June 2012
“In each age it is necessary to adapt to the popular mythology. At one time kings...”
– Professor Bernardo de la Paz, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
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Dr. Ron Paul: Health care's problem is too much... →
The fundamental problem with health care costs in America is that the doctor-patient relationship has been profoundly altered by third party interference. Third parties, either government agencies themselves or nominally private insurance companies virtually forced upon us by government policies, have not only destroyed doctor-patient confidentiality, [t]hey also inescapably drive up costs...
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15 Reasons Why The Obamacare Decision Is A Mind... →
baseballlibertarian:
1 step closer to the inevitable economic collapse of the United States.
#1 According to the U.S. Supreme Court, the federal government has the power to force you to buy private goods and services. Now that this door has been opened, what else will we be forced to buy in the future?
#2 Obamacare is another step away from individual liberty and another step toward a...
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Someone tell me the difference between the state...
freebroccoli:
anticapitalist:
You completely missed my point.
I’ll try a different approach.
What if the state picks an apple from an unowned apple tree and claims that the apple belongs to it? If you are allowed to do so, why can’t the state?
Why are you allowed to own property, but if the state does it, it’s coercive?
Oh, that wouldn’t be a problem at all.
The main problems with the...
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“A managed democracy is a wonderful thing, Manuel, for the managers… and...”
– Professor Bernardo de la Paz, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
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Better Living Through Wishful Thinking
Scarcity cannot be eliminated - and the reality of human action overturned - simply through the passage of legislation. No matter how well-intentioned, the negative unintended consequences of laws that disregard the way the world works tend to outweigh its intended benefits, often catastrophically so.
Until people accept this truth, the state will persist as the magical provider of all things...
“Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they...”
– Manuel Garcia O’Kelly-Davis, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
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12 hours until we know the fate of Obamacare.
antigovernmentextremist:
It feels like Christmas Eve.
Only if every Christmas Eve you wonder whether the guy trying to break into your house is Santa Claus or a burglar.
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Who "earns" what?
thecallus:
There is no reason to believe that what anyone owns was “earned”.
There is no reason? I can agree that not all wealth was earned. Certainly countless plutocrats, bureaucrats, and corporations use the state’s monopoly on force to coerce wealth from people against their will (just as it would be incorrect to view the “profits” of an average criminal as...
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“Before the development of economic science, people thought of exchange and the...”
– Murray Rothbard, Power & Market
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Chicago City Council Votes to Decriminalize... →
A small step in the right direction to mitigate the inherent dangers of drug prohibition.
“In the political language of today, people who want to keep what they have...”
– Thomas Sowell - A Political Glossary
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“Fractional reserve banking underpins the entire banking system, yet its effects...”
– Ron Paul - Will Hold Congressional Hearing on Fractional-Reserve Banking on June 28
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Austrian Capital Theory (and Why It Matters) →
The Austrians emphasize that production takes time: The more indirect it is, the more “time” it takes. Production today is much more “roundabout” (Böhm-Bawerk’s term) than older, more rudimentary production processes. Rather than picking fruit in our backyard and eating it, most of us today get it from fruit farms that use complex picking, sorting, and packing machinery to process carefully...
“One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die...”
– Professor Bernardo de la Paz, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
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Fascinating Fed Charts, 1915-2012
Via LvMI, more interactive charts here: assets and liabilities.
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A profusion of choice links, June 25, 2012
My east coast vacation continues. And with the downpour outside, it was a perfect opportunity to catch up on internet reading and share some worthy links - there’s something here for everybody.
War:
With the bicentennial of the War of 1812 upon us, and “commemorations” already under way (I have to admit, there’s some pretty cool “Tall Ships” lined up at...
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“Revolution is an art that I pursue rather than a goal I expect to achieve. Nor...”
– Professor Bernardo de la Paz, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I...”
– Professor Bernardo de la Paz, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
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“In terms of morals there is no such thing as ‘state.’ Just men....”
– Professor Bernardo de la Paz, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
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“A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as ‘state’ and...”
– Professor Bernardo de la Paz, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
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Whenever I read Rothbard...
I seem to end up highlighting pretty much every other page.
Might as well just print it on yellow paper…
“Señorita, the day I let politics interfere with my appreciation of beauty, that...”
– Professor Bernardo de la Paz, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
“Manuel, the life of a conspirator is not an easy one and I learned before you...”
– Professor Bernardo de la Paz, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
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Canola oil is a poisonous substance, an industrial... →
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“On the free market, it is a happy fact that the maximization of the wealth of...”
– Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty
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Peace Is Profitable →
War disrupts and distorts the free market, steals resources and workers from construction, and diverts them to destruction. War does not produce anything except death. It only destroys. Jobs supposedly created by war industries, including drafting men into the military, are not full employment; they are slavery.
The businesses that profit from war are not free-market entities but “merchants of...
Do Free Markets Require Rational Actors? →
The case for markets is not about people making perfectly rational choices. Rather the question is comparative: Under what set of institutions will people learn from and have incentives to correct the mistakes they will inevitably make? The standard is not perfection; it’s learning. …
Humans will always be imperfect and less than totally rational, which is precisely why we cannot trust...
Factual Free-Market Fairness →
The story is, in a few brief mottos to stand for a rich intellectual tradition since the 1880s: Modern life is complicated, and so we need government to regulate. Government can do so well, and will not be regularly corrupted. Since markets fail very frequently the government should step in to fix them. Without a big government ee cannot do certain noble things (Hoover Dam, the Interstates,...
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How a Drone War Works →
President orders somebody killed, based on God knows what.
By their mystic arts, people operating drones decide they have found the person the President wants dead. (Or [they] kill “suspected militants”, even when their full identities are not known. Previously, the CIA was restricted in most cases to killing only individuals whose names were on an approved list. Since 2008, however, it has been...
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“We must ask, not whether an anarcho-capitalist society would be safe from a...”
– David Friedman
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Questioning Authority →
Politics—the quest for power because you’re sure that you, more than others, know what’s best for everyone else—has always been a profession worth ridiculing, going back to the satirists who found plenty to ridicule in the earliest democratic institutions in Rome and Greece. But here in America we have a political process—another institution subject to 236 years of fine-tuning—that’s...
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The National Registry of Exonerations →
An up to date list of all known exonerations in the United States since 1989…
There are no doubt many more innocents rotting in prison, lives destroyed, for every one who is able to overcome the system’s ineptitude, corruption, and unaccountability in order to be exonerated.
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Man Goes on $1.5m Gambling Spree, After ATM Glitch... →
Ronald Page, a retired GM worker living in the Detroit area, took advantage of one hell of a computer glitch, after happening upon an ATM that allowed him to make unlimited cash withdrawals.
How did he choose to handle the situation? He loaded up his pockets and went on a multi-casino gambling bender. Unfortunately for him, Mr. Page’s luck ran out at the ATM; he lost all $1.5 million to...
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Imagine You're The Parent
letterstomycountry:
Imagine you are the mother and/or father of two daughters, 14 and 11. You live in a trailer. You are not rich, but you do the best you can for your kids. You keep a roof over their heads, and try to keep them from going hungry, and keep them out of trouble.
Now imagine the following occurs:
On the morning of January 20, 2007, Plaintiffs Thomas and Rosalie Avina and...
“Looking back, the supposed crimes of Watergate seem quaint, and even charming,...”
– Jeffrey Tucker, The Political Theater of President Ford
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“I suppose there were a few in World War II who were fighting for freedom or...”
– Arthur Hoppe (h/t David Henderson)
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More on Endorsing Romney
In my first post responding to the Rand-Rothbard comparison I noted, among other points, that “there’s little substantive difference between the red and blue statists.” Later, responding to a post by alexholzbach, I listed the many ways in which Romney and Obama are nearly identical.
Alex again responded to that post, summing up his position thusly:
alexholzbach:
I’m endorsing...
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What might cause another 9/11? →
I absolutely believe that another 9/11 is possible. And the reason I believe it’s so possible is that people like Andrew Sullivan — and George Packer — have spent the last decade publicly cheering for American violence brought to the Muslim world, and they continue to do so (now more than ever under Obama). Far from believing that another 9/11 can’t happen, I’m amazed that it hasn’t already, and...
