Moving to Self-Hosted Service
I’m moving this blog to a self-hosted site – ppresky.com
All updates will be on that site. This site will permanently close by June 1st.
Pew Research: “Socialism” not so negative, “Capitalism” not so positive
Pew Research Center released a study a few days ago showing “positive” or “negative” reactions towards words and phrases.
I’m just wondering how we interpret some of the data: when 14% of the polled say their response to the phrase “civil liberties” is negative, are we to understand they don’t like civil liberties? I mean, who says “nope, civil liberties? That sounds like a horrible idea!”. I expect the rise of the unpopular conservatives who simultaneously espouse civil liberties and prevent gays from getting hospital visitation rights with their lovers gives the phrase bad connotations.
And 15% of Republicans responded positively to “socialism”? What? It is more of a stretch to think they’re saying to themselves “Socialism. That’s like Obama. Who is becoming less popular every day. So yeah, a good thing!”.
??
On the failings of the free market: why regulation is necessary
This article is now hosted on my new site. You can access it with this link. I will be completing the move to ppresky.com by June 1st.
After the stock market crash which signaled the start of the Great Depression, after the housing bubble which blew in 2008, even after the recent anger over Goldman Sachs and BP, there are people who think unregulated markets are more efficient than and morally superior to regulated ones. And I’m not addressing anarcho-capitalists who base this on moral objections to central authority nor am I addressing those who prefer no regulation to extreme nationalization. I’m addressing people who think that all members of society are happier, more secure, and more empowered without market regulation of any sort. Dinesh D’Souza, one of these people, spoke at UCSC a few weeks ago. Most of his speech, which espoused the morality of capitalism, can be summarized in his saying “besides the clergy, the capitalist is the person most obsessed with fulfilling the needs and wants of others”. This is a clever way of disguising the capitalist’s selfishness as a virtue. Selfishness is not a virtue, though it can be harnessed in a way which makes it virtuous through its useful products. That is why the competitive marketplace has been the most effective economic tool for helping to grow the total material output of a society. But selfishness means that businesses do what is best for them, which only sometimes is what is best for the consumer. Thus if some level of safety, fairness, equality, whatever you call it, is wanted in a society, someone with immense power who is held accountable only to society’s members must have some say in what businesses do.
GOP says timing of SEC’s lawsuit on Goldman Sachs proves political agenda
A response to this article from Fox:
I haven’t read the lawsuit. I don’t know what its aims are. But would it be too extreme to guess the lawsuit came up around now because of how obvious Goldman Sachs’ abuses became a few months ago?
But then again, as an impartial regulator the SEC shouldn’t have waited until right before regulation is being considered to highlight the abuses in a high profile lawsuit. That would be getting the public aware of the regulations. Or was the timing to gain public attention of the litigation? Maybe they just want to kick GS’s ass like it deserves and now is the time to do it.
Video: Containment dam lowering over oil leak
Keep in mind this dam is over four stories tall. So the image of the oil spilling out from the sides near the end of the video gives you an idea of the rate of oil being dumped into the sea.
“Victory” for concealed carrying of guns on campus
I get emails from the National Association for Gun Rights on the issue of the UN Small Arms Treaty regularly. Today’s email’s headline, “victory for concealed carry on campus”, was so different from what I’m used to hearing here in Santa Cruz that I gave it a look.
Colorado State schools have rescinded their ban of guns on campus, including concealed weapons. But the bans had just been put in place meaning that guns were never actually illegal on their campuses. But those rights could have been taken away and we stopped that. Woo! Celebration!
I kid the gun advocates with my snarky sarcasm. I don’t have a firm view on gun regulations because I don’t know enough about the issues. But when I see a person celebrating guns on campuses I realize how foreign the idea is to me.
When conservatives cozy up to Big Government
I really love Dana Milbank’s Washington Sketch. A recent piece in his blog called Through oil-fouled water, big government looks better and better is great. Small government conservatives are suddenly calling upon the federal government to expand its efforts to stop the oil spill. And while you can argue this is practically an issue of national defense, is anyone pointing out that these small government conservatives are the same ones who push for deregulation of pretty much everything? Yeah, big oil totally regulates safety itself. Oops, guess pushing for not needing emergency shutoff valves was just a slip up…
Milbank’s most thought-provoking remarks:
As conservatives in Washington complain about excessive federal spending, the ones who would suffer the most from spending cuts are their own constituents.
An analysis of data from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation by Washington Post database specialist Dan Keating found that people in states that voted Republican were by far the biggest beneficiaries of federal spending.
Will this wake us up? Or will this be just like the financial crisis, where small government conservatives blame the financial industry but after a few months go back to fighting the reform that stops the insane practices that got us here?
Did the federal government respond to the BP spill too late?
Update: Adm. Thad W. Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard said on April 30th that even if it had initially known that the leak was 5,000 barrels a day, the response would have been the same.
The NYTimes published BP Is Criticized Over Oil Spill, but U.S. Missed Chances to Act a few weeks ago.
I read it thinking that the feds had missed an opportunity to start prepare for a massive cleanup. This line really is what seals the deal:
The Department of Homeland Security waited until Thursday to declare that the incident was “a spill of national significance,” and then set up a second command center in Mobile. The actions came only after the estimate of the size of the spill was increased fivefold to 5,000 barrels a day.
But wait: Wasn’t it BP that was insisting the spill was only 1,000 barrels/day for days. Even while NOAA had suggested it was much greater…
…critics questioned whether the federal government is too reliant on oil companies to manage the response to major spills, leaving the government unable to evaluate if the response is robust enough…
I’m not excusing the federal government for what people are calling a slow response. But honestly – is it slow? I don’t think we have anything to compare it to. Exxon Valdez was completely different in that we knew exactly how much (250,000 barrels) was going to spill as soon as the data about the ship was released. And that response was slowed by the physical barriers to getting help out there. But the recent BP spill had an air of murkiness to it: for days we were getting conflicting reports as to the rate of spillage. But despite NOAA’s and the Coast Guard’s timid initial estimates we have to realize that it is BP’s contractor, Transocean, who knows the area and the well the best. And it is BP who kept playing down the estimates for days.
Motorola buys mobile OS – starting yet another OS war?
Android and Me ran this story:
Motorola’s Co-Chief Executive Officer Greg Brown recently told Bloomberg that his company was ready to make acquisitions to return to growth and it looks like we might have spotted their first deal.
According to a LinkedIn profile, it appears Motorola has acquired mobile platform company Azingo. The little known company (I’ve never heard of them) makes their own operating system called Azingo Mobile 2.0 which is based on the Linux platform. Azingo Mobile 2.0 already includes a comprehensive application suite including a Webkit-based browser, web runtime, Flash runtime, and full developer tools.
Competition is great: I’m sure that without Android’s success embracing openness, Apple would have gone further in tightening its grip over iPhone OS. But do we need another mobile platform? This is like the early days of desktop OS’s – Amiga or Mac System 7 or M-DOS, etc. Eventually people are going to find two or three mobile OS’s which cater to powerful phones and have expansive libraries for thousands of programs (“apps”). Then there will always be that one small OS’s which will operate the phone-phones. But having too many powerful platforms won’t last. People will tend to want to stay with OS’s that have a large customer and customer support base with the applications they want. So given what has basically been a failure to launch webOS, how does Motorola suppose it is going to get a new one out to market? Apple has so much hardware dominance that it could force something like this, but Motorola (while not as compromised as Palm) is really struggling. And how will this affect its embracing of Android?
Bailout of California?
Fannie and Freddie, AIG, Citigroup, B of A, everyone helped by the TARP, Chrysler and GM…
Now the creditors to Greece rejoice to learn their bad decisions paid off. And given the debt Portugal and some other nations are amassing, creditors to those nations just sighed knowing that they can keep lending for a long time more before they’re actually in danger of having a real default.
So the EU spreads the suffering of bad debts across its people. But hey, they’re all socialists over there, right?
How likely is it that the federal government will bail out California? It is already on the brink: the Treasurer’s site plainly lists the banks that don’t accept their debt anymore (B of A, Chase, Union, Wells Fargo, US Bank…). While the bond ratings average out to be in the middle of “upper medium grade”, Fitch has them bordering “lower medium grade” with a rating at A-.
If the federal government bails us out, they will no doubt do it by printing more money. Gold, anyone? Right now I’m trying to average 5% return over the course of 2 weeks on buying and selling electronics equipment. We’ll see how that works…
