| Thursday, January
31, 2008
Considerable mail about
the generation gap in the military.
Discussion in Mail.
============
The Fed is pumping more money out in the hopes of
restarting the housing boom and bringing it down a bit less abruptly. In so
doing they tax fixed income and retirement savings.
Clearly the government hates people who save money, and
will do anything it can to tax those economic traitors. Or perhaps it's
simple greed?
Not, I hasten to add, that I quite know what to do about
the economic disasters we have engineered for ourselves. The country is
going to have to take an economic dose of salts, and clear out the system.
We know this. The market is still the most efficient
allocation system for putting resources to work. It satisfies what people
want. On the other hand, the market is amoral, and tends to the worst: left
to itself it will sell anything, from its grand daughter's virtue to human
flesh for stew. The unregulated market does not produce a country that many
will die to defend. Few ever charged up a hill to preserve a standard of
living, and the only greater fool is one who dies to preserve someone else's
standard of living. For a man to love his country, his country ought to be
lovely, and the market, unrestrained, can't do that; it will sell anything
that anyone, no matter how perverted, will buy.
We also know that the closest thing we have to a true
middle class in this country are the home owners. Sure: there are some who
have incomes reasonably independent of the government and economic
conditions, but most Americans are only a short step away from utter
dependence on government. They don't have savings enough to live for a few
months, much less for a year or more. We can't let the market wipe out all
those who were enticed into what they thought were investments in housing.
Yet we don't want to protect all those who took advantage of the
government's interference in the market to make silly loans in hopes of
shuffling the risk of onto someone else before everyone caught wise. And for
that matter, the financial institutions that didn't bother to look at the
quality of the "investment grade" paper they were buying from the money
lenders don't have much of a break coming -- not in an ethical world,
anyway.
So we have to climb down, carefully, from the precipice we
dashed up to; and that's going to take a lot more than rhetoric or food
stamps or demagoguery. It's going to take economic skills of a high order,
and I don't see one single candidate from any party who has the faintest
idea of the magnitude of the problem, much less a solution.
Libertarianism is a vector, not a position. In general, in
a Republic, that government that governs best governs least. That's not to
say it shouldn't govern at all. Pure unrestrained capitalism ends up with
the winner being the one who can hire the most efficient mercenaries --
which is to say, those who can set up a state under a different name.
Economic recovery is going to take economic freedom; but pure economic
freedom has the seeds of its own destruction. Political power isn't just
economics. Men do not fight and die for economic power - although there are
plenty who will send men to die for economic power.
(An aside to think about: The pure theory of politics: A
tells B to do something, and B does it. Why? De Jouvenal wrote on the
subject, but his books are largely unavailable. He also said that a nation
of sheep would soon beget a government of wolves.)
I am not sure where I am going with these ramblings, and
it's time to get dressed. I'll think on it. My point is that we are in a
mess in these United States, and it's going to take considerable care to get
out of it without disrupting the whole fabric of society. And now it's time
for our walk.
===================
Subject: TSA Blog?
Under the heading of, you've got to be kidding me!
http://www.tsa.gov/blog/
Stan Field
To which I can only say, they are trying.
============
And
now we learn that ice is nice, and will suffice?
=================
Imogene goes live: I have installed 4 GB of Kingston
memory (KTA-MB667K2/4G) in Imogene, the new 1Mac 20, and turned her on.
Setup will take a while, because I am also bringing Ariadne, the 15"
PowerBook back up and she is taking a while to install her updates. There's
a stage in a new iMac setup that asks if you want to bring anything over for
a previous Mac; that happens by Firewire.
I had forgotten just how elegant Macs are.
Imogene is the name of Rick Galloway's daughter in
Mamelukes, a book I'll get back to work on this week. We're getting past a
spate of medical appointments. Of course they may decide to poison me (on
the theory that they can poison whatever is going wrong with me and it will
kill that faster than it kills me) and that may make it a bit hard to work,
but I'll get that book done.
Stay tuned. Details will mostly be in the column, but
we'll have stories here. And if you haven't
subscribed, this would be a good time. I have just been reminded that a
number of works, including A Step Farther Out, and the California 6th Grade
Reader, and much other stuff is available to
subscribers in the closed section of
Chaos Manor Reviews.
I have long written that technology, having made it
possible for nearly anyone to make and distribute professional quality sound
recordings, is doing the same for video.
Now there's proof. This is astonishing.
=====================
The predictable end of civilization in England:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
main.jhtml;jsessionid=
E5LIDEGNOLAQLQFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?
xml=/news/2008/01/31/nschools731.xml
Grammar schools should be 'phased out'
By Sarah Radford and agencies Last Updated:
3:04pm GMT 31/01/2008
Grammar schools should be scrapped to make
the education system fairer for poor pupils, a Government-backed report
has said.
a.. One in 10 secondary schools face
closure a.. Muslim schools to conduct own inspections a.. Outrage over
rural school closures The Department for Children study concluded that
faith schools and academic selection were contributing to a divide
between rich and poor.
The report criticised specialist schools
that select pupils for an aptitude in subjects such as music Under its
recommendations, a lottery system would be more widely used to allocate
school places.
England's 164 remaining grammar schools
would be 'phased out', while faith schools could be forced to take a
number of children from non-religious backgrounds.
The report, conducted by academics at
Sheffield Hallam University and the National Centre for Social Research,
claims that faith and grammar schools are socially exclusive, taking a
larger proportion of children from wealthier homes. The study said:
"Fair and just policies on school admissions are an important mark of
commitment by governments to equality of opportunity."
It suggested one option would be to phase
out selective schools. Another option would be to "require the
admissions authorities for grammar schools to take effective steps to
ensure equal social representation amongst those who qualify on the
11-plus test."
And why not?
At least Italian Fascism honored its scientists. Fermi was
ennobled by the King on il Duce's recommendation.
And of course they don't want equality of opportunity.
They don't even want equality. They want an equal pool of submissive
subjects obedient to the master bureaucrats. 'Twas ever thus. Have a nice
century.
==================
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