![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chris_gerribThought #1 - Hugos
I have completed my voting on the Hugos. I found the Clarke short story via Google books, and bumped it up to the #3 slot. It was a refreshing parody of the Square-jawed Manly Man Fixes The Wog's Problems, something that was entirely too common in 1938. I also "no awarded" the Novelette category.
Thought #2 - No, Virginia, I Don't Want 'Big Government'
One of the many irritating facets of political arguments with small government types is they assume that I want 'big government.' No, I don't. This guy says it best: [conservatives] thinks that the littlebrains don't know that the power of the state is terrible. But we do know it, and nonetheless prefer to deal with the welfare state -- yes, even with police and taxes -- than take a chance on rule by corporations, because we also know that people who pitch us "customer service" and "entrepreneurial discovery" as an alternative to our current means of survival are the sort of well-manicured grifters who try to talk senior citizens into giving up their life savings for a fake stock certificate.
Thought #3 - Miami Will Be The American Venice
From my friend, the author Toby Buckell (and you really should buy his latest book): Miami is slowly flooding. 2.4 million people live there and will eventually have to move or master the 24/7 breast stroke.
I have completed my voting on the Hugos. I found the Clarke short story via Google books, and bumped it up to the #3 slot. It was a refreshing parody of the Square-jawed Manly Man Fixes The Wog's Problems, something that was entirely too common in 1938. I also "no awarded" the Novelette category.
Thought #2 - No, Virginia, I Don't Want 'Big Government'
One of the many irritating facets of political arguments with small government types is they assume that I want 'big government.' No, I don't. This guy says it best: [conservatives] thinks that the littlebrains don't know that the power of the state is terrible. But we do know it, and nonetheless prefer to deal with the welfare state -- yes, even with police and taxes -- than take a chance on rule by corporations, because we also know that people who pitch us "customer service" and "entrepreneurial discovery" as an alternative to our current means of survival are the sort of well-manicured grifters who try to talk senior citizens into giving up their life savings for a fake stock certificate.
Thought #3 - Miami Will Be The American Venice
From my friend, the author Toby Buckell (and you really should buy his latest book): Miami is slowly flooding. 2.4 million people live there and will eventually have to move or master the 24/7 breast stroke.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-07-17 06:59 pm (UTC)Do governments that cease to serve the needs of their customers, go out of business? Ask any Russian over forty about Soviet-style “customer service.”
no subject
Date: 2014-07-17 08:10 pm (UTC)United States was an economic giant: Half the world's wealth and productivity in addition to nearly two-thirds of all manufacturing was concentrated in its hands.” - Yeah, because every other industrialized nation had just had the stuffing bombed out of it!
Nixon, a Republican, created the EPA and OSHA. He created the former because private industry had let a damn river catch fire. OSHA was created because, with half as many people working in 1971 as now, 14,000 workers were killed on the job. That number fell to approximately 4,340 in 2009 (https://www.osha.gov/osha40/timeline.html).
Governments don't make things. - They make roads, bridges and dams. The vast sums of money spent making those items, especially during the Great Depression, gave the US the infrastructure needed to make all those aircraft, ships and tanks during WWII.
Do you know why Boeing was in Seattle? Cheap (government-provided) hydro-electric power made cheap aluminum available with which to build aircraft. We were able to feed the world because we built hard-paved roads to get crops to (government-improved) ports and thence to sea.
But yes, Gordon, governments that cease to serve the needs of their constituents go out of business. See Union, Soviet.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-18 05:50 am (UTC)You're a bad Leftist. Just hand in your credentials.
[One minor quibble, by the way - no, governments don't make roads, dams &c. They hire contractors, just as you would. The fun comes in when the contractor just happens to be the Governor's brother-in-law, or when roads to outlying areas where the political opposition live are deliberately made badly, or ten thousand miles of unnecessary road are laid to make work, &c. Government is coercion, paid for by robbery - whether it's necessary or not may depend on the situation, but the plain fact is, they spend other people's money, and that's almost never going to go entirely well.]
no subject
Date: 2014-07-18 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-18 04:53 pm (UTC)[Me, there'd be a fleet of Orion heavy-lifters flashbulbing their way out towards the moons of Jupiter. Yes, there's life on Europa - and it speaks English!]
no subject
Date: 2014-07-18 06:00 pm (UTC)