ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. ZARDOZ NEEDS A LITTLE BREATHER THIS WEEK, BUT NEEDS TO GET BACK TO WORK…OR DOES HE? WITH THE TABERNACLE GONE, ZARDOZ IS NOT COMPELLED TO DELIVER GUNS TO BRUTAL ENFORCERS, OR PICK UP GRAIN AND BRING IT BACK FOR ETERNALS. ZARDOZ NEEDS TO FIND NEW VOCATION – BUT HAS LIMITED EXPERIENCE. IN THE MEANTIME, ZARDOZ CAN AT LEAST DELIVER SOME LINKS TO HIS CHOSEN ONES.
Other varieties not pictured: lemon, cranberry, peach, sweet tea, orange, and unflavored.
So, my prelimary internet research tells me that this cocktail goes by a few different names: Ruby Red Mule, Austin Mule, Grapefruit Mule, etc. They’re all fitting since it’s basically a Moscow Mule made with a flavored vodka instead of your standard, boring vodka that aspires to taste like nothing.
This is the brand of flavored vodka I recently discovered at the liquor store (where they greet me by name almost every Saturday) and subsequently fell in love with. I’ve only tried two flavors–the lemon and the grapefruit–but they’re excellent. I’ve found they go well with the mixers I tend to have on hand–various bubbly flavored waters–but other folks reviewing them online say they’re also tasty just diluted with a bit of water over ice. I prefer my mixed drinks to sparkle, but that’s just my preference. The company is Austin-based, so you can buy them knowing you’re supporting the good, ol’ U.S. of A.
Anyway, here it is. I mix this directly into a copper mug on a kitchen scale because I’m precise AF like that.
Give it just a short stir so you don’t lose all of the bubbles, and that’s pretty much it. You can’t tell if you serve it in a copper mug, but it is really quite pretty if you serve it in a glass mason jar like some kind of redneck or hipster. Of course, being self-respecting menfolk, I’m sure most of you would prefer not to showcase to the world that you’re drinking some kind of pink, girly drink, but this really is very tasty. I’m going to be drinking plenty of these on my deck this summer; well, these and other Deep Eddy concoctions, anyway!
Spot the Not by Derpetologist – famous women on Clinton breaking the glass ceiling
1. Now, it’s up to us to elect Hillary Clinton, perhaps the most experienced presidential candidate in history, to the White House where we need her to be.
Faceless men and nasty women
2. There’s so much more women need to accomplish to feel like we have arrived in American culture. Hillary Clinton’s nomination is hopefully the beginning.
3. She’s strong, smart, bold, and kind. She’ll be an amazing president. It’s time for a Mrs. President, and I can’t think of anyone better than Hillary Clinton.
4. I feel a tremendous rush of pride because this is a woman who is more than qualified to be president. Isn’t it interesting how a barrier seems insurmountable — until it comes down? I hope girls across the country are thinking, “That could be me.”
5. I won’t say that I never thought I’d see the day when a woman would be nominated for president, because as a feminist, a mom and a leader of a national women’s organization, I knew this day would come. But I’m particularly proud that it is Hillary Clinton who is making history today.
6. When Clinton graciously committed herself to campaigning for Obama and unifying the party, I was sad yet proud. When she made her 18-million-cracks-in-the-glass-ceiling speech, I wept. She will be a great president who will do her best to unite the country. I wish her the goddesses’ speed.
Because I am hungry and Fur Friday is my petty fiefdom we’re going to skip the sexy bears and Mink Stole this week in favor of a condiment: furikake. For those of you who don’t know, it’s dry mix of shredded nori/gim, sesame seeds, sugar, salt. Common varieties mix it up with various fish flakes (bonito or salmon), and MSG…because Japan. It’s a quick way to make a plain meal of white rice taste like it isn’t a plain meal of white rice, but it’s also used on soups, noodles or wherever you need to punch up the flavor of something. Because I live in a Bladerunner-esque future LA–a jumble of pan-Asian and American influences, but lacking replicants–I can also get that shit sprinkled on kettle corn at A-Frame in Culver. It’s tasty. Buy some, put it in your face. You’ll thank me later. Or you won’t because you’re a bunch of ingrates.
This use deviates from the authorial intent of furikake as a “rice seasoning”
So there you go…links o’ bad. Just you feel fortunate I didn’t follow my colleagues’ lead and link to music…Bad by Michael Jackson would probably get me booed off the page.
One way of looking at things would be that there are two spheres for each person: the individual – where one acts according to subjective preference – and the common – where the individual ones meet and sometimes come in conflict. Freedom to swing your fist, my nose, etc.
In each human society, such a conflict must be handled. Conflicts in the common sphere are generally covered by, as Bastiat said, The Law. The Law in this case is not legislation but a subset of morality, and it usually exists absent of a specific government, religion, or whatever. Libertarianism, and the final form – anarchy – are still human societies and as such they have The Law.
As a self-proclaimed libertarian, I believe in free people acting voluntarily to reach whatever their goals may be. I believe in a free market, in goods and services, and whatever people make and need. This all goes without saying, really. But of course, problems arise and one cannot be completely free in a densely populated world.
So what about justice, in the sense of implementing The Law? This is not really product, in the sense that is not produced, distributed, traded, stockpiled, and whatnot. You cannot go short on justice because you expect a weak justice harvest. It is a service, but one unlike any others. The free market, for it to be free, must be free from aggression. And this is where justice comes in. As such, it can be viewed as outside the market, due to everything in the market depending on it.
It can be viewed as just another component of the market, as it does cost resources in administering it. It usually has the characteristics of what economists call a public good, as in non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Justice should be available to all, and giving justice to A does not reduce justice for B. Philosophically, application of the law is the one service in a society that should not depend on wealth, status, or any other characteristic of an individual. As such, it is unlike other services.
Law which is not enforced is merely a bunch of suggestions, so each society needs a way to administer and enforce it – this is the goal of justice. Society – despite what many keep claiming – is not government, but in the case of justice, it is usually a government prerogative. Voluntaryists (what is it with politics and weird spelling?) and/or anarchists say this can be done better outside of government, all others see it as a core function of government, some as the only core function of government. But all flavours of political ideology accept rules and their enforcement, the how differs.
Any political view that sees a place for a government, from minarchists to socialists, sees justice as a main function of government, up to the only legitimate function.
The justice as the sole role of government can be seen in, for example, Kritarchy which can be interpreted simplistically as rule by judges. The origin of the word is in ancient Israel before the rise of kings, but modern versions are found, for example, in the Xeer system of Somalia. (You know the one, Somalia anarchy ROADZ or other such things randomly screamed at libertarians, although the areas of Somalia ruled by Xeer seem to do better than the ones ruled by government).
Kritarchy is a legal and political system associated with structures of polycentric or stateless traditional societies, based on customary rather than statutory law, and it is very often close to notions of natural law. Medieval Iceland is another example. To be honest, I do not see these societies as stateless. But this depends on the definition of state. Governance in one form or other always existed: clan leaders, tribal leaders, warriors, shamans, elders, whatever. But there has always been authority where there have been humans. And this authority was generally accepted and imposed. So when does this become a state? And when anarchy? Or is anarchy just extreme decentralization? People will live in communities, and those communities will have rules. I simply do not see an ancap world in which each has his piece of property defended by private security and private courts of justice. There would be at least HOAs and such.
The question is how is justice best delivered? Can there be a market for it, separate from or identical to the one for everything else? I don’t see it that way, not as a pure market solution, but something else.
Justice should be accepted and enforced. After it is pronounced, it is not voluntary any more. The nature of the courts aside, the ruling must stand. Pending appeal, of course, and if you happen to live in Italy, 7 years of trials later maybe there is a resolution. The only voluntary thing may be choice of courts. If the decision is not respected, the offending party must be somehow coerced, by imprisonment or being socially ostracized or something else.
Enforcing the law can be the purview of the courts, or of different organisations, more or less independent. Enforcement may have a market structure more readily. See bounty hunters for a quick example.
Whatever views on delivering justice, for me it is clear that the current system is broken, irrespective of the country involved. Some, as always, more than others. Justice should be a cornerstone of society, as such it must be fixed. Most likely a society with better rules and system of justice will require less ruling and enforcement, as people will more likely respect the law. A good society is one that generates little crime, not one that punishes effectively, and those two things are not always the same.
So what are the options? The way I see it, at least: government courts run by taxes or fees, private courts run like a regular business, Kritarchy style system of traditional courts. In Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, if I remember correctly, parties in conflict simply agreed on a citizen, usually well respected by the community, to decide, and agreed to respect whatever he decided.There are disadvantages and advantages to, well, anything. In general, reality is only trade-offs.
Government has the advantage of a special legitimacy in the eyes of many people, which brings enough enforcement power. What it also brings is too much power, bureaucracy, politics in everything, lobbying, excessive legislation and overreach, and often a lack of accountability. It does not depend directly on money from the involved people, but money is always present in one form or another.
If a victim is dead or helpless and cannot pursue justice, justice can still be met, as government has agents for that express purpose, and this may not be the case in fully private circumstances. On the flip side, when a strong government commits an injustice, there is little redress for the wronged. Of course, many things influence government justice negatively: bribes, corruption, and politics to name a few.
Justice and Liberty never looked so good
Private courts of justice can end up more decentralized, with the risk of less uniformity and predictability. Their legitimacy will be lower and their enforcing power potentially more limited, with good and bad consequences. They must be to a point agreed upon by involved parties, someone must pay, and there must be some agreements between different private courts. Accusations of special interest might be stronger than with government, not really justifiably so, but nonetheless…
Citizens, ad-hoc courts, or juries have a chance to be less controversial and more acceptable than private courts. Get a few people of good standing who are invested in their community and have a ruling. Of course this would not be without controversy – nothing is really – and many will question their motives, integrity and capability – not being professional judges.
There can also be a hybrid system of private lower courts – this is often the case with mediation- and government as appeal courts.
My personal favourite form of justice is trial by battle, let the gods decide.
Justice in the end must be, well… just, lawful, universally applied, predictable, and generally accepted by the society. A system of justice like the asshole who is president of Philippines supports is not something to strive for.
Do I have a conclusion? No, this is mostly musing and thinking out loud, as I am a little on the fence about it. So, justice, how do you like yours?
“Well, if you hate the government so much, why don’t you just move to Somalia?!”
This is one of the most common retorts to libertarian ideas along with “libertarians are just Republicans who want to smoke pot.” I’ll save that one for another time.
Progs like talking about Somalia because they think it proves that libertarian ideas about limited government lead to chaos and misery.
As I have said before, there are 3 kinds of derp:
wrong: 2 + 2 = 5
very wrong: 2 + 2 = -17
not even wrong: hammer + tomato = January
The idea that Somalia is a libertarian paradise is solidly in the not even wrong category.
Mogadishu beach
Let’s examine the claim in detail:
1. Somalia is an awful place.
2. Somalia has no government.
3. A lack of government causes misery.
4. Libertarians want to abolish the government.
5. Since a lack of government causes misery, libertarians are wrong.
All of these statements are wrong or irrelevant.
Yes, compared to most countries, Somalia is a bad place to live. However, in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality, per capita income, and other measures, it’s not that much worse off than the countries around it. The main problem with Somalia is not its weak government; it is poverty. This is the same problem that Somalia’s neighbors Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and others have.
Somalia does have a government. True, it is a weak, provisional government with limited control, but it still has a budget, a parliament, a president, a military, international recognition, etc. Most articles about Somalia are careful to note that it has not had a central government since 1991. They don’t say it has no government. In fact, Somalia has at least 2 major governments (the one based in the capital and the other based in the northern region) and many minor governments headed by warlords.
A lack of government does not cause misery. Many countries with parliamentary systems have gone through long periods with no government because no coalition could win a majority and thus elect a prime minister. Countries on this list include Belgium. Did Belgium fall apart during the 589 days between 2010 and 2011 when it had no government? No.
Libertarians do not want to abolish the government. In the last election, the libertarian presidential candidate got about 3% of the vote and he ran on a platform that included saving Social Security. Most libertarians do want much less government, but there is an important difference between less and none even if some people are too dumb or dishonest to notice.
Lasa Geel rock paintings
The evils of too much government far exceed too little government. Who would choose to live under the totalitarian government of North Korea over the semi-anarchy of Somalia? At least in Somalia I wouldn’t have to worry about me and my entire family for 3 generations being sent to a prison camp because I forgot to put on my mandatory Dear Leader pin. Unlike North Korea, you can leave Somalia without being shot at by border guards.
If Somalia proves anything, it is that socialism always leads to death and suffering. Somalia was a socialist country from 1969 to 1991. It was a one-party socialist state officially allied with the USSR and modeled on it. The USSR switched sides after socialist Somalia attacked socialist Ethiopia (not the first time one socialist country attacked another) in 1979. The dictator of Somalia became increasingly authoritarian after a failed coup which resulted from the failed war in Ethiopia. The dictator was finally overthrown in 1991 by an alliance of rebel groups which then turned on each other.
In short, saying that Somalia proves libertarians are wrong is like saying that a bank robbery proves that money is worthless. No, the reason Somalia is screwed up is because they did the *opposite* of what libertarians want just like the reason the bank got robbed is *because* the money is worth something.
And that is all that needs to be said to the “why dontcha move to Somalia” morons.
Before embarking on Links None Of You Fuckers Will Read, I wanted to take a second and note that we’re approaching 100,000 comments, of which 90,000 are good, 4,000 are really good, and 1,000 are hilarious. The remaining 5,000, well…. But the real point I wanted to make is that, despite the short time the site has been running and your overall response, the site just hums along with a remarkable paucity of Sciuridae, and this on a budget of $27 per month. All hail SP, who put all this together!
OK, breakfast would not be complete without links.
When you want trenchant, objective, and insightful political analysis, it’s always best to consult popular entertainers, all of whom still have their Tiger Beat magazines with that dreamy Barack on the cover and the pages stuck together. Apparently, we now have a bill which passed the House, is not really a significant change from the shit sandwich of laws we already have, and is almost certain to go nowhere. But it’s Armageddon! And of course, the New York Times, always a source of objectivity, gleefully predicts a Team Blue majority is imminent.
I’m not sure I have words for this. I’m not sure anyone does.
Shocked, SHOCKED, that Team Red is making a futile attempt at cutting off federal funds to a Team Blue lobbying group. Even more shocked that the ACLU wants to sue to keep the money flowing. Shocked, yes I am.
Remember the guy who would sit in the endzone at football games with a multicolored wig and a sign reading “John 3:16”? Apparently, his identity has been outed and it’s unlikely that he’ll be coming back.
Greetings once again my scandalous sojourners into scintillating cinema, and welcome to the final installment of our three-part exploration of perhaps my single favorite genre of film, giallo. Forgive me if this is a bit short; I slammed my right index finger in the car door like an idiot on Sunday, and even though it’s been a few days as of Wednesday evening, typing and using a mouse still hurts like eight bitches in a bitch boat.
The movie poster for today’s treat.
In part one, we took a broad overview of the genre itself. Last week, I provided a brief survey of three of the largest names associated with these films. Finally today, we will briefly look into giallo’s influence on cinema outside of Italy.
If you recall, giallo’s heyday was from the mid-60s to the late-70s. The films continue to appear even to this day, but their production tapered off severely by the end of the disco decade. The more astute of you may have noticed this coinciding with the rise of “slasher” films in the United States, and the eventual full-blown emergence of the splatter genre in the 80s. Mainstays of those genres, such as a mysterious killer, graphic on-screen violence, young people being killed in alarming numbers, antagonist POV shots, gratuitous use of nudity, and total ambivalence to acting quality all spring directly from the success of giallo. As I previously wrote, John Carpenter has repeatedly credited the influence of giallo on his own work, Halloween. Sadly, some of the artistic flair seems to have been lost in the translation; in my opinion, films like Friday the 13th are straw giallos, copying the form but without the unique substance.
Anyway, so much for the meta-analysis. Please note that you can’t spell analysis without “anal.” Also note that I can attest that a middle-management cubicle schmuck in his Kohl’s polo and Penny’s khakis driving his fucking grey Camry to work every day in a bizarre effort to be the most cookie-cutter office monkey who ever lived doesn’t seem to find it amusing when you say that, after he asks you to analyze something.
Famous self-cannibalizing ending scene.It’s kind of hard to tell, but that’s the “fetus” he’s eating. I thought about showing a shot of him ripping it out, but I’m too classy.
Today’s effort will focus on a weird little piece from Joe D’Amato called Buio Omega in Italy, Buried Alive in the initial US release, and eventually now Beyond the Darkness. You may remember that I initially said I was going to focus this third review on one of the seemingly endless and decreasingly topic-related Zombi sequels. The movie I had in mind was Anthropophagus (or, Zombi 7), also by D’Amato. But as I was standing there looking at the dvd, I decided Beyond the Darkness would fit better, as it serves as a sort of bridge between the latter stages of the giallo run, and what we would call slasher films. Besides, Anthropophagus is really only worth it for two scenes: one in which the killer pulls a pregnant woman’s fetus out of her and eats it on camera (the effect done using a skinned rabbit covered in corn syrup), and the very end when he’s gutted by the Final Girl and he begins scooping up his own intestines and stuffing them in his mouth in a final cannibalistic orgy. There, I just saved you 90 minutes. Anecdote: I found this one at a Movie Trading Company in a part of the city with a heavy black population. The clerk was black. The dvd cover had a picture of that ending self-consumption scene. The guy looks at me and says, I shit you not, “Man who da fuck wanna watch a movie like this?!” I gave him a Cheshire Cat grin and didn’t say a word.
Anyway, Beyond the Darkness is still super fucked up, but has more super fucked up scenes than Anthropophagus. D’Amato dabbled both in horror and porn, so it was inevitable we’d get a movie like this. Our young lead Kieran Canter loses his fiancée to a voodoo curse by his weird-looking housekeeper Franca Stoppi who wants the guy all to herself (I’d link to both of their IMDBs, but neither of them has really done anything you’d care about). In fact, she breast feeds him in his sorrow after the funeral. Except he’s really into taxidermy as a hobby, see, and it turns out he’s also a complete fucking loon. So once the fiancée dies, he digs her up (this scene shows the coffin having been buried, oh, I’d say about six inches deep), takes her back to his palatial villa, stuffs her, and puts her in his bed.
Creepy-looking housekeeper. She’s making sloppy joes.Just what the doctor ordered after a hard day of burying the chick you wanted to marry.
While returning from the graveyard, he has a flat tire, and a hitchhiker helps herself into his van. He takes her back to his place, and after she freaks the fuck out seeing him taxidermy-ing this much better looking chick, he kills her (after bizarrely taking time to rip her fingernails out with pliers). The housekeeper helps hack her fat ass up (and we get to see her giant titties flopping out hither and yon), and they turn her into sludge in a bathtub full of acid. Amusingly, the acid in Italy also comes wrapped in those wicker baskets like you see around bottles of table wine. It looks exactly the same, only huge, and with a warning label on it. After feeling bad about this, the housekeeper gives him a handjob to lift his spirits.
Seriously, the acid looks just like this, only in a much larger bottle with a generic warning label on it. I really sincerely hope that’s how they sold acid in Italy in the 70s.
Next, he’s out jogging, when he comes across a comely lass who has sprained her ankle. He takes her back to his place, and in exchange for wrapping her limb in a bandage, she basically jumps into bed with him, no dialogue needed. Upon seeing the stuffed corpse she freaks the fuck out (stop me if you’ve heard this), and Kieran rips out her throat with his teeth, and then swallows the chunk. Enter housekeeper, to burn the body in their giant pizza oven.
Eventually the funeral director starts snooping around, because he saw Kieran inject the fiancée’s corpse with something just before the funeral. Franca and he have a falling out, eyes are ripped out, twin sisters appear, and all hell breaks loose. There’s an interesting jump-scare ending that I don’t want to spoil, so we’ll leave it at this.
Now, this comes close to rising above being a gore-fest, but just falls short. Kieran’s character is alternately devastated and weepy, only to become enraged and murderous, and there is a definite feeling of his being trapped in a childhood twisted by the early death of his parents. But this thematic avenue is never really explored. Franca’s character has no such interesting promise, and is just a freaking weirdo. Her family appears at one point, and they also are shown to be…eccentric, would be the politest way to put it. Also quite interesting, is the fact that there is no real protagonist. The good funeral director (whose entire subplot is worthless except to set up the final shot) and the twin sister both appear too briefly to be said to have a meaningful role in the conflict. It’s actually just two antagonists doing crazy shit to other people and eventually, to each other.
Order up: one dead jogger.
Really though you’re watching this for the gore factor. There are great scenes, particularly two well known ones: the taxidermy and the acid bath. The sequence where Kieran stuffs his former love’s corpse is drawn out, using buckets upon buckets of animal guts, as we see him emptying her out. Upon removing her heart, he holds it up to kiss…then takes a bite out of it. The hacking up of fatty and turning her into slurry is also quite graphic and memorable. There’s an amusing transition from Franca dumping the liquid remains in a hole in the yard, to her very messily eating beef stew that will stick in your mind. Also the soundtrack is once again by Goblin, so that’s good.
What’s left of fatty after her acid bath. Serves her right for jumping in his car after he drove past her a few moments earlier. Also serves her right for being a fucking fatty.
Really though, even though this is widely considered to be D’Amato’s best work (he also pulls double-duty as cinematographer, under his real name of Aristide Massacessi), it doesn’t do a lot more for you than show the potential he had, and make you sick. I haven’t seen any of his porn work (though I can’t help but wonder what Anal Paprika is like), but I suppose great directorial skills are less important in that genre. Suspiria is giallo at it’s finest (as evidenced by the number of commenters who chimed in with how much they also enjoyed that film) – this is giallo at it’s most base.
Sorry this is a bit short and to the point, but like I said, my finger really fucking hurts, and I’ve got a big convention coming up this weekend, so that’s just perfect. Ultimately I give this film 6 pictures of my brindle mastiff out of 11.
I tried to get him to wear a hat, to make the photo “amusing,” but no dice. And my corgi wouldn’t even sit still for any photo at all. Also, I saw UCS’s review of Dawn of War III too late to chime in on it, but the next time any one of you motherfuckers does anything Warhammer related without getting ahold of me so I can impress everyone in the comments with how much I know about Warhammer, I will destroy you all in my wrath. I have Warhammer tattoos FFS!!!
So there is some fail for ya. Have at it in the comments, ye snark masters and glib folk.
P.S. I was going to link if TEAM RED failed to, yet again, do anything about Lightworkercare. I’ll let y’all decide if what they did do was a fail (hint: almost anything Congress does is likely to be a fail).
There are a thousand examples that could be used to show the rot caused by the invidious tenets of socialism in our sports these days. The most illustrative, in my opinion, is that of IndyCar. For the first 75 years of the Indianapolis 500, the race and the supporting series were based on a free-market-style “run what you brung” model, resulting in a rich and storied tradition. Stories of turbine cars, diesels, close finishes, and 1000 HP rocketships on wheels echo through from the past. Before NASCAR, the various iterations of Indycar (CART, USAC, AAA, etc.) were king in the United States. Until the late 90s, IndyCar was a half-step behind Formula 1 for international popularity.
Today, IndyCar is circling the drain. They had a race in Phoenix last weekend with 7,000 attendees and a few hundred thousand, at most, watching on TV. Why such a precipitous drop from rivaling F1 to now being on the brink of failure? Beyond the basic ineptitude and competitive failures that doom any venture, the problem can be summed up in one word: socialism.
In the early 90s, CART (as IndyCar was called at the time) was king. Names like Unser, Andretti, and Foyt were touring North America, racing custom built race cars in front of packed stands. The Indy 500 would have 350k+ on hand for the annual culmination of a monthslong celebration of speed. Most years, certain qualifying days would have well over 100k people on hand. In 1994, the fastest qualifying speed was a hair over 228 MPH. Today, almost 25 years later, the cars do the same speed, the crowds are down and the hallowed Month of May has become a week and a half.
Then, in response to escalating costs and a perceived shift away from the small-town American dirt track racers to foreign racers in the F1 minor leagues, the owners of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway started the IRL, which based its operating model on a top-down financing of the racing efforts of smaller teams. There are a bunch of other factors in the decadal decline of IndyCar, including a split into two series, series-wide emphasis on safety over speed, and the rise of NASCAR, but the biggest factor was the susceptibility to the allure of socialism.
In the attempt to contain costs and attract smaller teams, the IRL and, later, IndyCar continued with two core principles that will sound familiar to all of you who are versed in the language of the socialist. First, IndyCar established a phonebook’s worth of technical regulations meant to curtail engineering costs. This resulted in the last 10+ years being run with a single allowable chassis each year. They have allowed limited competition in the engine, suspension, and aerodynamics, but the days of building your own mousetrap are over. Second, IndyCar established what’s called the “Leader’s Circle,” which is an alternative to the traditional purse system. Instead of the winner getting a zillion dollars and last place going home with a pittance, anybody who runs a certain percentage of the annual schedule is paid a salary for each full-time race car run, and winners are given a nominal sum as a prize.
As can be easily predicted by those of us familiar with the stories of Soviet Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, IndyCar has been suffering from poor racing, fewer teams, fewer race cars, and an utter collapse of the fanbase. Besides a single day per year burning off 75 years of tradition, American Open-Wheel Racing is on life support. Of course, these are “bad economic times” and “motorsports is on a decline” and “we can’t afford competition.” The excuses have been flying since 1996 when they first headed down this path. Every half-hearted, feeble attempt to introduce a market influence is quickly undone. The toe in the water is withdrawn as soon as they realize it’s wet.
The path to success is simple and quite obvious. Undoing 25 years of stupid will hurt, but, as Venezuela is figuring out right now, the pain is inevitable. IndyCar will wither into nothing unless it reintroduces the competitive spirit of the free market into the sport. The excuses of the boot-lickers in the sport are all based on some nugget of truth, but IndyCar isn’t failing because motorsports are unpopular or because the economy is bad. IndyCar is failing because socialism is more than just painful to live under, it’s also painful to watch.
It’s sad to see such a great tradition go down in flame, but these days even our sports act as a cautionary tale against socialism and all its variants.
2 ounces / 60 grams of Deep Eddy Ruby Red
In each human society, such a conflict must be handled. Conflicts in the common sphere are generally covered by, as Bastiat said, The Law. The Law in this case is not legislation but a subset of morality, and it usually exists absent of a specific government, religion, or whatever. Libertarianism, and the final form – anarchy – are still human societies and as such they have The Law.
Any political view that sees a place for a government, from minarchists to socialists, sees justice as a main function of government, up to the only legitimate function.
The question is how is justice best delivered? Can there be a market for it, separate from or identical to the one for everything else? I don’t see it that way, not as a pure market solution, but something else.
years of the Indianapolis 500, the race and the supporting series were based on a free-market-style “run what you brung” model, resulting in a rich and storied tradition. Stories of 
As can be easily predicted by those of us familiar with the stories of Soviet Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, IndyCar has been suffering from poor racing, fewer teams, fewer race cars, and an utter collapse of the fanbase. Besides a single day per year burning off 75 years of tradition, American Open-Wheel Racing is on life support. Of course, these are “bad economic times” and “motorsports is on a decline” and “we can’t afford competition.” The excuses have been flying since 1996 when they first headed down this path. Every half-hearted, feeble attempt to introduce a market influence is quickly undone. The toe in the water is withdrawn as soon as they realize it’s wet.