Twitter roundup

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[David in Cal]

TNR says, "Rand’s worldview is a crackpot Manicheanism, in which the world is divided between virtuous, productive individuals and lazy parasites."

IMHO to a great degree, America is indeed divided between productive individuals and parasites. E.g., on the one hand, we have Steve Jobs. "Jobs, was a visionary who made it his mission to humanize personal computing, rewriting the rules of user experience design, hardware design and software design. His actions reverberated across industry lines: He shook up the music business, dragged the wireless carriers into the boxing ring, changed the way software and hardware are sold and forever altered the language of computer interfaces. Along the way, he built Apple up into one of the most valuable corporations in the world."

OTOH we have an OWS demonstrator whose most notable achievement was defecating on a police car.
'Nuff said.

I think the popularity of Atlas Shrugged is deserved. Writing over 50 years ago, Rand created a surprisingly accurate picture of the flaws in today's political/economic system. In particular, her description of how goverment may help badly run companies while hamperiing well-run companies is illustrated by the Obama Adminstration's treatments of Solyndra vs. Gibson Guitar.

[David in Cal]

IMHO some of the factors responsible for today's polarization are:

1. As government spends more and more and as laws and regs exert greater control over people's lives, the stakes become greater.

2. There's a major split in belief over the desirability of government spending. Dems generally believe that more government spending is good for the economy. The Tea Party wing of the Reps believe that more government spending is bad for the economy.

3. Our enormous deficits mean that either
-- some people will pay much higher taxes, and/or
-- some will receive much lower benefits and/or,
--our currency will be debased. Debased currency would cause several types of bad consequences, particularly for those with savings, although it would help debtors.

People are fighting over which of these three paths to take, as they should be. There's a lot at stake.

IMHO this fight will intensify in the future, as it becomes more clear that these are the choices. I expect the winners to be those opposing high taxes and those opposing benefit cuts. These two groups will be much larger than the group that's primarily concerned with protecting the dollar. Note that TNR seems oblivious to the arguments in favor of making the kind of major cuts that Paul Ryan promotes. (I hope I'm wrong, and fiscal responsibility prevails.)

[Metrichead]

There isn't much to disagree with over the TNR article about overrated thinkers.

I wish they would have included Bill Maher, but this is the first time I've noticed TNR produced annual lists. Maybe he was on a list a few years back and I didn't catch it. I used to be all about him - even have an autographed copy of one of his first books and a photo that was signed, too. I enjoyed his unpredictability, but since he was fired from ABC, he's become somewhat stale and predictable (but he's still funny).