A Voice in the Dark

Yeah, I know, I said I’d post about Rush Limbaugh’s Viagra. But then I lost interest. So I’m going to post about flag burning instead.

I think this problem is very easy to solve. We have people on the one side who want flag burners to be punished. We have people on the other side who want flag burners to be respected as making protected political speech. Let’s make both sides happy: you’re allowed to burn the flag, but the witnesses are allowed to punish you.

Specifically, let’s make the performance, assistance, or encouragement of flag burning grounds for justifiable homicide within one hour of the event.

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Filed under: Politics
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I’ve said in many cases that privacy is dying and we should just get used to it.

This has led to a lot of responses. Here’s a recent comment I made on Slashdot. Notice the responses.

These people don’t quite get it.

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Filed under: Philosophy, Politics
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Minimum wage is the government saying “every hour of labor is worth at least this much”.

The market translates this into “if your labor isn’t worth this much, you can’t have a job”.

I’m pretty sure you can connect the dots.

Filed under: Business, Economics
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I keep telling you people this, but you don’t listen.

For those who can’t read between the lines: yes, I had mod points again today.

It’s completely out of hand.

The fun part is that now I get to mod down all the anti-Microsoft posts. Well, the first five I see, anyway. And even then, I’m too honest to mod them down unless they’re seriously out of line. So five points tends to get me through… oh, a dozen posts or so.

 

Filed under: Notices
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A fair question, and one that in recent weeks has been much on my mind.

It’s my considered opinion that they’re nesting.

Oh, wait, wrong script. Hold on. *ahem*

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Filed under: Gay Rights, Philosophy, Religion
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A commenter over at Cafe Hayek makes this heart-rending plea:

Why do you feel sorry for the person who “only” makes $1,000,000 per year, yet feel no remorse for the poor slob who is paid $1.00 or less an hour without any other benefits? Have you no heart, no soul, no compassion whatsoever?

Well, that’s not quite the issue.

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Filed under: Business, Economics, Philosophy, Politics
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Cafe Hayek is running an article about minimum wage which isn’t terribly compelling, so I thought I’d make a cut at explaining the problem. Generally speaking, it’s obvious to almost anyone with an understanding of basic economics why minimum wage is a bad idea… but it’s very difficult to explain that to someone who doesn’t have such an understanding. And most people, while they certainly could understand basic economics if they tried, have neither that understanding nor any interest in developing it.

I’m going to use a very basic example. I spent the last three years running a business. Most people arguing for higher minimum wages have never run a business. So let me explain the facts about running a business.

I have a service that I sell to clients. To perform that service, I employ eight people at minimum wage, which we will pretend is $6 an hour. That means that each week, these eight full-time employees will earn $1,920 before taxes. Let’s pretend I charge $3,000 a week for the service. This gives me an income of $1,080 a week before taxes, or 36% of my service fees.

Now let’s pretend the minimum wage goes up to $8 an hour. Now my eight full-time employees will earn a total of $2,560 before taxes, so I only make $440 a week.

What should I do?

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Filed under: Business, Economics, Philosophy
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Eugene Volokh over at the Volokh Conspiracy argues quite convincingly that one of the more productive ways to view sexual orientation discrimination is as a question of religious freedom.

See? I told you so.

Religion carries with it the same attendant confusion that homosexuality does. Were you born gay, or is it a choice? Were you raised Catholic, or did you convert? Are Jews a race or a religion?

This confusion is making the whole gay rights thing very hard to discuss productively.

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Filed under: Gay Rights, Philosophy, Religion
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There are two different things Microsoft says about Linux.

First, they say Linux is a credible threat to Microsoft in the server market, and represents serious competition.

Then they turn around and say Linux is a joke, represents no real threat, and barely shows up on the radar screen.

Why does it send these two clearly conflicting messages?

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Filed under: Business, Microsoft, Open Source, Software
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I was reading one of my favorite blogs, The Angry Economist, and I decided to follow a few of his blogroll links to see if there was something interesting on the other side. Thus I discovered Michael Hartl, who has made an interesting post on Greek mythology a couple months back.

This got me to thinking about religion as a market.

Be warned, I am not an economist, and have at best a rudimentary understanding of market forces. If you are formally educated in economics, you may want to run away screaming.

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Filed under: Philosophy, Religion
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