The Mighty Quinn at @reliantdogshows
lnewcomer link blog |
one of many tubes ... |
Facebook recently added a security option to use only secure HTTP when connecting to the site. While it's a good feature, they seem to have broken some of the apps that connect to the site, in this case the iPhoto Uploader, at least for iPhoto '11. I had to disable HTTPS in the Facebook settings in order to upload photos from the app.
Morgan is about 2 1/2 years old and she's a black Miniature Schnauzer. Her previous family had a new baby and there wasn't quite enough room for her. They were sad to see her go. She went for a walk when we got home and she's resting quietly in the crate for a bit before she gets to explore the house.
For the time being, we need to accept the possibility that the financial sector has learned how to game the American (and UK-based) system of state capitalism. It’s no longer obvious that the system is stable at a macro level, and extreme income inequality at the top has been one result of that imbalance. Income inequality is a symptom, however, rather than a cause of the real problem. The root cause of income inequality, viewed in the most general terms, is extreme human ingenuity, albeit of a perverse kind. That is why it is so hard to control.
Another root cause of growing inequality is that the modern world, by so limiting our downside risk, makes extreme risk-taking all too comfortable and easy. More risk-taking will mean more inequality, sooner or later, because winners always emerge from risk-taking. Yet bankers who take bad risks (provided those risks are legal) simply do not end up with bad outcomes in any absolute sense. They still have millions in the bank, lots of human capital and plenty of social status. We’re not going to bring back torture, trial by ordeal or debtors’ prisons, nor should we. Yet the threat of impoverishment and disgrace no longer looms the way it once did, so we no longer can constrain excess financial risk-taking. It’s too soft and cushy a world.
That’s an underappreciated way to think about our modern, wealthy economy: Smart people have greater reach than ever before, and nothing really can go so wrong for them. As a broad-based portrait of the new world, that sounds pretty good, and usually it is. Just keep in mind that every now and then those smart people will be making—collectively—some pretty big mistakes.
