President Obama calls on every American to learn code

He looks so very tired in that video.

The message is clear: top political donors want cheaper labor.

While I think more people should learn code, I think the president getting up and telling everyone to do anything that isn't applicable to... well... every-freaking-one... is stupid.

Washington is clueless in two ways. (1) It normally doesn't get new things and lags behind. (2) When it does get things, it proceeds to fail at execution or not really get them and do ham-fisted things like this. So that means that Washington is always clueless about everything.

Sometimes I think the only thing that keeps us from being invaded or otherwise run over by the rest of the world is that nearly all other governments are at least as incompetent as ours.

Yep. Can't have high-paying jobs. That would empower people.

We are very rapidly moving toward a time when the labor battles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries will have to be re-fought. History is clearly showing us that the alternative to activist labor is feudalism. In "natural" markets, multiple overlapping network effects cause nearly all wealth to flow to a very tiny number of strategically positioned or connected participants. Everyone else must fight for a slice of the pie. Even in a growing-pie scenario, nearly all the growth flows to the top; a rising tide lifts only the largest boats.

The libertarian ideal of volitional culture leading to equality and general prosperity is, like nearly all other political ideals, rapidly shaping up to be false. It's becoming clear that the natural state of human affairs is feudalism, and that anything else is an unnatural state that must be maintained "artificially."

Working with the congress that has the lowest approval rating in history, and the congress that has passed the least amount of bills will do that to you.