I am writing this from Kinko's in LA--even though I supposedly have DSL service in my condo. Verizon's service has been down for the past four days, out of the seven I've been in town. And, of course, they have no one to answer their phones.
Two screenwriters working over a script that features both the CIA and some kind of evil mercenary hired by...a pharmaceutical company. You can't say there's no originality in Hollywood.
My apologies to those of you on my Yahoo Groups list. I sent out a message today about recent articles and upcoming speeches--a single message that turned into eight or so copies once it went through Yahoo Groups. The same thing seems to be happening throughout Yahoo Groups. I also got multiple copies of a message my next door neighbor sent to our condo association's list. I'd send an apology to the list, but I'm afraid the same thing would happen to it, and I don't want to further clutter your in boxes.
From tables that rock (in a bad way) to mustard packets harder to open than ketchup packets, Professor Postrel wonders why there is so much obviously bad design. He's blogging at Organizations and Markets, which focuses on business strategy and, unlike this blog, takes comments. So please contribute your pet peeves and best hypotheses.
The Cato Unbound conversation kicked off by Brian Doherty's new book, Radicals for Capitalism
Bruce Caldwell's definitive edition of Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom
They're just amazing. To a book, they're all assuming that the age of scarcity is over. We have the potential to produce much, much more. These are things being written after eight or nine years of the Great Depression, saying we can produce much, much more, we just have to get it right and this past view of competition--that may have worked in the 19th century, but it's a new world, a brave new world. All of them were saying, Here's the way to go, and none of them were saying markets had any role in that at all.
It's almost chilling to read some of these books to the extent that they were willing to accept fairly massive interventions in the economy--directing labor, who should be working at what jobs and that kind of thing. There was a corporatist aspect to it, where some of these writers at least were saying, We'lll all be solid together. It's strange stuff to read. The Road to Serfdom today reads reasonably, most of it. You read these other books and you feel like you're on another planet.
The occasion for my Globe piece was the publication of Bruce Caldwell's excellent intellectual biography, Hayek's Challenge
UPDATE: Jesse Walker calls my attention to this comic book version of Hayek's argument, originally published by General Motors.
I'm very sad to that Cathy Seipp has died of lung cancer at the age of 49. There are lots of good memories on her blog, and Amy Alkon has a wonderful remembrance, with photos.
I was a big fan of Cathy's column in the old Buzz magazine, but I had no idea she was its author--she used a pseudonyn. I only met Cathy through the blogosphere, yet another demonstration of its great value. Although by then I'd moved to Dallas, I enjoyed seeing her on trips to L.A., most recently in late December. Although weakened by her sickness, she was still her smart, feisty self. She was a delight to know and, as the many comments on her blog attest, she'll be greatly missed by many people.
Thanks to the many readers who responded to my post about Bloggingheads. Here are a few sample responses.
On his blog, Jim Hu says no, or maybe hell no. Sample: "I find the whole thing just annoying as hell. I've never actually watched one from start to end, or even from start to middle. I'm not sure why I can't stand Bloggingheads."
Alex Massie, by contrast, likes the format: "It's a fun format--and a welcome alternative to the brain-rotting tedium of the so-called cable news channels. So, I do hope you'll be appearing again."
Ted Frank recommends the addition of transcripts: "Bloggingheads is so not worth the trouble, at least until they come up with automatic-transcription software. I read blogs precisely because I don't find it a productive use of my time to watch clever repartee on tv news shows. The comparative advantage of the blogosphere is quick-reaction-publishing, the ability to go into detail that one can't in the MSM, the ability to digest it a post in one-minute chunks while one is gathering one's thoughts, and the power of computer search engines and RSS feeds to quickly find what you want to read and ignore what you don't want to spend time on. Bloggingheads has none of those advantages. I've almost stopped reading Kaus's blog because there are so many links to bloggingheads that tell me nothing about what I'm going to hear. And I would say this even if it didn't crash my computer a third of the time."
Doug Anderson shares my own preference for audio: "I enjoyed you being on Blogging Heads, although I obviously can't evaluate whether it is worth the trouble. I seldom actually see Blogging Heads (and your episode was no exception) as I listen to the podcasts (which are audio only instead). I download the podcasts via RSS and video is not available this way."
And then there's Joseph Britt: "Honestly, Virginia, I can't think which is more absurd: the idea that you have nothing better to do with your time than spend it on internet talk video or the idea that I have nothing better to do with my time than sit motionless in front of my monitor for an hour watching you."
In the end, I wound up deciding not to do any more appearances, at least in the short term, for reasons that have nothing to do with the format. Bloggingheads can't handle Macs. The audio and video get out of sync. I decided that dealing with the technical problems wasn't worth the trouble of anyone involved. There are plenty of interesting PC-using bloggers out there. Check out the latest entries here.
In response to these posts, reader Susan Self writes:
I enjoyed reading your prediction that Gen Y will eventually stop plastering their private life all over the internet once there are employment/financial/status penalities. BUT I don't think trend was a Gen Y creation. Instead I believe it had its seeds in the ghastly Boomer internet dating phenomena of the 90's. HERE'S WHY: My co-workers and I recently heard that our boss--age 45--had joined Match.com. Gleefully hoping for the worst, we logged onto Match.com and tried to find him via his zip code. (Santa Monica). I was shocked to see how many 50 year old guys in Santa Monica had posted ads for themselves (46 pages!!) and who also posted multiple pictures of the themselves (sound familiar?) in addition to writing overly revealing essays listing the most mundane aspects of their daily routine. Many of them gave the MySpace crowd a run for their money. So while Gen Y does go the extra mile, the Boomer's are right behind them.
Of course, the next step is media coaching.
As many readers already know, Cato Unbound, the Cato Institute webzine edited by Brink Lindsey and Will Wilkinson, is devoting its current issue to the questions raised by Brian Doherty's new book Radicals for Capitalism
As the editor of Reason, I used to be infuriated at the way the Los Angeles Times and other mainstream publications consistently capitalized Libertarian when referring to the magazine or its parent organization, the Reason Foundation. They wouldn't capitalize liberal or conservative, republican or democrat, unless they were referring to a political party. (Most Republicans are, after all, democrats, and I've never met a Democrat who wasn't a republican.) Why couldn't they understand that Reason was not a party organ but, like its liberal and conservative counterparts, a magazine of ideas? Were the copy editors just stupid?
After a decade of hearing me gripe, my husband cracked the code: Maybe newspapers don't think of Libertarian as a party label like Democratic or Republican, he suggested. Maybe they think of it as a religious description, like Catholic or Presbyterian.
Great.
Two things strike me about the essays. The first is an unexpected overlap between the concerns here and those of the designers I addressed in my new Print magazine article on DIY culture. Just as graphic designers worry way too much about who gets to be called a designer, movement libertarians have spent an absurd amount of time worrying about who was a real libertarian. That impulse was worst in the 1970s and early '80s--before my time--but it hasn't gone away.
The second is that intellectuals who have spent most of their careers working for libertarian organizations, including those like Brink and me who did not come up in "the movement," are probably unduly influenced by intramovement squabbles and purity tests, which get awfully tiresome after a while. I'd love to see a continuation of the discussion featuring libertarian writers who have spent their professional lives surrounded by mostly liberals or conservatives or both. (I suspect the contrarian side of Tyler Cowen would have come out differently if he hasn't spent all those years at George Mason.)
UPDATE: On Cato's blog, John Samples goes to great lengths to refute an argument I didn't even come close to making. Take it up with Brink, please.