grylliade.org Free minds. Free markets. Free beer.

Oust
Steve
Chapman
Al-
Ready

One thing to keep in mind - people running things hate to feel like they're bowing to pressure from folks on the intertubes. Chapman isn't going to get canned because even many commenters demand it. Sure as Hell not if Mangu-Ward is still around.

Crap is crap. M-W's stuff is largely half-assed chicken soup for the conservative's soul. Chapman may annoy you worse, but again, crap is crap.

I agree Chapman's column is bilge. Sounds like a conservative trying to co--opt libertarians. I saw the headline of Chapman's column earlier. I assumed it was a snark at those who oppose a legal alcohol age of 18, so I didn't bother to read it until Warren's post here. I hadn't paid much attention to his byline before, so I'll have to see a few more before I pick up a torch or pitchfork.

i never really noticed chapman before. i don't agree with his considerations, but i didn't find this to be particularly offensive. the stupid hummer story or pretty much anything by mangu-ward is far worse, because they look like big business shills.

No? If the sewer line backed up into your shower, do you think you'd notice that? Steve Chapman is far far worse because shilling for big business is better than shilling for big stupidpoopyhead

EDIT:
Boo hiss on the KMW hate'n. Here are three KMW articles written in the past two months:

Education for Profit
Every Man a Jed Clampett
Scared Sober

Each is well researched and well written. The all support a libertarian position. They take on existing bureaucracy and corporate rent seeking. While being published in The Weekly Standard is nominally damning in and of it self, "Scared Sober" passes muster and therefore gets bonus points for bringing libertarian perspective to a wider audience.

FIE on all you Katherine Mangu-Ward nay sayers.

Steve Chapman is far far worse because shilling for big business is better than shilling for big stupidpoopyhead

i disagree, if you're trying to convince the outside world to read your magazine, that is.

libertarian already means "big business shill" in many circles.

composting is cool.

and since i don't drive public transportation is also cool. because i'm on it. and because the air conditioning usually works.

double cool.

My sense is KMW has improved of late--at least she's doing more than Instapundit-style citings of other stuff with one or two words of commentary at most.

Hugh Hewitt has more!

Looks like Nick got the hint that maybe some people weren't happy with that post:

I think that's being overshadowed by "chest-beating Team Red guy who wants to invade more Muslim countries" as the general definition in others' eyes.

I don't need exclusiveness. Just enough particular to spur some sort of action. Like planting dandelions in Gillespie's lawn so they spell out: CHAPMAN SUCKS in big yellow letters when they bloom.

Edit - After reflection. I'm giving the employees a break.

I pretty much stopped criticizing articles on Hit and Run once I started writing for the Advocate -- I dunno if you'd call it "professional courtesy," but for some reason I just didn't feel comfortable doing it anymore -- but in the privacy of this forum I'll say that Chapman piece damned near gave me shingles. Taking away the rights of an entire class of adults in the name of paternalism is one of those things which strike me as going FAR beyond merely "failing a libertarian purity test."

I'll say the same thing here that I said on one of the KMW threads on the old forum: is the magazine so desperate to fill space that THIS is the best they can get? I know what it's like to have a big chunk of white space that damn well needs to be filled before publication, but -- dammit, people, put in a nice public-domain photograph of Rose Wilder Lane under a headline like "Libertarian Trailblazer." Reprint an interesting old article labeled "18 years ago in Reason." Something -- anything -- better than this dreck weakening the libertarian name more than it already is.

I don't really have a beef against KMW, but I think the magazine has not made up for some of its losses since I started reading, especially on the blog. Sanchez, Cavanaugh, and now Howley have left. Welch came back, and that was good. Balko is great. I haven't made up my mind on Moynihan, though he is sometimes definitely too strident. Altogether, this has been a net loss.

I still stand by KMW as a competent libertarian.

Balko IMHO is worth Welch, Sanchez, and Cavanaugh combined (any one of which I'd take over Weigle, whom I also respect.)
I'm very sorry to see Howley go. At least Reason didn't loose her to another periodical. I wonder where she'll be in five years.

How about we just agree to agree about Howley's work, Warren? :)

Ayn Randian, the pollution situation in China is far worse than anything the US ever had to deal with. And even if American pollution DID reach such appalling levels, any American whose drinking-water supply was contaminated to the point where pregnant women can't drink it with giving birth to defective babies could at least pack up and leave for someplace better. The Chinese living in the cancer villages aren't even allowed to do that.

This isn't simply a matter of "Eeew, the air stinks" or "watch out if you have asthma." This is "so long as the cities get rich, it doesn't matter HOW badly we fuck over the poor people in the villages." And in that light, I DO think it analogous to eminent domain abuses: so long as the rich are happy, who gives a fuck about the poor?

Oh I have no idea what kind of libertarian she is. I'd have to talk to her in order to know that. She may well be fantastic. I just think she's a lousy writer.

There was the Great Smog of London in 1952 which killed thousands.

While I know libertarian purists are fond of the idea that you could sue people for their pollution flowing into your property (which presumably includes the air over your property), it seems that some form of regulation is more efficient in this situation.

The problem, of course, is: At what point does a regulation turn into a taking? 100 years ago, keeping a livestock in the city was necessary for all sorts of businesses and for many private individuals. Now, it is forbidden. Yes, restricting livestock to the countryside is probably more practical from an economic standpoint, but by what right do you decree that your neighbor may not do so? [Yeah, lady. Well I'm allergic to roses, so it I've gotta get rid of my Vietnamese pot belly, your roses gotta go, too.]

Well, you have to ask: what is it that makes the wealthy that way in the first place? Eminent domain is out-and-out robbery; if I go to the government and steal 1 million dollars in property from you via eminent domain, that's +1 million to me and -1 million to you.

If I produce a million dollars worth of goods and services, but I pollute to the tune of say, 500K, that's +1 million to me and -500K for you (and everyone around you).

So I suppose in your overly-simplistic view on this issue, it's all about the oligarchy and class warfare. But that does not really talk about a government, a society, making difficult trade-offs. Air and water do not naturally lend themselves to the easily-defendable "parcel lines model" of property.

So instead of arguing this form of lefty class-warfare "The rich just roll over the poor! HOW TERRIBLEZ!", please let me know what you think the solution should be. If China's pollution spills over to the United States, should the United States impose sanctions? Impose tariffs? Product bans? Saber-rattle with China?

If you're talking about how deplorable the internal conditions of China are, well, you're free to talk about it, but there are enough Chinese and international nosy-parkers worried about that as it is. I'd suggest dialing down or refocusing your outrage.

?

How does identifying the fact that a corrupt, nepotistic “new class" (to use Djilas' term) in China has used the resources of the state both to appropriate assets and to impose the negative externalities of their actions onto others become arguing a "form of lefty class-warfare?"

I honestly don't think there is much we in the West can do about it, except make the information available to those in China who are clever enough to find ways around the web censors (and maybe build internet tools that will allow the Chinese to hack their way past the censors.)

It's not really imposition on the part of the factory worker so much as it is "a tragedy of the commons". If I smoke outside a building, am I imposing that smoke on you as you walk through the door? Who knows? It depends on whether my liberty to smoke outside is more important than your liberty to not have vicious substances imposed on you against your will.

To talk about environmental issues in clear-cut "rich screw the poor!" bromides is hearkening to class-warfare. The rich have the power...they pull the strings...there's a big conspiracy on their part to step over bodies to grab the dollar at the end of the string. I don't believe that the vast majority of people, even the wealthy! (especially the wealthy!) are that....freakin'...malevolent. This isn't Erin Brockovich, this is Planet Earth, where a lot of us don't even know what the hell we're doing when it comes to environmental property rights and we're all kinda flying by the seat of our pants on this one.

However, in all things where the issue is not clear, a circumspect view is (IMHO) more productive than one that lends itself to placards.

I'd ask that you see the post I just wrote on that, plz.

Okay, this thread right here proves KMW's idiocy now and forevermore.

Because god-damned if Katherine can be bothered to put two minutes of thought into her words and realize that hey, we *are* running out of fucking whales. No, that would demonstrate that corporations aren't always the best there is at husbanding resources, and it would get in the way of her specious claims about how those corporations "saved" whales.

OK Shem, I'm not saying it makes up for everything. But surely this has got to count for something. Huh? Huh? Come on, you got to give a little credit for that. Right? Am I right? I am right, aren't I?

I'm not sure about whaling, but there are still some species and populations of whales that are endangered and not rebounding.

However, I think you may be correct that whaling aims at less endangered species.

Don't quote me on this, but I think that by international treaty the Japanese (and maybe the Russians too) are still allowed to do some whaling "for scientific research purposes" (although I think I've heard that in practice a lot of their "research" is along the lines of "Hey, I wonder if we could sell this thing for the meat and stuff?").

And some "indigenous peoples" with a tradition of hunting whales are allowed to conduct some whaling (usually the smaller species, and not on the large scale of the "factory ship" whalers).

Once their numbrs have been depleted, it probably takes a long time for large whales to build up their populations again. They only have one or maybe two calves at a time, and being such large animals, it probably takes them a long time to grow up to breeding size. (Although they probably grow fast at first; whale milk is incredibly rich.) I don't exactly know how long it takes them to reach maturity; I'd look it up if I had time, but I don't. I think their overall lifespan is comparable to a human's or an elephant's, though.

The problem I would have with whaling is this: whales are mammals with huge brains. I don't know anything really about whale neurology, although I know the bigger the brain the greater the cognizance, typically. I never feel guilty about eating chicken, because chickens are virtually retarded on the grand scale of animal intelligence. But whale -- even if a given population is resilient --...

...I don't know. That's just me.

Yeah. I've actually eaten whale meat, back when I was a kid. (Both I and my mom were in a "we'll buy and eat any weird food once" phase. She got it at Pier 1 Imports, which also sold foods back then. This is also where my mom got me my first tin of smoked octopus.)

It came in a can not unlike a sardine can, and I think the chunks of meat had kind of a mild barbecue-like sauce on them. The meat was smoked, and tasted and looked kind of like smoked pork.

It was interesting, but I wouldn't eat it again -- mostly because I'm uneasy about how smart these animals really are, like smacky said. More recently, I've heard they may not be that smart ... but I dunno. (I'm also wondering if I should stop eating octopus too -- they're supposed to be relatively bright also.)

Oh sure. No sympathy for the loners. You'd probably eat eccentric people, too, if you thought they tasted good.

:)

No.

Veal.

From what I've read, octopi ARE very intelligent, and the only reason they've never been able to do much with it is because their lifespans are too short. (Humans would never have amounted to much either, if we all died within two or three years of reaching biological adulthood.)

Octopus. Squid are pretty dumb.

I clearly recall seeing in a cartoon or cartoon like drawing an octopus, either purple or pink (probably purple), wearing round, black rimmed glasses and a mortarboard. Ergo, the octopus is the most intelligent sea based animal, and, I think, could probably beat any owl on Jeopardy, say six times out of ten.

English rules don't distinguish between the two.