Category Archives: Capitalism

Steve Jobs (1955–2011)

America, Business, Capitalism, Celebrity, Ethics, Human Accomplishment, Morality, Pop-Culture, Technology

Ryan McMaken at Mises.org eulogizes Steve Jobs:

Steve Jobs, one of the most important entrepreneurs and innovators of both the 20th and 21st centuries, has died. Will he receive the sort of veneration reserved to politicians when they die? That’s unlikely, although Steve Jobs typically did more good for humanity every day before lunch time than any politician has ever done in his whole life.
Jobs should be considered a great American icon in the same way that Michelangelo is associated with Italy or Mozart with Austria.
When foreigners walk into “American-themed” gift shops in America, they should be greeted with commemorative plates bearing Jobs’s face.
Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen since we have to honor great humanitarians like nuker-in-chief Harry Truman instead.
And of course, Jobs did great things for all humans, and not just Americans.

Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs.

APPLE–Remembering Steve Jobs: “… Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built…”

Playboy before “The Girls Next Door”. Via LewRockwell.com, here is the definitive Playboy interview with Steven Jobs.

UPDATED: Can the Incredible Hulk Strike at Socialism? (Clutching @ Straws)

Barack Obama, Business, Capitalism, Economy, Elections, Free Markets, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Socialism

The excerpt is from “Can the Incredible Hulk Strike at Socialism?”, now on WND.COM:

“New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie may be planning to join the Republican presidential thrust and ‘Perry.’ … references to Ronald Reagan do not make a speech Reaganesque. To be Reaganesque, Christie will have to expose the spirit of socialism—envy, entitlement, aggression—and juxtapose it with the morality of capitalism: commerce, creativity, comity.

Gov. Christie boasted that his ‘Executive Branch’ showed the requisite leadership, not least in educating the public before enacting solutions to New Jersey’s problems.

If Christie wishes to ‘educate’ the rest of the country, as he claims to have done for New Jersey, he would have to first strike at the assorted zero-sum, socialist notions, whereby one person’s plenty is portrayed as another’s poverty. Chief among these is the concept of ‘the American economic pie.’ This pie-in-the-sky is perverse in the extreme because it feeds the idea of a preexisting income pie from which the greedy appropriate an unfair share.

Wealth, earned or ‘unearned,’ as egalitarians term inheritance, doesn’t exist outside the individuals who create it. Wealth is a return for desirable services, skills and resources rendered to others. Labor productivity is the main determinant of wages—and wealth. Most wealthy Americans produce what they consume—and much more; they don’t remove or steal it from poorer Americans.”

Read the complete column, “Can the Incredible Hulk Strike at Socialism?” on WND.COM.

My new book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon.

A newly formatted, splendid Kindle copy is also on sale.

Barnes and Noble is always well-stocked and ships within 24 hours.

Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot from The Publisher.

UPDATE (Oct. 1): Clutching At Straws. Rasmussen Reports: Obama 44%, Christie 43%:

Few expect him to run, but New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is essentially even with President Barack Obama in an early look at a hypothetical Election 2012 matchup. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters shows that Obama earns 44% support in the matchup, while Christie attracts 43%. Six percent (6%) prefer a third option, and eight percent (8%) are undecided.

Moron’s Ideas for ‘Living Within Our Means’

Barack Obama, Business, Capitalism, Debt, Economy, Inflation

On Monday, Sept. 19, BHO published the grandiosely titled “Living Within Our Means and Investing in Our Future: The President’s Plan for Economic Growth and deficit Reduction.” As promised after the address given to the join session a week or so earlier, this thing is supposed to explain how BHO intends to pay for his latest plan to squander an additional $447 billion without adding a cent to the 14.7 trillion-dollar debt.

Things are bad when BHO media loyalists like The Economist are unimpressed:

Sadly, the details of Mr Obama’s plan do not live up to the promising goals. On spending it relies too much on one-off cuts to the military and a laundry list of untried and controversial trims to mandatory programmes and on taxes, a frustratingly vague tax plan that sacrifices meaningful reform to the more symbolic goal of raising taxes on the rich.

This from page 2:

“The American Jobs Act would cut payroll taxes in half to 3.1 percent up to their first $5 million in wages, providing broad tax relief to all businesses but targeting it to the 98 percent of firms with wages below this level, and it would completely eliminate payroll taxes next year for any business that increases its payroll by hiring new workers or increasing wages for existing workers. The Act would also extend 100 percent expensing through 2012, allowing all firms—small and large—to take an immediate tax deduction on investments in new plants and equipment.”

This kind of incentivization is grounded in BHO’s perception of business owners as tempestuous twits—kids who need candy to make them grow their livelihood.

If consumers were flush with cash to spend, business would expand to meet the demand. Business is behaving prudently, because that’s what the market demands. If anything, a tough economy would indeed force increases in productivity: fewer and fewer workers are doing more and more of work.

A Qwickster Response from Netflix

Business, Capitalism, Democracy, Free Markets, Technology, The State

Netflix upset its fractious, spoiled-rotten patrons by raising prices (which were at a rock-bottom low), and separating its on-demand internet streaming service from the DVD-by-mail business (now called Qwikster). No sooner did Netflix customers begin whining, than the company sprung into action—within weeks.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has been groveling to the only voters who count in the true democracy that is the free market: “I messed up. I owe you an explanation … we lacked respect and humility,” all ridiculous and untrue, but necessary if this shrewd businessman is to please his only lords and masters: the buyers.

Despite this Qwickster response, the same misguided patrons refuse to appreciate the wonders of free-market capitalism and will keep begging for more of Uncle Sam’s screw-you, coercive services.