June 2012
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“Trade does not require force. Free trade consists simply in letting people buy...”
– Henry George (1886)
Tariffs and import quotas do to a populace during times of peace what a blockade does to their enemies in times of war.
May 2012
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Who Needs War for Oil? →
[I]t is simply not true that military action is necessary to “secure” global oil supplies. Take the worst-case scenario: a foreign, oil-rich regime that is currently a U.S. ally falls into the hands of a group that despises the U.S. government. What happens?
Well, if the hardliners in the new regime want to make a symbolic gesture, they might cut off oil exports to the U.S. (This is what Hugo...
“If justice be not a natural principle, it is no principle at all. If it be not a...”
– Lysander Spooner
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Hero Talk
letterstomycountry:
… Blindly obscuring the nuance of every American soldier’s experience by uncritically assigning them the status of “hero” reduces them to nothing more than a cartoon caricature of vague, praise-worthy character traits that in no way properly describes the actual feelings of many veterans towards their military service. Worse yet, such uncritical praise is one of the...
“There have been many efforts over the years to develop a “third way” of managing...”
– Gene Callahan
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“We shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals or...”
– The Americanization of Emily
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“Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret “nominations” process...”
– Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will
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“There is not a single writer who ever worked for Jon Stewart who will tell you...”
– David Feldman Is Jon Stewart Anti-Union?
Counter to Feldman’s intentions, I have more respect for Stewart after reading that whole interview.
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new Nature study on why the most knowledgable...
whakatikatika:
Seeming public apathy over climate change is often attributed to a deficit in comprehension. The public knows too little science, it is claimed, to understand the evidence or avoid being misled [1]. Widespread limits on technical reasoning aggravate the problem by forcing citizens to use unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk [2]. We conducted a study to test this account...
“My belief is that 60 year olds should never send 18 year olds to be killed …...”
– James Altucher
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“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether...”
– Mohandas Gandhi
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What to Remember on Memorial Day
When news outlets and social media share photos of tearful mothers, fathers, wives, and children mourning their lost loved ones, my heart breaks at the senseless death and unnecessary sorrow. The state claimed a life, and then marked its claim by adorning the casket in its symbolism. And too few people earnestly ask why.
You’re told to remember “sacrifices” today. That certain...
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“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that...”
– United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley D. Butler
*Of course, such destruction could only ever be profitable if its losses were borne by others: funded by force (taxation and inflation) and funneled by favor (cronyism and corruption).
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Re: On Minimum Wage, "show me the equity" →
politico2012:
laliberty:
After receiving a few messages today regarding the minimum wage, I thought it worthwhile to offer a brief summary of the argument. (For a bit more detail, please see my post Repeal the Minimum Wage.)
The premise can be understood in one sentence: you set a price floor for anything, you create a surplus of supply.
When it’s a price floor on hirable labor (aka a...
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Minimum Wage, a Synopsis
After receiving a few messages today regarding the minimum wage, I thought it worthwhile to offer a brief summary of the argument. (For a bit more detail, please see my post Repeal the Minimum Wage.)
The premise can be understood in one sentence: you set a price floor for anything, you create a surplus of supply.
When it’s a price floor on hirable labor (aka a minimum wage) - you get a...
“There’s a reason that normal people think politics is dirty. It is dirty.”
– Lew Rockwell
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Forget the issues...
…it was my lack of a small, cheap potholder that was holding me back.
And yes, that is a democrat pushing his republican approval. After redistricting, there are now two democrat incumbents (Howard Berman and Brad Sherman) going after the same new seat, and after 2010’s Proposition 14 that creates an open primary in which only the top two vote-getters move on to the general election...
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"Tron: Uprising" Could Be Epic
Just watched the first episode (which previewed a few days ago but officially premieres June 7) with my oldest daughter. Beck, the young insurgent who will be the main protagonist of the show, has this exchange with Tron:
TRON: “You understand this makes you an enemy of the State?”
BECK: “The State is the enemy.”
Finally some straight talk in a kids’ TV show.
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in...”
– Frederic Bastiat
“It is important to observe two points about projection: [1] the power of the...”
– Butler Shaffer
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The Scarcity of Time
self-ownership:
A lot of people seem to think that if we could solve the problem of scarcity, all of a sudden economic issues would be solved. In other words, if we had infinite resources everyone would have access to as much as they wanted and everyone would be happy. But this isn’t true.
I think I can explain the point by describing my brother making breakfast in the morning. Monday through...
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Senate Banking Investigation of JPMorgan to be... →
Related:
JPMorgan’s Blunder Is No Market Failure
Government’s Implicit Subsidies to “Too Big To Fail” Corporations Enabled JP Morgan’s $2 billion loss
Glass-Steagall Wouldn’t Have Prevented the JPMorgan Loss or the Financial Crisis
How JP Morgan could actually benefit from the London Whale debacle, through the long-term regulations that could result
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Politicians and Team Owners Snooker Sports Fans... →
Minnesota governor Mark Dayton just signed the midnight deal that state lawmakers struck with the owners of the Minnesota Vikings to build the team a new stadium. Players and management shook hands. Fans breathed a sigh of relief that their beloved football team would remain in the Gopher State. But some important parties were missing from the celebration: the taxpayers who are stuck with the...
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“More fundamentally, each time the government expands its effective authority...”
– Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan
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Obama's biggest re-election hurdles
antigovernmentextremist:
squashed:
The Democrats. Obama ran a largely insurgent campaign in 2008. This meant that the people who cling to the coat tails of whomever they think will win all flocked to Clinton. The end result was that Clinton got an unmanageable operation full of egos with impressive resumes. Now all those egos are going to try to get Obama reelected. They’re a liability.
...
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“You have no principles, unless you are a voluntarist…. The payment of tax...”
– Conza: Libertarianism in a 300-word rant
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The Expanding Nature of the State
From Gene Callahan’s Economics for Real People:
An unhampered market [that is, a free market without interference from the state] brings about its outcome through the voluntary choices of all people in that market. Any interference with the market process—such as rent control, farm subsidies, and so on—will, to some extent, thwart the realization of people’s preferences. People, in the...
“[W]ithout my consent, [politicians] are not my “leaders” but overlords and...”
– L.A. Liberty (via lalibertyquotes)
This blog is really digging through my archives…
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“The state is an exploiter, a murderer, a violator of human rights. The typical...”
– Lew Rockwell
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A small correction
hipsterlibertarian:
squashed:
Lawmakers back indefinite detention for terror suspects in US The House of Representatives defeated a proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 that would have required those detained in the United States to be tried in civilian courts. The amendment was supported by more liberal Democrats and more libertarian Republicans....
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20 Things You Didn't Know About Allergies →
13. Warning: A walk in the grass could turn you vegan. Scott Commins at the University of Virginia has shown that tick bites can cause the immune system to produce antibodies to alpha-gal, a carbohydrate in beef, pork, and lamb. These antibodies can induce allergic reactions to meat. “We’ve had people nearly die,” Commins says.
That is horrifying… A life without bacon!?!
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“If one prison guard beats you twenty times a day while the other guards beat you...”
– Roderick Long (h/t Tom Woods)
As one of the commenters notes:
More conclusive proof that gliberals don’t really mean it when they revert to conservative-esque love-it-or-leave-it arguments (“why don’t you move to Somalia?” etc.).
They really just mean, “Love it and shut the f*ck up.”
More.
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Would-Be Lords of the Manor →
Irked that Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin has renounced his U.S. citizenship, [Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA)] propose, with [their] “Ex-Patriot Act,” to punitively tax and to permanently bar from ever again entering America men and women who, to reduce their tax liabilities, renounce their citizenship in the U.S.
The very fact that sitting U.S. senators issue...
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While Rep. Justin Amash Pushes His Amendment to... →
On Wednesday, a federal judged blocked Section 1021, (AKA the indefinite detainment provision) of the the highly controversial National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest agreed with journalist Chris Hedges, writer Noam Chomsky, Mr. Pentagon Papers Daniel Ellsberg, and several other plaintiffs who argued in January that the NDAA might just have a chilling...
On Child Labor
libertarians:
freebroccoli:
arielnietzsche:
freebroccoli:
arielnietzsche:
>communism caused endless death
What is this then?
[Image]
oh wait, I cannot see this because I have the invisible hand.
What is it? Child labor? The practice that has been going on for millennia that capitalism only recently made society wealthy enough to live without?
So, according to you, a capitalist,...
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“One inmate currently at Guantanamo was waterboarded 83 times. Was that because...”
– Jacob Hornberger, “Torture and the Innocent”
“He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is...”
– Lao Tzu
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More on "Markets not Capitalism"
socraticapology:
laliberty:
I saw Chartier speak in LA last summer. I like him. I like a lot of what he says. I thought Chartier’s “Conscience of an Anarchist” was pretty good. But that was an earlier Chartier and this book is not just Chartier; it’s a collection of essays by many of the bigger names in mutualism, agorism, and “left-libertarianism.” Think of it as C4SS in print. (You can...
