Friday Hodgepodge

Blog Roundup

1. At Thinking Directions, Jean Moroney asks, "What is missing from your plan for the day?" Here is a small, but crucial, part of her answer:

Seize the day by greeting it properly. (Image by Mohamed Nohassi, via Unsplash, license.)

Knowing the reason for your plan lets you judge objectively whether to change the plan. It ensures you know the assumptions built into the plan. When something unexpected comes up, you'll be able to judge whether it is relevant or irrelevant to the goal. Does it change your assumptions? Ultimately, is it important or unimportant? If the issue is important, and implies a change in goal or assumptions, it is logical to change your plan. If not, it is illogical, and knowing your reason will reinforce your determination to stick with your original intentions.

Encountering this at a time when I have been trying to improve my own daily planning has provided both encouragement and food for thought.

On the latter score, while I am not sure scheduling every moment is something I want to do, it is valuable to consider her reasoning for the practice. On the former, I am more confident that taking time to review my goals right after a major interruption I have most mornings is a step in the right direction.

2. At How to Be Profitable and Moral, Jaana Woiceshyn elaborates on why, "Why the government must leave Big Tech alone." After briefly outlining the differences between the coercive power of government and he economic power of large companies, she concludes in part:

[A]s long as the Big Tech firms trade on voluntary basis and don't resort to physical coercion or fraud, their moral right to produce and trade as they see fit must be defended. If we don't like the way with they operate or are worried about their influence, we are free to not buy or use their products and services. We are also free to recognize their faults, such as biased search results, and act accordingly: treat such results with suspicion and do additional research.

Woiceshyn notes the disturbing removal by Amazon of a classic of American literature from its stores. This crucially does not make Gone With the Wind impossible to obtain, as a government ban would. Some of the reasoning behind the current animus against Big Tech over such "censorship" flirts with having government step in to judge the merit of content -- that is, replacing this "censorship" with the real thing.

Thus, in the name of freedom of speech, antitrust is threatening both property rights and freedom of speech.

3. The Texas Institute for Property Rights offers praise to Disneyland president Ken Potrock. A rare bird these days, this is a businessman willing to stand up to abuse of government power, of which California's governor has been guilty ever since the first improper "lockdown" edicts were issued in March. The post quotes Potrock as follows:

We have proven that we can responsibly reopen, with science-based health and safety protocols strictly enforced at our theme park properties around the world. Nevertheless, the State of California continues to ignore this fact, instead mandating arbitrary guidelines that it knows are unworkable and that hold us to a standard vastly different from other reopened businesses and state-operated facilities.

I share the dismay about Potrock's being a lonely voice.

In better times, Newsom would have been recalled months ago. Today? Two attempts have failed, but a third is underway. I urge anyone in California to consider supporting this effort.

4. And speaking of better times, the following comes from Jason Crawford's excellent Roots of Progress blog, regarding America's once-healthy respect for growth. Crawford comments on widespread indignation that the 1890 census had not counted at least 75 million:

"Spasms of indignation" because population growth was too low for "the dignity of the republic". Americans were proud of being the fastest-growing country. Today, in contrast, people fear overpopulation, and the general slowing of world population growth is generally considered to be good news.

Something changed in American attitudes in the last 100+ years, not just toward technology or the economy as such, but more fundamentally toward growth itself.

Indeed, and Crawford's work on helping us understand and once again appreciate progress is a step in the right direction.

-- CAV