lexicography.com

Anyone else hear of this TLA, three letter acronym? Most on Wall Street know it.

Reading around the blogosphere lately it has dawned on me that often, one blog will take an idea presented on another blog, without crediting the source. Plagiarism.

Funny, in law ideas are not protected (you may take antyone’s original idea without credit or payment and even present it as your own), but expression is (it’s called copywrite).

Ideas got to be free. And I agree. But if you get your idea from another blog, you should do a hat tip.

Speaking of blog stuff. I got to learn to write like this, said about pajamas media:

PJM proves that when we go corporate, we’re even worse than the MSM, in pretty much every way. We’re more selfish and corrupt. We’re less effective at discovering and disseminating the truth. And we’re less entertaining. What reader with more than an ounce of brains wants to go to Instapundit now and read a long list of PJM-pimping links even more boring than the more-sincere links he was putting up two months ago? If you thought Instapundit was dull in the past, as I did, wait until you see it now. Glenn Reynolds used to link to things he mistakenly found interesting. Now he links to things he has to PRETEND to find interesting. It’s affirmative action, and like all affirmative action, it helps assure that the best and brightest get left behind while mediocrities bask in the limelight

Hog On Ice

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an amazing editorial. A respectable citizen (”John” identity is not relevant) accuses the NYC Atorney General Elliot Spitzer of threatinging John because John wrote something critical of Spitzer’s conduct in office.

Spitzer is a person who is able to command the NYC police department to deprive you of freedom. They have guns, you are prohibited by law from having guns. They have chains and taisers and rooms with bars. If Spitzer said that he was at war with me, I would take this post down. I want my children to have a father. Spitzer said that he was at war with his newspaper critic - sealing Spitzrs fate for eternity.

Given the high stakes, no one would write such a revealing article on Spitzer unless they were pretty sure thay would win in the end. Of course if Spitzer decided to destroy your life, you would not be able to write four inches in the Wall Street Journal so no one of any importance would ever notice your sexual servitude to prisioner 12345600 at the State pen. But Spitzer went over the line, and he is toast.

I’m glad a court examined and decided that the teaching of creationism is not valid science.

I petition the court to review and rule on the present teaching about race and gender.

I disagree with the whole thrust of this article:
Riehl World View: Media Bias In The News

My disagreement is that it is not a case of bias at all. Bias is a predilection to one particular point of view. What the MainStreamMedia have given us is propaganda, a message “directly aimed at influencing the opinions of people, rather than to impartially provide information” Same source.

It might be hard to prevent your bias from coloring your words on a subject. You might aim to report facts, but because of your bias be unable to reach your ideal. You might even think that your bias is correct or morally superior and so give it greater freedom in your work.

When writing propaganda, however there is nothing hard about it. You enjoy the characterization, slant and art of it all. That is what we have been getting in the MSM and what has held inordinate power for the last fifty five years because of the physical facts of information dissemination during the pre-Internet period.

So, as I was sayin . .

There is a shortage of human organs for transplant while countless healthy organs are turned into garbage every day. The “system” says that if you are in need of an organ for transplant, you are as equally entitled to it as any other person in need. There is a line of expiring people waiting for organs, but there is no incentive other than good will for anyone to be an organ donor.

Why can’t we just manage this by ourselves? After all, we have every legal tool available to, and more knowledge than, the 18th Century Englishman who colonized a new world with companies instead of crown colonies.

I am legally able to donate an organ [that I do not need to maintain my life] to any person I want. Were my life gone, I may have bequested vital organs to whomever I choose and the bequest will be honored.

Some people have tried to create a sort of limited market in organs by making the offer that if you are in need of a kidney, and if you bring in a kidney donor, we will move you to the top of the list to receive a kidney suitable for you. Now this is a limited market. If you could find a donor willing to give up a kidney and it was a good kidney for you for, you merely found an organ in private. However, if you get some sort of credit (currency) towards getting your very own kidney because you found or convinced a third person to donate a kidney to a fourth person, then there is a sort of market. Exchange. You get someone to supply a kidney now and you get a kidney sooner from someone else. It is a most imperfect market because your credit or currency is junk. What if a after your relative or best friend donated a kidney, a powerful politician needed a kidney and he was the exact same genotype as you? Probably he would get the next kidney matching your genotype consigning you to months of additional waiting. In all honesty, the donor you produced would be getting ripped off in a very big way and has no legal recourse. The donor and you have no legal claim on any specific organ no right of judicial review of the allocation.

Here is a better way.

Suppose that in each State a few of the more substantial citizens formed a trust. The trust would be called the “Organ Trust”. The terms of the trust would be as follows.

Anyone may become a member of the trust by executing a power of attorney in a form approved by the trust granting the trustees the power to dispose of their organs upon their death.

The terms of the trust would provide that the trustees must exercise the organ donor power of attorney to assign organs of a deceased trust member (i) first to any class A member of the trust who matches the organ, and if there is no class A member who may receive the organ, (ii) second to any class B member of the trust who matches the organ, and if there is no class B member who may receive the organ, (iii) third to turn over the organ to the semi-public authorities in charge of organ allocation for allocation as they see fit.

Trust members would be assigned to class A and class B according to how long they were members of the trust with an executed power of attorney governing the dispositions of their organs in accordance with the trust. Perhaps Class A members would be people who had a power of attorney effective for the last 20 years. Class B members would be those who had a power of attorney in effect at the time of need for an organ but less than the 20 prior years.

That way, if you joined the trust at legal majority (18) when you were 38 you would become a class A member and entitled to first chance at all the trust’s organs. If you waited to join the trust until you were 50 years old and a type II diabetic, you would immediately become a class B member but would have to wait twenty years before moving up to class A and standing first in line (sign up when young for maximum benefit - and the young die most in accidents and are the best organ donors).

The power of attorney to join the trust is durable - it survives death, so there is no begging the heirs of the deceased for re donation, you did it all when you joined the trust. It is a major problem even after a person has determined to be an organ donor to get the heirs of organ donor’s to follow through with the donation.

The power of attorney to join the trust is revocable, meaning at any moment as long as you are in charge of your affairs, you can revoke it. Of course the moment you revoke the power of attorney you stop being a member of the trust and are no longer entitled to the preference that class A or even class B members have to donated organs. Worse, if you remove yourself from the trust for so much as one second, you start over, needing to serve 20 years as a new member again to get to class A member.

In this way organ donor’s benefit from their donation. Non-organ donor’s pay a price for their non-donation. More organs become available for transplant. No one is required by law to do anything - everyone is exactly as free before this trust is put in place as after it is.

—UPDATE—

The trustees put every non-revoked power of attorney in PDF form on the Internet. The trustees write every major transplant center and say “you will not get one organ from this State’s Organ Trust for use at your center unless you enter an agreement with us to check for an effective power of attorney for all your future patients.”

For people, words are claws and fur; instruments of dominion and defense. “The pen is mightier than the sword” sort of thing.

Under our political system, both political parties will tend toward the middle with slight differences calculated to gain a majority.

I am now convinced that there will be no political power going to an American Libertarian Party or an American Communist Party. All change will come from changing the Zeitgeist, the ether we all live in. If one moves the conversation and the understanding one iota in the direction desired, that is the task we undertake.

Our great leaders: Ronald Reagan, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Thomas Szasz, various economists (although they all lack moral authority because of self imposed limits on their field); all popularizers of freedom, who talk to the public at large. I could name many others.

The only thing to do is to direct the conversation, no matter how little your influence.

Please visit The Szasz Blog

To be honest, the Szasz Blog does not live up to its name.

Thirty years ago, at my college posters went up, something about drugs being legal - naturally I showed up at the event. Thomas Szasz spoke for an hour or so. I agreed with what he said; where I did not agree he convinced me.

Szasz was who Nathaniel Branden should have been. Branden grafted the “wrong thoughts are a disease” carbuncle on to Objectivism.

Szasz said: no thoughts are a disease - the concept disease does not apply to thought (execpt as a metaphore - a sick joke).

Once I was promoting Szasz on the Internet and a person wrote me. He said that he lived in a certain town and he went out each morning for a long walk. His old frail neighbor would jump out of the door and ask to join in the morning walk. My correspondent wanted nothing to do with the old person, thinking he would slow the walk down. After a few days he looked forward to the walk because Szasz was most welcome company - throwing out ideas and challenging ideas.

I felt envy. A daily walk with this guy.

tramp stamp n. 1. a tattoo on a woman, especially on the back at or below the waistline. 2. a hickey (on a man).

Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary: Tamp Stamp. Perhaps we shold add doubletongued to the Word Blogroll?

Already done.

the BMW. Wife took delivery today. What really sold us was the test drive. The salesman drove first. It was raining. He took an exit ramp marked 25 MPH about 40. I add ten all the time on speed marked curves because they are marked so conservative. I know adding fifteen can be done safely if you know the road, but with this car there were no histrionics. No body roll. Just like on a rail. Then he checked to make sure no one was behind and applied 100% brake. No nose dive. Impressive stopping power. On wet pavement. Really a nice balanced car, not blindingly fast, athletic.

Now there are many, many things that annoy me about the car. the key is not a key, you press a button to start the engine, there are no less than three control stalks off the steering column each with two or three buttons.

I can get in any Japanese car from Honda to Lexis and the controls are so similar I can operate the car even if it is the first time I drove the model. A key turns to start it, the wipers are on the right stalk the turn signals and high beam on the left. Cruse control is on the steering wheel.

The controls of every car should be pretty much the same (unless the functionality is different). In the damn BMW you need special knowledge just to remove the “key”. You can’t pull it from its socket; you press it in to cause it to spring out. I guess the designers wanted to make the purchaser feel special and individual. When it comes to controlling three thousand pounds of steel traveling at serious speed with distractions, traffic and idiot other drivers around, I like standardization.

Wikipeodia says money is

any marketable good or token used by a society as a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a unit of account.

Hyperdictionary offers:

Definition: [n] wealth reckoned in terms of money; “all his money is in real estate”
[n] the most common medium of exchange; functions as legal tender; “we tried to collect the money he owed us”
[n] the official currency issued by a government or national bank; “he changed his money into francs”

Neither of these touch on how I think of money. Money is liquid power, distilled power, the Eau de Vie of power. Here is how I get there.

When I studied world history I believe they taught that absolute monarchy often gave way to limited monarchy when a prosperous merchant class arose. When trade and capitalistic activity lead to the accumulation of wealth outside of the actual state and the nobility, freedoms followed. The limited monarchs were direct precursors to our own limited government. The competing power centers were precursors to our own divided government.

Much later, I was reading an interview given by the founder of Mad Magazine. He said that when he sold Mad, he got F*** Y** money. The interviewer asked, what’s that. He replied to the effect that if someone was telling him something he did not like or was trying to require him to do something he did not want to do he now had enough money to walk away.

Later, I saw rich and famous people require the state to abide by the rules and prove everything. I do not think money can buy a trial verdict, but I do believe it can prevent the DA from playing fast and loose with your life. Witness OJ and Grasso (former CEO of the New York Stock Exchange targeted by NY Attorney General Spitzer for excessive compensation).

Around here, which is a very affluent part of the Country, many people think of money as the dial that determines how many toys they can buy and pleasures they can indulge. If their annual income tops $700K they buy a $3m home, a Porsche SUV, send their kids to private school, vacation in France in summer and Carib in winter, and basically spend what they earn all the while gaining no real assets other than their real estate equity and their 401(k). I do not think like that at all.

When I graduated from law school long ago, Wall Street was paying near six figures and Cravath just added a $40K housing allowance pushing we new associates over the threshold. Manhattan is an expensive place and six figures did not go very far. I could not afford a car, to have a bedroom in my studio apartment, to go out to dinner as often as I wanted. Still, I was shocked when my officemate confessed that he had maxed out his credit cards. Now in my view, at that income level if you could not be weaning yourself from wage slavery and amassing some liquid power you were just doing it wrong. Working late at night Polish cleaning ladies would enter my office and do their thing. I would talk to them. Poland was a poor country. They came to New York City and with poor English accepted what work they could get. They shared apartments in Brooklyn and saved a large percentage of their income. In a few years they went back to Poland important citizens. The associates I worked with would not live in Brooklyn, let alone share an apartment in Brooklyn, to own some of the wealth flowing through their hands.

Now here is the point. Americans are becoming seriously wealthy. Productivity gains, current tax rates, investments, new businesses, are driving a huge change. These people, who number in the millions, are becoming a new power. The old institutions of power were:

Government (guns and chains)
MSM (court jester to government and influential)
Academia (medieval self perpetrating institution)
Old Money (New England - fairly liberal)
Hollywood (like MSM but more money)
Big Business (Oracle offering to host the National ID card - Wall Mart calling for an increase in the minimum wage)
Organized Labor
Municipal Government
Political Parties
NGO’s and Non Profits (Ford Foundation)

I can identify a few additions of the last ten years to this list with little reflection:

The Internet in general and blogs in particular

Free capital flows worldwide (lets see any serious government block capital)

Lower dividend tax rate moving capital from large business to individual investors

Hedge funds escaping SEC regulatory scheme

The new wealthy (not Gates, the guy who ownes a business and can put some assets away, the new independent)

And you know, main street, not wall street, believes in freedom.

The Vietnam War Memorial (a slash below ground level with no heroic iconography and containing the name of each casualty like a CNN Iraq war report) was BI (Before Internet).

The Crescent of Peace, in many ways a similar project, was AI(After Internet).

See any difference?