Getting our terms right: free enterprise isn't the same as capitalism

The real divide in our political economy is the Wall Street versus Main Street outlook amongst the business management folks.

"At many companies," says Felix Salmon writing at Wired, "both public and private, the optimal course of action is a modest one — run the business so that it makes a reasonable profit, and can continue to operate indefinitely. If you chase after growth, you often end up in bankruptcy: that’s one reason why the oldest companies in the world are all family-run. Families, unlike public companies or private-equity shops, don’t need growth: they’re more interested in looking after their business over the very, very long run."

Yep. Even though "in the long run we're all dead", as John Maynard Keynes observed we at least have something to pass on.

Are STEM* types like Dilbert "natural-born libertarians"?

Nope. My experience is that they are natural-born control freaks. But opinions differ.
[OpenDemocracy.com via slashdot.org]

* STEM = Science, technology, engineering, and math.

Sign of the times... Borders near death yet again

The grim reaper approaches

The U.S. Bankruptcy court deadline for finding a buyer or liquidating is fast approaching for Ann Arbor-based Borders. This I fear will be the coup d'grace for the failing book retailer. "Add Borders", says one comment to the news story at annarbor.com/,  "to the list of companies that aren't politically connected and so are not considered 'too big to fail'. Now if Borders management had just encouraged the UAW or some other politically connected union to represent their employees (like the auto companies) then Obama would have run screaming to bail them out and they'd be fine now."
A very cynical observation but is likely quite true.

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41 % of NYC pregnancies end in abortion - WABC-TV on-line
Some believe this is a bad thing.
“[T]here is nothing most business people like less than free markets." - Reason.com
The truth about "crony capitalism"
Police drug-sniffing dogs "wrong" at least 4 times out of 10 - Chicago Tribune on-line
Nostalgia for old record shops - Untimely Meditations blog
Record stores, bars you can smoke in, independent bookstores, non-franchise coffee shops, and lots of other cool places are slipping away. And we're poorer for it too.
Obama's New Wall Street White House - The Nation
Otaku Nation: Sega Installs ‘Toylet’ Games in Japan’s Urinals - Wired.com
The games are needless to say short, since you use your urine stream to play them.

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GM loses money on every Volt electric car it sells. Same old GM eh? Lame products that don't make a profit. I wouldn't depend on another bailout next time they screw up if I was them.

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White-collar recession, blue-collar depression - CBS MarketWatch
The loss of manufacturing jobs has hollowed out the economy.

Sign of the times...

"If value, then right" = The latest form of capitalist dehumanization through assertion of supposed 'ownership rights'. What does that mean you say? This:

"...it's an idea that is fundamentally anti-private-property. Under the "If value, then right" theory, you don't own anything you buy. You are a mere licensor, entitled to extract only the value that your vendor has deigned to provide you with. The matchbook is to light birthday candles, not to fix a wobbly table. The toilet roll is to hold the paper, not to use in a craft project. "If value, then right," is a business model that relies on all the innovation taking place in large corporate labs, with none of it happening at the lab in your kitchen, or in your skull. It's a business model that says only companies can have the absolute right of property, and the rest of us are mere tenants."

So I guess if you hear a song in your head, or sing in the shower, or whatever, you owe the patent or copyright holders a royalty payment? Sheesh.

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"How Immigration Boosts Your Pay" - iSteve Blog

In a pig's eye. "Open Border" schemes are what have crushed all the working class' attempts at wage gains for the past three decades.

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Unpaving is Progressive - Kevin Carson @ The Center for a Stateless Society

"The system of subsidized infrastructure on which the car culture and the long-haul trucking industry depend is unsustainable. Absent intensive maintenance, asphalt highways deteriorate rapidly until axle-breaking potholes render them impassable to eighteen-wheelers. As state and local governments are plagued by increasingly severe fiscal crisis, as part of the death spasms of corporate capitalism, and Peak Oil drives up the price of asphalt for roads, governments will defer maintenance on more and more “secondary” roads, retreating and regrouping to a smaller and smaller core of highways that are maintained regularly enough to support heavy trucks."

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Backyard chicken coops becoming as common as vegetable gardens in some Michigan cities - Ann Arbor Observer

But not in Chelsea.

Gun rights activists: " 'Open carry' means anywhere I wanna go". - Detroit Free Press

And the law agrees. Michigan's political class doesn't like this but that's to be expected.

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"Where does the federal government get off spending the average person's tax dollars to help better-off-than-average Americans buy expensive new cars?" - Salon (Charles Lane)
New electric powered "green cars" have a starting price around $40,000. And the Obama administration will kick in $7,500 (as a tax credit) to help.

The dogma of globalization - iSteve (Steve Sailer)
"A few years ago, Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley asked one of Bush's Treasury Secretaries (not Henry Paulson) how America would earn its way in the world after our productive sector collapsed. The answer was that we (the U.S.) would act as 'capital allocator to the world.' Of course, this insane dialog attracted zero attention at the time or subsequently. The only good news is that U.S. credibility as a 'capital allocator' is within rounding error of zero."

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Predictable libertarian defense of the poverty industry in the WSJ - Wall Street Journal (C. Mangu-Ward)
Defending the pawnbrokers, rent-to-own companies, check cashing, payday loans and the rest of the parasites that feed off the working poor. Bottom line (according Ms. Mangu-Ward)?: Hey, these companies are better than mobbed up loan sharks.

So-called "Black Bloc" groups blamed for anti-G20 violence in Toronto - Christian Science Monitor
"The Toronto Star reports that the tactic, common in international protests, involves protesters dressing in black and moving as groups to perform violent acts, then removing the black clothing to blend in with the larger protest crowd to avoid apprehension by the police. On Saturday, dozens of such protesters huddled together in a park to change into their street clothes, leaving the black garments behind and disappearing into the crowds."
Long wars are antithetical to democracy - Washington Post (Andrew Bacevich)
"The Long War is not America's war. It belongs exclusively to 'the troops,' lashed to a treadmill that finds soldiers and Marines either serving in a combat zone or preparing to deploy."

Sign of the Times...

Getting paid fairly when job responsibilities spiral - Slashdot.org/
Good luck with that dude.

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Ann Althouse discovers the nuances of modern Japanese cultural references - Althouse

I first read about the Thomasson concept in Japanese aesthetics in William Gibson's 1994 novel Virtual Light [p.70-72 in the hardcover edition]

American capitalists to working class men: We don't need you - Wall Street Journal

Portraits of post-humanity - io9

It's come to this: SWAT team raids Toledo foreclosure defense league, 7 arrested-Infoshop News

" 'I'm proud of these kids, I really am. I think they've taken a stand for what they believe in. The middle class is being destroyed. These banks have been bailed out numerous times and they haven't given us any breaks,' said John Kutsch, father of one of the arrested people." Police attack video here.

Sign of the Times...

The picture of snobbery.

"A multi-multi-millionaire giving a homeless guy a dollar on the way to the Ritz… if that isn’t the perfect metaphor for the modern “Third Way” Democratic Party, I don’t know what is."

Whoa! And who is this dude being disparaged here you might ask? Why none other than ex-GoldmanSachs big-shot, ex-Treasury secretary, and CitiGroup boss, Robert Rubin. And I thought only Republicans acted like that! That Matt Taibbi sure has a way with words.

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We need counterweights not just to Wall Street's toxic products but to its malign influence - The American Prospect (Johnson & Kwak)

How to live out of your car - BoingBoing
Surviving (and thriving) on $12,000 a year - MSN Money

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Taser's newest nasty coming to a police force near you! - Popular Science

Specs are:" Size: 12 gauge Weight: 25 grams Speed: 270 ft. per second Range: 100 ft. Current: 1.3 milliamps Get it:When you get your badge—the XREP is for law enforcement only."

Are cadmium-contaminated insects killing endangered meat-eating plants? - Scientific American
Animal drug trials keep mum about failures - New Scientist
When companies are too big to prosecute or even sanction -CNN Money (via Slashdot)

"Prosecutors said that excluding Pfizer would most likely lead to Pfizer's collapse, with collateral consequences: disrupting the flow of Pfizer products to Medicare and Medicaid recipients, causing the loss of jobs including those of Pfizer employees who were not involved in the fraud, and causing significant losses for Pfizer shareholders."

David Shuster moving to CNN? Who cares? - NY Times
"...cable news is either dishwater dull (Anderson Cooper anyone?) or it has unhinged screaming nasties." [comment # 7] Exactly. So why pay money to watch such dreck?

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Plot of the new movie "Repo Men" is a logical projection of early 21st century capitalist practice - Detroit News (Tom Long)

"And yet there's something here that doesn't seem all that far-fetched. Who's to say you won't be able to put an artificial eyeball on your credit card in 20 years? And what will happen when you lose your job and can't keep up payments? OK, some guy probably won't show up to claim it like a Volkswagen that's three months behind. Probably."
Probably? Go look at yesterday's post about an auto sales company in Austin, Texas that has the capability to flat-line your car if you are late with the payments. Some RM trailers here.

A nasal spray that chills the brain while in cardiac arrest my prevent memory loss and other damage. - Gizmodo
Computer glitch blamed for years of police raids on elderly Brooklyn couple’s home. - NY Post

Die Hipster! Die! - LA Weekly

Shaving foam is bad for your facial skin - Lewrockwell.com blog (William Anderson)

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Why it's all falling apart - Herbert Marcuse
"In the affluent society, the authorities are hardly forced to justify their dominion. They deliver the goods; they satisfy the sexual and the aggressive energy of their subjects. Like the unconscious, the destructive power of which they so successfully represent, they are this side of good and evil, and the principle of contradiction has no place in their logic." (Eros And Civilization, 1966)
Are literary review journals doomed? - Mother Jones
NY Times in yet another plagiarism scandal. - Salon
Two Chinese schools linked to the army are said to be tied to online attacks. - Cnet
"Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh says he wasn't drinking and didn't do anything wrong when he crashed his city-issued car, drove home on a flat tire and waited three days to file a police report." - Detroit News
Nothing untoward going on here. Move along citizen. Move along.
Undercover CEO - CBS Television
WTF were they thinking? Just because your boss is nice guy doesn't mean capitalism is good or that being a wage slave is cool.
What MBA thought of this idea of "customer loyalty"? - Wall Street Journal
"Now, customers must spend $250 to get the same $5 offered by the old $100 plan. It was reminiscent of frequent-flier programs where the 25,000 miles required for an upgrade suddenly became 50,000. An added blow: The points from my old card—I'd accumulated 97—didn't transfer." Sucker!
Cold Steel® Latin Style Machete - 24 inch
Seems like a nice product for a very good price. And a good machete is handier than most would imagine when you really get out there. Handy on boats too. $12.99 + S/H @ Smoky Mountain Knife Works...