who's your nanny?

O Glorious Squirrel

The tree, the tin god of environmentalism, gets way too much respect. Trees, many of which are just weeds at heart, can be good or bad or grow in good or bad locations. But badmouth any tree for any reason, and you'll stoke the wrath of the ever-rational environmentalist.

So I won't do that today. I'll just mention how much I love squirrels. There must have been ten of them prancing around my front lawn this morning gathering or eating acorns. I'll always appreciate my symbiotic relationship with squirrels, as my acorns provide sustenance for my little rodent friends who, in turn, guarantee that the nuts never grow into unwanted trees.

Now, if only they killed moles ...

Selwyn Duke's Folly-Part 2

Here is my reply to Selwyn Duke's second essay "Libertarianism's Folly-Part Two". You can download my reply to his first essay here. He wrote a third essay to respond to criticisms of his second essay, but it is not worth the time for me to respond to it. He makes the same philosophical errors and displays even more ignorance of libertarian thought. The two essays I have written are sufficient rebuttals of all three of his essays.

Just to give you a sample of how ignorant Mr. Duke is of libertarian thought he writes the following in this third essay: "Now, the Founding Fathers, men much admired in libertarian circles, understood this well." (Emphasis added)

Well, he certainly has a good grip on what libertarians think about the Founding Fathers and the Constitution. I know that Trevor really admires Constitution. I, of course, absolutely love the Constitution. Hans-Hermann Hoppe has nothing but respect for the Constitution.  Manuel Lora appreciates what the Founders did for the US as does Ryan McMaken. Lysander Spooner was one of the biggest fans on the Consitution ever. Stephan Kinsella loves both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Of course, there are libertarians who do admire the Constitution, however, if Mr. Duke had some actual knowledge of libertarian circles, he would know that there are libertarians who despise the Founders. But this is pretty much how he frames his arguments in these three essays. He invents some characteristics about libertarians and then argues based on those inventions. In fact, I find it interesting that Mr. Duke does not actually cite any libertarians other than Ayn Rand and he does this to make an argument against secularism. But secularism is not libertarianism.

Mr. Duke does not at all reference Murray Rothbard or Hans-Hermann Hoppe or Lew Rockwell or Walter Block or Robert Higgs or Frederic Bastiat or Albert J. Nock or Frank Chodorov or Leonard Read or anyone else other than Rand. And Mr. Duke admits this ignorance:

To be fair, a couple of libertarians (one of whom is running for office) wrote me and stated that their informed ideological brethren understand that law must have a moral basis, such as the “non-aggression principle.”  Yet, while I realize many different conceptions of libertarianism exist, absent an authoritative “Church of Libertarianism” to establish official dogma, I have no choice but to draw my conclusions from libertarians’ consensus pronouncements.  After all, there are textbook/dictionary definitions of liberalism that sound pretty good, too, yet they describe no liberals I’ve ever met.  I live in the real world; if you seek a denizen of textbook dream-world, I suggest you visit your local college campus. 

Granted there is not an authoritative "Church of Libertarianism" (a contradiction of terms if there ever was one), but had Mr. Duke actually taken the time to do some research, he might have been able to write an intelligent argument rather than the sanctimonious fluff he did compose.

I sent Mr. Duke a personal email with some suggested reading. I also asked him to actually read some of my suggestions before responding to me or writing anything else about libertarianism. At the very least he could sound intelligent while arguing that the criminal known as the State can enforce morality.

Download Selwyn_dukes_folly_part_two

 

 

Lew Rockwell vs. the TSA

I wrote about the porno scanners when they first appeared in US airports here. Trevor wrote about his experience in the porno scanner here. However, Lew Rockwell and his fellow bloggers have been on fire this past week with post after post excoriating the TSA. It began with an article by Michael Roberts, a pilot who was fed up with being humiliated by the TSA. After that there were essays by Michael Rozeff, Mike Adams, Arthur Krolman, and Patrick Smith. There are also several posts on the LRC blog that include personal experiences with the TSA. If Americans would like to feel safer when traveling, they should campaign ceaselessly for the complete abolition of the TSA.

 

 

 

An Example of Ideology?

At the end of the Missouri-Oklahoma game tonight, the Missouri fans all rushed onto the field after the game to celebrate the Tigers victory over the number-1-ranked Sooners. There were several police officers and stadium security there, but they could not stop the rush. This is a good example of how futile State-protection is. In every State, the men and women who compose the praetorian guard are dramatically outnumbered by the masses. If the masses really wanted to run wild, they could do so and the praetorian guard could do nothing about it. So if the threat of violence by the praetorian guard is not enough to keep the masses in place, what does? Ideology. For example, in this game the masses did not rush the field until the very end although they could have at any time. Before the Tigers won the game, the fans accepted the rule that they should not be on the field. After the Tigers won, the fans in their excitement rushed the field. The rule was self-enforcing in that the majority of the fans accepted it until the Tigers won. Then the majority of the fans ignored the rule and the State police officers could do nothing. The police officers could have shot or beat the fans, but how would it appear on national TV to see the police shoot and beat college kids who ran on to the field after their team won a big game against the Number 1 team in the nation?

My simple point is that in spite of all the violent threats that the State uses to keep us in check, if a substantial majority of the people rebelled against the State, there would be nothing that the State's praetorian guard could do about it. The State needs the cooperation of the masses in order to exist, and although unlikely in the near future, it is possible that such cooperation could dissolve in an instant.

Prescription Drugs Kill More People Than Illegal Drugs Do

An analysis of almost 170,000 autopsies in Florida revealed that Americans have more to fear from buying drugs from corporatist pharmaceutical companies than from guys who peddle them in hooded sweatshirts.

In 2007, cocaine was responsible for 843 deaths, heroin for 121, methamphetamines for 25 and marijuana for zero, for a total of 989 deaths. In contrast, 2,328 people were killed by opioid painkillers, including Vicodin and Oxycontin, and 743 were killed by drugs containing benzodiazepine, including the depressants Valium and Xanax.

As if this paragraph alone weren't enough to debunk the myth that we need the nanny state to save us from "illicit" drugs, note specifically that marijuana -- the quintessential element of the "drug war" -- was responsible for zero deaths in this study.

(Via Karen De Coster)

'Rape Cheat' Sentenced to a Year of Complimentary Handjobs

Imagine reading a news headline like that in your local paper. I assume that would infuriate most people for a host of justifiable reasons.

So now consider the actual headline in today's Buffalo News: "Tax cheat sentenced to serve … pizzas"

Starting tonight and continuing every Tuesday for the next year, the more than 100 nightly diners at the Buffalo City Mission will feast on pizza -- thanks to State Supreme Court Justice Russell P. Buscaglia and a tax cheat.

Joseph J. Jacobbi, 57, operator of Casa-Di-Pizza, a popular Elmwood Avenue restaurant, was spared a jail term on his massive sales tax fraud case, but the judge Monday ordered him to deliver 12 sheet pizzas to the City Mission once a week on Tuesdays for the next 52 weeks, beginning tonight.

As I've mentioned before, taxation is theft. Evading the taxman is no less moral than repelling a home burglar or rapist (even if doing so is likely much easier than averting the state); all of these characters are bent on at least one thing: relieving you of your property against your will.

It's a pity that our intrepid media outlets just parrot the terminology they're fed in press releases by the government's police or PR teams. The term "tax cheat" seems a little too biased even for today's editors. Then again, maybe they've just figured out that we're all supposed to be subservient to our masters in the state capitals.

Sadly, prevailing wisdom holds that if you're not allowed to get away with withholding taxes from the state, then your neighbor shouldn't be either. This is faulty logic. It is heroic to repel violence no matter what.

Now, in the case of Mr. Jacobbi, he allegedly withheld sales tax that he collected on behalf of the state as owner of a pizzeria. This indeed makes him just as guilty of theft as the state itself (his customers' money, over and above the agreed-upon cost of goods or services, is no more his property than it is the Department of Taxation and Finance's).

However, as far as the newspaper should be concerned, withholding this money does not make him a tax "cheat"; it makes him a tax thief. The term "tax cheat" all too apparently implies that anyone who refuses to surrender his property to bandits is himself the criminal, when of course the very opposite is true.

The Dialogue Continues

Mr. Cullison has responded to reply. My comments are in italics.

 

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

I spent some time thinking about your claim that "States are formed in order to commit crime", which is the fundamental point of your refutation, if I'm reading you correctly.

I don't agree with this.

It took me awhile to realize that you mean that the State was formed with taxation in mind, and that this is the crime you mean. Forced taxation is a crime, right?

The first thing that comes to mind is that I don't believe the intent of creating a new nation in these here United States was to exploit people but "the grand experiment".

The creation of the U.S. government is a great example of a State formed through deception. The stated intention of the Constitution's creators was to form a better government. The real intention of the Constitution's creators was to increase the power of the central government. This was the "flaw" of the Articles of Confederation that the drafters intended to "rectify". Once again I recommend Nock's Our Enemy, the State. He includes a section detailing the true intentions of the drafters. Another book I highly recommend is Kenneth Royce's Hologram of Liberty. I live-blogged the book as I read it. Here is Chapter 11. This post contains links to summaries of all the chapters and my introduction.

What the Chilean Miners Can Teach Us about Obamacare

Guest Submission
By Robert Goldberg

[Editor's note: This publication is not intended to imply an endorsement of Dr. Goldberg or the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.]

Nearly a billion people watched as the 33 Chilean miners were rescued from their accidental prison below the earth. And millions more made their safe escape possible through innovations in medicine, telecommunications and engineering.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger observed, "If those miners had been trapped a half-mile down like this 25 years ago anywhere on earth, they would be dead. What happened over the past 25 years that meant the difference between life and death for those men?"

His answer: market-driven innovation.

Henninger continued: "The Center Rock drill, heretofore not featured on websites like Engadget or Gizmodo, is in fact a piece of tough technology developed by a small company in it for the money, for profit. That's why they innovated down-the-hole hammer drilling. If they make money, they can do more innovation.

"This profit = innovation dynamic was everywhere at that Chilean mine. The high-strength cable winding around the big wheel atop that simple rig is from Germany. Japan supplied the super-flexible, fiber-optic communications cable that linked the miners to the world above.

"Samsung of South Korea supplied a cellphone that has its own projector. Jeffrey Gabbay, the founder of Cupron Inc. in Richmond, Va., supplied socks made with copper fiber that consumed foot bacteria, and minimized odor and infection.

"Chile's health minister, Jaime Manalich, said, 'I never realized that kind of thing actually existed.'"

As Henninger notes: "[W]ithout the year-over-year progress embedded in these capitalist innovations, those trapped miners would be dead."

But there is another lesson to be learned that is woven in the fabric of this fundamental insight:  Both the technologies used to save the miners and the rapid development of a rescue plan were made possible because millions of people around the world exchanged time, money, ideas and inventions to create a solution.

There's No 'Easy Button,' Ben

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, who reminds me of an ER doctor that continues to administer electric shocks to a trauma patient even though it's apparent to everyone else that the victim has passed the point of no return, announced before the Boston Federal Reserve today that the Fed is poised to take "further action" to boost the economy. 

According to Robert Wenzel, we're going to see the Fed go on a money printing binge that will result in hyperinflation worse than the 1970s. If this is true, we can expect to see the debts of governments and the politically connected erased via even more criminal "bailouts" at the expense of savers and people on fixed incomes, who will likely be wiped out as a result.

Bernanke lamented the facts that business spending has slowed, the housing market remains depressed, and unemployment remains high. But these are precise results of continuous central manipulation of the economy in general and the money supply in particular, the cures for which cannot be found in even more authoritarian meddling.

As business owners are increasingly unable to make sound financial decisions and investments because economic signals are driven more by arbitrary government dictates (with regard to regulations, rates, controls, etc.) than by hundreds of thousands of daily, authentic free market transactions, one should only expect to see a decrease in them.

A Reader Comments on Selwyn Duke's Folly

We always welcome new readers to the blog, especially cordial non-libertarian readers. My post on Selwyn Duke's folly inspired the following comment from one of our newest readers. I understand many of his concerns and there are, in fact, entire books written to address them. I copied the comment below and I will add my comments in italics as well as some recommended reading by writers much smarter than I.

 

I love most of your article.

I disagree, however, with the assertion that the State is necessarily evil and can never be anything but bad.  It's not the State that's the problem, and you basically show that you know this -- it's the people who misuse the State for their own twisted ends.

State is a tool.  It's an artifical construct.  It is true that it's an easily abused tool by those who would seek to abuse it, but then so are AK47's.  I do not see why libertarians cannot or will not grasp this concept.  If it's the people who are doing the killing and not the weapon, if it's the people making the spelling mistakes and not the pencil, then it's the people who are abusing the State's power and not the State itself.

I have encountered this metaphor of State as tool on many occasions. I feel that it is an inadequate analogy at best. The tool metaphor suggest that the State is a neutral institution that can be used for good or bad. This neglects the orgin of the State. States are not formed to govern people. States are formed in order to commit crime. The people who come together to form a State do so in order to systematically exploit other people. I recommend Albert J. Nock's Our Enemy, the State to understand the origins of this criminal institution. Nock also has a good discussion on the difference between a government and a State. Government might be conceived as a tool that could be used for good. States are not created for the good of any except the criminals who created them.

A shorter read, but also excellent, is Murray Rothbard's "Anatomy of the State".

The problem is the people.  As long as there are people who want to use the State to violate the single fundamental right of the individual to make his own choices for himself, to force their opinions on others, we will never be genuinely free.  It doesn't matter if we have a State or not.  Get rid of the State.  Go ahead.  The abusive people will still be there, inventing new ways to continue to abuse people.

Yes, there will always be robbers and thieves. However, States institutionalize robbery and theft. Moreover, States encourage the aggressive tendencies of their agents. This is because States receive their income through taxation, i.e. forced payments. Since the agents of the State do not spend their own resources, they can be much more aggressive than otherwise. It is much easier to start a war when one does not have to pay for the war himself. On the other hand, if an individual wanted to start a war in a stateless society, he would have to pay the soldiers himself. Moreover, he would have to have enough wealth to sustain a battle. If he receives his money through the free exchange of goods and services, there is a good chance the people who trade with him will simply stop doing so, thus depriving him of income to pay his soldiers. As such, this individual probably won't start a war because the chances of winning are so small. A State, however, can simply increase taxes or implement a draft.

It is also important to point out that States are seen as legitimate by its citizens whereas criminal gangs are not. Thus, the abusive people will be seen as abusive in a stateless society. However, a State is successful because it has indoctrinated its citizens to believe that it is a legitimate institution. Thus, the citizens voluntarily make sacrifices for State wars. They would not do so if they saw the State as the criminal gang it truly is. I recommend Hans-Hermann Hoppe's The Myth of National Defense.

Yes, the use of the State to compel obedience to taxation and everything else (except the protection of rights) is wrong.  It was not, however, the State that made itself into itself, but the willingness of the people under the State to vote for or tolerate or support abuse whenever it suited their questionable purposes.

Until people generally value liberty enough to want it so much for themselves that they are willing to let others be free, too, in spite of disagreements about personal life choices, it doesn't matter what system we have, or whether or not we have a system.  We have a system now that is perfectly capable of self-correction, if only the people actually wanted it to be corrected.  If everyone wanted to end the abuses of our system and actually support liberty, we would have that, even under our imperfect system.  Even if only most of us wanted to end these abuses, or even just a lot of us, it would happen.  But this is not the case.  For example: A lot of liberals won't be satisfied until they've managed to change the mind of every conservative that it's OK to be gay.  A lot of conservatives won't be satisfied until they've managed to force every gay person back into a well hidden closet or, better yet, eliminated them entirely.  Both sides are correct to think of homosexuality as acceptable or unacceptable.  The problem is the failure on both sides to accept that everyone is entitled to his opinion and to make this choice for himself.  This one example demonstrates the general pattern perfectly.  Convince people that it's their right to violate other people's rights, and then the real abusers can trample rights freely.

These comments point to the mystery of States: Why do people voluntarily submit to their rulers? Why don't people desire freedom? The best person to read on this is Etienne de la Boetie's The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude. I also recommend Hans-Hermann Hoppe's essay, "Natural, Elites, Intellectuals, and the State" and his lecture "The State, Intellectuals, and the Role of Anti-Intellectual Intellectuals". Robert Higgs' "The Political Economy of Fear" argues that fear is the foundation of all State power and I highly recommend it. Jeff Riggenbach's essay "The Milgram Experiment" discusses the famous experiment and applies Milgram's finding to State power. I would also recommend Hoppe's Democracy-The God that Failed for an explanation of how democracy corrupts the masses among other destructive characteristics of the State. For a witty demolition of democracy I recommend H. L. Mencken's Notes on Democracy.

So this, then, is my problem with libertarians.  Ultimately, libertarians blame the tool and not the users.  If only we got rid of the tool, they argue, we'd be free.  We won't be, any more than making laws against gun possession will keep us safer from violent criminals.

See above. The State is not a tool. It is institutionalized criminality. There is simply no way that crime could ever be committed on the level it has been in human history without States. R. J. Rummel estimates that over 250 million people have been killed by their own governments since the beginning of the 1900s. He does not even include the number of people killed in wars between States. We would still have to guard against criminals in a stateless society. However, if the people actually desire freedom, they would see criminal behavior as criminal behavior. Instead they condemn private criminal behavior like the bank robber, but tolerate and in some cases even advocate public criminal behavior like the bankers who profited from the Bush and Obama bailouts. I recommend R. J. Rummel's Death by Government as a good empirical analysis of the carnage State's visit upon their own citizens.

Selwyn Duke's Folly-Part 1

Download Selwyns Folly Part One

Selwyn Duke of the American Thinker has written two essays which be believes are refutations of libertarianism. Instead he has demonsrated that he understands very little of actual libertarian thought. Originally I planned to write a short blog post, but the more I read of his essays, the more I felt compelled to write a more thorough response to his ignorance. There are entire books in print that refute Mr. Duke's arguments, but it is clear that he is completely unaware of their existence. He does not refer to any libertarian thinkers; He does not mention Murray Rothbard or Ayn Rand or Leonard Read or Albert J. Nock or Frank Chodorov or anyone. It appears, in fact, that he is responding to the handful of libertarians that email him in response to his articles. This might make for an effective blog post to a conservative audience, but his essays do not address any of the fundamentals of libertarian thought.

My first essay is available for download as a PDF file. I'll respond to his second essay later, but it will probably also be a long response that will be uploaded rather than a blog post.

Anti-Cop Hip Hop - "Black Cop"

Normally when I hear the term "sell-out" used among blacks in a political context, the term is used by liberal blacks to denigrate conservative blacks. For some unspecified reason, a black person ascribing to a conservative political philosophy somehow "harms" the black race. I suppose choosing economic policies that do not make black people dependent on the State "harms" the black race. At least that is what I infer from liberal black usage of "sell-out." But what is interesting about the term "sell-out" is that I rarely hear it applied to black people who actually do physically harm other black people in a political context. The only people I have heard apply this term to black people who physically harm other black people are rappers talking about black police officers.

"Black Cop" is second anti-police song by KRS-One I mentioned in my post on "Sound of Da Police". This song specifically calls out blacks who choose to become police officers and continue the oppression of the State against other blacks. I find the song still relevant today. Recently some black police officers in California have shown their support for Proposition 19 that would legalize marijuana. They say that they want to end the negative consequences that marijuana laws have had on the black community. However, it does not seem to have occurred to these police officers that they could end the war against marijuana by simply refusing to arrest people who distribute or possess marijuana. However, if "The Man" tells him that marijuana laws are no longer enforced, then and only then, will these black cops end (some) of their oppression of black people. Otherwise, the black cops will do as massa commands. So I dedicate this song to you, black police officers. You are true "sell-outs" to the black race.

Glide on the Peace Train

I used to think these anti-war hippies were crazy even though I loved their songs.

Today I still love their songs, but now I realize they were right.

 

This Chinese Official Does Have a Point

The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. Liu was jailed in 2009 for organizing a movement around a document called "Charter 8". The Christian Science Monitor describes "Charter 8" as a manifesto

modeled after “Charter 77,” a document issued in 1977 by intellectuals in Czechoslovakia asserting the principles of democracy for one of the Soviet-bloc countries then under communist rule. Such idealistic statements were crucial in bringing down the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union.

The opening paragraph of the charter states:

This year is the 100th year of China's Constitution, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 30th anniversary of the birth of the Democracy Wall, and the 10th year since China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. After experiencing a prolonged period of human rights disasters and a tortuous struggle and resistance, the awakening Chinese citizens are increasingly and more clearly recognizing that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal common values shared by all humankind, and that democracy, a republic, and constitutionalism constitute the basic structural framework of modern governance. A "modernization" bereft of these universal values and this basic political framework is a disastrous process that deprives humans of their rights, corrodes human nature, and destroys human dignity. Where will China head in the 21st century? Continue a "modernization" under this kind of authoritarian rule? Or recognize universal values, assimilate into the mainstream civilization, and build a democratic political system? This is a major decision that cannot be avoided.

In 2009 Liu was charged with "inciting subversion of state power" for promoting human rights and on December 25, 2009, he was sentenced to eleven years imprisonment.

The Chinese government is not happy with the Nobel Committee:

Beijing blasted a Chinese dissident's Nobel Peace Prize win Friday, calling the decision to award Liu Xiaobo the honor "blasphemy."

Ma Zhaoxu, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry, said the award is supposed to be given to those who "promote national harmony, international friendship" and work toward peace....

"Liu Xiaobo is a convicted criminal sentenced to jail by Chinese justice. His acts are in complete contradiction to the purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize," Ma said.

This may seem like Orwellian double speak, but honestly, I think that Ma is simply confused. Last year the Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to U.S. President Barack Obama. What had the President done to earn such an award? I wrote about this last year, but here's a summary: twenty-three days into his presidency he ordered a drone attack in Pakistan that killed 15 people. He sent 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan while keeping US forces in Iraq. And he refused to prosecute any CIA agents who tortured terror suspects.

Since winning the award he has ordered the assassination of an American citizen and now wishes to protect this "right" to kill Americans without any due process, but also wishes to claim that he can kill whomever he wants for whatever reasons he has. This "right" is ostensibly protected by state secrets, argues the Obama administration, and no court can adjudicate the legality of the president's hit list. The President is also continuing the deadly war on drugs and has expanded the war on the privacy of the American people.

So I can understand Ma Zhaoxu's confusion. In 2009 the Nobel Peace Prize Committee awarded the prize to a warmongering president who has upped the ante by demanding the legal right to assassinate Americans at his pleasure. Then in 2010, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee awarded the prize to a man who was jailed for preaching human rights and nonviolence. If murderers, tyrants, and warmongerers can no longer win the Nobel Peace Prize, just what good is the award anyway?

Land of the Really Freaking Expensive

Writes a friend about this story about three Wisconsin students who were fined $86,000 for throwing a college party: "Soon it will be easier and cheaper to go to jail."

I've got an idea. These guys can raise money by selling "Live really freaking expensive or die" t-shirts and hats. I'm in for a hundred dollars worth of merchandise if they decide to.

The Business Cycle

The best article you'll ever read on economic depressions, by Murray Rothbard, is reprinted today on LRC. I figured I'd link to it with the dual intent to share it for educational purposes and also to log it here on WYN for posterity.

Here's an excellent explanation of the business cycle, as first theorized by early classical economists David Hume and David Ricardo.

The Ricardian analysis of the business cycle went something as follows: The natural moneys emerging as such on the world free market are useful commodities, generally gold and silver. If money were confined simply to these commodities, then the economy would work in the aggregate as it does in particular markets: A smooth adjustment of supply and demand, and therefore no cycles of boom and bust. But the injection of bank credit adds another crucial and disruptive element. For the banks expand credit and therefore bank money in the form of notes or deposits which are theoretically redeemable on demand in gold, but in practice clearly are not. For example, if a bank has 1000 ounces of gold in its vaults, and it issues instantly redeemable warehouse receipts for 2500 ounces of gold, then it clearly has issued 1500 ounces more than it can possibly redeem. But so long as there is no concerted "run" on the bank to cash in these receipts, its warehouse-receipts function on the market as equivalent to gold, and therefore the bank has been able to expand the money supply of the country by 1500 gold ounces.

How We Got Here

Doug Casey explains how we arrived at the worst economy the U.S. has ever seen, and why it might not be all bad.

Before we get to where things stand at the moment, let’s briefly look at where we’ve come from.

That a depression was in the cards has been foreseeable for decades. The distortions cranked into the system in the ‘60s – the era of “guns and butter” spending by the government – resulted in the tumult of the ‘70s. Things could, and one could argue should, have come unglued then. But they didn’t, for a number of reasons that have only become clear in retrospect:

- Interest rates were allowed to rise to curative levels;
- The markets were non-manipulated and so, as they became quite depressed, were left to send out real distress signals;
- The U.S. was still running a trade surplus;
- The dollar had only come off the gold standard in 1971 and was still relatively sound.

Then, starting with Reagan and Thatcher, the world’s governments started cutting taxes and deregulating. The USSR collapsed peaceably. China, then India, made a shift toward free markets. And on top of it all, the computer revolution got seriously underway. All told, a good formula for recovery and a sound foundation for a boom.

But sadly, taxes, government spending, and deficits soon started heading much higher. Despite the collapse of its only conceivable enemy, U.S. military spending continued to skyrocket. Monetary policy encouraged everyone to take on huge amounts of debt, much more than ever in the past, and everyone soon found they could live way above their means. The stock, real estate, and bond markets got pumped up to ridiculous levels. The main U.S. export became trillions of paper dollars. Worst of all, the U.S. devolved into just another country, undistinguished by anything other than a legacy of a high standard of living.

The standard of living in the U.S. is now going down for these reasons, and others. But most disturbing to the average American is the falling position of the U.S. relative to the rest of the world. In brief, Americans won’t take kindly to the notion that they can’t continue earning, say, $10–40 an hour, for doing exactly the same thing a Chinese will do for $1–4 an hour.

What’s going to happen is that the Americans’ earnings are going to drop, while those of the Chinese are going to rise, meeting someplace in the middle. Especially when the Chinese works harder, longer, saves his money, and doesn’t burden his employer with all kinds of legacy benefits, topped off with lawsuits. This is a new threat, one that can’t be countered with B-2 bombers. It’s also something as big and as inevitable as a glacier coming down a valley during an Ice Age.

This, along with other problems presented by the business cycle have ushered in the Greater Depression.

Read the rest.

All Politicians Are Whores

So this is really news? Any political candidate who peddles influence for campaing contributions is a whore. The only reason Jerry Brown's comments are drawing any significant attention is because his challenger is a woman.

And that's just stupid. The only thing wrong with Brown's comments about Meg Whitman being a "whore" is that it's an insult to prostitutes, who actually are productive members of society.

You Still Can't Ban Idiocy

Even if legislators believed they were enacting laws for our own safety and benefit (instead of for the benefit of themselves or favored political interest groups, which is pretty much always the case), I still wouldn't see how cell phone bans like the one that just went into effect in Maryland would reduce car accidents.

Essentially, good drivers are good drivers and bad drivers are bad drivers. It really doesn't matter how many laws you pass when you're trying to regulate the habits of someone who doesn't drive worth a damn in the first place.

Banning the use of handheld devices while driving still doesn't prevent a bad driver from taking his or her eyes off the road for any reason other than attending to a phone call. Unless the ultimate goal is to ban driving altogether (which wouldn't be too surprising, I suppose, given the political popularity of public transportation systems), these laws are simply aimed at increasing revenue for either the government (in the form of fines) or its political allies in the private sector (in the form of the purchase of products deemed preferable to those being prohibited).

I'm not much different from anyone else who can become easily frustrated with the swerving motorist who's paying more attention to text messages than to the road ahead. But if you're honest, you have to admit that the kind of person who's comfortable taking his eyes off the road extensively in order to talk or text is also most likely the kind of person who will put her makeup on for ten minutes on her way to work, look all over the floor to find that missing CD, or think nothing of turning around constantly while yakking with his friends in the backseat. In short, these people are probably still going to end up in an accident eventually; the cause will just be different.

If you read the entire piece I linked, you'll notice that Maryland's cell phone ban is a secondary offense, meaning that a police officer would only be able to issue a citation after pulling someone over for another infraction first. Of course, secondary offenses can morph into primary offenses fairly quickly, but I wonder how much this designation as a secondary offense was due to the fact that you can almost never find a cop flying past you who's not talking on the phone himself. (Or looking at his cruiser's laptop while he runs the plates of everyone in front of him. Or ... well, you get my drift.)

I don't hold out hope that I'll ever see much of a reduction in the nanny/police state while I'm alive, but I could probably be satisfied if the majority of people would just realize that politicians never pass laws for our individual benefit. Only when this happens will there be any hope of recapturing lost liberty anyhow.

What Is Anarchy?

A very thorough description from Doug Casey.

How does it compare with your impression of anarchy?