Blog Heap o'Links for February 2014

[T]he main thing wrong with the way that economics is taught in this country is just about everything. The problem starts with, as was posted here a few weeks ago, a little thing called Say's Law.

The short form of it is that production is what creates wealth, not sales. This wealth is created by making something worth more than the sum of its parts and the labor required to assemble it. When you sell something, you are only doing a transfer of the created wealth for stored wealth (money).

An economy without production does not create wealth, but constantly bleeds wealth as it buys imported products. This is why there cannot be such a thing as a consumer nation. Eventually, if you consume more than you produce, you run out of the money that makes consumption possible.

Or, basically, as common sense would put it... you can only buy what you can't afford until your credit runs out, and you can't spend your way to prosperity.

Obamacare — Operated by the people everyone trusts the most! (graphic at link)

Back to Capitalism 101, to wit, that you will get a good deal from privatizing something only if the thing that you're privatizing allows for vigorous and open free-market competition. Absent that competition, privatization just leads to sloth and poor outcomes.

Dan McCall, of Sauk Rapids, sued the NSA and Department of Homeland Security last fall after they issued cease-and-desist orders over the merchandise, which includes T-shirts bearing the NSA's official seal and the slogan, "The only part of the government that actually listens."

"The first detection of intelligent extraterrestrial life will likely come within the next quarter-century, a prominent alien hunter predicts."

hahahaha. We'll "detect" them when they let us!

Also, predicting 1st contact? Better luck predicting earthquakes.

United Worlds Watcher assigned to us:/em So, do we smack them with SMOD today?

UWW's Superior: Naw. Orders are, give 'em a little longer. I hear there's True Hope in certain pockets of the old USA. Anyway, not on Palin's 50th birthday.

[Cross-posted as a comment on Ace of Spades]

"The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog." -GK Chesterson