Free kibbles

Lehman Brothers is hiring. This shows the fallacy of the alarmism that fuels these irresponsible bailouts. Companies don't go away when they file bankruptcy. Parts of the company get absorbed by other companies, and the core business remaining becomes profitable again. We should have let all those Wall Street firms go bankrupt. The stronger firms would have absorbed portions of the weaker firms, and the weaker firms would have rebounded stronger than before. This bailout hysteria was stoked by the most powerful aristocrats so they could take more power from us for themselves. Lehman won't come back stronger since its in full liquidation, but its loss is other companies' gain.

Tom Daschle stands as the epitome of the limousine liberal. His company gave him a limousine and a chauffeur for free, and Daschle never paid taxes on that benefit. He also "forgot" to claim some other income. He also made an official statement against tax cheats in 1998. No wonder Democrats don't care about raising people's taxes. They don't bother paying them. And Obama loves tax cheats. Apparently only tax cheats can do the jobs Obama wants done. What's up with that? Can you imagine if a Republican had done this? Can you imagine the outrage against Republican corruption and being in bed with big business? A Republican would have been hounded out of the job, and the press wouldn't have shut up about it for years.

GM to invest $1 billion of our tax dollars into it's Brazilian unit. This is no reason to be upset with GM. GM should invest however it best benefits the company. But I'm pissed that our government took that money by force from people who earned it and gave it to GM, which didn't.

Now that Obama is in the saddle, the Marxists are coming out of the woodwork. University professor proposes 99 percent greed tax on all income over $500,000. Why didn't he propose the simpler solution of rounding up all rich people by force and sending them to economically freer countries to make money?

God forbid that aristocrats like Rep. Obey have to account to voters for their actions.

Democrats are stealthily implementing socialized medicine while the country is distracted by the financial crisis, adding 10 million people to the socialized medicine bandwagon in 4 weeks! The dishonesty of the Democrats is amazing.

Obama's stimulus boondoogle has a buy American requirement that's a backdoor method of implementing the same kind of protectionism that started the Great Depression.

I haven't heard anything from the North America Union conspiracy fans since the economic crisis. I'm surprised because it fits right in with their conspiracy. It's a good an explanation why this crisis appeared so suddenly, with Paulson telling Congress everything was fine last summer, Frank saying everything was fine with Fannie and Freddie, even though experts were predicting it and tracking it step by step. So I looked up an article linking the crisis to the conspiracy. It's difficult to believe this crisis wasn't planned, but at the same time, self-interest and ego, the 2 most powerful influences in Washington, can lead to incredible stupidity.

Fine essay by Mises scholar calls this a hopeful time for freedom lovers. He thinks that idea that government can overcome economic laws will be exposed once and for all. He thinks that after a period of pain and suffering it will become clear to all people that the only way we can solve our economic problems is through freedom. He thinks this time is different than the 30s because our economy is so much more complex and evolves so rapidly that the failure of government control will become clear in 12 to 18 months. I love his optimism, but I don't share it. Too many Americans have wrapped themselves in the comforting illusion that government is the answer to our problems and, thanks to the enemies of freedom and free markets like Bush, Paulson, Greenspan, and Bernanke, they blame our problems in non-existent free markets. If our situation is worse in 2 years, and I think it will be, they will still blame Bush. But I do think that enough Americans will realize Obama doesn't have any answers to oust him in 4 years. But the Republicans that replaces him will probably be nearly as bad.

Amity Schlaes explains that Obama should not emulate FDR's economic policies, but in several scary ways, he is.

Essay provides more insight into Mises scholar's position that there should be no such thing as intellectual property. I was right when I deduced that the reason he didn't consider ideas as a scarce resource is that conflict cannot arise over sharing an idea. 2 people can't use a pencil at the same time, so people must have exclusive ownership of their own pencil. Other people can own a copy of the pencil. But there is no conflict over 2 people owning an idea. Every person in the world can independently and simultaneously on one idea. He makes the case that, like the pencil, each person owns a copy of the idea, but only in the case of IP, not the pencil, do we put restrictions on how others can use their copy of the idea.

So I get the principle's but the author fails to address the problems. If a band that has no money records a song and posts it on the internet, and it's a good song, then multiple artists with multiple record companies will record the song and take all the money for it. The original artists will get nothing. The book example mentioned by the author is silly. The publisher of the book wouldn't give 1000 books to the author. The publisher would just sell the books for himself. Think about it. If you sent a manuscript to a publisher, the publisher would own it, and you would be screwed. It makes no sense. If you posted it on the internet, and it was good, publishing companies would publish it and take all the money. You would get nothing. Same if you invented a new style of airplane. The first time you showed your plans to a company who could produce a prototype, they would build it and you would get nothing.

I suppose that problem could be solved with a conditional contract. I'll show you my idea, and if you like it and agree to produce it, print it, record it, distribute it, whatever, you give me 10 percent of everything you make off of it for 5 years. That company would get the advantage of being first to market. That company's competitors wouldn't have the restriction, so they would have that advantage. I just doesn't seem like the creator/inventor gets his due.

Mises scholar proposes 10 policy changes to fix our financial problems. While radical, they're not nearly as radical as government would have us believe.