Rhody Trader

I have been lax in my posting of late, but I have good reason. It’s been a bit of a revolving door in the office of late. We’ve got one member of the team out long-term with a broken leg and a few other injuries from a tree falling on him. Last week a second member of the team was out on holiday. This week and next we’ve got another medical absentee. I’m the only not taking any time out – at least so far – and the ins and outs has kept my duties bouncing hither and thither.

I have been trying to keep up with things in the blogosphere, and came across a couple of interesting things. One is a post by Ulli at Wall Street Bully which I found rather funny, in a kind of ironic way. And if you want a free MIT education, you can go here.

Speaking to the Rhody part of my monicker, word has it Sarah Palin is making a move from the biggest state in the union to the littlest. If that were to come to pass, Palin would surely not be a viable candidate for anything anymore. Rhode Island is a classic New England Democrat dominated state.

In terms of being productive outside work, I’ve gotten myself back into gear with my trading faq project. I have a list of about 40 of the new trader questions I see asked most often with answers to them all. That list will probably expand now that I’m recruiting additional answer contributors. The goal is to end up with a really useful reference for those coming into the markets.

John Stuart Mills introduced me to the term “tyranny of the majority” in his essay On Liberty. Basically, that means a group using its majority position to oppress a minority group in some fashion. A classic example in the US is the case of blacks being oppressed by the white majority.

Of course Mills wasn’t the first to introduce the concept. I just happened to read it first in his work. Plato, Aristotle, Madison, and Tocqueville (I’m sure among others), all addressed the issue as well in their discussions of democratic government.

I bring this up because we’re seeing the tyranny of the majority in glaring fashion in Congress right now with the healthcare legislation. Among the plans to pay for the proposed bill is to add a surtax to those who’s earnings exceed certain threshold levels. Why? It pretty much comes down to “because we can”.

This statement was made by answers.com in the definition of tryanny of the majority:

The main danger that worried Aristotle, Madison, and Mill alike was that the majority poor citizenry would vote for confiscatory legislation at the expense of the rich minority. For whatever reason, this has never happened.

Hmmmm….They might need to change that comment before too long.