Read it. Can the ACLU be far behind?

Read it.

Tyler Cowen hits some high points.

In my view anyone doing policy economics has an obligation to learn more about ethics — much more — than the guy in the street would know.  Would someone doing experimental economics feel free of the obligation to learn some empirical psychology?  Would someone doing trade feel free of the obligation to learn some trade law, some history, and some political science?  No.  What’s the difference?  Economists like to separate the “positive” and “normative” aspects of what they do, but this distinction has not much impressed the moral philosophers who have looked at it nor has it impressed Amartya Sen.  The very decision to use economic tools emphasizes some considerations and excludes others.  The final policy analysis is not just pure prediction but rather it is also an implicit presentation and weighting of both different kinds of information and different values.  So if you are doing policy economics, it is imperative that you think about ethics at a very deep level, and read widely in ethics.  You are doing ethics whether you like it or not!

Frank Fruedi of Spiked is agin it.

David Hume wrote about the tendency to jump from is to ought — but nobody reads any more.

Christopher Hitchens is always worth reading.

Although Steve Sailer isn’t all that impressed.

Read it. Presumably the other half want to be Steve Jobs.

Apparently Mencius Moldbug supports Ron Paul. With reservations.

(part 1)

(part 2)

Suppose Ron Paul is elected President. What makes you think that President Paul can fix the US Federal Government?

What makes you think that any President can fix the US Federal Government?

What makes you think that the US Federal Government can be fixed at all?

And if you don’t think it can be fixed, what do you hope to achieve by voting in its elections?

And those are good questions for everyone to be asking.

Read it.

Obama’s ‘I’m not an operating officer’ admission seems near-disastrous.

a) Obama makes the presidency sound like a grand, slo-mo transformation of vision into legislation. But there are crisis requiring quick, coordinated action, and the type of leader who can act effectively in a crisis is likely to be a good “operating officer” rather than a visionary;

b). Once you pass a law you have to implement it, which requires getting results out of the civil service departments. This would seem to be especially true of national health care. The president who ignores the bureaucracy and focuses on ‘vision’ is apt to be defeated by that bureaucracy.

c) Immersing yourself up to the elbows in the various departments is one way to find out the information that bureaucrats are unlikely to pass up the chain of command.

… I’m not saying Obama’s model of the presidency can’t work if he chooses the right “operating” officer to actually run his administration. I’m saying voters would be justified in preferring a president who was a good “operating officer.”

Anne Applebaum looks at the Tata Nano. Try and say that three times fast.

Read it. There’s a lot of old people out there. Some people think that’s a problem.

The inimitable Mencius Moldbug is not afraid to deploy the Hot Needle of Inquiry upon appropriate occasion.

Read it. Now that’s comedy.

Jonah Goldberg is always worth reading.

Mark Steyn on Redacted.

Read it. As Will Rogers once said, the problem is that a lot of what people “know” ain’t so.

Tyler Cowan reviews the economy.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

Read it. Apparently Hitchens has stopped smoking. You can believe as much or as little of that as you care to.

Read it. An intriguing idea.

Read it.

Have you wondered how corporate scandals can go on for so long?:

Philip Soergel, a parent who complained to Howard schools administrators about the principal’s offer, said: “We were aghast. I had never heard of this. Kids are getting these kinds of lessons in how to tattle on one another.”

Read it. A view from abroad.

Read it. An important point that bears repeating. Far too many people thing that “innovation” and “invention” are synonyms.

Read it. Is it just me, or does Giuliani not look like the ideal Lex Luthor?

Read it.

Peggy Noonan takes a look at Hillary and Barak.

Read it. Take whatever action you think is appropriate.

Read it.

Read it. Pawlenty is being talked about as a possible Republican VP candidate. I think he’s more useful where he is.

Christopher Hitchens is always worth reading.

Read it. Just because we have all of this technology available to us doesn’t necessarily mean that we ought to be using it 24/7.

Read it. I gather that Bill Gates will be retiring from Microsoft soon. Time to sell the Microsoft stock, then. Unless they hire Steve Jobs.

Does Bill Gates look like an over-the-hill English professor, or is that just me?

Read it. Primarily because it doesn’t soak the rich, so the government can’t make as much money unless it turns the screws tighter than most people will accept.

Read it.

David Friedman is always worth reading.

Read it. Sometimes one encounters a situation for which “genius” is an inadequate characterization.

Read it. More about language and writing in the Tribal World.

Read it.

Watch it.

Mencius Moldbug explains it all to you.

First, finance is not a science. Secondly, finance is not intrinsically complicated. And third, unless you are a physicist, your life will be pretty much the same whether you understand relativity or not. “You may not be interested in war,” Trotsky once said, “but war is interested in you.” The same is surely true of finance.

To actually understand all of modern finance, you would need a brain the size of a beachball. This would certainly attract notice, and you might have some trouble getting laid.

Read the whole thing.

Read it at your own risk. I like this stuff. Others feel differently.

Read it. If there isn’t anything to hide, why are they so determined to hide it?

Kausfiles contains many delightful things. Today’s treat:

Letting the presidential nominee be picked by the Iowa caucusers is like letting your antiwar tactics be picked by the last people left at the end of a 4-hour SDS meeting in 1970.

Whoa, that brings back memories. But he’s absolutely right.

Read it. The world is not as they tell you it is. But you knew that.

Steve Sailer just keeps on coming up with good stuff.

I’m a morning person. My wife is a night person. My late first wife was a night person, often excessively so. Both of my brothers are night people. I think I may be adopted.

Steve Sailer keeps coming up with all this great stuff.

Read it. Markets surface even where you don’t want them to.

Peggy Noonan.

We just want a reasonable person. We would like a candidate who does not appear to be obviously insane.

Hm. That doesn’t leave a lot.

Read it. This reiterates the vital distinction between invention and innovation. Coming up with a clever idea is fun but not important. What’s important is getting it out there to make people’s lives better. This is why more people speak European languages than Chinese.

Read it. Not a whole lot, apparently.

Read it. If you understand it, please explain it to me.