Tuesday, April 23, 2013

The Bloody Video Game Company

I like Curt Schilling.  I like Rhode Island.  But what Curt Schilling did to Rhode Island...or rather what Rhode Island apparently begged Curt Schilling to do to Rhode Island...well, it's just what a whole bunch of other "limited government" people have done as soon as they get a chance to have unlimited government help.  Excerpt from the NYTimes story:


Even in a state that long served as New England’s Mafia headquarters — and a state whose best-known modern political figure, Buddy Cianci, the former Providence mayor, was sent to prison in a federal corruption case known as Operation Plunder Dome — the 38 Studios debacle has registered as a painful embarrassment. (When I called influential Rhode Islanders and told them I was writing about 38 Studios, virtually all of them, even if they had opposed the deal, answered with some version of, “Do you have to?”) 

 Rhode Islanders are used to being played by their politicians. What makes them cringe is the suspicion that virtually all their elected leaders might have been played by someone else. 

More people on the right need to recognize the truth of this statement:


“There is some justification at least in the taunt that many of the pretending defenders of “free enterprise” are in fact defenders of privileges and advocates of government activity in their favor rather than opponents of all privileges. In principle the industrial protectionism and government-supported cartels and agricultural policies of the conservative groups are not different from the proposals for a more far-reaching direction of economic life sponsored by the socialists.” - F.A. Hayek, page 107 , Individualism and Economic Order

In some ways, I prefer the folks on the left.  They say they are going to use the state to run the economy, and they do that.  The phonies on the right say they favor free enterprise, but that quickly turns into a different kind of "favor."

Nod to Webster and Main

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