link round-up

[cellio]

Maritan Headsets (from Joel on Software) is a long but worthwhile article on software standards -- both not having them early enough, and having them and trying to enforce them. Parts of it made me laugh out loud, like the paragraph containing this passage: "[...] but of course when you plug the headphones into FireQx 3.0 lo and behold they explode in your hands because of a slight misunderstanding about some obscure thing in the spec which nobody really understands called hasLayout, and everybody understands that when it's raining the hasLayout property is true and the voltage is supposed to increase to support the windshield-wiper feature, but there seems to be some debate over whether hail and snow are rain for the purposes of hasLayout..."

Rescue me: a fed bailout crosses a line seems (to this non-expert) like a good analysis of what just happened to the market and the dollar. (Need a login ID? Try BugMeNot.) I am more scared, and more angry, about our government's economic policies than I've been in a while. As someone on my subscription list said (I forget who), the people who actually took personal responsibility and saved rather than spending recklessly are the ones who are going to get hammered by this, while the idiots who bought houses (or corporate holdings) they couldn't afford and racked up tons of debt will be bailed out because we can't stand to say "too bad you were an idiot".

As long as I'm saying "too bad"... too bad, Michigan and Florida. Agreed.

On a lighter note: Garfield Minus Garfield is surreal. And since seeing it a week or so ago, I haven't been able to read Garfield "straight".

Comments

[sethg]

I'm sure that if anyone had suggested, six months ago, that there should be some kind of orderly write-down of subprime mortgage debt to prevent this kind of catastrophe, the folks at Bear Stearns would have been speaking eloquently about how important it was for borrowers to take personal responsibility and for the market to work things out all by itself.

One reason I'm not a libertarian is because I believe that no matter how thoroughly a government pledges allegiance to free-market principles, when given a choice between following those principles or providing some kind of benefit to the rich and well-connected and noisy, the principles will go out the window.

[cellio]

I'm sure that if anyone had suggested, six months ago, that there should be some kind of orderly write-down of subprime mortgage debt to prevent this kind of catastrophe, the folks at Bear Stearns would have been speaking eloquently about how important it was for borrowers to take personal responsibility and for the market to work things out all by itself.

I don't disagree. And Bear Stearms should be held to the same standards. "Personal responsibility" applies to entities too. (Yeah, so maybe "personal" isn't the right word there.)

Governments (and political entities) often have little to do with the philosophies they espouse, unfortunately. "Conservative" doesn't mean what the Republicans in power say it does, either; should I assume that conservatism is a bad idea because of that? We will never see a purely libertarian government. I want to move ours in that direction. Any government is subject to corruption; there's nothing special about libertarian principles there.