Tag Archives: Ash Heap Of History

When Dominance Leads to Incompetence and Catastrophe

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CHS9a1

“It’s rather staggering to list Microsoft’s failures over the past decade. The strategy that worked in the 1990s–copy rivals and add more features to the copycat products and services–is no longer working.  Dominance in any space breeds complacency and enables the luxuries of political squabbling, sclerosis and loss of focus. Competence becomes incompetence, and the infrastructure that fosters creativity and flexibility–that is, a keen appreciation of risk and spontaneity–is slowly dismantled.  That applies not just to corporations but to governments, nations and empires.”

http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2013/09/when-dominance-leads-to-incompetence.html

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Canadian billionaire predicts end of US Dollar as world’s reserve currency

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Canadian billionaire predicts end of US Dollar as world’s reserve currency

“Canadian billionaire businessman Ned Goodman predicts the end of the U.S. Dollar as the world’s reserve currency. He predicts the transition out of the U.S. Dollar will become, ‘…quite ugly.’ He delivered the lecture at Cambridge House’s Toronto Resource Investment Conference 2013 on Thursday, September 12, 2013.”

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Fighting marijuana … or reality?

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“Americans are becoming deaf to the critics of pot legalization. Their hyperbolic claims about the dangers of pot — along with the realistic ones — are being dismissed by a justifiably cynical public. Anti-marijuana propaganda isn’t stopping the march toward national legalization, but the opposition is losing its voice as it screams about the falling sky.  A majority of Americans favor full legalization.  So why can’t the opposition discuss these problems realistically?  It’s simple: Because the only rational conclusion is that the dangers of pot are not sufficient to warrant its prohibition. Yet those who have an ideological opposition to legalization appear immune to reason.”

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/12/opinion/nathan-pot-legalization/index.html

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Drug-Sniffing Dogs Pose a Problem in States That Legalized Marijuana

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“Police in Tacoma, Wash., aren’t ready to retire their four-footed marijuana sniffers. ‘There are several instances where marijuana is still illegal,’ says officer Loretta Cool. ‘If you are under 21, you cannot possess marijuana. If you have more than an ounce, it’s illegal.’ But half an hour north in Seattle, police have stopped teaching drug dogs to recognize pot. ‘There’s constant training to make sure their sniffers are up to snuff, where we use real drugs from evidence and a dog is rewarded for sniffing it out,’ says Sergeant Sean Whitcomb, a spokesman for the Seattle Police Department. ‘Marijuana is not something they are training on—that skill is no longer being reinforced.'”

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-22/drug-sniffing-dogs-pose-a-problem-in-states-that-legalized-marijuana

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Fed Warns of ‘Escalating Threats’ to U.S. Payment System

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“The central bank oversees the nation’s payment system. The Fed is seeking public comments on the weaknesses of the system, including its inability to process transactions in near-real-time. The U.S. lags behind other countries in the speed of transactions, the Fed said.  ‘In a world where several other countries are moving to ubiquitous near-real-time retail payment systems, the U.S. payment system does not have this capability,’ according to the paper. The central bank also said ‘cross-border payments from and to the United States are slow, inconvenient, costly and lack transparency regarding fees and timing.'”

http://www.americanbanker.com/syndication/fed-warns-of-escalating-threats-to-us-payment-system-1061942-1.html

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Higher Education Cartel, Meet Creative Destruction

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CHS9a1

“Despite major advances in media technology and the accompanying reduction and sometimes outright elimination of cost, the ancient model of organizing schools has persisted to modern times, with education costs and student debts now spiraling out of control.  One reason for this persistence may be that tenured professor jobs with six-figure salaries, excellent health insurance, and generous pensions are increasingly rare in the private sector. The academic priesthoods that benefit from the current system have a vast self-interest in perpetuating it no matter what. The schools are able to do this because they have arranged a monopoly on accreditation.”

http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2013/09/higher-education-cartel-meet-creative.html

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Mises’ Answer to Would-Be Conspirators: You Will Lose

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portallogo3

“The heart, mind, and soul of Austrian school economics is this: the free market provides better information and better incentives to satisfy customers than any rival system can ever offer. Therefore, the free market will grow at the expense of central planning. The decentralized decisions of people with money — decisions informed by market pricing — will be more accurate than the centralized decisions of any committee. This is why I really do not pay a lot of attention to the Bilderberg, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission. Ultimately, they are going to lose, just as their British equivalents and predecessors lost, 1914-1945. The digital genie is out of the bottle.”

http://www.garynorth.com/public/11003.cfm

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Russian spokesman mocks Britain, the little island

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“Britain has faced questions about its role and influence in the world since Mr Cameron was embarrassed by last week’s Commons vote to rule out a military strike against Syria.  Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin’s official spokesman, is said to have highlighted that embarrassment, telling Russian journalists that Britain was now diplomatically irrelevant.  Britain is ‘just a small island … no one pays any attention to them’, Mr Peskov is reported to have said. The blunt remarks appeared to realise British fears that the Russians would use the St Petersburg summit to upstage Mr Cameron over his criticism of Syria, Russia’s closest Middle Eastern ally.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/10290243/Russia-mocks-Britain-the-little-island.html

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Even John McCain Is Having Second Thoughts about Drug Prohibition

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“What do John Stossel, Mona Charen, Gary Johnson, Pat Robertson, Cory Booker, and Richard Branson all have in common?  And let’s add voters from the states of Colorado and Washington to this list. So what unites this unusual collection of people?  They’ve all expressed doubts about the War on Drugs. And that’s a good thing.  As explained in this video, the Drug War has been a very costly failure. Indeed, it’s been such a boondoggle that we can now add John McCain to the list of those who think maybe it’s time to consider decriminalization.”

http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/even-john-mccain-is-having-second-thoughts-about-the-wisdom-of-drug-prohibition/

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Why Cash Costs the U.S. Economy Real Money

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“With all the buzz about Bitcoin, PayPal (EBAY), Google Wallet (GOOG), and all the other innovations in digital currencies, it’s easy to forget that cash remains remarkably resilient. In part, that’s because the cost of using it is often hidden to the users themselves. Chakravorti, along with co-author Benjamin Mazzotta, says that’s especially true for those who don’t even have a bank account. The unbanked are four times more likely to pay fees to get their own money, yet are also more likely to trust cash and feel comfortable carrying around large amounts.”

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-10/why-cash-costs-the-u-dot-s-dot-economy-real-money

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