socialism

This arse-awful gaggle of crap by Simon “Craven” Heffer has already been effectively fisked by Dave Osler among others, but I reckon there’s still some unexploited stupidity in there to be had. It’s actually even worse than this one. Basically, this article is an example of what Islamists would call takfiri thinking; takfiris are an…

Read More Tory Takfiri

I’ve been reading the oohing and aahing about the Obama web operation (for example, here at the Linux Journal); all those individual pages and RSS feeds and iCals for every event. It strikes me that some of this can be generalised, and that we can probably improve on it. After all, as LJ points out,…

Read More Organise

I’m about to propose something to make Daniel Davies cry. Specifically, it’s a solution to a problem we currently deal with by a cash transfer through the tax and benefit system. But I think I’ve made a good case that trying to deal with high energy prices by paying the poor to burn more energy…

Read More The Harrowell Plan (Or, No Christmas Card from Dsquared)

Jamie Zawinski links to a campaign to have a Californian sewage works renamed after George W. Bush. I disagree, strongly. Who on earth would associate something as civic, egalitarian, and useful as sewage treatment with the Commander Guy? Not just that, but it’s a publicly-owned sewage plant, part of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.…

Read More Civilisation is common defence and waste disposal

What do the two halves of the Control Party – its Scottish and Northern wing, and its Southern and Posh wing, both – think should have no price in our society? Recap: a price is a measure of something’s value in terms of the alternatives you forgo by choosing it. Prices are a constraint; they…

Read More Priceless

I don’t like the “contraction and convergence” approach to stopping climate change. Why? Well, I have a number of reasons. C&C states that we should set a global CO2 target lower than present (contraction), and that poor countries should be allowed to expand up to it while rich ones cut down to it (convergence). The…

Read More Criticisms of Contraction and Convergence