throttling of creativity by the deadweight make-believe managerialism

I love this line. If I can be forgiven for ranting a little...

I work in one of New Zealand's research institutes and have done for nearly 20 years. When I started the place was full of scientists and technicians working hard…

And yes, those grand scams that payed all the…

I should also note that I am driven nuts by people of The Left who can't see the virtue of markets at all. People at both extremes seem to find it hard to grasp that conflicting ideas might be worth their attention.

The challenge is to devise a new financial…

The moral of Rand books should be, appreciate intelligent people because that's what keeps this country going. Not going all John Galt because humanity hasn't built you a gold statue and given you a pony.

I should also note that I am driven nuts by people of The Left who can't see the virtue of markets at all. People at both extremes seem to find it hard to grasp that conflicting ideas might be worth their attention.

Agree, Russell. Totally frustrates me when people supposedly…

In my informal studies of economic theories I have, more often than not, been stuck by the notion that what we are dealing with is more of an ideology than something actually related to the real world, more of a religion than a science.

The New Yorker had [[http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/04/13/090413ta_talk_widdicombe|a lovely…

With its utter failure to see this crisis coming, why does anyone still take the OECD seriously? Probably for the same reason that people still generally obeyed the Captain of the Titanic after it had struck the iceberg: authority counts for a lot in…

Woah, Ken: you're in danger of tilting into nihilism here.

The British Parliamentary expenses system, established in good faith, turns out to have been unacceptably abused by many MPs. That abuse reeks of entitlement. But many other MPs have not behaved in this way — some of…

Not only do I not get a return now, I don't get anything from my bank or employers as far as I'm aware.

Am I being screwed through inactivity?

Why do you think there's a huge business scamming people to do the meagre work involved in claiming back over-paid tax?…

What we now may be seeing, as the purchasing power of the majority fades, is the decline of consumerism and a change in the form of society.

Has the purchasing power of the majority actually faded? Adding together the poverty reduction that has occured in China, India, Brazil and other…

Somalia, anybody?

Funny you should mention Somalia. I heard a Rand devotee* interviewed on Australian radio in the mid-90s. Raising the role, or lack thereof, of altruism in Rand's world view, the interviewer asked what she'd have done for the poverty-stricken locals if she'd found herself in contemporary Somalia. The…

Part of ensuring a Randian Nirvana is to convince people the government and democratic institutions are part the problem, not part the solution.

Somalia, anybody? No government or red tape to speak of, which is all well and good. Until the local warlord starts demanding his cut, of course. And…

And while the teabagging tendency drives further and further into its frenzy, the research says the people largely aren't going along with it.

Well its an astroturf isn't it? It'll arc along like the Anti-War brigades of the last lot, providing a backing focus for general discontent and picking up…

self-evident superiority of liberal democracy...once people start questioning it, democracy can fall.

Yet they seem to keep coming back to it...

After the multiple experiments that rose in its place throughout the 20th century, we now know that liberal democracy – even if we can never quite get it completely…

Can you both rage against the plutocratic pilfering elite and against the attack on democracy implicit in revealing the pilfering to the long-suffering public?

Part of ensuring a Randian Nirvana is to convince people the government and democratic institutions are part the problem, not part the solution.

One thing I…

And yet the response in the US as they hurtled towards the cliff edge was to vote in some relatively unknown black dude who appealed to their better natures.

And while the teabagging tendency drives further and further into its frenzy, the research says the people largely aren't going along…

inertia that can often set in.

One of the great benefits of this current system is the bureaucratic inertia that prevents rapid, revolutionary change – which never seems to work as well as the revolutionaries said it would.

So let us celebrate the faceless bureaucrat, for his/her risk averse unproductiveness…

Don't knock 'em – lots of people are employed by Kafkaesque bureaucracies. Their work maybe pointless and contribute nothing to society, but no more so than most jobs if you look at them from a high enough perspective.

It's the inertia and risk-averseness you might get in any large, established…

It will be a new political order of demagogues blending loathing of the globalised capitalist elite, discredited traditional deomcratic vehicles and an anti-crime, anti-immigration authoritarianism into a single populist ring wing program.

And yet the response in the US as they hurtled towards the cliff edge was to vote in…

harnessing public resentment against elites gets you some strange places: look at the incoherent Tea Party movement in the US.

Incoherent is the word, and an incoherent opposition is just what the "pilfering plutocratic elites" cultivate, insofar as they have a plan. Marx would have no trouble analysing the tea…

Like, being an actual Nazi

Funny that the article shouldn't mention the book that he wrote and self-published, The International Jew.

The moral of the story? If you have two or more jobs, do your tax return!

Previously when everyone had to do tax returns, I used to get one in the mail. Along with all the material from my employers and bank required to do it. Not only do I…

The moral of the story? If you have two or more jobs, do your tax return!

I have had five employers in the last year, and having just received a tidy refund I can only agree with this.

You still pay more tax if you have more than one job.

That's not quite right. You pay more PAYE (i.e. deductions from your wages as you go), but at the end of the year when you do your tax return, you should get a refund. Someone who earns say,…

But yes, as a general point, harnessing public resentment against elites gets you some strange places: look at the incoherent Tea Party movement…

Woah, Ken: you're in danger of tilting into nihilism here.

I am not so sure. The fact that the attack on the credibility of the democratic institutions is being led by a flagship newspaper of the very oligarchs that Ken says are incapable of reform surely reinforces his argument, more…

...but in your opening paragraph you point out one of the very best ways to distribute wealth more fairly in a capitalist economy: high minimum wages.

We have a global economy nowadays where the effective minimum wage is $2 per day, so we could increase that to say $5 a…

At the moment western working and middle class populations have lapsed into political lassitude, helplessly suffering from an economic version of battered wife syndrome.

Since communism is discredited and the elites increasingly…

Personally I'd prefer to have a go at a different economy (parecon) but in your opening paragraph you point out one of the very best ways to distribute wealth more fairly in a capitalist economy: high minimum wages.…

he entertained some profoundly politically incorrect opinions

Like, being an actual Nazi