NP: No gov't; best gov't..from John Lanchester LRoB

[Michael Bailey]

1) gold standard
seems like a specific instance of the "good old days" fallacy

what I wish is that we had better pictures on our money.  Tired of
presidential mugs.
Plus, putting them on varied denominations seems like a judgement of
relative merit, which doesn't withstand analysis.
Surely there's an icon system that would better convey "valuta"

2) Viennese school of economics, like any school of philosophy,
consists one might say of personalities and principles...nouns and
verbs?
Pynchon's allusions are all-encompassing, but I can't think of too
many places where he directly works with or even mentions the
prominent personalities, such as Mises et al.  As to principles,
direct references I can think of are the mention in CoL49 of the
theory of surplus value, wherein the character, but not necessarily
Pynchon, seems to use that Marxian principle to justify a cockeyed
individualism existing athwart the military-industrial setting of
Yoyodyne (and perhaps depicting a mindset the author might have
noticed while working in the similar milieu of Boeing); and AtD's
Dalley's posing for statuary representing economic principles, which
sort of brings them into a 3rd realm not theory nor storytelling, but
as discrete thingies to observe with a frisson of delectation.

What I'm inclined both by these examples and by my basic outlook to
believe about Pynchon's work is that it's economic-theory-aware...not
primarily about acceptance or negation of any of them, but bringing
mention of them into play in idiosyncratic contexts in service of a
narrative with artistic goals rather than propagandistic ones.

3) Ayn Rand's primary goals were propagandistic rather than artistic,
so different
from P's technique that his depiction of Mrs Winsome is somewhat like
the statuary Dalley modeled for...rather than any kind of direct
attack, the character is an instantiation in a medium that doesn't
conduce to direct argumentation (an observation AR apparently would
disagree with) and displays tendencies (unflattering ones) that would
be unobservable by considering her in philosophic terms...