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brucefancher

28 karma · joined March 7, 2013

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brucefancher··on Banks Forgot Who Was Supposed to Own Dell Shares
They didn't lose the records -- Cohagen stole them!
brucefancher··on The Silicon Valley-ization of San Francisco
Yes. As the economist Assar Lindbeck once said, "next to bombing, rent control seems in many cases to be the most efficient technique so far known for destroying cities".
brucefancher··on The Silicon Valley-ization of San Francisco
Sadly, he's correct that there really aren't that many classical liberals (the correct term for what he calls "libertarians") in Silicon Valley. Despite the fact that economic freedom in general and the technology industry in particular have brought an unbelievable level of comfort and prosperity to people at all income levels in countries fortunate enough to have relatively free markets, too many people who work in the industry fail to make the connection. Instead of taking note of such triumphs of economic redistribution as Detroit, they bite their nails with worry and yammer on about "income inequality", as if Mark Zuckerberg's or Sergei Brin's billions somehow came at the expense of other people.

Oh, and the reason rents are high in San Francisco is because there's too much regulation, not because there's too much money there.

brucefancher··on Will Scala ever be enterprise-ready?
No. Next question.
brucefancher··on Would it be evil to build a functional brain inside a computer?
You monster.
brucefancher··on How to fix America
Ban all PACs? So, in other words, repeal the First Ammendment. No thanks.
brucefancher··on The JVM situation
Clojure.
brucefancher··on Naomi Wolf: My Creeping Concern That The NSA Leaker Is Not Who He Purports To Be
My creeping concern is that Naomi Wolf is one missed dose of her medication from becoming a bag lady.
brucefancher··on Misogyny and the Marketing Chick
Why should I bother to read some moronic crap written by a marketing chick?
brucefancher··on Elon Musk comes to tears over auto dealers perversion of democracy
Rank hypocrisy from the man who got a half-billion dollar loan from the U.S. goverment (that he's paid it back is irrelevant) and continues to receive hundreds of millions a year in subsidies via carbon credits, tax credits, etc.
brucefancher··on Wisp: a homoiconic JS dialect with Clojure syntax, s-expressions and macros
You know, it's like French with Chinese syntax.
brucefancher··on New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More
Yeah, but malaria mostly only kills (tens of millions of) children in poor countries in Africa and Asia so it's of no concern to right-thinking environmentalists in rich Western countries.
brucefancher··on New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More
The Bloomberg story on the Koch Brothers is a complete smear job: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/09/bloomberg-legi...

Statists don't like the Koch's because they hate anyone who believes that people should be free to make their own decisions without being ordered about by small-minded busybodies whose self-image depends on the delusion that they know what's best for everyone else. And rather than engage in debate, they find it much easier to just demonize their opponents with dishonest ad hominim attacks.

brucefancher··on New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More
Don't forget about when they legalized gay marriage.
brucefancher··on Bitcoin is dead. Long live bitcoin.
The so-called "hoarding problem" was debunked decades ago:

http://mises.org/money/2s9.asp

It's still orthodoxy among academic economists, but there isn't any historical evidence that it's actually true.

More recently, this article in Forbes explains the issue more succinctly:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2013/04/11/bitcoin-do...