Boyakasha! West Side...

The debate about what the New York City government should do with the undeveloped area on the West side of Southern Midtown Manhattan is a perfect example of how the insane belief in socialistic land ownership has infected local politics, however predictable. On the one side is Bloomberg with the plan to build a giant sports and convention stadium. On the other hand are a variety of folks that don’t like Bloomberg’s plan, but aren’t really proposing anything, really.

The point here is that they are all wrong. The land should be sold to one or several private owner(s), but they should be free to do what they please with the land. Economic value represents aggregate preferences. This is nothing but Economics 101. Hello???

The highest bidder may want to build condos, office buildings, a mini-Disney, a sports stadium, a shopping mall, or a grand old Red Light District, of which Manhattan has been deprived in the quest of making the city particularly boring for desperate adults. Or any combination of the above. Why is the choice a sports stadium or nothing?

The City should sell the land to the highest bidder and let him/her do whatever they want with it, subject to the basic/normal noise/pollution limitations. Let’s say that turns out to be a $10bn or whatever. It should then cause a corresponding tax cut, particularly on the onerous income tax which causes the millionaires to leave the city in favor of less punitive jurisdictions.

Then, sell The Port Authority and all other government property so as to fund the long-term elimination of the income tax. Oh, and how about firing those 250,000 city employees that make NYC as large a socialist state as many ex-socialist states? Big Government is a cancer, and let the surgery start on Manhattan’s middle-West side with an auction and a major income tax cut! Let Freedom ring!

God is a fairy tale

I was watching Meet The Press today, and it was a disaster. Tim Russert's guests for the full hour (!) were some Catholic folks, like a nun, a Cardinal-type, and some other highly religious dude. The occasion was of course the aftermath of selecting a new Pope. The discussion quickly entered such subjects as what God really meant when he created mankind, and the meaning of "communion." To begin with, that's too big a word for me, but the fundamental problem is of course that these were seemingly grown-up adults, educated and all, discussing a bunch of complete fairy tales as if they actually meant something in the realm of reality.

When I was about 5 years old, I developed a great love for Christmas Eve. For this there were three reasons. First, grandma made some fantastic food. Second, my parents gave me all sorts of presents. Third, at 3pm on Christmas Eve, Swedish government television (the only one in existence there at the time) showed a 90 minute Disney cartoon compilation "Christmas with Donald Duck."

At that time, at age 5, I already understood perfectly well that Donald Duck, just like Santa Claus, was nothing but pure fantasy. A pleasant fantasy, but nevertheless nothing that a person of average intelligence would confuse with reality.

Same thing with organized religion. I am amazed every time when people argue about religion, specifically in the context of there somehow being a god who somehow has opinions on what’s right and what’s wrong. This includes wearing certain clothing, eating certain food, or behaving in a certain way. Talk about loony tunes!

As for any form of priesthood, of any religion, it seems like a club of old men incapable of getting laid. Looking like Ku Klux Klan in their pointy hats and robes, they run around with smoke generators and gold chains like the best of rappers, asking 11 year old boys to kneel in front of them and open their mouths and stick out their tongue so that they can… what? Either way, god is all powerful, but the church needs money. Those pointy hats and robes don't come cheap, especially not when combined with all of that rapper bling.

Surely there are many nice and well-meaning priests and the like floating around in every religion, but I never cease to be amazed that grown up adults of at least average intelligence actually take the religious fairy tales seriously. Hundreds millions of people have died as a result. It is a shame.

Moral of the story: I got it already at age 5. Billions of people live for decades and believe in this crap until they die. I must be really smart.

Eliot Spitzer, the evil of our time

To what or whom would you compare someone who has added trillions of dollars of cost to the U.S. economy and destroyed entire professions? Darth Vader? A Tsunami? The plague? Cancer? Kim Jong Mentally Ill? NY State Governor front-runner Eliot Spitzer does not possess favorable historical analogies. Through Sarbanes-Oxley (there are two co-conspirators right there) and the insane regulations cooked up in the made-up-"Analystgate" charges in 2002, Spitzer is primarily responsible for having knocked, according to some estimates, trillions of dollars off the net worth in numerous companies, and destroyed numerous lives. For this, Spitzer probably deserves the harshest of verdicts in the history of mankind.