Social Memory Complex: A political economy of the soul

Mutual funds are a scam?

I'm not sure what to think about this article entitled Wall Street's Shell Game at Catallarchy but I wanted to get the link out there for my readers. I was particularly struck by this passage:

Keeping with the theme of survivorship bias, I stirred up some debate on a mailing list recently by claiming that managed mutual funds are a scam. Specifically, they are a variant of a particularly clever scam that goes like this:

Get a list of email addresses of people interested in sports betting. Say you have 32,000. Email 16,000 of them to say that the home team will win this week's big team, and 16,000 to say the home team will lose. Now, half of the people will have gotten the correct prediction, and the next week, you do the same thing with them. After 5 weeks, you'll have 1,000 email addresses of people who have seen you pick the winner five times in a row!. Now you pitch your 1-900 number or paid email list subscription to this amazed group.

I'll update this post with more thoughts if I get any. For now I'm content to question capitalism quietly, in my own heart (and not on the streets of Seattle - just yet).

Surreality Alert: Tom DeLay is preaching to us about humility

This from the guy who has been talking about how the entire scandal he created is a big conspiracy to hurt NOT JUST HIM but Christians everywhere:

No matter what your faith, no matter what your political persuasion, your prayers for our increased humility, for our ever-humbler service to God and neighbor are needed and wanted.

I second that. But... wasn't there a famous Christian who once said, "By their works ye shall know them?" Ehh, that guy was probably a communist.

Jackie discovers irony!

Jacqueline writes about "The 10 generic themes that invariably show up in any chick flick":

7. If you become pregnant, don't worry -- you won't actually have the baby. It's just a temporary dilemma so you can break up for a month and he'll realize that he can't live without you -- mainly because you pushed away his friends and ruined his life. 8. If you're breaking up with the guy to prove a point, immediately find the best-looking guy in your office and invite him over to dinner, then hope the other guy shows up. When he shows up, he won't do anything vengeful like get drunk and hook up with the nearest bimbo. He'll simply stop shaving and showering until one of his friends goes over to his house to snap some sense into him.

Pretty damn funny.

UPDATE: So Jackie didn't write it. I made a mistake. Take your money elsewhere.

Matt's day in the sun

Can you tell Episode III is coming?

Welcome to Jesusland!

It's kind of campy, but you might find this entertaining. Gotta love the "Rush being high" jab.

Anti-Corporate Libertarianism

I have found my hero, and he is Sean Gabb. He gave a speech that sounds like I everything I've been telling libertarians:

If you think that I came here tonight to defend multinational corporations and the international government institutions, you have chosen the wrong person. These are dishonest. They are corrupt. They are incompetent. They have blood on their hands. But do not suppose for a moment that the world trading order as it actually exists is liberal or more than incidentally connected with free markets. A free market is a place where individuals and groups of individuals come together to transact voluntary exchanges without any backing of government force. To call the actually existing order liberal -- or "neo-liberal" -- is as taxonomically accurate as calling the old Soviet Communist Party syndicalist. That order is based on tariffs, subsidies and a web of other often invisible regulations. The international institutions are a projection of Western states. The multinational corporations are creatures of these states. They shelter behind the privilege of limited liability. They get their political friends to cartelise markets, and do favours in return. This is not market liberalism. It is a fraud played on us all by our ruling classes -- these being those politicians, bureaucrats, educators, lawyers and media and business people who derive wealth, power and status from an enlarged and activist state.

Holy shit. He goes on...

These corporations could not exist in any natural economic order. I have heard other libertarians argue that they might emerge without legal privilege on some loose contractual basis. But I do not agree. The shareholders would still be liable in tort, and that alone would deter them from any involvement with a business that they did not personally control. As for the utilitarian argument, that large undertakings need large companies, I also disagree. So long as it showed an acceptable return on investment, there is no project too big to be taken on by clusters of sole traders and partnerships. No doubt, things like the Channel Tunnel would not have been built -- but I fail to see how not having that would have made the world a poorer place. Even if some highly valuable projects might not be undertaken, their lack would be compensated by the greater general innovation to be expected in an order of small, unregulated firms. Indeed, the matter of what to do about the corporations is more interesting to me than world poverty. As I said in my speech, people in places like black Africa are poor because they have maniacally corrupt and oppressive governments. They would do better even with the most cartelised global corporatism than left in the clutches of their own rulers. And that is it. But how can this corporatism be replaced by a system of voluntary exchange between legally responsible small firms? I think I have a few answers here, but will give these at another time.

I'm going to be checking out what his answers are as soon as I get home. This is a guy I can relate to - business ueber alles libertarians to whom I'm used can get lost.

Hat tip to the Mutualist Blog who commented on the Gabb article as well.

Read more...

They elected a new pope!!!

FYI

I guess this is the part of the post where I talk about how I care...

Matt has a big announcement

Matt has a fascinating piece of news that will change the way you think about life.

Dirty Talk Advisory

The dirtiest conversation in which I have ever been involved with perfect strangers is going on at Right Thinking Girl in the comments section of one of her posts.

But I must warn you, it involves Justice Scalia. And Miss Sluttington. And... I wish that were the worst of it.

Stop playin'

Ooh, this is rich - the estate tax repeal might just be an overall tax hike in disguise:

Supporters of the repeal railed against what they called the "death tax." Opponents said it would benefit the very wealthy, and pointed to arguments made by Bill Gates and others that repeal would cause charitable contributions to drop. But, as is often the case with Congress, the truth differs from the story line. The law wouldn't repeal the estate tax but would replace it with a capital gains tax - one that's difficult to calculate and would mean a tax increase in certain cases. As Ronald Reagan used to say: There they go again! Here's how it would work. Starting in 2010 estates would no longer be taxed. But people who inherit wealth would have to pay capital gains taxes, currently set at 15%, on the difference between what was originally paid for an estate's assets and what they are worth at the time. That means people would have to figure out what their benefactors paid for something years, or decades, before.

I don't even know what to think of the Republicans anymore. But thank God they got elected and not the Democrats!

Libertarian Judicial Activism

See, tex: Libertarians do approve of these shit-nosed judges!

Libertarian Democrats, ASSEMBLE!

Check out this article, Another Approach: The Democratic Freedom Caucus, in The Free Liberal:

What I see now is the Democrats are a party that can change. The Republicans are in the grips of a certain ideology…it's not free market. It should be called corporate socialism. The economic rights of corporations are recognized, but not the rights of the average person. My Republican colleagues on the Land Use Committee continue to talk about eminent domain.

This is my prayer: Ralph Nader gets the votes of the socialists, the Republicans get the votes of the moralists, and the Democrats become the libertarians and get the votes of everybody else.

God, that would be so cool.