No fewer than six states — China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Phillipines, Malaysia, and Brunei — assert territorial claims over all or part of the (largely uninhabited) Spratly archipelago. To which, if any, of those states do the Spratlys “belong?” That’s for them to work out between themselves, through arbitration and mediation or maybe even war. The US government, neither numbering itself among those claimants nor having any plausible basis upon which to do so if it wished to, needs to butt out.
Tag: media
We Need More, Not Less, Separation of State and Journalism
The rise of free content and ease of entry into the field has us getting more “journalism” … but less real information. Opinion writers (like me) are a dime a dozen. Amateur stringers and glorified copy editors cover five-point-lede “hard news” on the cheap. But the shock troops of news, full-time investigative journalists, have to learn the ropes and they have to be paid. That’s not happening. The result: Many important things get missed and many things that aren’t missed get only insufficient, inaccurate — or worst, sponsor viewpoint biased — coverage.
On Antinatalism III
Another two thoughts I had on antinatalism, the belief that it is morally wrong to procreate, either on the basis of consent or on the basis of potential suffering.
Crisis Management
Recently, Forbes magazine published an article listing four rules of crisis management. The rules were illustrated with examples from the current hullabaloo over the confirmation of the appointment of a Supreme Court Justice.
When Fear is Stopping You From Pursuing Meaningful Work
I was having a discussion with a friend recently who is holding himself back from doing the purposeful work he thinks he wants to pursue. What’s holding him back? Fear of putting himself out there in public. Fear of failure. Fear of being judged. Fear of choosing the wrong path. Fear of not being good enough.
Evolution by Learning
Any person has two sources of stimuli by which she gains knowledge, the experiential and the referential. And in both sources, there are granules of true or false information — code versus noise.
Seeds on Fertile Soil
I’ve told a few select people about this already, but because of the personal nature of it I haven’t spread it around too much; I don’t want to violate anyone’s privacy. A couple of months ago, out of the blue, I got a nice private message on one of those Evil Socialist Media Platforms.
Political Boycotts with Taxpayer Money? Just Don’t Do It
All well and good. One nice thing about markets is that they’re hyper-democracies in which we all get to vote with our patronage, every day and with every purchase. Unfortunately, some people think they’re entitled to vote with other people’s dollars. Marshall Fisher, head of Mississippi’s Department of Public Safety, is one such.
The Anonymous Anti-Trump Op-Ed Inadvertently(?) Exposes Real Danger
The 25th Amendment doesn’t sound quite so over the top now as it did a week ago. Unfortunately, its beneficiaries would be the same gang minus their current leader.
Bernie’s Bozo Boondoggle (or, How to Keep Low-Income Workers Unemployed)
According to the press release from Sanders’s Senate office, Stop BEZOS “aims to end corporate welfare by establishing a 100 percent tax on corporations with 500 or more employees equal to the amount of federal benefits received by their low-wage workers. For example, if a worker at Amazon receives $2,000 in food stamps, the corporation would be taxed $2,000 to cover that cost.”