1/ Jane Dark:

Over at the sud­denly and excel­lently renascent Ads With­out Prod­ucts, the sud­denly and excel­lently erst­while CR has been making a vital record of the guilty half-​repressed flow­er­ing of nation­al­iza­tion talk in the national dis­course — patiently noting that while the mea­sures dis­cussed are always simul­ta­ne­ously dis­avowed, and not really full-​nationalization (much less social­ism), it remains the case that

…every time they dress the win­dows with this sort of talk, every time the gov­ern­ment play­ers offer the argu­ment that Gen­eral Motors or Chrysler would have been better man­aged by respon­si­ble, sane, and forward-​thinking bureau­crats rather than their board and cor­po­rate man­age­ment, they turn the wheel of dis­cur­sive nor­ma­tiv­ity a click toward state man­age­ment and the eco­nom­ics of planning….

…

[W]e fear one could make what is, in effect, a quite con­trary claim.

…Read More…