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Them Poor Ole Bosses

By on June 22, 2009 6

pointy-haired bossAccording to Trevor Bothwell:

Barack Obama enthusiastically supports punishing the most productive members of society in order to put capital to less efficient uses. Put more simply, he wants to take money from the “rich” and give it to the “poor.”

I’m no fan of Obama’s tax plan, but what on earth justifies the assumption that the richest members of society are the most productive, or that their uses of capital are the most efficient?

No doubt that would tend to be true in a freed market, but in a system like the one we live under – a system of government-granted privilege to the corporate elite – it seems extraordinarily unlikely to be true; and indeed the evidence is pretty overwhelmingly to the contrary.

Maybe someone should buy Bothwell a copy of Kevin’s book?

Minuteman at the Door of Thought

By on June 21, 2009 6

border fenceApparently Vin Suprynowicz is one of these guys who deletes comments from his blog as soon as he realises he’s losing the argument. But you can read the unexpurgated version of his debate with Charles over immigration rights here.

Reviewing the Encyclopedia, Part 2

By on June 19, 2009 4

Check out Martin Wooster’s review of the Cato Encyclopedia.

Incidentally, I can’t agree with Wooster’s claim that “the leading thinkers among the Progressives… were generally free of racial prejudice.” Perhaps the three names he cites were; I don’t know. But racism played a large role in a great deal of Progressive thought (Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson are obvious examples). Wooster’s contrast between racism and eugenics is also puzzling, given how deeply pervaded eugenics was by racist ideas (and vice versa).

In Triumph Through Persepolis

By on June 19, 2009 9

Sheldon makes some good points about the u.s. and Iran here. It would be interesting to know how much involvement the u.s. already has in what’s going on there. The Iranian government says that foreign influences are involved – but you’d expect it to say that. The relevant foreign influences deny that they’re involved, but you’d expect them to say that too. The u.s. government certainly has an incentive to intervene covertly – though they’re also so incompetent and clueless that they actually might not have.

That Twitter delayed its downtime until nighttime in Iran in order to avoid interfering with coordination among the protesters is great, but the fact that the u.s. govt. asked them for the delay makes me wonder what else the u.s. govt. is doing? That the u.s. govt. could simply have created this situation out of whole cloth as the Iranian govt. would have us believe is ludicrous; but to what extent did the u.s. actually promote this situation and to what extent are they simply trying to exploit an independently arising situation?

The protests also seem to be coinciding with a power struggle within the Iranian leadership. (I mean the actual leadership, not the presidency.) So the same question can be posed there: to what extent did dissident factions within the ruling council actually promote this situation and to what extent are they simply trying to exploit an independently arising situation?

Ignore This Test

By on June 18, 2009 6

At the moment I can’t add comments. I’m testing to see whether I can post.

UPDATE: Problem fixed! Post away ….

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