Archive for 2021

JUSTIN KATZ IS BACK TO BLOGGING AT Anchor Rising.

CHRISTOPHER BEDFORD: How American Small Businesses Are Being Coerced To Help Build The Oligarchy.

First, small businesses are captive to the government. Second, small businesses are captive to their most neurotic customers.

Let’s start with the government. Capacity limits in D.C., for example, cap occupants at 50 percent and, for some reason, if you have live music at a mere 25 percent — even though we’re banned from dancing anyway. We still can’t sit at bars for no good reason at all, since our bartenders now can come right around and meet us at our tables. Venues also can’t have live entertainment if people are seated within 30 feet of the stage. What? Why not? Who knows, but the same people who made that ridiculous rule up are now “reviewing it,” we’re told. Does anyone think they’ve grown smarter in the interim?

Now for the broken people. Why do some restaurants again and again seem to go above and beyond even arbitrary city regulations? Often, and especially because they’re struggling, they need every customer they can get, and that, some have decided, means they need to keep their most neurotic customers comfortable.

Is there a line between making those who aren’t completely broken uncomfortable and making the broken ones happy? It’s hard, and it comes down to an owner or manager’s call, but those most neurotic customers have a secret weapon normal people will never use: calling the government.

Neurosocracy.

UPDATE FOR MEN’S SHAVING SOAP AT HELEN’S PAGE: “We are swamped and cannot take any more orders!” The store says that they will be able to take orders again next week.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Critical Race Theory and the Death of Public Education. “The mask is off (COVID-era pun intended), the pretense that they want to enrich the minds of young Americans with real knowledge has been abandoned. Biden and Mrs. Dr. Jill want to start minting mindless automatons who are convinced that America is awful.”

EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO HIS OWN OPINION … BUT NOT TO HIS OWN FACTS: My friend Hans Bader pointed me to this: Ohio State University law professor claims that “Black-on-Black crime is a myth, and that Black and white people routinely commit crimes at similar rates.” The record amply demonstrates that neither assertion is true.

Of course, law professors have been making ridiculous assertions for decades. The problem is that this kind of stuff is now driving national policy. The last Chair of the U.S Commission on Civil Rights said essentially the same thing about school discipline. She now works at the White House as Biden’s Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council in charge of racial justice and equity.

WHY ARE ALL INSTITUTIONS GOING WOKE? Because leftists care more about politics than anything, and people on the right don’t.

In a democracy, every vote is supposed to be equal. If about half the country supports one side and half the country supports another, you may expect major institutions to either be equally divided, or to try to stay politically neutral.

This is not what we find. If it takes a position on the hot button social issues around which our politics revolve, almost every major institution in America that is not explicitly conservative leans left. In a country where Republicans get around half the votes or something close to that in every election, why should this be the case? . . .

While all votes count equally on Election Day, at all other times some citizens matter a lot more than others. For example, let’s say I vote Republican every two years, but otherwise go on with my life and rarely ever think about politics. You, on the other hand, not only vote Democrat, but give money to campaigns, write your Congressman when major legislation comes up, wear pink hats, and march in the streets or write emails to institutions when you’re outraged about something.

Through the lens of ordinal utility, in which people simply rank