Well I finally finishing Healing Our World in an Age of Aggression by Dr. Mary Ruwart.  Incidentally you can find an older version of this text for free online.  You have to give this book a lot of credit for being well organized.  There is a full index in the back as well as an appendix of citations.  Each chapter is broken into small sections with a one page chapter summary at the end.  In that respect, it kind of reads like a textbook.  I know I’ll use it in the future if I need to look up information on a particular topic.  The book also deserves credit for covering everything.  I mean that in the Cleveland quoting Peter Griffin, “Eeeeeevvvverythaaaang” sense.  I’ve never seen a libertarian book do such a good job of covering so many topics in three hundred some pages.

Most importantly it is writen from a compassionate perspective, which has caused me to by a few extra copies for my friends and parents.  No vulgar libertarianism here, just genuine concern for other people.  Dr. Ruwart cites numerous examples of how aggression hurts everyone, from the playground all the way up to wallstreet.  The language is simple, direct and quotes are included in the margins pertaining to the topics being addressed.

Now, this review isn’t just going to be a Ruwart love-fest.  There are a few things wrong with the book as well.  Let’s start with the most readily apparent, the cover.  It’s terrible and it’s turned a decent amount of people off from the book.  People I recommend the book to look at me like, “You want me to read that?  With the twin towers and the dove?”  I’ve considered putting a brown paper bag dust cover on it before I give it to people.  As much as it goes against conventional wisdom, people do judge a book by its cover.  I’m sure this book’s cover has hurt its sales.

As I stated earlier, it reads like a textbook.  Textbooks are usually packed with information, but not particularly engaging.  I could knock this book for not grabbing the reader, but I don’t really think that’s what it’s about.  I’d recommend that people read it slowly and pick topics they are already interested in to research.  Treat it like a textbook and it will serve you well.  Just don’t go thinking that it’s going to be riveting.

So to sum things up, I’d say this is a book you definitely have to own.  In time you’ll probably read all of it.  You may disagree with parts and you may find yourself quoting other parts.  It’s very well researched and organized so you’ll probably use it as a reference.

The best of both worlds: continued artificial economic stimulation and regulations that don’t slow it down.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

Glenn Jacobs – Kane! – writes:

Yesterday afternoon, I visited one of Knoxville’s two shopping malls–the downscale one on the east side of town. It had been months since I’d been in this mall; since then it has lost its Dillard’s department store, one of its anchor stores. Fully a quarter of the storefronts were closed, with more on a limited schedule.

But there was one place where business was booming…the county government has opened a branch office in the mall. The line of people waiting to pay property taxes and have their licenses renewed was out the door.

Above the entry to the office, a sign proudly proclaimed “Bringing Government to the People”. Hmmm, I thought “we are the government,” or at least that’s what we are always told. Just like the real stores in the mall, the government relies on slick marketing to “sell” its product.

It strikes me that this a microcosm of the American economy. While the rest of us suffer from the boom and bust that the government has caused, the government is there to pick through the bones.

Government–the anchor store of the new economy.

Bill Anderson followed up with:

Seeing Lew’s post reminds me of a drive I took the other night on PPG Road near Cumberland, Maryland. I passed a sign that announced it was an “Industrial Park.” However, the “industry” on that road is an office of Homeland Security, a huge lot where FEMA trailers are stored, and a federal prison. Welcome to the American growth industries of the 21st Century!

http://www.salon.com/…

Sen. Dick Durbin, on a local Chicago radio station this week, blurted out an obvious truth about Congress that, despite being blindingly obvious, is rarely spoken: “And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” The blunt acknowledgment that the same banks that caused the financial crisis “own” the U.S. Congress — according to one of that institution’s most powerful members — demonstrates just how extreme this institutional corruption is.

The ownership of the federal government by banks and other large corporations is effectuated in literally countless ways, none more effective than the endless and increasingly sleazy overlap between government and corporate officials.

As if the past several months hasn’t already shown that that’s the case?

http://i.gizmodo.com/…

Today, President Obama officially named his nominee for the new position of Chief Technology Officer: Aneesh Chopra, current Secretary of Technology for Virginia. We’ll explain who Chopra is and what his new responsibilities will be.

The CTO position is linked with that of the Chief Information Officer (the recently-named Vivek Kundra), but they are two distinct jobs. The White House explains:

The responsibilities of the CIO are to use information technology to transform the ways in which the government does business. The CTO will develop national strategies for using advanced technologies to transform our economy and our society, such as fostering private sector innovation, reducing administrative costs and medical errors using health IT, and using technology to change the way teachers teach and students learn.

Essentially, the CIO is responsible for the general strategic aim of information technology, whereas the CTO is the one who really gets his hands dirty with the specific architecture. In particular, Obama has listed health care and education in today’s YouTube address as the two areas most requiring the efforts of the CIO and CTO, and we (along with most others) think Chopra is the right guy for the job. Here’s why.

Aneesh Chopra is not a CEO. He’s not a thinker like Negroponte, or a businessman like Gates, or a showrunner like Jobs. He’s a governmental agent. This is important because the CTO is, after all, a government job, and Chopra won’t have to adjust his strategies to work within a governmental system. Right now, he’s the Secretary of Technology for Virginia, and has shown huge success in the field. Last year, Virginia was ranked 1st in Technology Management, a direct reward for Chopra’s work.

Further, he’s made significant achievements in health care and education, which, you remember, is just what Obama wants. He’s gotten the nation’s first open-source textbook approved, initiated competitions for the state’s students to create iPhone apps, and designed a social network for physicians in remote areas.

Most importantly, Chopra’s achievements are forward-looking (Web 2.0, social networking, open source) but fervently grounded in the practical. He’s not pushing for the sake of pushing, he’s using the best tools we have in the best way he can.

“develop national strategies for using advanced technologies to transform our economy and our society, such as fostering private sector innovation, reducing administrative costs and medical errors using health IT, and using technology to change the way teachers teach and students learn.”

So more government distortion of the market, more government chosen technologies sure to be wrong, greater monopolization of products, increased risk of privacy leaks, more redirected resources and more promises regarding education which won’t pan out.

http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=661

Arbeiter Ring Publishing is pleased to announce the release of Let Them Eat Junk: How Capitalism Creates Hunger and Obesity by Robert Albritton

Why are half the people in the world malnourished, while so many in the West are over-fed? Capitalism may promise cheap, nutritious food for all, but it has failed to deliver on that promise. This is the first book to explore the economics of our food system, and to explain why a quarter of the world’s population go hungry despite the fact that enough food is produced worldwide to feed us all.

Political economist Robert Albritton gives a refreshingly detailed explanation of the worldwide food crisis. He analyses the economic conditions that create a simultaneous oversupply and undersupply of food, and the massive implications they have for human health worldwide.

“[This book] pulls no punches in its analysis. … To understand how starvation and obesity can coexist in the same populations, follow the flow of capital. Everyone who cares about food equity and the preservation of democracy should read this book.”–Marion Nestle, Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, New York University

“Marx understood the dynamics of the current food crisis over a century ago. Robert Albritton has written a fine primer, bridging the best thinking of the nineteenth century to the urgent needs of the twenty-first.”–Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved

I’ll just post here my comment I left on Climate and Capitalism:

In what country where there is a supposed oversupply of food is there capitalism? In the USA there are tariffs, subsidies, unbalanced taxation and regulation, etc.
That’s socialistic, fascistic, corporatist. That’s not capitalism.

And what is the solution? Communism? Socialism of one kind or another? More corporatism and fascism? USSR starved millions. Cuba isn’t doing all that well. Nor is North Korea. What socialistic country has been able to produce more food than the people living there need to such an extent as the USA?

The problem isn’t production of food. It’s the distortion of incentives (ethanol subsidies, sugar taxes, corn subsidies) and the tyrannical remote governments which impoverish their people. The cost of food would be reduced if they weren’t kept artificially high due to protectionist trade policy and those who most efficiently produced a product was allowed to do so. And those who have a tough time affording the artificially high foods would have more wealth if their governments would stop with the horrible protectionist, anti-property and anti-business policy.

Even if you had all that fixed it wouldn’t get rid of all the problems right away. It takes time for wealth to increase. Capital must be built up. The size of the pie will increase as will each persons slice of it but it requires people to be free to make their own decisions and for labor to flow into those locations where it is most efficient.