The Perils of Centralized Innovation

(Austrian) Economics, Business, Corporatism, Technology
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Gizmodo has an interesting post about How Ma Bell Shelved the Future for 60 Years. It is an excerpt from The Master Switch by Tim Wu.

Here is the money quote:

This is the essential weakness of a centralized approach to innovation: the notion that it can be a planned and systematic process, best directed by a kind of central intelligence; that it is simply of matter of assembling all the best minds and putting them to work in unison. Were it so, the future could be planned and executed in a scientific manner.

Yes, Bell Labs was great. But AT&T, as an innovator, bore a serious genetic flaw: it could not originate technologies that might, by the remotest possibility, threaten the Bell system. In the language of innovation theory, the output of the Bell Labs was practically restricted to sustaining inventions; disruptive technologies, those that might even cast a shadow of uncertainty over the business model, were simply out of the question.

~*~

Cross-posted at Prometheus Unbound.

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TLS Podcast Picks: Tucker on Improving Society; Riggenbach on Nozick

(Austrian) Economics, History, Libertarian Theory
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Recommended podcasts:

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Activism for the long run, literally

(Austrian) Economics, Education
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Our fellow blogger and friend Vijay Boyapati is running 26 miles for the cause of Austrian Economics and Libertarianism. He will match up to $13,000 from the donors (you can donate 5, 10 or 15 dollars an up and he will match your donation) for a total of $26,000 to be donated to the Ludwig von Mises Institute. That is $1000 per mile. The Ludwig von Mises Institute was surprised by Vijay’s spontaneous initiative and so are the rest of us. The donations amount to $7,500 at this time, so to our readers I say “join the campaign!”

Run Vijay, run!

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Why Can’t Kobe Get Any Love?

Business, Firearms, Libertarian Theory, Pop Culture, Racism, Victimless Crimes
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“A debate on ESPN about Kobe being in that “Call of Duty: Black Ops” commercial, holding a rifle, convinced me of two things…” ~ First Tweet

“…One, ESPN has a lot of retarded debates about issues that are less than important.” ~ Second Tweet

“…Two, I watch too much ESPN.” ~ Third Tweet

My previous blog rant about a sports figure—regarding the LeBron Decision and the wrath it wrought—opened with this line, “I have an admission to make…” Here we go again.

I have another admission to make, this time about the Tweets I posted, as shown above.  I was wrong about ESPN.  They don’t debate about issues that are less than important, well, not in the way I originally opined.  (That those debates remain somewhat retarded is not similarly incorrect.)  This issue is not only important, but also emblematic of and intertwined with many other issues.  In fact, it dawned on me as I watched a panel discussion on “Outside the Lines: First Report,” that the Kobe-holding-a-rifle-in-a-commercial issue is both important and confusing.  By the way, the coverage, particularly on Yahoo, is worth checking out.

This issue is—these issues are—important because the discussion of black men—particularly prominent black men—and weapons, is tied up in the same psychological murkiness that I attempted to clarify via the lens of racist gun control.  The issue is confusing because any discussion seems to meander through any number of sub-issues, some germane and some peripheral, at best.  (As an aside, my third admission via Tweet, that I watch too much ESPN, is hardly worth debating.  It is what it is.)

That professional sports are fraught with racist collectivism is far from a discovery.  Furthermore, these issues are not new, which is probably why they tend to recur.  Given the exorbitant coverage of celebrity in the MSM, any time a prominent black man makes news, it presents an excellent opportunity to drive viewership.  Paraphrasing the old quote from It’s a Wonderful Life about angels and ringing bells, every time a high-profile black man does anything even remotely newsworthy, a budding TV producer gets his wings.

My own view is that the enchantment with these issues—and their presentation via sports television—is indicative of more than a sports-centric misinterpretation of value.  Plaxico Burris is in jail in some measure because he is a high-profile black athlete.  I might argue that Mike Vick went to jail for much the same reasons.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but “uppity Negros” have been getting whipped in America for about as long as there has been an America.  (I know.  I know.  Again, that’s unfair.)  Ergo, figuratively whipping them via the court of ostensible public opinion via sports entertainment is a tried-and-true strategy.

…

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Hunter S. Thompson’s Last Stand

Legal System, Non-Fiction Reviews, Private Crime
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Dear Dr. Thompson: Felony Murder, Hunter S. Thompson, and the Last Gonzo Campaign
Ghost Road Press, 2010

by Matthew L. Moseley

Reviewed by Ryan McMaken

Hunter S. Thompson was one of the 20th century’s greatest literary social critics, and one of the most anti-authoritarian. In the tradition of Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken, Thompson never flinched at exposing the hypocrisies and contradictions of American life and ideology, and his contempt for authority permeated not just his writing but his life as well.

Thompson killed himself in 2005, shortly before his remains were shot out of a giant cannon in Aspen, Colorado. Yet, right up to the end, Thompson made himself a gadfly and a nuisance and an enemy of the agents of the state who have so much power over the lives of the powerless.

In Dear Dr. Thompson, writer Matthew Moseley has provided an entertaining first person account of Hunter S. Thompson and his “Last Gonzo Campaign.” Through the book, which is both a true crime account and a study of Thompson the man, Moseley details Thompson’s involvement in the Lisl Auman case in which, Auman, then barely out of her teens, was kidnapped by a drug addled gangbanger who murdered a police officer. Later, prosecutors claimed Auman had assisted the murderer and, thanks to media hysteria and prosecutorial recklessness in the name of “sending a message” to cop killers, Auman was sentenced to life in prison without parole under the felony murder law in Colorado.

Then one day, while serving her life sentence in a Colorado prison, Auman wrote a letter to Hunter S. Thompson a few hours away in Aspen. Thompson’s assistant Deborah Fuller read the letter aloud to Thompson. The letter spawned the “Free Lisl!” campaign which would turn out to be Thompson’s last great campaign against injustice.

The Murder

Lisl Auman was handcuffed in the back of a police car in the parking lot of an apartment complex when skinhead Matthaeus Jaenig, whom Auman had met that morning, murdered a police officer.

Denver’s Westword newspaper provides a concise description of the scene: …

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