WeblogBahamas.com

Did The Unregulated Market Steal Christmas, Nassau, Bahamas?

by Jerome Pinder

Over the last two days, I have heard from several business persons that Christmas sales were not as good as they hoped for.  Some have said that sales were down by as much as 50%, compared to the previous year.  If this trend is more wide spread, it offers little hope for the New Year, as many small businesses were holding on to see if Christmas sales would pull them through.  Will the Country now be faced with more closures and layoffs in the first quarter of 2010?

Will someone please wake up the Bahamian Judiciary

Sidney Sweeting, DDS

The headline in the Tribune this morning (December 29, 2009) read "Man stabbed to death in holiday violence" and stated further "Person suspected of killing 'was on bail for murder charge.'

How long should the Bahamian people have to put up with this nonsense and get the Judiciary to give some consideration to the law abiding, God-fearing citizens of the country?

To add insult to the injury a high ranking officer on the police force is telling the public that they should not take steps to protect themselves. Perhaps someone should let the officer know that the public has had enough of the inefficiency of both the police and the Judiciary. Enough is enough.

Bahamas Police Officer Number 154

Rick Lowe

We got back from a fabulous weekend in Marsh Harbour, Abaco last night and I went for the car while my wife waited for the bags.

After collecting the car, I circled around to pick the wife up. Unfortunately the bags were delayed so I pulled in behind four or five cars obviously waiting to do the same thing.

After two or three minutes, officer 154 of the Royal Bahamas Police Force moseys up to tell me to move along.

Lessons in Freedom: The Myth of Surplus Wealth

Tibor R. Machan

Over the last couple of decades a colleague from a famous university has challenged me about my view that everyone has the unalienable right to private property.  Now this position, derived from such sources as John Locke, the American Founders, Ayn Rand, and many others in the classical liberal, libertarian political tradition, amounts to the idea that in a just human community every adult human being is free to pursue prosperity in the form he or she desires--material wealth, intellectual resources, land, items produced by humans or nature, and so forth.  The right to private property is a right of action, an extension of the more general right to liberty: everyone must be left free to pursue wealth, to take those peaceful actions that could result in prosperity (although there is no guarantee that they will).  And this right to freedom of action is itself based on the yet broader right to one's life.  Life is an ongoing process of action which, for human beings, needs to be initiated by the living agent.  We have to do stuff to live, in short.  And having the right to live entails being free to do so.

Abaco, Bahamas to get its Bunker C power plant after all, and the hypocrisy of the political class

Rick Lowe

On a recent trip to Marsh Harbour we took a side trip out to the entrance gate of the new Bunker C power plant the Bahamas Government, through its subsidiary, the Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC), is installing in the Wilson City area of Abaco.

As you can see from the photo below, the construction is well under way.

Stephen Kellogg & The Sixers - Song of the week - Sweet Sophia

Rick Lowe

I stumbled across this great band by accident and purchased their CD Glassjaw Boxer and I'm really enjoying it.

I really like the opening track, Sweet Sophia and set up below so you can give it a listen.

Check out their web site here... and buy some of their music or that of Stephen Kellogg in one of his many incarnations. I think he's excellent.

Enjoy.

From Poverty to Prosperity: Arnold Kling, Nick Schulz, and Economics 2.0 on Reason.TV

Rick Lowe

I'm presently reading From Poverty to Prosperity, among other books. It's most enjoyable and this Reason.TV interview with the authors is very good.

Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie talks with economist Arnold Kling and journalist Nick Schulz about their new book, From Poverty to Prosperity (Encounter), which charts the fantastic increase in overall wealth despite recent economic troubles.

Taking a longer view that stretches back decades and even centuries, Kling and Schulz argue that we've entered the era of Economics 2.0, in which the key issue is innovation, transformation, and growth, not the divvying up of existing goods and services.

Schulz, the editor of the The American, and Kling, author also of the new Unchecked and Unbalanced, worry about a politics that is dangerously out of synch with the way the economy actually works.

Approximately 10 minutes. Shot by Dan Hayes and Meredith Bragg; edited by Bragg.

Watch this video at Reason.tv's YouTube channel.

Hope you buy the book and give it a read.

Tibor R. Machan on the Free-Market, the Problems of 'Mixed' Economies and the Virtues of Minarchism

Rick Lowe

The editors of The Daily Bell are pleased to present an exclusive interview with well-known libertarian philosopher Tibor R. Machan. [More...]

Hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did.

Merry Christmas and A Happy 2010

If you see a fat man, who's jolly and cute,

Wearing a beard and a red flannel suit,

And if he is chuckling and laughing away,

While flying around in a miniature sleigh,

With eight tiny reindeer to pull him along,

Then let's face it...

Your eggnog's too strong!

Merry Christmas and A Happy 2010

(Hat tip to OS for passing this along.)

Seeing double: aid, climate change and Copenhagen

Rick Lowe

You might know by now two topics I enjoy reading about are foreign aid and climate change.

Well this blog by Alan Beattie at the Financial Times and all the links provide some great food for thought.

Here's the opening paragraph:

Nothing to gladden the heart of a reporter* more than a good row about development aid. It’s got everything: political posturing about rich versus poor; blindingly complex arguments about “additionality”; dire warnings that everything will fall apart without it; George Soros punting some version of his Special Drawing Rights plan for the twentieth time. And so it came to pass with the Copenhagen summit.

I wonder why the government's of the world keep throwing good money after bad? Is it simply to appear that they are doing something?

What am I missing?