Friday, July 20, 2012

A Rant from and Old School Lefty

The author Fran Lebowitz spoke recently at a book launch in Greenwich Village in NYC. The video should be viewed mostly for its entertainment value, especially her hatred of Mayor Bloomberg. She has a decidedly anti-private property view on things, but anyone who hates Bloomberg as much as she does can't be all bad. And I really like the way she calls out public-private partnerships.



(ht Thompson Clark)

7 comments:

  1. She would make a great stand-up comedian. Very funny!

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  2. She's the female version of Lewis Black.

    Some Liberals are 'ok' despite their almost complete disregard for property rights. I find most of them completely economically ignorant. If they had the foggiest idea of what "scarcity" is and a respect for property rights it's be easier to get along them.

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  3. She's smart and funny. Of course, she's economically ignorant - but that's a very big club. When she talks about New York, she really means Manhattan - that's New York to her. Her New York is not only a separate world but a separate universe. Non-Manhattanites are rubes, non-entities and losers unworthy of any regard. Such is the chauvinism of New Yorkers of the Manhattan stripe. Fine! No problem. I dig it. I applaud it. Please, secede from the rest of New York City and New York State and the USA. Then, visiting New York will be like visiting a foreign country, which, for most Americans, is pretty much what it's like visiting it now.

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  4. I'm sure the NYU types that are destroying as much of Manhattan as they can are all made to read Jane Jacobs, and believe that they're making the city a better place with all their power and real estate shenangians.

    Much respect to her for not finishing high school and hating NYU!

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  5. Just finished watching. She's fantastic. Sure she's no orthodox Austrian, but if you live in nyc for any amount of time, you'll learn that people like this are generally your ally. Kinda like how if Kucinich was running against Romney, I'd vote for him. I know he's an outright socialist(but at least he's honest about it!), but there's enough to like about the guy, and I really don't think he can be bribed by banks or the military. Yes he's beholden to unions, but they're the least of the big evils in my book.

    Whether you agree with her or not, she's informed and pissed off, and there's a lot you can learn from people like that.

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  6. When she speaks about the "legal" size of an apartment (around min. 9) are we to presume that she considers those who choose to live in the "illegal" sized apartments sub-human? She says that the reason there is a legal size of "n" sq.ft. (presumably scientifically determined optimal living sq. footage); that reason being that "it's not good for human beings." She proves Mises right again in that a socialist's worst nightmare is being ruled by another socialist.

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  7. *I'm sure the NYU types that are destroying as much of Manhattan as they can are all made to read Jane Jacobs, and believe that they're making the city a better place with all their power and real estate shenangians.*

    If they're reading Jane Jacobs, wouldn't they be devotees of spontaneous order?


    http://mises.org/media/6239/Jane-Jacobs-19162006?utm_source=mp3&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=Direct_MP3

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