Dustin Blake

Is there something dissonant about the fact that the greatest fortunes in human history have been created with a system developed largely by taxpayers dollars? Military research and labs at public universities. And many of the people whom the Internet has enriched have become libertarians who earnestly tell you that they are “socially liberal and fiscally conservative,” and resist progressive taxation because of it.

at CELLspace

at Civic Center Inn

the-feature:

> The postal service is not a federal agency. It does not cost taxpayers a dollar. It loses money only because Congress mandates that it do so. What it is is a miracle of high technology and human touch. It’s what binds us together as a country.

Every time I see something crazy like this happening in Arizona, I think of this lovely quote: “If you want to live in a Republican state with very conservative right-wing laws, then there’s a place called Arizona,” [Calif. Governor Jerry Brown’s] spokesman Gil Duran said [in response to Southern Calif. Republican nutjobs who proposed the creation of a “South California”]

Gay Men Will Marry Your Girlfriends

We support gay marriage. Here’s why you should too.

at San Francisco Opera’s Lohengrin (at War Memorial Opera House)

Hey @joyent !

“We appreciate and value you as one of Joyent’s lifetime Shared Hosting customers … your lifetime service will end on 10/31/2012…”

Norfolk Street (Taken with Instagram)

Even after all these years, it’s still my favorite spot. (Taken with Instagram at Northwest Vista)

The relentless drive for productivity may have some limits; if our economies don’t continue to expand, we risk putting people out of work.

anyone know what this is? is it pier one crap or art? (Taken with instagram)

in-between (Taken with Instagram at InterContinental-Mark Hopkins Hotel)

Barney Frank: These days in developed countries, everybody says you need a private sector to create wealth, you need a public sector to create rules by which wealth is created. Sensible people understand that. Let me read this to you.

[Picks up copy of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.] “In no system that could be rationally defended would the state just do nothing. An effective competitive system needs an intelligently designed and continuously adjusted legal framework as much as any other. Even the most essential prerequisite of its proper functioning, the prevention of fraud and deception, including exploitation of ignorance, provides a great and by no means yet fully accomplished task of legislative activity. There are undoubtedly fields where no legal arrangements can create the main condition on which the usefulness of the system of competition and private property depends where, um, it’s impracticable to make the enjoyment of certain services dependent on the payment of a price, competition will not produce the services; and the price system is, um, ineffective, um, we have to resort to the substitution of direct regulation by authority where the conditions for the proper working of competition cannot be created.” [Closes book.]

NYMag: Do you read Hayek a lot?

Barney Frank: For these purposes. And so we’ve had people who understand you have the private sector, you need the public sector. The tension between left and right has been where you draw that line, but it’s been a contest between people who see maybe a 20 percent overlap. For the first time in American history we have people in power now who reject that. If they knew it was Hayek, they might think, well, maybe, but they reject the public sector.

That’s why we can’t work together.’

(From New York Magazine interview)

Feels just shy of icy… looks frigid (Taken with instagram)

Postcard Row (Taken with Instagram at Alamo Square)