Logic is not only an exact science, but is the most simple and elementary of all sciences; it ought therefore undoubtedly to find some place in every course of education.
William Stanley Jevons, Elementary Lessons on Logic (1870), Preface.
On March 29, 1990, the Czechoslovak parliament proved unable to reach an agreement on what to call the country after the “Velvet Revolution” — in which the Communist Party was booted from sole power. This sparked the “Hyphen War,” a tongue-in-cheek moniker for the dispute between Czechs and Slovaks about official recognition of the two nations’ equal status. (The Slovak representatives wanted to insert a hyphen into the name, to make the Slovak part stand out.) Eventually, the dispute was resolved with the “Velvet Divorce,” in which the two countries split up, on New Year’s Day, 1993.
That’s the investment that “Meta” — the umbrella outfit that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — has agreed to invest in a patch of land in Kansas City’s Northland. The plan is to build a data center at an 882-acred development site.
“Political leaders who gathered at Union Station heralded the news as a major development for Kansas City and the state.” This private investment “would far surpass the scale of recent projects in the region . . . said Missouri Gov. Mike Parson,” The Kansas City Star relates.
But there’s more.
“Meta spokeswoman Melanie Roe said the company could invest as much as $40 billion at the site in land acquisition, construction, and development of a larger data center.” This is to be a “long term partnership.”
Make that a Big Business/Big Government partnership. The biggest ever, perhaps.
The Kansas City Council had unanimously approved a development plan for the site last April, with data centers there enabled to access to more than $8 billion in local tax incentives. “Incentive watchdog group Good Jobs First says such an incentive award would be the largest ever in American history,” The Kansas City Star explains.
Take it as a word of caution. This is not laissez faire capitalism. This is not “the free market.” It is favoritism. It unites big business and big government.
And even as an investment in future taxes — which is the ostensible justification for the subsidies — the data complex is slated to employ about a hundred workers.
Politicians don’t make the best investors. But they do make easy marks for big corporations.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Joseph Warren, “Boston Massacre” oration, March 5, 1772.
May our land be a land of liberty, the seat of virtue, the asylum of the oppressed, a name and a praise in the whole Earth, until the last shock of time shall bury the empires of the whole world in one common undistinguished ruin!
On March 28, 1936, Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa was born. This recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature ran, in 1990, for the presidency of Peru, but lost to Alberto Fujimori. His novels include La casa verde (The Green House), La guerra del fin del mundo (The War of the End of the World), La fiesta del chivo (The Feast of the Goat), and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, which was filmed as Tune in Tomorrow.
Sam Adams didn’t say it. The Gray Lady admitted it. Texas didn’t do it. China did something. The Deep State is all over it.
What is “it”?
Depends.
Here are the contexts:
This Week in Common Sense, March 21 – 25, 2022. Also available as audio via podcatcher, or hosted on SoundCloud.
He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.
Epicurus, as quoted in The Essential Epicurus: Letters, Principal Doctrines, Vatican sayings, and fragments (1993) edited by Eugene Michael O’Connor, p. 99.
On March 27, 1915, Mary Mallon, popularly and scandalously known as “Typhoid Mary,” was put in quarantine, where she would remain for the rest of her life, over 23 years incarcerated.
Ms. Mallon was the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States. As an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid, she was a puzzle to science, and, once discovered, an apparent threat to those around her, with at least three deaths attributable to her presence. She did not co-operate with officials, and preferred to work as a cook, which paid higher wages than less dangerous-to-the-public occupations. She had been quarantined once before her final permanent quarantine in a hospital.
The civil liberties aspect to her incarceration loom large, and it is obvious that health officials of her time were not exactly any more respectful of her rights than she was with those of her clients and neighbors. The case was an obvious turning point in American legal practice, and can be categorized along with eugenics and “social hygiene” — alongand with prohibition regarding alcohol and recreational drugs — in the increasing illiberality of legal practice in America in the early part of the 20th century.
We set the world afire!
Complaining about how much money someone is making is what dirty smear merchants do when, for all their efforts, they can’t think of anything actually wrong with what you’re saying and doing.
Mike Stephenson, aka Doctor Randomercam, in a talk at a men’s rights conference (2019).