I know, I know, it’s old. But it’s damn funny. If airlines normally ran ads like this they’d never have an empty seat.
Yes. I. Went. There.
Category Archives: capitalism
Buddy, can you spare ten trill?
Well, I have been asked for money for a latte before. And a friend of mine has an email signature, I live for the day schools have all the funding they need and the Pentagon has to have bake sales. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at this. Actually, having lived here for so long I shouldn’t really be surprised at anything.
It appears that the US Department of Homeland Security, having exhausted the normal funding routes of bleeding taxpayers and selling the next few generations to China as indentured servants, is muscling in on territory normally occupied by organizations like the Cancer Society, the SPCA, and the Make-A-Wish foundation.
It’s holding “charity” fundraising galas.
Oscar Wilde would’ve been ecstatic at the juxtaposition of life and art at the Brooklyn Museum earlier this evening — and not just because it involved an abundance of luxury goods. As guests arrived for the opening of an exhibit celebrating the art of Takashi Murakami and his collaboration with Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton, they were greeted by an outdoor scene more common on Canal Street: logoed merchandise piled on tables or hung on metal pegs, graffiti-covered walls, stalls closed “by court order,” and persistent vendors promising “best quality” and “best price.” The difference? Those piles of LV Multicolore bags were real…
As real as my recognition of Das Unheimliche.
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Stupid Girl
Loyal followers of Operation Global Media Domination will no doubt have several questions at this point.
- Who’s the stupid girl and dear god raincoaster’s not talking about me, is she?
- What does one of the best music videos of the 90’s have to do with the economics of prostitution?
- Really, she’s not talking about me, is she?
- etc.
Newcomers to the ol’ raincoaster blog will no doubt have an additional question, What the hell is she talking about?
She’s talking about this.
Now, to pick up the story where we left off (have you done your homework? Skim it at least enough to pass; didn’t you learn that essential skill in high school?)…
This post, and that post, were sparked by this post on Valleywag which in fact I did not read, because I went off on my own little egotistical tangent and became far more interested in what I had to say than what Melissa had to say.
That’s not like me, eh?
Now, if you’ve read your homework you know that the general opinion among economists is that prostitution is economically not only viable but also cheaper than being married. One economist went so far as to suggest that men open accounts with their wives and pay only for services rendered, on the basis that this would save the men money overall. One presumably unmarried economist (or, if married, presumably permanently celibate after penning the column).
The consensus was that marriage had one single advantage over prostitution as far as men are concerned:
Procreation.
I’m not exactly sure how it is that all these economists are unaware of the phenomenon of surrogacy, but apparently they are. The laws around surrogacy are quite obviously not relevant to the discussion because in most of the areas studied by those economists I referenced prostitution was itself illegal. Illegality and unregulation obviously pose no meaningful barrier to entry for clients as far as these studies are concerned; things might be different if everything were legal, but the studies stand for our current situation regardless of the legality or illegality of the activities described, which presumably extends to surrogacy. If a man can find a woman who will accept cash for sex, he is presumably not constrained by conscience or threat of the law against finding one who would accept cash to carry a pregnancy to term.
What I am saying is that: these women exist. I know one. She has babies for money. It is her career. And that song is dedicated to her.
Read past the jump for the whole story.
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the mansions Jack built, the house Jack lost
I’ve been working on a post about this for quite some time, but this single comic from AccordionGuy says it better than I could, which will, of course, not stop me from giving it the old college-dropout try, right after the pic:
And you know that Jack’s taxes paid for every one of them. The banks have been shuffled around between rich people, the bundled mortgage products rebundled and shuffled and dealt out again, tax writoffs have been off-written, but quite frankly the lack of defenestrations leads me to believe this was nothing but a shell game played by knowing hucksters, and every first-generation homeowner who thought he’d do something long-term for his family and think ahead instead of renting played the sucker here.
That’ll teach ’em.
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Hours of Fun!
And hours, and hours, and hours. Don’t tell ME about attention deficit disorder; I could play that forever!
If only. Oh, if only. This little baby is my dream machine. And they could have a right-wing version with an AI simulation of William F. Buckley for the playoffs. Gore Vidal, William Kristol and Naomi Klein modules! I can see it all now! I could sell a million of them!
Want to take a shot at it yourself? Here you go: the collected assault works of Noam Chomsky!
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raincoaster 