We Are the 99 Percent
You’re part of the ninety-nine percent, you say. What of that? Your status isn’t fixed, and you are not stuck there. You’re free to work your way along the spectrum — as, indeed, most people do. You’re free to run clear up to the top percent — as, indeed, many people do. Your motivation and…
“My Balls Feel Like Concrete”
“I’m in bed the next day, she brings me cafe-au-lait, gives me a cigarette. My balls feel like concrete.” — Ricky Roma, Glengary, Glenross Prior to the Industrial Revolution, a surveyor reported on two houses in London: “I found the whole area of the cellars of both houses full of sewage, to the depth of…
Creative Destruction
Did you know that America prospered for 140 years without a Federal Reserve or a National Income Tax, both of which are barely 100 years old, though now they’re so thoroughly entrenched, as is social security, medicare and medicaid, all of which are even younger, that the overwhelming majority of American people can’t imagine life…
If Government Doesn’t Provide It, It Will Never Be Provided: The Entrenchment Fallacy
In response to my latest book, which is an explicit espousal of laissez-faire, I’ve already gotten a few emails and messages with the exact comments I anticipated — anticipated from the moment I first conceived the idea, in fact, because I’ve been fielding these very same questions for well over a decade now. My main…
Sacred House of the Human Spirit & the Meaning of Life
She drove him six hours into a small mining town in eastern Nevada, near the Utah border. During the drive he told her what had happened. She listened intently but did not speak. A green-colored half moon hung low in the sky, the horizon beneath it a band of xanthic light which glowed like something…
Indian Privilege and the American Dream
The American Dream is a dream of aspiration. It is a story of striving. But it is more: It is a dream of breaking away from the pack. The American Dream is the freedom of each person, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, color, class or creed, free to pursue her or his own life…
This Earth Day, May I Suggest …
May I suggest this Earth Day you peruse Steven Pinker’s new book Enlightenment Now? Steven Pinker is by no stretch of the imagination a conservative, right-wing, Republican blah-blah-blah-blah — if, that is, you’re still into all that nonsensical partisan meaninglessness, which I am not. (Meaningless, I say, because the left and the right are two…
“Another Form of Collective-Tribalism — Of The Most Barbaric Kind”
The Indian who visited Kristy at his work was tall and thin and handsome. He had very white teeth and a kind smile. He was middle-aged, clean-shaven. His polished shoes gleamed like obsidian. He wore a black suit-jacket and a navy-blue necktie, his thick hair cut high-and-tight. “You’re Native,” the man said. “Yes,” Kristy said.…
You disparage wealth who have never known poverty. You disparage cleanliness and health from a tower of health and cleanliness. Let me tell you something:
You disparage wealth who have never known poverty. You disparage cleanliness and health from a tower of health and cleanliness. Let me tell you something: Poverty which is neither sin nor vice is also neither noble nor good. Poverty is hardship. Poverty is sickness. Poverty is misery. Poverty is death. The words well, weal, and…
Plastic Strawmen and Noble Cause Corruption
As a bartender, the latest wave of environmental misinformation and exaggeration struck particularly close to home. I’m referring, of course, to the environmental push to outlaw plastic straws in bars, with, additionally, the threat of steep fines. Have you ever heard of “noble cause corruption”? It’s when you’re so convinced that your argument is on…
Covert Cannibalism and My Wild Plea
The over-population scare that was once all the rage has in the last decade or so been supplanted by food fastidiousness. The over-population faddists, as you may or may not know, are also the folks who brought us the offshoot peak-oil scare. Both of those, while not quite completely out-of-fashion (yet), have been bunked many,…
On Wisdom, Knowledge, Cell Phones, & Unchaining The Learning Beastie Within You
This is the last and longest video in the course, and I urge you to watch it through to the end, because there are some surprises: Do you know what Google ethicists call cell phones? Tiny slot machines. You know why? Because cell phones are hard-to-put-down. I recently heard a report — and I believe…
Power Learner: How You Can Read 200 Books A Year
This is a brand-new course I’m teaching — name your price if you pre-enroll. Name Your Price! Reading is a dying art. And yet even as it dies, even as more and more people stop reading in favor of scanning, skimming, reblogging, LIKING, and so forth, it’s never been more important to become a real…
The Great Electrifier Takes on Climate Change
Climate change — or global warming, if you’re antiquated — is a dead duck. It always has been. The Great Electrifier explains why:
The Godless Constitution
There is, among rightwingers predominantly, though not exclusively, a rather persistent misconception that the United States is at its roots a religious nation. This is demonstrably false, and rather easy to verify, as we shall see in a moment, but first let us note that the subject is significant (and becoming more so) not because…