I strive for conservative ideals, but I recognize we no longer live in a conservative society and that’s not going to change during any tenure you choose to grant me. What I will seek out is necessary compromise: policies which meet short-term political or social needs using the tools available but which embody the ideal of long-term cultural change to render those tools unnecessary.
It might be better if we all slowed down. Or it might not. Notwithstanding the surety and sanctimony with which you have proclaimed otherwise, on all counts “Slower, Safer, Cheaper, Greener” is a matter of judgement — and a bit of faith — not of demonstrable fact.
I expect, then, that he runs his practice strictly on a cost-reimbursement basis. After all, any money he or his staff take home at the end of the day to pay their mortgages or to feed their families or to buy cars and gizmos or to pay for entertainment — whatever money they take home to live their lives — comes from profit.
Would those calling now for confiscation of that “excess” through a windfall profits tax be equally willing to to make up the “shortfalls” through a windfall loss subsidy during the next down cycle? That would be “fair”, if perhaps unproductive. But I don’t remember any of them being in favor of that in the past. And I can’t imagine it happening in the future.
Rather, in their lexicon “fairness” seems, at least with regard to business, to mean “responsible for losses but not entitled to profits” — risk without reward.
In advocating for Microsoft to defy the Chinese government’s censorship orders and stand up for free expression in China you are demanding that an American corporation take it upon itself to disregard the local laws of the community in which they operate. You are demanding that they substitute an American standard of civil liberty and an American vision of proper social regulation for the locally determined political and cultural choices.
We routinely view the problem of illegal immigration effectively as one of importing labor. But it is a much more useful paradigm to view it as exporting work, despite the fact that the work doesn’t actually leave the country … If we view illegal immigration as an illicit export of jobs rather than as in illicit import of people, we see a different set of solutions to the problem.
Which way do you want it? Opportunity comes with risk; security impedes opportunity. If you want creditors to give people opportunity you can’t blame them for enabling risk-taking. If you want them to prevent risk-taking you can’t blame them for denying opportunity.
Union representative William Seay (letters, 7 March 2005) hypothetically trades off a $50,000/year wage for Wal-Mart stockers/checkers/baggers/greeters with “a 12 percent discount on Gummy bears and barbecue grills” for Wal-Mart shoppers — implying, of course, that any rational and compassionate society would take the hit on their Gummy bears if it meant a decent standard of living for those poorest of employees.
But Mr. Seay’s analysis is corrupted by the same “all other things being equal” assumption that pervades so much of the economic reasoning in our political debates — the assumption that in coercing a significant change in wages nothing else would change as a result.
Ref: Mr. Baylis’ critique of the extraction of energy from moving vehicles using magnets and a street wire grid.
Mr. Baylis’ critique, while valid in every respect, was primarily economic and will therefore leave some readers (particularly those whose belief in the laws of supply and demand and pricing are ephemeral, and those who believe that moral righteousness is reason enough to ignore any and all economic considerations) thinking that overcoming those merely economic obstacles should be a high priority if the result is “free” energy.
However, there is a more fundamental matter of physics with which any such scheme must contend: the energy is not free.
During the last presidential campaign John Kerry scored populist points castigating “greedy corporations” who avoided paying their “fare share” of taxes by “sheltering” their profits in foreign countries. In an era of corporate downsizing and record budget deficits that topic resonated with many people, and the charges were repeated widely before disappearing under the weight of other criticism more easily tied directly to George Bush. But before they disappeared The Boston Globe ran a piece by Stephen Glain on the topic in their business section. I sincerely believe there is a lot of questionable – or downright dishonest – stuff going on behind the corporate veil in support of avoiding taxes. But I also believe that a business reporter should consider the possibility that some practices characterized by populist politicians as malfeasance may actually have a rational and legitimate basis in business principles – and that a reporter writing a story on the topic should at least talk to some people in business who are using those practices before writing the story about them.