Protestors affiliated with the “Occupy Wall Street” protests wave signs and banners outside 1185 Park Avenue. I’ve thrown cold water on the ‘We are the 99%’ slogan two times (here and here) pointing out that wealth inequality is more starkly divided between the bottom 80-or-so percent and the top 20-or-so percent, rather than the top […]
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I’ll be blogging about the ‘Golden Age of Music’ a series dedicated to post-Napster-era music and musicians. This time I’ll be talking about The Avett Brothers, pictured below. The Avett Brothers are far and away the best thing that’s happened to music (or at least to the music I listen to) in years. Prolific, energetic, and astonishingly […]
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I mentioned in my last post that nothing serves consumers more than healthy competition. This is the point of capitalism or, more appropriately, of free trade. It’s not to make some people fabulously wealthy while others just barely scrape by. Proponents of markets want to raise everyone up out of poverty and into prosperity where […]
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A common theme one hears lately is that regulatory uncertainty and government regulations imposed by the current administration are killing jobs and hurting new hiring. While I’m fully aware of the many bad local regulations that really can create barriers to enter markets and make self-employment difficult, from silly licensing schemes to laws preventing working […]
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Forbes is a business magazine, and I write a lot about democracy, storytelling in politics, culture, activism, and any number of other non-business issues. But I don’t feel like an outsider here. I think I’m actually very pro-business, just maybe in a slightly different way than you might think. I believe, for instance, that a […]
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Unlike pop-culture blogger, Alyssa Rosenberg, I only watch a handful of television shows. One of my favorites is NBC’s Parks and Recreation which is off to another great start this season. Alyssa also watches the show, and makes this savvy observation: I give this show infinite props for its awesome feminism, but it’s actually a […]
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The history of justice in America is pocked with such deep institutional injustices that time and again we make a mockery of the word. From slavery to the War on Drugs, the powerful have trampled time and again on the weak. Law and order masquerade as justice, and our prisons fill to the brim with […]
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Demonstrators gather to call for the occupation of Wall Street, Saturday, Sept. 17, 2011, in New York. (Via @daylife) I don’t have a lot to say about this latest anti-Wall Street protest movement. Certainly the anger is understandable. The financiers are making huge piles of cash while much of America remains unemployed or underemployed. The vast wealth […]
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I’ve spilled a good deal of ink on craft beer in the past, discussing how regulations have factored into the big beer monopolies, and questioning whether small brewers need to be unionized the way the big brew shops do. I’ve also written about craft beer as it applies to the “human economy” (more on the […]
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