Magnifisyncopathological

Third, there already is a free market in labor - it's referred to as free trade. The very point of free trade is that workers don't have to move across borders because products can. The movement of labor is not part of the free market because nations are, in a very real sense, the property of their citizens. The implicit goal of any modern, democratic government is supposed to be the welfare of its citizens, a goal that is actually explicit in our Constitution - that item about promoting "the general welfare," which refers to Americans, not the entire world.

In a free market I have the right to sell my goods or services in competition with Target, WalMart, whoever. That does not give me the right to walk into a Target or WalMart and sell my goods on their property in competition with them.

So, so many problems with the above quote.

Posted by drizzten at 03:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Rob Ray passes on a cultural note perched on the to-and-fro of regular politics.

Posted by drizzten at 08:59 AM | Permalink

The last seven years have revealed that almost the entire American establishment views itself as immune to the moral and ethical rules it applies to every other country in the world. Now we know, at least.

Posted by drizzten at 10:45 AM | Permalink

IP Address: 209.239.112.48 Name: inpuspils Email Address: aninuebit@gmail.com URL: Comments:

Yooo..

I kno it has nothing to do with what you wrote, but have you ever heard of http://www.bluestickers.nfo/ringtones.php . They seems to promise free ringtones

PS. Dont be an ass, this is NOT spam ;)

I hate you people. I really, really hate you people.

I leave my comments open in the off, slim, rarely-ever-fucking-happens chance that someone will see a post, have something useful or interesting to contribute, and the will to do so. Maybe it's pathetic to think my blog - average daily hit count: low 400's - has any such degree of impact. Maybe it's silly to think that of all the possible pages on which someone will land, they pick mine to read a particular topic. The overwhelming majority of my hits come from people searching for terms utterly unrelated to this blog's primary subject matter.

I still do it. I like surprises. I like strangers who positively contribute to an idea or discussion. I also like being informed and corrected when I'm wrong.

What I don't like are motherfuckers who have scraped the bottom of the marketing barrel. People who have reached the last refuge of the communications-incompetent. Gawddamn comment spammers.

In addition to the above, here are the other four most recent bits of shit some program or fleshy bag of wasted humanity attempted to leave on my blog. I've broken all the links at the TLD level.

IP Address: 89.190.225.92
Name: keevymokjowly
Email Address: harlebanearima@gmail.com
URL: http://70studio.u/
Comments:

nice, really nice!

---

IP Address: 194.8.74.171
Name: flemiWeiple
Email Address: breelajolobat@lviv.in
URL: http://ava.com.a/category/16/106/146/
Comments:

Жесткие диски
good ideas... it is said to be Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle.
lodfirutesli

---

IP Address: 203.92.64.97
Name: Chablis
Email Address: jullya@link.net
URL: http://bigthicket.lamar.du/Members/plone/fast-free-money-online
Comments:

Good evening. By learning to discover and value our ordinariness, we nurture a friendliness toward ourselves and the world that is the essence of a healthy soul.
I am from France and also now am reading in English, give true I wrote the following sentence: "Airline tickets, cheap, airticket, airtickets, travel, cheap air flight ticket, cheap flights to chisinau, moldova airline tickets best fares cheapest."

Thank you very much ;). Chablis.

---

IP Address: 211.152.42.149
Name: vetush
Email Address: dzxehy@yuftwg.com
URL: http://xysajjvrsbrs.com/
Comments:

mf3tZM kdrsscpjbevp, [url=http://auaqsjdqblgb.om/]auaqsjdqblgb[/url], [link=http://ogqvctddfrxw.om/]ogqvctddfrxw[/link], http://ccmbcifkplol.om/

I don't get it. Is it still statistically worthwhile to blast out a million shitty messages because the perpetually brain-dead 0.01% will click on them and divulge their credit card and bank account information? Half the time the damn links don't even work, hopefully because their web host recognized what was happening and pulled the plug on the bastards.

Just slightly less worse are the ones that have a coherent English message, but it's written in such clumsy kindergarten marketer language it immediately flags the whole thing as suspect. Really, folks? Decades of this shit and you're still writing Good evening. By learning to discover and value our ordinariness, we nurture a friendliness toward ourselves and the world that is the essence of a healthy soul. I am from France and also now am reading in English, give true I wrote the following sentence: "Airline tickets, cheap, airticket, airtickets, travel, cheap air flight ticket, cheap flights to chisinau, moldova airline tickets best fares cheapest."?

Of course, much of it isn't aimed at a human reader. It's aimed at Google and other search engines looking for those terms. And because I don't want to help these rotten fucks, I screen all comments and trackbacks to this blog.

I've still yet to receive a single trackback that wasn't spam.

There are 214 comments and 535 trackbacks in my system that Movable Type flagged as spam since April 7th. There are 120+ comments from the same time frame not flagged as spam that clearly are but reside in my normal comment queue.

I've periodically reported on this crap since the beginning. It's only grown worse.

Posted by drizzten at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am sure the proposition that "everyone should pay income taxes" seems obvious to you and me.

It is irrelevant whether I make $1 a year or a million. It is irrelevant whether 75% of American government is funded by the richest 10% or vice versa.

There is only one claim to be laid upon an income earned honestly through voluntary economic transactions and that claim belongs to the income-earner. Everything else (tax brackets, deductions, credits) is pointless distraction from the core moral issue of right and wrong. Taxation is wrong, full stop. Tweaking that systemic theft so it suits your personal sense of justice just reveals how perverted that sense really is.

Posted by drizzten at 04:35 PM | Permalink

Posted by drizzten at 07:13 PM | Permalink

With Angela Merkel and others gunning to remove "Cowboy Capitalism" by initiating international financial regulation and Barak Obama aiming for more modest reforms and government spending is Obama the free market's best hope?

How does this make you feel?

Should the world have uniform financial regulations?

The free market? Can someone please point me to a substantial population of people who currently enjoy such a thing? Every single commenter who talks about the excesses, drawbacks, problems, downfalls, and viciousness of "the free market" or "unbridled capitalism" or "laissez-faire" and so on is guilty of a massive category error. Nothing even close to those systems exists today in any sizable population. This is a world of profoundly mixed economies and the trend for the last 100 years is firmly away from the individual freedom necessary for actual capitalism.

Obama is not going to be capitalism's savior. He doesn't support the voluntary exchange of private property and services on whatever terms to which the seller and the buyer agree as long as each party is the legitimate owner of the property they propose to peacefully exchange. On the contrary! Whatever principles he has are incompatible with that economic system, full stop. He may be slightly less worse than Brown and substantially less worse than Merkel and Sarkozy, but they are all market interventionists at heart.

Obama won't even be the existing situation's savior. He does't want the current (im)balance between market and government. He's comitted to major changes towards increased state control and is firmly in line with the other big players with that goal.

What Obama and company want to save is enough economic wealth so they can build the coercive egalitarian societies they think we ought to have.

The entire circus makes me sick and the only uniform economic regulations humans need are prohibitions against theft and fraud.

adios,
-Charles

Posted by drizzten at 10:49 AM | Permalink