Links for November 28, 2011: Cheap Chinese Labor; Money; Unfortunate Baby Names; others….

1. 

   This image accompanied the article at Phawker. What emotion toward Chinese workers is this image calculated to instill?

   Philly.com | Apple’s American job disaster

   I first caught this article re-posted at Phawker.com under the title, How Steve Jobs F*cked Over The American Worker. Steve Jobs could have sat at home and played his Atari all day. He chose instead to revolutionize the way we communicate. This is the thanks he gets.

   But in 1996, the moneymen on Wall Street decided Apple was not living up to their expectations. Earnings had sagged. To raise cash and bolster the bottom line, the company was forced to unload assets. The Fountain plant was sold, just four years after it had opened. The plant was profitable and well-run, but Wall Street’s relentless focus on short-term earnings demanded results.

   It’s called efficiency. Those who see jobs as ends in themselves don’t seem to care a lick about it.

Links for Monday, June 20: China’s Economic Stimulus; Ludicrous RIAA Damages; What about NPR?; others…

1. SBS Dateline | China’s Ghost Cities

   Stories about how China’s economy will soon surpass that of the U.S. should not be taken at face value. This is China’s economic stimulus project. This is what a government stimulus project is. A government stimulus project is when the government takes money and resources from the private sector and uses it to make and build things for which there is no genuine demand. Our American stimulus is of the same essential character. Ours is just a little more modest in scale.

2. Newsweek | America Faces the Fiscal Facts

   Here is a nice article from Niall Ferguson about the choice the American Government will make on our behalf in the near future: Raise taxes and/or cut government. Thomas E. Woods has argued that raising taxes will not solve the problem. There will have to be copious cutting.

3. Wired.com | Feds, RIAA Ask $22,500 in Damages Per Song

   With juries like these, who needs dictators?

Links for November 16, 2010: Some Psychological Stuff, Some Fallacious Stuff, others….

1. Freedomain Radio | The Bomb in the Brain Part 4 – The Death of Reason – The Effects of Child Abuse

   Another fascinating diatribe from Stefan Molyneux. My question is: does this not apply equally well to libertarians and anarchists? Is libertarianism not just another ideology?

2. TED.com | Rory Sutherland: Sweat the small stuff

   Large organizations, including government, which is of course the largest organization of all, have actually become completely disconnected with what actually matters to people. … What behavioral economics shows, time after time, is in human behavior and behavioral change there is a very strong disproportionality at work: that actually what changes our behavior and what changes our attitudes toward things is not actually proportional to the degree of expense entailed or to the degree of force that is applied.

3. Philly.com | Some political parties remain outlaws in Pa.

   After invalidating more than 30,000 Nader-Camejo signatures on dubious and highly technical grounds – for example, because signers used informal names such as “Bill” instead of “William,” or because their current and registered addresses did not match – Commonwealth Court removed the candidates from the ballot. Then it ordered them to pay their challengers more than $80,000 in litigation costs.