Posted on 04/25/2009 7:44:08 AM PDT by Publius
Did you catch the results of the last election?
As usual, stunning job.. Many thanks.
Doesn't sound like such a bad concept for an economy actually. Don't like the goobermint that drove them to it, but you have to admit, the mind that thought up VIP shopper cards and similar stupidity would be laughed out of town in that world.
This is, certainly, "guerrilla" capitalism in action, but it does have a cleanliness and clarity that we will encounter again in three chapters or so in the Atlantis that has been hinted at. It will be interesting to compare the two at that point and see if we can discern a difference. I'm inclined to state that there is not, but we've a way to go before we can reach any reasoned conclusion.
Make that six chapters or so. And my apologies to all for hinting at a spoiler.
My husband was telling me about "The Folly of FDR", which he is listening to during his commute. He said that FDR was actually doing some really ridiculous stuff. They had the economics backwards, and noted that wages were high in good times, so therefore, they mandated high wages, thinking the wages were the engine. It was also the time of the Dust Bowl, and many people were starving, yet the government was destroying crops to keep prices high, because during the boom times, prices were high. Must have been the high prices that caused the boom times.....
In many ways, Rand was not prophesying, she was regurgitating what had already gone before under FDR.
By suspending the mark-to-market rules, they are preventing the banks from writing down or writing off the bad mortgate loans. Why? Because inflated real estate prices were the engine for the prior prosperity. Must have been the high prices that caused the boom times...
But when it finally comes, Galt's Gulch will turn out not to be a geographic place at all, but a state of mind. A secret brotherhood much like the Resistance in Nazi Europe.
Anyway, great work again fellows!!
The reaction to weather-based disaster reminds me of the vastly different responses to Katrina between the people in New Orleans (ruled for life by socialists) and the people of Mississippi (relatively free). Still even now, I continue to hear pleas for help to the “Katrina victims”. The reactions to the people who remained in New Orleans seemed to be of 2 varieties - first is the actual, literal looters who just took what they could get to while the rightful owners were gone, and second are those who just sat there expecting someone to rescue them (much more like AS). As I was reading this chapter, this reminded me very much of the New Orleans experience.
In Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida you had much more the expectation that people were self-sufficient, at least for some amount of time, and responsible for their own response. I think the people of these states are and will be much more self-sufficient than those who have grown up in a dependency culture. Let’s hope this dependency culture doesn’t get so pervasive that the pockets of self-sufficiency disappear.
I don’t think it’s a case of being uneducated or uncaring. But I am trying to figure out exactly why so many of these people are so completely uncritical of what’s going on in their own country. I was visiting my parents today and they have a very good friend who is just completely ga-ga over BO. There is nothing he can do that she will disagree with. Of course, she’s in her 80s and has never voted anything but a Democrat her entire life.
I have relatives who have graduate degrees who simply cannot have a back-and-forth discussion of anything in politics, but are absolutely 100% sure that anything BO does is best and he’s the smartest president we’ve ever had. The left is so incredibly closed-minded that I’m not sure what will have to happen to break them of this, if anything. Maybe an AS scenario, but I’m not even sure that would do it.
The release of the memos describing what we did to “torture” the Gitmo prisoners (haze would be a better term) is a stark example to me. If they’re going to do that, fine, but don’t redact the parts of the memos that describe the information that was gathered (keeping that classified). There seems to be a general inability on the left to honestly discuss and review these issues from a moral and/or logical standpoint. Whatever BO says is right by definition. May God have mercy on our souls...
And back then it was the opposite of what it is now. I remember being told in grade school that we were all going to freeze to death in the next great ice age.
And back then it was the opposite of what it is now. I remember being told in grade school that we were all going to freeze to death in the next great ice age.
I know, I know, it's Wiki. (caveat emptor)
Spoiler warning - judicious perusal required.
Submitted for furthering the group discussion.
There is nothing he can do that she will disagree with. Of course, she’s in her 80s and has never voted anything but a Democrat her entire life.”
That disease is part of what is going to kill the USA.
I call the left “LIEberals,” and with good reason.
As you pointed out so clearly.
only a effeminate ivy leaguer would have such a name today he'd be a member of GLAD
Tinky Holloway....how about Alger Hiss?
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