Gain and Loss

Everyone seems to believe that one man's gain must be another man's loss. The only exception they allow is government action in which case the poor gain and somehow, nobody loses. Well, maybe some rich pigs get taxed, but we hate them anyway.
Reality is precisely the opposite: unless coercive forces like the government get involved, people only interact by choice. Every exchange has expected gains for all parties. You can tell that they expected to gain because if someone expected to lose, they wouldn't have participated.

Subconscious

My brain comes up with some pretty weird stuff while I sleep, but this one is pretty interesting even a few hours after waking up. I dreamed that I was vandalizing a Port-a-John by writing on the wall:

Parapsychologists and parasitologists: one makes your ghosts flee, the other makes your fleas ghosts.

You've Been Mugged

If you have ever been to a large city, you have probably been mugged, and you might not have even realized it. I'm not saying you failed to notice a guy in a ski-mask jumping out of an alley and pointing a knife in your face; it was probably more subtle than that. It could be as simple as someone politely asking for money. To see why I call this a mugging, let's identify the essential features of a traditional mugger and see how a panhandler compares.
In a mugging, there are usually two parties: the mugger and the victim. The victim has something the mugger wants (say money). The mugger cannot or chooses not to try to exchange anything for the money. Instead, the mugger forces the victim into a dangerous position (such as the business end of a gun) and offers to release the victim—in exchange for the money. The mugger has produced nothing of value. He created a problem and expects to be paid to take it away.
Notice how the paragraph above becomes a typical begging situation when the gun is replaced with social pressure. Beggars create awkward an social situation and expect to be paid for taking it away.
A defender of begging would probably point out that awkwardness is not deadly whereas muggers' weapons are. This is certainly true, but they operate on the same principal, and while I prefer to have a nasty feeling in my gut rather than a knife, you can successfully threaten me with either.
Furthermore, while beggars are less physically dangerous, I suggest that there's a special sort of repugnance in using someone's own pity as a weapon to against them. Imagine if muggers did the same: they would ask to borrow your pocket knife and then held it to your throat saying, "Give me your wallet!"
I am not suggesting that we arrest people for begging. Asking for money (like most forms of speech) is a right that should be protected. Denying people the right to solicite "donations" could easily lead to outlawing certain types of fundraising for non-profit organizations (I think we can agree to avoid that). However, if individuals recognize begging as a sort of coercion, then we will feel less of the social pressure beggars attempt to apply. We will be disarming our muggers.

Friendly Airport Service

There are wonderful people in the world; we just meet them so seldom.

I once flew into the Salt Lake airport with some LDS missionaries returning from their two years of service. An airport employee (janitor I think) approached one of them and asked, "You're just getting back from a mission?"
"Yes."
"Your family hasn't seen you in two years?"
"Yes."
"Are they waiting for you in the lobby?"
"They said they would be."
"Would you like to surprise them?"
The employee then proceeded to show the missionary a hallway through a door marked "Employees Only."
Later, in the lobby, I quickly identified the young man's relations: a huge group with signs reading "Welcome Home Elder ______!" (they matched his name-tag). They were anxiously watching the passengers arriving from his flight.
I stuck around to see what happened. When the family had waited long enough to seem a bit confused by his absence, I saw the missionary emerge from another "Employees Only" door—behind his family. He was able to get right in among them before shouting, "How's everybody doing?"

Let's hear it for offering quirky services to strangers.

Shouting in the Darkness

I post to this blog for the same reasons that a castaway writes in the sand or that men on mountaintops talk to the stars. I have no hope that the words will  reach anyone else, but I derive some pleasure from translating my ideas into a physical form. It is a protest against the tragedy that so many worthwhile thoughts die without notice even from the thinker.

Return of the Jug

Has anyone else noticed that in "The Return of the King" (2003) the pitcher Pippin puts in Gandalf's arms when he takes the palantír looks just like the one he has in Minas Tirith a few minutes later? The first time is about 00:30:09 into the film, the second is 00:52:46. I'm not suggesting that the filmmakers made a mistake, only I was surprised to see that Pippin or Gandalf would bother to pack it. Or that such identical jugs were in mass production in a pre-industrial society.

Greed

Regardless of the system, the people at the top are capitalists.

The only question is whether they allow the other people to be.

Milton Friedman is unstoppable. He taught at Chicago University (one of the world's finest school for economics) where not even the professors could find room to disagree with him once he got started explaining things. He went on to win the Nobel Prize in economics, largely for his explanations of American monetary policy and explaining why the government should basically stay out of businesses' way.
Here's part of a chat he had with Phil Donahue:

The first video for this interview can be found below. The entire show was uploaded by the same user.