JoshWilson.org

Now I know it’s getting bad. My favorite technology pundit is writing about the price of gasoline and the breakdown of society. Here’s an excerpt from the discussion in the comments: 

During the Depression, when “ordinary decent people just like you and me” numbering in the millions were being utterly killed by the economy and DC was turned into a homeless encampment for war veterans and (ironically) being attacked by the National Guard…it was a time when people were seriously open to radical change. It was a time when the US could have taken an insane swerve towards Communism or national Socialism. 

Right now, if I want to visit a friend of mine who lives just an hour’s drive away, I drive over there and see him. If gas went to six bucks a gallon, I’d first do some math and realize that okay, the visit will cost me about forty bucks. And instead of an evening of dinner and conversation and some Wii, I’d stay home instead and iChat him.

THAT is a major shift, and it’d make me re-think my views towards how the country is being run.

Go, therefore, and read the article.

The guys over at Market Ticker have a nice piece on why we’re experiencing this economic crunch. Here’s some excerpts:

 People blame “Cheney” for the high price of oil and invading Iraq to “boost his buddies” but in point of fact the remaining reason we have high oil prices that are squeezing you like a turnip is that our nation’s accounting is fraudulent, corporately and nationally, and other nations have had enough of it, driving down the value of our currency. The consequence is served up upon you as a consumer in the form of higher costs for food and energy as the price of everything we import translates directly into your wallet.

Oh, and a little bit on the second ammendment

And don’t start with “the army has more guns than I do, therefore it doesn’t matter.” Of course the military and police have more guns than you do! They’re also better trained. So what? The purpose of the Second Amendment isn’t to allow you to “go postal” against the government, it is so that you and all 299,999,999 if your neighbors in this great nation can do so all at once if it ever becomes necessary.

I say, power to the people, not the government (which is not the people, but of the people and for the people).

via Daring Fireball

A great article by Daniel Jalkut about how we understand the word “free.” How we use words ends up defining them.

via Mises.org - George Reisman makes a pretty compelling case for the reinstitution of the gold standard:

Needless to say, such a system would not only end the threat of deflation, but, equally important, it could end the threat of inflation as well. For if it were actually followed, the increase in the quantity of money would be limited to the increase in the supply of gold, which is extremely modest compared with increases in the supply of irredeemable paper money. This is because gold is rare in nature and costly to extract. Irredeemable paper money in contrast is virtually costless to produce and is potentially as abundant as the supply of currency-sized sheets of paper, indeed, as abundant as the size of the largest number that can be printed on all such sheets of paper.

This is an issue that is very much on my mind these days. I think that the majority of our country’s problems are rooted in the stealing of the poor’s wealth through the invisible force of inflation. The popular solution is to redistribute money through taxation via free social programs. The problem is that redistribution doesn’t actually encourage individual financial responsibility, but rather individual entitlement (which I’m sure we can all agree is a very bad thing).I could go on and on about this, but that’s for another post when I’m not running late to work. In the meantime, go read George Reisman’s article.