It occurred to me recently, that I haven’t actually done of these yet, and as it happens this week is the perfect opportunity. You see, this week marks the US release of New Zealand artist Kimbra’s first album Vows.
You may be familiar with Kimbra from her role in Australian musician Gotye’s Somebody I used to know, but she has her own distinct style, and it would seem that she is positioned to become one of the rare kiwi musicians that makes a mark in the US.
So to mark the occasion, here are two of my favourite Kimbra tracks, Good Intent and Two Way Street:
Note that since some YouTube videos are region locked, I can’t guarantee the above links will work for you. Naturally I can’t test this, so if it happens please let me know.
The situation in Greece seems to be coming to a head, with the Greek people near-united in opposition to austerity, but not apparently sufficiently united on an alternative. The mainstream left has lost ground to a coalition of far-left parties which are totally opposed to austerity. Even the fascists are crawling out of the woodwork, as they typically do at times like this. Meanwhile, the Greek government’s credit rating has fallen from B- to CCC, which is basically a move from “Pretty dodgy” to “Don’t make eye contact”. You’d have to be a born gambler to buy Greek debt now. There’s even a risk of a bank run, and as we all know that never ends well.
One of the occasional frustrations of debating policy is that it can be difficult to convey your views concisely and precisely. In the case of libertarianism one difficulty is defining exactly what you mean by “size of government”. After all government is not some 1-dimensional continuum you can just slide up or down, every specific policy is different from every other and sometimes it’s not even clear whether a policy would increase or decrease government, since it depends on what you mean by size.
So what does it mean to call a government large or small? I can think of several dimensions across which we could measure a government’s size:
So, you know how my blognado was supposed to get my juices flowing again? Yeah, well so much for that plan. I can plead all manner of excuses: I’ve started a new project at work that’s tapping my creative juices, I didn’t want to touch the contraception issue because my distaste for the Catholic Church made it impossible for me to be at all objective, the sun was in my eyes. But none of that matters, because I’m back.
I’ve been thinking lately about political ideology and the way libertarianism functions in politics (or at least how it fails to do so), mostly because of l’affaire Cato, though I don’t really want to talk about Cato in specific because I can’t imagine what I could say that would be relevant given that there are plenty of people who actually know what they’re talking about (such as Will Wilkinson or Jason) commenting on it already. As a general rule I try to avoid talking about things when I have no idea what I’m talking about. Instead I’d like to start from first principles, and ask the central question of Realpolitik that plagues libertarians – given that libertarian thought is a minority, and probably always will be, how do we influence government? The normal practice in politics is to ally with another group to advance mutual goals. Ah, but who?
Today I want to do a round-up of my blognado experience.
First, allow me to explain the origin of the name. There was a short-lived TV series called The Middleman. It was perhaps the geekiest show ever, it was glorious. During the back half of its only season a running joke developed where one character would refer to something as being “a ___nado”, leading another character to ask ”You mean a tornado made of ____?” Thus the term blognado proves I am the nerdiest person in the world.
So what did I learn from this experience? For one thing, I should blog more. Despite how much work went into some of these posts (3 hours in one case), it was good to get back into it. Many of the topics were things I wanted to talk about at some point, and by committing to at least 5 posts I gave myself the impetus to actually write them. So lesson 1 – do more things.
Based on the comments at least, the biggest hit of the blognado was the tax post on Tuesday. I was a little curious as to how that one would be received because most of it seemed too straightforward to merit much attention. This is an occupational hazard of expertise – you underestimate the gap between what you know and what everyone else knows. Since tax policy isn’t even something I’m specialised in, I should think I could do similar post son other topics that could provide even more detail. So lesson 2 – more policy blogging.
The third thing I leaned, al though I kinda knew this already, is that we have a great community here. That ta xpost in particualr spawned side conversations that were post-wrothy int heir own right. So lesson 3 is to thank the commenters – Thanks’s commenters!
And that’s it for blognado. Perhaps when I next take time off work I’ll look at running another blognado. Thanks for reading.
This post is something of a coda to my Tuesday post on taxes, this time taken from the other direction. The most common objection to welfare system is that it discourages work, leading to protracted welfare dependency. This can indeed happen, and through a similar mechanism to one of the reasons that the laffer curve eventually bends downward. Pretty much every benefit in the Western world is abated as your income increases, by which I mean it is partially (or in some cases totally) withdrawn as your income rises. A benefit structured in ...
Today marks the end of blognado proper. While I do hope to put up a post on Saturday and Sunday, they will be much shorter than my customary door-stopper length as I will be otherwise engaged for much of the weekend. Today I’m going to write a much more political post than I normally do. Specifically, I’d like to discuss what I see as a troubling trend in the Republican party, and why I think people of all political persuasions should be concerned by it. Now before I get started, let me just say that naturally as ...
My Thursday Blognado post is a guest post at Mindless Diversions wherein I explain why I abandoned miniature wargames produced by Games Workshop, and why Warmachine is my favourite wargame.
When I was drawing up topics for blognado I item on my list was political speech and campaign finance, so when I saw that Elias and Dan post, I decided it was fate, or whatever equivalent we soulless materialists believe in. I’ll start by talking about what I think is wrong with some of the common left-wing criticisms of the level of political contributions permitted by the Citizens United ruling, then move into where I see legitimate concerns and end with some (hopefully useful) suggestions as to how to untie this Gordian knot. First off, Citizens United. The two most common arguments ...
Day 2 of Blognado is upon us (or upon me anyway, I’m never sure where your day boundaries are relative to mine), so to keep people interested I thought I’d discuss something light and easily relocatable like the intricacies of tax policy. Now I’ve done one post on taxes before, but that post wasn’t about tax policy per se. As far as I’m concerned ”how much tax revenue should we collect?” isn’t a valid question. You answered that question when you set the government’s budget (and determined your fiscal policy ...
Welcome to the first day of Blognado – an experiment where I try to shake myself out of my blogging drought (admittedly I’ve never been all that prolific, but still I’d like to try and get the juices flowing a bit) by writing a blog post each day, just to see if I can. If you have any suggestions as to what I should cover, do let me know. Today I’m going to riff off a comment I made as an aside ...
In the recent thread on Huntsman , BlaiseP, Tom van Dyke and I ended up in a bit of a digression of atheism and the burden of proof which I thought was worth teasing out, but not on that thread. The part of the exchange I want to focus on was between Tom and I and went like this: Tom: the atheists need better arguments. They don’t actually have an argument. Me: Epistemologically we don’t need one. Burden of proof ...
The environment is a tricky issue for libertarianism, in many ways environmental issues are “ideologically inconvenient” for libertarians – life would be easier if they didn’t exist. Of course that’s not sufficient reason to actually act as if they didn’t exist, something I don’t think enough libertarians are willing to recognise. So given that the environment creates complications for libertarian thought, it is incumbent on libertarians to find a way to reconcile libertarianism with environmental issues. Since my own brand ...
I wonder if I might crave your momentary indulgence in order to discharge a by no means disagreeable obligation which has, over the years, become more or less established practice in government service as we approach the terminal period of the year — calendar, of course, not financial — in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, Week Fifty-One — and submit to you, with all appropriate deference, for your consideration at a convenient juncture, a sincere ...
Since I’m the member of the League who is furthest ahead in the time zones, it falls to me to welcome you to the League of Ordinary Gentlemen’s inaugural opposite day, in which we shall attempt to sincerely argue for a position we are opposed to. So, to kick things off, let me introduce you to my more-evil twin Hamish, so he can give you his views on separation of powers: The League has been debating the merits of democracy ...
Dear Global Economy, we thank thee for thy economies of scale, thy professional specialization, and thy international networks of trade under Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage, without which we would all starve to death while trying to assemble the ingredients for such a dinner as this. Amen. Eliezer Yudkowsky
Just to mix things up a little I thought I’d take a look at something a little different – the meaning of life. Well, we all know it’s 42, but a can’t write a full blog post on that, so I’ll talk about this instead: the story of an atheist who converted to Catholicism. Before I get stuck in, first let me recommend Will Wilkinson’s take on this article and I think his point about Fulwiler’s whole crisis of not-faith ...
The ever-interesting Matt Nolan looks at the income of the Us top 1% and suggests some of the change may have been income reporting after tax changes in 1986. Perhaps Reagan was to blame for increase income inequality, though not quite in the way that is commonly meant.
I’ve been reading with interest the recent back and forth about university education (particularly education in the arts), and whether or not it’s a consumption good, an investment in your future and whether possession of a BA qualifies you for damn dirty hippie status (and whether that’s a bad thing). And since I expect to be otherwise engaged for much of the next week, I thought I’d chime in now. Though I’ll be addressing the issue from my preferred perspective ...
Alas, if only she'd follow the rules... …this girl wouldn’t have to spend a day in jail and pay a fine.
The nerve of some people, to think they can work to support their family and do school work and that somehow absolves of them playing by the rules everyone else has to show up for attendance! ( 7 comments)
Libertarianism in a Nutshell I fancy meself a South Park Republican, no prig he, more likely to laugh at the ineptness of somebody trying to offend than to be offended. A Piss Christ or a Virgin Mary made of elephant shit is so last century it’s hardly worth the bother of feigning outrage.
But I do confess that our friends and allies in Japan have come up with something I’m compelled/appalled enough to hide behind a link.
The only consolation is that there’s really nothing to be done for an encore. ( 52 comments)
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~ Around the League
Mindless Diversions: Sunday! ~ May. 27. 2012. ~ I brought two books with me on the plane. Game of Thrones, and Am... Read More
Maribou 
James K 
Rose 
Naima Van Swol 
Matthew 
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Mike Schilling 
Jaybird 
