Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Here’s my challenge: Think of three or four big areas in which capitalism has let us down. Shouldn’t be too hard, huh? Big health maintenance organizations (HMOs), big oil companies, etc.
Got ’em in your head yet? Okay, here’s my comment on that.
These industries don’t operate on “capitalism.” At least, not to the extent that they can start screwing people over and failing to do what they’re supposed to do, and you can point at ’em and say “Aha! See? There goes a prime example of the FAILURE of CAPITALISM!” No, these industries are hybrids between capitalism and something else. They are cooperatives in which we say, essentially…oh okay, let’s start exchanging goods and services, value for value…caveat emptor. But then let’s mix in a bunch of other bovine fecal matter with that. Let’s add in a regulating board, maybe one that sets prices at a certain level. And then let’s protect the “little guy” by guaranteeing some minimal provision, at the expense of someone else unwilling. Let’s have some people who don’t get any real work done, make rules about the people who actually do all the work.
The common thread is that capitalism isn’t exercised to such an extent that supply-and-demand equations determine prices. There are ceilings and floors and know-nothing pencil-pushers getting in the way.
That’s when the problems start.
And I think you’ll see as you go over that list in your head, that those industries have something else in common with each other. They are held aloft, and discussed a great deal, and inspected at high levels, as glorious, glowing, glittering examples of how capitalism ain’t gettin’er done.
Ultimately, we like to continually debate the best way of injecting a little bit of Marxism into specimens that are already swollen and bloated with it…because we already injected it a generation or two previously…and now we’re going to do it some more.
You know why that is? Part of it is that people who don’t like capitalism, aren’t inclined to admit it’s various successes. And the other part of it is that if you want one of those jobs wherein you don’t do any work, and you get to tell the people who do the real work how to do it — the first skill you need to refine is how to blame your screw-ups on other people. You get skilled at that, you can have that kind of a job. And if you don’t, you can’t — you have to do real work.
Meanwhile, the rest of us keep heading down the road that got us lost in the first place. Ladies, I’d invite you to think how you’d tolerate this if your husband used this technique to get “where we’re going” again when you know damn good and well he’s lost.
Just a good thought to keep in mind this year, in the advent of all the speechifying I think we all know we’re about to see in large, truckload-sized doses.
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[…] of capitalism. Actually, it was an observation I had made before: Think of this as an extension of D’JEver Notice? I, in which I made the point that each one of the industries that have “let us down,” if you take […]
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- House of Eratosthenes | 12/09/2011 @ 06:27