The conventional wisdom is that eliminating short selling would involve passing new anti-short selling legislation.
Conventional wisdom fails to realize that short selling, as it exists, is largely the contrivance of regulations. For that matter, the procedures on the NASDAQ that allowed unbridled short selling were created by the great Democratic philanthropist Bernie Madoff, former Chair of NASDAQ.
Eliminating naked short selling would be a matter of removing laws.
It would not even require a new bureaucracy. One need simply remove the regulations that allow naked shorting and announce that parties adversely affected by the process can sue the perpetrators of the crime for material damages.
In naked short selling, a person sells property that he does not own. The sell has a direct negative financial impact on the person who owns the property. It is clearly a violation of property rights. Defenders of the practice claim that the naked short seller will have future ownership, and future ownership is equivalent to current ownership. This argument falls apart when one realizes that owership exists in time. The whole investing thing is about buying an equity, holding it through a period of time and selling it again. The investor's hope is that the equity increases in value during that period of time.
Eliminating naked short selling would be a financial deregulation. Eliminating credit default swaps would actually be a deregulation as well. One would simply discard the 11,000 page regulation that made the process legal. This bill was passed in the beginning of the Bush administration (back when Bush was signing his name William Jefferson Clinton).
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Wall Street Bonuses
Not surprisingly, the stock manipulations that helped lead to a Democratic Super-Majority in Congress led to record bonuses. Apparently, many interesting things happened in 2008. For example Bernie Madoff had dramatically increased bonuses prior to his arrest. (DeepCapture is running reports on less than savory connections of Bernard Madoff. It is like a repeat of Joseph Kennedy).
2008 was a banner year for stock manipulation. Our country has not seen such epic stock manipulation since the heady days of Joseph Kennedy whose insider trading scams accumulated the billions necessary to buy his clan the status as first family.
I suspect that George Soros, who hates George W. Bush with every fiber of his being, was probably the leader of the pack. I look forward to seeing how historians play out his manipulations. Currently people praise Soros for the breaking of the Bank of London in the 1990s. I would love to hear more about his short position in 2008.
Tearing a page from The Prince, Obama is currently voicing outrage at the lieutenants who helped engineer his rise to power. It is an astute move. Fanning the flames of wealth envy keeps the masses in check. Dangers exist, however, if people look beyond the smoke and mirrors to see just who did the manipulations.
Obama should do well if the press can keep attention focused on how Republicans were chumps. Republicans were so focused on arguments about state v. private control that they failed to realize the ease with which the powers that be can manufacture financial ruin.
At all cost, the press must avoid deeper discussions on the cause of economic collapse. The left wing media needs to pound the drums of wealth envy without asking simple questions such as: "Why were bonuses at a record level when the market tanked."
When properly formed, bonuses track performance. In traditional bonus systems, bonuses drop when the market drops.
For that matter, it appears that a very large number of traditional investors lost their savings and a very large number of traditional financial advisors not only got no bonus, they received a pink slip for Christmas.
The only way that a market crash could generate near record bonuses would be if the bonuses weren't geared toward rewarding constructive activity, but were geared toward destructive activity.
We are told that the gearing of bonuses toward destructive activity is the result of deregulation. This is absurd. A free market tends to be weighted toward positive incentives. The negative incentives were pretty much all created with the idea that they would check irrational exuberance. As such, they are the creation of the desire for regulation, and are not the result of deregulation.
Of course, the point of deriding bonuses is to fan wealth envy.
The wealth envy arguments bounce off me. My anger is not aimed at the bonuses, but at the structure of the financial institutions which are now dominated by absurdities like credit default swaps, short selling (ftds), and mandated community reinvestment schemes. These created the swamp of sub-prime government guaranteed mortgage backed securities.
Madoff is important in understanding the problem. The former chair of NASDAQ was fundamental in creating a trading system that allowed unbridled short selling. The justification for the program was that shorting regulates the market.
The design that gave investors like Madoff and Soros the ability to engage in massive coordinated naked short attacks essentially gave a group of insider investors the power to destroy companies at will.
Folks, like Soros and Madoff, who hold the power to destroy, are a magnitude more powerful than those who struggle to create. An abortionist could kill a hundred fetuses in the time it takes an obstetrician to deliver a healthy child.
Republicans and Libertarians deserve the anger thrown in their direction. These idiots spent their days defending capitalism, when they should have been defending the free market against capitalism.
Had anyone read Marx, they would have realized that Marx never defined Communism. Marx simply gave a recipe for using the tools of capitalism to destroy the free market.
The greatest enemy of freedom is not the person dreaming of social utopia, but the intellectual working feverishly to undermine the financial system of the free society.
The people who work to undermine a financial system wear the title capitalist along with those who invent and build things.
People simply note that the rogues on Wall Street rape their investments as the market goes up and as it goes down.
The mob is incapable of seeing the difference between those who receive rewards for their creations and those who exploit weaknesses in the regulatory regime to make billions by tearing things down. All the mob sees is people getting bonuses and they are overcome with envy.
The left shows cunning in denouncing the lieutenants that brought them into power. The denouncing allows them to slap the shackles on the producers of this world under a false guise. By publicly deriding the sheep in lambs clothing, the wolves can take down a few more sheep from the herd.
It is the simply art of misdirection. If giving record bonuses for the destroyers of the world, then the left can justify taking the bonuses from the producers.
The fact that Wall Street bonuses hit record levels while the market tanked is just a symptom of the problem. The problem is that rogues created financial structures that pay off big time for the destruction of wealth. This created an inherently instable structure. It was simply a matter of injecting enough bad debt in the system and the system will implode.
The art of undermining economies is well known. You can find examples of thugs engineering the financial destruction of their enemies since antiquity.
If ever Americans regain the sentiment for freedom, I hope the leaders learn from the lesson of the 2008 manipulation. Conservative intellectuals need to stop accepting the terminology of the left. They should defend the free market and reject capitalism.
2008 was a banner year for stock manipulation. Our country has not seen such epic stock manipulation since the heady days of Joseph Kennedy whose insider trading scams accumulated the billions necessary to buy his clan the status as first family.
I suspect that George Soros, who hates George W. Bush with every fiber of his being, was probably the leader of the pack. I look forward to seeing how historians play out his manipulations. Currently people praise Soros for the breaking of the Bank of London in the 1990s. I would love to hear more about his short position in 2008.
Tearing a page from The Prince, Obama is currently voicing outrage at the lieutenants who helped engineer his rise to power. It is an astute move. Fanning the flames of wealth envy keeps the masses in check. Dangers exist, however, if people look beyond the smoke and mirrors to see just who did the manipulations.
Obama should do well if the press can keep attention focused on how Republicans were chumps. Republicans were so focused on arguments about state v. private control that they failed to realize the ease with which the powers that be can manufacture financial ruin.
At all cost, the press must avoid deeper discussions on the cause of economic collapse. The left wing media needs to pound the drums of wealth envy without asking simple questions such as: "Why were bonuses at a record level when the market tanked."
When properly formed, bonuses track performance. In traditional bonus systems, bonuses drop when the market drops.
For that matter, it appears that a very large number of traditional investors lost their savings and a very large number of traditional financial advisors not only got no bonus, they received a pink slip for Christmas.
The only way that a market crash could generate near record bonuses would be if the bonuses weren't geared toward rewarding constructive activity, but were geared toward destructive activity.
We are told that the gearing of bonuses toward destructive activity is the result of deregulation. This is absurd. A free market tends to be weighted toward positive incentives. The negative incentives were pretty much all created with the idea that they would check irrational exuberance. As such, they are the creation of the desire for regulation, and are not the result of deregulation.
Of course, the point of deriding bonuses is to fan wealth envy.
The wealth envy arguments bounce off me. My anger is not aimed at the bonuses, but at the structure of the financial institutions which are now dominated by absurdities like credit default swaps, short selling (ftds), and mandated community reinvestment schemes. These created the swamp of sub-prime government guaranteed mortgage backed securities.
Madoff is important in understanding the problem. The former chair of NASDAQ was fundamental in creating a trading system that allowed unbridled short selling. The justification for the program was that shorting regulates the market.
The design that gave investors like Madoff and Soros the ability to engage in massive coordinated naked short attacks essentially gave a group of insider investors the power to destroy companies at will.
Folks, like Soros and Madoff, who hold the power to destroy, are a magnitude more powerful than those who struggle to create. An abortionist could kill a hundred fetuses in the time it takes an obstetrician to deliver a healthy child.
Republicans and Libertarians deserve the anger thrown in their direction. These idiots spent their days defending capitalism, when they should have been defending the free market against capitalism.
Had anyone read Marx, they would have realized that Marx never defined Communism. Marx simply gave a recipe for using the tools of capitalism to destroy the free market.
The greatest enemy of freedom is not the person dreaming of social utopia, but the intellectual working feverishly to undermine the financial system of the free society.
The people who work to undermine a financial system wear the title capitalist along with those who invent and build things.
People simply note that the rogues on Wall Street rape their investments as the market goes up and as it goes down.
The mob is incapable of seeing the difference between those who receive rewards for their creations and those who exploit weaknesses in the regulatory regime to make billions by tearing things down. All the mob sees is people getting bonuses and they are overcome with envy.
The left shows cunning in denouncing the lieutenants that brought them into power. The denouncing allows them to slap the shackles on the producers of this world under a false guise. By publicly deriding the sheep in lambs clothing, the wolves can take down a few more sheep from the herd.
It is the simply art of misdirection. If giving record bonuses for the destroyers of the world, then the left can justify taking the bonuses from the producers.
The fact that Wall Street bonuses hit record levels while the market tanked is just a symptom of the problem. The problem is that rogues created financial structures that pay off big time for the destruction of wealth. This created an inherently instable structure. It was simply a matter of injecting enough bad debt in the system and the system will implode.
The art of undermining economies is well known. You can find examples of thugs engineering the financial destruction of their enemies since antiquity.
If ever Americans regain the sentiment for freedom, I hope the leaders learn from the lesson of the 2008 manipulation. Conservative intellectuals need to stop accepting the terminology of the left. They should defend the free market and reject capitalism.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Textbook Bias
One often hears claims of textbook bias. While listening to such a claim, I mindlessly checked to see who owned the domain TextbookBias.com.
Turns out, the domain was available.
I get a free name with my hosting account; so I registered it.
I really don't have an idea what to do with the domain. I figured it would be an interesting case study in an evolutionary design approach to the web site. In this approach, one starts with a topic and sees where the conversation leads.
So, what I've done so far is make a change log and slapped up an ad page. (There's gold in them thar textbooks). I haven't put up a homepage yet, as I really haven't ever thought about this topic before.
I will probably just slap up a few window dressing essays and might make a form for user submitted content. I want to figure out how OpenID works before soliciting info.
At worst the domain purchase is an excuse to read a few textbooks.
Turns out, the domain was available.
I get a free name with my hosting account; so I registered it.
I really don't have an idea what to do with the domain. I figured it would be an interesting case study in an evolutionary design approach to the web site. In this approach, one starts with a topic and sees where the conversation leads.
So, what I've done so far is make a change log and slapped up an ad page. (There's gold in them thar textbooks). I haven't put up a homepage yet, as I really haven't ever thought about this topic before.
I will probably just slap up a few window dressing essays and might make a form for user submitted content. I want to figure out how OpenID works before soliciting info.
At worst the domain purchase is an excuse to read a few textbooks.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Change and War
Natalie Collins is repeating the talking point that war is the result of religion.
There are aspects of religion that can increase the likelihood of war; However, I have never bought into the argument that there is a single cause of war. Much less that religion is that common cause.
In my last post I repeated my distaste for change campaigns.
The desire to affect change has been a cause in a large number of wars in the modern era.
Folks in the The French Revolution (and Reign of Terror) thought their efforts would bring about a new age of reason.
The Communist Revolutions were often instigated by fiercely anti-religious people who felt that they could scientifically engineer a perfect society. The Marxist formula is a simple thing where one starts a social movement that agitates for change, The party rises to power in the the turmoil created by the agitation.
One could argue that Marx raised science to a religion; thus all wars are still the result of religion. But, in doing so, they undermine their claim that scientists could engineer a perfect society. The scientists would simply take on the role of God.
One can explain the current series of Mideatern wars in the Hegelian dialectical manner.
Notably, George Bush the first did not overthrow Iraq after the Gulf war as he rejected nation building. George Bush the second listened to a group called neocons who believed that overthrowing Hussein and re-engineering the Iraq as a democracy would be a short cut to change.
I guess I should also point out that the 9/11 attackers thought that their attack would bring about change.
Religion plays a part in wars. Science and philosophical theories play parts in wars. Sometimes well intentioned peacekeeping efforts end up leading to wars. In almost all wars, you will find some people thinking that the war will lead to a positive change.
I was sad to see Ms. Collins repeating the religion=war talking point. The cause of war is always complex. The prevention of war is also complex. For that matter, a misdiagnosis of the cause of previous wars can end up being a cause for the next war.
There are aspects of religion that can increase the likelihood of war; However, I have never bought into the argument that there is a single cause of war. Much less that religion is that common cause.
In my last post I repeated my distaste for change campaigns.
The desire to affect change has been a cause in a large number of wars in the modern era.
Folks in the The French Revolution (and Reign of Terror) thought their efforts would bring about a new age of reason.
The Communist Revolutions were often instigated by fiercely anti-religious people who felt that they could scientifically engineer a perfect society. The Marxist formula is a simple thing where one starts a social movement that agitates for change, The party rises to power in the the turmoil created by the agitation.
One could argue that Marx raised science to a religion; thus all wars are still the result of religion. But, in doing so, they undermine their claim that scientists could engineer a perfect society. The scientists would simply take on the role of God.
One can explain the current series of Mideatern wars in the Hegelian dialectical manner.
Notably, George Bush the first did not overthrow Iraq after the Gulf war as he rejected nation building. George Bush the second listened to a group called neocons who believed that overthrowing Hussein and re-engineering the Iraq as a democracy would be a short cut to change.
I guess I should also point out that the 9/11 attackers thought that their attack would bring about change.
Religion plays a part in wars. Science and philosophical theories play parts in wars. Sometimes well intentioned peacekeeping efforts end up leading to wars. In almost all wars, you will find some people thinking that the war will lead to a positive change.
I was sad to see Ms. Collins repeating the religion=war talking point. The cause of war is always complex. The prevention of war is also complex. For that matter, a misdiagnosis of the cause of previous wars can end up being a cause for the next war.
Monday, January 26, 2009
The Effects of Change
The press successfully engineered a negative feedback loop in the effort to give their party the presidency and super majority in Washington.Like many, I am sitting here anxiously hoping that the feel-good-hype centered on the ascendance of the change agent will create a positive feedback loop.
I was expecting a 2000k pop in the market as short sellers take their capital gains while the many people who withdrew from the market for hatred of Bush begin the process of re-investing.
I think a large number of existing revenue streams are currently undervalued. I look at the market and see a wonderland of buy opportunities. I kick myself for buying in too early.
I decided to look at the market with the question: If I had a wad of cash to invest, where would I put it?
While asking this question, I saw a news-blurb with Obama talking about change.
A pit formed in my stomach.
Buying stock is just legalized gambling. Real investing happens when real business people make real decisions about hiring workers, buying product and producing goods.
I rephrased my question and asked: If I were a business, would I take the gamble and hire new workers anticipating a turn around?
The answer, in this day of change, is a resounding "No."
One cannot make substantive investment decisions in a time of change. Margins are so tight in business today that change can lead to a big net loss for a company foolish enough to hire.
I voted for Obama in the primary, and might have supported him in the general election if his campaign was about better quality discourse and politics. Instead, his campaign took a single focus on demanding an undefined change.
I let loose with a really ugly post about change campaigns right be for the general election.
When historians enumerate the causes of the current economic downturn, I hope that they include the change campaign as a contributing factor in the make up of the economic mess.
The change campaign is the very heart of radicalization.
One cannot make substantive decisions in the face of unspecified change. This affects both business and political decisions.
For example, Go Utah Go is arguing that we should jack up gas prices for road projects.
If change means a 40% drop in the number of miles that Americans drive, or a 20% drop in the number of Americans that own cars, then these road projects are superfluous.
What if change means a reversal of the migration to the suburbs? Suburban road construction projects would be a waste.
Road construction does a great deal of damage to the environment. The carbon-tire-track of a road-paver contributes more to global warming than a whole marching band of carbon-footprints.
Road construction for the sake of road construction is needless environmental waste. Sound road construction is built around very detailed analysis of needs. In a time of change, one cannot properly assess needs.
In a time of great social upheaval (ooops, I mean "change"), one can not delve into questions of optimizing resources. One simply falls into crisis mode. Road funds should only be spend addressing crisis. Substantive decisions about the shape of roads should be put off until after we have some idea of how the economy would look after the upheaval.
Change affects every part of business and social planning. Businesses should reduce their workforce to the minimum and hire temps until they have a feel of the shape of things after the change. School districts should shun building new schools in case the suburb needing the new school is changed out of existence.
I had been hoping that the change in tone of the press would be sufficient to remove the negative feedback loop which is wracking the economy.
Unfortunately, decision makers and business gamblers staring into the face of unspecified change. I hope I am wrong, but the engineers of change campaign may find it hard to socially-engineer their way out of the hole they dug with their campaign.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
The Microstock Bubble
I feel like a boy with a big balloon.
BigStockPhoto.com just released a whomping huge number of free photos to promote the use of microstock photography in blogs.
These are images from professional photographers that you can legally include in your blog. Here is a sample free-low-res image.
They have millions upon millions of quality photographs and graphic designs that you can include on your site. I like the Microstock business model as it creates an affordable source of images for blogs, web sites and scrapbookers while providing cash for photographers and designers.
I am super happy to find this treasure trove of free microstock images, because it allows me to be a hypocrite. I can preach at you about buying microstock, while I shamelessly use the free ones.
Truth be told. I started buying images. I made a little program that shows where I use them. You can use this program too (providing that you link to it).
You can view the free images here.
BigStockPhoto.com just released a whomping huge number of free photos to promote the use of microstock photography in blogs.
These are images from professional photographers that you can legally include in your blog. Here is a sample free-low-res image.
They have millions upon millions of quality photographs and graphic designs that you can include on your site. I like the Microstock business model as it creates an affordable source of images for blogs, web sites and scrapbookers while providing cash for photographers and designers.
I am super happy to find this treasure trove of free microstock images, because it allows me to be a hypocrite. I can preach at you about buying microstock, while I shamelessly use the free ones.
Truth be told. I started buying images. I made a little program that shows where I use them. You can use this program too (providing that you link to it).
You can view the free images here.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
To Every Argument Its Season
I will probably disagree with many of the policies of Barack Obama during the next eight years. As for now, I am extremely happy to see a nation coming together to celebrate the peaceful transfer of power which has been a hallmark of American democracy.
There really has only been one transfer of power that led to civil war. Oddly, that happened with the election of the First Republican president Abraham Lincoln. After the 1860 election the pro-slavery faction of the Democratic Party was so upset they chose to secede from the union.
I mention this as odd because Barack Obama, a person hoping to unite the nation, made numerous symbolic gestures towards Lincoln during his inauguration. In the 1860s, the partisan hatred of Lincoln was so great it threw our nation in to civil war. It was even worse than the hatred toward George W. Bush.
Being consumed by partisan hatred tears a nation apart.
One of the most effective cures of this affliction is for people to measure their partisan loyalties to the occasion.
A primary concern of our nation's schools is to raise good citizens. One of the hardest lessons for a student to learn is when an argument is appropriate. Our nation has well defined election cycles with a campaign, inauguration and legislative seasons.
A good citizen will be attentive and weigh their speech to the season.
For this reason, I will disagree with Liberating Education on the decision of the Dayton schools to discourage inappropriate comments during the inauguration.
It is possible that the school system is trying to pull the trick of openly encouraging agitation when the opposition is in power and stifling debate when their party is in power.
Obama's apparent move toward the center is strikingly similar to Bush's move to the center.
We are wise to watch the different treatment that the press and education establishment give to Obama v. Bush. We are wise to report on open efforts of partisan institutions to manipulate opinion.
The reported incident occurred during a time when respect for tradition was due.
The world could use a bit more civility, after all. ;)
There really has only been one transfer of power that led to civil war. Oddly, that happened with the election of the First Republican president Abraham Lincoln. After the 1860 election the pro-slavery faction of the Democratic Party was so upset they chose to secede from the union.
I mention this as odd because Barack Obama, a person hoping to unite the nation, made numerous symbolic gestures towards Lincoln during his inauguration. In the 1860s, the partisan hatred of Lincoln was so great it threw our nation in to civil war. It was even worse than the hatred toward George W. Bush.
Being consumed by partisan hatred tears a nation apart.
One of the most effective cures of this affliction is for people to measure their partisan loyalties to the occasion.
A primary concern of our nation's schools is to raise good citizens. One of the hardest lessons for a student to learn is when an argument is appropriate. Our nation has well defined election cycles with a campaign, inauguration and legislative seasons.
A good citizen will be attentive and weigh their speech to the season.
For this reason, I will disagree with Liberating Education on the decision of the Dayton schools to discourage inappropriate comments during the inauguration.
It is possible that the school system is trying to pull the trick of openly encouraging agitation when the opposition is in power and stifling debate when their party is in power.
Obama's apparent move toward the center is strikingly similar to Bush's move to the center.
We are wise to watch the different treatment that the press and education establishment give to Obama v. Bush. We are wise to report on open efforts of partisan institutions to manipulate opinion.
The reported incident occurred during a time when respect for tradition was due.
Back to the Ugly Business of Blogging
PS: After writing this great conciliatory post, I decided to take my own advice and temporarily curb my plans to protests at funerals. I am still clinging to my core belief that funerals for the living be given equal legal status as funerals for the dead. But, I will cut out the protests at funerals for the moment.The world could use a bit more civility, after all. ;)
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Transcending Politics with Dialectics
Someone needs to stimulate the economy; So, I decided to give StockXpert a try. I bought the 50 credit bundle to knock the per credit price down to $.75 an image.
To celebrate the peaceful transfer of power going on in DC, I decided to buy a designer's version of candidates racing to catch their political dreams.
My one worry is that the left is trying to pull the trick of framing anyone whose worldview differs from theirs as divisive haters.
I read a vicious attack from Eric Fried of FortCollinsNow on some a guy named Kevin Lundberg out of Berthoud.
The Democrats won pretty much everything. So, why waste precious time on the historic cusp of change attacking an enemy who Fried notes is pretty much marginalized already? Fried is clearly not content with seeing his enemies marginalized. He wants anyone holding opinions outside his narrow little viewpoint destroyed utterly.
Mr. Fried's anger seems to be toward the fact that Republicans are returning to the core principles that they abandonned in the Bush years. I see nothing wrong with this. The whole point of a two party system is that the party that loses regroups.
When Democrats regroup, they return to the Material Dialectics. When Republicans regroup, they return to principles.
Apparently the great sin of Mr. Lundberg is that he is a global warming denier. To tell you the truth, if I lived in Berthoud, I would welcome be welcoming global warming. Could you do a couple more coal plants, it's cold up here.
I think the Colorado Springs Journal piece on partisanship was a bit more insightful. The article has a pithy quote about Bill Ritter quoting Obama quoting Lincoln. The article points out a strange tendency of Democrats to put forward their view as if it were nonpartisan.
A dialectician pretends to internalize the conflicts of the day. People holding dialectical materialism have the illusion that the trick allows them to frame their partisan actions as non-ideological, pragmatic and nonpartisan.
I think it is far better for people to acknowledge that they have ideas. Then openly discuss the ideas.
I am hopeful that the Libertarians and Republicans who lost this last round of elections really hit the table with the best of their ideas.
I actually think one of the reasons the Bush years were so icky was that the Democrats disengaged from an open discussion of ideas. Instead, they chose to entrench in an eight year long change campaign that really wreaked havoc on this nation.
Anyway, this Kevin Lundberg guy is probably a kook. His site has a long presentation by a Dr. William Gray who has some sort of antiquated notion about the scientific method. He sees science as being a system where a scientist puts forward a thesis, then members of the scientific community put forward arguments for or against the thesis.
Everyone knows that science is a system that evolves through thesis/antithesis conflicts. A member of the party puts forward a set of talking points. Scientists go through the motions of internalizing the conflict. As the winning side becomes clear, the most cunning of the lot jump on the winning side of the debate then set out to destroy those still examining the thesis utterly.
That's how the paradigm shifts.
Anyway, it is really exciting that the millions of people who caught the Bush Derangement Syndrome in the last few years are back and happy to be Americans again.
To celebrate the peaceful transfer of power going on in DC, I decided to buy a designer's version of candidates racing to catch their political dreams.
My one worry is that the left is trying to pull the trick of framing anyone whose worldview differs from theirs as divisive haters.
I read a vicious attack from Eric Fried of FortCollinsNow on some a guy named Kevin Lundberg out of Berthoud.
The Democrats won pretty much everything. So, why waste precious time on the historic cusp of change attacking an enemy who Fried notes is pretty much marginalized already? Fried is clearly not content with seeing his enemies marginalized. He wants anyone holding opinions outside his narrow little viewpoint destroyed utterly.
Mr. Fried's anger seems to be toward the fact that Republicans are returning to the core principles that they abandonned in the Bush years. I see nothing wrong with this. The whole point of a two party system is that the party that loses regroups.
When Democrats regroup, they return to the Material Dialectics. When Republicans regroup, they return to principles.
Apparently the great sin of Mr. Lundberg is that he is a global warming denier. To tell you the truth, if I lived in Berthoud, I would welcome be welcoming global warming. Could you do a couple more coal plants, it's cold up here.
I think the Colorado Springs Journal piece on partisanship was a bit more insightful. The article has a pithy quote about Bill Ritter quoting Obama quoting Lincoln. The article points out a strange tendency of Democrats to put forward their view as if it were nonpartisan.
A dialectician pretends to internalize the conflicts of the day. People holding dialectical materialism have the illusion that the trick allows them to frame their partisan actions as non-ideological, pragmatic and nonpartisan.
I think it is far better for people to acknowledge that they have ideas. Then openly discuss the ideas.
I am hopeful that the Libertarians and Republicans who lost this last round of elections really hit the table with the best of their ideas.
I actually think one of the reasons the Bush years were so icky was that the Democrats disengaged from an open discussion of ideas. Instead, they chose to entrench in an eight year long change campaign that really wreaked havoc on this nation.
Anyway, this Kevin Lundberg guy is probably a kook. His site has a long presentation by a Dr. William Gray who has some sort of antiquated notion about the scientific method. He sees science as being a system where a scientist puts forward a thesis, then members of the scientific community put forward arguments for or against the thesis.
Everyone knows that science is a system that evolves through thesis/antithesis conflicts. A member of the party puts forward a set of talking points. Scientists go through the motions of internalizing the conflict. As the winning side becomes clear, the most cunning of the lot jump on the winning side of the debate then set out to destroy those still examining the thesis utterly.
That's how the paradigm shifts.
Anyway, it is really exciting that the millions of people who caught the Bush Derangement Syndrome in the last few years are back and happy to be Americans again.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Wellness Paradigm
During his confirmation hearing for the Department of Health and Human Services, Senator Tom Daschle spoke of the need to shift the focus of the health care system from illness to wellness.
I thought I would point out that this is the direction that a free market would trend. For that matter, the straggling vestiges of the free market that swirl around on the outskirts of the industrial-health-complex are things like doulas, nutritional supplements, gyms, and a ton of weird coaching and spiritual efforts aimed at self improvement.
These efforts are all on the peripheral, and most are marginal concerns.
The industrial-healthcare-complex used the paradigm of illness and marketed fear to roll up the lion's share of the health care pie into wasteful third party health systems (either employer or government funded).
The machine marketed fear of illness, and Americans responded by surrendering the health care to insurance companies, HMOs, government agencies and other third party providers. These agencies leverage our innate fear of illness to tighten their grasp on the industry then use their political clout to drive prices out of the range of the majority of Americans.
Conversely, the machine attacks attempts of the free market to provide wellness centered health services to the public as self-centered greed.
As health care is a direct human to human service, a free market would never have developed this current pricing structure that denies care to so many in our nation.
It takes the corrercive power of monopolies and government to create such an imbalance and unhealthy system.
I agree that our system is flawed. I worry, however, that the left would oppose any system where people played an active role in their lives. I am happy to hear Daschle's rhetoric going in the right direction, but fear that big government agencies bent on pushing the marginal wellness centered health efforts in the free market over the brink.
I thought I would point out that this is the direction that a free market would trend. For that matter, the straggling vestiges of the free market that swirl around on the outskirts of the industrial-health-complex are things like doulas, nutritional supplements, gyms, and a ton of weird coaching and spiritual efforts aimed at self improvement.
These efforts are all on the peripheral, and most are marginal concerns.
The industrial-healthcare-complex used the paradigm of illness and marketed fear to roll up the lion's share of the health care pie into wasteful third party health systems (either employer or government funded).
The machine marketed fear of illness, and Americans responded by surrendering the health care to insurance companies, HMOs, government agencies and other third party providers. These agencies leverage our innate fear of illness to tighten their grasp on the industry then use their political clout to drive prices out of the range of the majority of Americans.
Conversely, the machine attacks attempts of the free market to provide wellness centered health services to the public as self-centered greed.
As health care is a direct human to human service, a free market would never have developed this current pricing structure that denies care to so many in our nation.
It takes the corrercive power of monopolies and government to create such an imbalance and unhealthy system.
I agree that our system is flawed. I worry, however, that the left would oppose any system where people played an active role in their lives. I am happy to hear Daschle's rhetoric going in the right direction, but fear that big government agencies bent on pushing the marginal wellness centered health efforts in the free market over the brink.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Links to Nowhere
A week ago, I left a whining post about how lousy I am at link building.
The real motivation for that post was that my stats showed that I would soon be deleting the 5000th entry from the Community Color directories.
The site currently has 19055 active links. Over a fifth of the web sites that I've added to the site have gone dark already. FYI, I was hoping that the live count would top 20k before deleting link 5k; so I had stopped culling dead links for the last several weeks.
When I saw on my news reader that Circuit City is calling it quits. I decided to make their link the 5000th deletion. This was one of my few advertisers. My stats show that I them 1578 hits and made an astounding $58.17 for the effort.
Removing dead links always makes me sad. In many cases, it means that a person failed to realize a dream.
The primary reason that so many small web sites fail to realize their dreams is that no-one links to small business sites. People tend to get all jealous and link stingy when it comes to their neighbors.
Rather than doing something worthwhile like support the local community, people do silly things like writing absolutely inane posts that contribute nothing to the world. For example, I just read an idiotic piece from a Salt Lake blogger who was mourning the geese lost in the Hudson River crash.
What a Nimrod!
I would never do something like that.
My current focus on the community sites is a feature called Site of the Week. This is really just a blog about local web sites. I do the reviews on weekly schedule so that I can put them in an RSS feed. My stats show that there's current 2933 of these little beasties, and that the reviews have had 1.1 million page views. (When I delete a link, it deletes the review and the stats. I've probably deleted 300 reviews so far). The reviews are all poorly written because it is the link to web site that matters.
My most important reader is a gent named Googlebot. Googlebot doesn't seem to care much about the quality of the writing.
My hope is that people will subscribe to the RSS feed for their town, and might occasionally visit local business, artists, nonprofit or community sites in the feed.
To fund the review program, I made a cheesy little store of the day feature. Today's store of the day is MusicNotes which sells musical scores through the PC.
I estimate that the reviews make about $1 for every 1000 page views. So, I've made about $1,100 from this local site review program.
Speaking of RSS feeds: Blogger recently added a feature that lets people include an RSS feed in the side bar of their blog. As I have no shame, I put the feed
for the Store of the Day on the side bar of this blog.
All you have to do is pasted the URL of the feed in feed widget found on a layout manager. Blogger will post the most recent 5 entries from the feed.
I invite anyone who wants to promote their local web development community to add a feed for their town in their blog. For that matter, I would be happy to give people access to the review writer for their town if they contacted me.
BTW, The motive behind writing this blog post is to promote an effort to promote local web sites. In a round about way I am practicing what I preach in this blog.
The real motivation for that post was that my stats showed that I would soon be deleting the 5000th entry from the Community Color directories.
The site currently has 19055 active links. Over a fifth of the web sites that I've added to the site have gone dark already. FYI, I was hoping that the live count would top 20k before deleting link 5k; so I had stopped culling dead links for the last several weeks.
When I saw on my news reader that Circuit City is calling it quits. I decided to make their link the 5000th deletion. This was one of my few advertisers. My stats show that I them 1578 hits and made an astounding $58.17 for the effort.
Removing dead links always makes me sad. In many cases, it means that a person failed to realize a dream.
The primary reason that so many small web sites fail to realize their dreams is that no-one links to small business sites. People tend to get all jealous and link stingy when it comes to their neighbors.
Rather than doing something worthwhile like support the local community, people do silly things like writing absolutely inane posts that contribute nothing to the world. For example, I just read an idiotic piece from a Salt Lake blogger who was mourning the geese lost in the Hudson River crash.
What a Nimrod!
I would never do something like that.
My current focus on the community sites is a feature called Site of the Week. This is really just a blog about local web sites. I do the reviews on weekly schedule so that I can put them in an RSS feed. My stats show that there's current 2933 of these little beasties, and that the reviews have had 1.1 million page views. (When I delete a link, it deletes the review and the stats. I've probably deleted 300 reviews so far). The reviews are all poorly written because it is the link to web site that matters.
My most important reader is a gent named Googlebot. Googlebot doesn't seem to care much about the quality of the writing.
My hope is that people will subscribe to the RSS feed for their town, and might occasionally visit local business, artists, nonprofit or community sites in the feed.
To fund the review program, I made a cheesy little store of the day feature. Today's store of the day is MusicNotes which sells musical scores through the PC.
I estimate that the reviews make about $1 for every 1000 page views. So, I've made about $1,100 from this local site review program.
Speaking of RSS feeds: Blogger recently added a feature that lets people include an RSS feed in the side bar of their blog. As I have no shame, I put the feed
for the Store of the Day on the side bar of this blog.All you have to do is pasted the URL of the feed in feed widget found on a layout manager. Blogger will post the most recent 5 entries from the feed.
I invite anyone who wants to promote their local web development community to add a feed for their town in their blog. For that matter, I would be happy to give people access to the review writer for their town if they contacted me.
BTW, The motive behind writing this blog post is to promote an effort to promote local web sites. In a round about way I am practicing what I preach in this blog.
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