Everything is connected to everything 
The Reticulator
Category
Free markets
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06.30.08poverty patrons
Free markets (0)When free markets fail to serve the poor, these people don't like free markets. When free markets succeed in serving the poor, these people don't like free markets. There seems to be a pattern here. If only I could figure out what it is. Markets for the Poor in Mexico Helping the poor may be virtuous, but when the poverty industry starts losing "clients" because the market is performing good works, watch out. Compartamos Banco knows what it's like to have a tarnished halo. The Mexican bank specializes in microfinancing for low-income entrepreneurs in a country that never used to ...
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05.29.08Dumping on the Internet
Free markets (17)Alan Jacobs at The American Scene argues with the "freetards." That's a new term for me. I think I'll steal it and use it myself without paying any license fees for it. His first article on the subject was titled, "My writing doesn't want to be free." He credits the Fake Steve Jobs for the term. Jacobs questions the applicability of the method whereby bands give away free music as a kind of loss leader. That idea is one that comes up a lot in these discussions -- the freetards tell us to give away our writing/music/software ...
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05.05.08More Peru
Free markets (0)In Monday's WSJ, Mary Anastasia O'Grady gives us more information about Peru. In the weekend edition she told about President Alan Garcia's transition from socialism to democratic capitalism. In this article she tells about the turnaround in Peru itself. I suppose it would be wearisome to have to point out that the changes Peru has instituted are 180 degrees different from the changes that Clinton and Obama want to make in our country. The changes in Peru include removing barriers to international trade. Here in our country, on the other hand, two of our presidential candidates want ...
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04.28.08Obama planks
Free markets (0)It's no wonder Obama doesn't like to talk specifics. I went looking for some after I read the article at the Washington Post titled, "Obama links broad ideas to economic specifics." Despite its title, the article didn't give any specifics. It does hint that those are to be found elsewhere, though. It says, "Obama did not lack proposals for what he would do as president -- his planks took up a whole section of his stump speech." But it seems that the Post did not care to inform its readers about those. So I went looking for myself and found this web ...
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04.06.08Start here with price controls
Free markets (0)I probably should credit someone for putting a great idea in my head, but I don't remember who. Maybe it's George Will, who got me thinking about price-fixers such as Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama. With the command-and-control propensity of contemporary liberalism, Clinton predictably advocates a policy that has a record, running from Roman times to the present, that is unblemished by success. It is the policy of price controls: Her proposed five-year freeze on interest rates would be a control on the price of money. Despite this "unblemished" record, there are probably people out there who think ...
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03.22.08NAFTA for Cuba?
Free markets (2)Mark Milke, writing for the Calgary Herald, tells how Castroism took one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America, and turned it into one of the poorest. He doesn't expect much to change under Raul. He notes one of the old explanations we tend to get from the left: Some will point to the U.S. trade embargo as the source of Cuba's economic ills. I agree. It's a significant reason for Cuba's poverty, that and the Communist system itself -- and both should end. I, too, agree that the U.S. trade embargo should end. The remaining good reasons for ...
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03.07.08George McGovern for President!
Free markets, Health care reform, Regulation (1)Where can I get a George McGovern for President bumper sticker? I didn't have one on my car back in 1972 (I'm not sure my wife would have approved) but I was a McGovern supporter back then. Well, mostly I was against Nixon and Watergate, but I was suffering from a bout of leftwingism, too. I got over it in time for the 1976 elections, though suffered some lingering symptoms until Ronald Reagan's first year in office. But here is George McGovern at the WSJ, sounding like the type of libertarian-leaning Republican that could make me ...
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02.29.08Speak loudly and carry a big club
Free markets (0)Speak loudly and carry a big club to bash our neighbors with. That's the foreign policy being proposed by Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama. And I'm glad to see the Wall Street Journal explain it in terms like The Reticulator was using last September. Why do they hate us? Because we act like a global, unilateral bully, when we do what Clinton and Obama are recommending.
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01.31.08Good news about Audible
Free markets (0)Usually I don't like the consolidation of industries, techie or otherwise. But in Audible.com's case, I'm glad to see them getting bought out by Amazon. I've been on Audible's mailing list for a long time, looking forward to the day when I could sign up. I need more books to listen to while riding my bike. But it just didn't make any sense if Audible didn't have any means of browsing and searching their collection. Yes, they had something called "Browse", but it wasn't anywhere near what is usually thought of as a browse ...
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11.20.07Freedom vs prosperity
Free markets, Human rights (0)What if freedom and prosperity don't go together? Here is a paragraph from The China Mode, by Rowan Callick, at The American In the May/June edition of the american, Kevin Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, explained that evidence is emerging that developing “countries that are economically and politically free are underperforming the countries that are economically but not politically free.” China, of course, is in the lead of the economically free but politically unfree nations. Hassett wrote, “The unfree governments now understand that they have to provide a good economy to keep citizens ...
Copyright © 2006-2010 John Gorentz. All rights reserved.