It appears there are no criteria for assessing failure that proponents of the European economic model will accept. Belief in it is in that sense unscientific: the notion that it can be sustained without eventual collapse is an untestable hypothesis. If it seems to be in crisis, it's because it hasn't been tried long enough, not enough public money has been spent, or people haven't been taxed and regulated enough to make it work. When indications of failure become rationalizations for continuing a program -- stepping it up, even -- it ceases to matter what happens, when you think about it. Success or failure, they will reach the same conclusion: Keep it going.

Exercises of employee stock options are taxed as ordinary income, instead of as capital gains. Leave your employer and you're usually required to exercise all your remaining options within a month or so, yielding a windfall year that greatly misrepresents your average annual income over your tenure. A "Cadillac problem", perhaps, but it seems perverse to reward outside investors with a lower tax rate than an employee who has taken a stake in building the company's future in lieu of more salary or other benefits. It also dis-incentivizes holding options through to the end (showing faith in the company's and economy's future), since exercising them gradually, over many tax years, yields a lower effective tax rate. The current system is great for employee retention, no doubt, but likely stifles or forestalls entrepreneurial leaps.

The tax system is indeed far too complex, and I'm all in favor of simplification even to the point of a flat tax that gives everyone "skin in the game", though I despair for the good reasons that KarlUB cites that it's unlikely to come to pass.

Count me in for a near-April 15th Election Day, Foxman and Mollie!

I can personally vouch for this theory (and thank you for the validation, by the way), being right now engaged in building software I want that nobody else has written. I have high hopes for the natural motivation of developing something I would enjoy using producing a result that others will find fun & useful too. Aiming for a Summer launch. Will report back on how the theory pans out in practice!

Indeed, when I first read the subheading, I thought it must have been a mistake. Silly me, I'd have expected they'd want to figure out what they're doing that's driving men away. In the name of Fairness and Gender Balance, you know!

James, you beautifully articulated, as only you can, the set of popular myths I was taught to believe about those on the Right. As someone tweeted recently, one of the most satisfying things about leaving the Left has been discovering how much I like the people I was taught to fear, and how silly and full of holes that popular mythology is. Thanks and good to hear your perspective, as always!

I say all this despite my current despair that both Romney and Gingrich are managerial progressives who won't fight hard enough to save America, and Paul is unfit to lead on critical foreign policy matters.  For the election to matter, I concede we need better choices than we have.
There's also some cognitive bias at work here: Yes, we've seen some astonishing innovation in the past 55 years.  But what other wonders might have come to pass, or perhaps been achieved sooner, in a more business-friendly climate?  What's the opportunity cost of high-tax big government?

Rob, part of me that wants very much to believe the same.  Maybe it's some of the same charmingly naïve City of Angels optimism in our bloodstreams (I grew up in L.A., from 1971-'91).  I have an irrepressible creative drive that makes it hard for me to imagine "going Galt", as tempting a symbolic gesture as that might be.  That part says disregard the statist politicians' agenda, and just do what I would have done anyway -- invent, innovate, create, for the sake of something bigger than their small managerial mindsets can envision.  I can't help but feel that way, even though it troubles me that my attitude undermines the negative feedback that ought to compel correction of bad business policies.
Still, I think 2012 is critical.  Progressivism is a ratchet, and government programs that put down roots are never dismantled.  Progressivism implemented at the national level is dangerous precisely because, by design, there is almost no escape.  A few are able to game the system and work around onerous tax rates and regulations, but there will be an overall damper on economic activity.  If we can't dismantle ObamaCare now, we never will.

I'm not at risk of grade penalty, professorial scorn, or being penalized professionally, so I'm in no position to give advice worthy of being heeded. But one thing it's taken me too long to learn is that being silent in such circumstances, whether out of politeness or self-preservation, is self-destructive. It leaves others to infer that, surely, all present must agree, thus reinforcing the very climate that leaves us feeling marginalized. Have I taken my own advice and started speaking up in such cases? Certainly not. But when they arise, I now blame myself and my own inaction more than I blame those who are creating the inhospitable climate. I'm having to work against some very deeply ingrained tendencies of my own, including a strong desire to make others feel comfortable and at ease, but I think I'm making progress. My advice regarding the grade issue, that completely contradicts everything I just said: If you can prove discrimination, contact theFIRE.org and consider pursuing it. Else, this might be one to just let go. Classroom discussion is one thing. Career is another. Plus, it's un-Conservative to play the victim card. :-)

Excellent job as always, fellas! I love that you had Glenn on -- I'm a longtime Instapundit fan too.

Rob's comments near the close, regarding the self-inflicted decline of print publications that veered from news reporting into advocacy journalism, were a gem of insight that I felt had to be held up and quoted. What he describes, it seems to me, is exactly what happened. If only they'd take their fingers out of their ears, the mainstream press might have hope of saving (or creating?) their own jobs.

I've watched MGM's production of Doctor Zhivago many times over the years. As the first movie my parents took me to (I was 3?), its lessons are probably deeply embedded in my mind. (I'm sure my parents never thought they'd make it to Intermission. I'm told I was silent to the end, then cheered "Again!"). Pasha telling Zhivago "the private life is dead in Russia" stands out in my mind, alongside Zhivago's hopeless acquiescence to the "more just" partition and ruin of his family's home. I'm moved by your comment that "love and a personal, private existence are more powerful life-giving forces than the cold, cruel mechanisms of the state". As the statist agenda advances and more of what was once personal becomes politicized, I become more interested in the liberating difference between public rhetoric and the actual private lives people lead. It's our last refuge. Book: Kang Chol-Hwan's The Aquariums of Pyongyang; moving account of a childhood spent in a North Korean labor camp. When I read it, a liberal friend had to ask me "What's a Gulag?" We have a long way to go.

As an Apple software engineer for the past 9 years, I saw Steve now and again, but never had occasion to meet him or present work to him.  I sometimes joked that I liked it better that way, for his reputation indeed preceded him, but in truth it would have been a priceless opportunity, to glimpse Steve At Work while being held to the very standards I aspire to.  Though I never quite felt at home in Apple's left-leaning culture, I'm profoundly grateful for the remarkable opportunity I've enjoyed, to innovate in the company of design and engineering giants.  Steve's accomplishments included mainstreaming NeXT's exceptional but niche software technologies as the primary way to develop software for the tens of millions of Macs, iPhones, and iPads now in use.  That technology has quietly revolutionized the economics of software development, making greater achievements possible in fewer man-hours with greater delight.  I've had the privilege of helping to further its advance, and will get to leverage it when I strike off to pursue my own big dream as an independent Mac developer later this month -- an enterprise that Apple's success has made possible.

Thank you, Peter, for those anecdotes and the insights they lend into an extraordinary, complicated man.  I'm glad to learn Steve had the wisdom to attempt to recruit you!

This culture of ours should get to work producing more like Steve, but we don't know how, and seem to manage it in spite of ourselves.  They are, perhaps by nature, those who aren't content to fit into conventional roles or follow the usual paths.  (Remember, Steve dropped out of college to found a company with a mere $1,300 in startup capital.  Would many among us feel comfortable advising a student today to do the same?)  They're people who see things that others don't and have the temerity and persistence to realize their creative ambitions so that others may see, too.

Thank you, Steve, for bringing out the best in those you worked with, and for all you have made possible.  We're sure to feel the ripple effects for decades to come.

Insisting that we simply don't understand the smart ideas he's tried to communicate -- ideas whose implementation seems to be scuttling a pretty good thing we had going. No, I can't think who that reminds me of. Or, I suppose, prefer not to. It's hard to see the "humility" in insisting that he made a good decision that was just misunderstood.

I can't say my heart is breaking for Hastings, given his prior remark (also followed by a less-than-convincing apology) about "self-absorbed" Americans, and perhaps more importantly the ham-fisted way he's killing his own golden-egg-laying goose.  He seems to be doing a good job of inviting competitors to eat Netflix's lunch. But hey -- creative destruction to the rescue! Netflix's lapse will just be an opportunity for others to step in and fill the unrequited demand. No business can long get away with ignoring its customers' wants.

What others said above goes for me too. Thank you for the moving description and photo; I would love to have been there too.

James, your 2006 thought about a classical World Trade Center memorial incorporating "stern stone eagles" and "allegorical figures representing Sorrow and Resolve" has stuck with me. (Ditto the 150-story building.) I have yet to visit the WTC memorial they've built, and I'll give it a chance, but in my mind what you described is and will always be what belongs there.

I was at Bard College in upstate New York, learning to my astonishment and despair that it would take far more than the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. to shake the academic left's loathing of and commitment to undermining our dear country:

http://fearlessdream.blogspot.com/2009/09/my-experience-of-september-11-2001.html

Robert McKay: Welcome indeed, and thank you for your service! We are glad and grateful to have you here.

A fine idea! Being able to see each contributor's institution in the post headings would be of great interest -- especially to fellow students seeking kindred spirits, I imagine.

A forum like this could almost have been of great help to me when I was in school, except my move rightward didn't really begin until a few years later. In college (at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, the inspiration for "P.C. U."), I stuck pretty successfully to hard science, and was only peripherally aware of the seeming madness going on in the humanities. (Marxism isn't dead and reviled? Postmodernists have concluded objective knowledge doesn't exist, and the scientific enterprise was "socially constructed" to oppress women and minorities?) Realizing that what I dismissed then as fringe lunacy has had pervasive, damaging effects on our broader culture beyond academia was part of what finally woke me up.  I hope our younger contributors with quicker learning curves than my own will be able to make a positive difference while they're still immersed in that world.

Artfully, concisely summed up, Brian! You nailed it. James: I'm inclined to follow LinkedIn's sidebar suggestion, and "Find a different Barack Obama". It appears there are many to choose from.