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...
Two weeks ago I had observed about industries that seem to be illustrating for us the most treacherous, devastating and pure failures of capitalism:
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.
And, as if some divine omnipotent kismet had said to itself, Hey, that Morgan Freeberg guy is spouting a whole bunch of gibberish, let’s make some stuff happen so his gibberish makes more sense —
Well, first of all, before I get to that. Neal Boortz brought in some news this morning about some neophyte in economic science, one Congressman Representative Paul Kanjorski from Pennsylvania, who happens to have a whole lot of authority in deciding what our laws are going to be — brandishing a brand new bill that would…that would…uh…
• H.R. 5800 would tax industries’ windfall profits.
• The bill would set up a Reasonable Profits Board to determine when these companies’ profits are in excess, and then tax them on those windfall profits.
• As oil and gas companies’ windfall profits increase, so would the tax rate for those companies.
• Kanjorski said his legislation will encourage oil companies to lower prices to prevent them from receiving higher tax rates.
“Reasonable Profits Board.” Let me guess, the name of this bill is the Anti Dog-Eat-Dog rule?
The Divine Kismet remains dissatisfied with my delusional ravings, and has decided more events on the plane of reality are needed to make them sensible. And so we have Congresswoman Maxine Waters, which our parent site Webloggin has — well, our parent site, along with Rush Limbaugh, has embarrassed the bejeezus out of her by letting people see what she’s doing lately.
This liberal would be all about socializing, er, ah would be about basically taking over and the government running all of your companies.
That’s just great, Maxine! I can’t wait to have my gas purchases work exactly the same way as all my Social Security investments. Believe me…that quote does not do it justice. You have to watch the clip. Two clicks of your mouse — what in the hell are you waiting for?
My original observation stands: Where is the purely capitalistic free-trade industry, or nearly-pure capitalistic industry, that’s doing such a swell job of showing us what a slipshod ramshackle system capitalism is? I’m looking at a growing list here of confiscatory, predatory, inefficient “capitalist” industries that are running on about an ounce and a half of capitalism and maybe a gallon or two of that good ol’ Marxist stuff…from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs…plus a stranglehold of regulations, and a crapload of compliance officers, lawyers, paper-pushers and bureaucrats. Wherever the compliance officers and bureaucrats and regulating statues and boards are missing…it’s something we don’t discuss very often, because there’s no reason to. You have some kind of ooze that you need on a regular basis, you run out of the ooze, you rummage around in your couch cushions for some nickels and quarters, you go down to the store and you buy some more of the ooze. Plain and simple.
When you get frustrated, because you have to pay a lot more for the ooze this week than you did last week — it’s usually because of taxes, regulations, or some unanticipated shortage that never would have happened, but for some type of “price cap” or “ceiling.”
Where, anywhere, are we screwing ourselves over by electively exchanging goods and services, for like amounts of goods and services? And so, I shall come up with a name for this observation of mine: To really mess things up, you need a politician. And some big ol’ stacks of rules that have nothing to do with capitalism at all.
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These people are completely insane!
- pdwalker | 05/23/2008 @ 21:29