What a difference a hyphen makes
For example, take this headline from the WSJ:
Treasury Unveils Toxic-Asset Plan, Citing ‘Acute Pressure’ on Banks
It would take on a whole different flavor if there were no hyphen between “toxic” and “asset,” wouldn’t it?
It somebod buys rotten bananas…
and they find them to be rotten…
they will do due diligence to make sure they don’t buy rotten bananas again…
However, if the federal government steps in and tells the rotten banana buyers that the government will pay you for those rotten bananas there IS NO incentive for the buyer to every do the due diligence of not buying rotten bananas in the future.
Capitalism is a system where the people choose who gets what resources.
This means that capitalism is a system where the buyers learn by making bad choices how not to make bad choices.
In socialism – bad choices are rewarded.
It is this simple. When the government chooses who gets what resources they are constantly helping people who make bad choices.
It is imperative that people learn.
It is imperative that lenders do not make bad loans in mass and buyers do not choose to do no down payment loans.
All of us need to learn a lesson here.
Conservative values and principles work in a system of capitalism. We are the most prosperous nation in the world for a reason. Because our economic system for the most part was capitalist and we have a trust factor because we are a nation of laws.
Capitalism cannot work in a nation with anarchy.
That is why I’m a centrist.
But I’m not a socialist.
neo-neocon: Lose the hyphen between “toxic” and “asset” as you said. Then move the hyphen to a position after the second “s” in “asset. Then lose the “et” at the end of “asset” and insert the word “covering” into the space after the re-positioned hyphen and before the word “plan.” Ah, now the headline speaketh the truth!
I think that the common use of medical metaphors (or they could be similes)—acute, weak, recovery, remedy, stimulus, toxic—is a slick device used by our new overlords for disguising what is really an increasing scope, concentration, and administration of state power.
Nock had it down pat…
“…certain formulas, certain arrangements of words, stand as an obstacle in the way of our perceiving how far the conversion of social power into State power has actually gone. The force of phrase and name distorts the identification of our own actual acceptances and acquiescences. We are accustomed to the rehearsal of certain poetic litanies, and provided their cadence be kept entire, we are indifferent to their correspondence with truth and fact….
“When Hitler and Mussolini invoke a kind of debased and hoodwinking mysticism to aid their acceleration of this process, the student at once recognizes his old friend, the formula of Hegel, that “the State incarnates the Divine Idea upon earth,” and he is not hoodwinked. The journalist and the impressionable traveller may make what they will of “the new religion of Bolshevism”; the student contents himself with remarking clearly the exact nature of the process which this inculcation is designed to sanction.” [Alfred Jay Nock. Our enemy, the state.]
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And if you’d be so kind, young Neo, please explain how Nureyev manages (a rather broad term) to land at exactly the right spot on the circumference—towards the end. What is he doing? Is there some kind of steering mechansim? Is he even looking at a spot on the floor in front of him? How does he know where he is if he’s not looking?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wvwPo899bE
Lance de Boyle: It is actually rather easy to do, for dancers anyway. It done partly by what’s called “spotting.” No, that’s not looking at the ground, but looking at a spot ahead of you as you are turning, a spot that’s in the direction you want to go. I might do a post on that one day. The other element is that he has practiced this so many times he knows just how to gauge the distance. It is common in ballet class, for example, to do an exercise with turns or jumping turns that goes around in a full circle, and then goes from the back corner to the front opposite corner. Dancers do that sort of configuration all the time and they get used to it.
Toxic asset plan. Ooohhh. Wicked, wicked Neo.