"Nothin', Ya Hear? Nothin'!"

A peaceful Saturday afternoon, the sights & sounds of one of my semi-alma maters, the University of Spoiled Children, delivering a beat-down (by the largest margin ever in the series) to the Sucking Catholics or Loser Leprechauns or whatever they are of Notre Dame (Take that, Touchdown Jeebus, not one point, let alone a touchdown, scored by "your" team!) on the tube, I'm all ready to settle down with one Megan McArdle's web log to start stalking & mocking, & what do I find? Nothing! Not an item since yesterday @ 1821. (Perhaps she heard I'm back & is hoping I'll go away again. Perhaps the moon is made of green cheese.) Maybe she's off to another conference, or judging a college blogger contest, or "plinking nearly empty aerosol cans with .22 rifles," or getting back on the bike to deal w/ her fears. Or maybe I'm getting "obsessional."

So let's get a grip here & delve into a previous item from the muse:

I've always wondered why someone doesn't buy cheap wood furniture and glassware by the cargo container, rent out [sic] safety outfits, and let people whack the hell out of stuff with big hammers. We're a stress laden society. And who hasn't, when some inanimate object has stubbed their toe or otherwise thwarted them, wanted to vent their rage by destroying it? I'm also a big fan of plinking nearly empty aerosol cans with .22 rifles, and those have to be pretty cheap to acquire. America needs more outlets for its destructive tendencies that don't involve wrecking other places, or our own economy.

Again, I know she's going for the funny here, but note this: "we may occasionally be attacked by marauding curbstones," & this: "[a]nd who hasn't, when some inanimate object has stubbed their toe or otherwise thwarted them, wanted to vent their rage by destroying it?" Not I, for one. When an inanimate object attacks me, I usually consider it my fault, & take the blame. Perhaps that makes me a self-loathing American, but isn't glibertarianism all about choices & responsibility? Well, at least for poor people who made the poor choice of being born poor. For Ms. McA., it always seems to be something else's fault, and the reaction is to smash & destroy. Got your 2x4 ready, Megatron?

Of course, now she doesn't want to "wreck other places," or "our own economy." Here's another clue, sister: Those who, in your humble opinion, want to "wreck our own economy" don't actually believe it's their "own" economy. And they're not talking about how every other penny they earn is taken from them by the gov't. under threat of force. They believe that people who do no actual work, merely order others about & suck up to stock analysts in order to increase the value of their stock options are the "owners" of "our" economy, & the ones who profit therefrom, as opposed to those who must live paycheck to paycheck.

Not to mention the combined wrecking of "other places" (i. e., the wholesale slaughter & destruction of a sovereign nation that posed no actual threat to us) & of our "own" economy by appropriating billions & billions of $ — apparently pulled out of someone's ass along w/the "justifications" — for said adventure. But let's get out the 2x4s and beat the crap out of anybody who's opposed to wrecking things.

Scabrous Commentary

A bad photograph of the results of a bad bicycling event is available, giving me the chance to quote a line from Richard Meltzer's lyric for the Blue Öyster Cult tune Stairway to the Stars: "I hope you heal up real quick."

Looksism Dep't.: That's a big arm, sister. Maybe a little weight work while bouncing about in your overgrown elf stylee. I know, it's a digital camera w/ a next to useless lens (possibly accounting for the apparent hugosity of the arm) & the lighting's not good, but if you insisted on having your face in it, you could've thrown a couple of watts on said mug. Was this one of those "take your own picture in a mirror for Internet dating sites" deals?

Textual analysis:

On the benefit side, we are not being mugged by auto-mechanics, or unpleasant dictatorships with thoroughly undeserved good luck in geography.

Nor by unpleasant poor people w/ thoroughly undeserved bad luck in birth geography. Oh, sorry, I forgot for a moment; that's all their fault, they made the wrong choices, leading to demands for cable tee vee & gov't. child-care via taxation/confiscation/punishment of their betters.

And finally: Maybe it was the mere six or seven hours sleep, maybe the anti-anxiety drug, no doubt it was compounded by the waiting imposed by dial-up, but while attempting to catch up on the last week's Megatronics, this critic/stalker fell sound asleep in his comfy armchair. All that dismal science in the comments made my hair hurt, & my eyes glazed over too.

Not Very Productive

What Megan pimped:
Couldn't Ms. McArdle have placed her "Friday headset blogging" item (And why doesn't she capitalize the titles of her items?) in the redundant "GADGET OF THE WEEK" "Object of the week" section of her sidebar, which has been the same "GADGET/Object" since the dawn of her time at The Atlantic? (What's it been, two months now? That should make for eight or so gadgets/objects by now, not just the one.) It all seems to be pimping for Amazon.com. Is Amazon truly getting its money's worth from whatever deal they have w/ her? Remember, Megan, produce, consume, produce, consume, produce, consume, ad nauseum, or civilization (well, the consumer society) comes to a grinding halt.

Title Search

I'm back!! Hey, it's me, remember? Didn't notice I was gone? Whatever. Look, if you need a note from AT&T I'll get one, OK? Not even a 'phone line for over a week (& for once not for non-payment) let alone connection to the Internet Freight Lines. Which is about what I have now, haven't yet been re-connected to DSL, this dial-up crap is like the trucks that Sen. Stevens (Corrupt-Alaska) said the Internet ran w/, before he realized it was a series of tubes (DSL, I guess he meant).

And horrifying as it always is to dip one's toes in the icy appletini of Lake McArdle, imagine the agony of doing it @ 56K, waiting & waiting for the page to change, or the comments to appear.

The broadcast spectrum, owned by those mythical "people" & licensed to broadcasters as a public trust, is regulated. While my license has long since expired, & I'm not up on whatever changes may have been made to those regs, it used to be a violation to use the public airwaves for "personal communication." In other words, an "on-air personality" couldn't, say, remind someone at his or her house to take the roast out of the oven, or tell a spouse to pick up something at the store on the way home. (Not actually sure how this applies to athletes saying "Hi, mom;" it may only apply to the employees of the broadcaster.)

The Internet, being theoretically infinte, or limited only by how many servers can be piled up all over the world, has no such regulations, but you'd think that The Atlantic might not want its bandwidth used for this sort of personal communication:

Random question
15 Oct 2007 05:23 pm
Where's the most reputable place to do a title search in DC?

And now, in the grand tradition of the House of Commons, Question Time: What's so "random" about that question? Is Megatron asking on behalf of her sister, w/ whom she was house-hunting last month? Is there no one at The Atlantic who owns property & might be able to provide a suggestion? Does not Megan own a mobile, or have access to a 'phone line she could use (even if it's one of The Atlantic's lines) to call the rest of the Blogger Army & quiz them about this? Does she realize that a better phrasing of the question would be: "What's the most reputable title search company in D. C.?"

Fortunately, most of the commenters were all over her, besides the saps who were eager to offer legitimate suggestions to help the future Lady McArdle in her search for a "title." Good luck finding that earl, Your Grace.

New poll time soon

I got nothin, having not thought about it. Any suggestions?

Megan, you're not a human being

you're a conservative who uses faux-economic arguments instead of faux-moral ones and calls herself a libertarian to pretend there's something behind your greed and ignorance.
Example 1:

It might be fair to have the rich pay half their income . . . but when you factor in other taxes, many of them do. My old colleagues moving to New York City from London were frequently heard to say "What is this rubbish we've been talking about America having low taxes? My taxes are higher here!" That's because New York State and New York City together levy an additional income tax of 10% once your income is over $100K, which pushed two-income families above Britain's 40% top tax bracket. A 50% tax rate on top incomes would result, for New Yorkers, in a 60% effective total income tax rate total, with their incomes further eroded by the city's 10% sales tax. Since pretty much the entire increase in inequality in the last few decades seems to have come from a few zip codes in the high tax zones around New York and San Francisco, this matters.

Notice the flaw in this argument? Essentially, Megan is saying adjusting the tax rate to levels still lower than in the decades following the Great Depression and WWII would have the effect of placing a greater tax burden on those folk who, in no small part thanks to Bush's tax cuts, have become the beneficiaries of the greatest income inequality our nation has known since just before the crash of '29. At a time when the nation is hurting, badly, these folk are living in a second Gilded Age. And Megan wants them protected, because the guy making half a million a year needs that extra $50k a 10% difference in the tax rate means. You try living on $200k a year vs $250k. We're talking about depriving these folk of a second Hummer for their place in the Hamptons. That's just inhuman.
But Megan doesn't even need to argue why it'd be bad to take that extra 50k and put it to public service. It's simply so obvious that everyone deserves every cent of their income that Megan doesn't have to say it.
There might still be room to compromise, tho, and find other ways to afford social spending. Surely we can agree that military spending is massively wasteful, in the sense that military contractors grossly inflate their profits with the assistance of elements of our Armed Forces and Congress. It seems obvious that with a simple focus on removing corruption and cronyism we could spend less to have more, military-wise. There's untold billions in social spending just waiting to be funded by making our military spending efficient and cost-effective.
Or not:

Well, there's one way: the US could be like Alcoa. That is, we are huge, and rich, and this makes us the low-cost provider of military services to the world. We are so cost-effective that no one else even bothers trying to enter the market to compete against us. We've achieved this position in part just by being huge and rich, but also in part through path dependence: over the last fifty years, we've gained a lot of relevant expertise at having a giant high-tech military.

If we cut our military spending in half, however, it might be worthwhile entering the market to compete against us. At 1-2% of GDP, other countries probably could field an army against us. Yes, we're isolated, but that also makes us vulnerable to things like interdiction of shipping, which is why we ended up in both World Wars last century. Plus, the invention of the intercontinental ballistic missile renders discussion of our isolation somewhat moot.

.......... "We are so cost-effective".... She actually wrote that. If we spend less, other countries will decide to develop military forces, which will somehow endanger us. China and Russia don't have military forces, currently. Megan even says the following, "Imagine Europe if the US were not a global hegemon. I imagine Russia engaging in a rapid military buildup, taking back some of its lost territories, and wielding a great deal of influence over the ones on its new borders that it did not formally control."
Because Russia is not trying to create a new sphere of influence now, taking the US's diplomatic and military failures as an opening on the world stage. Phew.
But wait, you say that projection of power isn't something libertarians are in favor of? Could Megan be caught?

[O]ur military does not perform the traditional libertarian task of protecting our borders from invasion. Instead, it protects our interests abroad--and does so well enough that Europe, for all its complaining, is happy to free ride. This suggests that we are, for all our faults, doing a fairly good job of protecting the broader interests of liberal capitalistic democracy. A world in which China and Russia and Iran were using their military might to protect their interests, while we squatted behind our borders, would be possibly a nobler one, but I find it unlikely that it would be a better one in any utilitarian sense.

Imagine a world in which Russia used troops against Chechnya, or China used military force in Tibet, or Tiananmen Square. Imagine a world where Europe isn't threatened by the danger of being invaded by a Russia which depends on the European market to profit off its natural gas and oil reserves. Imagine a world where instead of close to $500 billion being spent by the US on defense, only $300 is spent under far more stringent oversight. We'd be invaded by Canada, as it suddenly became cost effective for them to adopt a violent, warlike culture of territorial expansion.
Besides, fuck the non-rich. If we put more money into actually helping people they might get it in their heads to expect to be treated with basic respect and consideration. What would that do to profit margins? Rich people are rich because they are successful because they worked hard. It has nothing to do with being born into wealth, and all them studies and numbers whut say otherwise just don't get it. And compassion is for suckers. There simply shouldn't be social spending, beyond poor houses and orphanages.

Food, shelter, or clothing are also necessities for children. But no one suggests that the government should provide them, except in the cases of those who are too poor to provide for themselves. Why should childcare be any different?

I can't keep going. If you can't see what's wrong with Megan's work, you're not human either.
Once upon a time, The Atlantic tried to promote the best in human nature. Now, it's "get yours n fuck em all". I... am disheartened.

I'm trying to watch Megan on bloggingheads

and before I say anything real, I have to ask Yglesias, are you trying to make your voice higher than Megan's? Speak from low in your chest, m'man. It makes you more pleasant to listen to. As it stands now, oy, jeebus.
Matt and Megan are arguing in favor of gentrification. I'm not going to try and transcribe, or link to this. Don't be so masochistic as to seek this out. You don't want to see it. I'm stopping it only 10 mins in.

Now, Matt, let's talk about when we should use the military

to begin with, not against Iran.
Anyway, credit where it's due, Yglesias takes an initial, faltering step towards a larger world. Ragging on teachers isn't going to keep Matt n Ezra jumping to your defense, Megan.
(Link from Gavin.)

If it's good enough for da alicublog

it's good enough for me to rip off. In honor of Roy's visit to Megan's world, here are brief recaps of Megan's work since Monday.

No relatives: China has a declining birth rate. No industrialized nation has ever faced such a situation, based on my memories of family reunions, meaning we cannot begin to guess how this will eventually affect their society.

The perils of buy local: My refusal to shop at Whole Foods shows why it's better to have a carbon tax that hurts the little guy than emissions caps and the like which large businesses oppose.

Random question: You guys, does this wristband make my nose look fat?

Department of awful statistics: Just what would happen if we made abortion legal?
or
While I'm always happy to misuse the ideas and words I find on feminist blogs to dismiss my critics, I'm not so sure they're right to claim that making abortion illegal and dangerous is somehow harmful to women.

Caveat emptor: Watch me scare brad.

One way to think about health care: For some reason, the rise of often lethal antibiotic resistant infections shows that we can either have medical advances, or nationalized health care, but not both.

I take it all back: I am a victim of ideological apartheid. THIS MIGHT AFFECT MY CAREER!

Should I resent having been evicted?: I'm not letting myself feel victimized by being evicted, because otherwise I might have to question the soundness of my beliefs.

What's the matter with Lomborg: I like thinking about things like health care and global warming in highly abstracted terms, else I might have to take them seriously.

Pet peeve: I AM NOT a bad person for dehumanizing an issue like health care. Bringing up the fact that the whole issue is about human lives just gets in the way of what's really important; preventing Hillary from taking my money.

School or sleep: My conscience keeps me up at night, which explains why I don't realize school hours were set back when everyone was a farmer, and are maintained as are for a variety of reasons, some of which I dismiss with no cause.

Think positive: I totally know more about health care than my doctor.

Family... who needs 'em?: Here's someone else's work.

Defining genocide down: The Democrats' failure to remove lobbyists from the system in under a year shows... something?

The budget deficit falls again: *insert confused ideas about economic processes here* (Damn you, Fishbone. This is where we need you.)

And, finally,

You jest: Not blaming teachers for the failures of our educational system is what a communist would do.

Now we're caught up.

This is probably interesting only to me

But this scared me. You see, I lived directly across the street the first three years I lived in NYC. Despite her descriptions, it's a nice building on the higher end of apartment buildings in a well-off area. And Central Park is at the end of the block. Megan complaining about that building is simply ignorant.
Also, it means this was an even bigger load of shit than I'd initially realized. Cause unless she lived there 15 years ago, which I suppose is possible, she was paying way over a grand a month in rent. My place was a 250 square feet one bedroom, and started at 1200 a month in the summer of 99 when I moved in. It was rent stabilized, which meant the landlord could jack it up 15% per new lease, which they did. And my building wasn't as nice as Megan's, which I believe, but may be wrong, featured a doorman. I finally moved downtown, where folk like me should have been back then, after three years.
(Aside: My parents don't pay for my existence, in case you're wondering. I come from somewhere in the now-vanishing line between upper middle class and lower upper class. My grandmother invested 5 grand for me when I was born, and did so wisely. I pay my rent with the income generated by that money, and live off what I earn otherwise. I'm lucky as sin to have that. And yes, I feel guilty for it, as evidenced by taking the time out to explain.)
Point being that Megan has never "slummed it", even in her "cave-dwelling" days. When she claims not to have lived a life of uninterrupted privilege, she's full of shit, just like the rest of the time.

Update:
It seems Megan was evicted recently, meaning she was probably paying 2 grand or more a month in rent for her place. Clearly, this is something anyone can do for their first place in Manhattan if they just buckle down and find an 80 or 90k a year gig. Loafers.