Hi Daniel and thanks for your comment.

Perhaps I could have been clearer, but my thought is that even in today’s mixed economy, there’s no reason to consider recycling as a whole, nor to have an opinion on it as a separate and distinct category of action. I think you should weigh and evaluate each potential act of recycling just as you would any other economic decision, i.e. according to whether it is to your benefit or not. There is no point forming a principle “I should always recycle” or “I should never recycle” since there is nothing peculiar to recycling which makes it universally good or universally bad. For example, in most cases, you probably should resell your cars and houses rather than throwing them away, while on the other hand, if you have to travel 50 miles to return bottle caps to a recycling center, you’re probably better off not to recycle them and simply throw them away.

So as I see it, the only principles you need are those which you already have viz. if a given exchange or action is worthwhile to you, you should pursue it, if not you shouldn’t. Whether or not the action or exchange is subsumed under the term “recycling” won’t help you make the decision, so I maintain that there is no point or validity to having a global “position” on recycling, even in today’s society.

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Posted by Amit Ghate to Thrutch at 8/27/2005 03:39:36 PM

Interesting post. Note that my main concern in my original post to my blog was the question: Should I, as an individual living in today's society, recycle? I think I agree that in a laissez-faire economy this question would be a non-issue.

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Posted by Daniel to Thrutch at 8/26/2005 08:31:10 PM

How sad that no American politician, newscaster, or nary a university professor would dare utter such a clear statement as this gentleman.
Truly sad.

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Posted by Blair to Thrutch at 8/24/2005 10:15:53 AM

In the case of the UK's leading "moderate" Muslim organisation, the MCB, I fear it is increasingly apparent that they (and some of their affiliates) do share the goals of the radicals. Until bodies like the MCB tackle the ideology and theology of the radicals, there will be little progress.

http://mcbwatch.blogspot.com/

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Posted by MCB Watch to Thrutch at 8/23/2005 12:46:58 AM

Excellent point!

I recently made a similar observation WRT to leftist hand-wringing about the "cost" of Wal-Mart in terms of state medical subsidies received by many of its workers. Such "costs" are, first off, NOT incurred by Wal-Mart, but by the welfare state. Worse, that portion consumed by Wal-Mart employees is merely the tip of the iceberg of the cost of state subsidized medicine! And, to top it off, the state taxes everyone to pay for these subsidies whereas Wal-Mart would merely be able to make its customers pay higher prices if it chose to offer similar benefits to its employees.

It amazes me how many issues there are out there for which people take the welfare state for granted when thinking about them, with the end result being that many issues facing our country are made to seem more complicated than they actually are. In addition, the thinking about such issues is muddled from square one, as we see in discussions about Wal-Mart.

Gus

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Posted by Gus Van Horn to Thrutch at 8/15/2005 08:04:31 PM

Thanks Diana and Gus. I think I will write to blogger (perhaps using NoodleFood as my example) and ask them about putting the recent comments on a single page .... the solution of having to click on individual links to each recent comment doesn't really accomplish what I'm looking for.

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Posted by Amit Ghate to Thrutch at 8/10/2005 04:21:16 PM

Thanks for the links!

My whole comments suite was custom-built. (Okay, so it's really just three PERL scripts that I wrote because Blogger didn't have any comments capacity when I started using it...)

Blogger might allow you to put the most recent comments in the sidebar. (I'm pretty sure that MT allows you to do that.) That's somewhat helpful, I think.

You might try writing to blogger with the suggestion of a "recent comments" page. It's something of a novel idea, I think. Frankly, I probably wouldn't bother to have comments without that page -- and I think it contributes to the occasional liveliness of my comments.

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Posted by Diana to Thrutch at 8/10/2005 12:31:37 PM

Hi,

Nice blog, BTW. Found it via Secular Foxhole.

I haven't tried these myself, but look here and here.

Hope that helps.

Gus

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Posted by Gus Van Horn to Thrutch at 8/10/2005 02:03:03 PM

woops,i gave you the wrong link, heres the real one

http://www.sftt.us/PPT/article04122004a.ppt

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Posted by Apollo to Thrutch at 7/29/2005 12:36:42 PM

Cool, thanks for the link. Heres another site you might enjoy reading, its a powerpoint presentation called:

"The Operational Code Of The Jihadists"

http://www.proteinwisdom.com/index.php/weblog/entry/18730/

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Posted by Apollo to Thrutch at 7/29/2005 12:32:21 PM

Here's another stoory from today's news...

BUCHAREST, Romania - A Romanian Orthodox monk has been indicted in the death of a 23-year-old nun in an apparent exorcism in which she was allegedly bound to a cross, had a towel stuffed into her mouth and left without food for three days.

Four nuns also were indicted Sunday in connection with the death of Maricica Irina Cornici of the Holy Trinity convent in northeast Romania. The prosecutor said Monday authorities were awaiting the results of a second autopsy before deciding how to proceed.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050620/ap_on_re_eu/romania_exorcism_death_1

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Posted by Chip Joyce to Thrutch at 6/20/2005 04:39:05 PM

In my first comment, I was trying to make the point that often when a true bubble is in effect, people start forecasting almost infinite future profits, so they drive up valuations to insane levels. Thus if we were at the height of a bubble I would expect the valuations of home-builders (a proxy for the real estate boom) to be in the 50's to 100's, not 15. In other words, as you posit in the original post, I don't think we're yet at the height of the boom, and definitely not in "bubble" territory. That said, I think that some local markets *are* in bubble mode as Chip's comment supports as do some of the anecdotes in the articles you cite. Here is another data point suggesting a bubble in local markets: the existence of services aimed at "flipping" properties. In my opinion, one of the tell-tale signs of a bubble is the almost exclusive focus on the exchange value of a good, i.e. valuing something only by what the next buyer will (hopefully) pay. The existence of a site like this: http://www.condoflip.com/ suggests we're getting into that territory.

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Posted by Amit Ghate to Thrutch at 6/20/2005 10:34:36 AM

Anectodally, here is more evidence. In the late 90s the high-rollers of New York City nightlife were the dot-commers: not exceptionally bright people, yet who were "instant millionaires."

Now it's real estate AGENTS that I meet who are the highrollers. I have met many not-too-bright people who are raking in cash and have nothing but contempt for buyers except multimillionaires.

One ditzy real estate agent told me that she won't even take calls from prospective buyers like lawyers and investment bankers who "only make" $200,000. They can't even qualify for a studio (i.e., one-room apartment) in Manhattan! She said if one doesn't have a net-worth of a million dollars, no co-op board will approve an application.

(Meantime, the one-bedroom apartment I rented in 1999-2000 was offered to me for $330,000. It was $275,000 the year before, so I thought it was too expensive. Now it is worth around $900,000!)

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Posted by Chip to Thrutch at 6/20/2005 05:57:22 AM

True, P/E's on homebuilders have been in low double-digits for like 3-4 years -- meaning that the market was, and still is, skeptical that the trend is sustainable and will continue?

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Posted by Rob to Thrutch at 6/19/2005 06:40:55 PM

I've been wondering the same thing. And it's also interesting that though valuation measures of the some affected groups have increased, they are not astronomical as they were for the tech stocks during the Nasdaq bubble. For example, TOL (considered by many as the best premium home builder) trades at a trailing P/E of 15 and forward P/E of 10 (see http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=TOL). Maybe higher than long term historical valuations, but hardly the stuff of a manic bubble.

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Posted by Amit Ghate to Thrutch at 6/19/2005 02:29:34 PM

I agree, making a positive argument *for* something is always preferred, and in the case of religion, it's the *only* thing worth arguing. Religion is so self-evidently absurd, that it is pointless trying to refute it.

The only reason most people even give religion the time of day is due to the complete lack of any rational alternative philosophy.

So the task at hand is to make them aware of the rational alternative.

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Posted by Rob to Thrutch at 6/19/2005 02:25:21 PM