Shopping as Theater or Grind

I recently watched a film in a movie theater in a ‘transitional’ neighborhood in Oakland and was more than pleasantly surprised on walking through the unimposing entrance to what could have been a very large garage. The scene opened up to a cheerful combination of café, pub and pizza parlor. Orders could be eaten in […]

Business as Usual or Revolution?

Liberals want to bring about a range of progressive goals for the poor and underprivileged, while Republican Tea Party types argue that, rather than trying to carve out larger slices of the pie for these groups, we would all be much better off relying on free markets to make the pie bigger for everyone. I […]

Roll Back The Regulators

I have spent countless hours during the past few weeks on what soldiers in the second world war called ‘chickenshit’ i.e. bureaucratic regulations so silly and so trifling that they don’t even measure up to the level of ‘bullshit’. Nowadays ‘chickenshit’ is everywhere. Virtually every occupation has a government and/or state licensing board and a bureaucracy […]