In terms of the knowable-in-advance weight and potential impact of each vote, the upcoming US Senate runoff elections in Georgia might be the most important in our lifetime, by a very wide margin.

Suppose we lose one of them by ten thousand votes, and two million eligible voters don't vote, one million of whom would have voted for each party.

How ( Read more... )

This came up in conversation recently and it bothered me how hard it was to explain to some people. I decided to find a good illustration to hopefully make this more clear ( Read more... )

One of the more popular arguments in favor of capitalism is that it rewards effort and skill. After giving that point some thought I found myself wandering down a line of thought that I would enjoy some feedback and dialogue on.

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You are protected against unwarranted search and seizure of your property. Unless, that is, you are at the border, an ostensibly sensible exception if you ignore such antics as seizing citizens' laptops *permanently*. However, various border security agencies, and a number of courts who support them, have claimed to be exercising that exception ( Read more... )

A company too big to fail is too big.

Thank you to my friend David for this sentiment, which I mirror. If a giant company cannot be allowed to die because of the harm it would cause, it should not have been allowed to grow that large in the first place.

The current "economic crisis" has driven me to reevaluate some of my beliefs, and I thought I would share one of them ( Read more... )