Rad Geek People's Daily

New U.S. $100 Even Uglier. Daring Fireball (2010-04-22):

Why are we making our money ugly? We're ruining one of the greatest visual brands in history.  â˜… 

Good lord.

John Gruber, linking the story at Daring Fireball, asks “Why are we [sic] making our money ugly?” I don’t think it’s hard to explain. The answer is that “we” (you and I) aren’t doing anything to the U.S. Federal Reserve notes, because we don’t design them and we don’t have any meaningful market choice about what kind of money to use, either. The “visual brand” here is a brand in a completely uncompetitive market.

The people who do exercise effective choice over the design of U.S. government monopoly money (Treasury, the Fed, and the Secret Service) have no need to work to attract customers; their work is solely concerned with confining customers. Hence they have no incentive to be concerned with keeping their “visual brand” strong or attractive; the incentives point towards just making it as complicated and inelegant as possible, in order to make the design hard to counterfeit. Money that was produced in a competitive market, and which relied on customer choice rather than government fiat as its basis for value, has typically been attractive and well-designed.

• I Must Have Missed It. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-04-20). Jon Stewart, just now: We've been given a false choice between tyranny and anarchy. Hey! When was I offered that choice? (Linked Wednesday 2010-04-21.)

• rechelon on “If you want to live as a communist and I enjoy markets, can’t we both respect each other’s autonomy? If your experiment works better than mine, I’m willing to come over. If mine is better, maybe you’ll pop in. reddit.com: what's new online! (2010-04-13). Ignoring birthright, which I more or less consider a non-issue because I'm so hardcore anti-hierarchy I'm opposed to any sociological role of parents (separate discussion), I would say while it would be insane to assume that we start out from anything other than sharing — it would likewise be insane… (Linked Saturday 2010-04-17.)

• Is Capitalism Something Good? Sheldon Richman, The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty (2010-04-16). Earlier this week I attended the annual meeting of the Association of Private Enterprise Education in Las Vegas to participate in a panel with the intriguing title "Free-Market Anti-Capitalism?" Organized by Roderick Long of Auburn University, the panel also included TheFreemanOnline columnist Steven Horwitz of St. Lawrence University, Gary Chartier… (Linked Saturday 2010-04-17.)

• THE FIGHTIN' SIDE OF TEA: We've seen two serious surveys of Tea. Jesse, The Perpetual Three-Dot Column (2010-04-16). THE FIGHTIN' SIDE OF TEA: We've seen two serious surveys of Tea Party opinion recently, one from the Winston Group and one from CBS and The New York Times. They certainly aren't the last word on the subject, and there's still a lot to be learned about a movement whose… (Linked Saturday 2010-04-17.)

• The Work of Nations. the Medium Lobster, Fafblog (2010-04-05). We are at war with Pakistan, bombing and killing thousands of people who might otherwise object to our war with Pakistan, which is urgent and vital and necessary to secure the success of our war with Afghanistan, in which we are bombing and killing thousands of people who might otherwise… (Linked Saturday 2010-04-17.)

This has been something of a busy week for me. I’d go through it all, but it’s mostly been a week of tilling, and of planting, and of gardening. Both literally and metaphorically. I have some time now when I am working on a number of projects, but relatively free of deadlines — something which will, I think, actually help things a great deal. When you’ve got deadlines to deal with, you’ve got to deal with them, but you can’t really set a deadline on gardening. Things grow best in their own time. The fruits should be coming soon; in the meantime, I’ll just say that my sojourn in Denver was lovely, and that the APEE panel on Free Market Anti-Capitalism earlier this week went well, that APEE was, in general, a good time, and that it was really fantastic to meet up with Roderick, Gary, Sheldon, and Steve. I’ll have more to say, soon, I hope. It’s getting warm here in Vegas, and I’m trying to catch the last few weeks of pleasant spring warmth, before the long, hot summer begins; once that happens, I’ll be looking forward to spending some more time in the shade indoors, getting work done on the Fair Use Repository, the Southern Nevada ALL distro, and a number of other projects that will take some quiet time in the scriptorium.

That’s my shamelessness for the weekend. And you? What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.

• DIY: Paper. Shawn P. Wilbur, Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth (2010-04-13). As part of the process of developing my workflow for Corvus, I’ve been trying to find the best way to handle the fairly considerable amount of scrap paper which is generated by the publishing process. Printing errors, test printings, failed experiments, unused corners and ends–all of this stuff piles up,… (Linked Thursday 2010-04-15.)