We’ve said this before, but one of our problems with doctrinaire laissez-faire economics is that it often amounts to a form of moral relativism.

A pretty obvious way to see that is with a subject lots of people can relate to: housing. 🏡🏡🏡
In many metros around the country, rising housing prices are caused in large part by speculation rather than ordinary buyers looking for a place to live. In many cases the “investors” don’t improve the property, or even rent it out, but just sit on it and wait to sell.
Now if you care about is protecting property rights and contracts, then buying a house as a speculative asset is just as legitimate as living in it.

But it’s a problem if you think a house sitting empty is inherently less socially valuable than one providing a home for a family.
Markets are very good are collecting information about what people want and what they’re willing to exchange for it.

But the market by itself also can’t tell us whether some of those subjective preferences are in fact more important than others.

Spoiler: sometimes they are.

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More from @AmSolidarity

7 Jun
Text of the prayer from FDR’s radio address, June 6, 1944:

“Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity... Image
Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. Image
For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph. Image
Read 14 tweets
1 Apr
We are thrilled to announce that, after much deliberation, a suitable site has been chosen for our first in-person National convention: Beautiful Utqiagvik, Alaska!
This historic and close-knit burg lies just a few miles from Point Barrow on the idyllic Beaufort Sea. As it turns out, meeting space comes at a real discount in Utqiagvik, particularly during the off-season in late January.
This will also be an invaluable opportunity to bring our whole-life message to an area where ASP organizing has been relatively sparse.
Read 7 tweets
30 Mar
We’re looking forward to the Veggie Tales reboot where Larry explains the costs of neoliberal globalization. Image
This is an important point, in all seriousness: trade can and does brings benefits, but we need to look at the costs for all those cheap consumer products that don’t get rung up at the cash register.
Since we’re talking about socks, Fort Payne, Alabama was the sock capital of the world until the 1990’s. One small town literally made 1 in 8 socks on the planet, and the factories employed more than half the town.

Most of that’s gone now.
Read 5 tweets
24 Mar
The thing about mass shootings is that they are a meme–in the original sense of the word, that is. They are a cultural template for a certain way people behave that has been propagated overtime (like a gene in biology).
That is, for a certain subset of isolated, angry, unstable men (usually it’s men), lashing out at the world with a gun has become a recognizable pattern that they can emulate to deal (if you can call it that) with their inner rage. One commentator called it a “slow-motion riot.”
Unhappiness and mental/emotional struggles exist in every society. But this particular deadly meme has only really come to the forefront in ours during the last several decades.
Read 11 tweets
23 Mar
One of the distasteful aspects of our national mass-shooting ritual is the part where we all speculate about the motives and identity of the shooter before we know anything about them, just to make sure we can get a dunk in on our ideological opponents.
We're not saying "don't politicize this," because there often are real social and political issues at play. What we *are* saying is that people should question their kneejerk reactions when those reactions are always to blame groups of people they are already inclined to dislike.
On that note: tragedies like this are just as worthy of our attention as the more dramatic Columbine-style mass shootings are (maybe more so, as they're distressingly common). But it's rare that they're discussed except as rhetorical point-scoring.

Read 5 tweets
23 Mar
Watch these guys unironically post something immediately afterward about the vital importance of Judeo-Christian values to our civilization.
As the guys at PragerU should know, one the better takes on Ayn Rand remains that of Whittaker Chambers, a long-time Soviet spy who recanted, then became a political conservative and a writer for National Review.

He wrote this in 1957. It's still true.

whittakerchambers.org/articles/nr/bi…
From Chambers' review of Atlas Shrugged:

"The news about this book seems to me to be that any ordinarily sensible head could possibly take it seriously, and that, apparently, a good many do. Somebody has called it: “Excruciatingly awful.” I find it a remarkably silly book."
Read 6 tweets

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