Yearly Archives: 2006

Friday Ark #108

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Weekend Cat Blogging Weekend Dog Blogging on by

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

We add boarders all day Friday plus intermittently on Saturday and Sunday so visit frequently.

You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive page.

Cats

Dogs

Invertebrates

Birds

Other Vertebrates

In Memoriam

Didn’t Make It

  • x

Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (73 shouts as of 10/12)

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings. Also, there are more doggies at Weekend Dog Blogging hosted this weekend by Sweetnicks.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 133rd edition, 10/8, is up at Curiouser and Curiouser. The 133rd edition will be hosted by The House of the (Mostly) Black Cats on 10/15. There are more weekly cats at Weekend Cat Blogging hosted on 10/14 by Rosa’s Yummy Yums . Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 34th edition is up and hosted by Tortoise Trail. The 35th edition will be hosted on 10/26 by Migration.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The 13th edition is up at Deep Sea News. The 14th edition will be hosted at the end of October by The Neurophilosopher’s Blog.

For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat’s Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users:

Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted “too rapidly” by the same host. I don’t know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I’m sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh….

Under the Skin of A Ferengi

This entry was posted in Libertarianism on by

Max, in commenting on the award of the Nobel Prize in Economics, praises Ned Phelps thusly:

People sometimes call me old school; Phelps is the old school of the old school. Unlike Prescott and Kydland, an ordinary mortal can engage Phelps’ work. Unlike some Ferengi-like libertarians, there is a rich current of humanism in it. There are all sorts of provocative things to argue about.

Which made me wonder who would be a Ferengi-like libertarian. Unfortunately Max does not give any examples so let’s briefly explore the idea.

Here’s a few of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition:

1. Once you have their money, never give it back

14. Anything stolen is pure profit

29. When someone says “It’s not the money,” they’re lying

34. War is good for business

51. Never admit a mistake if there’s someone else to blame

61. Never buy what can be stolen

164. Never spend your own money when you can spend someone else’s

172. If you can sell it, don’t hesitate to steal it

Leading to the conclusion that Ferengi-like folks would be embezzlers, thieves, war profiteers, rent seekers and so on.

Here is libertarianism in short:

Libertarianism is a political philosophy advocating that individuals should be free to do whatever they wish with their person or property, as long as they do not infringe on the same liberty of others. Libertarians hold as a fundamental maxim that all human interaction should be voluntary and consensual. They maintain that the initiation (or threat) of physical force against another person or his property, or the commission of fraud, is a violation of that principle.

Ferengi-like libertarians is a contradiction in terms.

Peel the skin off any so-called Ferengi-like libertarian and you will not find a libertarian but some variant of a statist trying to get something for nothing; some congress critter or policy wonk who thinks they know better what to do with what you have earned and how you should live your life than you do.

On the other hand the terms Ferengi-like liberals, conservatives, democrats, republicans are not at all self contradictory. I’m not saying that everyone in these groups is Ferengi-like rather that being Ferengi-like would not disqualify someone from membership in one of these groups whereas being Ferengi-like does disqualify someone from being a libertarian or, for that matter, being a member of most schools of anarchism.

A quick look at the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition leads to the conclusion that Ferengi-like folks would be thieves, embezzlers, rent seekers and so on. Comparing this to the characteristics of libertarians it is easy to determine that the phrase Ferengi-like libertarians is a contradiction in terms.

Peel the skin off any so-called Ferengi-like libertarian and you will find not a libertarian but some variant of a statist trying to get something for nothing; some congress critter or policy wonk who thinks they know better what to do with what you have earned than you do.

The terms Ferengi-like liberals, conservatives, democrats, republicans are not at all self contradictory. This is not to say that everyone in these groups is Ferengi-like but rather that being Ferengi-like would not disqualify someone from membership in one of these groups whereas being Ferengi-like does disqualify someone from being a libertarian or, for that matter, being a member of most schools of anarchism.