10-31-15 Hodgepodge

Not Ayn Rand

Although I have been busy moving, a quick check of Randex has made the election of Paul Ryan as the new Speaker of the House inescapable to me: Every leftist and his uncle are calling him "Paul 'Ayn Rand' Ryan," so his name ends up saturating the listings there.

If only:

[Paul] Ryan, who imagines that such programs as Social Security and Medicaid can be "reformed," ... is no capitalist. (Otherwise, he'd be clear that the best way to "encourage" competition is for the government to stop manipulating the economy altogether, and would speak of phasing out instead of reforming entitlement programs.)

The silver lining is that this attempt to smear Ayn Rand can backfire by getting her name out there more. Having more independent-minded people finding out who Rand is and what she actually has to say about politics and (more important, morality), would be a very good thing.

Weekend Reading

"A paper in the Journal of Political Economy analyzed ten years of data from New York and Pennsylvania (which had a similar system), concluding that the report cards may 'give doctors and hospitals incentives to decline to treat more difficult, severely ill patients.'" -- Paul Hsieh, in "Doctor 'Report Cards' May Be Hazardous to Your Health" at Forbes

"The justification for keeping the money you have honestly earned is not that there is some collective benefit, but that you have no moral duty to become a servant to the needs of others." -- Peter Schwartz, in "The Correct Answer to All the Soak-the-Rich Tax Schemes" at RealClear Politics

"Based on my experience over the years, I have isolated four mistaken assumptions that an adversarial person makes in his or her interactions with others..." -- Michael Hurd, in "The 'Happiness Pie' is a Flawed Concept" at The Delaware Wave

"There is no other kind of government intrusion in the market that sets off such a feeding frenzy of self-destructive behavior." -- Keith Weiner, in "What's Different about Monetary Policy?" at SNB & CHF

In More Detail

At the end of his article, Keith Weiner mentions a series of conferences he is helping organize:

I am helping put together a series of Monetary Innovation Conferences. The first two are in DC on Nov 13, and Phoenix on Nov 17. This is not just for the right wing, but for everyone from the unbanked to Wall Street. At the conference, speakers will discuss gold and how innovators are using it to solve real problems for real people.

Please follow the link above for registration information.

Fly (by Night?) Maids

If you need a maid service and are looking online, watch out for a company that apparently is using the database of the past customers of Homejoy -- and ripping off the web site of Handy:

Worst still, as I navigated around the site I realized the email link I clicked logged me into "My Account". This screen had my personal information, home address, email, even my credit card number.

I was even more bothered when I noticed that my connection wasn't even https. This shady email, my data being moved over, and the amateur look and feel of this site had me really annoyed. [emphasis in original]

I bet the first reaction of most people to this is, "There ought to be a law!" My reaction is a bit more along the lines of, "Don't I own my own credentials, and isn't the business I entrust them to legally bound to maintain them in confidence?" If not, why not? This looks like a simple case of theft or criminal negligence to me.

-- CAV