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There are many philosophers who claim that the most rational default mental position is one of pessimism; while I understand where they are coming from (pessimistic people are more careful, more discriminating), I have to disagree. Given sufficient evidence, I think we should be as pessimistic or as optimistic as is justified by the situation; [...] A little earlier then I promised, but I wanted to share some of these before they got stale: 1. How Obama Got Keynes Wrong. Just becasue Keyne’s ideas are used as justification for a myriad of statist ideas doesn’t mean Keynes himself was a bad man. 2. Politicians in Wonderland. It’s fun to talk about [...] The always-insightful Walter Williams comments on Haiti; and the political climate that made this earthquake so disastrous. Some expect Haiti’s 7.0 earthquake death toll to reach over 200,000 lives. Why the high death toll? Northern California’s 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was more violent, measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale, resulting in 63 deaths and 3,757 injuries. The 1906 [...] David Brooks has written a wonderful little article talking about the various successes of Jewish culture. I think it is a fantastic example of how ideas can affect achievement and economic prosperity in a society: Jews are a famously accomplished group. They make up 0.2 percent of the world population, but 54 percent of the world [...] Contrary to the popular delusions about the positive benefits of controlling business, the CIC (Investment Climate Department, part of World Bank) released a study that found that business corruption is directly correlated with restrictive legislation. Illustrated by the graph below:
This should come to no surprise to anybody with even the slightest understanding [...] Heh, funny; but I would add that government services tend to be so incompetently run that people will actually pay more for private alternatives, keeping them in business. The existence of FedEx and UPS are the obvious examples of this; though the huge (and growing) medical travel industry is probably a better example. |
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Copyright © 2010 Ryan’s Rantings - All Rights Reserved |
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