Comments on: Terrorists For Obama

By: Rueful Red

Rueful Red — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:28:22 +0000

Jo Bjelke Peterson! Waves of nostalgia! Wonder what the chooks made of it?

By: Brett_McS

Brett_McS — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:50:20 +0000

Oh come on. The great Jo Bjelke Peterson - a Kiwi of Dutch descent and longest serving premier of Queensland - used to refer to press conferences as “feeding the chooks” - as often as not during the press conference.

By: ninme

ninme — Thu, 15 May 2008 05:40:20 +0000

I know. Even ~I~ took offense at that and I’m not exactly a feminist’s feminist. I mean, what is this, the 1950s? “Don’t worry doll,” except not even Ike would have said something like that.

By: RC2

RC2 — Thu, 15 May 2008 01:42:22 +0000

Sheesh. Sweetie? Can hardly believe that one.

By: ninme

ninme — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:09:39 +0000

Good heavens, the philosopher-engineer has his thinking cap on.

So if liberals really can't stand him, it goes back to the final question again, made doubly interesting: Why'd the Times publish this?

By: Brett_McS

Brett_McS — Wed, 14 May 2008 12:12:23 +0000

The groundwork was done by von Mises, and later Hayek, at the beginning of the 20th century, in particular von Mises’ paper in 1920 on “The impossibility of economic calculation in a socialist commonwealth”. Von Mises proved with logical rigour that a socialist economic system cannot garner the potential gains from trade - the cornerstone of a functioning economy - and hence could not function. It was a very unpopular message at the time, but Lenin provided a proof by demonstration - although the existence of Lenin’s proof was not widely known in the west at the time.

Hayek is generally recognised as one of the great geniuses of the 20th century, but von Mises, who is less well known, was smarter.

By: Rueful Red

Rueful Red — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:40:12 +0000

In the early 80s Luttwak wrote a brilliant book anatomising the failure of the Soviet economy, and forecasting the collapse of the whole system within a matter of a few years. This was at a time when the CIA was still taking Soviet economic statistics at face value, and liberal opinion thought Luttwak was nuts. Since he was proved so triumphantly right, liberals really can't stand him.

Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, thought he might be onto something.