Game of Theories: The Austrians

Game of Theories: The Austrians

Jovem liberal e descomplexado

Todos os anos marcham pela Avenida da Liberdade aqueles (ou os herdeiros ideológicos daqueles) que lutaram contra a ditadura - mas não a favor da democracia, e muito menos pela liberdade. Em cada slogan, um apelo ao colectivismo. Se levassem a sua avante, Portugal seria mais pobre. A "liberdade" desta gente não é a de gente livre. Mas esperam-se sorrisos embevecidos e declarações para arrancar aplausos.

Jovem liberal e descomplexado

Alt-Libertarianism

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Libertarianism and the “Alt-Right” (PFS 2017)

Consent of the Governed, Revisited

Consent of the Governed, Revisited:

For the record, I can state in complete candor that I do not approve of the manner in which I am being treated by the liars, thieves, and murderers who style themselves the Government of the United States of America or by those who constitute the tyrannical pyramid of state, local, and hybrid governments with which this country is massively infested. My sincere wish is that all of these individuals would, for once in their lives, do the honorable thing. In this regard, I suggest that they resign their positions immediately and seek honest employment.

Socialismo = Miséria

Socialism is for suckers: Venezuela

Politics in One Page

Politics in One Page por Jeffrey A. Tucker:

• Lesson 1: Your Vote Cannot Change the Election Outcome
  
• Lesson 2: You Are Voting for People, Not Policies
  
• Lesson 3: These People Are Not Actually the Government
  
• Lesson 4: These Are Not the Only Options
  
• Lesson 5: Social Change Happens Outside of Government

Lyin' Lincoln

Could have compromise avoided the Civil War?

Libertarian Paternalism is Socialism

"Libertarian Paternalism is Plain Oxymoron" por Pedro Videla (sem link):

.. on closer look, the concept of "libertarian paternalism" looks like an oxymoron for three reasons:

First, libertarians believe that adults should be allowed to pursue their own interests, unless their behaviour hurts other. They do so because they assume that individuals know their own interests better than bureaucrats, authorities, the elite, or anyone else.

Second, libertarians believe that adults should be allowed to pursue their interests, unless their behavior hurts others. They do so because they assume that individuals know their own interests better than bureaucrats, authorities, the elite, or anyone else.

Second, libertarians do not assume that individuals never make mistakes, always know their interests, or even are always able to act on their interests when they know them. Rather, they stress that individuals have the right to make their own mistakes because it leads to a more autonomous and competent individual.

Third, libertarians emphasize that even the best-intentioned member of the educated elite may be subject to the same irrational traits and cognitive limitations that are supposed to affect choices of ordinary people. Remember that these problems are not a function of low IQ or a poor education; they are universal.

To summarize, libertarian paternalism should be considered just a nice intellectual exercise.

If the elite want new reasons to implement policies that control choices - such as how much fat people are allowed to consume, whether adults are allowed to smoke, or how much they have to save - it must be called what it is: a nanny state that drains freedom and kills individual responsibility.

People Hate Feminism

Why Do People Hate #Feminism? #1 - Feminists Hate Men | #2 - The Patriarchy | #3 - The Gender Pay Gap (#EqualPayDay) | #4 - Gender Studies Degrees | #5 - Hashtag Hate Group | #6 - Everything is Sexist | #7 - Male Feminists | #8 - Yes All Feminists | #9 - Feminists Say the Darndest Things | #10 - #Feminism is a Supremacy | #11 - Feminism Is Its Own Parody | #12 - Feminist Fundamentalists

Mises, Rothbard, and Catalonia

Mises, Rothbard, and Catalonia por David Gordon:

Mises addresses the issue directly. In Omnipotent Government, he criticizes the eminent Spanish liberal Salvador de Madariaga for his opposition to Catalonian independence. “If some peoples pretend that history or geography gives them the right to subjugate other races, nations, or peoples, there can be no peace. It is unbelievable how deep-rooted these vicious ideas of hegemony, domination, and oppression are even among the most distinguished contemporaries. Señor Salvador de Madariaga condemns the demands of the Catalans and the Basques for independence, and advocates Castilian hegemony for racial, historical, geographical, linguistic, religious, and economic considerations.”

Attempts to suppress the autonomy of a distinct linguistic group, Mises thought, would tend to lead to war. Peace requires that groups be allowed to choose their own destiny. “It is futile to advance historical or geographical reasons in support of political ambitions which cannot stand the criticism of democratic principles. Democratic government can safeguard peace and international cooperation because it does not aim at the oppression of other peoples.”

Mises extended the right of secession very far: any group wishing to fend for itself should be free to do so. “The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. ... If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done.”

Mises would have little sympathy for the view, held by some libertarians today, that Catalonian independence should be opposed because the Spanish government is at present less socialist than the Catalonian provincial authorities.

The Utility of Racism

ThatGuyT - The Utility of Racism

turba ululante

Observe that today’s resurgence of tribalism is not a product of the lower classes—of the poor, the helpless, the ignorant—but of the intellectuals, the college-educated “elitists” (which is a purely tribalistic term). Observe the proliferation of grotesque herds or gangs—hippies, yippies, beatniks, peaceniks, Women’s Libs, Gay Libs, Jesus Freaks, Earth Children—which are not tribes, but shifting aggregates of people desperately seeking tribal “protection.”

The common denominator of all such gangs is the belief in motion (mass demonstrations), not action—in chanting, not arguing—in demanding, not achieving—in feeling, not thinking—in denouncing “outsiders,” not in pursuing values—in focusing only on the “now,” the “today” without a “tomorrow”—in seeking to return to “nature,” to “the earth,” to the mud, to physical labor, i.e., to all the things which a perceptual mentality is able to handle. You don’t see advocates of reason and science clogging a street in the belief that using their bodies to stop traffic, will solve any problem.

Ayn Rand, “The Missing Link ”-
Philosophy: Who Needs It

O Papa anticapitalista

Tom Woods - The Pope and Libertarians: My Response

hear the cry of the poor

Pope and Patriarch, hear the cry of the poor (because of Climate Change):

In short, like so many callous and coldly indifferent totalitarians before you, you demand the Nanny-knows-best disposition of the world’s resources by a pietistic, profiteering few central planners in the governing elite with which you seek to align yourselves rather than by the energies and industries of the many through the cheerful chaos of the free market.

Hear the cry of the victims of the totalitarianism you disgracefully advocate, a system of governance that was and is and ever shall be, first and foremost, harmful to the poor, as the gruesome and murderous history of Fascist, Communist and, now, environmentalist Socialism amply, repeatedly and terribly demonstrates.

government vs. you

How the US government spies on people who protest -- including you | Jennifer Granick

Class Struggle Rightly Conceived

Class Struggle Rightly Conceived por Sheldon Richman:

Getting the members of the classes straight is important if we are to accurately distinguish the exploiters and exploited.

Who are the exploiters? All who live off of the industrious class. Besides common crime, there is only one way to do that: state privilege financed by taxation.

In this view, political-economic history is the record of conflict between producers, no matter their station, and the parasitic and predatory political class, both inside and outside of government.

In summary, the taxing power necessarily produces two classes: those who create wealth and those who take and receive it. The producers of wealth naturally want to keep it and use it for their own purposes. Those who wish to expropriate it look for clever ways to get it without unduly upsetting its creators. One way is to teach people that they are the state and that paying ever-more in taxes benefits themselves. The public schools have been particularly useful in that mission.

As long as government is in the wealth-transfer business, class conflict will persist. Class in this sense is an important tool of political analysis. It’s time that advocates of individual liberty and free markets reclaimed it from the Marxists.