Politics & Current Events Archives
Conservatism and the Regulatory House of Cards
I’ve alluded to the regulatory house of cards before, specifically with regard to net neutrality. The basic idea is one of unintended consequences: starting from a state of freedom, the government sees a problem real or imagined and tries to fix it by fiat. Of course, this perverts incentives and makes for new problems, which [...]China’s Dilemma Revisited
China is on everyone’s minds now, not only because they send us cheap imports, but because Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with this arrangement. The crux of the issue is China’s currency policy, which most of the world believes is set “too low” – effectively making China’s exports cheaper than they would otherwise be in terms of other currencies. The US is not the only one upset either, for the sake of its trade balance…The Stimulus: Beyond “Worked” and “Failed”
$787 billion worth of fiscal stimulus to get the economy back on track, and the best volley Conservatives can lobby is that it didn’t work. With the Obama administration’s widely off-the-mark estimates as to the unemployment rate with or without the stimulus (the actual job losses exceeded the estimates without the stimulus), the debate now [...]“Natural Marriage”
Let us for the sake of argument grant that homosexuality is unnatural in some meaningful way. Guess what else is unnatural? Monogamy. Certainly the proportion of animals in the animal kingdom practicing monogamy is lower than that which practices homosexuality: Neither is unheard of, but both are comparatively rare. And if one can make an appeal to naturalness without reference to animals, then what constitutes naturality?…For Sensible Deregulation: Why We Need Net Neutrality (for now)
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Soviet Union was in trouble. It had been on a protracted economic slide for many years, and showed no sign of lifting. Mikhael Gorbachev, leader at the time, fancied himself a reformer, and went on a spree of deregulation and privatization. But coming from such a regulated environment, the sweeps of deregulation were not – and could not be – total. People were free to do things they were not before, but the perverse incentives still existed. The house of regulatory cards collapsed…Pat Robertson’s Year End Prophetic Review
Pat Robertson, January 2008:
“he said oil would reach $150 a barrel – the price hit $100 on Wednesday – with the dollar continuing to lose value in 2008.”Reality, October 2008:
“Crude has now fallen about 40% since surging to an all-time record $147.27 a barrel on July 11.”…The Auto Crisis and Car Commercials
Surely by now every American is aware of the collapsed credit market and the imploding American auto industry. So what are the automakers telling us to quell our fears?
(WARNING: The sample of commercials is non-representative and based on two nights of watching an hour of TV.)Honda was subtly and soothingly reassuring, with a hypnotically calm voice:
“Rest assured that now, as always, you can still get low APR financing.*”
*for well qualified buyers…Don’t Vote
No, seriously. As wonderful as civic duty is, there’s also civic responsibility. If you plan on voting in November, answer the following questions out loud before reading on:
Who are the two major party candidates?
Who are you voting for this November?
Why?If you could not answer the third question, don’t vote. If your answer for the third question was “I can relate to him” or “the other guy’s eletist”, do not vote…
Why Neither Party Stands for Change
Change is the official buzzword of the 2008 Presidential Election. Everyone likes to throw it around: Obama started the craze with a series of high-minded-sounding but empty slogans, and now the word has even been co-opted by John McCain, seeking to recover his maverick image. But what exactly are we changing from? Partisan politics and [...]George Bush and the Death of American Constantinianism
Or, How God Works Through History to Suppress Bad Theology. The history of the Church over the past few centuries may be surprising to many who consider the world to be in a perpetual state of moral decline. The 18th and 19th Centuries were particularly dark times for Protestantism and Evangelicalism worldwide. Having fully accepted [...]Partisan Media and the Radical Left
Lest you think I’m going to be giving the Democratic base a break while I bite the Republicans, this bit of fun has been going around various left-wing blogs. Liberal bloggers have collectively lambasted Obama for appearing on Fox News without a confrontation and undoing all their work to “delegitimize the network”. Delegitimize the network. [...]Why the Republicans Can’t Keep a Good Candidate
This time I’ll give the answer first and explain it later: Groupthink. Why did Mitt Romney’s campaign fall apart? Because no one believed him when he said he was conservative. Despite having made a living off of rescuing companies from debt and being one of the most economically conservative of the bunch, his socially liberal [...]China’s Dilemma of Economic Sustainability
Note: a deeper analysis has now been written. Please refer to that one instead. Skyrocketing macroeconomy. Massive production glut. Artificially low wages. Déjà Vu? American businesses in the 1920s caught a wave of technological advance. Ford’s assembly line technology was catching on everywhere, and workers were becoming more and more unnecessary as automated machines replaced [...]On Mitt Romney’s Religion Speech
Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone. -Mitt Romney This is shaping up to be one of the most interesting elections in recent memory, with three [...]Ridicule, Scare Tactics, and Piracy on Campus
More than logic, more than emotional appeal and more than fear of punishment, there’s nothing like ridicule to kill an idea. People fear looking stupid in many cases more than they fear consequences – after all, you could go down as a martyr. And where’s the fun in that for the status quo power? It [...]Culture, Consumerism, and American Interests Abroad
Never before in history has global communication in so many media been so accessible. Cultural elements now spread across the world, taking us ever closer to what increasingly appears to be a homogenous global base culture marked by subcultures rather than regional variation. In looking at this trend, one must ask, will this resulting culture [...]Boom! RIAA Sues AllOfMP3.com
Word on the streets is that the RIAA has finally sued the Russian Mediaservices that owns AllOfMP3.com in a New York court for $1.65 trillion. That’s right, a Russian company in a New York court for upwards of Russia’s entire GDP. Considering AllOfMP3 is in complete compliance with Russian copyright law (pay 15% royalties to [...]Universal Sues Myspace: Who didn’t see this one coming?
In a battle between Satan and the Great Harlot, who do you root for? I’ve long said that Myspace is a blight upon the internet. I’ve also said that the record labels are driving us towards societal destruction. But for all the flack that Myspace takes for its chaotic and mind-bendingly vapid communities, it does [...]Microsoft and Panda Diplomacy
China for centuries has been using a tactic called Panda Diplomacy to endear themselves to whichever country they feel the need to. Basically, they loan out pandas (since Chinese law forbids actually giving away pandas to foreigners) for foreign zoos as an act of goodwill. Even the US has received pandas under this policy – [...]Dotcom Bust, Part II
As great as the economizing potential of the internet is, we must be careful not to put our stock (literally and figuratively) in unsustainable or doomed business models. The “dotcom bust” of the late 90s was a mild economic crash caused by entrepreneurs getting excited by the potential of this new medium of the internet [...]