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Rocketboom

8 Comments on wednesday may 11, 2005 : daily

  1. Jonny Goldstein

    Nice content, nice pacing. That car skydiving looks cool, but I’m gonna stick to bicycles.

    5 years ago  ∞
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  2. Perry de Havilland

    Great vlog… pity about the “please help us keep stealing other people’s money on your behalf” political crap at the end.

    5 years ago  ∞
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  3. ed

    Drew, I’m with Perry. Amendment may be good, who knows? All you did was air a Democratic National Committee ad. Ted, Barack, and Hillary. God, what a trio.

    But I guess your final bit of the day is often an ad, if thinly disguised, right? Yesterday Microsoft, today DNC.

    5 years ago  ∞
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  4. Perry de Havilland

    What can I say, I am a wild eyed libertarian type who just hates taking from one group of people by force and giving it to another. Education is something would rather not see the state involved with at all.

    5 years ago  ∞
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  5. Perry de Havilland

    Are refrigerators only for privileged elites? Are cars? Are TVs? Are TV programmes? Would you trust the state to make the cars you drive and produce the food you eat and the TV you watch and the books you read and the medicines you need?

    Unless you are a purblind leftist of the most extreme kind, my guess is you would not what those things given the evidence of history.

    Yet all those things are not something only the ‘privileged’ have access to. You have to be a truly poor member of an underclass to not even be able to buy some sort of refrigerator. Why? Because they get produced at prices all but the very poorest people can afford because in the western world the vast majority live in extraordinary affluence by historical and global standards. How many people can *really* not afford to buy a second hand Hyundai?

    So do you think people also have a demand for educational services? Yes, of course they do, so what makes you think completely different rules and logic applies to providing people with that? If you *do* trust the state to provide people with education but not all that other stuff, why? Can you explain how it is so different? Do you think if the state does not provide schools, no one else will and moreover for prices that service all the same markets other products do? If education is about teaching people how to think, do you really what something as important as that to be subject to complex *political* processes in which ever more arcane loans and grants and credits, all with their own catchy acronym, are constructed to make the true beneficiaries of the political process indispensable? If such things did not exist, who would need the likes of that bloated Senator? Not me, that is for sure. If I ever have children I would either send them to a private school or (more likely) home educate.

    5 years ago  ∞
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  6. noel james

    What gives re the uncle ted gang’s rendition of “it’s for the children and you’ll cry because we say so”. Isn’t mandatory public education/conscription/taxation contradictory to the spirit of your efforts? See “Getting Flat” as an excellent memoir-post re school as a brain-drain leveling prison.

    5 years ago  ∞
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  7. Perry de Havilland

    “That, my friend, is how the rich and poor were created. Whether you support the principle now just depends on how much you’ve got.”

    Actually the poor are (usually) that way because of the way the playing field is set up, not because someone directly took something from them. The biggest hurdle for most people starting some endeavour (be it getting a job or starting a business) is usually rules and regulations rather than just capital and skills. As existing market players (be they owners of capital or labour) usually like the state to impose all sorts of rules and regulation and burdens (such as employment taxes) which make it hard for new people to start up and compete with them, *that* is the real source of ‘rich and poor’ (I am generalising of course… things are rather different in other parts of the world).

    5 years ago  ∞
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  8. Josh Leo

    Remember the old days when we dreamed of a rocketboom that was available at midnight every night? It was a reality once…oh we were so young and idealistic back then. I guess that is what aging does to ya huh?

    5 years ago  ∞
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