Being a founder of a startup here in silicon valley, I can comment on Spengler's essay. In the EDA business (Electronic Design Automation) everyone expects to get bought by one of the large EDA companies. No one expects to go IPO. Why? All of those wonderful laws the democrats passed after the fake energy crisis. Once you pass the small business threshold and enter big business, the cost of doing business goes up prohibitively. Further, the extra burdens placed on IPO's in the last 10 years, make it much harder to go public. The net result is we all (if we are lucky) join the collective. We get paid for our stock or get new company stock, stay the minimum required time and leave. Those of us with the energy, do it all over again. The unintended consequence is we build bigger and fewer large companies. Just what the democrats like. As Amity Shlaes pointed out in "The Forgotten Man", bigger companies act more like the government and are easier to manipulate. Resistance is futile."
The Spengler column: http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/11/07/if-you-believe-in-staples-clap-your-hands/
the big problem right now is that we need 100 Facebook IPO's a year right now just to make good on the recession and we are not going to get them.
Posted by: J Carlton at Mon Feb 4 22:29:32 2013 (i0RQw)
3
J Carlton. Thank you for that comment and the links! You very succinctly conveyed what I was trying to.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Feb 6 15:42:08 2013 (vp6an)
4
Your welcome. Ever since I was "restructured" out of a job, I've had a fair amount of time to catch up on reading stuff like this. It beats running around and looking at all the "for rent" signs.
Posted by: J Carlton at Wed Feb 6 16:04:00 2013 (i0RQw)
Some Quick Thoughts on Recent Events
Evil exists.
No writ of law or regulation will banish narcissism and hatred from mans heart.
It cares not one whit whether you acknowledge it's blackness or you make up politically correct excuses for it.
Evil will always find a way to arm itself in some manner, and it will gravitate to those places where no one else is able to do so. For evil is not impressive, it is generally cowardly, venal and narcissistic.
Mass shootings take place in schools, movie theaters and workplaces in part because these are places where no-one is allowed to carry a weapon and options for escape are limited. The lessons from this are obvious, but they are not the lessons being espoused by those who want a nation of compliant subjects and not citizens.
No, the maniac in Colorado shot up the theater because he was a
pathetic weakling unloved by women and incapable of satisfying them and
so retreated into a twisted babydick world of power fantasy.
Same thing with this guy.
I'm going to go against my political team, here-- although
conservatives often say "Label evil as what it is, Evil, and leave
therapy and psychology out of it," I'm going to say No, not in these instances. Because Evil (notice the capital letter E) is powerful in these sad losers' imaginations, and they want to be called the Big Scary Man, the Shadow That Menaces At Midnight.
For an impotent, weak, ineffectual man, that is an attractive fantasy.
What they do not want and could not abide is an accurate assessment
of their psychology, their physical stature and shortcomings, their
ability to succeed in work or school, their loser history with women,
and so on.
Yes. Don't encourage the worms that might follow him in search of some affirmation of their value via infamy. This dickless wonder should not be a source of dread but beneath our contempt.
The Wonders of a Modern Education
I've been in and around colleges and universities off and on for 20 years. While this is certainly amongst the more crazy lecturers I've seen, I can say that yes, things are indeed getting this bad. This is especially true regards China/ Mao et al.
This is not below the fold because it's history.
Note the applause...
OK, actually it's the evil opposite of history but hey...
This is closely related. It's deeply troubling and fairly accurate.
In my limited experience, it tends to be almost exclusively older professors (a rapidly dwindling demographic), or some of those from abroad that occasionally buck this trend, and they do so at their peril.
UPDATE: For those who did not look at the 3 minute video, it's a professor adamantly denying that Joe Stalin killed anybody.
The big problem with the Democratic government over the past four years has been that they haven't owned or even properly addressed any of the serious underlying problems they've been facing. Everything has been laid at the door of the previous administration, with the tacit assumption that now that the Republicans were out of power, the problems would be solved by fiat.
How to approach this over the next four years (as a conservative or libertarian) is tricky. Getting liberals to admit that they have a problem and need to find a solution (really, many problems, and many solutions) is essential, but when people are invested in something, it becomes very difficult to get them to admit they made a mistake. They will often back up their mistake with increasingly irrational responses rather than admit that the original decision was wrong.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wed Nov 7 06:38:37 2012 (PiXy!)
2
Bricky, you make some very good points, but you're too optomistic. I and a number of people said the same thing regarding the social conservatives four years ago -- they were poison to our cause. We tried to make a (third-party) go of it then, but failed due to lack of money, leadership, focus, and everything else needed to succeed. Oh, and the minor matter of a schism -- by the social conservatives. We never recovered, and I can tell you -- the liberals can't tell the them from the Tea Parties, and nobody can tell either from the "false flag" operations mounted by the GOP.
In four years, it won't be "difficult"; it will be impossible. The EU will fall into chaos by then, and I expect Europe to start falling under the sway of fascists in fact if not name, with war to follow. Greece is already heading there. We'll be suffering from a broken economy, China will be in a succession crises and looking for a diversion, and Mexico is a mess.
What to do now? We can't "close the deal" when half the country thinks the "deal" is being taken care of the other half's productivity. The voters will (continue to) flock to whomever promises them food and security.
I'm too old and decrepit to tilt at windmills any more. My plan is to hunker down in a ringside seat with a drink and try to survive watching the fall of Western Civilization. The end is beer.
This assumes I'm not in the equivalent of a re-education camp somewhere for wrongspeak.
Oh wait, been there, done that. It was called "diversity training."
3
Ubu: I'm most assuredly not optimistic.
I'm a history buff. The road we are on is well traveled, but only in one direction.
Still, despair is a sin, and we simply must turn this around, because civilization is precious and there is nowhere to run.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Nov 7 15:20:44 2012 (e9h6K)
4
1. The NEA has raised a couple generations of American students to expect the government to give them what they want, and that there is no need to actually go out and earn it themselves. Most of the young voters I have talked to have never been exposed an alternative political argument, and in fact have been conditioned to tune out any opposing viewpoints because they are, by definition, racist/sexist/Fascist/etc.
2. The majority of the members of the supposed Fourth Estate were educated as "journalists", which means they feel their purpose is to advance a social agenda, and not report facts . In other words, they are political propagandists. Even as a growing number of voters turn away from traditional sources such as newspapers, magazines, and TV/radio news programs, most are still being spoon-fed one political viewpoint disguised as "news".
3. The majority of the entertainment industry is also committed to pushing leftist agendas, just so long as they are exempted with special tax breaks, etc.
Right now, I just don't see any prospects to turning things around in my lifetime...
Posted by: Siergen at Wed Nov 7 19:23:21 2012 (Ao4Kw)
5
Eh... not all the glories of Rome were in the era of the Republic.
The one bright ray of sunshine, if you can call it that, is that though we are beset by problems, it's worse almost everywhere else. Things are exceedingly unlikely to go wrong here first, and the worse off it is elsewhere, the more we benefit in terms of relative competitiveness. Already it's one of the prime enablers of our spending spree - the treasury bonds keep coming in because if the US goes under, there's no other safe harbor for the money anyway.
And if things go bad everywhere? Well, not to put it too bluntly, but in a savage world of tooth and claw, nobody has fangs to match ours. In point of fact, nobody is even in the same class, excepting the broad class of "countries who have nuclear weapons", and of those none other have anything even remotely like our ability to project power abroad. You could even go so far to say that the current system of international trade and commerce exists entirely at the whim of the US - were we determined to stop it, not a single tanker would reach port, nor a single pipeline continue to pump gas. It's not good to make too big a deal of it, and obviously it would be PREFERABLE not to have to go down that road, but if the shit hits the fan...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Wed Nov 7 22:56:07 2012 (pWQz4)
2012 First Election ResultsDixville Notch, a town in New Hampshire traditionally opens the polls at 12:01 on election day. As the town has less than 20 people they certify their vote early. They've been an accurate predictor in the past every single year since...um...2000.
Anyway they're the first polling location to have certified results as of a few minutes ago and the result was...A TIE!
I think we can all reach a bipartisan consensus that as omens go, this is a bad one.
UPDATE: Oh yeah...a prediction.
I think its likely to be EITHER Obama in a squeaker, or Romney in a blowout. That is, if it's Obama he will just get his base and little else. If it's Romney then some states will have shifted dramatically and I think it will be a cascade of red across the map.
"How Can You Possibly Believe That?"
I hear that from time to time. As some of you know I'm in college. So on those occasions I allow myself, either be accident or design to by "outed" as to my political leanings I frequently get words to that effect.
"Oh you have got to be squidding me! He's carping about pollacktics again. Thank Cod this election season is fin-ally over"
1
Cutting loose the dead weight would seem to be the number one skill needed by an incoming president these days. Cautiously optimistic here on the far side of the world (as a small-l libertarian myself, inoculated early on by Robert Heinlein).
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tue Nov 6 09:15:03 2012 (PiXy!)
A lot of people's private retirement accounts are tied up in the stock markets, due to an overwhelming advantage in taxation. The government has been encouraging people to put money in 401(k)-type plans for ages.
This has resulted in a great deal of money being allocated into stocks that otherwise wouldn't necessarily be in that market. (Granted that some of it has also gone into bonds.) And, lo and behold, as we've seen retirement plans switch from traditional pensions to individual stock accounts, the index value of the stock market has multiplied several times...
Unfortunately for us, we have a well-known demographic bubble ahead. What happens when all of those boomers stop putting money into the stock market for retirement, and start taking it out in order to actually retire? The answer is going to be a general decline in stock prices across the board, the same way as we've seen a general increase, right?
So what's going to happen when a bunch of baby boomers who are on the cusp of retirement suddenly see their stock holdings start to lose value? Those who can get out of the market will do so... sparking further reductions in prices, spooking more boomers. It's at least the seed of a full-blown stock panic...
Leaving that aside, the US faces a different set of problems than, say, Weimar or Zimbabwe.
Those two countries were effectively powerless. The US... well, it ain't. Anyone who believes that the US economy would enter a death spiral and not decide to export some of its problems is being delusional...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Tue Nov 6 15:28:50 2012 (GJQTS)
3
I'll agree with you on everything but education. Depending on the government for education is like handing politicians a blank check and saying "please use whatever you need to propagandize our children."
Posted by: RHJunior at Wed Nov 7 11:12:23 2012 (hZlxe)
Romney did well again and I think he won it, though it was not the utter rout the first debate was. The President showed up this time...
...and seemed to have bribed the ref.
At NRO corner they're forming a conga line in celebration. Townhall is the same way. At HuffPo they're saying, wow, that wasn't very good for Obama, was it? And Sullivan is wearing mourning colors tonight.
I didn't watch it (no TV, but I still wouldn't have even if I owned one) but it's interesting to see the post-game writeups from each side, and it really must have been a romp.
1
Gonna steal this. It's amazing that the Obama campaign keeps thinking it's throwing fastballs, and then serves up these big fat slow pitch softballs.
Posted by: Mauser at Wed Oct 3 04:25:02 2012 (cZPoz)
So, What About Those Fishing Boats
The Chinese media is claiming that the fishing fleet that left for the Senkaku Islands mentioned in this post was apocryphal.
Information that a large number of Chinese fishing boats are heading for
the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture is false, the chief of a
Japan Coast Guard office in the southern prefecture said Tuesday.
It seems that a fishing season opened which much like the Alaska season involves a mad dash to sea, that this happened in the middle of the current crisis was run with by the press.
Note that this is a Chinese newspaper and I'm not hearing this anywhere else yet so take with adequate salt.
Indeed, Asahi Shinbun is reporting that the Chinese are keeping several patrol boats and several hundred fishing boats "in the vicinity of" the Senkakus. This means that they are not there now, possibly over the horizon, but could rush the islands at any time.
A senior official of the Japan Coast Guard said the agency was
already braced for a more aggressive maritime offensive from China,
considering the moves it has recently taken.
"We need to deal with it,†the official said.
The primary duty of fishery monitoring ships is to prevent illegal operations by fishing boats.
But a source close to the Japan Coast Guard said the reality
is different. The source said Chinese fishing boats tend to move upon
the instructions of a monitoring ship.
"With a single command, fishing boats could head southward (to the Senkakus) all at once,†the source said.
The Japan Coast Guard has assembled 50 patrol boats around
the Senkaku Islands in case Chinese government ships or fishing boats
enter Japanese territorial waters. Many of the vessels have been sent by
regional coast guard headquarters across the country.
So...
If there's a war, the first battle will be fought by the respective countries Coast Guards.
This could turn into a HELL of a real mess real quick.
The JCG is a crackerjack service but coping with hoards of civilians who cannot be harmed but must not be allowed to land while dealing with warships is a thorny problem.
One dead fisherman and China might claim causus belli.
This is a dreadful situation that could spin completely out of control either by an error or a simple boating accident.
The secret of brinkmanship is to stop short of the brink. The danger is that the ground can shift as one stands on the edge. That happened one August 98 years ago and did not work out well for anyone involved.
More on the Senkaku dispute here and here. Scary stuff.
...but wait...there's more...
All this is happening as Chinas's prospective leader remains missing.
There's a lot more here and here over at Ampotan which is covering the situation via the local media.
Their coverage includes this interesting tidbit...
This photo appeared on Weibo, the Chinese Twitter. Photographs such
as these don’t last long on the Net in China. It reads: Chinese people!
What should we oppose? No wage increases. Public officials make large
profits from illegal land transactions. We can’t buy a home. We die
because we can’t go to a hospital. We can’t die because graves are too
expensive. We use all our assets to graduate from college and still
can’t get a job.
There are 30 grievances in all. I don’t see any about the Japanese.
It's traditional in totalitarian states when the peasants start grumbling to try to rally them by picking an external fight. E.g. Argentina's periodic attempts to take the Falkland Islands.
With the world economic slowdown, which is finally affecting China's internal economy, I wonder if that's what's going on this time. The Senkaku islands would make a perfect distraction.
A revolution in China right about now would be pretty terrifying. But there's never been a totalitarian government which built a large bourgeois class and didn't eventually face revolution from them. (Contra Marxist ideology, revolution is a sport of the bourgeois. The proletariat never revolts.)
2
Part of the problem is that the legitimacy of the Chinese government is wholly wrapped up in economic advancement.
"Legitimacy", in this context, is the perception among the public that the government has the right to rule. This runs very high in, say, democratic countries right after election time, when the government can point directly to the election results as evidence of the mandate of the electorate. It runs very low in totalitarian nations that have just suffered a coup, since that drives home the notion that the man on top is only on top by the power of shooting anyone who disagrees. (By contrast, a totalitarian government can have high legitimacy if the people believe that government policies are an expression of their own desires... for example, Nazi Germany around 1937.)
China's original legitimacy stemmed from promulgation of the Communist revolution. That's dead, dead, dead these days... but nothing much has come to replace it either. China's still ruled by a nominally-Communist party that, in practice, is turning into a hereditary oligarchy of party officials. The adoption of capitalism has helped soften that a lot by providing good economic growth, and nothing puts off revolution like today being measurably better than yesterday. This is especially true when the freedoms that are thereby restricted were never really enjoyed by the Chinese to begin with...
But without that economic growth, people have a greater incentive to take a close look at the governance of China, and that is an ugly thing to look at these days.
Can China whip up enough anti-Japanese sentiment? They can't actually go to war with Japan, because that brings in the US. More to the point, China needs Western markets more than Western markets need China. If things get sufficiently bad there, retaliatory tariffs have the potential to gut the Chinese growth engine and kick off precisely the kind of unrest that the Chinese government is trying to prevent with their jingoist nonsense...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Tue Sep 18 15:11:58 2012 (GJQTS)
Bastille Day
Today in history, 7 Aristocrats were freed from a French prison.
The garrison consisted mostly of crippled veterans who wished to continue serving their country and who were sent to the Bastille because it needed guards and the aristocratic prisoners were not considered particularly formidable.
In the politically charged July of 1790 a leftist revolutionary mob was protesting outside when they heard one of the prisoners shout from the window that the prisoners were being executed. The prisoner, The Marquis DeSade was lying (as he was wont to do), but this greatly incited the crowd. Two days after he was removed they attacked in an attempt to seize the gunpowder rumored to be there and free the prisoners. They stormed the fortress and were driven off with small arms fire and suffered some casualties.
The garrisons commander, was quite inexperienced and, in any event, had very limited alternatives available. Basically he could surrender or fire his cannon into the faces of a crowd of his fellow Frenchmen. Because his position was not strategically important, the prisoners were just 7 decadent nobles he entered into negotiations with the protestors.
For his magnanimity he was dragged from the prison and he and his garrison were butchered.
Jean Antoine Pujade, Bernard Laroche, Jean Béchade and Jean La Corrège
were forgers; they were recaptured and put back in another prison a few
days later. Hubert de Solages and Whyte de Malleville were aristocrats
imprisoned at the request of their own families; they too were back in
jail within a week. Finally, Auguste Tavernier had been accused in 1757
of a connection with an attempt to assassinate Louis XV, and was
undoubtedly mad; he was transferred to an asylum.
Umm...yay...
But look on the "bright" side. This was the first step to sticking it to those nasty fatcats...
...the definition of which got rather fungible rather quick.
Very fungible indeed...
Among those who initially went along with the revolution was the population of the region called Vendee.
Three years after the Bastille fell The Committee of Public Safety decided to impose ruinous taxes and a draft. The Vendeeans protested that this was in violation of the principle of 'Libertie'. They were informed that 'Egalitie' required coercion and thus trumped 'Libertie' ('Fraternitie' was, in actuality it seems, a punctuation mark) The Committee of Public Safety then decided to abolish the church and imprison those who would not renounce God. The good people of Vendee protested...then when their emissaries ended up a foot shorter (from the top) they revolted.
The Committee of Public Safety had an answer...45,000 troops. They did not fair well and were replaced with a larger force, which did not meet with success until the locals powder and shot became depleted. The leader of the punitive force wrote one of the most appalling requests for clarification of an order ever.
General Turreau inquired about "the fate of the women and children I
will encounter in rebel territory", stating that, if it was "necessary
to pass them all by sword", he would require a decree.
General Turreau's Infernal Columns marched across the Vendee and when it was all over another general, one General Francois Joseph Westermann penned another letter to the The Committee of Public Safety.
"There is no more Vendée... According to the orders that you gave me, I
crushed the children under the feet of the horses, massacred the women
who, at least for these, will not give birth to any more brigands. I do
not have a prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated all."
Westermann had an inflated opinion of his efficiency, estimates of the death toll in the Vendee range between 117,000 and 400,000 out of a population of 800,000. Given the nature of the perpetrators and victims I suspect that there is a tendency to minimize the death toll. Thus, it's probably a bit to the high end of the median of that estimate...far from everybody. Still, ...he tried....and besides...Westermann's fellow Jacobins spread this utopian joy throughout France and under Napoleon through Europe.
But WAIT There's More!
The French revolution inspired Mao, Stalin, and many third world thugs with body counts that are by comparison mere rounding errors! So those hippies 222 years ago today REALLY made a difference...and isn't that worth celebrating!?
I won't be.
Libertie, Egalitie, Fraternite
These are incompatible principles.
For Equality to be enforced one must ignore the liberties of those who have that which others desire. Fraternity is loyalty and can't exist if one is asked to turn on those who fall out of favor in the name of equality.
While there are things one can do to enable social mobility enforced equality requires a bunch of unequal overseers to enforce it.
Freedom is not free.
Free men are not equal.
Equal men are not free.
These three things are the real lesson of the conflict that grew out of the fall of the Bastille.
...and yet there are still those who look to it as an inspiration and not a cautionary tale. Those people should inspire considerable concern in the rest of us.
1
"If you are in the Health Insurance business, well you just made out like a bandit"
Probably not, because they will have to start taking in all the currently-uninsured, including those with pre-existing conditions, and they can't charge those people higher premiums.
Posted by: RickC at Thu Jun 28 17:55:02 2012 (WQ6Vb)
2
Regarding the insurance business, I think long-term they're dead. I currently employ two people; I do not provide health care insurance. When I am forced to, I will take the cheapest option possible...which I understand to be the government option. An acquaintance who does provide health insurance claims he will switch to the government option, as his research shows it will be cheaper overall. And that's probably correct initially, after all, we will ALL be paying for the premiums. Of course, when it's all said and done and everyone is one the government insurance dole, the cost will be astronomical.
Posted by: Ben at Thu Jun 28 19:19:23 2012 (eC5M6)
3
I've heard the "Marbury" theory too, that by making this NOT a Commerce Clause case, it sets the stage for further rollbacks of the Commerce Clause abuse we've lived with, and that may have been why Roberts went to the pro side, so he could write the opinion.
Posted by: Mauser at Fri Jun 29 04:46:07 2012 (cZPoz)
4
I'm not sure I buy the Marbury analogy. This decision just seems blinkered. As odious as I find the lefts commerce clause argument, the tax thing seems even more of a stretch. I'm not sure that this will have ANY effect on lefty jurisprudence, since it often seems that they tend to ignore the parts of the constitution they don't like anyway.
Ace links to representatives of both sides of this discussion here.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Jul 1 14:58:04 2012 (EJaOX)
I think I figured out what happened. Randy Barnett made a wish on a
cursed monkey’s paw that his commerce clause argument would be accepted.
It explains everything, no?
Quick! Someone check to see if Randy Barnett is now a magical girl!
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Jul 1 15:16:41 2012 (EJaOX)
Hobby Space News of the commercial space industry A Babe In The Universe Rather Eclectic Cosmology Encyclopedia Astronautica Superb spacecraft resource The Unwanted Blog Scott Lowther blogs about forgotten aerospace projects and sells amazingly informative articles on the same. Also, there are cats. Transterrestrial Musings Commentary on Infinity...and beyond! Colony WorldsSpace colonization news! The Alternate Energy Blog It's a blog about alternate energy (DUH!) Next Big Future Brian Wang: Tracking our progress to the FUTURE. Nuclear Green Charles Barton, who seems to be either a cool curmudgeon, or a rational hippy, talks about energy policy and the terrible environmental consequences of not going nuclear Energy From Thorium Focuses on the merits of thorium cycle nuclear reactors WizBang Current events commentary...with a wiz and a bang The Gates of Vienna Tenaciously studying a very old war The Anchoress insightful blogging, presumably from the catacombs Murdoc Online"Howling Mad Murdoc" has a millblog...golly! EaglespeakMaritime security matters Commander Salamander Fullbore blackshoe blogging! Belmont Club Richard Fernandez blogs on current events BaldilocksUnderstated and interesting blog on current events The Dissident Frogman French bi-lingual current events blog The "Moderate" VoiceI don't think that word means what they think it does....but this lefty blog is a worthy read nonetheless. Meryl Yourish News, Jews and Meryls' Views Classical Values Eric Scheie blogs about the culture war and its incompatibility with our republic. Jerry Pournell: Chaos ManorOne of Science fictions greats blogs on futurism, current events, technology and wisdom A Distant Soil The website of Colleen Dorans' superb fantasy comic, includes a blog focused on the comic industry, creator issues and human rights. John C. Wright The Sci-Fi/ Fantasy writer muses on a wide range of topics. Now Read This! The founder of the UK Comics Creators Guild blogs on comics past and present. The Rambling Rebuilder Charity, relief work, roleplaying games Rats NestThe Art and rantings of Vince Riley Gorilla Daze Allan Harvey, UK based cartoonist and comics historian has a comicophillic blog! Pulpjunkie Tim Driscoll reviews old movies, silents and talkies, classics and clunkers. Suburban Banshee Just like a suburban Leprechaun....but taller, more dangerous and a certified genius. Satharn's Musings Through TimeThe Crazy Catlady of The Barony of Tir Ysgithr アニ・ノート(Ani-Nouto) Thoughtful, curmudgeonly, otakuism that pulls no punches and suffers no fools. Chizumatic Stephen Den Beste analyzes anime...with a microscope, a slide rule and a tricorder. Wonderduck Anime, Formula One Racing, Sad Girls in Snow...Duck Triumphalism Beta Waffle What will likely be the most thoroughly tested waffle evah! Zoopraxiscope Too In this thrilling sequel to Zoopraxiscope, Don, Middle American Man of Mystery, keeps tabs on anime, orchids, and absurdities. Mahou Meido MeganekkoUbu blogs on Anime, computer games and other non-vital interests Twentysided More geekery than you can shake a stick at Shoplifting in the Marketplace of Ideas Sounds like Plaigarism...but isn't Ambient IronyAll Meenuvians Praise the lathe of the maker! Hail Pixy!!
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