Category Archives: Business

Microsoft Surface: ‘A Truly Productive Tablet’

Business, Capitalism, Human Accomplishment, Politics, Private Property, Technology

Today is an important day for America’s rotating kleptocracy and the comitatus—that is “the sprawling apparatus … that encompasses not only the emperor’s household and its personnel … but also the ministries of government, the lawyers, the diplomats, the adjutants, the messengers, the interpreters, the intellectuals.” The Democratic incumbent and the Republican candidate for president prepare for another round in the debate circuit, to see which one of them will inherit the earth.

It is no wonder that productivity and creativity are lost in the din over parasitical politics.

Today, the Microsoft Surface tablet went to market. To call this magical thing a “tablet” would be to undersell it. If it fails to win wide general appeal it’ll be because there is nothing quite like it, and because it is “a truly productive tablet.” Yes, The Surface provides the features that keep the average individual’s brainwaves from flatlining. But it does so much more. For example, “It runs as a full computer,” and sports a physical keyboard.

The no-nonsense Windows chief Steven Sinofsky is “almost unwilling to truly define the Surface as a tablet: ‘I’ve used a lot of tablets and this is not a tablet, but this is the best tablet I’ve ever used. And I’ve used a lot of laptops and notebooks, but this is not a laptop or notebook, but it’s the best laptop or notebook I’ve ever used.'”

Sinofsky has also ventured that The Surface “provides the best WiFi reception of any tablet today.”

The Surface’s dual Wi-Fi (“wireless networking technology that uses radio waves to provide wireless high-speed Internet and network connections”) antennae are the part my genius and his team nailed.

Congratulations.

Protectionist USA

Business, China, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Labor, Paleolibertarianism, Private Property, Trade

If you’re in the market for “cheap rooftop solar panels,” you might have to reconsider. The Commerce Department has slapped “tariffs ranging from about 34 to nearly 47 percent on most solar panels imported from” China.

Tariffs, quotas, anti-dumping penalties, or any other trade barrier, force the American consumer to subsidize less efficient local industries, making him the poorer for it. Hundreds of industries—“the burgeoning business of installing cheap rooftop solar panels,” for example—are destined to shrink or go under in order to keep local, politically efficient industries in the lap of luxury.

This is not in the interest of the American consumer and it violates his freedom of contract and association.

The meddlers in Commerce had “determined that Chinese companies were benefiting from unfair government subsidies and were selling their products in the United States below the cost of production, a practice known as dumping.”

Dumping is good for American consumers. Antidumping penalties are typically imposed by the West on poorer nations to stop them from selling their wares bellow market prices. Such protectionist policies are detrimental to less- developed and Third-World countries, which gain advantage through the use of one of the only resources they have, their labor.

The US flouts freedom when it meddles in the affairs of the Chinese and the US consumer. The latter loves cheap Chinese products.

Global Tax Troglodyte

Business, Economy, Hillary Clinton, Human Accomplishment, Propaganda, Taxation

“There are rich people everywhere, and yet they do not contribute to the growth of their own countries” was the obscene comment made by Hillary Clinton, at the Clinton Global Initiative, on Monday.

Worse than her global crusade against under-siege, “market-dominant minorities” worldwide is Clinton’s crushing ignorance. As Economist George Reisman put it, “a Highly Productive and Provident One Percent Provides the Standard of Living of a Largely Ignorant and Ungrateful Ninety-Nine Percent.”

Contrary to such beliefs, in the modern world in which we actually live, the wealth of the capitalists is simply not in the form of consumers’ goods to any great extent. Not only is it overwhelmingly in the form of means of production but those means of production are employed in the production of goods and services that are sold in the market. Totally unlike the conditions of self-sufficient farm families, the physical beneficiaries of the capitalists’ means of production are all the members of the general consuming public who buy the capitalists’ products.
…the wealth of the so-called one percent is the foundation of the standard of living of the so-called ninety-nine percent … the “greed” of those who seek to become part of the one percent, or to enlarge their position within it, is what serves progressively to improve the standard of living of the ninety-nine percent.

To comprehend what Reisman wrote you’d have to, first, have a mind. And second, be in possession of moral fiber such that you were not jealous of those who have what it takes.

MORE.

Who Will Be Our ‘Massa’? The Mormon Or The Mulatto?

BAB's A List, Business, Debt, Democrats, Intellectual Property Rights, libertarianism, Regulation, Republicans, Ron Paul, Taxation, The State, War, Welfare

We all live on the “plantation”; we are all “moocher-hiddeen,” says Barely A Blog contributor, Myron Pauli.

Who Will Be Our ‘Massa’? The Mormon Or The Mulatto?
By Myron Pauli

Unless you are hiding in the Unabomber’s Montana shack and consuming rabbits and berries, we all give to and take from the government. However, some give more than they take and some take more than they give.

Just how large is the sector that depends upon government?

Children and the elderly have become virtual wards of the state – so that 50% already falls into the “moocher-hiddeen” (to use an Islamic term!). That leaves the “working age population” of roughly 25 to 65 supporting the rest. Of course, if “Joe the Plumber” has kids or elderly parents, then the government acts as a conduit from him to his extended family. Even addressing just those working age people with neither children nor parents – are they the ones who pay more than they receive? Maybe.

Remove government employees and the government contractors from that. Then you have the governmental corporations such as Fannie Mae and academia who are funded via government largesse. And what to make of GM, Chrysler, the bailed-out-financial sector, etc., kept afloat by government? Public utilities are governmentally regulated monopolies. Automobile Dealers function only thanks to governmentally legislated monopoly. Pharmaceutical firms, publishers, and the entertainment industry function on patents and copyright for their financial status. Sectors in agribusiness, health care, insurance, energy, and transportation (Amtrak!) are so heavily regulated that those employees are de-facto governmental workers even if there is a semblance of profit. The less said about lawyers and lobbyists, the better!

Truly private workers such as waiters, plumbers, and preachers are quite independent of government; but in locations like metropolitan Washington DC, nearly all their customers come out of the “oink sectors.” Even worse is that when Americans invest their money, the Roth’s, IRA’s, 401k’s, 529’s, HSA’s, “cafeteria plans” are so controlled by governmental rules that one wonders who owns the money – you or the government – or is that even a distinction?

The sad and pathetic truth is that we are all living on a large plantation with a quadrennial democratically elected “Massa” and a bureaucracy of overseers. It is to the credit of racial and religious tolerance that we can have a Mormon vs. mulatto fighting for the job of “Massa”.

The fact is that government has entangled itself from cradle to grave like a metastasizing cancer. Rhetorical flourishes aside, the only government programs downsized in the last 40 years was transportation deregulation under Carter and welfare reform under Clinton (nothing eliminated under Republican presidents), and the budget was in near-balance (ignoring raids on the “Social Security Trust Fund!”) by Clinton. I mean, this not as an endorsement of the unabashed big government Obama but merely to point out that the odds of Romney downsizing the Federal Government is smaller than the odds that the Chinese politburo will make Yom Kippur a Chinese holiday!

So when “Tea Party Conservatives” start bitching about Obama endangering their Medicare, it is because the addiction to government is nearly universal. Some of us on the plantation may be more productive than others, but we all live under the rules and, regrettably, most inhabitants (or inmates) generally support the system.

A few libertarian “nutcases” like Paul or Johnson may point the other way, but even most billionaires are as happy to have the Warfare-Welfare state as the poor. Who do you think pays for the TV commercials and the spin doctors and the political “think tanks” – Christian coalminers and Hispanic gardeners, or guys named Koch, Adelson, Soros, and Spielberg?

Nothing short of a major non-violent libertarian revolution” (Constitutional restoration) is needed – but until then, we can all stick our hand out for our share of the public gruel.

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Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.