The Unincorporated Man

The counterpart for education would be to "buy" a share in an individual's earning prospects: to advance him the funds needed to finance his training on condition that he agree to pay the lender a specified fraction of his future earnings. In this way, a lender would get back more than his initial investment from relatively successful individuals, which would compensate for the failure to recoup his original investment from the unsuccessful. There seems no legal obstacle to private contracts of this kind, even though they are economically equivalent to the purchase of a share in an individual's earning capacity and thus to partial slavery. - Milton Friedman, The Role of Government in Education

So begins The Unincorporated Man, by Dani Kollin & Eytan Kollin. You know when a book begins with a Friedman quote it is going to be interesting, and not exactly light reading. On that promise the Kollin brothers deliver.

The Kollin brothers that Friedman's idea and run with it, exploring the consequences of such a system. Just as micro-loans to the third world are perhaps the best way to help third world farmers and entrepreneurs, would not buying stock in such folks be even more beneficial.

This is the grand idea, would not owning stock in others thus harness the mighty engine of enlightened self interest? War would suddenly become unprofitable for example. You certainly don't want to go around shooting people you own stock in after all.

The down side is naturally that your investors expect a good return on their investment. Now as you save you can buy your stock back and get more control over your life, but as you become more successful your stock will naturally rise in price...

Enter into this world one Justin Cord, wealthy industrialist who had himself cryogenicly frozen when dying of cancer. He's from 300 years in the past, and older than the concept of personal incorporation. He IS the Unincorporated Man.

4 out of 5 stars. 5 for concept and 3 for execution. Lots of reviews say it reads like Heinlein, but it really doesn't. (Varley reads like Heinlein.) This novel reads more like someone tossed Asimov and Rand books into a blender but poured out the resulting mix while still a bit lumpy. It starts out well and ends well, but slows down quite a bit 2/3 of the way through.

And yes, I know this review is late, and everyone else read it last year. I picked up my copy at last year's CopperCon, (signed by Dani & Eytan) but these days it seems I only read while on business trips, and I haven't had to travel for the new job until last week.

Charter Arms - not vaporware - maybe

So remember way back when (December 2008) Charter announced they were building a revolver that took rimmless cartridges:

http://rocketsong.blogspot.com/2008/12/charter-arms-rimless-revolver.html

Well it looks like they have finally (maybe) built one or two.
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2011/08/12/charter-arms-pit-bull-40-sw-rimless-revolver-carr/
Early guns are in the .40 S&W, which I have no use for. Still waiting on the .45. And , as always, moon clips are a feature not a bug, so a moon clip enabled version would be preferable.

Minor home repairs

Drained the water tank at the old house and installed a catch pan under it. Not easy. Took 3 hours to install that stupid $9 part.

Lodi

A bit humid and sticky. Nice breeze, but you have to be outdoors for that. Just finished helping my dad install a new microwave. Took a bit of work, as we had to modify the kitchen cabinets to prevent the microwave from being too close to the cooktop.

SCOTUS gets another one right

The US Supreme Court just struck down the matching funds provision of the so-called "Clean Elections" law in Arizona. It's a good first start. The whole thing is blatantly unconstitutional as it forces people to fund the campaigns of those they disagree with.

Standard 5-4 split. I don't need to lay out who voted which way, because everyone knows how the court breaks on these issues.

Unalienable?

Fascinating discussion over on Volokh over the use of unalienable vs. inaliable in the Declaration.
HERE.

As far as I'm concerned it's "inalienable." It's a Latin root and therefore should have a Latin and not Grmanic prefix.

Besides, while the printer may have used unalienable, every copy in Jefferson's own handwriting uses the proper Latin form.

QoTW

From Eric over on TheGunCounter:

Evil and highly intelligent means showing some form of rational behavior and predictability. Evil and stupid means they can come up with anything at any time no matter how weird, crazy and destructive it is. It's the leftist version of "hold my beer and watch this!"

Rolling Thunder

Currently reading Rolling Thunder by John Varley.

Quite possibly the best Heinlein novel not written by Bob Heinlein. The main character is named Podkyne. Yes that's right.

I like Varley's sense of humor as well, from page 197:

I finally read the book my parents stole my name from, Podkayne of Mars.
What a Horrible book! What a mean old man! He spends the whole book getting you to like this sweet little airhead, and then he does terrible things to her. Don't you hate it when an author does that? I'm not reading any more of his books I promise you.

HA. Foreshadow much ?