As the Thunderer reports, the man who has built a considerable fortune largely through the process of mimicking others’ consumer products and plastering his highly-visible brand stickers all over the copies, Sir Richard Branson, is about to move into virgin territory, indeed, by taking on the ghost of John D Rockefeller.
Prestopundit (aka Greg Ransom) had a funny word to describe, based on a article by Will Wilkinson, how several left-liberal pundits including Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd and Harold Meyerson are describing President Bush: Murray Rothbard with a Texas accent
Paul Poenicke, a student from my honors seminar on Spontaneous Order, sent me this Slate article concerning the “unorganized” and surprisingly efficient market in “green gold” out of Kenya. A quote from the end of the article:
US-backed government kills another 150, and the dead should probably grateful: “We are warning those who have given shelter to terrorists that they must stop, kick them out or else we will cut off their hands, heads and tongues as we did in Tal Afar,” said the defense minister of liberated Iraq.
. . . not that government in the US has been small in the past 150 years, but the Wall Street Journal’s columnist David Wessel announced (subscription required) in his September 8 column that the days of small-government rhetoric are over, too, and the reasons he cites (9/11 and Katrina) are indeed working much as he represents, and many Austrians fear.
