The one thing that makes flying just a tiny bit more comfortable is the reclining seat. If I were perusing airlines and prices and saw the offering of a ticket without a reclining seat, I would refuse to purchase that ticket!
Tag: lying
Being Forced to Help Not Helping
Being forced to help isn’t helping. Complying with a threat doesn’t make you a compassionate or moral person. It shows you can be manipulated and easily scared into doing what someone else thinks you should instead of acting on your own values.
“Our Government” is a Lie
Every time someone says “our government” it is a lie. The lie may be calculated to manipulate– to hypnotize you. Don’t fall for it.
If the Only Way You Can Get Your Great Idea Implemented…
Economics textbooks are full of clever-and-appealing policy proposals. Proposals like: “Let’s redistribute money to the desperately poor” and “Let’s tax goods with negative externalities.” They’re so clever and so appealing that it’s hard to understand how any smart, well-meaning person could demur. When you look at the real world, though, you see something strange: Almost no one actually pushes for the textbooks’ clever-and-appealing policy proposals.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I am late for MLK’s birthday’s anniversary. It happened a week ago according to a record source I have seen. MLK’s real birthdate occurred on January 15, 1929. Every year we are reminded of the contributions that Martin Luther King, Jr. made to our society. What I fear now is that we are doing it wrong.
Two-and-a-Half Cheers for Elizabeth Warren’s Student Debt Plan
There’s a strong historical correlation between easy availability of student loans and soaring costs of a college or university education. It’s basic economics. By artificially lowering loan risk to direct money at a good or service, government increases debt and drives up the price of that good or service.
Trump versus Iran: Power Doesn’t Just Corrupt, it Deludes
The claim of such absolute power has been the tacit US doctrine of foreign relations since at least as far back as the end of World War Two. America emerged from that war as the world’s sole nuclear power and, unlike other combatant countries, with its wealth virtually unscathed and its industrial capacity increased rather than demolished. Its rulers saw themselves as able, and entitled, to dictate terms to almost everyone, on almost everything.
In Praise of Home Delivery Culture
Much of the focus on home delivery culture, both positive and negative, is on lots and lots of stuff becoming more and more accessible. That’s true, and relevant, whether you’re a fan of consumer culture or bemoan it. But home delivery culture also incentivizes businesses to do things that are good for all of us. And it does so through market mechanisms rather than through political haggling.
Computers Do Not Understand Lying
Computers have no capability of filtering good from bad, in an ethical sense. Content creators, on the other hand, can lie copiously, knowingly or not. Content creators are the complete set of all human beings, and some human beings will lie.
Evolution in the Age of Lying
Yesterday I picked up my two youngest granddaughters after school. We talked over frosty shakes, slushes, and sodas at a local drive-in. At some point, it occurred to me to say, “It must be tough for a young person to grow up in a world that is so full of lying,” as though this might be some wisdom available only to an ancient man. I was most happy to hear, in unison, “We know! Right?”