I need a new word for certificates of debt or IOUs. Arrogating CD for certificate of deposit was clever. Many people are averse to debt, so it is best not to talk about it. It used to be that “money” was tabu. But, that word has now been rehabilitated, in part because the word says nothing about the nature of what it references. A quantified debt. How can that be characterized to convey both the relationship and its dimension?
Category Archives: Cost/benefit
Compulsive behavior
Is that what afflicts the ex-men? Compulsion. Does that explain the prevalence of exhibition, exposure, exploitation and even exclusion. A cost-free psychic high?
The brain’s assignment over night? What kind of ridicule would work best to stump the Dude.
Boys and their Toys on Sea Island
On the shore at Sea Island. While the tracks will disappear with the next tide, the sands, compressed by heavy equipment, won’t be supporting organisms for some time. It’s no wonder the dunes never regenerate.
Capitalist profit and Socialized debt
Really clever graphic!
Somebody does not like trees.
The deforestation of about 500 acres infused $331,000 into the Airport accounts to subsidize a losing proposition. That’s over and above the 41% of the annual budget that the Airport Commission derives from leasing land, rather than transport operations. A similar subsidy to ground transportation would move many more people around and relieve congestion.
Car culture is denuding and strangling Glynn County. More on that later.
Sitting at the JWSC
Water and sewer rates are going to have to go up to pay for $35 million in reatment plant improvements.
Thoughts from the shower.
The abundant warm water prompted some reflection on the services and practices we expect from our Brunswick and Glynn Joint Water and Sewer Commission (JWSC) and the fact that some of our oldest neighborhoods are still not being properly served. And the system does not seem to be set up to change that.
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Cash Cow
Non-governmental U.S. enterprise has always looked upon the governmental sector as a cash cow, a source of income requiring no effort. In the beginning, the income/benefits were composed mainly of land and natural resources to exploit and take to market for a profit. More recently, as much of the continent has been allocated as private property and the federal treasury is the only source of currency, the entrepreneurs are after plain old cash. The view with envy any money that doesn’t flow into their hands.
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Reconsidering pairs.
About twenty five years ago, when I started writing about cost/benefit, the analysis of which was a favorite in the late eighties to promote enterprise that turned out not too well, there was little awareness that the problem with this pairing was that it involved a sort of non-sequitur. That is, the supposed relationship between cost and benefit is not valid because the costs are borne and the benefits flow to different entities. Since then, “socializing the cost” and “privatizing the benefits” has come to be a standard explanation for why many well-intentioned proposals have not, in fact, increased the well being of the people supposedly being served. Rather, it has resulted in a society where a few are extraordinarily wealthy and the vast majority are increasingly deprived of even the necessities of life. Having a good explanation obviously doesn’t correct a problem.
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Photo-shop the President
That’s my suggestion. Just issue a daily image of the dude photo-shopped into stock-footage of presidential endeavors and be done with it. That would be cheaper, much less disruptive and allow more time for TV and tweeting. Instead of photo ops, let’s let photo-shop do its magic!