Friday Morning Ramble: Are we recovering?

It’s a long haul to recovery. Post-earthquake, post-economic bust, and post-political oblivion. How has everyone been doing this week?

• Pssst. Did you hear about the racist speaking at the ACT Party conference?
  Willie Jackson at ACT conference – L I N D S A Y   M I T C H E L L
• Blogger Eric Crampton has some post-earthquake updates.. Things are so desperate he’s going ninja!
  Assorted earthquake updates – E R I C   C R A M P T O N
• Christchurch businesses can’t break the cordon to get their business equipment. No way. No how. But the grey ones will allow folk in to get a wedding dress.
  Christchurch – recognising emasculation – S T E P H E N  F R A N K S
• How does the government help the South recover? Simple. Get out of the way.
  Mark "Speedo" Weldon Actually Raising Funds – C A C T U S  K A T E
  Make Christchurch an Enterprise Zone not a Ward of the State – Peter Osborne,  N O T  P C
• An astonishingly prescient 1996 documentary on the dangers of a Christchurch earthquake [thanks to MrRetromaniacs for the link]

• Danyl has a great idea to put  John Minto, Chris Trotter and Keith Locke to work. 
  The dependency trap –  D I M   P O S T
• Alan Bollard demonstrates he’s never read the Broken Window Fallacy, or learned anything about booms and busts:
  “Rebuilding Christchurch will create conditions similar to the building boom between 2002 and 2007, Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard says.” [hat tip Berend]
  Building boom 'will help economy' – N Z  H E R A L D
• OliverCooper sums up why Alan Bollard and other central bankers are getting paid the big bread: Interest rates are kept at 0.5%. Price inflation, in case you forgot, is at least 5%. So you're PAID 4.5% to borrow money. No wonder we do so recklessly...
• What rights to unions have? “People have the right to associate freely, but no right to force their conditions on others.”
  Guarantee to Unions the Same Rights the Rest of Us Have – Ari Armstrong,  F R E E  C O L O R A D O
• Bar-owners are outraged that competition from supermarkets has forced them to cut their prices and offer a better deal to consumers. If you’re worried about the shrinking profits of bar owners in New Zealand, Rauparaha recommends you head on down to a bar and make a donation tonight.
  There are others who need your generosity – V I S I B L E   H A N D
• What do you get when a former Minister of Energy writes to the chairman of the panel reviewing Nick Smith’s Emissions Tax Scam? A surprising amount of good sense, actually.
  NZ ETS review under way – C L I M A T E  C O N V E R S A T I O N   G R O U P
• The principle of non-initiation of physical force (sometimes called the non-aggression principle) is at the bottom of any rational politics.  But what ideas underpins the principle?
  Reduction of “the Initiation of Physical Force is Evil” – Roderick Fitts,  I N D U C T I V E  Q U E S T
• Yaron Brook comments on Abraham Lincoln’s legacy at the 150th anniversary of his inauguration.
  President Lincoln, 150 Years Later – P J T V
• “The literature that recounts the evils of the political/theological ideology of Islam is vast, growing, and informative. Unfortunately much of it is wrongly premised and written by individuals of a religious bent who have yet to check their premises. They really have no reason to cast the first stone at Islam, when the stones thrown at them share a striking similarity to the stones they hurl back.”
  Mosques vs. Churches vs. Freedom - Edward Cline, R U L E  O F   R E A S O N
• What happens when an anti-jihadist cartoonist (and former Muslim) meets Jon Stewarts’s Daily Show? Does insight ensue? Or hilarity? Or just some very neat editing?
  Don't Judge a Comic Book by its creator's appearance on The Daily Show – B O S C H  F A W S T I N
  Batman’s Muslim Sidekick – D A I L Y  S H O W

Source Bosch Fawstin

• “New Senator Randall Paul is championing economic freedom while at the same time championing the morality that prevents it from existing.”
  Senator Rand Paul’s Morality and the Welfare State
  – Joshua Lipana,  C A P I T A L I S M  M A G A Z I N E
• What you would have made if you had bought Apple stock instead of Apple products [hat tip Geek Press]
  Had You Bought Apple Shares Instead Of Apple Products… – M O N E Y   C O N E
• Cartoonist Jon Cox keeps spotting his cartoons all round the Middle East, especially in nearly every street protest.
  Gadhafi Caricature Gets Around – J O H N  C O X  A R T
• Has globalisation caused food riots in the Middle East and elsewhere?  No, says Don Boudreaux. “The people who today are hungry and starving are not those of us living in globalized, liberal economies; it is, rather, the poor souls cursed with the misfortune of living in countries whose governments follow the advice of the [anti-globalists] and ‘protect’ their citizens from ‘global economic liberalization’.”
  Food, Famine & Globalisation – Don Boudreaux, C A F E   H A Y E K
• Andrew Schiff is the coauthor, with his brother, Peter Schiff, of the great introduction to economics How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes. And he’s pretty smart too.
  An Interview with Andrew Schiff about Fishing Nets, Hut Gluts, and other Economic Matters 
  – O B J E C T I V E  S T A N D A R D
• Events in the Middle East have made it abundantly clear—or should have—that If policymakers want to maintain food security they had better reconsider the arguments behind inflationism.
   Inflationism and Social Unrest – E C O N O M I C   P O L I C Y  J O U R N A L
• America has a huge government debt crisis. How big? Take a look…

• PS: You can get the graph Duquesne University economics professor Antony Davies uses in his presentation at his website.
• So with a debt like that, is a crash inevitable? Find out…
  The Powell History "Crash Course" on the Coming Crash! – P O W E L L  H I S T O R Y
• Don Boudreaux demonstrates how to debunk the Balance of Trade Fallacy in 200 words or less.
  Protectionists are to economics what astrologers are to astrophysics – C A F E   H A Y E K
• Amazon have dropped the price on new book The Price of Everything. Some wags have suggested the author of The Price of Everything did not understand the price of his own book. The author responds, leading to this neat headline...
  The Price of the Price of Everything – Russ Roberts,  C A F E  H A Y E K
• Here’s a lecture by Frederic Sautet to savour over the weekend on the Austrian school of economic thought (for all of you  who have been asking about it).

Austrians and Other Schools of Economic Thought from FEE on Vimeo.

• The BBC thinks I’m “a mature social reasoner.” Find out if they’re equally deluded about you.
  Morals - Social Responsibility Questionnaire – B B C
• The Kings’s Speech? Good movie, bad history.
   Churchill Didn't Say That
  -  Christopher Hitchens,  S L A T E
• Oh look, Hollywood doesn’t want you to watch the new Atlas Shrugged movie. That’s surely a good sign.  Especially because Outrageous Fortune’s Grant Bowler looks so damn good as Rearden.
  Why Hollywood Was Against the “Atlas Shrugged” Film
  - J O H N  S T O S S E L
• The advantages of book learning, Part XII. This week …
  30 Literary Quotes That Just Might Get You Laid 
  – F L A V O R W I R E  [hat tip Quote Unquote]
• “Many atheists abandon their faith, but don’t follow that decision through to it’s logical conclusion. Many of them hold onto the morality of Altruism after the faith that it depended on is removed.”
  Have You Abandoned Faith but Kept Christian Morality? 
  – Scott Connery, R A T I O N A L  P U B L I C  R A D I O
• As psychiatrists become less and less competent their bankrolls become bigger and bigger. Why? Simple:
  Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy – N E W   Y O R K   T I M E S
  [hat tip Dr Shaun Holt]
• The only time I watch Glenn Beck is when people send me his videos. People send me a lot of Glenn Beck videos. I only watch about five percent.  Here’s why: he’s insane.

• Parents should be making selfish decisions about their parenting and not feeling guilty about those decisions. But in our culture of parental sacrifice and maternal guilt, especially, that can be hard. Here’s the list of things I will not feel guilty about.
  Things I Won’t Feel Guilty About – Kelly Elmore
• “Here’s to not accepting unearned guilt and feeling good about parenting decisions!”
  Seven Things I Refuse to Feel Guilty About As a Parent 
  – R A T I O N A L   J E N N
• Here’s one of the great mean of jazz, clarinetist Sidney Bechet (pron. Besh-AY) [hat tip 20sJazz.Com]

• Leonard Bernstein building the Vienna Philharmonic up to the climax of Mahler’s First Symphony, in a Philharmonic Hall looking very much like Auckland’s Town Hall.

• George Harrison’s guitar still gently sleeps, but his friends still do Concert for George every year on his birthday.
  Concert For George – G E O R G E  H A R R I S O N . C O M

Cheers, and have a good weekend.
PC