Homage to Catalonia

What about this

I'm spanish, from Madrid. My feelings about Mr. Sala-i-Marti are mixed, as you can imagine.

I dont know if you can read spanish, but if you can let me recomend you this really awful article (from a euro-liberal point of view).

Antonio, ?porque 'awful'?

As I read it, he's just saying that if there is not a pure public goods argument for Catalan language films, you can make a network effects one. But the taxpayers ought to foot the bill for the translation, not obligate the producers and distributors to do so.

I don't think it's a very strong argument, but I don't think its completely illegitimate.

Sala-i-Martín states that the Catalan language is a public good and he advocates the use of government force to promote its use among Catalonians. In that article he advocates forcing people to pay (through taxes) for something they don't want to pay in the free market - movies dubbed in Catalan. Sala-i-Martín seems to be a classical liberal in most matters, but not in those related to his Catalonian nationalist ideology.

Those pics are very funny. However, government is not the only one to make those kinds of mistakes - those without English language skills are almost as bad; if you have not seen these you'll have a very good laugh: http://engrish.com/