Ireland, Please Default (2)

Guest Post: Ireland, Please Do the World a Favor and Default:

The alternative title for today entry is: Ireland, please drive a stake through the heart of the vampire banks which have the world by the throat. The entire controlled demolition of the Eurozone's finances can be summed up in one phrase: privatize leverage and profits, socialize losses and risk.

The EU's bailout of Greece and Ireland will only hasten this dynamic. The Power Elites are rapidly losing their credibility; just compare the market's euphoric reaction to the Greek bailout in May and the openly negative response to the Irish bailout.

It's a little late to decide Capitalism is only fun when reaping gargantuan profits from highly leveraged mal-investment and fraud. Ireland, and indeed the world, will survive if all the vampire banks are liquidated. That is the end-state, and "buying time" just increases the misery of the citizens who have been yoked to save their "betters."

End the Fed (6)

No seguimento de Enf the Fed (5), Failed Fed por Dan Boudreaux:

Supplying money, Hayek argued from 1976 until his death in 1992, is best left to private banks competing against each other for deposits. Entrusting government with monopoly control over the single most important good in a market economy -- money -- is a recipe for catastrophe.

Ask yourself (and answer honestly): If you possessed exclusive power to print dollars and spend them as you wish -- and if you were allowed to imprison anyone who tried to compete with you in the money-supply business -- might you be tempted from time to time to pay your bills not by working harder, but by simply rolling a few thousand more dollars off your printing press? ..

You see the temptation.

Ireland, Please Default

Peter Schiff: The Irish Should Default On Their Debt, Not Become Slaves To Bankers

Go John Galt

Simon Black Advocates Leaving America As The "Most Effective" Way To Fight The Battle With "The Mob-Installed Government Beast":

While the notion of staying and 'fighting' is a noble idea, bear in mind that there is no real enemy or force to fight. The government is a faceless bureaucracy that's impossible attack. People who try only discredit their argument because they become marginalized as fringe lunatics.

You could spend a lifetime trying to change ideology and not make a dent; people have to choose for themselves to wake up, it cannot be forced upon them. And until that happens, they're going to keep asking for more security and more control because it's the way their values have been programmed.

Nobody is born with a mandatory obligation to invisible lines on a map. Our fundamental obligation is to ourselves, our families, and the people that we choose to let into our circles... not to a piece of dirt that's controlled by mob-installed bureaucrats.

The government beast in your home country feeds on debt and taxes, and the best way to win is for bright, productive people to move away with their ideas, labor, and assets. This effectively starves the beast and accelerates its collapse. Then, when the smoke clears, you can move back and help rebuild a free society.

When Portuguese Bonds Are Due

Via Paulo Pinto Mascarenhas,

doublespeak

Excertos de If the Government Does X, It Is Called Y por Bob Higgs:

As a public service to such political novices, I have drawn up a brief guide whose entries match a particular government action, objective, or condition with the terms commonly used to describe it in the news media and in polite conversation. Simply apply the rule: If the government does X, it is called Y.

X = extortion; Y = taxation
X = kidnapping; Y = imprisonment of persons convicted of [victimless] crimes
X = accepting bribes; Y = accepting campaign contributions
X = unjust enrichment of private individuals and corporations; Y = subsidies

X = fostering systemic economic booms and busts; Y = monetary policy
X = fostering systemic economic booms and busts; Y = fiscal policy

X = robbing productive Peter to pay unproductive Paul; Y = maintaining the safety net
X = unjustly enriching Goldman Sachs et alia; Y = preventing another Great Depression
X = gratifying one’s megalomania and feathering one’s nest at public expense; Y = public service

X = war; Y = peace
X = slavery; Y = freedom
X = ignorance; Y = strength

O título deste post era government doublespeak — mas seria redundante — só ao Estado é tolerada a falsificação sistemática da verdade.

Libertarianism Is Anarchy For Productive People

fonte

Portugal, colónia e rogue state

Portugal used to be an empire. Now it's about to become a colony de Ezra Levant:

How’s Portugal doing these days?

It’s not a question that most Canadians would ask, other than last month when the United Nations voted for Portugal instead of us for a two-year term on the UN Security Council.

Earlier this month, China’s president visited Lisbon and met with the Portuguese prime minister, Jose Socrates .. China’s hobby is collecting small, weak countries. You collect enough of them, and you’ve got yourself a little sphere of influence. You’re not just an economic and military superpower. You’re a geopolitical superpower, too.

Portugal. They won the UN vote not because they’re strong, but because they’re weak. The world’s dictators don’t want a strong democracy on the Security Council. A desperate beggar is more pliable.

Watch Portugal’s voting record at the UN Security Council. Watch them as they consider Chinese allies like Iran and Sudan. Watch them on human rights.

Euro Game Is Up

'The Euro Game Is Up! Who the hell do you think you are?' - Nigel Farage MEP

Fuga de cérebros e socialismo (4)

No seguimento de Fuga de cérebros e socialismo (3), :

Portugal é o terceiro país da União Europeia com maior taxa de fuga de cérebros. À nossa frente, apenas a Irlanda (23%) e a Eslováquia (14%).

Os que falam e escrevem bem Inglês optam pelo Reino Unido. Enfermeiros, farmacêuticos, dentistas e veterinários estão entre os portugueses que mais emigram para o Reino Unido.

Os licenciados em Engenharias, Contabilidade, Gestão e Economia optam por Angola.

Na última década, fugiram do socialismo 700 mil portugueses. Numa população de pouco mais de 10 milhões, é obra. Uma obra que devia envergonhar a trupe que nos (des)governa há 15 anos.

Give Thanks...For Property Rights!

The Pilgrims and Property Rights: How our ancestors got fat & happy

LEITURA ADICIONAL: Morning Bell: Giving Thanks for the Free Market

Creative Commons

Creative Commons, propiedad intelectual y anarcocapitalismo:

Todo contenido de una página web “protegido” bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. la única verdadera protección que comporta es que advierte a los lectores que, en caso de reproducir material de la página, deben atribuir éste a sus autores. Por lo demás, se es libre de reproducir y modificar todo el contenido de la página con cualquier fin que se desee. Los términos anteriores son los que la página, voluntariamente, ha solicitado.

Creative Commons es la solución que todas las personas contrarias a la propiedad intelectual han estado esperando.

Creative Commons, uno de los ejemplos del sistema anarco-capitalista que vive dentro del entorno estatista .. Si se dejara en libertad la producción legal podemos ya prever cómo respondería el mercado, eficiente y justo donde lo haya. El ejemplo constituye pues no sólo la esperanza sino también la confirmación de los ideales libertarios, el saber que así nos ahogue el poder, siempre hay espacio para que el ingenio humano produzca sus soluciones.

Happy happy joy joy (2)

Very Unhappy:

.. The whole business of so-called "happiness economics" .. is based on the ludicrous idea that happiness can be measured, and that you can compare happiness today with happiness yesterday. The "measurement" comprises asking people how happy they feel out of 5 (no, really).

.. averaged across all of us, the answer will be around 2.2. That's because it always is. Come rain or shine, better or worse, richer or poorer, the average never changes much.

But the real worry is that he [Cameron] hopes to use it somehow to guide policy. To accept the soppy left's argument that lower economic growth doesn't matter because more money doesn't make us any happier. That we were all just as happy back in 1973 with the Austin Allegro. Or back in 1473 with unglazed windows. Back in 10000 BC, some lefty druid almost certainly used the same argument against the invention of fire.

Da mesma maneira que os Governos não resistem a fazer aumentar o PIB às custas da Economia (aumentando os gastos públicos por exemplo), não resistirão em melhorar as estatísticas de "felicidade". E é imenso e aterrador o universo de barbaridades orwellianas que podem advir de tais políticas. Desde logo, falsificando os tais índices e, por outro lado, pelo tudo fazendo por produzir propaganda feliz, por remover da comunicação social notícias negativas, por atirar para debaixo do tapete do conhecimento tudo o que desagrade aos governantes.

Fuga de cérebros e socialismo (3)

No seguimento de Fuga de cérebros e socialismo e Fuga de cérebros e socialismo (2),
A CGTP é uma fábrica de desemprego de Henrique Raposo:

[aqueles que lideram a greve] são os piores inimigos da minha geração. Ao defenderem leis laborais ultra defensivas (as mais restritivas do espaço da UE, aliás, do espaço da OCDE), a UGT e a CGTP contribuem para a ausência de criação de novos postos de trabalho, de novas empresas. Os mais jovens não conseguem entrar naquilo que já existe (porque é dificílimo fazer um despedimento individual em Portugal; portanto, o jovem só entra a recibos verdes para fazer um trabalho que devia estar a ser feito por uma pessoa do "quadro"; e essa pessoa do quadro continua lá) e, acima de tudo, os jovens não vêem novas empresas a aparecer. Porque a lei laboral está pensada para defender a todo o custo aquilo que já existe. O futuro não interessa à nossa lei laboral..

Portugal está a deixar cair a geração mais qualificada (Público):

A taxa de desemprego entre os jovens mais do que duplica o índice geral. Entre os que arranjam emprego, só cerca de um terço escapa à regra dos contratos a termo, recibos verdes e outras formas de precariedade. Um em cada dez licenciados abandona o país. É o retrato de uma geração sem saída.

Com poucos (e maus) empregos à sua espera, não espanta que muitos jovens optem por deixar o país. O fluxo da emigração atingiu nesta década valores só comparáveis aos do êxodo dos anos 60 do século passado e os números só baixaram nos últimos dois anos porque a crise também se faz sentir lá fora. Rui Pena Pires, sociólogo e professor do Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa, em Lisboa, fala em 60.000 saídas por ano - eram à volta de 70.000 na década de 1960.

Happy happy joy joy

NCBI ROFL: A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder:

“It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains–that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.”

Faz-nos falta medir a felicidade interna bruta? (Público):

O Governo conservador britânico quer medir a satisfação dos cidadãos. Aferir a sua felicidade, a satisfação com a vida que levam. A ideia é cara ao primeiro-ministro, David Cameron, que a defende pelo menos desde 2006 e agora quer mesmo pô-la em prática. O Reino Unido vai começar a recolher estatísticas que o poderão levar a criar um índice da felicidade interna bruta (FIB), em oposição ao PIB.

BÓNUS: God save Cameron

A new civilization is born (2)

Regressar ao liberalismo clássico por Rui Albuquerque:

.. a crise a que estamos a assistir, e que tem sido engenhosamente vendida como a crise do "mercado", é verdadeiramente a crise do estado e do constitucionalismo social .. Ao longo destes anos mais próximos, o intervencionismo secou a economia das nações onde se instalou para garantir a .. despesa do estado.

.. os estados estão obrigados a reduzir drasticamente as suas despesas, retirando-se, assim, de áreas sociais onde investiram fortemente nos últimos anos, confessando a sua incompetência para as gerir.

.. No fim de contas, o estado .. terá de abandonar a maioria das rúbricas do seu orçamento. Apesar de ser um caminho ínvio, a elevada probabilidade da falência do estado social poderá nos levar no sentido do regresso aos velhos princípios do liberalismo e do constitucionalismo clássico.

A new civilization is born (1)

Via O Insurgente, excerto de por Frank Chodorov:

Some of the appropriations seep through to some members of Society, thus satisfying the something-for-nothing urge, at least temporarily, and so stimulate a disposition to tolerate the institution and to obliterate understanding of its predatory character. Until the State reaches its ultimate objective, absolutism, its answer to tax-grumbling is that the "other fellow" pays all the levies and that seems to satisfy.

.. But, since the State thrives on what it expropriates, the general decline in production that it induces by its avarice foretells its own doom. Its source of income dries up. Thus, in pulling Society down it pulls itself down. Its ultimate collapse ..

.. means a weakening of the instruments of coercion by means of which property in the fruits of one's labors was transferred to nonproducing rulership or its supporting accomplices. Thereafter, maybe for centuries, freedom prevails, men learn to dream and hope again, and the realization of each dream through effort encourages further fantasy and generates more effort; thus wealth multiplies, knowledge accumulates, manners take shape, and the nonmaterial values attain importance in man's hierarchy. A new civilization is born.

Libertarian porn (2)

he Day The Dollar Died

Como continuar a confiar nos socialistas?

Excertos de Como continuar a confiar nos socialistas? de Adolfo Mesquita Nunes no Aparelho de Estado:

Os socialistas portugueses tiveram sempre, do ponto de vista económico, com excepção da sua determinante contribuição para o afastamento do comunismo e para a integração europeia, uma relação difícil com a História. Ou estiveram sempre do lado errado, ou chegaram muito tarde ao lado certo.

Não era já tempo de deixarmos de confiar nos socialistas portugueses?

Vale a pena ler o resto!

Gerald Celente on the mess

Gerald Celente on Irish Radio 3/11/2010

Recomenda-se até aos 5'10", a partir daí descarilha um bom bocado.

living with parents

Esta deixo para o Pedro Arroja explicar...

sobre o patriotismo de pacote (2)

O novo patriotismo da esquerda de André Abrantes do Amaral n'O Insurgente:

Este tipo patriotismo é perigoso. Não valoriza o conceito de estado-nação por corresponder a um território onde o Estado de Direito e a sujeição à lei é aceite por todos, sem sentimento de perda, mas de ganho. Não se baseia no sentimento comum a todos os que falam a mesma língua, de que o elo que nos liga, apesar de não nos conhecermos, nos garante a democracia e as leis que protegem a economia de mercado, o respeito pela propriedade privada e a liberdade de expressão. Ao contrário, e porque de pendor negativo, os argumentos patrióticos que o PS, PCP e Bloco de Esquerda utilizarão nas eleições presidenciais, hostilizam povos estrangeiros, empobrecem as nossas relações com eles e conduzirão a esquerda portuguesa a um beco sem saída.

Peaceful Revolution Against Banks

Man U Player Of The Century Eric Cantona Appeals For Peaceful Revolution Against Banks, Calls For Europeans To Pull Their Money:


[[ERIC CANTONA]] ACCIÓN MUNDIAL CONTRA LOS BANCOS - WORLDWIDE ACTION - [OPERATION

We don't pick up weapons to kill people, to start the revolution... the revolution is really easy to do nowadays. What is the system? The system revolves around the banks. It's based on the power of the banks... so it must be destroyed starting with the banks. This means that the 3 million people with their placards on the street... they go to the bank, withdraw their money from the banks and these ones collapse. 10 million people and the banks collapse and there is not real threat, a real revolution. We must go to the bank. In this case there would be a real revolution. It's not complicated. You simply go to the bank in your country and withdraw your money. If there are enough people withdrawing their money, the system collapses. No weapon, no blood, or anything like that.

BÓNUS: December 7 Is The Unofficial Pan-European Bank Mutiny Day

sobre o patriotismo de pacote (1)

Que posso eu fazer pelo país? de Gonçalo Taipa Teixeira:

Posto isto, o que é, afinal, a pátria? Varia conforme o ponto de vista. Não é, forçosamente, o país. Pátria é o eu, ou o nós, por oposição ao ele ou eles. É um conceito abstracto cuja compreensão varia com a pessoa, a situação, ou o propósito a alcançar. É um truque de retórica cujo objectivo é, vezes demais, justificar comportamentos violentos ― sejam estes físicos ou psicológicos ― contra aqueles que interessa transformar nos outros, por oposição ao nós. É um instrumento demasiadas vezes utilizado para uniformizar vontades e hostilizar dissidências por parte daqueles que se advogam arautos do colectivo e da boa-vontade.

Harrison Bergeron

No seguimento de 2081: Everyone Will Finally Be Equal e By hatchet, axe, and saw,

The TV movie is a dramatic departure from Vonnegut's original short story. In this 1995 made for television movie, after the handicapping devices are discovered to be ineffective against Bergeron, he is recruited to become a member of the secret unhandicapped elite who keep society running. Eventually disgusted by their duplicity, Bergeron commandeers a TV station in order to broadcast censored materials to the masses. Bergeron is eventually stopped by the government, and later forced to apologize, claiming that the incident was an act. During this on-air apology, Bergeron breaks from his script and commits suicide after explaining that it was not an act.

Harrison Bergeron

também bom conselhos aos nossos queridos governantes

Recebido pelo Facebook, incorrectamente atribuído:

Bill Gates speech: 11 rules your kids did not and will not learn in school

Rule No. 1: Life is not fair. Get used to it. The average teen-ager uses the phrase “It’s not fair” 8.6 times a day. You got it from your parents, who said it so often you decided they must be the most idealistic generation ever. When they started hearing it from their own kids, they realized Rule No. 1.

Rule No. 2: The real world won’t care as much about your self-esteem as much as your school does. It’ll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself. This may come as a shock. Usually, when inflated self-esteem meets reality, kids complain that it’s not fair. (See Rule No. 1)

ler o resto aqui

Decency

The crux of Justice ...

Europe’s horrible truths (3)

No seguimento de Europe’s horrible truths , Europe’s horrible truths (2) ,

JPMorgan Private Bank On The "Quixotic" End To Europe's Latest (Failed) Grand Experiment (ZeroHedge):

In the wake of the 1992 ERM collapse, why did Europe attempt another monetary union given large differences in language, labor mobility and productivity?

.. Europe seems to be on a Quixotic quest for mechanisms to support a peace that had already been obtained by 1954, or shortly thereafter. As a result, the European creation myth of the 1990’s (“Europe must accept supranational political and economic structures to prevent future conflict”) may be flawed.

Such a flaw, to the extent that Europeans no longer believe it, may explain a lot of things, from public referendums rejecting the EU constitution; to the lack of widespread support for regional transfers; and the reluctance of countries like Ireland to yield sovereignty over their fiscal affairs.

The author of the 1992 German Constitutional Court opinion on Maastricht described this issue in plain terms.

.. A Europeanisation without a prior European consciousness and therefore without a European people with a concrete capability and readiness for common statehood would be, in terms of the history of thought, un-European.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe Facts!

Hans-Hermann Hoppe Facts!:

Move over Chuck Norris, Hans-Hermann Hoppe is in town:

1) Hans Hermann Hoppe can see the invisible hand.

3) Hans Herman Hoppe can homestead intangible concepts and ideas.

6) Hans Hermann Hoppe’s icy stare can breach the non-aggression principle.

7) Hans Hermann Hoppe wasn’t born. His existence is an a priori statement.

10) When God made the world, he originally intended air to be a scarce resource, until Hans Hermann Hoppe told him otherwise…

…Read the full 24 facts on Evan Issac’s Facebook Page here.

Blowback (2)

No seguimento de Blowback, Chalmers Johnson, RIP:


DECLINE of EMPIRES: The Signs of Decay

Incentivos - candongueirização

How To Reduce Unemployment and Drunk Driving in One Fell Swoop:

Examples of how the economy would improve by getting these intellectual and political parasites off the average man's back are almost infinite, but one example in particular is so blatantly obvious that even people from Princeton ought to be able to grasp it.

This would be to get government completely out of the business of regulating who may or may not be a taxi driver. Getting government out of the business of regulating taxis might appear to be such an insignificant alteration in the economy that it is not even worth thinking about, but its effects would actually be profound. Indeed, the two main effects of this simple change would be to drastically reduce drunk driving and put enormous amounts of people to productive work in the economy.

David Nolan

Libertarian Party Founder David Nolan, RIP:

David Nolan was the founder of the national Libertarian Party in 1971. He continued to be a leader of the LP, running for US Senate in this past election against John McCain. David was the creator of the “Nolan Chart,” which redefined the old left-right political spectrum unto a more-accurate two-dimensional field. He was an outspoken advocate of radical libertarianism and was a strong voice against war as the worst infringement on liberty.

---

Do Friesian Institute, Positive & Negative Liberties in Three Dimensions, uma variação [quanto a mim mais confusa] do famoso gráfico que deu origem ao The World's Smallest Polical Quiz:

Since the original Nolan Chart employs two kinds of "negative" liberty, it is possible to represent "positive" liberty on a separate axis, producing a three dimensional display of political positions. .. How much there will be for "political society" and political power to do will be defined by the degree of personal and economic freedom that is envisioned.

Inequality

This ain't no banana republic no Economist:

The main explanation for widening income gaps in wealthy, advanced liberal democracies is a complicated combination of (1) increasing economic returns to the acquisition of high levels of skill; (2) low supply of highly-skilled workers relative to demand; (3) changes in the way executives are paid, and in the norms governing executive pay; (4) technology-driven magnification of top rewards in "winner-take-all" or "superstar" markets; and (5) relatively low political demand for higher levels of progressive redistribution. Unlike expropriation and monopolisation by ruling elites, none of these causes of rising inequality are particularly objectionable in their own right.

I do worry that America's nexus of political and financial institutions in particular have made it too easy for a small class of people to hoover up massive amounts of cash while producing little of value to the rest of us. But it's worth noting that the people at the top of the Forbes list have grown rich mostly by making useful stuff, or making or selling useful stuff more efficiently. I don't think American innovation would much suffer were these folks to face somewhat higher income-tax rates. At the same time, the fact that innovation is so richly rewarded in America surely has something to do with why America produces so much of it. And I doubt the most deplorable injustices of the American system would be ameliorated much, if at all, by raising taxes on the rich.

Happy Birthday Climategate

One Year Ago Today – Breaking News Story: CRU has apparently been hacked – hundreds of files released por Anthony Watts:

One year ago today, after returning from a conference in Brussels, I sat down in Dulles airport, connected to WiFi, researched and wrote this article .. and pressed the “publish” button just seconds before they closed the door to my flight back to Sacramento. When I landed five hours later, I immediately got back on WiFi and found the the story had exploded, and we lived in a different world.

Climategate is Still the Issue

Net Neutrality (4)

Na continuação de Net Neutrality (3),

Net neutrality is 'Communism' in the network – Arthur D. Little:

Arthur D. Little this week advised operators against treating all Web traffic equally, comparing network neutrality to Communism.

"Operators need to manage the capacity of their networks better," .. "At the moment we have Communism in the network with no real separation between how much you pay for it and how much you use it," .. "Why should operators have to treat a company that uses up most of the capacity in its network the same as another company that uses hardly any?"

Google, Verizon and Avoiding the Communist Concept of Net Neutrality:

The concept of guaranteed class of service is critical to emerging technologies ranging from telepresence (used for things like remote medicine and to keep our sorry butts off planes) to online gaming, like OnLive's service. This is because there is far too little bandwidth to go around at the moment, and not dealing with the problem at all isn't turning out to be the better path. Favoring a concept that, as defined, appears closer to communism than capitalism seems particularly whacked in the U.S., but maybe I'm just old fashioned.

Com a nacionalização da largura de banda, diminuirá o investimento no seu aproveitamento óptimo. É verdade que a largura de banda continuará a aumentar, mas se não havendo possibilidade de penalizar quem faz uma utilização irracional da mesma, os sistemas estarão permanentemente perto da sua capacidade, ou que é operacionalmente muito gravoso. A escassez artificial aumentará os custos unitários, o que afectará desporporcionalmente os utilizadores com menos escala para diluirem os seus custos de capital — start-ups e serviços de nicho. A médio termo, o pavoroso conceito da Net Neutrality tem os efeitos opostos ao que pretende atingir — tal como qualquer forma de socialismo económico.

A Darwinian theory of beauty

Beauty — Human Action, not Government's


Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty

going postal

A witty German Social-Democrat of the seventies of the last century called the postal service an example of the socialist economic system. This is very true. At present the Postal Service is a business operated on the lines of a State.

To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service .. all under the control and leadership of the armed proletariat – is our immediate aim. It is such a State, standing on such an economic foundation, that we need.

Lenin, The State and Revolution

Da mesma forma que o socialismo totalitário faliu, tal como está a falir o socialismo-democrático, também o U.S. Postal Service está falido — Postal Service Announces $8.5 Billion Loss:

The U.S. Postal service has announced a net loss of $8.5 billion for fiscal 2010. Since 2006, the USPS has lost $20 billion, and the organization is close to maxing out its $15 billion line of credit with the U.S. Treasury.

Na Alemanha o Deutsche Post decidiu perder a cabeça com uma tecnologia inovadora que vai certamente revolucionar as comunicações como as conhecemos — Postal Service in Germany to Deliver Mail...Electronically!:

Wouldn't it be great if you could instantly send mail through a series of tubes? If there was some way to take an electronic version of a piece of mail and set it to arrive instantly in a virtual mailbox that was unique to your recipient? If only someone could figure out a way to send this...electronic mail.

Prayers answered! The postal carrier Deutsche Post has leapt boldly into the late 20th century, billing a new way for Germans to receive mail electronically, at the costs of a mere 75 cents per letter! What a bargain!

Algo me diz que a divisão de correio normal da Deutsche Post continua a funcionar em regime de monopólio...

End the Fed (5)

Na continuação de

- End the Fed (4),
- Ron Paul em grande forma (2), e
- Airport Porn,


Lew Rockwell Freedom Watch 11/17/10: Ron Paul, Fed and Congress

Austerity hypocrites

Via Devil's Kitchen, Austerity hypocrites have no right to attack Osborne:

Liberal, left-wing and green-leaning commentators are outraged by George Osborne's spending review, claiming it will lower people's living standards and throw thousands on to the dole queue. Which is a bit rich, considering that many of the liberal intelligentsia have been agitating for austerity for years.

Time and again, liberal thinkers have told us that we must learn to live with less "stuff", for the sake of our own sanity and for the good of the people-plagued planet.

So don't be fooled by their crocodile tears today - they laid the cultural foundation stones for this age of hardship.

Por exemplo (o post tem mais exemplos):

In 2008, the Independent's green-tinted columnist Johann Hari called on the government to enforce wartime-style rationing in order to save the planet from almost certain fiery doom.

"Just as the government in the Second World War did not ask people to eat less voluntarily, governments today cannot ask us to burn fewer greenhouse gases voluntarily", said Hari. No, it must "force us all" to live more frugally and sensibly.

...and to hear the lamentation of their women

A propósito do iminente colapso financeiro do Estado da Califórnia:


The Devolution of Arnold

Hasta La Vista, Arnold (IER):

In this year’s Chief Executive, over 600 CEO’s were asked which states had the best and worst business climate. Not surprisingly, California owned the dubious honor of being the most difficult place to do business.

It didn’t have to be this way. California enjoys abundant natural resources and is home to some of the most entrepreneurial companies of the past decade. But with Arnold leaving office soon, his legacy of increased government intervention in the California economy, budget shortfalls and excessive job-killing regulations will unfortunately live on.

o que os empreendedores precisam é que os larguem da mão

Na continuação de Empreendedorismo@madeira, España, un país de analfabetos... empresariales:

España es un país altamente deficitario en cultura emprendedora, señal inequívoca de la baja competitividad, del voraz intervencionismo estatal y de la fuerte rigidez económica.

.. El empresario es tachado de “sanguijuela social que vive de la sangre ajena”, explotando vilmente a los pobres trabajadores al tiempo que destroza el medio ambiente con el único fin de expoliar al resto de ciudadanos. Mientras, sindicatos y partidos políticos (gobierno) son encumbrados a lo más alto de la esfera social, héroes en el papel de defensores sociales, humanitarios y ambientalistas.

.. Crear una empresa se convierte aquí en un arduo y complejo proceso burocrático y fiscal repleto de zancadillas en el que el éxito dependerá, en gran medida, de la tenacidad, valentía, arrojo y cuasi milagrosa obcecación del susodicho empresario en ciernes.

Resulta que es más fácil iniciar un negocio en Congo, Venezuela, Argentina o Zimbabwe que en España... ¡Ahí es nada!

airport porn (2) - EPIC Ron Paul Edition

Ron Paul - The American People have become Submissive

Paul is so pissed he introduces a bill that makes it illegal for the federal government to do anything a US citizen can’t do.

o culto da despesa do Estado para além de qualquer racionalidade

Uma das defesas dos socialistas-democratas (de todos os partidos) à mais do que evidente falência do seu modelo económico — intervencionismo; Estado "Social"; défices; dívida; desorçamentação de despesa futuras (unfunded liabilities); Estado gordo politizado e burocratizado — é que incorrecto analisar a situação por analogia com a economia de uma família. Esta crítica vai além do superficial "a tua analogia não é exactamente igual à realidade, logo não pode ser usada como analogia à realidade".

A analogia diz que se uma família gastar mais do que produz durante várias décadas (como Portugal faz), e endividar-se em montantes cada vez maiores (como Portugal faz), e andar a esconder dos credores que vai ter encargos violentos no futuro (como Portugal faz) ... algum dia o dinheiro vai acabar, e o nível de vida que gozava acima das suas possibilidades vai ter de ser reduzido drasticamente, a bem ou a mal.
###
Dizem os socialistas-democratas deste país — e de qualquer país de irresponsáveis em pleno exercício de negação — que uma vez que estamos em crise; e que os consumidores estão a retrair-se; e que as empresas também... tem de ser o Estado o responsável por estabilizar "a Economia".

Ainda vivemos numa Idade das Trevas económica, em que não há vestígios de separação da Economia e do Estado, pelo que é preciso repetir pacientemente os fundamentos:

- mesmo que não fosse uma máquina político-burocrática que chafurda em desperdício, mina as condições de prosperidade de toda uma sociedade, e destrói riqueza passada, presente e futura — mesmo que fosse eficiente — o Estado nunca conseguiria investir o meu dinheiro [ para evitar o pronome nosso ] melhor que eu. Se milhões de pessoas, sem comando central, entendem que em tempo de crise há que ter contenção, é um exercício de puro surrealismo que agentes públicos iluminados por algum saber livresco façam ideia do que convém às pessoas e às empresas, e decretem que tudo se resolve gastando mais;

- o problema das contas do Estado é o gasto do Estado. Tentar curar o problema das contas públicas com mais despesa pública é estúpido. Tal como tentar curar alcoolismo bebendo mais quando chega a ressaca é estúpido. Bombing for Peace is Like Fucking for Virginity. A "Economia" só "sofre" (coitadinha!) com a diminuição das despesas do Estado na medida em que supostamente diminui um agregado macroeconómico que contribui para o PIB — e depois os governante portugueses passam vergonha quando comparam o PIB de Portugal com o dos outros. A Economia real só pode agradecer.

- isto porque toda e qualquer despesa pública vem dos bolsos do "contribuinte", do produtor de riqueza — seja em impostos e taxas, seja por assalto às suas poupanças (hoje - inflação, ou amanhã - dívida pública). O Estado nada produz, tudo consome. Se o Estado fosse eficiente na gestão do gado contribuinte, tentaria maximizar a sua receita futura — encontrar o máximo de Laffer [atenção: seria à mesma imoral, por ser uma expoliação racional da riqueza privada]. Mas o Estado não é um parasita evoluído — os parasitas sobrevivem porque por selecção natural evoluiram para não dizimarem a população dos hospedeiros. Não é por aí que o Estado deixa de ser um fracasso organizacional. Graças aos incentivos políticos, e outros, o Estado vive para hoje, e portanto expolia irracionalmente a riqueza privada. Em tempos de crise os interesses financeiros do Estado e das pessoas (da Economia real) são diametralmente opostos.

Em tempos de crise, o Estado tem de se comportar "como" uma família em apuros se comporta, porque tal é do interesse de todas as famílias de carne e osso. Quanto mais austeridade o Estado mostrar — se reduzir o seu tamanho, se gerir superavits orçamentais, e ser reduzir a despesa pública —, mais dinheiro ficará com as famílias, e portanto menos dificuldades terão que passar, e portanto melhor se adaptarão aos tempos diferentes que aí vêm. Paradoxalmente, isto também salvará grande parte dos fundamentos filosóficos do Estado. Mas, lembremos, o Estado é um parasita pouco evoluído.

A defesa de défices públicos - mais despesa pública - é procura a salvação do Estado no Estado. É uma espécie de criação destrutiva. Esta política arrasará com a classe média do país, e abrirá as portas a uma verdadeira luta de classes — os oprimidos pelo Estado, e aqueles que o capturaram. As leis da realidade eventualmente ganharão, não sem grande sofrimento social.

Are You A Hypocrite?

Are You A Hypocrite?:

If you believe that it is wrong to take that which does not belong to you by threats or by force, you must necessarily be an anarchist or a hypocrite. If you believe that it is wrong to use violence against people who have harmed no one or damaged anyone else’s property, you must necessarily be an anarchist or a hypocrite. If you believe that the only justifiable use of force is in self-defense or in defense of one’s property, you must necessarily be an anarchist or a hypocrite. If you believe people are entitled to keep the fruits of their labor, you must necessarily be an anarchist or a hypocrite. If you believe in equal justice for all and that ALL men are equals, no matter their position, rank, or title, then you must necessarily be an anarchist or a hypocrite.

Anarcho-capitalism is the only socio-economic system that is not hypocritical or internally self-contradictory. If you believe in private property and you believe in the principles of non-aggression, then there is only one socio-economic system you can agree with that does not make you a hypocrite.

Citação Liberal do Dia

Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.

P. J. O'Rourke

Ron Paul em grande forma (2)

Na continuação de Ron Paul em grande forma (2),


Congressman Paul Discusses Federal Reserve Transparency on MSNBC

Nota: é perfeitamente absurda a fé que esta gente tem (trata-se da MSNBC, bastião mediático do progressismo americano). O Fed foi criado para combater o desemprego, o desemprego é uma coisa má, como é possível ser-se contra o Fed?

Europe’s horrible truths (2)

The horrible truth starts to dawn on Europe's leaders por Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:

Europe’s president .. is admitting that the gamble of launching a premature and dysfunctional currency without a central treasury, or debt union, or economic government, to back it up – and before the economies, legal systems, wage bargaining practices, productivity growth, and interest rate sensitivity, of North and South Europe had come anywhere near sustainable convergence – may now backfire horribly.

.. Political faith alone was enough. Investors who should have known better walked straight into the trap, buying Greek, Portuguese, and Irish debt at 25-35 basis points over Bunds. At the top of boom funds were buying Spanish bonds at a spread of 4 basis points. Now we are seeing what happens when you build such moral hazard into the system, and shut down the warning thermostat.

.. the EU became illegitimate when it refused to accept the rejection of the European Constitution by French and Dutch voters in 2005.. When this lonely electorate also voted no, the EU again disregarded the result and intimidated Ireland into voting a second time to get it “right”.

This is the behaviour of a proto-Fascist organization .. The cataclysm will not be pretty.

Ron Paul em grande forma

Na continuação de End the Fed (4),

Europe’s horrible truths

Don’t blame the euro for Ireland’s mess por Philippe Legrain:

Even many euro supporters now regret that in the boom years the currency permitted huge capital flows from Germany and other surplus countries to Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Ireland ..

The problem is not that savings flowed from Germany to Europe’s periphery. It is that they funded property bubbles rather than productive investment. But the blame for that lies with herd-like investors, flawed banks and foolish governments, not the euro.

A adesão ao euro expôs os países periféricos a uma moeda estável e barata — demasiado estável e demasiado barata face às estruturas de capital das suas economias. É mais do que natural que bolhas de investimento tivessem ocorrido.

O problema não foi do euro enquanto meio de transacção. O problema foi da união monetária, que veio a juntar à força o que evoluira separadamente. Que gerou um fluxo de dinheiro barato a países sem a produtividade económica — e maturidade política — que o justificasse.

Se é verdade que o dinheiro barato leva a que milhões de pessoas façam decisões de investimento erradas, então o mesmo dinheiro barato é veneno intelectual e moral para a entidade que consome metade da riqueza do país — o Estado. E não há wishful thinking que mude esse facto.

O problema é que agora a solução oferecida pelos europolíticos — embriagados com fatal conceit com hindsight — é mais força — integração fiscal e política forçada.

The Case for Legalizing Capitalism

The Case for Legalizing Capitalism | Kel Kelly

Airport porn

The Terrorists Have Already Won:

As of last week, air travelers in the United States going through security screening at most modern airports have only two options: either go through a scanner that shall enable security personnel to – literally – see them naked, or be subjected to an “enhanced pat down” – one that is little different to the groping of a sexual pervert ..

Let’s see. [ vários links ] TSA agents are – quite literally – putting their hands down people’s pants.

TSA Needs to ‘Get a Grip’ ... of a Different Sort:

The TSA believes that it must view your naked body with a scanner or place a hand on your private parts to safeguard the flying public from terrorists. I have advice for the TSA: you can spend a trillion dollars to make air travel safe and it won’t work. Islamists will simply board an aircraft originating in a nation with weaker security or go after a school or a bus or a subway. By incurring unending costs and eroding our freedoms, the terrorists win and we lose just a bit each day.

TSA versus America:

Many free-marketeers have suggested the U.S. would benefit from returning to non-nationalized airport security. It certainly makes sense — after all, airlines stand to lose a lot of money if anything goes wrong on their planes. In a security game that involves keeping up with ever-changing terrorist threats .., I trust the profit-seekers over the government to find an appropriate balance between consumer demands for privacy and airline security.

Let Markets Civilize Airport Security de John Stossel:

Israel gave up on centrally-planned security in 1995. Instead, private contractors with money on the line compete for the job. Scanners are not used. The government can fire the worst and pick the best .. But the United States government is not so smart. After 9/11 .. the Senate voted 100 to 0 for the TSA. What nonsense. When you’re scared, it’s instinctive to think that the government will step in and do things better, but it NEVER DOES.

BÓNUS - a experiência de Penn Jillette
BÓNUS - George Carlin - Airport Security and Terrorists

The Extremists Are Coming

Andrew Klavan: The Extremists Are Coming!

Trillion-Pound Horror Story (2)

5 lessons to learn from Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story:

Channel 4 recently aired an excellent hour-long program called Britain’s Trillion-Pound Horror Story, discussing the state of the British economy .. There was a lot to take away from it all, but I have narrowed it down to five simple points:

Inflation is a stealth tax - There was outrage .. when the Government decided to raise VAT from 17.5% to 20% for non-essential goods .. Yet this is precisely what happens when the government prints more money, except the cost of basic goods such as bread also rises.

The NHS needs reform - .. Over the last decade there has been a dramatic increase in NHS spending without a proportional increase in the quality of service. Being a public monopoly, there is simply no incentive to provide a good service at a low cost.

Government spending doesn’t stimulate the economy - .. The problem is that the focus is only on what is seen, the jobs and growth created by the new government programs. However the money to fund this comes from taxes; had those taxes remained in the hands of the people they would have spent that money in the private sector and would still have stimulated the economy.

Lower taxes can increase revenue - .. Business taxes reduce profits for companies, which prevents them from reinvesting their earnings and growing. Meanwhile, high income tax, particularly on the poorest in society, gives less incentive to work. When the government punishes hard work and success you will quickly find that people simply commit less of their time to working and tax revenues drop.

Our current government is not smashing the state - .. Not only is government spending increasing, but so is the debt. The government is merely reducing the deficit, the amount of money that we are losing each year. They’re not actually concerning themselves with the national debt at all. That task will be left to my generation, who also have to pay for the pensions of the much larger generation of baby boomers.

Wait and See

Wait and See

Bar Stool Economics

Recebido por mail:

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100 and If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

###

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20." so drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected... They would still drink for free... But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'... They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33... But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
- The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
- The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
- The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
- The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
- The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
- The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before... And the first four continued to drink for free... But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20, "declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man," but he got $10!" "Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man.
"I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!" "That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!" "Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

Empreendedorismo@madeira

empreendedorismo@madeira - 1ª parte

A segunda parte é interessante porque acrescenta (aos cinco empreendedores apresentados na primeira parte) alguns oito empreendedores da esfera político-burocrática. Não se leia aqui qualquer crítica. É que de facto "e toda a gente tem conselhos para dar", e sem a existência de generosos apoios e guiamentos institucionais, certamente não seria possível à sociedade superar a "desaprendizagem para o empreendedorismo" (tentanto usar um jargão institucional) que surge da existência de generosos apoios e guiamentos institucionais.

O Rei vai nu

O Rei vai nu (embora haja quem goste), excelente artigo de Rodrigo Adão da Fonseca:

Uma das ideias mais patéticas que se impôs recentemente no politicamente correcto do nosso cantinho à beira-mar plantado assenta no princípio que se estivermos caladinhos cá dentro, e dermos uma sensação de normalidade, os “mercados internacionais” pode ser que não percebam a miséria em que nos encontramos. Daí que sempre que um responsável político opta por dar nota que o rei vai nu, zás! todo um coro de austeros irresponsáveis vem a terreiro apontar-lhe o dedo para de seguida o elevarem até aos lábios, sussurrando, “shiu, está lá caladinho, ninguém precisa perceber na lama em que nos rebolamos!”.

matando o doente um estímulo de cada vez

Stimulus: Still Not Working!:

Imagine that I break my arm, but instead of getting a cast I take a big shot of morphine. The drug will make me feel better, but it won’t fix my arm. When the effect wears off, the pain will come back. And instead of being restored to their proper position, my bones will remain out of place, perhaps solidifying there, which will surely mean chronic pain in the long run.

Stimulus spending is like morphine. It might feel good in the short term for the beneficiaries of the money, but it doesn’t help repair the economy. And it causes more damage if it gets in the way of a proper recovery.

Unless you believe that federal spending magically conjures up purchasing power (or that morphine heals bones), the total GDP will remain unchanged, because the federal government has to borrow the stimulus money from either domestic or foreign sources. This borrowing in turn reduces other areas of demand.

Stimulus spending does not increase total demand. It merely reshuffles it, leaving the economy just as weak as before—if not weaker, since it also increases the national debt. By trying to ease the pain, the administration may well have made the patient worse.

consistent opposition to interventionism is a rare thing

Getting Beyond ‘Left’ and ‘Right,’ — Part Two : Another tradition por Justin Raimondo:

So, again, what lessons are to be drawn from all this? The principal lesson, I would contend, is that consistent opposition to interventionism is a rare thing indeed: one’s attitude to war is largely conditioned by who is fighting the war, and what party is in power .. Thus, today, supporters of President Obama are not too eager to protest the two wars we are currently fighting ..

The second lesson we can draw from this history is that the conventional labels of “right” and “left” are almost meaningless when applied to the foreign policy realm.

Which brings us to the third, and final, lesson of this rich and complicated history .. No party or faction, be it conservative or progressive, liberal or reactionary, has a monopoly on the banner of peace. At one time or another, both right and left have been on different sides of that divide ..

.. we cannot continue along the path of world conquest without bankrupting ourselves materially and morally ..

Hayek e a Wikipedia

Wikipedia and Beyond — Jimmy Wales' sprawling vision:

[ Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia ] .. has offered a more erudite account of the site's origins and purpose .. "Hayek's work on price theory is central to my own thinking about how to manage the Wikipedia project," Wales wrote on the blog of the Internet law guru Lawrence Lessig. "One can't understand my ideas about Wikipedia without understanding Hayek."

UFM.edu - Interview with Jimmy Wales

BÓNUS: Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts

A hipocrisia da esquerda quanto às guerras de Obama

Getting Beyond ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ — Part One: A deal with the devil por Justin Raimondo, November 12:

For now, let’s talk about the left, and the long loud silence that has been their response to Obama’s wars. Of course, we all remember the antiwar movement of the Bush years .. Then, suddenly, it all – stopped. No more demonstrations. No more angry op-ed pieces in the New York Times. No more congressional resolutions put forward by the so-called antiwar caucus in the House of Representatives.

The left has made a bargain, with the Democratic Party, and the powers that be. They’ll shut up about the wars, if only they can get the domestic programs – the government spending, the regulations, the social programs – that they want .. So all these groups, which the left imagines are their natural constituency, don’t dare speak out against the war, they don’t bite the hand that feeds them – they go along to get along.

Now that Bush’s wars are Obama’s wars, the antiwar left is silent. Oh, they still maintain they oppose the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, but that’s only in theory. In practice, they seek to subordinate the antiwar issue to the long litany of progressive causes. Their so-called “strategy” is to channel antiwar activism into building whatever rally or candidate the union bosses are sponsoring that day.

BÓNUS: Justin Raimondo in Boston Nov. 11 2010

Trillion Pound Horror Story

Na continuação de a clinically obese State on your back,


parte 1 | parte 2 | parte 3 | parte 4 | parte 5

Σοσιαλισμός

Via Café Hayek, Greedy capitalism vs. the beauty of collective action, Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds na Vanity Fair:

The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2007 has just now created a new opportunity for travel: financial-disaster tourism. The credit wasn’t just money, it was temptation. It offered entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. Entire countries were told, “The lights are out, you can do whatever you want to do and no one will ever know.”

The structure of the Greek economy is collectivist, but the country, in spirit, is the opposite of a collective. Its real structure is every man for himself. Into this system investors had poured hundreds of billions of dollars. And the credit boom had pushed the country over the edge, into total moral collapse.

The Greek state was not just corrupt but also corrupting .. No success of any kind is regarded without suspicion. Everyone is pretty sure everyone is cheating on his taxes, or bribing politicians, or taking bribes, or lying about the value of his real estate. And this total absence of faith in one another is self-reinforcing. The epidemic of lying and cheating and stealing makes any sort of civic life impossible; the collapse of civic life only encourages more lying, cheating, and stealing.

A religião do economismo

Via Cobden Centre, Keynesianism: The Modern Day Religion of Economism,

I have also extended the list that the Professor speaks about during his lecture. Here is my attempt at a full expansion of his central tenets of ‘Economism’:

• God = Government
• Sin = Scarcity
• Punishment = Inflation and Recession
• Salvation = Economic Progress
• Original Sin = Poverty
• Eden = Princeton University
• Heaven = The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building
• Churches and Cathedrals = Banks
• Bible = Samuelson’s Economics notes on Keyne
• Pope = Paul Krugman
• Priesthood = Keynesian Economists
• Biblical Latin = Gobbledegook Mathematics

Freedom torturers

George W. Bush can’t fight for freedom and authorise torture por Boris Johnson:

How is some tired and frightened American officer supposed to make head or tail of this sophistry, late at night in some bleak Iraqi jail? How is he supposed to calibrate the pain that comes from an organ failure or death? It is no wonder, with orders like that coming from the top, that the troopers misbehaved so tragically in Abu Ghraib. They failed to see any moral difference between waterboarding their suspects and putting hoods over their heads. They failed to see any moral difference between waterboarding them and terrifying them with alsatian dogs or attaching electrodes to their genitals. They failed to see any moral difference, that is, because there isn’t any moral difference.

.. if your end is the spread of freedom and the rule of law, you cannot hope to achieve that end by means that are patently vile and illegal.

Individualismo

fonte

socialismo ladrão, caloteiro e mendicante

Agora, viremo-nos contra a Alemanha! por Michael Seufert:

O avanço hoje anunciado pelo ministro das Obras Públicas do TGV, do Novo Aeroporto de Lisboa e da Terceira Travessia sobre o Tejo, sõ demonstra que é o governo que não está à altura da situação portuguesa.

Portugal hoje, por via da acção do governo e destas declarações do partido do governo, comporta-se como o vizinho desempregado que constrói uma piscina nova e vem pedir "um quilinho de arroz, que a vida não está fácil".

cutting hair without a licence

No seguimento de Licencing Madness e Licencing gone mad,


Licensing Gone Wild: Armed Government Agents Raiding Barber Shops

a longa vida parasítica do socialismo

Jesús Huerta de Soto: Socialism, Economic Calculation and Entrepreneurship no Cobden Centre:

There are three books that take pride of place in my Austrian bookcase. These are Socialism, by Ludwig von Mises; The History of Intellectual Thought, by Murray N. Rothbard; and Democracy the God that Failed, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe..

.. the Big Three .. form the solar core of my own personal life-long cure from socialism, along with various lesser satellites which rotate around them, including Nineteen Eighty-Four, Atlas Shrugged, and An American in the Gulag.

.. I managed to cure myself from this orcish horror, mainly due to the fact, of course, that socialism is utter self-serving elite-generated nonsense and the most evil destructive bone-headed religion that mankind has ever invented .. in its bid to keep people stupid, sick, and poor — and thus easier to rule over and exploit as tax cattle — socialism has slaughtered tens of millions of people ..

Why does socialism keep taking so long to fail, with the Soviet Union surviving for 70 years and the fiat currency union of the west surviving for 40 years, since 1971? .. Jesús Huerta de Soto uncovers and reveals the mysterious ghost-in-the-machine hiding behind these questions in a beautifully simple connective way, in Socialism, Economic Calculation, and Entrepreneurship.

Socialism thus survives because of the free market, which constantly tries to repair the damage socialism causes through its taxations, regulations, and debt-fed inflations. The free market self-repairs, re-connects, and re-organises itself — spontaneously ..

Thus, the more socialism we have, the quicker it kills itself, destroying that which it parasitises, as with full-blooded national socialism and soviet communism; the more anaemic versions of socialism allow a more bloodless monster to survive longer, as with social democracy in the western world.

Ketchup economics

Via business insider,



Taleb Says Fed Doesn't Understand Risks of Quantitative Easing

Carbon smoke

Via O Insurgente, A morte silenciosa da negociação de carbono nos EUA:

Morte na negociação de carbono nos EUA no Ecotretas:

Nos Estados Unidos, a bolsa de carbono de Chicago, CCX (Chicago Climate Exchange), anunciou a 21 de Outubro que cessaria a negociação de carbono este ano, depois de as cotações terem atingido os valores mínimos possíveis, acima de zero ..

.. Nasceu há dez anos atrás, e na altura as perspectivas eram grandiosas, primeiro com 500 biliões de dólares, que chegaram a ser inflacionadas para 10 triliões de dólares. Muitos fizeram parte desta história triste, incluindo o actual presidente dos EUA, Barack Obama. Al Gore também não faltou, mas parece que teve o bom senso de sair quando o funeral ainda não havia sido anunciado.

How much does a ton of carbon sell for on the Chicago Climate Exchange?:

It was given millions of dollars in start-up subsidies, including from Chicago’s Joyce Foundation when Barack Obama was a board member. Buying and selling imaginary carbon credits was going to lead us to a bold, green future, when people would pay billions — Al Gore said trillions! — to buy hot air .. But as the exchange’s own website suggests, companies bought and sold carbon as a public-relations exercise — to greenwash their operations in the eyes of the gullible media.

Big guns like Goldman Sachs bought a stake in the exchange hoping for far more. They were betting that with Obama in the White House, carbon trading would become mandatory under the Democrats’ “cap and trade” scheme .. But that law died in the U.S. mid-term election .. Carbon trading was one of the reasons.

a clinically obese State on your back

Via Burning our money,

.. government is now spending more of our money than it allows us to spend ourselves .. According to the latest OECD stats, this year the UK government will spend an astonishing 53% of our income .. So - just to hammer home the point with an outsized mallet - for every pound we earn, the government spends 53 pence of it, leaving us with just 47 pence.

UK public sector is crippling UK economy (11Nov10)

Recorded from Channel 4's "Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story", 11 November 2010

Think big, act small

When We Demunicipalize the Garbage Service, Then We'll Have World Peace por Brian Doherty:

War is the culmination of the breaking of libertarian principles, not once, but thousands of times .. You can’t apply libertarian principles to wrong things at their culmination and expect to make much sense. It is too fundamental.

.. there are people who look forward a generation — the libertarian, a part of "the remnant," takes the long view — he is looking forward to the time when war will be looked on as we now look on cannibalism, a thing of the past .. We make the case for freedom which cannot coexist with interventionism .... Again I say: We will never end wars until we at least understand why the garbage service should be removed from the jurisdiction of the police force — that is, government.

O mesmo se aplica às soluções "liberais" para o estado de falência do Estado social-democrata. Não há soluções. Chegou-se aqui porque as pessoas aceitaram que os sistemas de recolha de lixo fossem monopólio, e porque as pessoas aceitaram que era legítimo tirar dinheiro a uns e dar a outros, e porque as pessoas aceitaram que era legítimo os governos e "reguladores" manipularem o mercado, e porque as pessoas aceitaram que era legítimo evitar que empresas pouco competitivas fossem à falência, ... no fundo, porque as pessoas legitimaram o ilegitimável, décadas e décadas fio.

no such thing as free parking

Um pouco no seguimento de Estacionamento, Campo de Ourique, uma explicação económica do pricing do estacionamento. De notar que exige que o negócio seja explorado e gerido localmente, o que o torna adequado para empreendimentos privados, ou zonas públicas em que o estacionamento seja tutelado — por exemplo — pelas freguesias.


Reason TV: How Donald Shoup Will Find You a Parking Spot

Cash only (2)

No seguimento de Cash only, a relutância em dar dinheiro aos desfavorecidos não se prende com quaisquer questões morais derivadas do facto que o dinheiro pertence a outrem, ou que tem de ser "bem gerido" pela burocracia — algo por definição impossível. Remember that the key words in the sentence "I want to help you" is "I want".

Antigamente as pessoas davam presentes de casamento. Mais recentemente, apareceram as "listas" de artigos. Hoje em dia na prática uma pessoa está a dar créditos de compras na loja que organiza lista. Em algumas zonas do país, os presentes são em cash. Assim maximiza-se o valor para os noivos — mas à custa do valor que as pessoas têm em dar algo de personalizado. Esta instituição (a dos presentes de casamento) está adaptada às diferente culturas, e tem evoluído.

Ora, embora as pessoas não tenham direito ao dinheiro dos outros, na assistência social acontece exactamente o contrário do acima descrito. As pessoas receberão em género, aquilo que a burocracia decidir, quando a burocracia decidir, e mediante as condições que a burocracia decidir. Este não é um processo que ajude as pessoas, é um processo parasítico de gestão de contribuintes, e de recipientes de ajuda social, do qual depende a existência (e prosperidade) da burocracia.

P.J. O’Rourke (2)

No seguimento de P.J. O’Rourke e back away from politics.


P.J. O'Rourke: "Where Was the Government with Studebaker?"
Part One | Part Two

os poderes da liberdade

“Dear Foreigners, You Do the Math”:

A brand new Harvard University study finds that American students perform very poorly in math compared to their peers in other nations .. This study compares the percentages of students scoring at advanced levels across countries .. This may come as a shock to those who imagined that America’s educational shortcomings were restricted to inner cities or disadvantaged populations, but it is entirely consistent..

So how, then, have we remained an economic superpower for so long if our school system is so bad?

The answer is that we have historically enjoyed one of the freest economies on Earth, a relatively unfettered labor market, and comparatively low taxes – all of which have drawn to our shores many of the world’s best and brightest. Regrettably, our comparative advantage in those areas has eroded over the past several years.

Perhaps, instead of continuing to make our economy more like our failing centrally planned school monopoly, we should allow our education system to benefit from the freedoms and incentives of the marketplace that was always the engine of our prosperity....

hipocrisia socialista no crédito

In Defense of Payday Lending