If it is not enough that conductors are being arrested for employing low-priced singers, now we have leading composers threatened by the state at the behest of animal rights advocates. The story is that Sir Peter Davies, a leading British composer, was spotted with a dead swan in his yard, which he admits that he planned to eat, though he denies having killed it.
An excellent story by Brian Carney: “Use a Baton, Go to Jail.” It tells of how France’s and Germany’s music unions use the state to enforce their labor cartel, even to the point of arresting the conductors of operas who employ low-paid foreign actors.
Ben “Helipcopter” Bernanke, the same Fed Governor who has threatened to drop bales of freshly printed money from a helicopter in a last-ditch effort to fight deflation, speaking to the Virginia Association of Economics, recently state:
I wrote a short piece for Hillsdale’s student paper in response to a physics professor’s warnings about an impending oil shortage. (He’s a nice guy so please don’t insult him...) I thought some people might be interested in my fanciful arguments.
Apples sues blogs for revealing future product plans. Judge sides with Apple, saying that blogs were not “legitimate members of the press”. Story
With a few exceptions contemporary commentators on economic problems are advocating economic intervention. This unanimity does not necessarily mean that they approve of interventionistic measures by government or other coercive powers. Authors of economics books, essays, articles, and political platforms demand interventionistic measures before they are taken, but once they have been imposed no one likes them. Then everyone—usually even the authorities responsible for them—call them insufficient and unsatisfactory.
