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Presenting Part 3 of our new series (Part 1 and Part 2) of guest posts by Saul Rothbart, who is taking us on a “history tour” of capitalism — and speculating on how today’s technological advances might impact our tomorrows…

VIRTUAL CAPITALISM 101

Real news is what happens to you.The “truth of experience” so to speak.

As a commercial entity, mass media news aims to leverage this notion to the broadest populations of shared truths of experience. And articulated with the right measure and mix of fluff, bang and stoke, can effectively influence (manipulate?) consumer markets in big matters like peace and war. Or small ones like chewing gum or not chewing gum.

The barriers of entry to own or control a media (any media) are steep and delivery costs are prohibitively high. Just turning on studio lights is normally cost-accounted at six figures given the incidentals that need to be taken into consideration. Same goes with setting up a newspaper, magazine or book run.

With traditional media, profitability comes from a business methodology that allows the producer to get dollars per consumer unit while incrementally reducing the delivery cost to pennies per unit through market scale. It’s a high risk business where if you get the content right and connect to a broad market, you can make a very rich profit.

But if you get it wrong (and wrong being not connecting to a broad market), the end product is no better than burnt toast.  

(KEEP READING...)

A fine (if sometimes over-ripe) prose style is not always a symptom of wisdom.

Zero’s otherwise worthy essay on the unworkablity of collectivism suffers from his declaration the world is at last “awakening from the [socialist] dream.”

As one commenter puts it better than I can:

Similar things were written after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Bloc dissolved, the Chinese allowed some capitalism, Hernando de Soto consulted with rulers of teeming cities, VP Gore was charged with cutting bureaucratic waste, country after country reformed their economy to encourage more entrepreneurship, Milton Friedman’s books got made into TV documentaries. Bill Clinton even said, “The age of big government is over.”

I thought, maybe people really have learned that. The dismal oppressive failure of socialism/fascism stood all around. There was no way to defend it. The entire 20th century was one experiment after another in top-down control – all shown in the end to be murderous, oppressive, corrupt systems.

But no. A new generation came up, a financial crisis happened, and everyone wants to throw that knowledge out the window. 

***
On a stylistic level, the “conservative” attraction to this style of pretentious, powdered-wig prose exasperates me.

It’s the written equivalent of four walls papered in pink country toile — from the Martha Stewart Collection.

I can only assume that reading it makes late-to-the-party auto-didacts feel “smart.”

Wasn’t one Eject!Eject!Eject! enough?

HotAir:

It’s come to this: Bored senators now bantering with Kagan about “Twilight”

No. Not even close to the original. But still:

I give it three months…

“It will be both a pleasure and a challenge to write for the Independent,” she said. “I don’t exactly agree with the editorial line of the paper on certain issues, but the differences between us are insignificant compared with what we hold dear – independence of mind, and the importance of free speech.”

Simon Kelner, editor-in-chief of the Independent, said he was a “long-time admirer” of Burchill’s writing, adding: “I very often don’t agree with what she says, but I always read it”.

“She’s a truly original thinker, and fearless in her opinions,” said Kelner. “She’ll enrage some of our readers, for sure, but she’ll engage all of them, and I think she is a hugely significant addition to our stable of columnists.”

Rush Limbaugh’s in-house parodist Paul Shanklin, as Al Gore and Clinton, as the former VP gets some sex-scandal advice from his old boss (free audio)

See what you’re missing when you don’t tune in?

Talk radio host:

“90% of my listeners” support Supreme Court’s 2nd Amendment decision, says crazed white right-winger blowhard Christian GOP hack oh wait…

They’re tired of the violence and it’s very very interesting. I have had a few on both sides today, but yesterday was overwhelming, it was stunning to me.

I just told Attorney Lou Meyers, lady stopped me last night; I did the commencement address at Boys and Girls High. She said I listen to your show Reverend and I want you to know I’m saved sanctified by feel of the Holy Ghost, but if they come in my house I’m going to drop them right where they stand. So, and she looked like she was in her eighties.

A black t-shirt is one thing. But dude…

Well, yes and no.

Here’s my response at the Western Standard:

Being an uneducated working class type, I actually am a stereotypical law & order (definitely lower case ), Archie Bunker, “life is life,” lock em up and throw away the key type.

And I make no claims for ideological consistency either. I don’t think that would be humanly possible, literally. You aren’t really “human” in one sense if you are so rigidly principled that you NEVER bend to circumstance and insist on filtering everything through whatever your favorite author/thinker once said.

However, I am law & order etc regarding real criminals who have been convicted of real crimes.

(If I saw those criminals getting just punishments instead of what they do get, I’d be more sympathetic about their “rights,” which sometimes seem to go too far.)

I share Peter’s frustration with people who are blindly motivated by party politics, which frankly bores me.

In this case, there is actually an undertone of city mouse/country mouse in the SDA critiques, too. When push comes to shove, many people react to these situations by going “tribal” (myself included.)

Certain Blogs have long history of “city folks are scum” thinking. Believe me, that is driving a lot of this animus even though they won’t admit it. Yes, people can be that shallow. Again, I include myself.

Oh well, nothing like a little tear gas to clear the air!  

(KEEP READING...)

NationalPost:

An Indian Muslim televangelist recently banned from Canada for his inflammatory statements about Jews, gays, and the West, will still headline a massive Islamic conference in Toronto this weekend, addressing upwards of 10,000 attendees via video satellite.

Dr. Naik, president of the Mumbai-based Islamic Research Foundation, has been denied a visa to enter Canada because of past comments such as “every Muslim should be a terrorist”…

OK, WHAT the **** did somebody put in the water this week?

VillainousCompany:

None of us has called for any kind of boycott of Michael Yon. No one has suggested his dispatches be banned or suppressed. No one has tried to organize “grassroots” protests of opinions we disagree with. You won’t see that kind of nonsense coming from me nor (I suspect) any of my Milkook friends. It seems to me that Yon has just done precisely what he has repeatedly accused the military of – choke off and punish criticism.

was in fact — shocka!! — an illegal immigrant from Mexico.