"Just when I thought I was out...."

Identifying with Michael Corleone. As fans of The Godfather movies will remember, at a moment when Michael desperately wants to be a "legitimate businessman," and NOT a godfather like his Dad, he complains, "just when I thought I was out, they PULLLLL me back in."

I am out of a self-identification as an anarcho-capitalist, but the Securities and Exchange Commission seems to want to drag me back in with an over-reaching pack of new rules about the operations of private funds. The new rules seem outside of the SEC's statutory mandate, ill-advised as a matter of market structure, and in general nearly certain to do more harm than good.

It is in responding to such stuff and nonsense too often that I once slid into anarcho-cap. Now I will try to limit my back-sliding.

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A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

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Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

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