http://bkmarcus.com/blog individualism for the masses Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:28:08 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en As iceberg recently reminded me via email, Murray Rothbard pointed out that inflation can lead to more than rising prices: All sorts of monstrous situations will occur. Decline in quality, for example. We will find that there will be more air in the Baby Ruth — you can't ... http://bkmarcus.com/blog/2008/08/the-baby-ruth-effect Another great Mises quote:"If a man imagines himself to be the king of Siam, the first thing which the psychiatrist has to establish is whether or not he really is what he believes himself to be. Only if this question is answered in the negative can the man be considered ... http://bkmarcus.com/blog/2008/08/king-of-siam Mises on schooling: It is often asserted that the poor man's failure in the competition of the market is caused by his lack of education. Equality of opportunity, it is said, could be provided only by making education at every level accessible to all. There prevails today the tendency to reduce ... http://bkmarcus.com/blog/2008/08/those-who-defy-what-school-has-taught Salacious bed-sheet print ad from 1949: (via Snopes via steve2 via email from Scott Lahti) The ad copy says "This buck may look more like 47¢ — which is what most bucks are worth these days." I thought I'd check this inflation calculator to see if 47¢ is the right number. ... http://bkmarcus.com/blog/2008/08/a-buck-well-spent "You would be hard-pressed to find any industry with this level of income that is less efficient than higher education. If Wal-Mart gets into the field, this will change. " – Gary North, "Wal-Mart University: No More Boola-Boola" http://bkmarcus.com/blog/2008/08/the-future-of-free-market-education (Click to Enlarge) Harper Lee has been on my mind recently — ever since seeing her portrayed in Capote a few weeks ago. But tonight she came to mind in an unusually perverse way. I found myself wondering if there was a cocktail called Tequila Mockingbird. There had to be, right? Turns out ... http://bkmarcus.com/blog/2008/08/tequila-mockingbird "All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the ... http://bkmarcus.com/blog/2008/07/as-the-wheel-follows-the-foot-of-the-ox I once recommended George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman to a libertarian comrade who then said, "Wasn't he a socialist?" Shaw's socialism wasn't as harmless as some shavians would want us to believe, but neither do I think it was coincidence that this brilliant playwright was friends with such antisocialists (in ... http://bkmarcus.com/blog/2008/07/exit-ghoti This is from About.com : Babies & Toddlers : Court Intervenes, Changes Child's Name From the story in the Telegraph: A lawyer acting for the girl claimed she was so embarrassed by her name that she had kept it from her friends, insisting she should be known as 'K' instead. ... http://bkmarcus.com/blog/2008/07/talula-does-the-hula-from-hawaii This paragraph from Human Action forces me to check my vulgar antimilitary reflexes and seek a subtler understanding of the nature of demand and the fallacy of manufactured demand: The moralists' and sermonizers' critique of profits misses the point. It is not the fault of the entrepreneurs that the consumers — ... http://bkmarcus.com/blog/2008/07/m-i-c-k-e-y-m-i-s-e-s