- One of the problems with our present banking system — and more to the point, who is incentivized by our "market economy", and how, and to what extent — is that there's little or no recognition that both individual and collective interests need to be protected by and built into any self-perpetuating financial system. Failure to do so risks niche predation that ends up harming both the niche prey and the niche predators: The prey are, well, prey, and the predators lose the ability (or at least incentive) to adapt.
Instead, we've incentivized personal beneficiaries of excess rents, Ricardian or not, to deploy part of that excess in service (whether "protection" or "expansion" is ever-changing and constantly up for debate) via noneconomic political pressure. Somewhat more imagistically, we've given dead presidents a quasivote — but only if they have an established, long-term residence. They don't get to vote if they're homeless; or in refugee status; or job-seeking; or (pardon the pun) mere renters. It's always worth asking "Cui bono?" (which this otherwise-rational-and-perceptive piece doesn't).
- Which leads us farther astray. OK, we're just following; it's critical to remember that the foundational text of the so-called "free-market economy" was written as a work of moral philosophy.
Ewww.
It's slightly better than racist aspiring ballerinas (who, not incidentally, would have chosen to shoot almost all other aspiring ballerinas), applying the same standards to That Inimical Book as a certain set of culture warriors would apply to other books, and the morality of trading hostage retention for electoral victory that gave us multiple variations on "but he's our bastard/dictator." It's certainly better than actually contemplating the New York Met (or the similarly-named collective of… sportscreatures and their
support staffenablers?). Isn't it?I say again: Ewww.
- This piece on the need for VA reform seriously understates the historical problem. It goes back a century in the US, to broken government promises culminating in the Bonus Riots (in which MacArthur gave us a glimpse of the future). It goes back centuries, though.
- All of which is perhaps less embarassing than being beaten up in public by Quaker thugs. Which leads to further questions indeed regarding the political history of the Society of Friends (and Everyone Else Is an Enemy) (it helps to know how one R.M. Nixon was raised…); it's not, or at least not entirely, industrious pacifism tolerant of all alternate views.