Archive for the ‘Business’ Category
More evidence of a green bubble
Monday, April 22nd, 2013In 2009 I predicted that the Obama administration and Congress would create two bubbles to replace the recently burst housing bubble: a green bubble and an automotive bubble. A report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that "green" jobs were produced four times as fast as all other types ...
How dare corporations make money by giving people what they want!
Monday, April 1st, 2013Michael Moss, author of Salt Sugar Fat, recently gave an interview on the Daily Show about the scientific precision with which junk food manufacturers design the flavors and textures of foods and drinks, and how it all smacks of a nefarious ploy to make money off of Americans by destroying ...
Oh, but in a libertarian society private courts would convict and imprison innocent people for profit, unchecked by any higher authority
Monday, December 24th, 2012A Justice Department review of FBI forensics cases has revealed widespread and prolonged malfeasance that resulted in the conviction and imprisonment of many innocent defendants. Thousands of criminal cases at the state and local level may have relied on exaggerated testimony or false forensic evidence to convict defendants of murder, rape ...
Right-to-work laws are un-libertarian
Wednesday, December 12th, 2012A local (Michigan) radio show was recently discussing the right-to-work law being debated in the state legislature. One pro-union caller said (paraphrasing), “It’s simple math. When a union represents the employees of a company or of an industry, the employees earn higher wages because the union has major bargaining power ...
“Insider trading” is not wrong and shouldn’t be illegal
Sunday, December 2nd, 2012Federal prosecutors in New York recently charged hedge fund manager Mathew Martoma with using illegal "inside tips" to help his hedge fund make $276 million in illegal profits or avoided losses. He received some unpublished data about the ineffectiveness of an Alzheimer's disease drug, so he sold all possible stock ...
Adam Davidson on Standard Motor Products
Tuesday, March 27th, 2012I loved this EconTalk podcast with guest Adam Davidson, who co-founded NPR's Planet Money and writes the It's the Economy column for the New York Times Magazine. The subject of the podcast was Davidson's recent article in The Atlantic, Making It in America, about the Greenville, SC factory of Standard ...
Red Hat’s open-source, democratic work culture
Saturday, February 11th, 2012I was really intrigued by this article about the culture that Red Hat, a Linux-based open-source software company, fosters in its work environment. Because Red Hat is a pure open source company, its culture is something between a democracy and a commune. This comes from the nature of open source, where ...
How long will the SOPA protests be successful?
Sunday, January 29th, 2012In my more cynical moods, I think that Westerners' complacency in political and economic matters and their comfort levels with life in general will make their recent victories against internet censorship mere footnotes to the history of State encroachment into our online lives. In other words, lawmakers, lobbyists, and other ...
Links for an ending week
Friday, January 20th, 2012President Obama deserves praise for opposing the SOPA/PIPA bills in the House and Senate, respectively, but, of course, in true Republocrat fashion, deserves further criticism for qualifying that with, "That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors ...
Union-negotiated protections are apparently only okay when people agree with the outcomes
Friday, January 6th, 2012Libertarians and anarchists who don't add the "left-" moniker or some other adjective advertising how pro-union or pro-"worker" they are often get accused of opposing unions or unionization in general. Few misrepresentations of libertarians are farther from the truth. I have found myself to be quite pro-union, especially when looking ...
More of Obama’s green bubble: subsidizing Wall Street to buy Chinese solar panels
Saturday, December 10th, 2011I liked this column by T.J. Rodgers in the Wall Street Journal, Subsidizing Wall Street to Buy Chinese Solar Panels. It explains how American consumers are not the ones who benefit from the Obama administration's subsidies on the purchase of household solar panels. It's a nice, short economics lesson on ...
Google shifted profits offshore to avoid taxes. Good for them!
Thursday, October 13th, 2011The IRS is investigating how Google shifted some of its profits to offshore subsidiaries to avoid paying taxes on them. Good for Google! I have displayed varying degrees of vocality in my disappointment or disapproval of some of Google's practices in the past, such as the creepiness and Orwellianness of ...
Farhad Manjoo is a raging moron and a danger to society
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011It's a good thing Slate.com columnist Farhad Manjoo isn't a historian, or he'd probably argue that the best solution to slavery in America would have been to allow blacks an equal chance to enslave white people, because that would be "fair" in his biased, uninformed, unimaginative mind. Amazon.com is resisting the ...
Big government, big corporations, corn syrup, and Galco’s Soda Pop Stop
Saturday, July 16th, 2011This video seems to be popular with the kids around the internets this week. It's about Galco's Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles, a small, independent soda pop store that seems to sell mostly drinks that I've never heard of, many of which I'm assuming are also made by small ...