The Trump administration made Intel give the US government a piece of their company, and Trump is pledging many more deals of that sort. The Secretary of Commerce was on CNBC this morning praising this move and hinting at many more ways that the US government should get a piece of the businesses they support. He talked about the huge US investment in defense companies and the large amount of money that the government gives to support research at universities, which end up holding the patents for the work done with that money. On its face, I get the argument. I find it troubling that drug companies benefit tremendously from NIH funding, without sharing the profits with the NIH. I can’t say that I’ve felt that way about universities, but the logic fits there also. All that said, this is a shocking shift in philosophy for the Republican Party.
Continue reading “Socialism is on the rise”Tag: capitalism
Sensitivity editing and free speech (have nothing to do with each other)
The folks at Fox News have been pretty upset lately. They’re pretty upset to have learned that publishers are going through books looking for things that might offend readers (or potential readers). The f***-your-feelings crowd who mocked snowflakes for being so easily offended are now super offended because publishers like the guys who publish 007 books are trying to keep readers engaged in spite of some antiquated language that’s pretty likely to offend many of today’s readers. Social media has been buzzing over this and the Roald Dahl controversy and other instances of woeness and cancel culture. Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally opposed to censorship and I’m a big advocate of the free speech part of the first amendment, but I think the folks at Fox News (and elsewhere) are missing some key points.
Continue reading “Sensitivity editing and free speech (have nothing to do with each other)”Capitalism first, a hybrid economic perspective from a woefully amature economist
I’m not a scholar of economics, so I probably have no business writing about this at all, but here goes anyway. I’ve spent time, probably too much time, thinking about socialism and capitalism and the ways that we’ve been told that capitalism is good and socialism is bad, and how to reconcile the socialism in our society that we love with the capitalism in our society that we hate. It’s not an easy task, and the most simple and easiest answer to the clear discrepancy is that people are stupid. This seems to be the fallback too often these days. Why did people who benefit most from government vote for smaller government? Because people are stupid. Why did people who have insurance thanks to Obamacare vote for a candidate who ran to repeal Obamacare? Because people are stupid. I’m not saying I disagree with that response entirely, but it’s too easy, and too simplistic. I think there’s more to ponder here, which is what I plan to do with the next few hundred or so words.
Continue reading “Capitalism first, a hybrid economic perspective from a woefully amature economist”
Hitting Bregma 