Posted by
Andrews on Thursday, September 10, 2009 4:42:41 PM
I am afraid work has been rather busy recently, and all the stuff for my son's first two weeks of pre-school, all the meetings and preparations and so on, have taken a lot of my attention, meaning I have not written as much as usual, and have done an even worse job of keeping up on current events. Still, I did manage to get a few long posts, but I have noticed I have been writing on rather unusual topics. Some are interesting new ways of looking at things, such as my discussion of symmetrical and asymmetrical rights, others are largely tangential and of interest to maybe one reader at best.
So, since I seem to have a bit less time than usual (and have to go to a "Back to School Night" tonight, so won't be writing tonight), and have trouble focusing on a single topic (even more than my meandering, discursive norm), I have decided to announce in advance what I will be writing, in hopes of keeping me on topic and forcing me to write at least what I promise.
So, without any more introduction, here are my plans for tomorrow:
1. A discussion of how green "green technologies" truly are. As I mentioned previously, a lot of "green" solutions are green only because they conceal the pollution that takes place elsewhere, such as the coal generated power that drives "clean" electric cars. Or the nominally clean technology uses caustic, scarce or otherwise "non-green" resources, resources which, if used in a non-green context, would have the eco-nags up in arms. It is a topic I have mentioned in passing several times, but never truly looked into. So tomorrow I hope to do just that. (I first promised this in "Quick Note", quite some time ago.)
2. A look into voluntary taxation. As I mentioned today("One Sided History"), I have some serious problems with taxation carried out at the end of a gun, as is the case today. I know given our truly outrageous spending we have today no system of voluntary taxes would work, but if we could get spending under control, I would love to see us move toward a system of taxation which did not carry with it the threat of jail or confiscation. Why I think so, and how it would work are the topics I hope to cover.
3. I promised a few days ago (in "More Delays") to write "Pragmatists, Dogmatists, Certainty and Prosperity", which would look largely into the question of whether Obama is malicious, has a secret agenda, or is simply too much of a "pragmatist" for his own good, setting goals, but then taking whatever he can get in terms of reaching them, adjusting his principles to the changing public sentiment. I also hope to look at the question of which would be worse, a bad philosophy consistently held, or a "pragmatic" philosophy. In short, my old question of whether Clinton or Gore would have been worse. As I mentioned today ("Public Insurance") that in some ways this relates to Obama's medical reform, I will be touching on that as well. (I may not be able to decide conclusively whether Obama is a clever dogmatist or a well-polished pragmatist -- as sometimes we just don't have enough information to know such things for sure -- but I can at least explain which would be worse for us.)
If time allows, I hope to write more than that, but work is still quite busy, so I doubt I will get far beyond those three posts.