Words    Words    Words

This very short chapter deals with drawbacks.  I’d have had an easier time of it if I knew what drawbacks are.  Next chapter is about bounties, and the same applies.  As near as I can tell, a drawback is a refund of a portion of whatever duty is charged on export.
Page 389: “They tend not [...]

[Read more →]

Those of us who know Emma, or have read her work, or heard her sing, think this is a very, very fine day, because we are all ecstatic to know there is a her in the world.
I can think of many national holidays that could be replaced by a celebration of the existence of Emma [...]

[Read more →]

Not terribly proud of this one, but here it is.  I think the formatting is a bit screwy, so the changes don’t actually go where they appear to.
Never Trust A Bureaucrat
E                A
Negotiations broke down over benefits and pay.
B7                 E
We put it to a vote and went out the sixth [...]

[Read more →]

I don’t know why I feel like telling this story now, but I do; it’s the story of a moment–an instant–in my life that I look back on with intense pleasure.
It was the winter of 1990, and I had left the Party some years before, but still considered myself a sympathizer.  In International Falls, there [...]

[Read more →]

You can start your link hunt here if you haven’t seen this yet.

[Read more →]

Reesa and Nathan have been watching re-runs of the old Addams Family TV show.  I approve of this, in part because it’s refreshing to see a 60’s sitcom where one can believe the couple actually had sex.  But it produced a question which has been bothering me, lo, these many days, even to interfering with [...]

[Read more →]

When Cory Doctorow and Neil Gaiman both say to sign it, I’m inclined to sign it, so I did.

[Read more →]

In this chapter Smith gets into restrictions on trade in some detail.  In brief, he argues that restricting trade, while not always a mistake, will never be advantageous economically to society as a whole, but at most to certain small sections of it.  He address balance of trade, and makes some interesting points.  In brief, [...]

[Read more →]

To all writers, and especially TV writers, just thought you should know that the riff where someone says, “I have something important to tell you,” and then gets interrupted before being able to tell it, is now played out.  In fact, it was played out the first time it was used.  If your goal is [...]

[Read more →]

Thanks to Adam Israel for fixing the problem that was preventing me from crossposting to LJ.  As I was holding off Wealth Of Nations posts until that worked again, you can blame him for their reappearance.

[Read more →]

Here we begin what seems to be Smith’s major campaign: to prove that anything that restrains trade (with a very few exceptions) is bad for society as a whole.  The difficulty with this proposition appears in the very formulation: society “as a whole” consists of divisions whose interests are opposed to each other; thus to [...]

[Read more →]