles that didn’t properly capture all of the risk. But the main reason for the recession is U.S. citizens couldn’t keep buying homes for increasingly higher prices forever. This was propped up by the government, and then had moral hazard introduced by Fannie and Freddie being the lenders of last resort. A major problem with that is that they were insolvent! So much for the almighty government being a solid rock to stand on.
From vikingvista on Cafe Hayek:
“‘aggregate demand’ is not a very good simplification for what makes a real economy tick.
The textbook aggregate demand story ignores how people view the future…”
It ignores how people must individually choose amongst trade-offs whose costs can only be revealed by their integration with the decisions of others in the resource network.
Massive government spending changes the appearance of those costs, causing people to make decisions that in the absence of government spending would be too costly and rationally avoided.
The result is the development of a network that cannot sustain itself without government spending. It also cannot be sustained with government spending, since government spending is necessarily limited.
Government spending can only interfere with economic recovery, because the economy it creates, is one dependent upon government spending.”
Right on! This should be so self evident that any politician who proposes stimulus spending is either lying or has never taken any type of economics course before. Anyone else have some thoughts?
The New York Times being shown to be inconsistent as usual in their quest to support more government regulation in every aspect of American society, except for their line of business.
Read about that here at Weblog Bahamas
It’s called Getting Things GNOME!. Go try it out.
