Quote of the Day

LeGuin identifies all capitalism as "growth capitalism," and is concerned that, like cancer, it requires endless growth to survive. By her definition, she's right. I'd point out that government efforts to regulate it, to channel it, have resulted in many of the deleterious effects she lays at its door: corporations are actively discouraged from looking much past quarters, or single years at best -- "What's good for General Motors is good for the county" once carried the implicit assumption that GM was in it for the long haul, century after century, in the kind of way that we now call "sustainable." It no longer does, and has not for quite some time. Other regulations encourage rent-seeking, regulatory capture and the use of regulations to stymie new entrants and thwart competitors. And vast defense budgets ensure many corporations have a vested interest in war. This does not strike me as a wise long-term strategy.

A mess like that, is that "capitalism?" Karl Marx said it was -- but he was defining an enemy. When I go to a hamfest, a farmer's market, an antique mall, a gun show or the Feast Of The Hunter's Moon, what is that selling of things you've got plenty of for tokens that will let you buy what you need and want, if not capitalism? And does it not manage to achieve an equitable -- or at least mutually-acceptable -- distribution of goods and services? To limit "capitalism" to the goons of Wall Street, to a game best played by those with money to gamble that doesn't risk their physical survival, is to ignore all those regular people, getting by selling loose cigarettes for a penny profit each, selling excess honey from their backyard hive to buy Christmas presents (or, like my Mom, simply giving the honey as gifts -- how she missed her hive when she and Dad moved to a subdivision that was shocked, shocked at the notion of a tiny home apiary, and forced her to rehome it) and a jillion small businesses and minor exchanges.

via Roberta X.

Rationers Vs. Producers

Daniel Greenfield talks of two different types of societies, the Production society and the Rationing society. It's worth reading in full, as are all of Greenfield's essays. You follow him, right?

We have become a rationing society. Our industries and our people are literally starving in the midst of plenty. Farmers are kept from farming, factories are kept from producing and businessmen are kept from creating new companies and jobs. This is done in the name of a variety of moral arguments, ranging from caring for the less fortunate to saving the planet. But rhetoric is only the lubricant of power. The real goal of power is always power. Consolidating production allows for total control through the moral argument of rationing, whether through resource redistribution or cap and trade.

In a production society, the role of government is to expand the territories of exploitation and to protect those territories. In a rationing society, the role of government is to control the available quantities of production with a view to distributing them fairly. Naturally, the rationers, as always, get the best rations. In a production society, government is a means of protecting everyone's ability to produce. In a rationing society, government prevents the bigger from grabbing the rations of the smaller and protects everyone from grabbing all the rations at once and starving to death.

The sort of society we have is fit for passengers adrift at sea on a lifeboat parceling out their last crackers. It is an emergency society for the lost and the starving. And perversely we are starving amidst plenty.

The rationing society discourages people from farming and encourages them to peer in each other's mouths to see who is eating more than his fair share. In the rationing society everyone is certain that they are not getting their fair share and eager to sign on to initiatives to get their group's fair share. In a rationing society everyone is an informer because everyone's livelihood depends on informing on others.

That should give you a good taste of Greenfield's thesis. Now go and read the rest.

Why Are Bankers Killing Themselves?

And why are they doing it with nail guns, among other methods?

They must know something we don't, and that worries me.

Quote of the Day

"You may not get any more revenue, you may not get any more economic growth. But you can say, ‘I stuck it to the rich people.’”

From the man who, if the GOP had any sense, they'd nominate for President in 2016: Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.

It'll Sound More Effective...

...if you add the words you pussy to that statement:

"Stop blaming my brother for the lousy economy, you pussy."

Except Me

That's the two words missing from the headline to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's latest screed, "Nobody Understands Debt."

The Nobel-winning economist clues us in to the solution to getting out of debt: spend more!

Where's the Greatest Income Disparity?

In the blue states. So get your own house in order before telling others to fix theirs, hippies.

h/t Knuckledraggin' My Life Away.

Can't Sell Your House? Light a Candle.

No, not a votive offering to St. Jude, the Patron Saint of Lost Causes, but instead The Scent That Sells.

Cooley wanted to give sellers a simple tool that can save them from losing as much as a quarter their home's value.

He wants homes that smell inviting - no yesterday's fish, no dog hair, no lingering tobacco smoke.

To create that atmosphere Cooley, in conjunction with the Old Wilmington Candle Co., created a candle that cleanses the air without leaving a telltale aroma.

He calls the candle "The Scent That Sells."

"Five years ago there was not much of a need for this," Cooley said. "Now, we have to have solutions for every house problem."

The candles go for $26 apiece, which is a bit dear for a candle, but if it helps sell your home in this godawful market, I guess it's money well spent, isn't it?

He's So Far Left...

...that, given the chance and the power, President Mao Zedong Barack Obama would probably launch his own Cultural Revolution to ensure that the wealthy are sufficiently punished.

You Keep On Using That Word.

I do not think it means what you think it means.

Employment in the U.S. unexpectedly stagnated in August and the jobless rate held at 9.1 percent as American employers became less confident in the strength of the recovery.

Many bloggers and pundits on the Right have pointed out how often economic bad news is described as "unexpectedly" so since Barack Obama became President. Glenn Reynolds even collected dozens of examples, if memory serves. Must be nice having 90% of the media in your corner.



h/t Jammie Wearing Fool.

Damn Those ATM's Taking Jobs Americans Won't Do

According to President Obama, anyway.

Might as well include self-service gasoline pumps, and drive-through car washes, and grocery store self-scanners, and self-service elevators...

Walter Russell Meade: Obama Doesn't Resemble Carter...

...more like Herbert Hoover.

Like Obama, Hoover was the child of a broken home with an unconventional background. He was far more widely traveled than most Americans in his day, and his time overseas made him a globalist in his thinking in many ways. His wife (Lou Henry Hoover) was unusually well educated and assertive — at a time when few women went to college, she graduated from coeducational Stanford with a degree in geology. Hoover was an unconventional candidate who came into office on a tidal wave of support. Hoover, Secretary of Commerce during the Roaring Twenties, had never held elected office before winning the presidency. His campaign went deep into enemy territory, winning over solidly Democratic states in what was still the deep blue South including (like Obama) Florida, Virginia and North Carolina. Hoover was the great progressive hope of his day — he had supported Teddy Roosevelt’s 1912 Bull Moose campaign and was seen as much more forward looking and progressive than the party machine. He ran on the most diverse presidential ticket until Barack Obama’s own election in 2008; Hoover’s running mate, Kaw nation member Charles Curtis, was the first Native American and the first American with significant non-European ancestry to serve as Vice President of the United States. Hoover continued to burnish his diversity credentials in the White House; he was the first president since Theodore Roosevelt to invite an African American to a White House dinner and he wanted progress on Native American issues to be a hallmark of his administration. Hoover was also deeply concerned about the health of the middle class and the condition of the poor. He was an early backer of the long term, low interest mortgage that became the cornerstone of middle class finance, and he came into office hoping that prosperity would eliminate poverty in the United States.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

Sobering Words From Walter Russell Meade

This isn’t the first time the American Dream has died. The old dream — your own farm rather than your own home — once dominated American culture, politics and family life as much as the family home ever did. The slow and painful death of that dream was one of the country’s core preoccupations in the first half of the twentieth century. The death of the new dream is likely to be a big deal as well.

Read the whole thing, as they say. And while you're there, bookmark Meade, he's one of our more profound thinkers.

Quote of the Day

"You can't put Osama's blood in your gas tank." - - Rush Limbaugh, 5/10/2011

Now He's A Punch Line

"Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Paul Krugman."



(Skip forward to 1:20 to hear the laughter)

h/t Jammie Wearing Fool

Just Get Rid of the Gas-Guzzler, Ya Dumb Redneck

President Obama finally answers a question about high gasoline prices.

The party of the working class.

h/t Alan at Snarkybytes.

update: Looks like the Associated Press is trying to make that embarrassing passage disappear.

A Self-Sufficient Lifestyle - - No Money Necessary

Mark Boyle lives a suburban lifestyle, with all of his needs met by scrounging.

Do I think he'll continue this existence for the rest of his life? Unlikely; not even Thoreau did that.

Incredulity Test of the Day

In his op-ed for The New York Times today, Paul Krugman says that Barack Obama's first year has been unsuccessful because he didn't blame the previous adminstration for his economic woes.

Damn, Krugman, even Linda Lovelace couldn't swallow a whopper that large.

Free Yachts!

The old joke goes that a boat is a hole in the water into which the owner pours money. Looks like the money has run out, because boat owners are abandoning their boats as too costly to keep.

Help Yourself.

"We'll Probably See Spam Lines Instead of Soup Lines."

Hard times for the world's working people means good times for Hormel, the maker of SPAM.

You know, I'm 47 now and I've never even tried the stuff. Maybe I should correct that as an experiment.