Evolution To Liberty

John Stossel - Evolution To Liberty

Inside Every Leftist Is a Little Authoritarian Dying to Get Out

Inside Every Leftist Is a Little Authoritarian Dying to Get Out por Michael Cannon:

I’ve been meaning to write about how ObamaCare’s unelected rationing board — innocuously titled the Independent Payment Advisory Board — is yet another example of the Left leading America down the road to serfdom. (Efforts to limit political speech — innocuously called “campaign finance reform” — are another.)

As Friedrich Hayek explained in The Road to Serfdom (1944), when democracies allow government to direct economic activity, the inevitable failures lead to calls for a more authoritarian form of governance: Parliaments come to be regarded as ineffective “talking shops,” unable or incompetent to carry out the tasks for which they have been chosen. The conviction grows that if efficient planning is to be done, the direction must be taken “out of politics” and placed in the hands of experts — permanent officials or independent autonomous bodies.

This isn’t how it starts. This is how it snowballs.

Legalize Porn

Porn Obscenity: Cure or Cause for Violence?

democracismo acrítico

Lo que uno es, y lo que uno Cree Ser por Manuel F. Ayau:

.. generalmente se cree que otorgar autonomía a ciertas instituciones ¡es democrático! Se les priva de la cualidad esencial democrática, que es la cualidad política, y a pesar de ello se considera que su existencia es congruente con la democracia, por el hecho de que en su régimen interno las decisiones se toman por mayoría de votos.Las consecuencias no son sin importancia. Los ciudadanos típicamente resultan con la obligación de sostener esas instituciones a través de impuestos, cuotas, comisiones obligatorias y precios monopolísticos, pero nada tienen que decir en cuanto a su manejo, pues ni siquiera su presupuesto es autorizado por el Congreso. En algunos casos ¡ni dan cuenta pública del empleo de los fondos de los ciudadanos! Por ello no debe extrañar que con el tiempo esas entidades resultan manejadas por los grupos que tienen un mayor interés creado en las actividades de la entidad, que en las finalidades de la misma. Ello, desde luego, más se parece al fascismo que a la democracia.

Socialismo para todos! (2)

No seguimento de Socialismo para todos!,

Portugal too big to fail?

U.S. Taxpayers on the Hook for Portugal Bailout:

Recently, Portugal officially requested a $116 billion bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. This makes Portugal the third European nation to seek such a bailout in the past year (Greece got $157 billion; Ireland $122 billion). What most people don’t realize is that the U.S. is the largest contributor to the IMF. Therefore, U.S. taxpayers are paying for Portugal’s bailout which – like the earlier bailouts of Greece and Ireland – was caused by too much government spending and borrowing.

While the IMF refuses to provide a reliable number, we estimate that America’s contribution to a Portuguese bailout is equal to writing a check worth $600 for every man and woman in Portugal. This largesse makes it more likely that larger counties – particularly, Spain and Italy – will be standing in line for U.S. tax dollars tomorrow. That is unacceptable. We cannot take the “too big to fail” philosophy to a global level. The only thing “too big to fail’ is America itself.

responsabilidade fiscal

True News: The Insanity of 'Budget Cutting'

Controlling Others

Controlling Others is Insulting:

Are you an idealist and romantic at heart? If so, good. But if you want to save the world, stop trying to fix, change or control others. Instead: Show them, convince them, do whatever you have it in you to demonstrate to them...

Telling others what to do is an insult. It implies that the person you’re ordering to do something has no rational faculty of his or her own.

The government is bankrupt because the small number of rich and the decreasing number of middle class people who still choose to work are expected to pay for never-ending, entitled screams for more and more entitlement checks. The whole thing is imploding, fiscally, right before our eyes ..

It’s said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This isn’t precisely true. Rationally good intentions are not how human beings destroy themselves. Human beings destroy themselves through deception first and foremost, through self-deception.

the Banking Crisis

John Allison on the Banking Crisis @ CEI's 25th Anniversary

LEITURAS ADICIONAIS recomendadas:
- Master class sobre os ciclos económicos
- Meltdown em video
- Peter Schiff is right (2)

The Onion mais real que a realidade

Obama's Deficit-Reduction Plan Includes Spending Cuts, Robbing Fort Knox, Tax Reform (The Onion):

WASHINGTON—Saying the nation must face the "grave realities" of its mounting debt, President Barack Obama unveiled a deficit-reduction plan Wednesday that included far-reaching spending cuts, pulling off a daring robbery of the heavily fortified Fort Knox bullion depository, and repealing Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy.

In a televised address, Obama .. expressed his vision for a future in which the government .. had billions and billions of dollars worth of stolen gold ..

Republican leaders were quick to unleash a barrage of criticism ..

In a party-line vote earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed Rep. Ryan's rival plan, which includes across-the-board tax cuts, tunneling under the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, sending an electrical surge through its security system, and stealing the engraving plates so that "we can print off as much money as we want."

The War on Walmart

The War on Walmart: Who's afraid of cheap groceries?

Socialismo para todos!

Good Jobs for Everyone!:

Political leaders today want to think big. So in the spirit of Secretary Solis, here are some ideas for other cabinet secretaries needing a new and exciting vision:

• Secretary of Agriculture: Soaring crop prices for all farmers!
• Secretary of Commerce: Huge profits for every business!
• Secretary of Defense: More wars and fat contracts for all weapons makers!
• Secretary of Education: Straight As for all students!
• Secretary of Energy: Windmills for every family!
• Secretary of Health and Human Services: Huge portions but slim waists for all!
• Secretary of Housing: Granite countertops and Jacuzzis for every home!
• Secretary of Justice: Lawsuits for all accidents!
• Secretary of Transportation: High-speed subway trains for every village!
• Secretary of the Treasury: More IRS agents because someone has to pay for all this!

Leviathan

Via Economist:

Government has always tended to expand (see table 1), and people have always fretted about it. In 1888 a French economist, Pierre Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, calculated that a share of 12-13% of GDP (just above the Western average then) was the sustainable limit for a modern state. By 1960 sprawling welfare states had pushed the average in the rich world to 28% (see chart 2), enough to convince Friedrich Hayek that “the deliberately organised forces of society [ie, government regulation]” might “destroy those spontaneous forces which have made advance possible.” Yet the next quarter-century saw another surge, pushed mainly by transfer payments and subsidies ostensibly aimed at the poor but often of most benefit to the middle classes.

If I ruled the world

If I ruled the world: Niall Ferguson:

The world, in other words, has left behind the old top-down command structure. In its place has arisen a host of interlocking and overlapping networks. The positive “externalities” created by the mere existence of these networks can hardly be overstated. It is not that I buy the theory of the wisdom of crowds: people in the aggregate can and do make horrendous mistakes. It’s more that networks allow information to flow to where it is needed, making all kinds of markets work better. They may be prone to violent mood swings. But so, in case you hadn’t noticed, are rulers. And while markets may occasionally throw millions of people out of work, they tend not to murder them and toss them into mass graves.

So my answer to the question of what I would do if I ruled the world is quite easy. I would use my power for a period of, at most, a week, to stamp out traditional systems of rule and to replace outdated hierarchies with networks. I would begin by deposing all autocrats and giving their former subjects a simple constitution modelled on that of the United States.

You may say that this would be recipe for anarchy .. room for leadership—a very different thing from rule. The best thing about our networked world is that it greatly increases the chance that natural leaders will emerge, whatever the disadvantages of their birth.

single party system (3)

No seguimento de single party system (2),


Obama/Boehner’s Phony Spending Cuts

What Would Hayek Do?

The Budget Battle: WWHD? (What Would Hayek Do?) AK? (And Keynes?) por Russ Roberts:

Hayek was not an anarchist- he didn't believe there should be zero government. But he was also not a conservative. He was a classical liberal- he believed in personal freedom and responsibility. This idea that we'd need to increase the budget by $1 billion to "stimulate the economy", he would view with extreme skepticism. So he was very skeptical of macroeconomic predictions. He believed in the importance of bottom-up, emergent actions of individuals: planning for the future should be done by individuals, not by someone at the top.

He didn't believe that anyone can steer the economy. Hayek would also be skeptical of the idea that we'd need to keep spending to prop our economy up and to keep our economy going. He'd want to let entrepreneurs and individuals make decisions based on the knowledge available to them, rather than a top-down approach [by the government] that tries to micro-manage at a macro level.

He was skeptical of the idea that the Federal Reserve, through manipulating interest rates, could create prosperity or improve the economy. Hayek would argue in fact the Fed is a major reason we're in the mess we're in.

anatomia do roubo

A maior fraude da História

Why windmills won’t wash:

.. So how much would each of the seven billion people on the planet have to cough up over the next century to forestall the 3.4 C global warming that IPeCaC hopes will happen by 2100? It will cost each of us more than £3.8 million ($6.3 milllion), and that’s probably a large underestimate ..

.. After the biggest and most expensive propaganda campaign in human history, leading to the biggest tax increase in human history, trying to stop “global warming” that isn’t happening anyway and won’t happen at anything like the predicted rate is the least cost-effective use of taxpayers’ money in human history, bar none – and that’s saying something.

The thing about gesture politics is that the politicians (that’s us) get to make the gestures and the proles (that’ll be you) get to get the bill ..

Anarchism in America

Anarchism in America
parte 1 | parte 2 | parte 3 | parte 4
parte 5 | parte 6 | parte 7 | parte 8

confusions about democracy

Classical Liberal confusions about democracy:

.. except in wartime or other major emergency democracies cannot be described in this way. They possess no hierarchy of goals, but rather are constituted by a complex stew of conflicting policy proposals and competing organizations and politician where nothing is stable ..

I think we need a new way of thinking about democracy’s scope, one that incorporates awareness of limits on power, but not defining in advance the areas of life it can seek to influence. The issue is not the number of issues a government can address, but the amount of power it can bring to bear to get its way.

This alternative model also focuses our attention on what really matters. It is not the size of government that matters, it is the “principle agent problem” [sic] whereby its leaders seek to turn a democracy into an organization they control. This is the problem of autocracy. In addition there is the problem of organized interests in a democracy seeking to bring it under their control. This is the problem of aristocracy, and it is by far the largest problem we have today in American politics.

When we see these problems as the key problems, and not the “size” of government we are freed to think far more intelligently about the problems facing modern democratic countries.

The state is the Mafia (2)

Na continuação de The state is the Mafia,

No profits are pirated

I Got an E-mail Today from Ritz-Carlton….

Thanks for your e-mail celebrating your and your employees’ participation in “Give Back Getaways” – activities in which you and your employees (along with some of your customers) “give back to the community.”

Have you taken something that doesn’t belong to you? ..

Please, though, unless your profits are the product of dishonest deals or theft, please drop the rhetoric of “giving back.” This sort of talk implies that you possess something that isn’t rightfully yours. It fuels the common misapprehension that corporate profits are either ill-gotten gains or, at best, wealth subtracted from that of other persons.

By all means, give if your shareholders approve. But stop calling it “giving back.” Your profits aren’t pirated booty; they’re legitimate earnings.

single party system (2)

No seguimento de single party system,


Cato's David Boaz on Republicans and Democrats at ISFLC 2011

Valores, decisões, acções

Toma de decisiones y escalas de valores:

Cada uno decide según su escala de valores. Pero tenemos que cerciorarnos que tenemos una escala de valores correcta. Los valores son las cosas que valen y nuestra escala de valores son las cosas que nosotros valoramos, y si lo que nosotros valoramos no son cosas que valen, nuestra escala de valores estará equivocada y por tanto nuestras decisiones y actuaciones serán incorrectas. Es por tanto importante que nos preocupemos de valorar las cosas que realmente valen.

Los valores son objetivos y mis valores son subjetivos. Sí, sí, has leído bien por muy contracultural que suene: existen valores objetivos. La honradez, el respeto a los compromisos adquiridos, la justicia, etc. son valores. Si en nuestras decisiones no tenemos en cuenta que hay que ser honrados, respetar los compromisos adquiridos, etc. nuestras actuaciones serán incorrectas. Nos saldrán las cosas mal.

Leitura recomendada: Leadership and Values

Thanks

Via Facebook,

Bernanke 0 - 1 ZéDu

Discurso do Presidente José Eduardo dos Santos, no IV congresso extraordinário do MPLA:

Assim, é uma operação estratégica do Executivo reduzir a taxa de inflação para baixo de 10 por cento, de modo não apenas a proteger os rendimentos gerados na nossa economia, mas também a permitir que o crédito possa ser menos oneroso e capaz de continuamente estimular o crescimento sustentável da economia.

Assim, as pequenas, médias e grandes empresas privadas dos angolanos poderão, através do crédito bancário ou de empréstimos, realizar investimentos em todo o território nacional, criar empregos, produzir mais riqueza e ajudar a combater a pobreza.

Mas os bancos só podem emprestar dinheiro quando têm esses recursos depositados em contas por inúmeras pessoas individuais ou colectivas.

Por essa razão, todos aqueles que têm economias ou poupanças, em vez de guardar o seu dinheiro em casa, devem guardá-lo num banco, pois são essas poupanças individuais depositadas nos bancos comerciais que constituem a Poupança, de que uma parte é destinada ao investimento ou a financiar o consumo.

Hip-Hop Economics (5)

No seguimento de Hip-Hop Economics ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ),


Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two

Citação Liberal do Dia

The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates.

Tacitus

We don’t need no endoctrination (2)

No seguimento de We don’t need no endoctrination,


We Don’t Need No (Public) Education: Sheldon Richman on the Separation of School and State

A filosofia política de Jorge Luis Borges

A filosofia política de Jorge Luis Borges por Martín Krause:

Sua descrença no estado só poderia estar acompanhada de um baixo interesse pela política .. Quando lhe foi dito que não parecia ter em alta conta os políticos em geral, confirmou:

"Não. Em primeiro lugar não são homens éticos; são homens que contraíram o hábito de mentir, o hábito de subornar, o hábito de sorrir o tempo todo, o hábito de agradar todo mundo, o hábito da popularidade... A profissão dos políticos é mentir. O caso de um rei é diferente, um rei recebe tal destino, e portanto lhe cabe cumpri-lo. O político não; o político deve fingir o tempo todo, deve sorrir, simular cortesia, deve submeter-se melancolicamente aos coquetéis, às cerimônias oficiais, aos feriados nacionais."

"Penso que nenhum político pode ser uma pessoa completamente sincera. Um político está sempre à procura de eleitores, e diz aquilo que esperam que diga. No caso de um discurso político, importa mais a opinião dos ouvintes que a do orador. O orador é uma espécie de espelho ou eco do que os demais pensam. Se não for assim, fracassará."

Em suas próprias palavras, Borges se considerava um anarquista, embora pacífico: "Atualmente me definiria como um inofensivo anarquista; isto é, um homem que quer o mínimo de governo e o máximo de indivíduo".

"Sou anarquista. Sempre acreditei fervorosamente na anarquia. E nisso sigo as ideias de meu pai. Ou seja, sou contra os governos — especialmente as ditaduras —, e contra os estados".

surrealismo contabilístico, político e jornalístico

Via Blasfémias, O mundo surreal do jornalismo e da política,

os políticos que nos dirigem estarão a ponderar não introduzir portagens nas SCUT para não aumentar o défice contabilístico.
Vou repetir: os políticos que nos dirigem estarão a ponderar abdicar de uma receita para não aumentar o défice.

single party system

Saving the Warfare-Welfare State por Sheldon Richman:

Why does everyone think Washington is plagued by excessive partisanship? The contest over how to address the fiscal debacle says otherwise: Both divisions of the uniparty (Democrat and Republican) agree that the warfare-welfare state must be saved. It’s the means not the end that divides them.

But here’s the thing: Both seek to retain the fundamental status quo in which the State parcels out favors to reigning interests while providing succor to the vulnerable in a combined spirit of charity and fear. Fear of what? In the case of the elderly, fear of their political clout at the ballot box; in the case of those shut out the economic system because of lousy government schools, occupational licensing, and cartelization via the subsidy and regulatory regime, fear of a frustration that could turn into unrest.

The Insane Asylum

Earth – The Insane Asylum

Citação Liberal do Dia

The plans differ; the planners are all alike.

Frederic Bastiat

We don’t need no endoctrination

Pink Floyd - Another Brick in the Wall

Japan’s Broken Window (2)

No seguimento de Japan’s Broken Window, Japan’s Broken Windows por David D'Amato,

The truth is that some people do stand to benefit in the wake of disasters that elicit huge government spending projects, but that benefit doesn’t come in a vacuum. Where the economic system is defined by the coercive interventions of the state, public works projects that follow natural disasters mean contracts for the state’s favorites, courtesy of the working masses.

The state and its courtiers, groups that can’t actually be distinguished in practice, are happy to use tragedies to redirect wealth; they certainly enjoy a boost, but it isn’t somehow free of charge. Working people pay the price, and the price is significantly higher than it would be in a society where the details of the rebuilding process were determined by the voluntary decisions of free people.

Where the state expends wealth, it doesn’t erase the costs that attend disasters without someone paying, and the inefficiency and self-serving that inhabit the venal relationships created by power themselves foist further costs on productive society.

a marcha implacável do "neoliberalismo"...

...e contudo a sociedade não colapsou, e vivemos mais prósperos que nunca.
No lado oposto, as receitas fiscais não deixaram de aumentar, e os Estados arruinam-se.

Sistema Nacional de Mercearias

Grocery School por Don Boudreaux:

Suppose that we were supplied with groceries in same way that we are supplied with .. education.

Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. A huge chunk of these tax receipts would then be spent by government officials on building and operating supermarkets. County residents, depending upon their specific residential addresses, would be assigned to a particular supermarket. Each family could then get its weekly allotment of groceries for “free.” ..

Except in rare circumstances, no family would be allowed to patronize a “public” supermarket outside of its district.

.. the resulting calls for “supermarket choice” would be rejected .. Such ‘choice,’ it would be alleged, will drain precious resources from the public supermarkets whose (admittedly) poor performance testifies to the fact that these supermarkets are underfunded.

And the small handful of people who call for total separation between supermarket and state would be criticized by nearly everyone as being .. indifferent to the malnutrition and starvation that would sweep the land if only private market forces governed the provision and patronizing of supermarket ..

Does anyone believe that such a system for supplying groceries would work well, or even one-tenth as well as the current private, competitive system that we currently rely upon for supplying grocery-retailing services? ..

.. why might you continue to count yourself in the ranks of those who believe that government schooling .. is the system that we should continue to use?

Japan’s Broken Window

No seguimento de Economic Lunacy ,

Japan's Broken Window

Os liberais e o "25 de Abril"

Via O Insurgente, Deverá um liberal festejar o "25 de Abril"?:

Ao contrário do que possam pensar alguns distraídos, os liberais identificam-se com muito pouco no regime derrubado em 1974 ..

O “25 de Abril” não se fez em nome da experiência histórica do liberalismo .. fez-se em nome de uma míriade de socialismos coligados que iam fundar um “país novo” e que chegaram ainda a apresentar-se como nova “União Nacional democrática” no defunto M.D.P. (PCP+PS+PPD) ..

.. a normalização de 1976 veio a fazer-se com uma vitória ideológica inequívoca do socialismo, que só o pragmatismo dos políticos e a realidade das coisas foi forçando a esbranquiçar em sucessivas revisões constitucionais. Onde, nesta “herança de Abril”, os liberais se podem situar não é nada claro ..

The Age of Fiscal Irresponsibility

Via Economist,

Como gerir um negócio segundo a esquerdalha

How To Run a Protest-Proof Grocery Store:

All of which got me wondering. What would it take to run a grocery store that’s immune to progressive protest? I came up with this checklist [uma selecção]:

• You must pay your employees a high wage .. However, you may pay them crappy wages .. so long as you let them unionize ..
• You must offer organic food, and cater to alternative diets ..
• .. You shouldn’t sell anything that can only be shipped by jet or tractor trailer .. you still need to cater to a wide variety of diets. And have good selection. And not charge too much.
• You should .. donate regularly to charity and political causes .. that disapprove of commercialism ..
• Just a reminder: You must do all of these things while keeping your prices low ..
• .. you also must be locally-owned.
• .. Morally, you should really only be making just enough money to keep the lights on.
• You can’t advertise; all advertising is exploitation ..
• You must foster a work environment that promotes tolerance and open-mindedness. This means no white trash.
• Don’t hire any Republicans, “blue-dog Democrats”, libertarians, or business majors, either. Those sorts of people promote intolerance.

"Liberdade"

Comprativa

El mayor gasto de cualquier ciudadano son los impuestos

El mayor gasto de cualquier ciudadano son los impuestos:

Si cualquier ciudadano sumara todos los impuestos que paga a lo largo del año (IRPF, Seguridad Social, IVA de todo lo que compra, IBI, impuestos a la gasolina, impuesto de circulación, etc.) vería que su mayor gasto es el Estado.

Y lo mismo que sucede con los ciudadanos el mayor coste de las empresas son los impuestos: Impuesto de Sociedades, Seguridad Social de los empleados, IBI, impuesto a la gasolina, infinidad de tasas y permisos administrativos, etc.

Esto forma una cadena desde el origen en la que todas las empresas van traspasando el coste de todos sus impuestos hacia sus clientes, hasta llegar al cliente final, el ciudadano de a pie, que paga todos los impuestos de todas las empresas que han intervenido en todas las etapas del proceso de fabricación del producto o servicio que está adquiriendo.

Por eso resulta tan ridículo que alguien se alegre, o proponga, que les suban los impuestos a las empresas creyendo que la cosa no van con él.

hoje é aquele dia em que querer menos "democracia" naquilo que não diz respeito ao Estado é fascismo e tal

e o último que feche a porta

Epístola de São Paulo aos Lusitanos (ou, muitos anos depois, o FA publica um post) de Fernando Albino:

É assim que, a cada dia que passa, a perspetiva de eu a minha mulher ou os meus filhos algum dia voltarmos para Portugal para aí desenvolver qualquer tipo de atividade económica vai-se esbatendo. No que depender de mim, eles não pagarão nem um centavo desta dívida absolutamente suicída com que o país está a ser albardado por este bando de loucos que o “governa”.

The Growing Libertarian Youth Movement

The Growing Libertarian Youth Movement: Q&A with SFL's Alexander McCobin and Blayne Bennett

Economics vs. Emotions

Helping the Poor? Economics Vs. Emotions:

Humanitarians seem to become too attached to their stance at an emotional level, even seeming to suffer from a mystical belief in the moral superiority of their solutions, no matter what the outcome. In fact, this has led to the enactment of countless terrible public policies. Economics, on the other hand, is a science. The economist’s job is to take the end as given and then explain the best ways to achieve that end.

For example the issue of sweatshops is one of the most emotional issues, which enrages many Americans today. People see struggling women and children “forced” to work in terrible working conditions and call: “Sweatshops must be Stopped!” “Ban them!” “We must boycott!” The question is: will closing sweatshops stop “exploitation” and get people out of poverty?

.. the right response should be to encourage trade with countries where sweatshops exist. Buy sweatshop goods, higher demand for their services means the quicker wealth accumulation by these workers, which inevitably will lead to disappearance of sweatshops. Restricting trade with countries where sweatshops still exist keeps these individuals poor, which is the opposite of what we want.

o Keynesianismo funciona

The Onion: In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?

uma visão libertarian-contrarian sobre a imigração

On Free Immigration and Forced Integration por Hans-Hermann Hoppe:

The current situation in the United States and in Western Europe has nothing whatsoever to do with "free" immigration. It is forced integration, plain and simple, and forced integration is the predictable outcome of democratic – one-man-one-vote – rule.

What should one hope for and advocate as the relatively correct immigration policy, however, as long as the democratic central state is still in place and successfully arrogates the power to determine a uniform national immigration policy? The best one may hope for, even if it goes against the "nature" of a democracy and thus is not very likely to happen, is that the democratic rulers act as if they were the personal owners of the country and as if they had to decide who to include and who to exclude from their own personal property (into their very own houses). This means following a policy of utmost discrimination: of strict discrimination in favor of the human qualities of skill, character, and cultural compatibility.

.. – with the predictable result of a systematic pro-European immigration bias.

Outsource Everything

Sandy Springs, Georgia: The City that Outsourced Everything

The state is the Mafia

The state is the Mafia:

100% Everything the state does, ever has done or ever will do can easily, only and best be explained by understanding this. They just want money. They’re in it to live a good life at the expense of others without having to work hard for a day in their lives. That’s the entire, dull and ultimately obvious point and purpose of Government – hidden behind complexity, ritual and euphemism is a machine for taking your money.

.. think back to Medieval times. Think of Disneys Robin Hood, and the Purpose of the Character known as the Sheriff of Nottingham. You can understand .. that the peoples of England had at least the self-respect to not even pretend the Sheriff of Nottingham was in anyway a hero, or good. The entire point of this character was to steal money – nicely wrapped up as Taxation .. Please tell me you understand, at least, that the Medieval “Government” had NO function but to take money and to enslave people?

.. See the same Tax system in place, now stated to do good, but still the same racket .. it’s the same system, the same racket.”

Statism is Slavery

Statism is Slavery

Death by Decorator (3)

Wallpapering With Red Tape por George Will:

This is done in the name of "professionalization," but it really amounts to cartelization. Persons in the business limit access by others -- competitors -- to full participation in the business.

Being able to control the number of one's competitors, and to dispense the pleasure of status, is nice work if you can get it, and you can get it if you have a legislature willing to enact "titling laws." They regulate -- meaning restrict -- the use of job descriptions. Such laws often are precursors of occupational licensing, which usually means a mandatory credentialing process to control entry into a profession with a particular title.

.. Such regulations come with government rationing of the right to practice a profession. Who benefits? Creating artificial scarcity of services raises the prices of those entitled to perform the services. The pressure for government-created scarcity is intensifying because the general public -- rank amateurs -- are using the Internet to purchase things and advice, bypassing designers.

It is not true that businesses, as a matter of principle, want to fend off government regulation. Businesses have a metabolic urge to make money, which is as it should be. But when a compliant government gives them the opportunity to use government regulations to enhance their moneymaking, that metabolic urge will overpower any principles about the virtues of free (from government intervention) enterprise.

Death by Decorator (2)

Throw-Pillow Fight: Is your interior designer really putting your life at risk?


EPIC LICENSING BATTLE: The Florida Interior Design Cartel Strikes Back

Death by Decorator (1)

Death by Decorator:

The Wall Street Journal reports on a heated battle in Florida over whether to deregulate commercial interior designers — that is, to allow just anyone to hang out a shingle and seek customers looking for office design. It turns out the question is fraught with more danger than one might have realized. Herewith, the opening of the Journal‘s comprehensive report:

..they’ve stormed legislative hearings to warn of the mayhem that would ensue if the measure passes.

Among the scenarios they’ve conjured: flammable carpets sparking infernos; porous countertops spreading bacteria; jail furnishings being turned into weapons.

.. By deregulating, she told lawmakers, “what you’re basically doing is contributing to 88,000 deaths every year,” citing a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on deaths from hospital-acquired infections.

Interior design “sounds like this simple hanging curtains on a wall,” .. But “it only takes a couple things to go wrong for people to lose their lives.”

Sobre os factos, este vídeo é elucidativo.

Nothing wrong with Capitalism

Oingo Boingo - Capitalism - 1983

You're just a middle class, socialist brat
From a suburban family and you
never really had to work
And you tell me that we've got to get back
To the struggling masses (whoever they are)
You talk, talk, talk about suffering and pain
Your mouth is bigger than your entire brain

There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap

Um dia negro para o feminazismo:

Of course, anyone with half a brain could have told you there is no wage gap, otherwise some business owner would hire nothing but women and pay them less, there by undercutting the market.

The WSJ reports - There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap:

Recent studies have shown that the wage gap shrinks—or even reverses—when relevant factors are taken into account and comparisons are made between men and women in similar circumstances. In a 2010 study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30, the research firm Reach Advisors found that women earned an average of 8% more than their male counterparts. Given that women are outpacing men in educational attainment, and that our economy is increasingly geared toward knowledge-based jobs, it makes sense that women’s earnings are going up compared to men’s.

Feminism isn’t about equal pay for equal work, it is about expropriating money from men and handing it to women by force.

Busting the Myth of Green Jobs

Renewables Supporters Miss the Point of Scotland Study:

As I explain in this short video clip below, people favoring carbon legislation often try to have their cake and eat it too. They want to claim that revamping the energy sector will not only mitigate the damages from climate change, but that it will also create jobs and boost the economy even in conventional terms.

Robert Murphy: Busting the Myth of Green Jobs

Predatory Pricing

The Problem With Predation por Donald J. Boudreaux:

A key to understanding the economics of predatory pricing is to realize that the predator must lose more money than do any of its prey. The reason is that the predator can force the preys’ prices down only by taking away their customers. And to take away the preys’ customers requires that the predator expand its sales during the price war. In contrast, the prey are free to reduce their sales to levels that minimize (if not eliminate) their losses.

How, then, can predation be a lucrative strategy? The answer must be that the predator is better able than the prey to absorb price-war losses. Fortunately for consumers, predators are not better able to absorb such losses. In fact, any prey that is as efficient as the predator has just as much access to funding for the price war as does the predator.

"How can this be?" asks the skeptic. The answer is straightforward — capital markets. If the prey are as efficient as the predator, the prey will likely be able to borrow enough money to wage the price war successfully.

If the prey can borrow enough money to defend themselves against predatory pricing, then it is obvious that predatory pricing is suicidal. The reason is that the predator loses more money during the price war than do the prey, without the hope of driving its adequately funded prey to extinction.

Tax Hike

The Daily Show - Slashdance - Democratic Deficit Reduction Plan
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Aos cinco minutos:

What? ”Spending reductions in the tax code”? The tax code isn’t where we spend, it’s where we collect. And tha–ohhhhh. I guess what you said is tax code — code for raising taxes. You managed to talk about a tax hike as a spending reduction. [Laughter.] Can we afford that and the royalty checks you’re going to have to send to George Orwell? That is the weirdest way — just say tax hike.

Charter Cities

Paul Romer Interview About Charter Cities on Zurich Minds:

Rolf: Twenty years out, what’s your dream?
Paul: I hope for a world where every family has a choice about living in one of several different cities, all of which are competing to attract new residents. That’s something that we take for granted. You [Rolf] could go to any city in Europe. I could go to any city in the United States…Many of those cities want to grow, they want more activity, they’d be eager to have us as residents. That kind of competition leads to new cities…that do something different, but it also disciplines cities—that if they don’t do their job well, the residents can go someplace else where things are done better.

The Path to Prosperity

The Path to Prosperity: America's two futures, visualized

Mother Earth Day

Happy Mother Earth Day, Citizen!:

If this all sounds a bit mystical, that it because the philosophy of environmentalism is pure mysticism ..

In his inaugural Mother Earth Day speech to the UN, President Morales noted that environmental destruction is "offensive to the many faiths, wisdom traditions and indigenous cultures for whom Mother Earth is sacred." In doing so he explicitly appealed to faith, not reason, as the standard of moral judgment. Those in the UN did not object to this invocation of mysticism as a basis for their resolutions. Rather, they passed his resolution for Mother Earth Day unanimously ..

It is difficult to make satire of something like this, because the supporters of this proposition have already done the job for us. Those who dream up UN treaties to establish a "Ministry for Mother Earth" are the kinds of people who mistakenly thought that Orwell was writing an instruction manual, not a work of dystopian fiction ..

Happy Mother Earth Day, citizen! Now bow down to the almighty state in celebration!

Top 8 tax protest songs of all time

Anteontem foi o Tax Day nos EUA, fica aqui Top 8 tax protest songs of all time — esta não está na lista oficial:


Goin’ to the CPA

Nacionalismo racional

Nacionalisme Racional (I): Catalanisme, Catalunya i la Llibertat Individual

Es fácil entender, por tanto, que el origen de los males actuales que generalmente se asocian con el nacionalismo, más que tener su causa en la idea de nacionalidad, tienen su origen en que no se cumplen los tres principios básicos ya analizados del nacionalismo liberal. O dicho de otra forma, que el nacionalismo deja de ser una fuerza positiva para el proceso pacífico de cooperación social y se convierte, como en mayor o menor medida ha sucedido en relación con el actual gobierno de Cataluña, en un semillero de conflictos y sufrimientos precisamente cuando deja de ser liberal y se convierte en un nacionalismo intervencionista o dirigista.

Es decir, el error se encuentra en el socialismo, en el intervencionismo y en el ejercicio sistemático de la coacción, y no en el nacionalismo per se. Si bien es preciso reconocer que, en muchas ocasiones, los intervencionistas y socialistas recurren, prostituyéndola, a la idea de nación para alimentar y justificar sus medidas de coacción.

VIDA, LLIBERTAT i PROPIETAT PRIVADA. Els únics valors objetius, i per tant, defendibles. Imposar llengües, sistemes educatius, sistemes de “protecció” social (sanitat, polítics) són immorals, no els podem elegir.

Aqui segunda parte.

Police Abuse

Reason.tv: Radley Balko on the 3 Worst Cases of Police Abuse in 2011

taxing is stealing from everyone

The Man Who Can’t Be Taxed:

Stevens wants to tax the “idle rich”, her Exhibit A being Robert Kendrick, heir to the $84 million Schlage Lock Company fortune. According to Ms. Stevens, Mr. Kendrick appears to do pretty much nothing but park and re-park his four cars all day long. Taxing people like Mr. Kendrick, she says, has to be part of any solution to America’s fiscal crisis.

You can try to tax him, but any attempt to tax him turns into a tax-in-disguise on somebody else.

.. the government consumes more goods, Mr. Kendrick consumes no fewer, so someone else must consume less. Who is that someone else? The answer depends on the details of the transactions, but the most likely answer is that when Mr. Kendrick withdraws $84 million from the bank to make his tax payment, the bank makes fewer loans, interest rates rise, and someone cancels a vacations, or postpones a car purchase, or abandons a half-built factory. Who bears the burden of the tax? The people who cancel their vacations and car purchases and factories, that’s who. Not Mr. Kendrick.

Obamacare

ObamaCare - Live Your Carefree Lifestyle

mais socialismo, mais carvão

Unintended Consequences of Free Carbon Permits -- Burning More Coal (Reason):

Proponents of cap-and-trade carbon rationing argue that it will encourage inventors to develop and companies to adopt low-carbon energy technologies. A new study, "How emission certificate allocations distort fossil investments: The German example," .. by the German Economic Research Institute in Berlin finds that allocating emissions permits at the beginning the European Trading Scheme for free actually encouraged the "dash for coal" in Germany.

Economist Alex Tabarrok makes a nice and relevant observation about the law of unintended consequences:

The law of unintended consequences is what happens when a simple system tries to regulate a complex system. The political system is simple, it operates with limited information (rational ignorance), short time horizons, low feedback, and poor and misaligned incentives. Society in contrast is a complex, evolving, high-feedback, incentive-driven system. When a simple system tries to regulate a complex system you often get unintended consequences.

IRS

47 Ways to Say "IRS" ... What do those initials really stand for?

Taxpayers vs the Public Sector

Via EU Referendum,

The horizontal split is typified by the days of Whigs and Tories, when the politicians had more in common with each other. Those were the days when they looked after themselves, and their own interests. Those were the days when the people were unrepresented. Just like now.

But, if we are returning to the old political model - the original class, or even feudal model - there is nevertheless a new certainty: us "below the liners" have had enough of the "above the liners". What swept out the decaying self-interest of the old systems must be done again. This time, though, we must do it right or, at least, get it wrong in a different way.

The Injustice of Social Justice (3)

No seguimento de The Injustice of Social Justice (2),


Martín Krause - ¿Importa la desigualdad social?

Portuguese Bail-out is the Beginning of the End of Big Government

Portuguese Bail-out is the Beginning of the End of Big Government (Big Government):

Can you hear that great sucking sound? It’s the sound of government shrinking around the world, as Portugal just joined Greece, Ireland and soon many others in acknowledging they are bankrupt and asking their European brethren for a bail-out. What is frightening to the big government advocates is this collapse was caused by a doubling of Portugal’s borrowing costs in just three weeks. The klaxon horns are going off in Europe and America; cut deficit spending or be destroyed by rising interest rates.

Southern European countries like Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain got low-interest German and French bank loans to scrap supposedly uncompetitive local manufacturing and “cushion” the transition of workers into leisure services and retirement housing development. Germany and France got elimination of competition and export growth to Southern Europe. Europeans were ecstatic for 15 years; the South had a real estate and banking boom, the North had a manufacturing and banking boom.

.. Portuguese planners were obedient followers of the Southern European plan. Tourists and retirees flocked to their sun-drenched beaches and historic villages along the Atlantic coast. But Europe has reached its financial tipping point; interest rates are rising and deficit spending is about to get slashed. As the crisis builds across the continent, expect big tax increases and widespread layoffs to fill the streets with violent right-wing and left-wing protestors. National Industrial Policy planners claimed they would be more efficient masters of market forces. Their legacy will be unleashing of brutal market forces that will strangle nations trying to unwind staggering debt burdens.

A hipocrisia da esquerda quanto às guerras de Obama (4)

No seguimento de A hipocrisia da esquerda quanto às guerras de Obama (3),

Ed Shultz Drinking the War Kool-Aid?!

modelos que não vingaram

Discurso do Presidente José Eduardo dos Santos na reunião do Comité Central:

.. até à década de 80 do século passado, foi conduzida com êxito em África a luta de libertação nacional dos povos, que pôs fim ao colonialismo francês, britânico e português.

Na fase seguinte, vários países entraram em processos revolucionários que culminaram com a escolha do desenvolvimento não capitalista para as respectivas nações e a organização de Estados ou sistemas políticos de partido único, em que a base do sistema económico era o capitalismo de Estado erigido na base de um conjunto de empresas do Estado.

Nalguns casos, como foi o nosso, o processo revolucionário teve carácter de classe e levou à tentativa de configuração de uma ditadura democrático-revolucionária, com um sistema de governo socialista baseado no plano económico único e na direcção centralizada da economia.

Estes dois modelos não vingaram, porque não foram capazes de proporcionar o exercício das liberdades e garantias fundamentais e o advento da prosperidade económica e social.

psicologia e escolha pública

psychiatry - a perveted instrument to control YOU?

the Portuguese bailout

Via O Insurgente, Ten reasons why Britain shouldn’t join the Portuguese bailout por Daniel Hannan:

1. We won’t see the money again. It is becoming increasingly clear that Greece will renege on its debts. International loans are always arranged so that the IMF gets its money back first, which means that the EU will take the hit. Portugal’s debt is growing faster than its GDP, making a default almost inevitable.

6. This is about rescuing the euro, not about rescuing Portugal. The bailout money will go to European bankers and bondholders, the repayment will come from Portuguese taxpayers. The people of one of the poorest states in Western Europe are being burdened with the cost of propping up the entire European banking system.

7. Portugal won’t recover until it leaves the euro. Decouple, devalue and – if necessary – default. Only when Portugal starts tailoring its interest rates and exchange rates to suit its own needs will it be able to price itself into the market.

Green Regulation Machine Killing Jobs

Reason TV: The Green Regulation Machine - Saving the Planet or Killing Jobs?

Three More Attacks on Civilization

No seguimento da sabotagem regulatória às retretes de toda uma nação, Three More Attacks on Civilization por Jeffrey Tucker:

Remember the old Calgon commercial that showed food falling off plates and glasses left gleaming at the end of a wash? That was phosphorous at work .. 17 states have already banned the product for consumers.

A similar impulse is driving the new attack on ice makers.

Now let's talk drain openers. Everyone knows that the best chemical drain opener is lye, or sodium hydroxide .. mainstream hardware stores have stopped carrying the stuff .. It turns out that this stuff is an ingredient in the making of methamphetamine, and hence it too is on the regulatory hit list.

You can't make this up, políticos e burocratas at work.

porque alguns alunos não precisam de notas tão altas

No seguimento sobre Uma parábola sobre o Socialismo,


Petition to Redistribute GPA Scores

União Monetária nas últimas

The EU Crackup por Lew Rockwell:

It should be no surprise that over-taxed Finns have no interest in sending their tax dollars to bail out the banking industry of Portugal, a country that is 2,500 miles and two days travel away ..

The entire EU system is afflicted with the paper money disease. It creates a boom that balloons the banking sector, allows politicians to spend wildly, and encourages private enterprise to expand operations in an unsustainable way. Then the bust comes and everything falls apart. Government revenue crashes, banks are threatened with insolvency, and mass bankruptcies are apparent everywhere.

This debt creation generates its own unsustainable boom. A country’s finances then correct to reflect reality and the banking system comes under pressure. Then the bailouts begin. What ends up happening is that the (relatively) frugal states in the European Union subsidize the less frugal ones. There is moral hazard embedded in the very structure of the entire system.

Nothing is going to fix it. Bailouts are only temporary aids until the next round of credit-fueled profligacy. And there is absolutely nothing that the ECB can do to stop it. Every profligate country knows that it is too big to fail, and that it enjoys presumed access to the financial resources of every other state in the EU. So the result is ongoing and worsening bailouts, leading to total bankruptcy.

Have The Communists Ever Produced?

Top Gear - Have The Communists Ever Produced A Good Car?
parte 1 | parte 2

What Greens Really Believe

What Greens Really Believe:

What most people are unaware of is the fascistic hatred of mankind that underlies the philosophic basis of environmentalism.

At the heart of environmentalism, aside from its wish for far fewer humans, is a hatred of capitalism. The failures of communism and socialism everywhere attest to the way state control of all aspects of life is ignored by Greens.

The few quotes cited here do not begin to illuminate the horrors that environmentalism would visit on mankind or the nihilistic view it holds, but they represent a far greater body of Green writings and statements over the years that indicate the extent of the threat it poses to humanity.

Government is magic!

Government is magic

Foi pedido o resgate

Artigo de opinião - Foi pedido o resgate - Henrique Medina Carreira:

Narrativa. Se Portugal aprovasse o PEC IV não haveria nenhum resgate.
Verdade. Portugal já está ligado à máquina há mais de 1 ano (O BCE todos os dias salva a banca nacional de ter que fechar as portas dando-lhe liquidez e compra obrigações Portuguesas que mais ninguém quer - senão já teríamos taxas de juro nos 20% ou mais).

Narrativa. Sócrates estava a defender Portugal e com ele não entrava cá o FMI.
VerdadePortugal é que tem de se defender deste criminoso louco que levou o país para a ruína (há muito antecipada como todos sabem).

Narrativa. Estava tudo a correr tão bem e Portugal estava fora de perigo mas vieram estes "irresponsáveis" estragar tudo.
Verdade. Perguntem aos contabilistas do BCE e da Comissão que cá estiveram a ver as contas quanto é que é o real buraco nas contas do Estado e vão cair para o lado (a seu tempo isto tudo se saberá).

Atlas Is Shrugging

Uma montagem do filme Atlas Shrugged (estreado dis 15/Abril/2011) com footage real:

Atlas Is Shrugging

Declaração de Dependentes (2)

Na continuação de Declaração de Dependentes, Government Treats the Taxpayers Like a Piggy Bank:

I pay my mortgage, but I also pay to bail out banks who made risky loans and yuppies, who have trouble paying $700,000 mortgages on their McMansions ..

I pay for groceries for my family, but also pay millionaire farmers not grow stuff like rice. I buy dinner for more than 41 million food stamp recipients ..

I’m trying to save enough money in case I lose my job, but I pay for more than 70 different means-tested poverty programs

Because I work hard and am successful, I am in the 10% of Americans, who now pay more than 71 percent of the total federal income tax burden ..

I pay property taxes, sales, excise taxes, taxes on my phone, my cable, my water; state income taxes, Social security and Medicare taxes. I also help pay the bills for the nearly half of households who no longer pay any federal income tax ..

Obama’s War That Isn’t a War

Reason.tv: Obama's War That Isn't a War

Dropping bombs, shooting missiles, deploying massive amounts of personnel and power - all of these are generally understood as acts of war. But Obama can't admit that we're waging war because then he would have to acknowledge what his critics correctly underscore: Constitutionally, he doesn't have a right to do this sort of thing unilaterally when the country isn't facing a clear and present danger.

Economic Lunacy

Economic Lunacy por Walter Williams:

After the 2001 terrorist attack, economist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman wrote in his New York Times column "After the Horror," "Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack – like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression – could do some economic good." He explained that rebuilding the destruction would stimulate the economy through business investment and job creation.

Do a simple smell test on these examples of economic lunacy. Would the Japanese economy face even greater opportunities for economic growth had the earthquake and tsunami also struck Tokyo, Hiroshima, Yokohama and other major cities? Would the 9-11 terrorists have done us an even bigger economic favor had they destroyed buildings in other cities? The belief that society benefits from destruction is lunacy.

Tributação Transparente (2)

Na continuação de Tributação Transparente,


TRIBUTAÇÃO TRANSPARENTE 2

China’s Bad Growth Bet

Via Marginal Revolution, China’s Bad Growth Bet por Nouriel Roubini:

China is rife with overinvestment in physical capital, infrastructure, and property. To a visitor, this is evident in sleek but empty airports and bullet trains (which will reduce the need for the 45 planned airports), highways to nowhere, thousands of colossal new central and provincial government buildings, ghost towns, and brand-new aluminum smelters kept closed to prevent global prices from plunging.

Commercial and high-end residential investment has been excessive, automobile capacity has outstripped even the recent surge in sales, and overcapacity in steel, cement, and other manufacturing sectors is increasing further. In the short run, the investment boom will fuel inflation, owing to the highly resource-intensive character of growth. But overcapacity will lead inevitably to serious deflationary pressures, starting with the manufacturing and real-estate sectors.

Eventually, most likely after 2013, China will suffer a hard landing. All historical episodes of excessive investment – including East Asia in the 1990’s – have ended with a financial crisis and/or a long period of slow growth.

Regulação estatal e Desporto

Why The NFL Labor Dispute is Like Battleground Wisconsin (& Statehouse Stand-Offs Across the Country)

Os verdadeiros factos

Via O Insurgente, Os verdadeiros factos da campanha:

Isto não é política. São factos. Factos que andámos a negar durante anos até chegarmos a esta lamentável situação. Ora, se tomarmos em linha de conta estes factos, interessa perguntar: como é que foi possível chegar a esta situação? O que é que aconteceu entre 1995 e 2011 para termos passado termos de "bom aluno" da UE a um exemplo que toda a gente quer evitar? O que é que ocorreu entre 1995 e 2011 para termos transformado tanto o nosso país? Quem conduziu o país quase à insolvência? Quem nada fez para contrariar o excessivo endividamento do país? Quem contribuiu de sobremaneira para o mesmo endividamento com obras públicas de rentabilidade muito duvidosa? Quem fomentou o endividamento com um despesismo atroz? Quem tentou (e tenta) encobrir a triste realidade económica do país com manobras de propaganda e com manipulações de factos? As respostas a questas questões são fáceis de dar, ou, pelo menos, deviam ser. Só não vê quem não quer mesmo ver.

Medina Carreira na AR

Apresentação de Medina Carreira na sala do Senado
parte 1 | parte 2