no third solution

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Category Archives: Blog Reactions

Unpaid Internships: Illegal?

September 5th, 2009

I thought the job market was bad when I graduated in 2003. I can’t begin to imagine what this year’s graduates are going through, since they are competing with last year’s graduates, and also with everyone who’s been laid off or otherwise let go in the last 5 or 6 years (some of whom might have a decade or more experience) for the eleven remaining jobs. I can understand that in such circumstances, people might be willing to do some work for free, in order to try and impress the right people.

Enter: government.

Its illegal (9 times in 10).

Mark Cuban argues (and I agree) that the Federal Government has absolutely zero reason to be concerned with the interactions between individuals—voluntary interactions.  However, I understand that only desperation, the product of an un-free market, permits employers to offer, and drives people to choose unpaid jobs or internships in the first place.

Unpaid internships* seem to be most prevalent in those fields where there is the least amount of freedom or competition: government, sports, media. These organizations can get away with asking 20-somethings to grovel at their feet for zero pay, because there is no real competition to keep them honest.  And people accept these gopher-jobs because of the prospect of the economic rents which they might be able to capture in the future.

In a free market people will pay you to create value**, because if they don’t, someone else will, and you’ll go create value for those people, not the misers who want you to work for free.

“Unpaid internships” shouldn’t be illegal, but in a free society, there’s no room for them.


* And it’s not limited to unpaid. Medical residents might earn something like $50k per year, during which they’re expected to work 80 hours a week. That’s about $9 an hour when you factor time-and-a-half for overtime, or about the same as a shift supervisor at McDonald’s. So either doctors-in-residence are about as valuable as a Fry Chief, or doctors (post-residence) are grossly overpaid. I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between the two extremes.

** I do not mean to suggest that there would be no room for apprenticeships or other programs where one party may work for “free” or even pay in order to learn a specific skill or trade, only that internships as most people understand them (errand-boy/girl, gopher, etc.), would disappear.

Bailouts, Bullsh*t and Blackmail: How Banks Profit in the 21st Century

August 27th, 2009

In case you’re still not convinced that the banksters are holding us all hostage,  essentially blackmailing us under the repeated threat of “systemic collapse”, I have one question for you: how much more evidence do you need? Virtually nobody wanted to help them out, but they took $7.4 Trillion dollars anyways!  In other words, under color of law, they stole six months of your hard work, so as to perpetuate a massive check-kiting pyramid scheme.

As it turns out, six months of your labor wasn’t enough. And adding insult to injury, not only do they want more money (from you), they want no accountability so badly, even after having ripped you off for $7.4 Trillion, that they are to make your life even shittier what with the “complete economic collapse” thingamajig. At Zero Hedge, Tyler Durden calls this “Racketeering 101.”

The players are: ABN Amro, Chase, US Bank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, The Bank of New York, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, etc. — a veritable “Who’s Who” of motherfucking scumbags, political profiteers and rent-seekers extraordinaire, who together have siphoned off or otherwise managed to destroy more wealth than any World War.

The reasons put forth by the CHA simply do not hold up under scrutiny: “The severe competitive harm that public disclosure of their identity will cause,” and the argument that “negative rumors about a bank’s financial condition – even completely unfounded rumors – have caused competitive harm, including bank runs and failures.”

Spin. Let’s rephrase: “The severe competitive harm that public disclosure of their crimes will cause,” and the argument that “facts about a bank’s insolvent financial condition” will cause people to avoid them like the Plague.  Puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?

If mere “rumors” of insolvency set in motion certain events leading up to the eventual failure, we can logically conclude that the bank was insolvent in the first place. Public awareness exposes the fraud sooner, but awareness didn’t cause the insolvency. If these banks are worried about “rumors”, it’s because they’re trying to pass themselves off as solvent to delay their reckoning and steal a few more billion dollars from you before the whole system comes crashing down. In other words: they’re broken, and they know it.

The only people who want to obscure the facts and suppress the truth are those people who profit from lies.

They say the world will end, “teh economy will collapse” unless we help them.  They’re fucking wrong. I say: Let’s call that bluff. Let’s see it all collapse.  We can do without any of them, but they can’t do without us.

Their world might very well end, but I don’t see anything wrong with that.

Nothing Unlawful About Executing the Innocent

August 26th, 2009

Except for regular updates at Radley’s place, I’ve heard little about the plight of Troy Davis.

In case you don’t know: Troy Davis has been fighting for his life (on death row) for decades. He was tried and convicted by a “jury of his peers”, and previous attempts to overturn the ruling have failed. Last week, SCOTUS recently asked a Georgia federal court to consider the new evidence and determine whether it establishes Davis’ innocence. [wiki]

What makes Davis’ story particularly compelling (aside from the alleged prosecutorial misconduct, witness tampering, police obstruction, etc.*) is that the dissenting Supreme Court Justices (Scalia and Thomas) argued, “Even if the district court were to find Davis to be innocent, there would still be nothing unlawful about executing him.”

You’d think that if there were a shred of human decency left in this world, people would be all over this story.

On this note, Mark Cuban inquires, “Is there a right of the innocent not to be executed?” The answer to that question is so painfully obvious that even a child could grasp it…

Cuban says “maybe it’s time for a constitutional amendment.”

I come back to a single issue. Its not illegal to execute an innocent person. Maybe its time for a constitutional amendment? (sic)

I’m sorry, Mark. No amendment, constitutional or otherwise, no piece of paper is going to protect you as long as rat-bastards like these are on the bench. And as long as there is a monopoly to exploit, rat-bastards like these will be the ones doing all the exploiting.

Let me condense this for you, and the rest of the reading public.

First, Scalia and Thomas dissent, essentially arguing that “We don’t give a god damn whether Troy Davis is innocent. We don’t give a god damn whether Troy Davis can present evidence that would (under any other circumstances) exonerate him.” In other words, as long as “procedure” is followed to the letter**, Scalia and Thomas are content to give zero consideration to the morality of the criminal acts they would sanction.

I’m sorry, but “I was just following orders/procedures/rules” is not a fucking excuse. Especially when you’re the one who validates, approves, or otherwise seals those orders under color of law.

And then, in a vulgar display of obstinance which would make my 3-year old nephew’s head-banging temper-tantrums look tame in comparison, “Even if he does present evidence which would in all other circumstances prove his innocence†, we don’t give a god damn if he is hanged by the neck until dead. In legalese, there would be nothing unlawful about executing him.”

Ask yourself, “What sort of man would willfully disregard all relevant facts, and condone the pre-meditated murder of an innocent man.”

A fucking sociopath, that’s who. Or, more precisely, two fucking sociopaths. The callous disregard for either justice or human life, exercised by both Justices Thomas and Scalia, is indicative of their moral bankruptcy, and it is a stain on the fabric of all humanity.

This system does not need to be reformed, it needs to be eradicated.


* All of which are, sadly, par for the course in the American criminal justice system.
** It should be noted: if the evidence is in-fact exculpatory, and corroborates the claims of tampering, etc., that procedure was thrown out the window in favor of a kangaroo court.
† A burden one is not ordinarily obligated to carry.

no third solution

Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics