Jumping in:
- Did you know that many people are released from prison owing a debt to the state for things like court fees and charges for public defenders? Our criminal justice system is intentionally cruel in so many ways.
- And speaking of the criminal justice system, people who benefit financially from incarcerating massive numbers of people are generally in favor of maintaining and expanding the systems that put people in jail, even unnecessarily. The League of Ordinary Gentlemen looks at how the prison guards’ union has gained influence in California and the quality of prisons has gotten worse. This is a great piece of blog writing.
- This is the sort of libertarian philosophy I agree with. The fair price of goods should include the negative externalities of their use.
- The description of now-more-than-everism is useful, and not just for politics. I’ve certainly seen it plenty of times on engineering teams, and probably have practiced it more times than I’d care to admit.
- James Governor talks about the advantages of giving engineers some responsibility for communicating with the public. Probably the smartest blog post I read last week.
- Anil Dash explains how he uses the favorite and like features on social sites.
June 13, 2011 at 3:45 pm
Rafe, I agree 100% on the negative externalities link. I feel the same way with regards to gasoline (vs CAFE fleet stanards). Raising efficiency often causes folks to drive more as they can afford to move further from their job, take more trips, etc. Just increase the gas tax and let the market figure it out, whether that is living closer to mass transit, closer to work, telecommuting or whatever.
I wonder if in his visit to CREE today that President Obama bothered to mention that CREE got a huge boost when he voted (as a Senator) to outlaw a low cost product that they compete against? Hmmm…I really doubt it.