Monopoly and Competition

Monopoly and Competition | Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism (3)

Na continuação de:
— Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism
— Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism (2),

C. S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism, Part 3 por David J. Theroux:

For Lewis, science should be a quest for knowledge, and his concern was that in the modern era science is too often used instead as a quest by some for power over others. .... Lewis shows that "what is" does not indicate "what ought" to be. Scientists on their own are not able to address moral ethics, and all social and political questions are exclusively questions of morality. Lewis furthermore viewed as nonscience, or scientism, all those disciplines that attempt to replicate the scientific method to analyze man.

As the form of government most consistent with his study of natural law and the nature of man, Lewis settled on democracy (not majoritarianism, but self-government as in Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America)

.... he similarly noted the need to radically constrain the powers of government, quoting Lord Acton's axiom on the corrupting influence of power .... Lewis fully understood that democracy, if unchecked, becomes egalitarianism and will trample on liberty as a collectivist force for evil by celebrating pride and envy as it fosters tyranny.

Above all, Lewis was a keen observer of the world he lived in, consistently recognizing the implications of every development in the galloping socialism of post-World War II England ....

In direct contrast to the moral relativism, utilitarianism, collectivism, and authoritarianism of the "progressives," the profound lessons from Lewis's extensive writings pertaining to liberty are absolutely clear and of the upmost importance to every modern man and woman.

Never Enough

Never Enough: William Voegeli on America's Limitless Welfare State

Why Catholics Don’t Understand Economics

Why Catholics Don't Understand Economics por
Jeffrey Tucker:

Today, most of what is written about economics in Catholic circles is painful to read. The failing extends left and right, as likely to appear in "progressive" or "traditionalist" publications.

I have what I think is a new theory about why this situation persists. People who live and work primarily within the Catholic milieu are dealing mainly with goods of an infinite nature ... They are what economists call "free goods."

Scarcity is the defining characteristic of the material world, the inescapable fact that gives rise to economics.

As an example, consider the case of the loaves and fishes, an incident in the life of Jesus recorded by all four Gospel writers .... He turned the scarce bits of food into non-scarce goods by making copies of the scarce food. The multitudes ate and were full.

This is completely different from the way things work in the realm of scarce goods. Let's say that you like my shoes and want them. If you take them from me, I do not have them anymore .... It means absolutely nothing to declare that there should be something called socialism for my shoes so that the whole of society can somehow own them. It is factually impossible for this to happen, because shoes are a scarce good. This is why socialism is sheer fantasy, a meaningless dreamland as regards scarce goods.

The moral norm is that non-scarce goods should be free. There is no physical limit on their distribution. There is no conflict over ownership. They would not be subject to rationing. This is not true with regard to material goods.

Lições esquecidas

Income Tax Cut, JFK Hopes To Spur Economy 1962/8/13

Neocorporativismo

(Relacionado com Corporativismo 1 – Consumidores 0 n'O Insurgente)

À semelhança do que se passou com os casos das lojas jurídicas — Ordem dos advogados chumba loja jurídica em área comercial (DN):

"o exercício da advocacia rege-se pelo princípio da dignidade da profissão, o qual rejeita estratégias e actuações de cariz desmedida ou exclusivamente comercial, ou que possam criar uma aparência de mercantilização da profissão"

Ordem dos Médicos alerta para riscos de novo site que dá uma segunda opinião aos doentes:

A partir de hoje um grupo de mais de 150 médicos vai estar disponível para dar uma segunda opinião médica através da Internet, em apenas 72 horas. O portal segundaopiniaomedica.pt, pioneiro no país, não é, contudo visto com bons olhos pela Ordem dos Médicos. O bastonário, Pedro Nunes, disse ao PÚBLICO que não foi informado na existência do site e deixou claro "que isto não é medicina, nem pode ser visto como um acto médico".

Que não haja dúvidas: os fascistas de estetoscópio, beca, comprimidos, esquadro, ou calculadora científica sempre usarão todos os meiso legais para salvaguardar o seu esquema mafioso com o Estado e impedir que as pessoas tenham escolha. O corporativismo está bem e recomenda-se.

Endgame

President Barack Obama's Endgame: A Look At The National Debt

Cartões de Crédito

A propósito de Banco de Portugal deverá proibir cláusulas abusivas em empréstimos (Público):

.... a questão não se colocará tanto ao nível da legalidade de tais cláusulas, mas mais ao nível ético. Lembram que esse tipo de cláusulas, que visam proteger os bancos de "factores supervenientes extraordinários", tem sido praticado em contratos de financiamento a grandes empresas e a grandes projectos, sem que a sua legalidade seja questionada.

Regulate THIS! por Don Boudreaux:

Our Leaders, though, cling to their peculiar faith that regulations never create incentives for people to do what Our Leaders would prefer people not to do.

Let’s put this faith to a real test: Ask Congress and the White House to .... reduce fees and interest charges for late payment of taxes, and eliminate jail time as a punishment for tax evasion. If Our Leaders’ faith is sound, there will be no increase in tax evasion and delinquencies. Revenue collected by the IRS will be unaffected. The IRS’s stiff penalties will be seen to have been unjustified because (if Our Leaders’ faith is true) these penalties do nothing to encourage timely and full payment of taxes.

Ou seja, se o Estado fosse pessoa de bem, devia proibir quaisquer "cláusulas abusivas" na colecta fiscal - aquelas que "permitem" ao Estado aumentar a carga fiscal sem o contribuinte ser tido nem achado, uma vez que tais cláusulas deixam o cliente numa situação de fragilidade e incerteza face ao futuro.

Obamacare’s Devastating Consequences

Exclusive Video: Gov. Mitch Daniels on Obamacare's Devastating Consequences

O modelo chileno

Via Dan Mitchell,

Chile does not face a long-term Social Security crisis. This is because lawmakers shifted to a system of personal accounts almost 30 years ago. As a result, Chile’s economy is much stronger, the financial system is healthy, workers are better off, and taxpayers are protected.

How to Keep Seniors Working: Lessons from Chile:

Chile .... had a traditional pay-as-you-go defined benefit system, like Social Security in the United States. Workers had strong incentives to start their retirement benefits as soon as possible, because postponing pensions and adding contributions did not increase benefits commensurately. Labor force participation dropped dramatically when workers became eligible for pensions.

This changed with reforms in 1981 that replaced the defined benefit system with a defined contribution system. All new workers were required to join the defined contribution system while existing workers had a choice. Most workers are now in the new system and are required to contribute 10 percent of their wages to an individual account. Contributions are invested in a pension fund chosen by the worker and accumulate a market rate of return. Payouts take the form of inflation-protected annuities or gradual withdrawals during retirement. The new system increased incentives for older workers to postpone retirement and continue working. The response was dramatic ....

How the Commerce Clause Made Congress All-Powerful

Wheat, Weed, and ObamaCare: How the Commerce Clause Made Congress All-Powerful

Divorciar casamento e Estado (3)

Na continuação de Divorciar casamento e Estado (2) — Taking Marriage Private:

WHY do people — gay or straight — need the state’s permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn’t, because marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents’ agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity.

Privatize Marriage por David Boaz:

A second meaning of "privatizing" marriage is to treat it like any other contract: The state may be called upon to enforce it, but the parties define the terms.

Privatize Marriage por David Boaz [um post diferente do anterior]:

One of the problems with this whole idea is that, as usual, the state has entangled itself in our lives.

There are 1049 federal laws that mention marital status, most of them dealing with taxes or transfer payments. If marriage becomes a matter of private contract, the federal government will still have to decide whether to recognize all such contracts for the purpose of handing out marital benefits. And that doesn’t even get into custody, inheritance, property, next-of-kin, hospital visitation and other sorts of laws usually handled at the state level.

Just another example of how the intrusion of the state into every corner of society makes it difficult to privatize any aspect of life. But it’s good to see the idea getting some discussion.

Bankrupting America

Public Pulse: how the American public views its government
Bankrupting America

Divorciar casamento e Estado (2)

Na continuação de
- Divorciar casamento e Estado
- What Should Be The State’s Role In Marriage?
- Divorciar casamento e Estado

Time To Divorce Marriage and Government no C4SS:

Surprisingly, both the state and churches were mostly uninvolved with marriage until the ninth century .... Recorded ceremonies were recommended to the upper class, primarily to settle issues of inheritance.

Over time, however, churches became involved with blessing marriages, and eventually asserted authority as legitimizers of the institution.

Marriage licenses are a fairly new invention, created in the mid-nineteenth century as a tool the state could use to enforce social proscriptions on interracial marriages. By the early twentieth century they were nearly universally required as enforcement tools for the state’s increasing regulation of inheritance, parental authority, taxes and other matters.

By obtaining a marriage license, a couple is begging for permission of the state to marry, which places both love and the church under the authority of government .... it requires couples to marry a de facto third spouse — the government itself.

Divorciar casamento e Estado

Na continuação de
- Casamento: entre o estado e a Liberdade
- What Should Be The State’s Role In Marriage?


CATO Daily Podcast - August 6, 2010: "Gay Marriage and Conservatives" featuring Ilya Shapiro

o Ensino Estatal é racista (3)

Na continuação de o Ensino Estatal é racista (2) — Teachers Unions and Civil Rights Groups Block School Choice for Black Students:

Teachers unions, like the National Education Association (NEA), and many civil-rights organizations inadvertently sabotage the potential of black males by perpetuating failed educational visions. Black males will never achieve academic success until black parents are financially empowered to opt out of failed public school systems.

Even though there is overwhelming evidence supporting the success of charter schools for children from low-income households, the civil-rights groups resist the opportunity for parents to exercise freedom to choose those schools. .... “that our nation’s urban public schools have prepared more children for poverty, the penitentiary, and premature pregnancy than they did for college.”

We don’t need no education

157. ‘We don’t need no education. We dont need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom. Teachers leave them kids alone.’

Mr. Gatto quit as a public school teacher in order to stop harming kids. He had discovered that institutional schooling is designed to prevent the natural genius of children from emerging. Public schools impose a state of permanent incompletion to our kids, by teaching habit-training, not intellectual development. The power elite deliberately suppresses independent and critical thinking, to make us obedient citizens and consumers. Gatto, author of the best-selling Weapons of Mass Instruction, Dumbing Us Down, and The Underground History of American Education, discusses how the twenty elite boarding schools teach their students according to ancient principles, and homeschoolers and unschoolers are doing the same.

Políticos e Burocratas 0 - 2 Cabras (2)

Na continuação de Políticos e Burocratas 0 - 2 Cabras,

Portugal e Espanha gastam 48 milhões em 150 mil cabras para prevenir fogos na raia (Público):

Foi ontem apresentado, na Guarda, o projecto Self-Prevention. A ideia, exposta por um agrupamento de cooperação territorial que abrange 187 entidades de ambos os lados da fronteira, consiste na reintrodução de 150 mil cabeças de gado caprino, nas zonas raianas dos distritos da Guarda, Bragança, Zamora e Salamanca, como "limpadores naturais" dos campos.

Ao custo de 320€ por cabra, espera-se dentro de para breve o anúncio de um programa paralelo de reflorestação das zonas de pastoreio caprino.

The final frontier (2)

Na continuação de The final frontier,

Danish Amateurs Hope To Launch Suborbital Rocket Next Week:

The team has been building their rocket since about 2004. Copenhagen Suborbitals is a non-profit endeavor, based entirely on sponsors and volunteers. Their mission: launch a human being into space. If they are successful, Denmark would become only the fourth nation to send a human into space. But this project is completely private – no national funds have been used. “We are working fulltime to develop a series of suborbital space vehicles – designed to pave the way for manned space flight on a micro size spacecraft,” said Madsen and von Bengtson on their website.

Separação entre sociedade e parasitas

Via Mises Daily en Español, Art and State: The Case for Separation por Wendy McElroy:

More fundamentally, why is there a National Endowment for the Arts as opposed to a National Endowment for Plumbers? Art is a profession like any other. Artists who depend on the government dole are expressing nothing so much as their inability to succeed in the real world where they would have to satisfy the same standards of free-market competence imposed upon the rest of us.

The answer returns: Art enriches society. Only by forcibly diverting the money that unenlightened people would otherwise spend on their children or on feckless pleasures, like snow tires, can 'society' protect itself against their ignorance.

I revolt against the elitist arrogance of those who pick the pockets of working people and slur them in the process .... Those who create art should have to pound the pavement for rent money the same way as everyone else.

Art and state should be separate. Artists, like all people in free society, should seek benefactors through voluntary means.

Sowell on American collapse

Sowell on American collapse
parte 1 | parte 2 | parte 3 | parte 4 | parte 5

Business ethics courses

Business 'Ethics' Wrong Focus por Thomas J. DiLorenzo:

Business ethics courses typically combine anti-business moralizing with advocacy of more government regulation of business and, subsequently, a greater politicization of society. In doing so they actually encourage unethical behavior because it is politics, not markets, that is inherently immoral.

Calling this immoral act "democracy," "majority rule" or "progressive taxation" does not make it moral. Under democracy, rulers confiscate the income of productive members of society and redistribute it to various supporters in order to keep themselves in power. The government also pays itself very well out of these confiscated funds.

The most successful politicians are those who are the least hindered by strong moral principles. They have the least qualms about confiscating other peoples' property in order to maintain their own power, perks, and income.

In short, universities perform a disservice with their relative neglect of the real ethical problem in America – the politicization of society and the growth of government – while greatly exaggerating ethical problems in private enterprise.

Motivational Speech

Tony Robbins Economic Warning 1-2
parte 1 | parte 2

[ Nota: não se perde muito em começar o vídeo aos 7 minutos. ]

Think Globally, Act Irrationally: Recycling (2)

Na continuação de Think Globally, Act Irrationally: Recycling — por Michael Munger:

There is a simple test for determining whether something is a resource (something valuable) or just garbage (something you want to dispose of at the lowest possible cost, including costs to the environment). If someone will pay you for the item, it's a resource. Or, if you can use the item to make something else people want, and do it at lower price or higher quality than you could without that item, then the item is also a resource. But if you have to pay someone to take the item away, or if other things made with that item cost more or have lower quality, then the item is garbage.

No amount of wishful thinking, or worship of nature as a goddess, can change this basic calculus .... the price system is telling us this is an inefficient and wasteful activity.

A generation of Americans has been indoctrinated into a "save resources, recycle at all costs" mindset. "Recycle!" is used as a moral bludgeon. This is different from "Don't Litter!" .... is an attempt to solve a real problem.

"Recycle, regardless of cost!" doesn't solve a problem; it creates one. Laws requiring recycling harm me, the environment, and everyone else. We have to take prices into account, because prices are telling us that we can't save resources by wasting resources.

Peter Schiff on Crash Proof 2.0

Peter Schiff on Crash Proof 2.0 | Google Books

A tirania da burocracia

Dangers of a Salaried Bureaucracy por Benjamin Franklin:

Sir, there are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice—the love of power and the love of money.

.... as all history informs us, there has been in every state and kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing and the governed; the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the princes or enslaving of the people.

Generally, indeed, the ruling power carries its point, and we see the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes, the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partizans, and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure.

There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh— get first all the people’s money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever. It will be said that we do not propose to establish kings. I know it. But there is a natural inclination in mankind to kingly government. It sometimes relieves them from aristocratic domination. They would rather have one tyrant than five hundred. It gives more of the appearance of equality among citizens; and that they like.

Delivered in Philadelphia in the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

More Liberty, Less Government

Mais uma pérola — uma das melhores — de Milton Friedman:


Milton Friedman - More Liberty, Less Government

Socialism, Limited Government, Anarchy, and Bikinis

.... the socialist claim that capitalism emphasizes competition whereas socialism emphasizes cooperation; it is one of the reasons why socialism seems, in the abstract, to be such an attractive system .... Does this mean that socialism is better? No more than the desirability of sunny weather means that women should always wear bikinis or that men should never carry umbrellas.

There is a difference between what institutions allow and what they require .... a socialist society will work only if people do have the same ends. If they do not it will collapse or, worse, develop, as did the Soviet Union, into a monstrous parody of socialist ideals.

Socialism does better with perfect people than capitalism does with imperfect people; limited government does better with perfect people than anarcho-capitalism with imperfect. And it is better to wear a bikini with the sun shining than a raincoat when it is raining. That is no argument against carrying an umbrella.

Citação Liberal

The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are. H. L. Mencken

Free Will and Job Performance?

Free Will and Job Performance?:

Do philosophic views affect job performance? The authors found that possessing a belief in free will predicted better career attitudes and actual job performance. The effect of free will beliefs on job performance indicators were over and above well-established predictors such as conscientiousness, locus of control, and Protestant work ethic.

In Study 1, stronger belief in free will corresponded to more positive attitudes about expected career success.

In Study 2, job performance was evaluated objectively and independently by a supervisor. Results indicated that employees who espoused free will beliefs were given better work performance evaluations than those who disbelieve in free will, presumably because belief in free will facilitates exerting control over one’s actions.

Tea Party: the movie

Tea Party Movie Trailer 2010

Entitlement and resentment

Entitlement and resentment:

The biggest cultural change that the government needs to make is to eradicate the sense that people are due certain entitlements. Instead of assuming that they are entitled to benefits and services as of right, people need to come to terms with the fact that what they receive comes at the expense of others: welfare benefits can only be granted to some because others pay tax. Calling a benefit an entitlement ignores the fact that the money has to be earned by someone and then taken by government.

End the Fed (3)

Na continuação de End the Fed (2), The Anti-Fed Revolution por Anthony Gregory:

The libertarian case, the economic case, the constitutional case, and the philosophical case are all here, as well as some ideas on how to return to a more sensible and morally defensible system of money, credit, and banking. The short list of recommended reading at the end is helpful: it is divided into levels of sophistication to aid all readers and will help to educate a new, larger generation of anti-Fed revolutionaries. Give this book to your skeptical friends and family and keep a copy in your personal libertarian library. In the battle against the rapacious leviathan, defeating the state’s counterfeit machine must be a high priority. This is a great addition to our intellectual ammo, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

###

Of course, what makes Austrian economics so particularly compelling and important these days is its explanation of the boom-and-bust business cycle. Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek, the latter of whom won the Nobel Prize in 1974 for his work on this topic, explained unsustainable and systemic economic booms in terms of artificially easy credit, which leads to malinvestment in economic projects, especially long-term ones that cannot be justified by current savings. In a free market, interest rates are determined by the willingness of people to forgo spending and instead save their money. When the rates are lowered by the Fed, it discourages saving while simultaneously encouraging borrowing and investing. This leads to a cascade of high wages, massive construction, rising prices, and everything else we associate with booms such as those seen in the 1920s, the Nasdaq bubble, and the skyrocketing housing prices of the Bush era. But eventually, as economic projects must yield a return, the savings are shown not to have been there to justify the investment. Whereas a free market in interest rates harmonizes production and consumption over time, central bank distortions lead to the boom and bust.

The Cognitive Biases of Hierarchy

Na continuação de Why Networks Defeat Hierarchies — The Cognitive Biases of Hierarchy por Kevin Carson:

Another, related problem is the cognitive biases that authority itself implants in the mind of the individual manager.

.... experiments found that people in a position of power display behavior patterns commonly associated with damage to the portions of the cerebral cortex that govern empathy and the ability to imagine the world from others’ perspective. Power, in other words, kills the ability even to understand that there are other perspectives than those of the hierarchy.

.... people in power are encultured to shut off the capacity to critically evaluate communication based on internal logic or sense, and instead to evaluate it based on how authoritative the source is. After all, if they’re not at the very top of the pyramid, they’re expected to “buy in” to whatever comes from above and uncritically pass it along down the conveyor belt.

If you state it instead in the active voice (“So-and-so says to do this”), there’s the danger that someone will see the issuer of the order as a mere mortal with individual goals and desires and subjective judgment.

Once you view the makers of rules as your equals, and their rules as arguments or suggestions to be evaluated and followed based on your own judgment of their merits (If it’s not “a good idea,” I don’t CARE if it’s “the law”), you’ve established that you’re a dog with too much ancestral wolf DNA to be safe around humans.

the libertarian electorate

How Obama Revived the Freedom Movement: John J. Pitney, Jr. on the libertarian electorate

Progressistas

Excertos de Progresismo. Concepto y objeto. no TodosGronchos, leitura integral recomendada:

El progresismo es la ideología adecuada para el débil de ideas, para el cansado, para el que ansía ser esclavo, para el cómodo y el culpógeno. El progresista es básicamente un cobarde cultural. Si fuera un poco más decidido sería comunista, socialista o partidario de su hermana boba, la socialdemocracia. No acepta todo el vitalismo creador/destructor del totalitarismo al que termina sirviendo.

Su debilidad se manifiesta ya en su modo de expresarse y escribir: Relativista hasta el extremo, dubitativo, buscando siempre el consenso, transmisor fiel de lo políticamente correcto. Nunca expresando lo que siente, sino lo que “está bien sentir”.

La realidad, la naturaleza, no la cambian los intelectuales sino los hombres y mujeres de acción. Ése es su mayor resentimiento. Y la justificación del fracaso económico personal y la laxitud que experimenta permitiendo que lo conduzcan políticamente gente de acción y poco basamento intelectual.

Porque bajo esa rebeldía hay un ser temeroso, obediente, sumiso. Sumiso a su amo y al patrón ideológico de turno. Y como está enfrentado con el concepto de autoridad, aun sintiéndose parte de, por ejemplo, el kirchnerismo, sabe que "le falta un poco".

[ Também publicado n’O Insurgente ]

Downsizing State Agriculture

Agriculture: Downsizing The Federal Government

um conservador convertido

Pragmatically Toward Libertarianism por Conor Friedersdorf:

The pragmatist in me has concluded, after long experience and repeated disappointments, that the conservative movement is never actually going to deliver on its promise to check the growth of the federal government; and that the progressive movement is never going to deliver on its promise to protect civil liberties.

I retain Burkean concerns with pure libertarianism, but the pragmatist in me is confident that they're irrelevant. In a way, that is a disappointment. Libertarians lack the power to pass their most appealing agenda items, never mind the extreme stuff. That aside, there is also the fact that the conservative movement's worst features -- its advocacy for foreign wars of choice, catastrophically failed approach to drug prohibition, and radical views on executive power -- are themselves Burkean nightmares.

All the better if this post helps some readers toward what I regard as the most important takeaway: upon reflection, the loose coalition of libertarianism looks pretty damned attractive to pragmatic folks on the right with Burkean sympathies.

The Professional Left

Também se aplica a Portugal - The Professional Left vs. the Amateur Right no sempre excelente The People’s Cube:

The term "Professional Left" denotes a growing industry that specializes in converting other people's money into an ideological product, while making a good living out of it in the process. .... there is a class of people with radical leftist views who have made it their job - with the help of abundant grants, foundations, and trusts - to carry out propaganda campaigns, indoctrinate, subvert, and plant the seeds of the leftist worldview in people's minds through the arts, media, education, blogging, and street protests. For many it's the only income they've had in years.

Slowly but surely, the Professional Left's complex has diversified and expanded its frontiers to include professional educators, filmmakers, entertainers, lawyers, writers, clergy, journalists, politicians, government workers ....

The term "Professional Left" existed in the early 20th century Russian empire as "professional revolutionaries." The term described a large group of gainfully employed leftist activists whose full-time job was street agitation and community organizing. They also set up subversive networks, created and distributed propaganda, and sabotaged the existing political and economic system by any other means possible.

###

In contrast, there's no such class of people on the right .... What we have is the Amateur Right: a loose amalgamation of free-roaming conservatives and libertarians who engage in political activism in their spare time - and on their own dime. The least the Amateur Right can do is turn the term "Professional Left" into an insult and give it the widest circulation. Learn to identify, expose, and isolate the Professional Left. Ostracize and ridicule them. Disrupt their networks and cut off their finances. Deny them the moral high ground from which they preach and obtain public support. Turn their work, assets, narrative, images, and their very words against them.

Don't compromise, and never forget that their morals are crooked, their logic is flawed, their honor is stolen, their motives are corrupt, their methods are criminal, and their goal is a disaster.

You want THEM to control your life?

You Want THEM to Control Health Care? por Chuck Baldwin:

Among the scariest words ever heard are, "We are from the government, and we are here to help you." When you hear those words, RUN, because you are about to get hammered.

Anyone who believes that the government can manage anything efficiently is 8 years old, rationally challenged, or in the business of profiting from the government's inefficiency. The only thing the government can do with precision is destroy things (and people). That is the one thing the feds can do with complete and total proficiency. Our first and greatest President, George Washington, understood this reality. He said, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." Amen.

Free the Monks & Free Enterprise

Free the Monks & Free Enterprise

A liberdade não se decreta

Via O Insurgente, A liberdade não se decreta de Rui de Albuquerque no OrdemLivre.org:

O liberalismo não serve para gerar programas liberais de governo, mas para impor limites a que estes se transformem em governos socialistas e desmesuradamente intervencionistas. Essa resistência só pode ser oposta por uma sociedade com forte apreço pela liberdade e pela responsabilidade individual que ela comporta. Por isso, é no campo das ideias e da formação da opinião pública sobre a sua relação com o poder, a soberania e o estado que o liberalismo deve operar.

Não é, de fato, fácil convencer uma sociedade a arcar com o peso da responsabilidade, da liberdade e da individualidade. É politicamente muito mais eficaz convencer os cidadãos que uma minoria esclarecida de políticos os governará rumo à felicidade e ao bem-estar, sem que eles tenham de sacrificar muito mais do que alguma renda mensal e certas prerrogativas da liberdade individual.

Hoje, ao fim de décadas de socialismo e de estatismo que lançaram o país na miséria, os portugueses e os partidos que os representam continuam a clamar pelo estado social e pelo aumento da ingerência do governo nas suas vidas. Este cenário não será, de resto, muito distinto do que se passa noutros países do mundo democrático e desenvolvido.

The Open Internet

The Open Internet and Lessons from the Ma Bell Era

Teorias de Conspiração e Socialismo (2)

Na continuação de Teorias de Conspiração e Socialismo — The Myth of the Engineered Recession por Gary North:

The series of bank failures in 2008 called attention to the fact that bankers were in fact idiots. They had been completely taken in by promoters of toxic debt. The subprime mortgage market was a gigantic fraud. The various high-leverage risk-transferring contracts were equally fraudulent. The entire financial services industry looked like a casino run by imbeciles.

The conservative conspiracy theorist shares with the socialist and the communist enormous confidence in the power of intellect to direct the affairs of society. They attribute to a central ruling committee the ability to foresee the future almost perfectly, to structure social institutions to alter this future to their advantage, and to implement their plans, despite the self-interest of billions of economic actors.

The Insiders did not engineer the economic crisis except insofar as they have used central banking to further their advancement, beginning in 1914 in the United States. Central banking inevitably produces financial crises. Central bankers try to avoid crises by inflating, then stabilizing, then inflating, and in so doing, they create crises. This is the teaching of Mises. One intervention leads to the next. The Insiders engineered the crisis of 2008 by building the flawed machine in 1914. They are now trapped. So are we.

é preciso um desastre natural para eliminar um desastre humano (2)

Na continuação de é preciso um desastre natural para eliminar um desastre humano,


The New Orleans School Voucher Program

Burofilia gourmet

A vida do anticapitalista é fácil. Graças ao labor livre de milhões de pessoas, e à acção catalizadora de milhares de empreendedores, não faltam casos de sucesso empresarial — que o anticapitalista, cronicamente aleijado pelo mal de vivre de quem é intelectualmente superior, soberanamente odeia.

Qualquer cadeia de fast-food serve como besta negra. Mesmo que não houvesse comida de plástico, já seria uma sina educar as massas a preferir comida de gente ao bife com batata frita com vinho tinto a copo. Quanto mais com essas americanices à solta.

Ao teórico da sociedade equilibrada choca que estas cadeias consigam operar cadeias logísticas de imensa complexidade e um sistema de recursos humanos verdadeiramente infernal, e mesmo assim conseguirem fornecer aos seus clientes alimentação a um preço imbatível.

O intelectual prefere que haja quem corrija os excessos de liberdade destas massas acéfalas sem paladar educado — selvagens e selvajarias que tanto envergonham a nação. Onde falha o mercado, obviamente não perdoará a mão pesada da burocracia do Estado. O intelectual despreza tanto a liberdade alheia que prefere que o povo seja servido com a mesma eficiência de uma empresa ou repartição pública.

Happy Birthday Mr. Paul (2)

Prepare for the Worst | Ron Paul

Deficit deniers

Deficit deniers por Dan Boudreaux:

Highly critical of persons calling for deep cuts in government spending to reduce budget deficits, Paul Krugman describes such budget hawks as members of “strange and savage cults, demanding human sacrifices to appease unseen forces”.

Funny – that’s exactly how I describe Mr. Krugman and others who call for deep cuts in our standard of living to reduce global warming.

One difference, of course, is that we know from actual experience that budget deficits can lead to inflation and other serious economic maladies. Climate hawks have no such evidence – a fact that is especially relevant in light of the excellent historical record of free economies to innovate and to overcome countless problems once believed by “experts” to be insurmountable.

The Marijuana Policy Tipping Point

The Marijuana Policy Tipping Point: A conversation with author Christopher Fichtner, M.D.

physics envy

It’s not the length of the equations, but what you do with them:

Rick Bookstaber has a fascinating post about “physics envy”, which is how he describes the affliction suffered by those who would explain activity in financial markets according to sophisticated mathematical models (and base decisions on them).

Physics Envy in Finance por Rick Bookstaber:

In the Bruce Lee movie, Enter the Dragon, Lee faces his arch enemy in a fight. To intimidate Lee, his opponent holds up a board, and splits it in two with his fist. Lee watches passively and says, “Boards don’t hit back”. That gets to the reason physics does not work in finance: markets do hit back.

fonte: xkcd.com

You can’t build in a feedback or reactive model, because you don’t know what to model. And if you do know – by the time you know – the odds are the market has changed.

So it is not by chance that there are so many people trying to add complexity to the markets. Whatever rules are put in place, whatever metrics are devised, traders will try to find ways around them. In an engineering system, if you find a poorly designed valve in a nuclear power plant and replace it with a new and better deigned one, the new valve doesn’t try to figure out ways to make you think it is closed when it is really open. But traders will do that.

Esta abordagem está relacionada com o problema do cálculo económico:
- Wikipedia
- The Use of Knowledge in Society (Friedrich Hayek)
- The End of Socialism and the Calculation Debate Revisited (Murray Rothbard)

curas keynesianas

The Real Voodoo Economics

The High Cost of Copyright

Na continuação de Copyright, um travão à criação de prosperidade,

The High Cost of Copyright por David Post no Volock Conspiracy:

The benefits of a copyright regime are pretty obvious — What’s harder to see is why that principle should ever be limited.

A story in yesterday’s New York Times caught my eye, and — unfortunately — it furnishes a perfect illustration of why copyright is not an unalloyed Good Thing. The National Jazz Museum has apparently acquired a true treasure trove of early jazz recordings .... So needless to say I can’t wait to hear the reissues.

But alas, that may never happen .... Tracking down all the parties who may have .... an entitlement to royalty payments ... is a monumental, and quite possibly an impossible, task ....

All we — the public — get from applying copyright here is a restriction on our ability to encounter magnificent works of art. Now of course, copyright is only ever applied in retrospect, and if we always ignored it when applied to already-existing works it would cease to exist, and would therefore no longer serve its incentivizing function prospectively.

O artigo é interessante, mas falha na presunção que é preciso copyright para que o ser humano crie Arte. Retirando da tese esta premissa intelectualmente nojenta, fica provado por absurdo que o copyright é um mecanismo mafioso de controlo da concorrência artística ao status quo

não é mais do que uma forma de perpetuar modelos de negócio que só existem pela limitação da propriedade e liberdade de terceiros.

Happy Birthday Mr. Paul

Firing Line: Ron Paul and William F. Buckley (1988)
parte 1 | parte 2 | parte 3 | parte 4

Copyright, um travão à criação de prosperidade

The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion?:

German authors during this period wrote ceaselessly. Around 14,000 new publications appeared in a single year in 1843. Measured against population numbers at the time, this reaches nearly today's level. And although novels were published as well, the majority of the works were academic papers.

.... it was none other than copyright law, which was established early in Great Britain, in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom.

###

Germany, on the other hand, didn't bother with the concept of copyright for a long time. Prussia, then by far Germany's biggest state, introduced a copyright law in 1837, but Germany's continued division into small states meant that it was hardly possible to enforce the law throughout the empire.

In England during the same period, an elite circle indulged in a classical educational canon centered more on literature, philosophy, theology, languages and historiography. Practical instruction manuals of the type being mass-produced in Germany, on topics from constructing dikes to planting grain, were for the most part lacking in England. "In Great Britain, people were dependent on the medieval method of hearsay for the dissemination of this useful, modern knowledge,"

The market for scientific literature didn't collapse even as copyright law gradually became established in Germany in the 1840s. German publishers did, however, react to the new situation in a restrictive way reminiscent of their British colleagues, cranking up prices and doing away with the low-price market.

Obamacare’s Impact on Families

Obamacare's Impact on Families
"a message to children that they are not competent to take care of themselves"

Private Law Enforcement

Private Law Enforcement in the US:

Unlike what many economists have said for decades, the enforcement of the law is (most of the time) not a public good. The services that private police agencies provide are private, i.e., delivered to a set of clients in a given area. Moreover, as the article shows, private law enforcement companies react to market conditions in a much faster and efficient way than the public police. Because they use the price system, they can be entrepreneurial

All this is reminiscent of Murray Rothbard’s work on private law enforcement (see Power and Market chapter 1 for instance), that of Bruce Benson (The Enterprise of Law), Gustave de Molinari (De la Production de la Securité), and the project that Peter Boettke is leading on anarchy as a research program.

E, acrescento eu, David Friedman.

Bracing for ObamaCare

Bracing for ObamaCare: Shirley Svorny on the Economics of Healthcare Regulation

democracia socialista: death of a thousand cuts

The Perversion of American Democracy: Death by a Thousand Cuts:

.... on substantive political issues, the current Administration has virtually ignored the value — indeed the imperative — of finding commonality of purpose, which, in a democracy, requires both compromise and consensus. The Obama Administration, has confused a large Congressional majority for a license to cram down our collective throats, legislation that a substantial majority of the people do not want ....

We are witnessing a usurpation of power, an unlawful exercise of power, by the executive branch, of those powers clearly delegated by the Constitution to Congress or the states. This, over time, can become the proverbial death of a thousand cuts to the Federalism created by the founders .... Tyranny or authoritarianism doesn’t necessarily have to arrive by violent Soviet-style revolution or mimic Mubarak’s Egypt, Castro’s Cuba or Chavez’s Venezuela. At the end of the day, if democracy is eroded away does it matter whether we lose it through a coup or the accumulation of self inflicted wounds?

Solução para o desemprego (2)

Na continuação de Solução para o desemprego, e via Stossel, no Economix:


fonte: Denmark’s Labor Market Commission

Este gráfico demonstra que há um grupo de gente cujo desemprego dura exactamente o limite do subsídio de ao desemprego, ou seja, gente que escolhe não trabalhar enquanto é suportada pelos contribuintes.

Solução para o desemprego

Diz o Público, no seu novo estilo popularucho — 326 mil pessoas procuram emprego há mais de um ano:

A situação torna-se mais grave numa altura em que o Governo decidiu retirar alguns dos apoios extraordinários dados aos desempregados - como o prolongamento por seis meses do subsídio social de desemprego - e alterar as condições de atribuição dos apoios sociais.

Via Division of Labout, Denmark Starts to Trim Its Admired Safety Net (NYT):

Denmark, which allows employers to hire and fire at will while relying on an elaborate system of training, subsidies for those between jobs and aggressive measures to press the unemployed into available openings, is facing its own strains. As a result, it is beginning to tighten up.

Struggling to keep its budget under control after the financial crisis, the government in June cut into its benefits system, the world’s most generous, by limiting unemployment payments to two years instead of four. Having found that recipients either get work right away or take any job as their checks run out, officials are also redoubling longstanding efforts to move Danes more quickly out of the safety net.

The Robin Hood myth

Um pouco no seguimento de Robin Hood "morality" (2), mais Milton Friedman:


Milton Friedman - The Robin Hood Myth

BÓNUS: The End of Director’s Law?

Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism (2)

Na continuação de Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism:C. S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism, Part 2 de David Theroux:

Of central importance in Lewis's discussion of natural law is his critique of the moral relativism of utilitarianism ("the end justifies the means") as a theory of ethics and guide to behavior. Lewis claimed that the precepts of moral ethics cannot just be innovated or improvised as we go along: There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world.

The demand for equality has two sources; one of them is among the noblest, the other is the basest of human emotions. The noble source is the desire for fair play. But the other source is the hatred of superiority .... Virtue is not democratic; she is achieved by those who pursue her more hotly than most men .... Ethical, intellectual, or aesthetic democracy is death.

If man has free will and is considered accountable for his actions, there are limits on the state's power. But if individuals act out of necessity, they are not moral agents .... the state simply eliminates the individual's choice or, more exactly, makes the choice for him or her.

.... if one were inventing a language for "sinless beings who loved their neighbours as themselves" it would be appropriate to have no words for "my", "I" .... A society .... where none could say "I love you", would, indeed, be free from selfishness, but not through love.

Tragedy of the Commons

Na continuação de History of Environmentalism,


Robert J. Smith, Tragedy of the Commons

ouro, papel-moeda, e dilema do prisioneiro

Há dias perguntava o Distributed Republic:

.... why doesn't some forward-thinking government (I know, I know) buy a bunch of gold and issue a currency backed by that gold? Such a currency would, in my humble opinion, be an immediate competitor to the dollar. I would also think such a move would attract investment capital to that country.

Hoje no Zero Hedge:

More world governments are "just saying no" to the ponzi. Last week, the Malaysian government of Kelantan "said it was introducing a new monetary system featuring standardised gold and silver coins based on the traditional dinar and dirham coins once used by the Ottoman Empire." And as everyone who has taken game theory 101 knows, the first defector wins the most, while the last one is left with nothing. A small province in Malaysia just made the critical first defection. The question now is who will be next... and next...and next.

The History of Liberty

Muito recomendado,


Judge Napolitano's History of Liberty
Pt. 1: The Original Tea Party | Pt. 2: The Civil War and Gilded Age
Pt. 3: The Progressive Era | Pt. 4: FDR's state and LBJ's society

Socialismo e sociopatia

Socialismo e sociopatia de Hélder Ferreira n'O Insurgente:

Isto é um exemplo cristalino do funcionamento do estado socialista. Em três gerações e à custa de uma ideia muito particular (eu diria abjecta) de igualdade, fraternidade e solidariedade, rebenta com uma tradição de heranças que, como se comprova, tinha justificação, ao mesmo tempo que destrói se necessário um país inteiro.

Os responsáveis pela pulverização da propriedade e consequentes problemas não são nem mais nem menos que os governantes, o estado e a idiotice socialista.

Quando a consequência da irresponsabilidade, da insensatez e do abuso bate à porta e, de acordo a cada vez mais óbvia sociopatia socialista, quer resolver roubando à descarada aqueles que já tinha roubado uma, duas, três vezes. É o admirável mundo novo dos sociopatas, mais conhecidos como socialistas ou, eufemisticamente, como social-democratas.

people in government love power more than liberty

No seguimento de If the Earth is round, will the King’s command flatten it? ,


Freedom Watch Judge Napolitano w/ Bruce Fein

Engineered Economic Collapse

Via ZeroHedge, The Purpose Behind Engineered Economic Collapse:

Men like Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, Gerald Celente, Jim Rogers, and many others were able to predict long before hand that the Federal Reserve’s actions were creating an explosive mortgage and credit bubble, yet, we are supposed to believe that the Federal Reserve had “no idea” that their actions would result in a debt implosion?

Since the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913, all markets and even our own currency have become more and more vulnerable to manipulation by the banking elite. We have lived our entire lives in a rigged market, not a free market. To blame the very concept of Capitalism for our current dire circumstances is not only naïve, it is dangerous.

Central bankers have the ability to PRINT all the money they want from thin air! Remember, the Federal Reserve has never been subjected to a full audit, meaning they could easily create billions if not trillions without any oversight whatsoever. Greed for money, to them, is surely an absurd notion. What they do want, more than anything else, is social power.

Why is it that the Federal Reserve has never been fully audited? Why is it that when Ron Paul tried to pass HR 1207 Federal Reserve Transparency Bill, it was muddled in committees and then eventually derailed? Why is it that banks like Goldman Sachs have been caught, yes caught, setting the stage for an economic implosion in this country, yet no government indictments have been formed to criminally prosecute them? Why are these men still roaming free like locusts to continue pillaging at will? Are we supposed to feel lucky that we get table scraps like Bernie Madoff behind bars while the Federal Reserve commits Ponzi fraud on a scale that dwarfs his?

Rolling Stone e "propriedade intelectual"

I can haz internets?

o pequeno comércio e o Estado

Start-Ups on a Shoestring (WSJ):

Technology, in fact, is a big reason it's possible to launch a business so cheaply. Thanks to the proliferation of the Internet and the accessibility of once-costly technology, start-up costs "have plummeted in the last 10 years," says Bo Fishback, vice president of entrepreneurship at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City, Mo., nonprofit devoted to entrepreneurship. "It's gotten so much easier to reach mass markets and test out ideas. This is something that's becoming accessible to anyone with an idea."

Num sistema capitalista, algumas actividades económicas — sobretudo nos sectores primário e secundário — continuam a precisar de muito capital, capital que existe nos mercados, mas que não está acessível a qualquer um; contudo tudo o que está relacionado com serviços tende a exigir menos e menos investimento inicial. Há nichos para todos na long tail de uma economia moderna (i.e. não socialista ou "social").

As maiores barreiras à entrada passam a ser aquelas que são impostas pelo Estado - regimes fiscais opressivos, proteccionismos, licenciamentos, inspecções, corporativismos, legislação laboral "activista", excesso de regulação.

O Estado é inimigo do pequeno comércio porque é o seu oposto — imenso capital empatado em burocracias arrogantes, centralizadas e politizadas, avessas a qualquer espírito de satisfação das pessoas, prestando contrariadas serviços de qualidade soviética. Num regime de mercado as pessoas são estimados clientes; no funcionalismo público são meros utentes, cativos, pestes irritantes, consumidores de recursos, a serem servidos "económica" e cientificamente através de racionamentos impessoais, e cuja liberdade económica fora do sistema "tem de ser rigorosamente limitada".

Rotten public schools

Na continuação de State Controlled Consciousness (3) e the problem is a system that protects academic failure (2), Thomas Sowell no seu melhor:


THOMAS SOWELL - rotten PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The internet: changing the way we think

A propósito de The internet: is it changing the way we think?

"Over the past few years," Carr wrote, "I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn't going – so far as I can tell – but it's changing ...."

His argument was that our deepening dependence on networking technology is indeed changing not only the way we think, but also the structure of our brains.

Diz-se que a internet só acrescentou entropia à vida pessoal e social das pessoas; ora, a resistência é uma reacção normal à mudança. O facto é que a internet é uma ferramenta que permite às pessoas superarem algumas limitações sociais do ser humano. E, como qualquer ferramenta revolucionária, abre um mundo de oportundidades, cuja exploração causa desconfortos e adaptações indesejadas — "destruição criativa".

Qualquer utilizador frequente da internet acaba pois por adaptar-se, e alinhar os seus processos mentais ao modo como se organizam os interfaces e as plataformas. Será mais do que simplesmente ter mais meios tecnológicos para suprimir algumas incapacidades - será treinar o cérebro pensar de forma diferente. Não surpreenderá &mdash por exemplo e um pouco caricaturalmente — que se "descubra", daqui a uns anos, que as capacidades multitasking dos utilizadores femininos melhoraram, ou que as capacidades de "orientação" das utilizadoras ficaram mais apuradas.

Ora, as pessoas das gerações-internet serão mais sensíveis a sistemas descentralizados do que a sistemas hierárquicos. E mais tolerantes a sistemas informais do que condescendentes a instituições. Pode acontecer que o conceito de "família" seja redefinido, mas também acontecerá que o consenso estatista será gravemente minado.

a government cannot control the Economy without controlling the people

Via O Insurgente,


Ronald Reagan "Those Voices Don't Speak for the Rest of Us"

Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism

Relembrando a philosophy so that nonsense in the intellect may reinforce corruption in the will — C. S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism, Part 1:

For decades, some Christians, both "conservative" and "liberal," have unfortunately embraced an ill-conceived "progressive" (i.e., authoritarian) vision to wield intrusive government powers .... abandoning the Christian, natural-law tradition in moral ethics and economics.

[C.S. Lewis] stated, "I was by nature ‘against Government'" .... Lewis was unquestionably and profoundly interested in the ideas and institutions that were the basis for free and virtuous individuals and communities, but he was not at all interested in partisanship or campaign politics. He instead focused on first principles, and public-policy matters were of interest only as they pertained to questions of enduring value.

###

Lewis addressed not only the evils of totalitarianism as manifested in fascism and communism, but the more subtle forms that face us on a daily basis, including the welfare, therapeutic, nanny, and scientistic states. "Of all tyrannies," he stated,

a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

Throughout his work, Lewis infused an interconnected worldview that championed objective truth, moral ethics, natural law, literary excellence, reason, science, individual liberty, personal responsibility and virtue, and Christian theism. In so doing, he critiqued naturalism, reductionism, nihilism, positivism, scientism, historicism, collectivism, atheism, statism, coercive egalitarianism, militarism, welfarism, and dehumanization and tyranny of all forms.

Lewis firmly rejected the idea that only those who are Christian can understand morality or be moral because the natural law is fundamental to human existence and serves as the basis for human choice .... Lewis argued that a natural moral law is known to all, and this natural moral code is inescapable; it is the basis for all moral judgments. Its foundational truths such as "caring for others is a good thing," "good should be done and evil avoided,"

A Guide to the United States Constitution

Andrew Klavan: A Young Person's Guide to the United States Constitution

teste de pureza liberal (3)

No seguimento de teste de pureza liberal (1), e num tom muito mais provocatório — A Libertarian Tolerance Test no C4SS:

1. living in a society where cannibalism was practiced
2. someone freely and unabashedly defecating or urinating
3. replacing the Western diet’s for protein with insects
4. Combat to the death
5. 11-year-old girls engage in prostitution
6. tattooing and piercing — the deliberate amputation of body parts
7. public offerings of nudity and sex?
8. unions including any number of men and/or women
9. defacement of religious icons
10. opening of a gay nightclub adjacent to the “Ground Zero Mosque.”

Monopólios (2)

Milton Friedman - Monopoly

Keynesian horror show

America’s Keynesian horror show:

....you would think that they might start to work out that Keynesianism is actually poison rather than a stimulus to faster growth and more jobs. But as Samuelson accurately observed, once something gets into the textbooks, it is almost impossible to get it out again.

Keynesian economics is the instruction manual for our economic elites which they use to trash the economy believing they are doing good. It is too much to hope they will eventually work out that leaving things to the market is an infinitely better way to proceed. But at least they might finally recognize that public spending on worthless projects is not the way to get an economy to grow.

.... insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result .... if they really do apply a second stimulus in the US, with all the evidence of failure right before their eyes, in what other way would you describe such decisions or the people who made them?

Monopólios (1)

Free Market Monopolies

Private Enterprise Does It Better

Na continuação de Who Would Maintain Roads Worse Than the State? e Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Private Enterprise Does It Better por John Stossel:

Why? Because if private companies don't do things efficiently, they lose money and die. Unlike government, they cannot compel payment through the power to tax. Even when a private company operates a public facility under contract to government, it must perform. If it doesn't, it will be "fired" -- its contract won't be renewed. Government is never fired. Contracting out to private enterprise isn't the same thing as letting fully competitive free markets operate, but it still works better than government.

- In 1995, a private road company added two lanes in the middle of California Highway 91 .... Now congestion pricing is a hot idea for both private and public road management systems.

- for years there was a gap in the ring road surrounding Paris that created huge traffic problems. Then private developers made an unsolicited proposal to build a $2 billion toll tunnel .... The private road has cut a 45-minute trip to 10 minutes.

- Indiana used to lose money on its toll road. Then Gov. Mitch Daniels leased it to private developers. Now it makes a profit.

Leituras suplementares:
- Notas sobre transportes ( parte 1, parte 2, parte 3),
- pagamento de portagens quando há obras

Gripe A - Pandemia de Negocios Turbios

Campanas por la gripe A - Teresa Forcades - Pandemia de Negocios Turbios
parte 1 | parte 2 | parte 3 | parte 4 | parte 5 | parte 6

La historia de la monja benedictina que desmontó el timo de la gripe A y nadie la escuchó:

El 1 de octubre de 2009 Teresa Forcades cargó contra la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) por declarar pandemia una gripe con una mortalidad inferior al virus estacional. "¿Por qué no declaramos pandemia a una gripe cada año?".

.... la monja preguntaba, citando informes y documentos oficiales para contrastar sus datos, por qué se declaraba una pandemia mundial a un virus con una mortalidad inferior al del año anterior. “¿Cómo pudo declarar algo así cuando la nueva gripe es más benigna que la gripe estacional y parte de la población (la tercera edad) tiene inmunidad?”

Government morals (4)

No video anterior, Milton Friedman explica porque é que pessoas que não roubariam um tostão ao vizinho não têm problemas em evadir aos impostos.

Outras aberrações morais provocadas pelo Estado:

- pessoas que não roubariam um tostão ao vizinho não têm problemas morais em apoiar políticas estatais que começam no roubo de milhões de euros a todos os indivíduos de um país, e em apoiar a repressão (multas, processos judiciais, expropriação, encarceramento, ...) de qualquer evasão fiscal;

- pessoas que não se intrometeriam na vida dos vizinhos não têm problemas morais em defender a regulamentação (e frequentemente proibição) de meros comportamentos com que discordam; não têm problemas morais em fazer condicionar a vida económica (consumo, poupança, emprego) de todo o "cidadão"; não têm problemas morais em defender que políticos e burocratas planeiem as escolhas de vida (educação, saúde, reforma, ... ) de toda a gente que conhecem e não conhecem.

Government morals (3)

No seguimento de Governement morals (2),


Milton Friedman - Incentives for Immoral Behavior

Government morals (2)

Nos seguimento de Government morals(1) — Ignorance of the Law Is No Excuse — Unless you work in law enforcement por Radley Balko:

Ignorance of the law is no excuse. That's the standard line motorists hear when they say they weren't aware of the speed limit, or gun owners hear when they say didn't know about the gun laws in the jurisdiction they happened to get arrested in. Yet that ignorance is pretty understandable in an America where just about everything is being criminalized. At the federal level alone there are now more than 4,500 separate crimes, and that's not counting the massive regulatory code, violations of which also can sometimes be punished with criminal charges.

But what happens when law enforcement officials don't know the law? What happens when they illegally detain, arrest, and charge you even though you've done nothing wrong? Unlike you, their ignorance doesn't result in arrest or jail. And unless the violation is pretty egregious, they're unlikely to be punished for it.

Recuperando Jesus is an anarchist,

The principle which all governments are founded upon and follow may properly be termed the "Luciferian Principle." .... which is none other than doing to others what you do not want others to do to you.

Feminazis

A propósito de O legado de Zapatero n'O Insurgente

— Feminism - Put on your bras, shave your armpits and quit your bitching de Maddox:

Why there will never be absolute gender equality is because of the inherent contradictions between equality and liberty .... It's impossible to live your life without being offended at something. Violence, foul language, pornography, sex, religion, whatever it is, you're bound to be offended by it sooner or later. So rather than bitching about it, just deal with it and move on. Men aren't out to get women; we're not the bad guys.

Feminism is in a lot of ways like fascism. Your average Fascist will disregard any scientific argument unless the conclusion supports his existing belief. The ideology comes first and the Fascist looks for anything to back it up, no matter how trivial, unreliable or discredited. Much like today's feminists and their ideology. Fascists attempt to rationalize their beliefs and portray them as truth by twisting the facts. A fascist might, for example, cast blame for unemployment and work discontent on immigrants "stealing" their jobs. Feminists similarly cast blame for women's lower average pay onto another party (men). Both feminists and fascists are quick to cast blame on someone else for anything that goes wrong in their lives .... Feminism serves as nothing more than a wedge to further seperate the sexes, segregating men and women into cultures that wouldn't otherwise exist.