May 2011
“Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential...”
– Ayn Rand (via paintyourbrain)
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Alienable Rights?
I had an interesting question presented to me Thursday night regarding slavery and its place in a laissez faire economy.
Slavery is definitionally coercive; indeed, ownership of another person is one of the most aggressive acts that can be perpetrated on someone short of murder.
Libertarians advocate self-ownership, the literal antithesis of slavery: we own our lives, we own the product of our...
April 2011
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Obama, GOP appear to agree: Big oil needs no tax... →
evilteabagger:
shortformblog:
Obama Today, the president used his weekly radio address to suggest, in the wake of high gas prices and huge oil company profits, to remove the oil subsidies big oil companies enjoy. This might just be the time to pull it off.
GOP In this case … it appears that top GOP figures agree. John Boehner recently suggested removing corporate tax breaks for oil...
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Capitalism Saved the Buffalo →
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Liberals for Slavery →
Said Lincoln in 1848: “Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”
At that point in American history some of the most significant rumblings about secession since the...
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“The last year in which the black unemployment rate was lower than the white...”
– Thomas Sowell
Free Markets Have Room for Everyone →
[I]n a genuinely free market there is always a job for anyone whose VMP [or worker’s marginal product] is greater than zero. Even the least-skilled worker, say a teenager who can produce only three dollars worth of output an hour, is potentially employable at a wage just under that VMP. Or consider someone with a physical or mental disability. That person may be capable of producing only a...
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The Confederacy was Pure Evil →
azspot:
Yes, the ‘Civil War’ was an atrocity. And perhaps there is a contingent of deluded and misguided folk that somehow cherish a noble notion of a Confederacy, sans any allusion to the evil of slavery.
Are you really casting the Confederacy as a just cause — the reason for secession was entirely predicated on the defense of the diabolical practice of institutionalized slavery. To claim...
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“Morals Police” Assault, Electrocute Teen →
After being paroled from his daily sentence in the government mind-laundry [see: public school], [17-year-old] Jonathan [Villareal] passed a brace of official bullies on the way to the bus. One of them told Jonathan to pull up his pants; the youngster replied — hopefully with the appropriate measure of controlled contempt — that school was over and he was thus free to dress any way he chose. One...
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"The Confederacy is Cool!" Says Large Number of... →
In Georgia 47% of Republicans are content with the Union victory, while 31% wish the South had won. Democrats (58/17) and independents (54/19) are both strongly supportive of the North, making the overall numbers 53/23.
In North Carolina GOP voters are almost evenly divided on the outcome of the war with 35% glad for the North’s victory, 33% ruing the South’s loss, and 32% taking neither side....
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Cuban food better in Miami than Cuba →
Another victory for communism!
The 'Great Fact' →
Economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey calls it “the Great Fact” — the humongous increase in humans’ standard of living that began about 200 years ago.
And what a Great Fact it is! It’s great not only in the sense of being amazingly, resplendently good for ordinary men and women, but also in the sense of being the single most surprising and astounding change that we humans have experienced...
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“There’s not much the Federal Reserve can do about gas prices per se…...”
– Ben Bernanke
But the Fed can create more dollars, and for every batch of dollars it makes the number of dollars needed to buy oil goes up. So the Fed can - and does - quite a bit about gas prices; unfortunately, it’s all bad.
The True Nature of Taxation →
The initiation of violence is the act of an aggressor against you or against your property. This can be done through actual violence or through intimidation, because the mere threat of violence is an act of violence in itself. A good example would be a thief that points a gun at you to get your wallet without actually pulling the trigger. Another less obvious example is the way the government...
“The nomination of Petraeus doesn’t change much; it merely reflects how...”
– Glenn Greenwald, “A more militarized CIA for a more militarized America” (via ryking)
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Government Creates Poverty →
The U.S. government has “helped” no group more than it has “helped” the American Indians. It stuns me when President Obama appears before Indian groups and says things like, “Few have been ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans.”
Ignored? Are you kidding me? They should be so lucky. The government has made most Indian tribes wards of the state....
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State Week: Shark Week with Badges
Fresh off the heels of this weekend’s bogus parking ticket, I was just pulled over this morning for the violent, aggressive crimes of “using an electronic device while driving” and “tints on the driver and front passenger windows.”
When I asked the cop why I was being detained and fined for inherently non-violent offenses, he said for “safety reasons.” He...
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Slack-jawed at non-sequiturs
You know how when you see a massive flock of birds migrating across the sky - when the heavens are so imbued with feathered specks that it seems as if an ancient titan had streaked the azure with a giant black brush - you have to just pause for a moment to awe at its epic scope?
This was my reaction at seeing this unfortunate deluge of economic illiteracy.
Logicallypositive has done valiant...
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[Printing] Money Can't Buy You Economic Prosperity →
[Fed apologists say] that monetary spending makes the economic world go round. It does not. Increasing the money supply does not magically increase the quantity of land, labor, or capital goods available for production. Creating money out of thin air does not produce more consumer goods, and there is the rub. We cannot eat money. We cannot wear money. We cannot live in money. Even the Beatles...
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“One only needs to reflect on the dramatic decline in the value of the dollar...”
– End the Fed, Ron Paul. (via libertarians)
Highly recommended book.
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Obama Administration Attempting to force out CEO... →
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration has launched an effort to remove a CEO in a private-sector pharmaceutical firm as punishment for violations in marketing laws. The Department of Health and Human Services notified Forest Laboratories that it plans to blacklist CEO Howard Solomon from doing any business with the federal government, a status that would effectively...
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Secession Down to the Individual →
By definition, politics is violent; its sole object is control of the state, an institution distinguished by its preclusive monopoly on the use of force, and the economic windfalls accompany such control. [A]ll states through time [are] characterized by a cycle violence in which coercion is the route to wealth. …
To speak of a society without the state is not to speak of one without law —...
“Capitalism teaches people to work harder; the welfare state teaches people to...”
– Dennis Prager
Does John McCain Support Al-Qaeda? →
During the 2008 election, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul said that our constant military intervention in the Arab world was the primary motivation behind terrorist acts like 9/11. Why did Paul say this? Because Osama Bin Laden said it. Because the 9/11 Commission report said it. Because CIA intelligence said it, even inventing the term “blowback” precisely to describe it. Yet, when...
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Speed Limits: Perhaps the Biggest Con Since the... →
Consider: For about 20 years, no American could legally drive faster than 55 MPH on a U.S. Interstate Highway. On the same highways that had previously had significantly higher speed limits – 70, 75 MPH was common prior to 1974, when the 55 MPH edict went into effect. It suddenly became illegal to drive 70 or 75. But it didn’t becomeunsafe – unless you attribute magical powers to Congress, which...
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“For whatever reasons the Southern States had to secede from the...”
– Scott Lazarowitz
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L.A. Times Buried Lede: 88% Support Cutting... →
A Times/USC poll asks 1,503 registered California voters about their views on the state’s structural budget and dying economy. It gets some grim views on the state’s future and finds Californians very skeptical of the spending-heavy budget proposals supported by the Democratic machine that has monopoly control of the state’s political functions (though somewhat favorable to...
Here’s What $80 Billion Bought us: 9 of the 11... →
Thank goodness we put up $80 billion to bail out GM and Chrysler. They are now building such wonderful cars that they have achieved total dominance of the Forbes “Worst Cars on the Road” list, which we could also call the “Bottom Eleven.”
GM and Chrysler account for nine of the cars among the bottom eleven. IN other news, the [United Auto Workers] is grateful for your generosity in keeping...
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“The Founding Fathers would be appalled and alarmed at such contempt for their...”
– Bruce Fein (via azspot)
Among many reasons that the 16th and 17th Amendments were so disastrous is the loss of certain protections against frivolous wars. Before the 16th, any resources used in waging a war had to be collected by the states. States, therefore, had to individually decide whether...
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Food for Thought.
missdaisyvo:
L.A. Liberty has been giving me lots of things to re-evaluate lately (thank you, sir, much appreciated). Now, I want to ask you guys if you would consider all statists aggressors.
I’m not only talking about people who work for the government; those people are, well, part of the “machine” already. I’m talking about the people who are just misinformed and vote either Democrat or...
“It’s amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give...”
– Penn Jillette (via statehate)
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The State Even Rains on Tiny Parades
Last night, I met a small group of people at a party. This being Leftywood, they were all big government types, natch. I held my ground in defense of liberty and a miraculous thing occurred.
After over an hour and a half, a woman - life-long democrat, vegetarian, lesbian, Prius-driver, cousin to teachers in Wisconsin, and campaign worker for Obama in ‘08 (a quintessential leftist, in other...
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“I don’t want my children fed or clothed by the state, but I would prefer that to...”
– Max Victor Belz
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Being Gay in Cuba still gets you arrested →
Just like when racist, intolerant murderer Che was traipsing about the island. Except he preferred to kill them.
“[T]o make Keynesianism look ridiculous would be like blacking the chimney.”
– Tim Cavanaugh
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Happy Easter →
What we recall at Easter is the show trial and judicial murder of Jesus of Nazareth. A mob [democracy!] is manipulated into calling for his death. The judge, who knows he is innocent, feebly gives in. Such things are common in the real world, to this day.
Keynes must die so that the economy may live.
Subtitle to Korean translation of Thomas Woods’ Meltdown.
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“Alcohol didn’t cause the high crime rates of the ’20s and...”
– US District Judge James C. Paine, addressing the Federal Bar Association in Miami, November, 1991 (via combattant-de-la-liberte) 