Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Ronald Brakels, Conservative:

1. I'd like to have an official conservative party card
2. I'm horribly conservative.
3. But I have never been able to find a conservative party.
4. Whenever I think I've found one they always turn out to be in favor of radically changing the atmosphere's radiation balance.

Thomas Hutcheson, NeoLiberal:

1. The market is always right except about externalities, collective consumption, and when market power and informational asymmetries are important.
2. If you think #1 is wrong, consider regulatory capture.
3. The market is inescapable and so has to be factored into the design of second best polities.
4. If you think #3 is wrong, consider the political economy of widely shared benefits and concentrates costs and vice versa.
5. The market giveth and the market taketh away so a progressive tax/benefit system needeth to take back and give back.
6. Not everyone who crieth "market, market" shall enter into the pareto optimum.

James Wimberley, Conservative:

1. My country, especially when wrong.
2. Wealth is merit, especially when inherited.
3. People not like me are inferior. Sorry, but SCIENTIFIC FACTS.
4. Out of my way, peasant.

Ebenezer Scrooge, Conservative Funder:

1. My wealth, especially when wrong.
2. Wealth is merit, especially when inherited.
3. Political power grows out of the barrel of an ATM machine.
4. I owe my allegiance to the nations that facilitate tax avoidance. And those nations owe their allegiance to me and my kind.
5. Out of my way, peasant.

Ebenezer Scrooge, Conservative Voter:

1. People not like me are inferior if they are the wrong color, surname or religion.
2. People not like me are threatening if they are Jews (coded today as "liberals.")
3. People not like me are inferior if they do not have a penis.
4. People not like me are threatening if they do have a penis but do not use it correctly.
5. People who are richer than me are neither inferior nor threatening unless they are Jews, of the wrong color or do not have a penis that they use correctly.

  derrida derider, Conservative:

1. The market destroys respect for authority (Marx's point)
2. New Money is vulgar and corrupts manners (more Marx)
3. The privileged have a duty to look after the poor
4. Unintended consequences are pervasive, from which follows:
   • Prevent large scale changes to the planet
   • Avoid foreign wars as counterproductive

#shouldread