March 8th, 2009 by drs
I’ve been using TweetDeck to search for mentions of “Galt” in all the posts on Twitter. Coming up with some interesting stuff such as this post on the Motly Moose.
What, haven’t you heard? It’s the new thing. Thanks to Obama‘s crushing tax policies, America is now punishing awesomeness and success! What the hell are they thinking?? This is Econ 101 people, punish success and people will stop being successful. More specifically, I, and dozens of my brethren will stop being successful, on purpose, to prove how foolish these policies are!
See, this visionary, Ayn Rand, wrote a really prophetic book, where the brilliant, creative awesome overclass just got tired of carrying the “looters and moochers” (technical terms folks, shrug it off). These wunderkinds move away to a sort of uber-creative Shangri-La, and ROFL lustily while the leaderless, idea-strapped society crumbles behind them.
Check it out: turns out that some completely nonpartisan think tank, the Tax Foundation, figured out a way to tell who the moochers were, and summarized it in this brilliant chart:
Holy Grover Norquist, Batman! In a nutshell, anyone above about 60k is “carrying” anyone below 60k.
Read more at Motley Moose – gettin’ my Galt on
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March 7th, 2009 by drs
I heard about the use of this tone, that only teenagers are supposed to be able to hear, several months ago. The story told of shop owners that were playing the tone outside the entrance to their businesses to keep teenagers from loitering and bothering their paying customers. The theory is that the tone is very annoying to teens, but most older people can’t hear it so it should not bother them at all.
I was very surprised that I was able to hear this tone. Maybe I am doing something right!
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February 11th, 2009 by drs
In his book “Capitalism and Freedom” (1962) Milton Friedman (1912-2006) advocated minimizing the role of government in a free market as a means of creating political and social freedom.
An excerpt from an interview with Phil Donahue in 1979.
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February 1st, 2009 by drs
Our school system at work!
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November 26th, 2008 by drs
The true story of Thanksgiving from the book by William Bradford: History of Plymouth Plantation
, c. 1650.
From the post at Ludwig von Mises Institute
Each year at this time school children all over America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio, TV, and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all very colorful and fascinating.
It is also very deceiving. This official story is nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving’s real meaning.
The official story has the pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620-21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The Pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them.
The official story then has the Pilgrims living more or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first Thanksgiving. Other early colonies also have hard times at first, but they soon prosper and adopt the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called America.
The problem with this official story is that the harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.
In his ‘History of Plymouth Plantation,’ the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years, because they refused to work in the fields. They preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was riddled with “corruption,” and with “confusion and discontent.” The crops were small because “much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable.”
In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, “all had their hungry bellies filled,” but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first “Thanksgiving” was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.
But in subsequent years something changes. The harvest of 1623 was different. Suddenly, “instead of famine now God gave them plenty,” Bradford wrote, “and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God.” Thereafter, he wrote, “any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.” In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.
What happened?
After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, “they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop.” They began to question their form of economic organization.
This had required that “all profits & benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means” were to be placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, “all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock.” A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take out only what he needed.
This “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that “young men that are most able and fit for labor and service” complained about being forced to “spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children.” Also, “the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak.” So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.
To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines.
Read more about the other original settlements in the article…
Thus the real reason for Thanksgiving, deleted from the official story, is: Socialism does not work; the one and only source of abundance is free markets, and we thank God we live in a country where we can have them.
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November 9th, 2008 by drs
Here is a very interesting talk by Evan Sayet (the very first Creative Consultant on the highly respected “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher” ) on why modern Liberals (“Progressives”) are wrong on every issue.
Now I believe in what you say
Is the undisputed truth
But I have to have things my own way
To keep me in my youth
- from Goodbye Stranger -Supertramp
There was a song that came out at about this time called “Goodbye Stranger” by a group called Super tramp–because, you know, being a “tramp” is super! In it, this guy and this girl shack up together for a couple weeks, and apparently things are pretty wonderful until she says something like, “Honey, we’ve run out of food. Why don’t you go to the supermarket, pick up some things, and then we can do this for another week or two?” He says, “I should go shopping? No, no, that’s not my paradise. I’m leaving.” And as he’s walking out the door, he says to her, “Now, I believe that what you say is the undisputed truth, but I have to see things my own way just to keep me in my youth.”
That is so much the mindset of the Modern Liberals. It’s not that they are not aware of all the things that we’re aware of; it’s that they need to reject them in order to remain in this five-year-old’s utopia that they’ve been told is the only hope for mankind: a mindless indiscriminateness.
So, if The New York Times and CNN and News week and the rest of the leftist media outlets are right and there is no objective difference between the terrorist and the freedom fighter, why is it that you and I teach our children that George Washington is a hero and Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein are vil lains? You and I know why because we think.
George Washington risked his personal fortune to personally lead his troops into battle: battles fought nobly against other uniformed warriors for the purpose of creating the freest nation in the history of the world. Pretty noble, pretty heroic stuff. Yasser Arafat, on the other hand, stole his people’s money, sent 14-year-olds out to fight his battles: battles fought against kids and women and civilians in pizza parlors and Passover ceremonies, all for the purpose of maintaining his corrupt dictatorship. Pretty villainous stuff.
But to the folks at The New York Times, there is no objective difference between the terrorist and the freedom fighter. So why do we teach our children that George Washington is a hero? The only possible explanation is that he is a white Christian of European descent. If there is no difference between the behaviors of the freedom fighters and the terrorists, then why do we teach that Yasser Arafat and Sadd am Hussein are villains? There can be no other rea son than they are darker-skinned Muslims of Middle Eastern birth.
View the entire text here
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November 8th, 2008 by drs
This is a very interesting discussion on the differences between peoples interests and their visions. Visions are the assumptions by which people run their lives. “Constrained” or “unconstrained” describes the visions which motivate our political candidates. Which visions motivate our Presidential candidates?
Video transcript
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November 6th, 2008 by drs
John Stossel make a great point in his column Who Will Run America?
Some of you think you went to the polls yesterday to pick someone to run America.
“Who do you want to have run this country?” Chris Matthews asked repeatedly on MSNBC.
“One of these guys is going to be running the country,” said Michael Goodwin of the New York Daily News.
Really? Run the country?
“That has to be a joke — or a misunderstanding,” said George Mason University economist Walter Williams on my recent TV special, “John Stossel’s Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics”.
Williams pointed out that the White House doesn’t govern what happens in your house. And a president certainly cannot control the economy. We, all of us, run the country.
“Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good,” Williams says.
The failure to understand this is at the root of many of our problems.
If Williams is right, a lot of Obama‘s supporters are going to be very disappointed when their expectations don’t come true.
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April 7th, 2008 by admin
In my last post I talked about Twitter.com and why I was enjoying it. This post is about an article (The Lessons I’m Leaving Behind) and a video that I would have completely missed, except for the fact that one of the people I follow on Twitter mentioned it and supplied a link.
Randy Pausch agreed to give his “last lecture” (these are events where the speaker will talk on what matters most to them) at Carnegie Melon University where he was a professor in the computer science department. Just a few weeks later, he learned he was dying from pancreatic cancer. Instead of backing out of the lecture he knew that by speaking he would be leaving a part of himself for his three very young children to discover sometime in the future.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. It certainly made me think about my life and what is really important. Have fun!
You can read the original article: The Lessons I’m Leaving Behind or watch the video below.
Randy Pausch’s bullets points for life:
Always Have Fun
Dream Big
Ask For What You Want
Dare To Take a Risk
Look for the Best In Everybody
Make Time for What Matters
Let Kids Be Themselves
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