First We Conquer Iceland
The law of unintended consequences states that actions, especially governmental ones, always have unintended and unpredictable effects. These unanticipated effects can be far more powerful than the...
View ArticleIn Praise of Parallel Institutions
“Globalization” has been a buzzword for decades, but the word has competing definitions. It can refer to the reduction of barriers to trade and travel, which allows goods, ideas, and people to act as...
View ArticlePaper Money = Despotism
“Fiat” is money with no intrinsic value beyond whatever an issuing government is able to enforce. When it enjoys a monopoly as currency, fiat inevitably turns the free market functions of money inside...
View ArticleWho Is Plotting to Steal Your Pension?
A huge pool of money lies just beyond the grasp of government’s itching fingers: private pension funds. Various money-grab schemes have been floated, including a legal requirement that all private...
View ArticleIn Praise of Gridlock
I want gridlock. If the House of Representatives and the Senate both go Republican, as I expect they will, then the best chance for political paralysis may be a hostile Democrat in the White House. I...
View ArticleShould You Be Hoarding?
Two news items stress the necessity of hoarding and of doing it now. A Nov. 5 headline on NBC Connecticut announced “N.Y. Man Charged in Gas Hoarding Case” and addressed an incident from the flood...
View ArticleObama Theatrics, Obama Reality
Obama has been too quiet lately. And when he does speak, he says little of substance. For example, on the looming fiscal cliff that has America panicked, he held a press conference on Nov. 28 to urge...
View ArticleAmerica’s Coolest Capitalist TV Shows
The cultural elite routinely disdain reality TV as voyeuristic garbage being churned out for the unwashed masses. But this unwashed woman is a fan of a new subgenre of the category that has become a...
View ArticleWipe the Debt From the Books
The national debt of the federal government is $16.5 trillion, $52,317.30 for every individual in the United States. The only sane and moral stance is to repudiate it entirely. “Repudiation” is not a...
View ArticleHiding the Unemployed: Disability and the Politics of Stats
Some statistics cannot be understood without being set within a political framework, because they reflect politics as much as, or more than, they do reality. The unemployment rate is an example and a...
View ArticleCoca-Capitulation
Is Coca-Cola being a “conscious capitalist,” or is the company capitulating? A headline on the advertising and technology blog ad:tech prompted the question for me. “Why Coca-Cola Will Voluntarily Stop...
View ArticleWhy the Feds Want to Cripple Home Businesses
This post Why the Feds Want to Cripple Home Businesses appeared first on Daily Reckoning. Imagine you’re out of work. But you’ve got capital in your talents, your home, and your family and friends. You...
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