ma gavte la nata

Although Andrew Berman is one most pompous busybodys around town as the organizer behind the GVSHP, I can still find the courage to commend him for acting in a civilized manner in regards to his latest bellyaching over aesthetic concerns to a billboard erected in what is known as the Meatpacking District.

Civilized, in the sense that he organized a boycott of local merchants to protest the erection of this unwanted advertising sign by having the participant shun and ostracize the party they feel offended by. This is largely in contrast to his usual tactics of complaining to the local goons and fabricating all sorts of wishy-washy nonsense on stilts which would supposedly justify their aggression against the despised party.

an apropos analogy

Tarran, a frequent and admired commenter on the Mises blog delivers this nugget (via Cafe Hayek) on his world view of the business world, one that I very closely share:

"comparing tax burdens is precisely the same act as a bunch of shop-keepers getting together to discuss the protection money they pay to the local Mafia family, and getting into an argument as to whether the more affluent shop-keeper is paying his "fair" share."

Of course, this is all said to the extent that the business we are talking about is a business qua business; a viable one that does not ultimately depend on a violent, criminal-class customer base (read: no-bid government contracts) for most their income, for in that case I would acquiesce to the left-lib side and call a spade a spade-- a net tax recipient which didn't take in much loot as it would have otherwise.

one bad bite deserves no other

Nothing spells CYA over-reaction like city government.


This brouhaha occured after a KFC-Taco Bell joint was found to be infested with rodents a day after they were green-lighted by the NYCzar's Health Inspectors, leading the Department of Health to react by shuttering a record 89 food establishments around the city.

As I've argued before, it's not always that anarcho-libertarians have a beef with the goals of government; it's that in the [racketeering] job that they purportedly serve to justify their monopolizing or market-crowding existence is one marked by corruption, inefficiencies, and incompetency; a sure recipe for failure under free market conditions.

geriatric pastures for trannies

"Barbary Lane Communities at Lake Merritt, one of the country’s first urban independent-living communities for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) seniors is being developed in Oakland, Calif...

According to BLC, the needs of LGBT seniors are currently unaddressed in the senior housing industry largely due to lack of awareness, discrimination and homophobia. There are presently over 3 million LGBT seniors over the age of 65, and that number is expected to double by 2030." - Article Link

eine kleine nachtmusik im museum

Just in case you didn't catch this- in the very first scene introducing Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) to the night life in the museum, a tyrannosaurus-rex exhibit mysteriously goes missing.

If you listen carefully to the accompanying soundtrack, you can hear composer Alan Silvestri's tribute to John Williams, as he uses the theme from Jurassic Park's "Dennis Steals the Embryo" to highlight Daley's confusion as to whom might have pinched the exhibit.

map-line worship

Though I was less than satisfied with this novel, it did have its redeeming parts. This following passage questions the rationality of nationalism; the illogical and evil religion worshiped by billions millions in their fervor to violently exclude immigrants, block free and voluntary exchange, and of course, to wage murderous wars.

For all of humanity's sake, I hope we can advance beyond this childish notion of fixed-pie economics, where unfortunately the bulk of grownups live a nightmarish reality, feeling threatened by the mere existence of other people.

"How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in the autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply?

What is love of one's country? Is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession...

Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate."

For Sale: One Brooklyn Bridge

More on the faux privatization front:

"Investment bankers are blitzing the Spitzer administration with proposals to sell state assets to private firms, as investors seek to buy toll roads, bridges and even Off-Track Betting.

Bankers are making the rounds at the Thruway Authority, the Empire State Development Corp., the state Department of Transportation and the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. They seek to capitalize on statements by the new governor that he is open to public-private partnerships." -Article Link

misplaced aggravations

"Merck & Co. said it would stop lobbying states to pass laws requiring that preteen girls be vaccinated against cervical cancer in the face of a growing backlash among parents, physicians and consumer advocates." - Full Article

Sure, it's easy to get all pissed at Merck for a little rent-seeking, but if this doesn't get your blood boiling against the state mechanism which makes it all possible, you have nothing to complain about.

fiction[-writer] versus [economic] reality

On a topic I hold dear, Mises blog authors discuss the economic and aesthetic repercussions when the real estate market is disrupted via the political process in an attempt to craft a city more to the liking of the planning czars.


Mises.org
Can We Trust the State with Preservation?

By Gene Callahan and Julius Blumfeld

"Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, commenting on the controversy surrounding 980 Madison, sensibly noted that blocking the construction of new Manhattan residential space will result in housing costs being higher than they would be if the apartments were built. Wolfe's response demonstrates his ignorance of the fact that his pet cause entails very real costs: "[The proposed 980 Madison Avenue project] certainly isn't going to help the housing situation. Just more people who have the money will be able to move in" (Gillette, 2007, p. 21).

Wolfe apparently has never considered the fact that, when very rich people move into those new apartments, that will ease the demand for the residences they would have occupied otherwise, allowing the slightly less wealthy to acquire those spots. That, in turn, will free up the housing those people would otherwise have chosen, making them available to yet others, and so on. An increase in the housing stock at any price level will tend to lower housing costs in general, although, of course, that effect might always be offset or even swamped by some other factor working in the opposite direction.

Wolfe, not content with this first display of economic naïveté, continues, "To take [Glaeser's] theory to its logical conclusion would be to develop Central Park." Here, he confuses the recognition that action X would act towards lowering the cost of good Y to imply that, therefore, X must be done! Without a doubt, filling Central Park with apartment buildings would lower New York City rents. Similarly, butchering all of the dogs and cats in the United States for food would lower meat prices. But that in no way implies that either course of action is indisputably recommended. People quite sensibly prefer not to eat their pets, even though doing so would reduce their meal expenditures, just as New York City residents might prefer a bucolic respite in the midst of their urban environment, even given the higher housing costs that entails.
Glaeser is doing nothing more than noting that the elementary principles of supply and demand apply even to virtuous causes, while Wolfe, by refusing to concede such a basic truth, raises the suspicion that his campaign may have more to do with his public image than with concern for the greater good."

I've argued this very same point in the past, as evidenced, here, here, and here that some people would like to have their cake and eat it too.

I guess it's just that some fiction writers have no grasp of reality.

whence order arose

"I have never doubted the truth of signs, Adso; they are the only things man has with which to orient himself in the world. What I did not understand is the relation among signs... I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no order in the universe."

"But in imagining an erroneous order you still found something. . . ."

"What you say is very fine, Adso, and I thank you. The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless. Er muoz gelichesame die leiter abewerfen sô er an ir ufgestigen... is that how you say it?... It's hard to accept the idea that there cannot be an order in the universe because it would offend the free will of God and His omnipotence."

kitchen unwisdom

I think I've come up with a novel way to end the timeless recipe mix-up involving baking soda and baking powder - just swap their respective containers and go on making your mistakes.

eudaemonic

Holy crap- one of my favorite authors- George R.R. Martin has just signed a deal with HBO giving them rights to produce his "Ice and Fire" series. I'm seriously hoping that his books will gracefully survive the treatment to this newfangled audiovisual media device.

beyond the grave

(what might be an inappropriate title based on something you will read shortly)

In a very personal spell of synchronicity or perhaps merely coinci-dance, I've just finished off Robert Anton Wilson's "Email to the Universe". At the near end of the book, it recounts an interview from 2002 with Paul Krassner that ends with this:

Paul Krassner: Recently, when I spoke at a college campus, a student asked what I wanted my epitaph to be. I replied, "Wait, I'm not finished." What do you want your epitaph to be?

Robert A. Wilson: I have ordained in my will that my body will get cremated and the ashes thrown in Jerry Falwell's face. The executor of my will should then shout one word only: "Gotcha!"

Since this book is classified as non-fiction, I patiently await Reverend Falwell's decoration by a guerrilla ontologist.

R.A.W., R.I.A.

With much gloominess, I learn of Robert Anton Wilson's transcendence from his mortal coil.

R.A.W. will be sorely missed by all, to use clichéd verbiage, and fnord I not-so-humbly offer my sincerest condolences to his family, close friends, and all his extended readership who are all surely saddened by his passing.

Kallisti, rest in anarchy.

petty potty patrol psychotics

What happens when busybody lawmakers prohibit food establishments from having their sole restroom located behind the counter?

According to The Brooklyn Paper's Gersh Kuntzman [is that even a real name??]:

...But not any more, because Roma ripped out half of its seats rather than fight a law that requires restaurants with more than 19 seats to “provide toilet facilities for the public.”

And “public” means that the crapper can’t be in the food-preparation area because the dirty, filthy public (again, I’m not talking about myself here) is not legally allowed to be in the food-preparation area — except in restaurants with fewer than 20 seats, apparently.

So Roma now has only 16 seats — and the bathroom remains behind the counter. The result? I still have to ask the counterman to let me go into the kitchen to use the can — and now I can never find a seat at my neighborhood pizzeria!

Don't you love the unintended consequences of road paving to hell (i.e., all lawmaking)- it also manages to create hell on the way there too.