Poor Matthew Yglesias was mugged, that's just awful. Still, what can one do? Adding more police would be a subsidy to pedestrians and encourage moral hazard. There will be a flood of upwardly mobile people moving into the neighborhood and the markets will lose equilibrium. Although if people like the Sudermans and Yglesias don't gentrify the neighborhood the inhabitants won't have anyone to thank for pricing them out of their neighborhood and putting in hipster pubs.
Yglesias is no McSuderman, even though he does seem to view all the world as his sandbox. He does not think carefully about the consequences of his little suggestions but at least he does think. Yet like all Villagers, old or young, he is perfectly comfortable associating with repulsive people. A little charm, a lot of money, a helping hand now and again, that's all they require, and then taking Koch and Bradley money to shaft the poor is perfectly acceptable. Perhaps one is above doing such things one's self, but one sure would go the the dinners, beach vacations and weddings of those who do.
You put aside your successful career to have and raise a child, you sink hundreds of thousands of dollars into nannies, lessons, summer camp, private school, university, graduate school. You raise a child to be a leader, a thinker, and then what do they do? Sell out their integrity for a seat at the Algonquin Round Table Of Fail, in which the mediocre sons and daughters of the rich ape their betters. You get Jonah Goldberg, red-faced with gobbling cognac and reeking of cigars. Or Megan McArdle on CNN, rolling her eyes with contempt as she informs the world that Goldman, Sachs isn't the bad guy here, it's the system, which took advantage of its naive, foolish Masters of the Universe.
ADDED: Shorter Megan McArdle: I have finally found one thing I want to spend taxpayer money on--personal protection.
If this had happened to anyone else, McArdle would have told them they they went into the purchase with their eyes open, knowing the neighborhood, and got a much cheaper house in return for decreased security. So why should she care about their problem when they are reaping the monetary advantage?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
11 comments:
MattY is a sociopath.
It's in pretty low taste for you to be making hay out of this unfortunate occurrence, you know.
Even the habitual haters on Matt's blog are restricting themselves mostly to condolences and get-wells, as they should.
Myles
Myles, you're absolutely right. I don't know how you can bear to visit this site and I wouldn't blame you at all if you never came back. It would serve me right.
Personally, I blame their attackers for their stupidity and poor selection of targets.
Make no mistake: Yglesias is a spoiled brat and a punk. He doesn't deserve to be beaten; he requires waterboarding on a daily basis for a period of, say, five to eight months.
However, the attackers should have gone after Bob Wright or Eli Lake.
Were the female thugs, give 'em baseball bats and send them the way of Sally Quinn or the insufferable Kristen Soltis.
It's in pretty low taste for you to be making hay out of this unfortunate occurrence, you know.
It is however, excellent strategery to use a failure on 9/11 as an excuse to invade and destroy some country you always wanted to destroy.
Furthemore, it's excellent strategery to use the debt created from this debacle (along with other things Republicans did to bust the budget and enrich themselves) to go after programs like Social Security that you always wanted to destroy.
Point being, Myles, if you accept that making hay from unfortunate things is wrong, then you ought to stop promoting any and all right-wing causes immediately.
T.I.A.
~
It's in pretty low taste...
Trolls give fashion advice now? Who knew!
What do our friends think will happen if/when they are able destroy the social safety net? The suffering of others means nothing to them, others' deaths are a statistic, war is an intellectual exercise. But when one of their own is hurt---call the cops, start profiling, pour money into DC law enforcement.
What do they think happened in Iraq? What do they think will happen here, now that their precious financial innovation and Randian system crashed the economy? DC is just a beginning; its income inequality has spread and so will its violence. Every action has consequences---do they think they are exempt?
All it takes is a gated community of like minded producers to feel safe again.
Susan of Texas,
That's a fantastic point and one that really clarifies what is so painful about Megan's writing on every subject. Her attitude towards the suffering of others is, basically, "they should have taken more precautions/had more money to prevent this from happening." But when fellow citizens try to club together to "take more precautions" or "have more money" to prevent something from happening she excoriates them for their presumed weakness, socialism, and class warfare.
Take her attitude towards rent control and renter protections. When she imagines herself a proto-landlord/owner she's against them. When she was actually a renter she used and abused the system as much as she could.
Now she's a homeowner and a mortgage holder. She will attack Elizabeth Warren and any attempt to collectively enforce consumer protections until it turns out that she needs them. Then she will complain that somehow those regulations aren't in place to protect her from her own bad decisions.
aimai
McMeg on tv talking about goldman was terrifying. She kept looking left and right like you do when you're making shit up. or and also like gollum.
Amusing to see a commenter describe Eliz. Warren as a consumer protector, and not as one who preys on poor fools who didn't Ivy Up when they finished HS.
Elizabeth Warren is analogous to Barry Obama.
In case you weren't watching. Which it appears at least one of you (Anonymous, that'd be you) wasn't doing.
Post a Comment