politics

  • Central planning always bad, no matter who does it and why?

    Once upon a time there was a country. Year after year, that country funded the wrong projects, built the wrong infrastructure and bought the wrong things. Eventually, the accumulation of bad investment made that country so fragile that even the smallest shock could topple it.

    The reason for this failure was

  • If Arab public opinion were to influence policy...

    If [Arab] public opinion were to influence policy, the U.S. not only would not control the region, but would be expelled from it, along with its allies, undermining fundamental principles of global dominance. The U.S. and its Western allies are sure to do whatever they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world. So says Noam Chomsky in a piece I just discovered and recommend as useful food for thought: Is the World Too Big to Fail?

  • The difference between USA and Europe? The meaning of "rights"

    A discussion on Slashdot about the cost of broadband in rural areas contains an interesting explanation of the difference between USA and most European states (well, one of the important differences anyway): the meaning of “right”. Nothing new, but worded in a synthetic way that, in my opinion, shows well, apart from the USA Constitution, how many USA citizens see the issue. Here it is (the user names link to their comments in the original discussion, bold markup is mine):

  • EU governments to citizens, you want transparency, we ll make it useless

    In general, I agree that humans aren’t ready for total transparency yet and that what is called the “space to think” in the article I quote below is necessary. But I also think we need an equilibrium betwen that and the de-facto total lack of transparency we have today, and I’m pretty sure that many average EU citizens think the same. However, if we are to judge from some recent news, EU governments seem to think that they’ll take such demands seriously… and then just merrily walk around them.