Bitcoin

Stefan Molyneux The True Value of Bitcoin: What You Really Need To Know

Cegueira

Ensaio sobre a cegueira:

Funcionários, médicos, professores e muitos outros grupos profissionais, que tanto ganharam nos anos fáceis, tinham de conhecer a trajectória ruinosa que os seus sistemas seguiam. Só com enorme cegueira voluntária podem agora indignar-se perante os cortes de despesas insustentáveis que acumularam diariamente sem denunciar. Pensionistas, subsidiados, munícipes e utentes quiseram acreditar nas benesess que políticos irresponsáveis lhes concediam, apesar de os défices funcionais mostrarem a evidência do embuste. Não só os aceitaram mas erigiram-nos em direitos inalienáveis, apesar de muito superiores às receitas e liquidados por dívida externa. Agora, dizer-lhes que os seus descontos não garantem os níveis prometidos gera fúrias incontroláveis. Os realistas têm de ser corruptos, neoliberais, hipócritas ou mentecaptos, pois nada é mais negativo do que a sinceridade num povo embevecido pela ilusão. A verdade é crime de lesa-pátria.

Freedom = Security

FFF Webinar: The Phony Trade-Off between Freedom and Security

Socialismo sacrificial

Um "regime sacrificial":

As contribuições dos funcionários públicos cobrem cerca de metade dos mais de 8 mil milhões de euros pagos anualmente em pensões. O buraco de mais de 4 mil milhões é tapado pelo orçamento de estado, ou seja, pelos contribuintes. O diploma de convergência da Caixa Geral de Aposentações e da Segurança Social não elimina esse buraco, apenas o reduz um bocado, 728 milhões, ao que consta. Mesmo assim, Cavaco Silva fez um pedido de fiscalização preventiva da constitucionalidade do diploma do Governo, alegando, entre outras coisas, tratar-se de um “regime sacrificial” que frusta as “legítimas expectativas dos pensionistas. Muito bem. Os contribuintes e os mais jovens que aguentem e se sacrifiquem em nome das “legítimas expectativas” dos pensionistas, da confiança, da proporcionalidade, da equidade e de todos os outros valores consagrados em todas as constituições deste mundo. Ah, é verdade, e, ainda por cima, não se deve retirar este tipo de conclusões, porque isso equivale a promover um conflito intergeracional, a falta de solidariedade pelos mais velhos, a pressionar o TC, etc., etc.. Em Portugal, há de facto um “regime sacrificial”, o pensionista Cavaco Silva, perdão, o Sr. Presidente da República é que não vê, ou não quer ver, quem são as suas principais vítimas.

How Murray Rothbard Became a Libertarian

How Murray Rothbard Became a Libertarian

Totalitarianism

Masking Totalitarianism por Walter E. Williams:

One of the oldest notions in the history of mankind is that some people are to give orders and others are to obey. The powerful elite believe that they have wisdom superior to the masses and that they’ve been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Their agenda calls for an attack on the free market and what it implies — voluntary exchange. Tyrants do not trust that people acting voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. Therefore, free markets are replaced with economic planning and regulation that is nothing less than the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by the powerful elite.

Because Americans still retain a large measure of liberty, tyrants must mask their agenda.

Positive rights is a view that people should have certain material things — such as medical care, decent housing and food — whether they can pay for them or not.

What the positive rights tyrants want but won’t articulate is the power to forcibly use one person to serve the purposes of another. After all, if one person does not have the money to purchase food, housing or medicine and if Congress provides the money, where does it get the money? It takes it from some other American, forcibly using that person to serve the purposes of another. Such a practice differs only in degree, but not kind, from slavery.

The idea that one person should be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another has served as the foundation of mankind’s ugliest and most brutal regimes. Do we want that for America?

Hackschooling

Hackschooling Makes Me Happy: Logan LaPlante at TEDxUniversityofNevada

argumento à autoridade

How a lay climate skeptic’s view can count on global warming:

I am in Grantham in Lincolnshire. It is a sunny day. A respectable looking man in a wig is sitting under an apple tree. It is Sir Isaac Newton. I greet him. He smiles back, but looks agitated. ‘What is wrong?’ I ask. ‘I have made a wonderful discovery,’ he replies. ‘I call is my Law of Gravitation’. ‘What does it say?’ I enquire.

‘It says that any two bodies in the universe repel each other with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distance apart’. ‘Really?’ I respond. ‘But that is nonsense!’ ‘Nonsense?’ explodes the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. ‘Nonsense? How can you, a nobody, a nonentity, dare to question the mind of the greatest living scientist in the world?’

‘Sir, I refute your law quite simply’. And with that I take an apple from the tree and drop it on Sir Isaac’s head.

Realists & the Global Warming War

Walter Cunningham: Realists & the Global Warming War

On the Edge of Utopianism

On the Edge of Utopianism por Steve Horwitz:

Left-libertarians rightly argue, and the historical evidence amply supports, two related claims: 1) capitalists are not the primary beneficiaries of freed markets, society as a whole is and 2) capitalists are all in favor of using the state to advance their own interests in the face of free market results they do not like.

My own conviction is that the underlying market processes carry more weight than the distorting effects of the state along more margins than the left-libertarians believe.

One reason I leap to the defense of the Walmarts of the world is because they have done a great deal of good for the least well-off among us precisely due to the underlying market forces that critics would like to remove. In “playing defense” this way, I might look like a vulgar libertarian, but the larger strategic goal is to defend not the existing imperfect market processes but rather the freed market processes against those who would eliminate both.

To the degree that proposals to move us away from freed markets are based on a misreading of these data, defending the market forces at work in a mixed economy is not vulgar libertarianism, but an attempt to save us from even further statism and corporatism.

.. we should more carefully examine what parts of the status quo are driven by the underlying market forces and which by the state. Charges of vulgar libertarianism against legitimate arguments for the robustness of markets will do more harm than good.

Sundown in America (8)

No seguimento de Sundown in America (7)


David Stockman-This Is Not a Viable System-It's a House of Cards-The Great Deformation

What If Grocery Stores Were Run Like Healthcare?

What If Grocery Stores Were Run Like Healthcare?:

• Product prices will not be posted.
• The price will vary even within the same store, depending on who is buying and paying.
• You won’t be able to shop during evenings or weekends.
• If you need something, it probably won’t be there in the store. You may be told to come back days or weeks later.
• Even if you find the item, you may have a long wait to be able to buy it.
• If you want to charge your purchase, it won’t be at an automated machine; the transaction may be rejected; the necessary records may be missing; and someone from outside the store will have to approve the amount of the purchase. Since this all takes time, you may not be able to charge at all.
• You won’t have the right to return anything. Even defective merchandise will not be reimbursed. As a result there will be no incentive to maintain product quality.
• Your degree of satisfaction will not matter much to the store. What will count is the satisfaction of third-party payers, and the store will focus on how to get the most from their formula. If the third-party payer formula says you may not buy cherry pie and ice cream on the same day, you may grumble, but most likely you will have to return to get what you want.
• There will be very few brands to guide you in your selection. Labels and quantities will be all over the map, so direct comparison shopping will be impossible.
• Your chief protection against injury or death from what you buy will be hiring a lawyer to sue. These suits will in turn greatly increase the cost of the food you buy.
• The purchase of many food items will require permission from a licensed professional. The professional, fearing a lawsuit, will require you to buy items you do not need or want.

Good and Bad

Contrasting Good and Bad Science: Disease, Climate Change and the Case of the Golden Toad:

Anyone can write a model: the challenge is to demonstrate its accuracy and precision

The giants of history like Darwin’s “bulldog” Thomas Huxley relentlessly urged greater critical thinking arguing, “Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.” And Benjamin Franklin rallied, “It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.” In contrast advocate scientists and their followers like David Suzuki and Mark Hertsgaard try to bully the media if the media presentats any views skeptical of the consensus’ manufactured authority. Their insistence on “denying the deniers the right to deny” uses fear mongering like the Golden Toad’s extinction and every human tragedy to promote an intellectual tyranny. Such tactics are far more dangerous to our way of life than the current levels of CO2. We must demand more public debates between skeptics and advocates that are honestly moderated, so the world can separate good science from the bad.

The global warming lobby is immoral, corrupt and evil and condemns people to poverty

Global Warning!

Jovem se és socialista sê canalha, nunca dês o exemplo

Suíços Rejeitam Proposta Para Limitar Salários Mais Elevados:

A parte que me choca mais na notícia é que seja sequer possível referendar o que uma empresa privada pague de livre vontade a quem quer que seja. Sugiro à tal “juventude socialista” que se dedique à criação de empresas onde aplique a regra que tanto defende em vez de a querer impor coercivamente aos outros – sempre, claro, em nome de ideiais muito nobres e moralistas.

The Rise Of Libertarians

John Stossel ~ The Rise Of Libertarians?

The ’Economics’ of ObamaCare

The Economics of ObamaCare:

We are now seeing many of the undesirable effects of the ACA. These are typically being described as “unintended.” However, this adjective is a bit of a misnomer, since these outcomes were entirely predictable, and in fact were predicted by many free-market economists in the debate leading up to the passage of the ACA. Cynics can justifiably speculate that at least some of the proponents of the ACA knew full well the outcome would be untenable, leading the public to embrace even more federal intervention in health care down the road.

This isn’t rocket science, as they say. If the government has to force employers to provide a benefit to their employees, it means it’s unprofitable; otherwise the employers would have already done it as part of their compensation package in order to attract quality workers. So if this costly, unprofitable employer mandate only applies to firms with 50 or more employees, and even then only applies to those employees who work 30 or more hours, then we shouldn’t be shocked — shocked! — to discover firms not growing past 49 employees, and/or limiting people to 29 hours per week.

The State is an Institution of Theft

Murray Rothbard + Godfrey Bloom: The State is an Institution of Theft

Government Wealth Destruction

Today’s Wealth Destruction Is Hidden by Government Debt:

The welfare-warfare state is the biggest malinvestment today. It does not satisfy the preferences of freely interacting individuals and would be liquidated immediately if it were not continuously propped up by taxpayer money collected under the threat of violence.

Many people believe the paper wealth they own in the form of government bonds, investment funds, insurance policies, bank deposits, and entitlements will provide them with nice sunset years. However, at retirement they will only be able to consume what is produced by the real economy. But the economy’s real production capacity has been severely distorted and reduced by government intervention. The paper wealth is backed to a great extent by hot air. The ongoing transfer of bad debts onto the balance sheets of governments and central banks cannot undo the destruction of wealth. Savers and pensioners will at some point find out that the real value of their wealth is much less than they expected. In which way, exactly, the illusion will be destroyed remains to be seen.

Rant Liberal do Dia

« você é um fanfarrão xerife! »

A ver manif (dos sindicatos) das forças de segurança em S. Bento, e a pindérica escalada das escadas. Não é que as polícias não tenham utilidade, sobretudo as de proximidade -- mas estamos a falar de uma classe de funcionários do Estado que não têm problemas em pavonear-se com uniformes paramilitares e importunar altivamente quem "pisa a linha" em zonas nobres das cidades, e que fazem gala em aparecer com grande aparato quando abre a época de caça à multa por todo o tipo de "crimes" inventados. Se for preciso, fecham autoestradas, interrogam populações inteiras a la Gestapo. Mas que se recusam a entrar em subúrbios problemáticos, e deixam o interior ao Deus-dará. Ai de quem resista a uma cobrança fiscal. Mas experimentem serem vítimas de violência real. Sacou filmes na net? Cacetete em cima! Foi assaltado? Sabe como é, o bairro não é fácil. Responder pela falta de eficiência? Nunca! Responder pelos abusos de direitos individuais? Nós somos a polícia! Fanfarrões just following orders. É vê-los, todos contentes, por terem ultrapassado a "linha contínua" da base das escadarias (suponho que não tenha aparecido nenhum mentecapto uniformizado a dizer "é como se fosse uma parede, vai ter de levar multa, mas pode pagar por multibanco"). Coragem para ir mais longe? Nã... não sem subsídio!