Today’s Links: October 13, 2011

OPINION

VIRGINIA POSTREL: “Web Bone-Marrow Bounty Takes on Paid-Donor Ban”
“Amit Gupta is in a terrible situation, but he’s also lucky. He’s got lots of friends who not only want to help him but also have the connections and financial resources to change the odds of a match — potentially saving not only him but other, less fortunate patients as well. Too bad the law only hinders such efforts.”

MEGAN MCARDLE: “No More Servants”
“The other day, Arnold Kling asked a sort of interesting question: why hasn’t rising inequality resulted in in the much-predicted oligarchy?  Or to put it as he does: with so many unemployed, and income increasing faster among the affluent, why aren’t people hiring more servants?”

LIBBY COPELAND: “Are Americans Secretly Homesick?”
“We like to think of Americans as restless westward wanderers, forever striking out for new territories. We don’t look back; we squint into the sun. We imagine the immigrants who built this nation as optimistic, rugged folk, shaking off old ways to hustle in a land of inventors and entrepreneurs. If these people missed home in their relentless drive to conquer, they didn’t dwell on it. Except they did. It was all they talked about. In her new book, Homesickness: An American History, historian Susan J. Matt documents all the ways in which restless Americans have missed home—and how they’ve gradually learned to suppress their declarations of homesickness. It’s only over the last 100 years or so, Matt writes, that we’ve come to idealize leaving home, to see it not just as a necessity but as proof of real adulthood.”

NEWS

INTERNET – Biggest Four UK ISPs Switching to ‘Opt-In’ System for Pornography
“Subscribers to four of the UK’s biggest internet service providers will have to ‘opt in’ if they want to view sexually explicit websites, as part of government-sponsored curbs on online pornography.”

POST OFFICE – Postal Service’s ‘Welcome Kit’ Raises Privacy Concerns
“For years, the USPS has given a Massachusetts company, Imagitas, exclusive rights to manage its change-of-address process, called MoverSource. As part of the deal, which was based on an unsolicited proposal sent to the USPS in the 1990s, the company sells advertising to major retailers. The ads then are sent to millions of homes along with the change-of-address letter.”