A discussion about "fairness"

The more I read about the financial situation, bailouts, the end of capitalism as we know it, etc., the more I think that it's time for our nation/society to have a lengthy, honest discussion about fairness. It feels like "fairness" has now come to mean making sure I get mine, which strikes me as horribly wrong both morally and practically. We as a society need to begin a "national dialog" about what we want "fairness" to mean, what role government has in achieving fairness in our society, and what government programs will best accomplish (or undermine) the goals we decide on.

Since I had no "theme" for this blog, I think I'll perhaps focus on this new one. I do not know how often I will actually post here, and it may turn out to be never again. Here's hoping that a national politician--perhaps someone running for a major office in 2012--will begin this dialog.

New Beginnings at The Inflection Point?

Well, perhaps we're hitting an inflection point of an economy, a culture or even a civilization as a whole. I see several possibilities for those sorts of things right now, and I may end up talking about those eventually. But first there's got to be some starting point. The most important starting point is of course one's name. So here's the explanation of both my pseudonym and the blog's name:

Autolycus is a name I have used in various online games and message boards for over a decade now. In all that time, I have run across a couple others, but it's held up as a relatively rare, and often mispronounced online persona. I think my original inspiration was Bruce Campbell's portrayal on TV, but the actual mythology of Autolycus is great for an online pseudonym as well.

So, the blog name... Well, I'm pretty sure All the King's Thieves is an original phrase to me. Google, Ask, Yahoo and MSN's Live don't return anything, and that's good enough for trademark work, right? For fear of pointing out the obvious, the explanation for the name is fairly simple: All the King's Men + Autolycus (a king of thieves himself) = All the King's Thieves.

It's happy timing for me, considering the rapid growth populism during this coming inflection point. Both major party candidates seem to be tossing out all kinds of thoughts about increased government involvement in our lives and pocket books. One of them even said we need to spread the wealth around.

I do have to also give a bit of shout-out to Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit. It was one of his posts in particular that really set my mind about this blog and its title. And while I'm at it, I'd also like to thank all of the Volokh co-conspirators, Ann Althouse, Megan McArdle, Mary Katharine Ham, Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution, the folks at TPMMuckraker, and countless others for providing me with more insight than I'm sure I can even provide anyone else.

That's all for now. Posts will probably be pretty infrequent until I win the lottery, but hey, maybe you'll get to read some fun rants in the meantime.