Friday Ark #120

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….?

Do link to the Ark every week!

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

Cats

Dogs

Birds

Other Vertebrates

Invertebrates

In Memoriam

  • Solidly Average: Caesar: Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep; also here and here
  • Wolf’s Den: Caesar: We’ll see you at the Rainbow Bridge.
  • Jelly Pizza: Sushi…

Didn’t Make It

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Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

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Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (75 shouts as of 12/21)

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 145th edition, 12/31, is up at Watermark. The 146th edition will be hosted by Leslie’s Omnibuson 1/7. There are more weekly cats at Weekend Cat Blogging hosted on 1/6 by TBD . 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 39th edition is up and hosted by the Natural Visions. The 40th edition will be hosted on 1/11 by Peregrine’s Bird Blog.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The 16th edition is up at The force that through…. The 16th edition will be hosted at the end of January by The Voltage Gate.

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

Note for Haloscan Users:

Over the past month or so Haloscan started (the end of July) handling of trackbacks has improved though it is still pretty broken for carnival type posts. Now, instead of rejecting every attempt to ping it accepts single pings for a while and then will start rejecting them. I will keep trying to track back to Haloscan boarders but can make no guarantees for any particular week.

Note for Typepad Users:

Typepad continues to behave similar to Haloscan for trackbacks. I been able to get trackbacks to most, if not all, Typepad based boarders. I have to do it one at a time and wait a while in between pings but Typepad does not go into semi-permanent rejection mode like Haloscan.

Scale Down To Rather Than Up From Denmark

This entry was posted in Anarchism Economics Federal Government Federalism on by

Matthew Yglesias wonders about scaling up Denmark’s welfare state model to larger countries:

The thing to say in response to this is that the Scandinavian countries are really little and it might not work as well in a big country, but I don’t understand what the causal mechanism for non-scalability is supposed to be. I’ll happily grant that it’s politically easier to put a Scandinavian-style system together in a small, homogeneous country, but that’s different from saying it wouldn’t work on the merits.

Tyler Cowan responds by noting a number of factors that might facilitate implementing Denmark scale programs that may not apply in larger countries, e.g.,

Perhaps the ability to dispense with federalism helps government efficiency in small countries. I favor federalism for larger units, such as the United States, but I think of it as a necessary evil. Singapore and New Zealand don’t have much federalism, nor should they.

This factor points us in the right direction.
Leaving aside the question of whether we really want the Denmark like social welfare programs implemented in the US, the very first step toward making this a possibility is to dispense with federalism in the US. No, not by centralizing all government function into the federal governement. Rather, by completely eliminating the federal goverment.

Yep, break the US up: into the current states, into 54 Denmarks by population, or into 223 Denmarks by land mass. Pick your method but break up the country. Not only will you get many opportunities to recreate Denmark’s social structure but you will also eliminate the many ills that result from the massive centralization of power and wealth in the current federal government.