Political Philosophy

How Faddish Leftism Kills: Part 2,658,893

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While people in  Zimbabwe  starve,  Robert Mugabe’s [sic] “consumer rights group” raids stores that sell genetically modified food.  In  Zimbabwe, GM plants provide basic staple foods that the country must import. Their loss  seriously  depletes the food supply.

This is a case in which the intellectual fads of western leftists in rich countries mutate into something lethal in the less  sophisticated  political systems of the 3rd world. In this case, the hysteria over genetically modified foods promoted by revenue-seeking, activist-corporations (e.g., Greenpeace) in the developed world provides the moral justification for a thug like Mugabe to kill people.

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Let’s See Alcuin of York Figure This One Out

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[source]

It’s a sad fact of life that if you don’t drink much you end up as the  designated  driver for those who do. On the plus side, as the cartoon  elucidates with the traditional logic puzzle, taking care of the inebriated presents some interesting intellectual challenges.  

I worked all through college and on weekends during my  sophomore  year. I had to get up at 6:00 AM to go to work bussing tables at a  restaurant. This meant I didn’t party on weekends. This also meant that only the Mormon guy, the Southern Baptist residential assistant and myself were sober at 2:00 AM on a Saturday, so we got stuck hauling the drunks in off the lawn and tucking them into bed in such a way as they wouldn’t  aspirate  their own vomit. (This was in addition to the joys of being awakened by a never ending series of boisterous but still ambulatory revelers.)  

I can’t help but feel that the  teetotalers’  taking care of the drunks extends to most areas of life.

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Quoted Without Comment

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“A recollection touched him, booklegged stuff from the forties and fifties of the last century which he had read: French, German, British, Italian. The intellectuals had been fretful about the Americanization of Europe, the crumbling of old culture before the mechanized barbarism of soft drinks, hard sells, enormous chrome-plated automobiles (dollar grins, the Danes had called them), chewing gum, plastics … None of them had protested the simultaneous Europeanization of America: bloated government, unlimited armament, official nosiness, censors, secret police, chauvinism … Well, for a while there had been objectors, but first their own excesses and sillinesses discredited them, then later …”

Poul Anderson, Sam Hall

Monkeywrenching Socialism – Ratchet Smashing II

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On reading this article on unsustainable public/private compensation gaps I wondered whether I had any pension funds drawing on my tax dollars that were grossly underfunded and would inevitably be coming after my budgeted retirement savings to save their pensions. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to get that information but it’s vital for financial planning for the long haul to a dignified retirement where one can reliably live on your own money.

The cycle of negotiating generous government employee contracts, underfunding pension contributions, and then jacking up taxes to make up shortfalls at the last moment is another way the socialist ratchet effect works. Since so many of these pension funding sources are location based, the real estate industry offers us a way out.

When you buy a house the quality of the local public school district is a large factor influencing prices. Childless couples buying a house with no prospect of children will still take an interest in their local schools because of the influence school quality has on house prices. Most who have gone house hunting knows this.

If I know that taxes will have to double to pay for some lavish government promises within the timeframe of my likely ownership term, I’m going to not be so enthused about buying in that jurisdiction. I certainly would not pay the same price as a neighboring town or county that set up their pension payments as the actuaries say they should be funded.

Were there to be an unfunded liability index attached to every house in the US comprising of a basket of future expenditures traditionally paid by property or other municipal, county, or state taxes, housing prices would react relatively quickly to poor governance and the drop in housing values prior to the future crisis where the pension fund simply ran out of money would lead to a secular trend of homeowners increasing pressure for responsible government and likely smaller government.

Right now such an index doesn’t exist but all the information needed to make such an index are already public record. Any large real estate agent system that created such an index would have a competitive advantage over its rivals, even after those rivals replicated the work. The reputation benefits of being the guys who did it first are likely to last much longer than the exclusivity of the index.

Worthwhile Reading

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A few items for your Monday reading pleasure:

In a commencement speech, the CEO of Questar Corporation takes on some popular myths about energy.

A professor of English who teaches at the U.S. Naval Academy has thoughts about the teaching and mis-teaching of his subject:

We professors just have to remember that the books are the point, not us. We need, in short, to get beyond literary studies. We’re not scientists, we’re coaches. We’re not transmitting information, at least not in the sense of teaching a discipline. But we do get to see our students react, question, develop, and grow. If you like life, that’s satisfaction enough.

Interesting description of the typical reaction of his students to Madame Bovary, and about the ways in which he tries to establish a connection between this character’s feelings and their own.

(via Newmark’s Door)

Finally, some not-so-cheerful thoughts from Arnold Kling:

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