Steve Kates posted this at Catallaxy Files, saying it was everything you need to know about public spending:
May 14, 2017
Junkers Fighter Planes – Whiter Feather Movement – Swiss Invasion Plans I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
Published on 13 May 2017
Chair of Wisdom Time! This week Indy talks about Junkers fighter planes, the plans for an invasion of Switzerland and he Whiter Feather Movement.
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Euthanised For The EU – that’ll reverse the Brexit vote for sure…
On Facebook, Brendan O’Neill responds to an article in the Independent, calling for elderly pro-Brexit voters to just die already:
Ian McEwan says the death of ageing voters, “angry old men”, will help swing Britain back to being pro-EU. Maybe we should hurry them along? Start a “Die for Britain” scheme, where old anti-Brussels bastards could sign up to have themselves put down? Make them feel so guilty for having plunged Britain and their grandchildren’s futures into uncertainty that they will lose the will to live, or certainly to vote? Initiate a cleansing of the demos, giving over-65s the option to croak it for the sake of their grandkids’ right to study in France for six weeks? Create a Euthanised For The EU scheme? We could call it EU-thanasia, perhaps get funding for it from Brussels.
I think we sometimes fail to grasp how nasty elite Remainers are. How misanthropic, anti-old, anti-working-class and of course anti-democratic they can be. Openly fantasising about old people dying is the first step towards helping old people die. It tells old people they are scum and Britain would be better off without them. Just imagine how that makes them feel. The elitist anti-Brexit outlook is the ugliest strain in British politics right now, and the ugliest I can remember in my lifetime.
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Space Myths Debunked – Earth Lab
Published on 4 May 2017
From astrology to the temperature in space, Dom counts down the top 5 space myths and explains why they are baloney.
1 http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/N/Neutron+Star
2 http://www.universetoday.com/77070/how-cold-is-space/
3 https://www.wired.com/2007/11/no-dark-side-of/
4 http://www.livescience.com/34212-great-wall-of-china-only-manmade-object-visible-from-space.html
5 http://www.universetoday.com/25364/can-you-see-the-great-wall-of-china-from-space/
6 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-nasa-spen/
7 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/proceedings-of-the-international-astronomical-union/article/div-classtitleastronomy-and-astrologydiv/3171E9B009B4E8421B1913AC0A08AB32
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QotD: Big business, crony capitalism and regulatory capture
Now, Pope Francis has the beginnings of a point about large “private corporations” (note the oxymoron), which in their wealth may grow (though only temporarily) to a size rivalling the smaller national governments. And I would add, they become nearly as centralized and monopolistic (through “regulatory capture”), and faceless and bureaucratic as the agencies of State. Whenupon, unlike the self-perpetuating agencies of the State, they begin to disintegrate from their own lack of enterprise.
It is not enough, as the libertarians suppose, to leave them to their fate, in the knowledge that if they are inefficient they’ll be gone tomorrow. For new large corporations rise to take their place, and at every moment the great majority of people are reduced to wage-slaves of one large corporation or another. Indeed, part of the power of large corporations comes from their scale as employers. A democratic government which tries to stand up to them will quickly relent, and switch to subsidies instead, when they threaten to create mass unemployment.
The question must be asked: What makes vast, morally obtuse, centralized corporations possible? And the answer should be easy to see. It is vast, morally obtuse, centralized governments, which command regulatory regimes that are consistent over huge areas. That has actually become our model for global “free trade”: making regulations and taxation consistent not only across nations, but across continents. This creates an order which large corporations, and only large corporations, are well-equipped to exploit.
Imagine instead they were to face different regulatory regimes, parish by parish. They could still operate, but would have to adapt each franchise to local conditions, as defined by the sovereign local authority. This immediately flips the onus, and gives the local merchant or producer the advantage over his multinational competitor, in being on the spot. It reduces that competitor’s economy of scale, while also imposing upon him a new model of corporate governance, as network, that must of necessity become decentralized and responsive (just as creatures in nature) to every single environmental niche.
The re-focusing on what is local, and what is doable locally, would have tremendous ramifications on “the environment” at large — overwhelmingly positive, given some time. Yet it would also have the happy effect of disempowering the ecological whack cases.
David Warren, “Five thousand max”, Essays in Idleness, 2015-06-19.
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