g m g D e s i g n . c o m

The Chinese gov has passed a sweeping labor law. Per the NY Times, the law will…

…increase worker protections in a society that, despite its nominal socialist ideology, has emphasized rapid, capitalist-style economic growth over enforcing labor laws or ensuring an equitable distribution of wealth.

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Found a good article on aei.org where the author discusses the Great Depression and the hideous beast that emerged in its aftermath–the New Deal. Teaser (bold text was my doing):

After all, the argument of markets has its own powerful morality. It is immoral to cause unemployment by pretending that a big government policy is morally necessary. When Andrew Mellon and Calvin Coolidge put through their tax cuts in the 1920s, they made the efficiency argument that supply-siders make today: lower rates could yield, they posited, higher revenues. But they also had a moral argument: high taxes were wrong, confiscatory and illiberal, in the classical sense. You can acknowledge this without being a Roosevelt-hater.

Check out this article on securityfocus.com about potentially vulnerable devices, like routers and phones. Excerpt:

i.e.: if a router you were using had been exploited, and the firmware patch was active, any seemingly legit executable download would be infected with a stub that would execute a file of my choosing. The hostile executable would run transparently along with the original executable.

So, even if your Windows XP/Vista box is fully patched and even if you download only from trusted web sites, you could get infected & never know about it. Very scary. What to do to mitigate the threat? Only execute digitally signed executables; patch your firmware just as you patch your computer; purchase devices from companies that have a good security track record.

Excellent post by Stossel regarding price “gouging” nonsense. From the editorial:

No, Jon [responding to Jon Scott of Fox News], get this: It’s not a record high. It only looks that way if you don’t adjust for inflation.

And more:

If the politicians do enforce anti-”gouging” rules, it will be akin to capping prices, and we tried that before. It was a disaster. Drivers had to wait in long lines, and some couldn’t get any gasoline. Only when price controls were lifted did supplies rush in, and only then did prices go back down.

Markets don’t work? That’s a myth.

I agree with Stossel that markets definitely work and the tyranny of Big Gov intervention (price caps, legal repercussions to “price gouging,” etc) tend to lead to scarcity due to under-investment. Just take a look at Venezuela under their Castro-adoring despot, Hugo Chavez.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0606/p99s01-duts.html 

This is amazing. Laotian-Americans were planning on training and procuring weapons in the US so that they could go to Laos and overthrow the government. The ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) was tipped off early on of the plot.

From BBC Health:

If you are there is a chance fidgeting may be in your genes – and the good news is that you are less likely to be fat, according to the new research.

 Good news for me, since I’m a fidgeter.

Excellent view point from Dr Thomas Barnett on his blog site. The topic is China, and he explains why the belief that China has found a “new model”–whereby they can usher in economic reforms (capitalism) but never institute democratic governance–is totally false. An excerpt: 

What Mann and others like him don’t get is that democracy in China is beginning–like everywhere else–from below. It is always a bottom-up process. You cannot build a national democracy on a foundation of sand. It must be built–brick by brick–from below.

One million text messages screaming “We want life, we want health!” shuts down construction of a dangerous chemical plant in China. Frankly, that sort of democracy is far more important right now in China that multiparty elections on top.

The case law for China’s future-and-emerging democracy must be written, individual by individual. Yesterday’s torture victims become today’s plaintiffs become tomorrow’s political leaders.

Conclusion: we don’t need to be worried about the rapidly pro-capitalist “Communist” China. They’ll have democracy in my lifetime, and it will come from the bottom up. Their conversion to capitalism sealed this optimistic (and yet realistic) fate, as pro-capitalist reform leads to greater economic connectivity leads to greater proliferation of “subversive” ideas leads to demand for more transparent and more representative governance.

Hence: US foreign policy should change and embrace China as a strategic ally rather than a strategic competitor.