Sapere Aude
Tag: us
use technological tools to make government less beholden to special interest groups and lobbyists and promote citizen participation in government decision-making.
his trade policy may be misguided, but this could offset that and have many positive effects
real estate values have already lost $1T. That could increase 3x over the next few years.
painful lessons are needed to get over the easy credit culture and the home ownership fetish.
The European Union took a step recently that the US Congress can’t seem to muster the courage to take. By proposing a simple change in immigration policy, E.U. politicians served notice that they are serious about competing with the United States and Asia to attract the world’s top talent to live, work and innovate in Europe. With Congress gridlocked on immigration, it’s clear that the next Silicon Valley will not be in the United States.
h1-b is completely broken. between this, the monopoly money housing bubble and the waste going into “homeland security”, the us is well-positioned to slip badly
McKinsey & Co. predicts that making substantial emissions cuts may cost the economy only a few billion $, and that at least 40% would actually bring economic savings.
we need a CO2 tax, not this cap and trade nonsense.
it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing.
i am always shocked by the illiteracy and the lack of common knowledge with “college graduates” in the us.
- The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
- The Pharmaceutical/Biotech Industry
- Big Telco Companies, Industry Group USTelecom
kill them, and watch GDP soar
I think it’s time to restore freedom of contract to marriage. Why should 2 men, for example, be denied the same rights to contract as are allowed to a man and a woman? Far from ending civilization the extension of the bourgeoisie concept of contract ever further is the epitome of civilization. Our modern concept of marriage, for example, is simply one instantiation of the idea of contract. People will claim that this means a chaos of contracts for every form of marriage. This is wrong factually and also conceptually misguided. Factually, we already allow men and women to adjust the marriage contract as they see fit with pre-nuptials. Moreover, different states offer different marriage contracts with some offering more than one type. Partnerships of other kinds have access to all manner of contractual arrangements without insufferable problems. More importantly, the chaos of contracts argument is fundamentally misguided. The purpose of contract law is to give individual’s greater control over their lives. To make contract law a restraint on how people may govern themselves is a perversion of the social contract. To restrict people from accessing the tools of civilization on the basis of their sexual preference is baseless discrimination.
as usual, there are deeper, economic reasons behind some of the crap bible-thumpers are rallying behind.
strikes are going away.
In the wake of subprime losses we are hearing claims that the United States should have regulated its banks more. It is worth pointing out that the US has some of the most heavily regulated banks in the world. It is plausible to argue that the United States should have fewer bank regulators (I’ll nominate the Fed for the main role), but that consolidation should be accompanied by greater efficacy of regulation. In the meantime there are too many regulatory authorities, and too many regulations. We have completely blurred lines of accountability, legal, political, economic, and otherwise.
the real problem is a culture that fetishises home ownership.
pet peeve: why is every little shit “the experience of a lifetime“? such a suburban phrase and as dishonest as “best X ever”.
2008-01-01: how sad a life you have to lead if some stupid SUV sale for an ailing car manufacturer that won’t see the next 10 years is “the event of a lifetime”?
Gregor J. Rothfuss 