Liberty

Lawrence Reed, Americans for Prosperity 2010

Why Free Markets?

Why Free Markets? por Steven Horwitz:

Those who stand to gain concentrated benefits from regulation, such as firms, will lobby to get regulations that benefit them, while the costs are dispersed across hundreds of millions of us .. As markets get increasingly politicized, it will be those with the best access to the political process who will call the tune and benefit from the regulatory process ..

.. the argument against a great deal of regulation is precisely that it harms the least well off it is trying to help and provides unwarranted privileges for those who need them least. There is plenty of historical evidence of the role of big business in lobbying for and helping to write a whole variety of regulations .. this is a feature of the mixed economy, not a bug. My First Law of Political Economy is “No one hates capitalism more than capitalists,” and the mixed economy is not accidentally rigged to benefit the powerful. That is why it’s there in the first place.

As long as the state regulates, the possibility of private profits will lure with those with power and resources into that game and it’s a game they will inevitably win. And the losers will be those without the power and resources. Free markets don’t give us utopia, but I really do believe they do better by the poor than do regulated markets for the reasons I’ve outlined.

Daniel Hannan on America

Na continuação de The New Road to Serfdom e Interview with Daniel Hannan


British MEP Daniel Hannan on America's Future

Please Stop

A peça é humorística mas destaca o imenso desperdício de talento humano que acontece quando o Estado decide apoiar indústrias em colapso — Please Stop Trying To Save Our Family Farm:

Shit, I'm 16 goddamn years old. I want to be in a rock band. I want to go to Indiana U. and spend spring break in Cancun. I want to live in a house with my friends Trevor and Jake, a house that has a couch on the front lawn and spray-paint scrawled on the sidewalk reading "Limp Bizkit" or "Fa$cism" or something.

But, no. Here I am in the middle of nowhere, having the quintessential Heartland experience while those goddamn do-gooders in Washington are lobbying for greater farm subsidies .. Why don't you spend your time saving the whales or the rainforests or the ozone layer or something. Just leave me the hell alone.

Facts and Fallacies

Facts and Fallacies with Thomas Sowell

É preciso acabar com o modelo socialista (2)

Na continuação de É preciso acabar com o modelo socialista, "O Estado só deve estar onde a sociedade não consegue" — Adolfo Mesquita Nunes no Qi:

O que não se pode é confundir o papel da sociedade como algo que é dispensável. É exactamente ao contrário. Eu diria assim: o Estado só tem de estar onde a sociedade não consegue. E nós estamos a fazer exactamente ao contrário: a sociedade só está onde o Estado não consegue. É uma total diferença que marca a esquerda e a direita hoje em dia.

The Illusion Of Choice

You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge.

George Carlin: The Illusion Of Choice

Keynesianismo extremo

World War II: Still Being Touted as the Quintessential Keynesian Miracle:

.. unemployment had disappeared during the war not because of the beautiful workings of a Keynesian multiplier, but entirely because about 20 percent of the labor force was forced, directly or indirectly, into the armed forces and a comparable number of employees set to work in factories, shipyards, and other facilities turning out war-related ”goods” the government purchased only after forcing the public to pay for them sooner (via wartime taxes and inflation) or later (via repayment of wartime borrowing). Thus, the great wartime “boom” consisted entirely of (1) some people’s mass engagement in wreaking death and destruction and (2) other people’s employment in producing supplies for these warriors after the government’s military labor drain, turning out ”goods” never valued by consumers or private producers in voluntary transactions, but rather ordered by government functionaries and priced completely arbitrarily in a command-and-control economy. In no sense was the alleged ”wartime prosperity” comparable to real, normal prosperity. The pervasive regimentation, rationing, price controls, direct government resource allocations, and forbidden forms of production (e.g., civilian automobiles) should have served as a tip-off.

Sweatshop truth

Sweatshop Wages and Third World Workers: Are the Wages Worth the Sweat

lessons from public choice theory

House of Lords reform: lessons from public choice theory:

Public choice theory - the application of economics to politics - is inspired by classical liberal principles of free markets and limited government ..

.. Frédéric Bastiat. ‘If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free,’ he argued in The Law, ‘how is it that the tendencies of these organisers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?’

Tullock stated the matter without illusion: ‘ .. democracy operates so that politicians who simply want to hold public office end up by doing things the people want.’

F. A. Hayek was rather more pessimistic, lamenting in Economic Freedom and Representative Government that ‘...even a statesman wholly devoted to the common interest of all the citizens will be under the constant necessity of satisfying special interests, because only thus will he be able to retain the support of a majority which he needs to achieve what is really important to him.’

create jobs - not government’s job

Duke professor Michael Munger explains why government's job is not to 'create jobs'

Capitalism as Art

Capitalism as Art:

.. capitalism is fueled by creativity and makes possible a level of individuality never before seen in human history .. “capitalism is art, a transformational exercise that turns meaning into value and value back into meaning.”

Capitalism makes it possible for us to better differentiate ourselves from others by providing an enormous variety of goods and services. This variety not only enables us to better fine-tune our purchases to our particular wants — which is itself a way of creating meaning in our lives — but it also lets us create and define who we are ..

Market economies also produce goods that cater to the most idiosyncratic of tastes. Those with “minority” tastes, such as wearing Hawaiian shirts all the time or ties that look like fish, can find products that satisfy those tastes in the market. Imagine instead that we had to vote on what to produce according to majority rule. Much of what markets now produce to satisfy strange, unusual, or weird wants would never get produced. Markets make possible forms of creative individuality that alternative systems would not, and do not, tolerate.

Consumers take the values that entrepreneurs create and transform those products back into meaning for themselves. In some fundamental sense the creation of value and the creation of meaning are just two ways of looking at the very same process of production and consumption in a market economy. In other words, both entrepreneurship and consumption are acts of creativity, imagination, and art.

Myths About the Great Depression and the New Deal

Top 3 Myths About the Great Depression and the New Deal

Scrupulosity

Scrupulosity and the Condemnation of Every Existing Business:

I find it just preposterous for anyone to believe that somehow Taco Bell is thriving because of corn subsidies alone. It is thriving because it serves consumers food that tastes good, is low priced, and is very convenient. In other words, its profits come from public service. Why is that so hard to understand?

Murray Rothbard used the phrase “do you hate the state?” to ferret out real from mild libertarians. As a correlative question, we might ask “do you love commerce?” to ferret out real defenders of real markets as versus those who just enjoy standing in moral judgement over the whole world as it really exists. Yes, I too am against corn subsides, and against all subsidies, as well as taxes, regulations, inflation, zoning, public roads and everything else. In a free market, everything would thrive even more than it does today, and that goes for fast food too.

this is not a form of brainwashing

The Whitest Kids U' Know - Pledge of Allegiance

The Way Things Are Done

five monkeys:

Start with 5 monkeys locked in a cage.

Hang a banana from the roof on a string and place a set of stairs under it.

Before long the monkeys will go to the stairs and start to climb toward the banana.

As soon as the first monkey touches the stairs, hose the other monkeys with cold water.

###

After a while another monkey makes an attempt with the same result. All the other are sprayed with cold water.

Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and goes to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm!

Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.

Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water.

Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana.

Why not?

Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been done around here. And that, my friends, is how company policy begins.

the sky never falls

How Cultural Innovation Happens: Q&A with Anthropologist Grant McCracken

Scots Splitting From the State

Scots Splitting From the State?:

Consider the problems that would undoubtedly arise if you were charged with making decisions about your neighbor’s life, from the sort of car she ought to drive to the kinds of groceries she ought to buy. Beyond just the ethical unconscionability of taking these decisions away from her, you would soon realize that, lacking her particularized understanding of her own living situation, you were unable to manage efficiently her daily life.

This is the intrinsic problem in all foreign domination and therefore all of statism; it delegates to a small, ruling class responsibility for governing our lives and livelihoods, foolishly assuming not only that the elite can govern us, but that they will do so without rigging the game to exploit us.

Market anarchists do not claim that individuals should be able to do whatever they please, just that they should be able to do, in the words of Leonard E. Read, “anything that’s peaceful.”

inflação festivaleira

fonte: Glastonbury festival: charting a history of inflation

o capitalismo é inato

Scientific Evidence Proves Capitalist Ideas May be Innate:

Americans have indicated avid opposition to property rights violations throughout the course of U.S. history, whether those violations take the form of taxation, eminent domain, or “open space” laws. According to one psychologist, that sense of being wronged when one’s property rights are violated may be innate, as property ownership may be a natural-born attribute.

In an article published in Science News magazine, Bruce Bower contends that young children are predisposed to concepts of possession, ownership, and ultimately, capitalism. Citing evidence produced by psychologist Ori Friedman, Bower asserts that children are natural-born capitalists.

Psychologist Ori Friedman of the University of Waterloo in Canada reported on May 28 at the Association for Psychological Science annual meeting [that] at ages 4 and 5, youngsters value a person’s ownership rights — say, to a crayon — far more strongly than adults do, Friedman and psychology graduate student Karen Neary found.

Remarking on the experiment, blogster Eric Falkenstein referenced the philosophies of great thinkers such as Ludwig von Mises, Frederic Bastiat, and F. A. Hayek, all of whom garnered a reputation as champions of private property rights.

In his book The Law, Bastiat observed, “Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make the laws in the first place.”

It is perhaps for this reason that people tend to feel so violated when their property rights are threatened, to include rights to their own body ..

Bullying

Feddie the Bully

The Individual Mandate Bullies Americans:

The individual mandate in the new health care law bullies Americans, by the Obama’s Administrations own guidelines. The president himself has said that he was not immune to bullying as a child:

“As adults, we all remember what it was like to see kids picked on in the hallways or in the schoolyard. And I have to say, with big ears and the name that I have, I wasn’t immune,” he said. “I didn’t emerge unscathed. But because it’s something that happens a lot, and it’s something that’s always been around, sometimes we’ve turned a blind eye to the problem. We’ve said, ‘Kids will be kids.’ And so sometimes we overlook the real damage that bullying can do, especially when young people face harassment day after day, week after week.”

Real damage does come from bullying. Obamacare is damaging our fragile economy. The only way to heal is to repeal.

The Half-Life of the Welfare State

Via O Insurgente, The Half-Life of the Welfare State:

The welfare state is taken for granted as the "normal" state of affairs, as if it has always existed. At least, it is assumed that the welfare state has been around for so many decades that the current crisis is just a temporary aberration, a rough patch that we can get through with only minor reforms. But the actual economic history does not bear this out. The welfare state "as we know it"--that is, at its current size--is a product of recent decades. In all of its branches, it has vastly increased just in the past 30 to 40 years. So the current crisis is not some temporary aberration. It is cause and effect. It is a direct consequence of the modern welfare state.

What we need to realize is that the modern welfare state is a temporary aberration, historically, economically, and morally. It was a brief historical holiday from the basic principle that wealth is earned through work. It was a system that could not work because it tried to defy the laws of nature. We need to grasp that basic lesson now, and proceed deliberately and quickly with the task of dismantling the welfare state and rebuilding our economies on the secure footing of individualism and capitalism.

dance for liberty

Jefferson Memorial Dance Dance Revolution - 6/4/2011

em que acreditamos

em que acreditamos, afinal?:

Espantam-se algumas pessoas com a afirmação de que os governos não servem para desenvolver países .. crie riqueza, emprego, empresas, isto é, que dirija a economia .. ou se acredita que é ao estado que compete criar riqueza e desenvolvimento ou se acredita que só a iniciativa privada e aos indivíduos o podem fazer. Os resultados das convicções intervencionistas e socialistas estão bem à vista de todos: a falência do país e das empresas, o aumento do desemprego, o crescimento da burocracia pública e do clientelismo político.

Get Out of Libya, Get Out of NATO

Get Out of Libya, Get Out of NATO

The Virtue of Market Inefficiency

The Virtue of Market Inefficiency:

Markets are often rightly characterized as extraordinary problem solvers. Under the right rules of the game (including private property, free exchange, and the rule of law) people following their own self-interest can coordinate their plans with one another more or less successfully, generating an overall order without being aware, or needing to be aware, of how it all gets done. That’s why economists sometimes say that markets are a lot “smarter” than any single person.

As marvelous as the market economy is at problem solving, in a sense the real genius of the market process is in how it brings problems to people’s attention in the first place. Before you can solve a problem, you have to be aware that there is a problem ..it is a process of entrepreneurial discovery of error.

So a living economy needs to create inefficiencies, and lots of them, to set the stage for greater efficiency and ongoing innovation. And that’s just what the market process does all the time – thank goodness!

Economic Freedom & Quality of Life

Episode One: Economic Freedom & Quality of Life

free trade

A convincing case for free trade found in the history books por Jagdish Bhagwati:

In India .. the shift to accelerated growth after reforms that included trade liberalisation has pulled nearly 200 million people out of poverty. In China, which grew faster, it is estimated that more than 300 million people have moved above the poverty line since the start of reforms.

In fact, developed countries also benefit from trade's effect on poverty reduction. Contrary to much popular opinion, trade with poor countries does not pauperise rich countries. The opposite is true. It is unskilled, labour-saving technical change that is putting pressure on the wages of workers, whereas imports of cheaper, labour-intensive goods from developing countries help the poor who consume them.

If freer trade reduces poverty, it is presumptuous for critics to claim greater virtue. In truth, the free traders control the moral high ground: with at least 1 billion people still living in poverty, what greater moral imperative do we have than to reduce that number? Talk about "social justice" is intoxicating, but actually doing something about it is difficult. Here the free traders have a distinct edge.

As the historian Frank Trentmann has demonstrated, the case for free trade was made in 19th-century Britain in moral terms: it was held to promote not just economic prosperity, but also peace.

Bitcoin (2)

Na continuação de Bitcoin,


Stefan Molyneux: Bitcoins: digital currency of the future?

um fosso de incentivos

Different Decisions
by Thomas Sowell:

If banks try to act like they are real estate companies and hold on to a huge inventory of foreclosed homes, they are likely to lose money big time, as those homes deteriorate and cannot compete with homes marketed by real estate companies with far more experience and expertise in this field.

But if teachers fail to educate children, they don't lose one dime, no matter how much those children and the country lose by their failure. If the schools waste precious time indoctrinating children, instead of educating them, that's the children's problem and the country's problem, but not the teachers' problem.

They are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And that is not going to happen until the voters recognize the fact that political rhetoric is no substitute for competence.

The Great Stagnation

TEDxEast - Tyler Cowen - The Great Stagnation

Indian Capitalism

The Untouchable Case for Indian Capitalism:

The plight of the Dalits, those whom the Hindu caste system considers outcastes and hence Untouchables, was a rallying cry of Hindu reformers and Indian leftists for half a century. But today these victims of the caste system are finding that free markets and development bring advancement faster than government programs.

More economic choices are changing Dalits' own expectations and, in turn, changing social structures for the better. Dalits may have seats reserved for them in public schools, but parents now prefer to send their children to private schools. Urbanization is one trend hugely in favor of those thought to be Untouchables in the village economy. Commerce in cities doesn't discriminate.

This has the left, with its belief that only the modern state can repair social ills, in a quandary. One refrain common among Indian leftists is that 20 years of economic reform have benefited upper castes and left those at the bottom of this hierarchy worse off. But Dalits clearly don't agree.

the message of Peace and Liberty

Peace and Liberty: A Powerful Message for Everyone

Government scientific ignorance and greed

But It Worked in the Computer Simulation!:

There are many reasons that theoretical mathematical calculations or computer simulations may fail, especially in frontier science and engineering where many unknowns abound. The major reasons include:

• simple error (almost certain to occur on large, complex projects)
• most theoretical mathematical calculations and simulations are approximations
• symbolic math and computers cannot reason conceptually and may not detect conceptual errors
• the math may be intractable
• new physics.

In the history of invention and discovery, it is rare to find theoretical mathematical calculations or computer simulations working right the first time .. Even after many full system tests or trials, theoretical mathematical calculations or simulations may still have significant flaws, known or unknown.

In these difficult economic times, almost everyone would like to see more immediate tangible benefits from our vast ongoing investments in research and development .. With increasing economic problems and several bitter wars, it is easy to succumb to fear or greed. Yet it is in these difficult times that we need to think most clearly and calmly about what we are doing to achieve success.

A Queda de Roma (2)

No seguimento de A Queda de Roma,


Judge Napolitano - Rome Wasn't Destroyed in a Day

No-Confidence

Vote No-Confidence . . . In the State!:

Market anarchists recognize that the fundamental nature of the state makes it impossible for it to serve society in any positive way. Although, as Frank Chodorov observed, scholars have “turned tribute into ‘fiscal policy’ and clothed it with social good,” this merely reflects our “adjustment to conquest.” The state, with violence as its foundational tool, has always been an origin of social problems — at least for the laboring masses. For the ruling class, on the other hand, these problems have proved very profitable.

To abrade the foundations of authority and hierarchy, we too must file a no-confidence motion, one entered simply by our abstention from the political process. Once we withdraw in large enough numbers, implementing our vision of change through peaceful counter-institutions, the state will be forced to compete with the versatility of true free market society.

The state depends for its existence, and that of its economic system, on tractable, “civic-minded” subjects, pietistic sheep who will accept without thought “the way things are.” That the state has dominated society so completely and for so long leads most to believe that it ought to exist, that it has won out on the practicality and strength of what it does for us.

Modern Economics Is Rubbish

Não se pode dizer que seja uma análise muito profunda, mas é significativo que isto comece a ser debatido... Max Keiser And Sandeep Jaitly Explain Why Modern Economics Is "Rubbish":


Max Keiser & Sandeep Jaitly Discuss Austrian School of Economics

As Jaitly goes on to say, "all other forms of economics, classical, neoclassical economics, ascribe value to something else other than the human mind." And the punchline, coming from a mathematician: "all of the equations in neoclassical economics are rubbish. The differential equations describe nothing. Economics is not about mathematics, it is about the human being."

el principio de subsidiariedad

Acerca del principio de subsidiariedad:

Lo que pueda hacer la sociedad civil no lo haga la Administración pública y que ésta haga exclusivamente lo que no puedan hacer los ciudadanos. Se podría resumir así en pocas palabras el llamado principio de subsidiariedad horizontal o funcional que pone límite a la actuación excesiva o injustificada del Estado y del aparato público en la sociedad.

A los teóricos del Estado les faltó tiempo para dar con otra formulación de este principio conocido como subsidiariedad vertical o territorial que legitima la injerencia estatal para intervenir en cualquier área de la vida social. Con la coartada de impedir un centralismo del poder se promueve otra forma de estatismo al abogar que lo que no hace el Estado central lo debieran hacer subsidiariamente otras entidades públicas inferiores (regionales o locales).

Los estatistas de todos los niveles debieran contemplar "horizontalmente" la sociedad, al menos alguna vez en su vida, y tratar de entender que los asuntos públicos no se limitan a los del gobierno (en cualquiera de sus manifestaciones) y que tal vez sería bueno cultivar también desde la política la virtud de la paciencia para dejar crecer y prosperar organizaciones voluntarias para alcanzar los legítimos fines que sus actores consideren importantes siempre que sean respetuosos con los derechos de los demás.

Rand Paul TSA Grilling

Sen. Rand Paul Questions Invasive TSA Searches - 06/22/11

Fascism, defined

Um bom resumo do que era (e é) o fascismo à italiana — Palin And Her Free Republic Friends Are Fascists por Michael Suede:

I shall now layout the exact tenants of Fascist doctrine, as clearly defined in the Doctrine of Fascism by Benito Mussolini. Below each point that Mussolini makes, I shall provide a summary overriding theme.

The Fascist State expresses the will to exercise power and to command. Here the Roman tradition is embodied in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understoodby the Fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical. An imperial nation, that is to say a nation a which directly or indirectly is a leader of others, can exist without the need of conquering a single square mile of territory… imperialism implies discipline, the coordination of efforts, a deep sense of duty and a spirit of self-sacrifice… Never before have the peoples thirsted for authority, direction, order, as they do now.

Unintended Consequences of Price Controls

Unintended Consequences of Price Controls

Keynesian Collapse

Continual Keynesian Collapse:

The Keynesian policy of trying to increase total i.e. “aggregate” demand – either by having government spend, or by cutting taxes just to leave more money in people’s pockets in hopes that they’ll spend – to revive the economy, never works.

This wasn’t the first time Keynesian stimulus failed to stimulate. Let’s recall that Keynesianism failed to revive the economy from the Great Depression, during which government spending increased throughout the 30s, yet unemployment remained in double-digits; it failed in 2001 when President Bush attempted to stimulate the economy out of recession by putting money in people’s pockets through a series of tax rebates; it failed under President Bush a second time in 2008, when government spent hundreds of billions of dollars; then it failed in 2009 under President Obama, after we spent the largest sum of money in the name of Keynesianism – some $800 billion – in order to revive the economy. The one thing you can say for Keynesian stimulus is that it is bi-partisan – it fails for Republicans as effectively as it does for Democrats.

This is no surprise. Keynesian stimulus policy is built on the assumption that government spending has a multiplier effect through the economy, meaning that $1 spent by government adds more than $1 to total national income. The mistake is in ignoring the fact that in order to raise money for government to deficit spend, government must first remove that money from the private economy through borrowing, resulting in an equal multiplier reduction. The two sets of multipliers cancel each other out. There is no net increase in total demand.

A parte do "equal multiplier reduction" é claro um disparate, em termos líquidos o Estado destrói riqueza, mas o post está interessante.

Warlord Obama

Obama's Unprecedented War Powers Claims

Competition is stealing (2)

No seguimento de Competition is stealing,

Slave Labor and Intellectual Property por Sheldon Richman:

Instead of talking about property rights in the product of one’s labor, we’re talking about property rights in economic value or potential profits. How can one own economic value? It’s in the eyes of beholders. How can one own yet-to-be-made profits?

Copyright Argument Implications: Is Competition Theft?:

.. the idea that someone has a right to a certain rate of profit — and that market competition which deprives them of this rate of return is “theft” — is ludicrous. It’s as idiotic as the claim by Property Values Nazis that their alleged right not to have the value of their house lowered trumps my right to have a clothesline or compost pile on my own property, or to park my car on the grass.

The Constitutional Case for Marriage

Embora a questão de "igualdade" seja um tiro à água...


The Constitutional Case for Marriage Equality

Greece Should Return to a Gold Standard

Greece Should Return to a Gold Standard:

Reality is not optional. The Greek government is bust, which means it cannot and will not repay its debt in anything of material value. Introducing a soft drachma doesn’t change anything.

But the Greeks are now the first to take the pain. They are the first to hit rock bottom, so they should be the first to be able to rethink the situation and look at other options. As soft money is not in the interest of any society, why not be the first to go for hard money? Money that is harder and more trustworthy than any politicized national fiat money which the authorities can print without limit? Greece should allow the full and painful liquidation of the paper money excesses, it should let the government default, exit the euro and be the first to reintroduce a proper gold standard. This would give the country instantly much needed credibility. It would not only keep Greek savings in the country, it would attract savings from around the world, potentially making the country a magnet for savers everywhere who are increasingly concerned about aggressive monetary policy and are desperately looking for safe places to park their cash.

The State Against Blacks (2)

No seguimento de Walter Williams e The State Against Blacks,


John Stossel - The State Against Blacks
parte 1 | parte 2 | parte 3 | parte 4

Plunder (2)

No seguimento de Plunder, The Law and Charity:

You say: “There are persons who have no money,” and you turn to the law. But the law is not a breast that fills itself with milk. Nor are the lacteal veins of the law supplied with milk from a source outside the society. Nothing can enter the public treasury for the benefit of one citizen or one class unless other citizens and other classes have been forced to send it in. If every person draws from the treasury the amount that he has put in it, it is true that the law then plunders nobody. But this procedure does nothing for the persons who have no money. It does not promote equality of income. The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder.

With this in mind, examine the protective tariffs, subsidies, guaranteed profits, guaranteed jobs, relief and welfare schemes, public education, progressive taxation, free credit, and public works. You will find that they are always based on legal plunder, organized injustice.

"The Law", Frederic Bastiat

Gary Johnson (7)

Na continuação de Gary Johnson (7),


Gov. Gary Johnson, Stossel, FOX Business, 6-9-2011

Gary Johnson (6)

Na continuação de Gary Johnson (5), Some Thoughts on Gary Johnson por Steven Horwitz:

Is he a perfect candidate from a libertarian perspective? Nope. At least not mine. But he might be as good as one could ever expect from a major party. I'm going to pass on the comparison to Ron Paul, other than to say again that RP's knowledge of economics and his comfort level in communicating it is a real advantage. On the other hand, I think GJ is better on social issues and does not have RP's history and the baggage it brings. I think it's much harder to pin the "kook" label on Johnson.

As a pro-choice, pro-gay union, pro-immigrant candidate, his odds of winning the GOP nomination are near zero unless he can motivate a whole bunch of young voters to get into the primaries. Ironically, as he said in the conference call, he won the NM governor's race by persuading people that he would be the strongest Republican in the general election. That may well be true nationally also.

If you're going to vote in 2012, he's worth a look. You could do a lot worse

Legalize nature

The Global War on Drugs Has Failed

Report: ‘The Global War on Drugs Has Failed’:

“The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.” That is the opening sentence of a report released today by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, a nineteen-member panel that includes, among others, world figures such as former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana. The report is also signed by the current Prime Minister of Greece, George Papandreou, making him the only sitting head of government to openly denounce global drug prohibition.

The 20-page report says all the right things: prohibition has failed in tackling global consumption of drugs, and has instead led to the creation of black markets and criminal networks that resort to violence and corruption in order to carry out their business. This drug-related violence now threatens the institutional stability of entire nations, particularly in the developing world. Also, prohibition has caused the stigmatization and marginalization of people who use illegal drugs, making it more difficult to help people who are addicted to drugs ..

Myths about Immigration

Top 3 Myths About Immigration

If This Is the Free Market, Why Do I Feel So Unfree?

If This Is the Free Market, Why Do I Feel So Unfree? por Kevin Carson:

It’s remarkable, considering how frequently our politicians and cable news commentariat remind us of the “free market” we live in, just how existentially unfree things seem down here where the rubber meets the road. We constantly see the Washington Consensus and the neoliberal order equated to “our free market system.” But as I always understood it, a free market was simply a system of free exchange. Why does this so-called “free market system” seem to require, for its survival, a regime of totalitarian lockdown resembling Verhoeven’s take on “Starship Troopers?”

Never mind stuff like the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, and the United States government’s perpetual wars to make the world safe for corporate domination. I’m more interested in the forms of authoritarianism we encounter on a daily basis, as a direct adjunct of maintaining what neoliberals consider a “free market” as such: Increasingly draconian restrictions on the most basic rights of free speech, an upward ratcheting of the surveillance state, and all sorts of other authoritarian intrusions we’d normally associate with the old communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union — and all in the name of “our free market system.”

The Curse of Machinery (2)

No seguiemento de The Curse of Machinery n'O Insurgente,


Senator Johnson Speaks on Manufacturing

Heritage:

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) spent 31 years in manufacturing before his election to Congress last November. He’s not letting that experience go to waste. Johnson .. criticizes Obama’s recent comments blaming inventions like the ATM for unemployment.

“This is a depressing display of economic ignorance,” Johnson says. He adds: “Technological innovations create jobs. They drive our economy forward, by helping workers be more productive. That raises everyone’s living standards.”

Johnson recounts a story of Milton Friedman’s visit to China. Upon seeing Chinese workers digging with shovels, he asked, “Why not use bulldozers?”. Friedman was told that workers using shovels would create more jobs. He replied, “Then why not use spoons, instead of shovels?”

Statism kills

The Most Dangerous Delusion and Addiction of All por Don Boudreaux:

Regarding the graphic pictures that, by government decree, will adorn all cigarette packs sold in America .. shouldn’t bottles of Bud carry pictures of car crashes, or cirrhotic livers, or beaten wives? Shouldn’t Big Macs come with photos of early contestants from ‘The Biggest Loser’?” ..

True dat. But why not also require that graphic warning pictures be draped over government buildings? The Federal Reserve building, for example, might be covered with a huge picture of a graph showing that, since the Fed’s creation, the dollar has lost 96 percent of its value. Truth in advertising would be further promoted if the U.S. Capitol’s exterior featured a supersized photo of Rep. Barney Frank who, after applauding Fannie and Freddie for promoting more home-ownership than would be promoted by the market, proclaimed in 2003 “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.”

And from the roof of the White House to its lawn, let hang ginormous photographs of American troops returning home in body bags from Vietnam, Iraq, and other theaters of war in which Uncle Sam had no business acting.

É preciso acabar com o modelo socialista

No seguimento se o socialismo é tão bom, porque é que esta geração está à rasca?:


É preciso acabar com o modelo socialista - parte 1


É preciso acabar com o modelo socialista - parte 2

Freeing Marriage from Church and State

Freeing Marriage from Church and State por Mario Rizzo:

I do not believe that the state should busy itself about providing incentive or disincentives to individual contractual behavior that violates no one’s rights. If the institution of marriage has a good social purpose it is because it enhances the lives of the individuals involved ..

The Churches can bless whatever they like and condemn whatever they dislike. But individuals should be able to follow their own consciences and values in determining the nature of their relationships.

Who knows what the myriad of “experiments in living” will help us discover about society and ourselves?

The truth about taxes

Tax Competition vs. Tax Harmonisation

BÓNUS: Tax harmonisation for Thieves' Cartel - Godfrey Bloom

Never-ending war

John McCain’s never-ending war por George Will:

Elevating the fallacy of the false alternative to a foreign policy, John McCain and a few others believe Republicans who oppose U.S. intervention in Libya’s civil war — and who think a decade of warfare in Afghanistan is enough — are isolationists.

“Was our country under attack, or under the threat of imminent attack? Was a clearly vital national interest at stake? Were we invoking the inherent right of self-defense as outlined in the United Nations charter? Were we called upon by treaty commitments to come to the aid of an ally? Were we responding in kind to an attack on our forces elsewhere, as we did in the 1986 raids in Libya after American soldiers had been killed in a disco in Berlin? Were we rescuing Americans in distress, as we did in Grenada in 1983? No, we were not.”

McCain, however, says we must achieve regime change in Libya because if Gaddafi survives, he will try to “harm” America. This is always the last argument for pressing on with imprudent interventions (see Vietnam, circa 1969): We must continue fighting because we started fighting.

Ron Paul, extremist

Thought Controllers Call Ron Paul "Extreme"

Somália (5)

No seguimento de Somália (4), Somalia crece y se desarrolla en medio de la anarquía:

Parece claro que Somalia no está sumida en el caos y desorden social más absoluto, como consecuencia de la ausencia de gobierno, y que ha podido generar cierta actividad económica. La pregunta que surge inmediatamente es obvia: ¿cómo se las arreglan los somalíes sin un gobierno que proporcione la ley y el orden?

Como afirman distintos investigadores, Somalia tiene un sistema complejo de gobernanza -sistema de normas- basado en la costumbre que proporciona un orden legal privado y descentralizado. La sociedad somalí está segmentada en diferentes clanes, que son quienes se encargan de interpretar y hacer cumplir las diferentes normas. Esta ley consuetudinaria (Xeer) existe desde tiempos precoloniales y, de hecho, continuó operando bajo el sistema colonial.

Tras la independencia, el gobierno somalí trató de reemplazar el sistema tradicional por la legislación del estado. Sin embargo, sus intentos no tuvieron efecto en las áreas rurales y regiones fronterizas, donde el gobierno somalí carecía de un control fuerte, por lo que la gente siguió utilizando este sistema. Así, cuando el estado colapsó, la gente no se encontró en un vacío donde un código legal gubernamental existente se había reemplazado por nada, sino que la población contaba ya con su sistema legal tradicional y preexistente basado en la costumbre.

Según algunos autores, es la Xeer la que ha hecho posible que exista la actividad económica y el comercio en la Somalia anárquica, protegiendo los derechos de propiedad privada a través de la compensación directa a las víctimas, y no del castigo a los criminales. Es, además, totalmente contraria a cualquier forma de imposición.

Great minds discuss ideas

The Southern Avenger: Identity vs. Philosophy

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

No more monopoly money for Europe

Via O Insurgente, No more monopoly money for Europe:

Eurozone members have only two options - both are simple but neither is easy. The first involves radical liberalisation, in particular labour-market liberalisation, to ensure that eurozone economies are flexible enough to respond to shocks. The second is to contemplate a eurozone breakup.

But there is an alternative to wholesale destruction of the eurozone: monetary competition. The euro should be made a competing common currency - as envisaged by the UK government in the 1990s - and not a monopoly single currency. The treaties should be amended to allow any eurozone government to make any other currency it wishes legal tender alongside the euro - including a new local currency, privately issued currencies, sterling or even the dollar. Germany, for example, may opt to keep the euro and only the euro. Ireland may opt to have sterling, a new punt and the euro all as legal tender. No country would be able to opt out of the euro but no country would be forced to have the euro as a single legal-tender currency.

The existence of competing currencies within the EU would ensure that pressure was kept on the ECB to ensure that the euro is a low-inflation currency. Under this plan, businesses could still use the euro, contracts could be written and settled in euro and so on - but contracts could also be written in new national currencies. Transactions costs would be kept low and trade within the EU would still be facilitated by the existence of a common currency. Currency competition and a common currency would replace monetary monopoly and a single currency.

The Decline and Triumph of Classical Liberalism

Uma excelente lição para liberais, mas também para aqueles que acham que "liberalismo-social" é liberalismo, e para quem gosta de usar a palavra "neoliberal" sem preocupações de parecer ignorante, estúpido ou desonesto.


The Decline and Triumph of Classical Liberalism
Part 1 | Part 2

O Medo de Sair do Euro

O Medo de Sair do Euro:

O euro foi um dos grandes responsáveis pelo estado de endividamento a que chegamos. Só nos endividamos desta forma porque o Banco Central Europeu indirectamente injectou crédito barato no Estado português ao aceitar títulos de dívida pública como colateral para empréstimos a bancos comerciais. Isto sim, impediu que qualquer reforma liberal fosse feita internamente, fazendo com que o Estado pudesse subsidiar a improdutividade de inúmeras formas: empregos inúteis na função pública, distribuição de obras públicas para os "rent seekers", etc... Com o euro (e antes disso com os fundos estruturais europeus) os empresários portugueses passaram a dedicar mais tempo ao "rent seeking" do que a investirem na produtividade. Retirar uma "renda" do Estado proveniente da impressão monetária do BCE passou a ser desporto nacional.

Como alguém que está interessado em que o poder político esteja o mais próximo possível dos indivíduos, como alguém que vê na descentralização uma virtude, quando tenho de optar entre escolher entre uma impressora europeia centralizada e longe dos indivíduos e outra próxima dos indivíduos e em competição com outras, não tenho dúvidas que prefiro a segunda.

plunder

The Philosophy of Liberty: Plunder

Excellence

Markets and Human Excellence por Steven Horwitz:

One of the most wonderful feelings I experience is my aesthetic response to being in the presence of human excellence.

.. millions of people achieve excellence daily, each in their own way and in their own corner of the marketplace. Excellence is not just open to a select few, but is possible to all. The market makes it more likely for two reasons.

The first was identified by Adam Smith: The division of labor within a production process makes each worker more productive at what he or she does. By focusing only on the flat top rather than also serving customers or prepping the food, the cook is able to get progressively better at the one thing he does. The finer this degree of specialization, the more such improvement can take place.

Second, the market links improvement in skill to the role profit plays in providing the incentives and knowledge required to serve consumers well. The need to produce good food quickly, and the ability to judge success by calculating profit and loss, contributes to the achievement of excellence. There is a reason it is more common in the private, rather than in the public, sector.

While not all forms of excellence command the salaries that athletes and musicians command, each form serves other people in its own way and, because of the magic of comparative advantage, brings some reward in the marketplace. Excellence is indeed all around us. We just need to take the time to appreciate it.

politicians

Citação Liberal do Dia

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Ronald Reagan

This Is Your Brain On Statism

This Is Your Brain On Statism

O fascismo do século XXI

Perú: La derrota del Fascismo:

"Fascismo" es una palabra que ha sido usada con tanta ligereza por la izquierda, más como un conjuro o un insulto contra el adversario que como un concepto político preciso, que a muchos parecerá una etiqueta sin mayor significación para designar a una típica dictadura tercermundista. No lo fue, sino algo más profundo, complejo y totalizador que esos tradicionales golpes de estado en que un caudillo moviliza los cuarteles, trepa al poder, se llena los bolsillos y los de sus compinches, hasta que, repelido por un país esquilmado hasta la ruina, se da a la fuga.

Es decir, el fascismo del siglo XXI. Éste ya no se encarna en svásticas, saludo imperial, paso de ganso y un caudillo histérico vomitando injurias racistas en lo alto de una tribuna. Sino, exactamente, en lo que representó en el Perú, de 1990 a 2000, el gobierno de Fujimori. Una pandilla de desalmados voraces que, aliados con empresarios sin moral, periodistas canallas, pistoleros y sicarios, y la ignorancia de amplios sectores de la sociedad, instala un régimen de intimidación, brutalidad, demagogia, soborno y corrupción, que, simulando garantizar la paz social, se eterniza en el poder.

Bitcoin

What is Bitcoin?

Divorciar casamento e Estado (4)

No seguimento de Divorciar casamento e Estado (3), Privatize Marriage Now:

Naturally, marriage, being what it is, did nevertheless impact the distribution and ownership of property. Who were the legitimate heirs of a married couple, for example? Could Bastard Jimmy inherit the property of his father instead of First Born Tom who was the child of both dad and his wife? These considerations attracted the state’s attention.

The state hates it when property changes hands without being taxed and regulated, so the state set its sights on marriage centuries ago. Over time civil governments inserted themselves more and more into the religious institutions of marriage. This was helped along by the Reformation and by defenders of government-controlled marriage like King Henry VIII of England. As nation-states consolidated their monopolies on all law and over all institutions in society, the state finally displaced religious institutions as the final arbiter on marriage.

So yes, Ann, there is a reason that governments control marriage: They couldn’t keep their mitts off it.

The natural outcome of widespread approval of this state of affairs is that governments are now seen as the institution that can legitimately define marriage itself. We now have civil laws deciding what marriage is and what it is not and who can be married and who can not.

For anyone who has an interest in actually defending the historically traditional status of marriage, this power should be viewed as both dangerous and illegitimate.

Voluntary City (2)

No seguimento de Voluntary City, as growing pains de um novo modelo de desenvolvimento:


I am Gurgaon. The new Urban India (Marije Meerman, VPRO 2009

sociedade estatista, sociedade imoral

Our Moral Dilemma por Walter Williams:

.. Does one American have a moral right to live at the expense of another American? To be more explicit, should Congress, through its taxing authority, give the Bank of America, Citibank, Archer Daniels Midland, farmers, dairymen, college students and poor people the right to live off of the earnings of another American? I'm guessing that only a few Americans would agree with my answer: No one should be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another American.

.. the next moral question, namely under what conditions is it moral to initiate force and threats of force against a person who himself has not initiated force or threats against another? .

I am all too afraid that most of my fellow Americans would answer, "Yes, some kind of force, fines or imprisonment should be initiated against a person who refuses to give up his earnings for the use of another." Their only source of disagreement would be just who had the rights to another's earnings.

French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) said, "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." That endeavor has plagued mankind throughout his history and has now reached a crisis stage in Western Europe and the United States, and the prospects for reversing it don't appear to be promising.

obamasitismo fail

fonte: Failbook

teorias da exploração e racismo

Seductive Beliefs por Thomas Sowell:

Because the Western culture has been ascendant in the world in recent centuries, the image of rich white people and poor non-white people has made a deep impression ..

In a wider view of history, however, it becomes clear that, for centuries before the European ascendancy, Europe lagged far behind China in many achievements .. the Chinese were not to blame for Europe's problems – which would not be solved until the Europeans themselves finally got their own act together .. If they had listened to people like Jeremiah Wright, Europe might still be in the Dark Ages.

It is hard to reconcile "exploitation" theories with the facts. While there have been conquered peoples made poorer by their conquerors, especially by Spanish conquerors in the Western Hemisphere, in general most poor countries were poor for reasons that existed before the conquerors arrived. Some Third World countries are poorer today than they were when they were ruled by Western countries, generations ago.

False theories are not just an intellectual problem to be discussed around a seminar table in some ivy-covered building. When millions of people believe those theories, including people in high places, with the fate of nations in their hands, that is a serious and potentially disastrous fact of life.

Obama, war criminal

Via O Insurgente,


Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Dennis Kucinich on CNN John King USA - 06/15/11

Obama Wins Nobel War Prize

Obama Wins Nobel War Prize:

Among Obama’s list of war accomplishments, the committee highlighted Obama’s decision to double the number of troops and expand the number of private contractors in Afghanistan, as well as his dramatic escalation of drone strikes and targeted assassinations in Yemen and Pakistan. According to one committee member, “Two years ago, we worried that President Obama would rollback Bush administration policies and pursue a peace agenda, but in fact he’s expanded the militaristic Bush approach to counterterrorism. He’s managed to get the U.S. involved in three wars in the Middle East, keep Guantanamo open, and dramatically expand the use of covert CIA capture/kill operations across the globe. We could not think of a more worthy candidate for this award.”

A Brief History of Inflation

Currency Failures from Argentina to Zimbabwe: A Brief History of Inflation | Timothy Terrell

A sobrepopulação é um conceito anti-humano

Population Growth as Propaganda: The Greens and the Reds:

The Malthusians always talk about the burden of more mouths to feed. They never talk about the economic benefits of more hands to work and more minds to think creatively beginning two decades later. They ignore the long-term capital returns from a 15-year or 20-year capital investment in morality and education. That is, they are present-oriented and therefore lower-class social theorists. Sadly, vocal Christian intellectuals in the late twentieth century joined the camp of the Malthusians.

Are many people facing famine today? If so, what is the proper solution? If not, why are so many Western intellectuals convinced that famine is imminent? How could a supposedly serious pair of scholars have written a book in 1967 titled, Famine-1975!? The famine never appeared. Instead, food prices fell. Per capita consumption of food rose. Yet the myth of looming food shortages continues to be believed. From 1798 until the present, Malthus' predictions have been refuted by the facts, decade after decade. The West has experienced a growing population with increasing per capita consumption of food. Yet the myth still flourishes in the West. That starvation is possible in a major war is quite possible. The question is: If we avoid such a major war, is a famine inevitable? The apocalyptics' answer: yes. This answer has been proven incorrect for over two centuries, but generation after generation of apocalyptics learn nothing from the evidence. Theirs is a religious worldview, impervious to the historical record.

The Right to Offend

The High Value of Low Speech: Attorney Robert Corn-Revere Defends The Right to Offend

Immoral rulers

Na continuação de Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism (3), The Prophetic C.S. Lewis por Joseph Sobran:

Lewis saw a parallel danger in “the modern theory of sovereignty,” which holds that the state can make right and wrong by sheer act of will: “On this view, total freedom to make what laws it pleases, superiority to law because it is the source of law, is the characteristic of every state; of democratic states no less than of monarchical. That doctrine has proved so popular that it now seems to many a mere tautology. We conceive with difficulty that it was ever new because we imagine with difficulty how political life can ever have gone on without it. We take it for granted that the highest power in the State, whether that power is a despot or a democratically elected assembly, will be wholly free to legislate and incessantly engaged in legislation.”

As a result of the theory of sovereignty, Lewis observed, “Rulers have become owners.” He added: “We are less their subject than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, ‘Mind your own business.’ Our whole lives are their business.” As the state offers us less and less protection, “at the same time it demands from us more and more. We seldom had fewer rights and liberties nor more burdens: and we get less security in return. While our obligations increase their moral ground is taken away.”

Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them

peak socialismo

Cervantizar o país:

Existe um pressuposto de que os combustíveis fósseis se vão esgotar no futuro próximo. Como é óbvio, nem o carvão, nem o petróleo, nem o gás natural alguma vez vão acabar. O que vai acontecer e como o Tiago Julião Neves aliás concorda, é que, gradualmente, quer por progressiva escassez destes e consequente subida do seu preço de mobilização energética, quer por o avanço tecnológico tornar mais barata a produção a partir de fontes reno-sustentáveis, os agentes económicos vão encaminhar-se naturalmente para os modos de produção reno-sustentáveis. É uma questão de tempo, e a lógica da batata é muita clara: não é necessário o esforço ou a visão de ninguém para que voluntariamente as pessoas mudem para aquilo que custa menos a produzir e a comprar.

O engenheiro José Sócrates e defensores .. hipotecam uma parte dos recursos deste abastado país numa raspadinha de contornos ecológicos erotizada com tecnologia de ponta e inovação.

.. Existe um pressuposto de que os combustíveis fósseis se vão esgotar no futuro próximo. Como é óbvio, nem o carvão, nem o petróleo, nem o gás natural alguma vez vão acabar. O que vai acontecer e como o Tiago Julião Neves aliás concorda, é que, gradualmente, quer por progressiva escassez destes e consequente subida do seu preço de mobilização energética, quer por o avanço tecnológico tornar mais barata a produção a partir de fontes reno-sustentáveis, os agentes económicos vão encaminhar-se naturalmente para os modos de produção reno-sustentáveis. É uma questão de tempo, e a lógica da batata é muita clara: não é necessário o esforço ou a visão de ninguém para que voluntariamente as pessoas mudem para aquilo que custa menos a produzir e a comprar.

Ron Paul for President 2012

Ron Paul's Full Speech at the Republican Leadership Conference (RLC 2011)

We Are All Libertarians Now

We Are All Libertarians Now:

Individual liberty is based on two concepts: life and property. Your life and your property are yours, and yours alone. You are free to do with them what you will, as long as you don't harm another with your doings. We exercise the choices we make regarding life and property through an ideal held dear by ALL people, no matter the political or religious label attached to them: that of free will.

We choose what to eat and drink, where to live and how, what to think and believe, who to befriend or not, whether to be honest or lie, if we will act morally or immorally...the list could fill tomes. All individuals, regardless of race or gender, are born with this gift by which, at the very least, they are able to think, rationalize, and create. It is an accepted fact that free will is dictated by no person other than the one exercising it.

If people are religious, they exercise their free will to adhere to God's laws. However, I doubt any of them seriously believe that a bolt of lightening will shoot out of the Walmart ceiling tiles to strike them dead should they decide to shoplift. God does not compel mankind through force to follow His laws regarding morality, the treatment of fellow man, or any other of His dictates. God gifts mankind with individual liberty and extolls us to use it to exercise our free will, follow His guidance, and choose wisely in all things. If we choose unwisely, we and we alone will suffer the consequences – not our parents, not our neighbors, and not the rich people who have more than us.

Does government then deem itself more powerful, more all-knowing than God? It must. Through legislation written by Congress the federal government: denies us the liberty to exercise our free will and dictates our choices for us; takes our wealth through taxation and redistributes it to others; and forces us to comply with its dictates through threats of imprisonment and/or fines. Pretty presumptuous, not to mention overbearing. As Ron Paul is fond of saying, "It makes no sense whatsoever." It makes even less sense to label people who believe in the right of individual liberty to exercise free will as kooks, anarchists, or extremists.

rectificando a escala do liberalismo

Finanças. Vítor Gaspar é um bom investigador mas também um falcão liberal

Politicamente é considerado um liberal da linha dura, que defende que o mercado deve funcionar por si próprio, deixando ao Estado o papel de regulador.

Vítor Gaspar (europeísta keynesiano) vs. qualquer uma das referências do liberalismo

Dependência

Dependency and Votes por Thomas Sowell:

We don't need to send the country into bankruptcy, in the name of the poor, by spending trillions of dollars on people who are not poor, and who could take care of themselves. The poor have been used as human shields behind which the expanding welfare state can advance.

The goal is not to keep the poor from starving but to create dependency, because dependency translates into votes for politicians who play Santa Claus.

We have all heard the old saying about how giving a man a fish feeds him for a day, while teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime. Independence makes for a healthier society, but dependency is what gets votes for politicians.

For politicians, giving a man a fish every day of his life is the way to keep getting his vote. "Entitlement" is just a fancy word for dependency.

As for the scary stories politicians tell, in order to keep the entitlement programs going, as long as we keep buying it, they will keep selling it.

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 1 of 4)
parte 1 | parte 2 | parte 3 | parte 4

Patriotism is a Mental Disorder

On Patriotism:

Patriotism is everywhere thought to be a virtue rather than a mental disorder. I don’t get it.

We are animals of the pack. We don’t admire patriotism. We admire loyalty to ourselves.

Part of patriotism is nationalism, the political expression of having given up to the pack all independence of thought. Patriotism is of course incompatible with morality. This is more explicit in the soldier, a patriot who agrees to kill anyone he is told to kill by the various alpha-dogs – President, Fuehrer, emperor, Duce, generals.

The same instinct governs thought about atrocities committed in wartime. In every war, every army (correctly) accuses the other side of committing atrocities. Atrocities are what armies do. Such is the elevating power of morality that soldiers feel constrained to lie about them. But patriots just don’t care. Psychologists speak of demonization and affecting numbing and such, but it’s really just that the tortured, raped, butchered and burned are members of the other pack.

Liberty evolves

Liberty evolves - a young libertarian speaks about freedom's development

slash the State

Via O Insurgente:

.. “the typical unsuccessful fiscal consolidation consisted of 53 percent tax increases and 47 percent spending cuts. By contrast, the typical successful fiscal consolidation consisted of 85 percent spending cuts.” ..

.. successful consolidations involve important reductions in social transfers and that “cuts to government wage expenditures, meaning the size and pay of the public sector work force, and cuts to subsidies are typical in both successful and unsuccessful consolidations.” Unfortunately, only a minority of countries chose to cut spending. Most relied on revenue increases, which were unsuccessful in reducing the debt ratio.

the New Soviet Union

Vladimir Bukovsky: The European Union - the New Soviet Union?