- Safety exposes us to risk? It appears so. Seat belts make us safer, which causes us to take more risks. Steven Landsburg talked about this in The Armchair Economist -- one of the first econ books I ever read. I'd never thought about things that way before and it was one of many things that got me fascinated by the economic way of thinking.
- Illegal immigration and crime.
- The difficulty of trying to stop Rwandan genocide from every happening again.
- Neuroeconomics happens in the brain. Who knew?
- An interview with a statistician.
- Nikon just introduced the D5000 dSLR with a swivel screen.
- 13 of the world's riches national parks. I've been to three of them so far: 1) The Grand Canyon; 2) The Great Barrier Reef; and 3) Yosemite. I'd love to see the other ten.
- A nice summary of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People."
- You are funding forced abortions in China.
- How to get smaller government: "Move election day to April 15th." Great idea! Similar thoughts here.
- DSLR Camera Owners - 3 lenses you need to pack while traveling: 1) Telephoto zoom lens; 2) Wide angle lens; and 3) Fixed lens. Sounds like a good recommendation to me!
- Short papers on the financial crisis.
1 comment:
As many have pointed out, the critics of "big government" cannot be taken seriously until they identify exactly what they would cut.
These pundits do not for obvious reasons.
One reason is ignorance: many of the pundits do not know enough to make intelligent recommendations. How many of the critics understand Medicare and all its parts, for instance? How many conservative talk show hosts understand social security, for instance?
Another reason is simply that they do not have any concrete proposals...only some vague nostalgic feeling for "small government" without knowing what that really is.
But main reason is that they know once they come up with their cuts and counterproposals, then these will also have to stand the test of scrutiny and criticism. And they are afraid of that. Some realize that their counterproposals would not stand such a public test, and are afraid of the criticism.
If someone wants to cut Medicare or Social Security, let them say it. If someone wants to cut back on the FDA or SEC, let them say it. But many of these conservative pundits and critics lack even the courage of their supposed convictions to expose their convictions to public scrutiny.
In the end, these conservatives are simply chasing a feeling without any substance behind it. If they want to argue for small govt, let them educate themselves on the actual govt programs and make specific proposals. Until then the criticism means nothing.
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