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...
Hat tip to Ed Darrell. And, good for him, since I think it is very important that this information get around. Not so much the distribution itself, but how people look at it.
Of course, there’s a problem or two with it, which I’ll just leave unmentioned.
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There’s too much wealth in Metro DC and too little everywhere else.
- Rich Fader | 03/04/2013 @ 14:33Here’s what I’m taking away from this video: the claims of the Occupy folks – that there’s a 1% and a 99% – is correct.
Please tell me I’m wrong.
- Nate | 03/04/2013 @ 21:13It’s almost as if wealth were distributed in our system by some method other than what strikes the bulk of citizens as fair in the abstract. Instead, we use the primitive system of letting each person spend his resources as he sees fit, and let the chips fall where they may.
I thought the bit at the end about whether a CEO “works more than 380 times harder” than the average employee was amazing — as if wages had something to do with intensity of effort rather than the value of the work in the eyes of the people paying the compensation. But there are, unfortunately, a lot of workers who imagine that their compensation should track their sense of self-worth rather than the value they can offer someone else.
The whole thing would hold my interest more securely if I didn’t happen to know that the system that produces these supposedly shocking results is also the system that does the most toward eliminating absolute poverty. Alleviating starvation interests me. Alleviating envy does not. The narrator is entirely too glib about dismissing the effects of incentive on wealth creation.
- Texan99 | 03/04/2013 @ 21:58That whole “380 times harder” bit stems from their naive Marxism — something is only as valuable as the labor that went into it. Which feeds nicely into their white liberal guilt — if I, who never break a sweat except at the gym, live this nice cushy middle class lifestyle, then how come actual laborers don’t? Somebody must be getting screwed. By a Republican, no doubt.
It’s the unexamined assumption that launched a thousand nonprofits.
Which is another reason I enjoy our little “science” discussions over here, frankly — the labor theory of value is about the most easily disproven postulate in the history of ever, but science’s BFFs are all lefties. More fun than a barrel of retarded monkeys.
- Severian | 03/05/2013 @ 07:29Truly, the labor theory of value is one of the most preposterous piles of balderdash I’ve ever run into.
- Texan99 | 03/05/2013 @ 08:57Severian: …if I, who never break a sweat except at the gym, live this nice cushy middle class lifestyle, then how come actual laborers don’t? Somebody must be getting screwed.
Funny, isn’t it? Risking capital, using one’s brain, writing and marketing and researching and developing and all of that stuff, isn’t “real labor” until it’s a leftist who’s doing it for a non-profit or NGO or community organization. If you’re doing it for a business – and especially if many of your dollars are going to paying your workforce – then somehow YOU’RE exploiting THEM.
As you notice, a lot of the people who think this way are in fact in business for themselves, and would bristle at the accusation that they weren’t doing much of anything compared to their lawn service, au pair (only Republicans hire “nannies”), dog walkers, et als. In fact, they seem quite rational and in touch with the realities of their own lives; the moment they talk policy, however, they don’t apply the lesson and advocate everything that causes and exacerbates those problems. They then wax rhapsodic about the struggling common worker, whose lot they have made far worse.
There are a half-dozen contradictions in play at once. The one that is of primary concern here is, those who make this observation that capital exploits labor, only make it of their neighbors, and never of themselves. Merely observing is an absolution – they’ve raised awareness, I suppose – and giving a little money to one of these busybody outfits is just gravy, an expiation in their silly shamanistic Virtue Cult. It “makes a difference” or somesuch, primarily by employing an otherwise-unemployable young adult misfit with a sham degree in Nonsense Studies. As a private charity running solely on private contributions, I can easily approve; it’s a model I’d like to be followed much more strictly, in fact, if we can ever get back the tax dollars that would fuel such a model for our own charitable causes.
- nightfly | 03/05/2013 @ 11:06Don’t go pointing fingers at the Republicans. There are plenty of Democrats with their fingers in that 1%, not to mention people who will cheerfully contribute to either party who can make sure the wealth keeps pouring in.
The documentary ‘Inside Job’ documented how this wealth moves uphill. And government helped make it happen.
Then there’s this article: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-08/guest-post-inequality-and-decline-labor
- hcrawford | 03/14/2013 @ 16:31