Take the $38.5 Trillion of the US, and scale down to a household.

Claramente esta família precisa de mais "investimento público" e de mais "projectos estruturantes". Se as contas parecem um pouco estranhas, e se a vida parece que não vai ser tão fácil daqui para a frente, a culpa só pode ser dos "neoliberais" que sempre disseram para gastar menos — ou da "austeridade" reflectida nos "cortes" entretanto feitos.

Bill Gross

Law as a Private Good

Law as a Private Good por David D. Friedman:

One attractive feature of such a system is that the usual economic arguments for the efficiency of market outcomes apply to the legal system and the rules it generates. To see why, imagine that there is some change in the legal rules currently prevailing between two enforcement agencies which would yield net benefits to their customers. If it benefits both sets of customers, then it is in the interest of the protection agencies either to persuade their arbitration agency to make the change or to shift to one that follows the superior set of rules. If it benefits the customers of one agency but imposes costs on the customers of the other, with net costs smaller then net benefits, then it is in the interest of the two agencies to agree to make the change, with the loser compensated either directly or by some other change elsewhere in the legal rules. In practice, since it is the arbitration agencies that specialize in legal rules, we would expect them to try to develop superior legal codes in the process of competing for customers. The result should be a set of legal codes that are economically efficient in the conventional sense.

The Virtue Of Selfishness

Ayn Rand - The Virtue Of Selfishness

Lord Acton : The American Revolution

The American Revolution por John Dalberg Acton:

The rational and humanitarian enlightenment of the 18th century did much for the welfare of mankind, but little to promote the securities of freedom. Power was better employed than formerly, but it did not abdicate.

The Americans proceeded to give themselves a Constitution which should hold them together more effectively than the congress which carried them through the war…

The powers of the states were limited. The powers of the federal government were actually enumerated, and thus the states and the union were a check on each other. That principle of division was the most efficacious restraint on democracy that has been devised; for the temper of the Constitutional Convention was as conservative as the Declaration of Independence was revolutionary.

Inequality: good

PBS NewsHour Does U.S. Economic Inequality Have a Good Side?

Breaking windows

Stephen Colbert skewers Carol Browner and the EPA:

Then she went into the second (alleged) reason, which was very interesting:

The EPA creates jobs ... When EPA says that that dirty smokestack needs a new scrubber, someone has to engineer that scrubber, someone has to build that scrubber, someone has to install it, maintain it, and operate it. Those are American jobs.

This is bad economics .. In fact, we can keep upping the ante—having businesses with dirty smokestacks buy three, four, eight hundred scrubbers—until we restore full employment just by regulatory fiat.

On the fly, Colbert himself pointed out the absurdity of Browner’s second alleged benefit of EPA’s new regulations. Colbert (pretending to be a stereotypical right-winger who cares only about business and not the environment) told Browner that “we’re losing our lunch” to the Chinese, whose businesses don’t have to face the high regulatory costs that American firms endure.

In response, Browner asked Colbert if he had ever breathed the air in China. He admitted it was more polluted than the U.S. air, but then saw a comedic opening. He argued:

"That’s another job creator. If there’s more pollution [in the U.S.], then there’s more work for the doctors who have to cure us of the diseases we get, from the things we eat and drink ... I can use your own logic against you."

Bullshit - College

Penn & Tellers Bullshit - College
parte 1 | parte 2 | parte 3

Iceland finds his wealth

Iceland Loses Its Banks, Finds Its Wealth:

.. In 2008, the tiny island nation in the North Atlantic became a byword for both boom-time excess and recessionary disaster. After inflating its financial service sector with a pile of foreign-currency debt and risky combinations of short-term debt instruments with long-term loans, Iceland, which is not a member of the European Union, endured one of the most unpleasant recessions in recent memory.

The country’s three largest banks, whose total assets were 11 times larger than Iceland’s GDP, proved too big to fail and then too big to rescue, bankrupting the central bank that took them over and leaving foreign creditors empty-handed .. neither the government nor the private financial institutions had cash to redeem the large number of foreign-denominated loans ..

This international neglect turned out to be Iceland’s saving grace. The crisis ended almost as quickly as it had begun ..

So what’s causing the recovery? The plain-sight answer is the one nobody will consider. Iceland is coming back specifically because its banks went out of business. That happened in spite of strenuous public efforts, but the removal of the tiny nation’s colossally bloated financial sector turns out not to have eliminated all that much value.

It bears repeating that banks are not creators of wealth. They are places where you store the surplus value generated by productive enterprise. In very narrow circumstances that surplus value can be loaned out at a profit, but a financial sector is the icing, not the cake. This should be common sense, but apparently it is wisdom so rare it can only be learned in countries small and remote enough to avoid the deadly medicine of the global financial markets.

It’s All Connected: Spectator’s Guide To The Euro Crisis

It's All Connected: Spectator's Guide To The Euro Crisis

Vaticano vs. Subsidiariedade (2)

No seguimento de Vaticano vs. Subsidiariedade por Thomas E. Woods, Jr.:

Had we really been engaged in "idolatry of the market," as the Vatican document suggests, we might have listened to the market. Instead, the central authorities drowned out what the market was trying to tell us.

It’s been idolatry not of the market but of central banks, institutionalized sources of moral hazard and financial instability around the world, that has yielded us the boom-bust cycle .. There is no repealed regulation that would have prevented the crisis consuming the world right now.

The present malaise, therefore .. calls for a serious moral and economic reevaluation of institutions, among them central banking and fiat money, that we have long taken for granted, and in support of which all manner of historical and theoretical fallacies have taken widespread root.

The last thing we need is a larger, more centralized version of what we have now. Our problem isn’t greedy people or bad personnel. Every society and every period of world history have had those. The problem is the system itself.

An excellent moral case can be made for a genuinely free economy, one not subject to the cronyism and manipulation at the heart of the present system.

fé nos economistas

How to silence a Nobel Prize winning economist: Ask him about the economy.

Bullying politicamente correcto

The Media and 'Bullying' por Thomas Sowell:

.. there is still a difference between words and deeds – and it is a difference we do not need to let ourselves be stampeded into ignoring. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees freedom of speech – and, like any other freedom, it can be abused.

If we are going to take away every Constitutional right that has been abused by somebody, we are going to end up with no Constitutional rights.

Already, on too many college campuses, there are vaguely worded speech codes that can punish students for words that may hurt somebody's feelings – but only the feelings of groups that are in vogue.

Women can say anything they want to men, or blacks to whites, with impunity. But strong words in the other direction can bring down on students the wrath of the campus thought police – as well as punishments that can extend to suspension or expulsion.

.. Our schools are already too lacking in the basics of education to squander even more time on propaganda for politically correct causes that are in vogue. We do not need to create special privileges in the name of equal rights.

The Failure Of A Keynesian Economic Model

Meet the Press (10/23/11): Ron Paul

Profits Are for People

Profits Are for People por Walter Williams:

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are demanding "people before profits" .. when it's often the absence of profit motivation that's the true villain.

.. Profits are .. a cost of business just as are wages, rent and interest. If those payments are not made, labor, land and capital will not offer their services. Similarly, if profit is not paid, entrepreneurs won't offer theirs. Historically, corporate profits range between 5 and 8 cents of each dollar, and wages range between 50 and 60 cents of each dollar.

.. When's the last time we've heard widespread complaints about our clothing stores, supermarkets, computer stores or appliance stores? We are far likelier to hear people complaining about services they receive from the post office, motor vehicle and police departments, boards of education and other government agencies ..

.. If we gave it just a little thought and asked what kind of organization throughout mankind's history has accounted for his greatest grief, the answer wouldn't be a free market, private, profit-making enterprise; it would be government, the largest nonprofit organization.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters are following the path predicted by the great philosopher-economist Frederic Bastiat, who said in The Law that "instead of rooting out the injustices found in society, they make these injustices general." In other words, the protesters don't want to end crony capitalism, with its handouts and government favoritism; they want to participate in it.

Taxation is Theft

Taxation Isn't Just Theft, It Is Also Armed Robbery and Kidnapping

A palhaçada dos stress tests

Stress em 5 etapas...:

• «Vitor Constancio: “These stress tests are the more extensive and the more severe that have been conducted in developed countries on such a scale”(*)» – 23 de Julho
• «2011 EU-wide stress test results: no need for Dexia to raise additional capital»
• «How did Europe’s bank stress tests give Dexia a clean bill of health?» – 5 de Outubro
• Dexia bank gets massive bailout
• Belgium in Trouble After Dexia Bailout

The Market for Security

The only way to have a prosperous and productive society is to create a society that is fundamentally predicated on the rule of law. – If it is wrong for you to steal, it is wrong for the State to steal.

The Market for Security | Robert P. Murphy

Alarmismo globalwarmista

Not Alarmist Enough:

First, you unilaterally declare that there is some huge looming disaster a long ways in the future. Using a variety of methods fair and foul, you obtain the full cooperation of other scientists, governments, educational institutions, and the media the world around. With all of you, the whole chorus, baying for skeptic’s blood in full voice, you spend a quarter century trying to convince the people of the oncoming Thermageddon.

Second, after said quarter century you notice that despite having the entire resources of the educational and media institutions of the planet and the blind agreement of other scientists and billions of dollars poured into trying … you have not been able to establish your case. Heck, you haven’t even been able to falsify the null hypothesis. In fact, after a long string of predictions of doom, none of which came to pass, and at the tail end of a 15-year hiatus in the warming, the US public doesn’t believe a word you say. Oops. Over two-thirds of them think climate scientists sometimes falsify their research. Oops.

In response, you say that the problem is that scientists have been too .. reticent, that they haven’t been alarmist enough or aggressive enough in promoting their views.

That’s the problem? After 25 years of unbridled alarm from scientists and everyone else from Presidents to my kid’s teachers, the problem is that scientists are not alarmist enough, they’re too reticent to state their true opinion? Really? That’s the reason the public doesn’t believe you? Is that your final answer?

Ron Paul Nannyslayer

Ron Paul: Eat, drink, and smoke whatever you want!

Bad corporate governance oaths (4)

Na sequência de Bad corporate governance oaths (3) — Promising students:

Personally, I have always had a problem with oaths such as this. I have long suspected that this was just my cynical British hack reaction. Every time I thought about it I was reminded of one of my grandmother’s favourite sayings: “Never trust a man who says he is honest.”

My other major concern has always been that it is divisive. The oath has real implications for those who choose not to sign it. Does it mean, for example, that they are unethical? Or does it mean they, like me, simply feel uneasy about such a process?

When I mentioned the MBA Oath to a new colleague recently, her comment was perhaps the most instructive of all. “Well,” she said, “it doesn’t really mean anything, does it?”

Socialismo "Intelectual" galopante

Expansion of U.S. copyright law (Assuming authors create their works by age 35 and live for seventy years)

Horwitz on the Financial Crisis and Recession

Horwitz on the Financial Crisis and Recession:

.. our current mess was not the result of “predatory capitalism,” but the predictable consequence of government intervention and crony corporatism. Nowhere does he mention the Federal Reserve’s role in pushing interest rates so low that banks were being paid to borrow, nor does he have a word to say about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac having privileged access to the Treasury to buy up all of the questionable mortgages that banks originated. He also ignores two decades of Congress’s role in mandating that banks lend to marginal borrowers.

.. why, if this was really capitalism, banks would make loans to people they thought could not pay them back. If corporations are greedy profit-seekers, why would they risk customers not being able to pay unless they believed that those mortgages could be sold off to government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie and Freddie who would, as they did, get bailed out by the government?

If all the traffic lights in Watertown were stuck on green, we’d hardly blame the drivers for the ensuing accidents. When government distorts the signals and incentives facing producers and consumers, the blame for the resulting disaster should fall on government not the private sector. The crisis and recession are what happens when you put “people before profits.”

Funding Public Goods

Funding Public Goods: Six Solutions (by Roderick Long)

O Desespero das Elites Eurocratas

O Desespero das Elites Eurocratas por Filipe Faria n'O Insurgente:

O desespero obriga a alguma sinceridade, e à medida este projecto europeu se aproximar do fim, mais sinceridade e mais autocracia teremos. As animosidades entre países irão crescer, os ódios pessoais serão revelados e as culpas serão “disparadas” em todas as direcções. Se os políticos de facto representassem os cidadãos, o projecto do euro terminaria agora e a preparação para uma nova fase pós-euro (com a recuperação das soberanias dos Estados nações) estaria em curso. Como a representação política ao nível da UE é uma fábula de manuais de ciência política, vamos continuar a assistir a um agravar do problema que irá implodir quando a magnitude do mesmo for o dobro ou o triplo do que é agora.

O euro já falhou economicamente e sobrevive devido à vontade política; quando é que a moeda única irá colapsar é impossível de aferir, mas o desespero revelado pelas elites eurocratas sugere que não deverá ser num futuro muito distante.

o sexto sentido dos glaciares

World is Getting Warmer:

This is from 1906. Most records show that glaciers have retreated since around 1820 right up to date. Those who want to blame retreating glaciers today on man-made CO2 have to first explain why the natural retreat from 1820 to about 1955 ended natural somehow at the exact moment that manmade Co2 took over.

euroestalinismo

A URSS tinha estatísticas maravilhosas de Helena Matos:

No projecto de reforma da lei sobre as agências de ‘rating’, Barnier propõe que a nova agência europeia de supervisão de títulos bolsistas, a ESMA, passe a ter o direito de «proibir temporariamente» a publicação de avaliações sobre a solvibilidade financeira dos Estados.

Nem a ESMA nem qualquer outra agência pode ter o direito de proibir a divulgação de informação. Aliás como os dados em que as agências de rating se baseiam não são secretos a ESMA terá de proibir também a publicação pelos Estado de informação que permita avaliar a sua solvibilidade financeira.

Europe Rediscovering Seditious Libel?:

The analogy to seditious libel, I think, is quite close. Traditional seditious libel barred, among other things, statements that diminish the reputation of the government, whether the statements were opinion, true factual assertions, or false factual assertions; likewise here. The rule that is apparently being proposed would essentially be a seditious libel law focused on a particular set of statements about a government’s finances.

Conservatism for What?

SA@TheDC - Conservatism for What?

Vaticano vs. Subsidiariedade

The Vatican Should Try to Save Souls, not Ruin Economies:

Here are some excerpts from Reuters about the spectacularly misguided thinking from this division of the Catholic Church.

Let’s look at the three main proposals and translate what they actually mean.

1. A “global public authority” is bureaucrat-speak for a world government .. A supra-national government would be even worse since it would have power to wreck all sectors of the economy. These proposals are driven by the left’s desire for bureaucratization, harmonization, and centralization.
2. A “Central World Bank” is bureaucrat-speak for a Federal Reserve on steroids .. A supra-national Fed, by contrast, will give the political elite more power to pursue bad monetary policy.
3. The notion of “taxation measures on financial transactions” is bureaucrat-speak for the Tobin Tax, which is a great scam for politicians since they would get to tax every transaction we make ..

Last but not least, I’m flabbergasted by the report’s comments on the “idolatry of the market.” What planet have these people been living on?

Do they blame the market for the financial crisis, when the mess was the result of the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and government-created moral hazard? Do they blame the market for the sovereign-debt crisis, when the mess is the result of over-spending governments?

The Free Market, Capitalism, Corporatism

Andrew Napolitano - The Free Market

Citação Liberal do Dia

What’s wrong with central banking? The same thing that’s wrong with central schooling, central farming and central medicine. The plans of politically-connected elites bulldoze the plans of everyone else. Be assured that Hell will be centrally planned.

Saturday Night Live e a Crise Financeira

(puxado do Facebook)

The Paradox of Thrift — Debunked

Não é uma análise completa, mas está aproximada — The Paradox of Thrift — Debunked:

Under normal conditions .. the paradox of thrift does not apply:

• If an individual saves they will increase their wealth;
• If the entire nation saves, there is no effect on national income provided savings are channeled through the financial system into new capital investment.
• All that then happens is less consumer goods but more capital goods are produced — spending as a whole does not fall.
• Production, as a result, will also not fall.
• National income is, in fact, likely to rise. New capital investment will boost productivity and accelerate growth.

Consider the simple example of a farmer who saves and buys a tractor. His overall spending is unaffected. He merely consumes less and spends the proceeds on something else — in this case a tractor. The income of the store that supplies him with consumer goods will decrease, but the income of the dealer that sells him the tractor will rise; the net effect on national income is so far zero. But the farmer now produces more food with his new tractor; so his income — and the national income — increases.

This misconception that the paradox of thrift applies in normal markets has done immense harm to the economy and eroded the savings of the middle-class and retirees. For three generations, central bankers attacked savers by artificially reducing interest rates — in the belief that lower savings would boost demand and stimulate the economy. Low interest rates simply forced savers to assume more risk, in order to earn a return on their investment, and encouraged speculation.

The traditional work hard and save ethic that is the backbone of the capitalist system has been supplanted by the consume, borrow and speculate profligacy that got us into such a mess. High levels of public and private debt, inflation, volatile investment returns and rising income inequality are all consequences of the low-interest policy pursued by the Fed. Today’s giant casino is a far cry from the cautious, prudent investment outlook of our grandparents’ generation.

endgame para o eurosovietismo

In One Chart, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the European Fiscal Crisis

comentários (2)

No seguimento de comentários, e dedicado a todos os que ainda têm pachorra para os trolls que pululam pelas nossas caixas de comentários — Another Note on Commenting:

I continue to believe that for us the best policy – the most civil policy – is not to bar or ban our own “protestors.” It’s undeniable that many of these commenters are obnoxious, uninformed, verbal-bomb-tossing, and (yes) frequently laughably stupid buffoons who fancy themselves as making contributions to intelligent discussion when, in fact, all they do .. is to expose their abject lack of intelligence and their absurdly tunnelled world view.

So I plead again for everyone to ignore all comments that, according to the precepts of good judgment, evince only prejudice or profound ignorance. Just pay no attention. Correct factual errors that they might make. But don’t give them the satisfaction of your thinking that their ignorance and prejudice in any way poses the slightest challenge to your intelligence and civility.

Time is precious commodity. It must be allocated wisely, which is why I almost never bother to address logically incoherent assertions, ad hominem attacks, monuments to the post hoc fallacy, or grossly historically uninformed comments that so often appear here at the Cafe. And your time, I’m certain, is at least as precious to you as my time is to me.

One goal of the discussion here, in my view, is to expose especially young people to the economic way of thinking and to the precepts of classical liberalism ..

These shouting commenters do the cause of economic education and genuine liberalism actual good by revealing the shallowness of their arguments and the often-comical twists that they perform in their efforts to argue with genuinely thoughtful people.

The Dominoes Of Debt

The European Financial Crisis In One Graphic: The Dominoes Of Debt:

The ’Occupy’ protesters are 99% wrong

The ‘Occupy’ protesters are 99% wrong:

Still, they all marched side by side, because a narrative had developed which interpreted the cuts as acts of viciousness directed against all of them. They thought government was sitting in a big pot of money which, if they had just been willing to tap into, could have satisfied the concerns of all groups alike.

Last weekend’s anti-capitalist ‘Occupy’ protests can be seen as the reductio ad absurdum of this mindset. The unifying theme of all these protests seemed to be the 99% vs. 1% narrative: we, the 99% (aka ‘the people’) are kind and noble folks. It’s the other 1%, the bankers and business owners, which causes all the trouble. All we need to do is take power and money away from them, and give it to ‘the people’.

The big fallacy of this idea is that there is no entity called ‘the people’ or ‘the 99%’, which is defined by common characteristics or common economic interests. Ask 99 people what they think the government should spend a hypothetical windfall surplus on, and you will get 99 different answers ...

Still, the protesters are right about 1% of their ‘programme’: bailouts for banks, or indeed any privileges for Big Business, are economically harmful and morally objectionable. But the most logical conclusion from this concern is to demand the abolition of privileges, not the abolition of business.

Law without Government (parte 3)

No seguimento de Law without Government (partes 1 e 2),


Law without Government Part Three: The Bargaining Mechanism

The gold standard and boom-bust cycles

The gold standard and boom-bust cycles:

The printing of unbacked-by-gold certificates divert real savings from wealth generating activities to the holders of unbacked certificates. This leads to the so-called economic boom .. Once the printing of unbacked money slows down or stops all together this stops the flow of real savings to various activities that emerged on the back of unbacked money. As a result these activities fall apart – an economic bust emerges.

Note that a major factor in the emergence of a boom is the injection of money out of “thin air” into the economy. The disappearance of money out of “thin air” is the major cause of an economic bust. The injection of money out of “thin air” generates bubble activities while the disappearance of money out of “thin air” destroys these bubble activities.

On the gold standard this cannot take place. On a pure gold standard without the central bank money is gold. Consequently on the gold standard money cannot disappear since gold cannot disappear. We can thus conclude that the gold standard, if not abused, is not conducive of boom-bust cycles.

observação, teoria e modelos

Via O Insurgente, uma imprescindível apresentação


Prof. Dr. Vincent Courtillot Präsentation

LEITURA ADICIONAL - globalwarming-religião e os seus heréticos

Self-Employment

Self Employment, Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth:

Interesting new monograph from the IEA (Institute of Economic Affairs) in the UK on: Self Employment, Small Firms and Enterprise. A pdf is available for free here. And here is the executive summary.

Genuine entrepreneurial insight and discovery tends to come from small firms. Entrepreneurship is crucial for economic growth. The nature of entrepreneurial insight is such, however, that we have no idea where it will come from – not even in the most general terms. Probably only one in every thousand ‘start-up’ firms will become one of the large businesses of the future.

Policies to promote entrepreneurship must come in the form of removing impediments to business and should not involve the promotion of particular business activities. It is simply not possible for government intervention to pick this tiny number of winners. All government can do is create a climate in which entrepreneurship can thrive.

The cost of regulation has grown enormously over the last fifteen years. This particularly affects small firms with employees because regulatory costs act like a ‘poll tax’. .. Radical reforms of the tax system would also assist small firms which experience much greater compliance costs than large firms.

Moves by the government to promote entrepreneurship through the state education system or provide specific tax exemptions and reliefs for particular forms of business activity are wasteful or counterproductive.

Bleeding-Heart Libertarians

Philosopher Matt Zwolinski on "Bleeding-Heart Libertarians," The Poor, and Social Justice

Soviet Planning Fails

Soviet Planning Fails… Even in America:

In 1920, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises predicted that the Soviet socialist system would fail. “Imagine the plight of a [Soviet] director when faced with a project,” he wrote later in Human Action. “What he needs to know is whether or not the execution of the project will increase well-being, that is, add something to the wealth available without impairing the satisfaction of wants which he considers more urgent. But none of the reports he receives give him any clue to the solution of this problem… Eliminate economic calculation and you have no means of making a rational choice between the various alternatives.”

After he retired, former U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration Director Orson Swindle admitted that Mises was right. “The minute politics enters the equation,” he said, “rational financial management and economic decision making goes out the window.” While a project may seem perfectly good to a Soviet director or EDA bureaucrat, they have no means to judge between multiple projects that seem equally good. In the market, prices, profits, and losses guide producers only to projects that create wealth and away from ones that destroy wealth. This is the most important market process. It assures that resources are not wasted and used most productively.

Where do Ron Paul’s ideas come from?

Where do Ron Paul's ideas come from?

"free trade" treaties

The New “Mercantile System”:

The problem is that the economic principle enshrined in free trade treaties is the preservation of corporate privilege, not the liberation of commerce .. to the political class, “free trade” has forever meant “organized monopolization by elites.”

.. Commenting on “[a]ll the different regulations of the mercantile system” that obtained in his day, Adam Smith remarked that “[m]onopoly of one kind or another … seems to be the sole engine” of that system.

In and of itself, the interconnection of the globe, taking place through voluntary exchange and the social communication that accompanies it, is of course completely unobjectionable. But .. Today, as in Smith’s time, the state is actively engaged in ensuring that the most powerful corporate actors are protected from “the troublesome competition of such odious and disagreeable rivals.” ..

.. Only .. when the global markets are truly free from the oppression of the state, will we witness the advertised advantages of free trade.

Regulations - The Job Killers

Schiff + John Stossel - The Job Killers

LEITURA ADICIONAL - not deregulation

It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong (2)

No seguimento de It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong, Are You Owned by the Government? por Andrew P. Napolitano:

There is no human liberty, natural or constitutional, expressly guaranteed in the Constitution or traditionally viewed as belonging to all persons, that has not been nullified by government in America. We are deluding ourselves if we really think that the government thinks that the so-called guarantees of freedoms are truly guarantees. They are not. They have been tolerated by American governments unless and until the governments have felt threatened by them. Of course, a guarantee that can be suspended whenever those obligated on the guarantee no longer feel bound by it, is no guarantee whatsoever. Throughout our history, persons in America have had all natural rights denied by different levels of government, from slavery to abortion, from punishment for speech to theft of property, from denial of due process to invasions of privacy; and the government has prevailed.

Obama hates Rock ’n’ Roll... and Freedom

Gibson Guitar CEO Speaks Out

Ainda o modelo sueco

The Swedish Model Reassessed - Affluence Despite the Welfare State (PDF):

Sanandaji’s key insight is the primacy of the prevailing values. Honesty, frugality, and thrift were part of Swedish culture even before the Reformation, which institutionalized basic virtues. This moral capital, arduously built up over centuries, has sustained Sweden (and the other Nordic countries) through many vicissitudes and supported entrepreneurship, inventiveness, and economic growth. It also brought Swedish emigrants in the United States well above average financial benefits.

The welfare state depends on high taxation, which is made possible by the presence of moral capital. Yet the bureaucratic welfare structure is inexorably eroding the very moral resources which make it feasible. In due course, economic decline is inevitable. This has become apparent in Sweden, and contributed to a political swing after decades of social democratic rule. The new right-of-center administration has already made an appreciable difference.

Government is force (2)

No seguimento de Government is force, Penn Jillette:

o Presidente mercenário

The Iraq War Ain’t Over, No Matter What Obama Says:

On January 1, 2012, the State Department will command a hired army of about 5,500 security contractors, all to protect the largest U.S. diplomatic presence anywhere overseas.

Mercenaries to Fill Void Left By U.S. Army:

What exactly that pie will consist of remains to be seen. During the first four years of the war—the most recent available estimate—the U.S. spent as much as $10 billion on private security contractors, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Yet this occurred at a time when the military employed far fewer than the roughly 11,000 private security contractors that it employs today.

a slave to the Government

you are a slave to the Government

globalwarming-religião e os seus heréticos

Why I Deny Global Warming:

I'm a denier for several reasons. There is no substantive evidence that the planet has warmed significantly or that any significant warming will occur in the future .. Climate research has largely degenerated into pathological science, and the coverage of global warming in the media is tendentious to the point of being fraudulent. Anyone who is an honest and competent scientist must be a denier.

Global warming predictions cannot be tested with mathematical models. It is impossible to validate computer models of complex natural systems. The only way to corroborate such models is to compare model predictions with what will happen in a hundred years .. the theory of catastrophic global warming cannot be tested or empirically corroborated in a human time frame.

.. Scientific theories are never denied or believed, they are only corroborated or falsified. Scientific knowledge, by its very nature, is provisional and subject to revision .. Anyone who thinks scientific knowledge is final and complete must necessarily endorse as a corollary the absurd proposition that the process of history has stopped.

A scientific theory cannot be "denied." Only a belief can be denied. The person who uses the word "denier" thus reveals that they hold global warming as a belief, not a scientific theory. Beliefs are the basis of revealed religion. Revelations cannot be corroborated or studied in the laboratory, so religions are based on dogmatic beliefs conservatively held. Religions tend to be closed systems of belief that reject criticism. But the sciences are open systems of knowledge that welcome criticism. I'm a scientist, and therefore I must happily confess to being a denier.

Keynesian Economics in under 1 minute

"Cainesianismo" - a crença que diz que é "prosperidade económica" usar recursos escassos em coisas que fazem outras coisas mexer (porque caso contrário, sei lá, as pessoas podiam usar esses recursos naquilo que mais precisam - consumo, poupança, investimento...)


The Fifth Element - Keynesian Economics in under 1 minute

a democracia internacional a funcionar

UN Should Apologize For “Legitimizing” Gaddafi with Key Posts por UN Watch:

UN Watch today welcomed the end of the Gaddafi regime, one of the world’s most brutal violators of human rights, and called on UN chief Ban Ki-moon and human rights commissioner Navi Pillay to acknowledge the UN was wrong to support Gaddafi by granting him key posts on its most influential bodies.

“It’s time for the UN to formally apologize for having legitimized Gaddafi’s regime by electing Libya to its Human Rights Council last year, to the Security Council in 2008-2009, and as General Assembly president in 2009,” ..

“The UN should also apologize for choosing Gaddafi’s regime to head the planning of its 2009 world conference on racism, and for designating Col. Gaddafi’s daughter Ayesha a UN Goodwill Ambassador.”

An international coalition of 45 human rights groups have urged .. to call on the UN Human Rights Council .. for .. actions over three decades to shield Libyan dictator Col. Gaddafi from scrutiny of his regime’s gross violations of human rights .. in 1989 announced the creation of the Moammar Gaddafi Prize for Human Rights ..

A função do Estado é limitar-se

Adolfo Mesquita Nunes
A função do Estado não é reconhecer a liberdade: é limitar-se em função dela

LEITURAS ADICIONAIS:
- O Estado Social autodestruiu-se (2)
- "Socialism can’t be improved, it has to be removed"
- "Socialism can’t be improved, it has to be removed" (2)
- se o socialismo é tão bom, porque é que esta geração está à rasca?

not deregulation

We Didn’t Deregulate de Veronique de Rugy:

In fact .. “almost all financial legislation, such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Improvement Act of 1991, adopted after the savings and loan collapse in the late 1980s, significantly tightened the regulation of banks.” In other words, we’ve had regulation, not deregulation.

The great villain in the deregulation myth is the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1999, which repealed some restrictions of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, namely those preventing bank holding companies from owning other kinds of financial firms .. it was investment banks, such as Lehman Brothers, that were at the center of the crisis, and they would have been able to make the same bad investments if Gramm-Leach-Bliley had never been passed.

To be sure, there has been a great deal of deregulation in some sectors of our economy over the last 30 years or so .. but practically none of it has been in the financial sector or has had anything to do with the current crisis..

.. the FDIC, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve created a housing bubble by encouraging a decade of careless lending. When the federal government guarantees bank loans or assets, banks have a weaker incentive to evaluate loan applicants thoroughly, and a stronger one to engage in risky behavior. When things are good, they make high profits; in the case of a catastrophic downturn, it is the taxpayers, not the banks, who foot the bill.

The financial-reform legislation currently under consideration in Congress does nothing to address the Fed’s cheap-money policy or the unsustainable subsidies that government still provides to homeowners and mortgage lenders .. The proposed regulations don’t.. reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They don’t guarantee that taxpayers won’t have to pay for the future errors of bank executives who, cheered on by their government enablers, take on excessive risk. The “reformers” simply wish away the root causes of this crisis: the “too big to fail” mentality and crony capitalism.

Not only will these regulatory initiatives not address our biggest problems, they threaten to make things worse. The massive government intervention in the economy in the 1930s made the Depression an even bigger disaster than it had to be and significantly delayed the eventual recovery. President Obama’s invasive agenda .. probably has already had a similar effect ..

Planned Destruction

Chicago Tribune, 1934

SPEND. SPEND. SPEND. Under the guise of recovery
bust the government - blame the capitalists for the failure
junk the Constitution and declare a dictatorship."

all ships rise in a rising tide

Há quem defenda que "os ricos ficam cada vez mais ricos, e os pobres cada vez mais pobres". Uma versão desta baboseira (ver aqui ou aqui por exemplo) é que o aumento de produtividade não beneficia "os pobres" (que não beneficia "por igual" é um truísmo estatístico, uma vez que nada muda "por igual" nesta vida).

Descontando os incríveis desenvolviementos em condições de trabalho, e na variedade e qualidade de opções de consumo (bens, serviços) disponíveis a quem menos posses tem, em comparação com décadas passadas, o aumento de produtividade sim faz aumentar os salários de todos.

Admitir o contrário conduz a conclusões bizarras, com que por exemplo aumentar o salário mínimo (aumentar artificialmente os custos, equivalente a estragar de propósito uma máquina de produção, por exemplo) cria prosperidade.

Joseph Stiglitz, um dos activistas mais queridos da esquerda socialista:

“marginal-productivity theory.” In a nutshell, this theory associated higher incomes with higher productivity and a greater contribution to society.

Nobel laureate James M. Buchanan:

The inverse relationship between quantity demanded and price is the core proposition in economic science, which embodies the presupposition that human choice behavior is sufficiently rational to allow predictions to be made. Just as no physicist would claim that “water runs uphill,” no self-respecting economist would claim that increases in the minimum wage increase employment. Such a claim, if seriously advanced, becomes equivalent to a denial that there is even minimal scientific content in economics, and that, in consequence, economists can do nothing but write as advocates for ideological interests. Fortunately, only a handful of economists are willing to throw over the teaching of two centuries; we have not yet become a bevy of camp-following whores.

Em resumo (A Fresh Perspective for Occupy Wall Street):

The Occupy Wall Street movement would be much improved if they stuck to the basic lessons of economics .. all ships rise in a rising tide. Basic economic logic should steer those 99% to direct their anger to the real sources of fraud, theft, and inequity.

Ron Paul - Cortes na despesa

Ron Paul proposes $1T in specific budget cuts:

Ron Paul’s opinions about cutting the budget are well-known, but on Monday, he got specific: The Texas congressman laid out a budget blueprint for deep and far-reaching cuts to federal spending, including the elimination of five Cabinet-level departments and the drawdown of American troops fighting overseas.

The plan, Paul said, would cut $1 trillion in spending his first year in the White House and create a balanced federal budget by the third year of his presidency.

Many of the ideas in Paul’s 11-page Plan to Restore America are familiar from his staunch libertarianism, as well as tea party favorites, like eliminating the Education and Energy Departments. But Paul goes further, proposing an immediate freeze on spending by numerous government agencies at levels from 2006, the last time Republicans had complete control of the federal budget, and drastic reductions in spending elsewhere.

Ron Paul Plan To Restore America Press Conference (começa aos 11')

Blame the Fed for the Financial Crisis

Blame the Fed for the Financial Crisis por Ron Paul no WSJ:

The Federal Reserve has caused every single boom and bust that has occurred in this country since the bank's creation in 1913. It pumps new money into the financial system to lower interest rates and spur the economy. Adding new money increases the supply of money, making the price of money over time—the interest rate—lower than the market would make it. These lower interest rates affect the allocation of resources, causing capital to be malinvested throughout the economy. So certain projects and ventures that appear profitable when funded at artificially low interest rates are not in fact the best use of those resources.

Eventually, the economic boom created by the Fed's actions is found to be unsustainable, and the bust ensues as this malinvested capital manifests itself in a surplus of capital goods, inventory overhangs, etc. Until these misdirected resources are put to a more productive use—the uses the free market actually desires—the economy stagnates.

.. The manner of thinking of the Federal Reserve now is no different than that of the former Soviet Union, which employed hundreds of thousands of people to perform research and provide calculations in an attempt to mimic the price system of the West's (relatively) free markets. Despite the obvious lesson to be drawn from the Soviet collapse, the U.S. still has not fully absorbed it.

The Fed fails to grasp that an interest rate is a price—the price of time—and that attempting to manipulate that price is as destructive as any other government price control.

The continued existence of an organization that can create trillions of dollars out of thin air to purchase financial assets and prop up a fundamentally insolvent banking system is a black mark on an economy that professes to be free.

United States of Europe insane politics

Nigel Farage United States of Europe insane politics (Portuguese subbed)

Occupy Wall Street (6)

No seguimento de Occupy Wall Street (5), Occupy Wall Street (Hearts) Wall Street por Ann Coulter:

The worst thing about Occupy Wall Street is that it's ruining a good cause: hating Wall Street. Just when opposing Wall Street was gaining momentum, these brain-dead zombies are forcing us to choose between thieving bankers and them.

If the Flea Party were really concerned about the greedy "Wall Street 1 Percent," shifting money around to make themselves richer and everyone else poorer, their No. 1 target should be George Soros.

The Flea Partiers try to win good will by pretending to protest "Wall Street" -- but they ignore Wall Street's villains. They claim to speak for 99 percent of Americans, but their sponsor, George Soros, would be delighted if America collapsed and the 99 percent were impoverished. All he cares about is his own power and pocketbook.

This is the Democrats' idea of "capitalism": Rich, Democratic-donating bankers get to engage in wild risk-taking; if the bets pay off, they keep all the winnings, but if the bets lose, they still keep the winnings, and the taxpayers get stuck with the bill.

Democrats are firm believers in the welfare state for their own constituents, whether that's a crack addict mother of five or a Wall Street banker.

BÓNUS: Occupy Wall Street for Dummies

Euro breakup

Preparing for Euro Breakup - conference with MEPs Farage, Bloom and Professors W. Hankel, P.

Mais destalhes aqui - Conference: Preparing for Euro Breakup (video)

Practical steps to withdraw from Euro (PDF) por Philipp Bagus:

We found three ways to exit the euro.

• First, a redenomination of all contracts and deposits into a new national currency. Coins and notes bearing the national symbol are exchanged gradually into the new currency preferably at a 1:1 exchange rate. In order to prevent disturbing flows of capital a “provisional” redenomination allowing for democratic discussion seems to be the most elegant way.
• Second, the issue of a parallel national currency. This national currency may be backed by government or central bank assets preferably gold and would compete with the euro.
• Third, currency competition. All legal tender laws are abolished. Gradually, citizens will start using more stable currencies and possibly adopt commodity based means of payment.

The Five Steps of Corporatism

A crisis of government

The collapse of capitalism por Robert Sadler:

The actual system that is under threat of collapse is the system by which governments finance themselves over and above their explicit tax revenues.

By combining the existence of a central bank with a fiat currency and fractional reserve banking, the state can raise funds significantly in excess of the official tax rates.

It is easy to see how governments benefit from this system. It allows them, not only to benefit from inflation but to vastly increase taxes on both current and future generations!

Now we can see clearly that this is not a crisis of capitalism or free markets. It is a crisis of government caused by fraud on a grand scale .. the fraud of the government, which as an institution has over time created this inflationary and unstable financial system as a method to surreptitiously expropriate resources from the population which it serves, in order to finance its expansion.

Free markets will survive this crisis simply because the will to voluntarily produce and trade is an intrinsic part of human nature. There is no crisis of capitalism, but there is a crisis of government .. governments will take the steps to prolong it until the inevitable and total failure of this deceitful system.

Ditadura europeia

Via O Insurgente, O Mito do Livre Mercado,

A UE apoiou de início boas ideias como a do livre mercado para retirar instrumentos políticos aos Estados nacionais, mas nunca disse que não sempre que havia a possibilidade de adquirir mais umas competências (intervencionistas). Agora finalmente mostra as suas garras de forma agressiva porque vê o seu projecto de centralização ameaçado pelos “mercados”. Isto para dizer que ter apenas livre mercado nunca foi a intenção do projecto europeu, e provavelmente nunca será.

MEE, o novo ditador europeu

Roubo via patentes

Adam Smith Institute: Do not feed the patent troll:

The typical argument for patents is that they encourage innovation. By protecting a person’s potential invention from being copied, they increase the reward for coming up with an invention. But the other side of this coin is that they discourage innovation too, by increasing the cost of improving on or incorporating other innovations into your own work. If you want to stand on the shoulders of giants, you’ll have to cough up.

The Apple/Samsung patent war is an example of patents at their worst. There’s a big deadweight loss associated with lawsuits and restrictions on commerce. And most of the challenges are completely spurious – should Apple really “own” the pattern of a four-column grid of apps on a tablet home screen, or the concept of a rectangular tablet computer? Apple and Samsung have created enormous value to a huge number of people, but in this case they’re acting against consumer choice. Like blaming gravity for plane crashes or greed for financial crises, it’s silly to blame the firms themselves. Fundamentally, it’s the patent system that’s at fault.

Patents are anathema to private property rights. A pattern or idea is non-rivalrous and non-excludable – unlike property, there is no opportunity cost to someone’s use of an idea or pattern. An individual idea is not scarce unless we make it so through patent laws.

Unavoidable Economic Consequences

Harry Browne - Unavoidable Economic Consequences

Sobre Harry Browne:
- Why You Are a Libertarian
- entretanto na terra dos czars...

The government is great at breaking your leg, handing you a crutch, and saying .You see, without me you couldn’t walk'.

Parasitismo acéfalo

Sei que por esta altura a malta já não tem pachorra para a política, vencida pelo cansaço depois de tanto tempo de austeridade. Mas o cansaço - ou o desespero - não justificam algum surrealismo que por aí anda.

Por exemplo toda a questão de quem ganha mais - público ou privado - e portanto quem deve ser mais "roubado". Como se houvesse uma ética do roubo. A verdadeira escolha é entre roubar _ainda mais_ ao privado, ou redistribuir internamente ao Estado - menos dinheiro para os funcionários públicos, mais para a máquina -- mantendo o produto do roubo (sim porque não se esperam reduções na despesa/taxação).

Ora, todo o dinheiro que vai para o sector "público" é previamente subtraído ao privado. Os funcionários públicos que defendem que os privados deviam "contribuir" mais estão matar, a prazo, quem lhes produz os salários.

COST-something Approach to Public Policy

A Cost-Benefit Approach to Public Policy

O Estado que os carregue

O querido e santo Estado que os carregue por António Ribeiro Ferreira:

Chegados a este beco sem saída, vem a tese querida dos amigos do monstro: seria muito mais justo aumentar o IRS ou aplicar um novo imposto a todos os trabalhadores públicos e privados. Pagavam os justos e os pecadores, não se punham portugueses contra portugueses, verdadeiro horror, e o Estado ficava exactamente como está, sorridente por extorquir mais uns valentes milhões ao mexilhão que lhe sustenta as gorduras e os vícios. Embrulhados nos seus próprios argumentos, fogem do labirinto com a ausência de estímulos à economia e a ineficácia do ministro que tem a pasta da dita.

Para estas cabecinhas pensadoras, que estiveram sempre de acordo com o modelo económico ruinoso dos últimos 30 anos, é o Estado o motor de tudo. Do emprego e da economia. O Estado que os carregue. Mas não à custa de quem trabalha e cria riqueza.

What Did You Learn In School?

What Did You Learn In School?

The Dawn of Late Fascism

The Dawn of Late Fascism por Lew Rockwell:

The state as we've known it — and that includes its political parties and its redistributionary, military, regulatory, and money-creating bureaucracies — just can't get it together .. the nation-state is in precipitous decline. Once imbued with grandeur and majesty, personified by its Superman powers to accomplish amazing global feats, it is now a wreck and out of ideas.

Look at the thing that we call the post office. It is a complete wreck, a national joke, a hanger-on from a day long gone. They deliver physical spam to our mail boxes, and a few worthwhile things every once in a while, but the only time they are in the news is when we hear another report of their bankruptcy and need for a bailout.

It's the same with all the grand monuments of yesteryear's statism .. This was an age when freedom — as in the old-fashioned sense — was just out of the question.

But this whole system of inspiration has nearly died out. In the communist tradition of naming the stages of history, we can call this late fascism ..

Fascism, like socialism, cannot achieve its aims. The grandeur is gone and all we are left with is a gun pointed at our heads ..

.. this reality only speeds the inevitable death of the state as the 20th century reinvented it.

Occupy Wall Street (5)

No seguimento de Occupy Wall Street (4),

Via Big Government (Why Doesn’t #OccupyWallSt Protest Facebook, Google, Or YouTube?),

the politics of hate

Pitting Us Against Each Other por Walter E. Williams:

When you recognize that celebrities earn salaries that are some multiples of CEO salaries, you have to ask: Why is it that rich CEOs are demonized and not celebrities? A clue might be found if you asked: Who's doing the demonizing? It turns out that the demonizing is led by politicians and leftists with the help of the news media, and like sheep, the public often goes along. Why demonize CEOs? .. If all CEOs worked for nothing, it would mean absolutely little or nothing to the average American's bottom line.

For politicians, it's another story: Demonize people whose power you want to usurp. That's the typical way totalitarians gain power. They give the masses someone to hate ..

.. promoting jealousy, fear and hate is an effective strategy for politicians and their liberal followers to control and micromanage businesses.

It's not about the amount of money people earn. If it were, politicians and leftists would be promoting jealousy, fear and hate toward multimillionaire Hollywood and celebrities and sports stars, such as LeBron James ($48 million), Tiger Woods ($75 million) and Peyton Manning ($38 million). But there is no way that politicians could take over the roles of Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga and LeBron James. That means celebrities can make any amount of money they want and it matters not one iota politically.

The Occupy Wall Street crowd shouldn't focus its anger at wealthy CEOs. A far more appropriate target would be the U.S. Congress.

Ron Paul - Imagine Armed Chinese Troops in Texas

Armed Chinese Troops in Texas!

Citação Liberal do Dia

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

Gerald Ford

Ensebados Indignados

Aviso à população - respeitante à invasão dos Ensebados: - têm aversão a água corrente - são incapazes de olhar-se ao espelho - para mantê-los à distância, usar um colar de sabão

Mais Estado, melhor Estado

As pessoas estão a EXAGERAR nas reacções ao Orçamento e ao Plano de Austeridade. Tenham calma. Chill, be happy!

O défice orçamental do Estado ainda não diminuiu, a dívida pública ainda não diminuiu. Foram três décadas e meia de "Mais Estado," [desejo concedido!], "melhor Estado" [hahahaha].

"Melhor Estado", "melhor Estado"... conceder crescentemente mais poder a políticos, eleitos pelas massas em troca de pequenos populismos imediatos; conceder crescentemente mais dinheiro a burocratas instalados, que fazem sua a vida dos outros, e depois não fazem nem deixam fazer; cultivar crescentemente a promiscuidade ("colaboração") entre política, órgãos estatais, forças "sociais", interesses económicos, media, tribunais — tudo em nome do causas muuuuito nobres — foi uma boa ideia não foi?

E agora é o "Mais Estado" — que se divertiu a gastar o que não tinha —, que vai decidir se "devemos" cortar pelo Estado, ou se pela sociedade. Relax, não vai doer nada.

The global debt clock

A identificar que países estão na calha para tornarem-se Estados falhados...


The global debt clock (The Economist)

Socialismo: a escravatura é socialmente justa

George Fitzhugh (Wikipedia):

George Fitzhugh (November 4, 1806 - July 30, 1881) was an American social theorist who .. argued that "the negro is but a grown up child"[1] who needs the economic and social protections of slavery. Fitzhugh decried capitalism as spawning "a war of the rich with the poor, and the poor with one another" – rendering free blacks "far outstripped or outwitted in the chase of free competition." Slavery, he contended, ensured that blacks would be economically secure and morally civilized.

Sociology for the South, or, the Failure of Free Society (1854) was George Fitzhugh's most powerful attack on the philosophical foundations of free society. In it, he took on not only Adam Smith, the foundational thinker of capitalism, but also John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and the entire liberal tradition. He argued that free labor and free markets enriched the strong while crushing the weak. What society needed, he wrote, was slavery, not just for blacks, but for whites as well. "Slavery," he wrote, "is a form, and the very best form, of socialism."

Fitzhugh believed that slavery reduced the pressure on the poor and lower classes; in other words, he advocated slavery for poor whites as well as blacks.

Indignação!!!

fonte: NSFW

Crónica de uma farsa anunciada

Crónica de uma farsa anunciada:

Em último lugar, o ponto para mim mais significativo: depois de toda a encenação em torno de remeter para a discussão do orçamento as tais “medidas de corte de despesa”, aquilo a que assistimos ontem, numa perspectiva duradoura, foi à apresentação nem de muitas, nem de poucas, mas de zero medidas. Zero.

No rol de iniciativas que primeiro ministro escolheu na sua alocução ao país, não se inscreve uma medida que seja de corte na despesa que perdure para lá de 2013 e que tenha natureza estrutural. Para lá de a generalidade de medidas de corte de despesa que apresentou terem uma natureza que se aproxima perigosamente do confisco, ou terem legalidade mais do que duvidosa, todas elas têm horizonte temporal definido, pelo menos a acreditar na palavra (cada vez menos valiosa) do governo. Não há nada de estrutural que se sobreponha a um desespero de tesouraria, e parece que a mensagem a passar é a de que se “aguentarmos” até ao final de 2013 tudo ficará bem, e tudo poderá mudar para voltar a estar exactamente na mesma.

Lógica Circular do Estatismo

"people are bad so we need a government made of"

Citação Liberal do Dia

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

Frederic Bastiat

all-you-can-eat buffet for healthcare

How to Fix Health Care: Lasik Surgery For The Medical Debate

Constituição, Fugitive Slave Law, Nulification

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? por Frederick Douglass:

"[L]et me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it."

.. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither.

.. let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it ..

Now, take the constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq. .. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour.

Ainda Douglass sobre 0 Fugitive Slave Act:

By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form .. and the power to hold .. slaves remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States .. For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. The Fugitive Slave Law makes MERCY TO THEM, A CRIME ..

.. this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation ..

Em resposta, vários estados do Norte procuraram nulificar a tirânica lei central, o que se tivesse acontecido teria sido um passo de gigante para eliminar a escravatura nos Estados Unidos de forma pacífica:

In 1854, the Wisconsin Supreme Court became the only state high court to declare the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional .. Ultimately, in 1859 in Ableman v. Booth the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the state court.

In November 1850, the Vermont legislature approved the "Habeas Corpus Law," requiring Vermont judicial and law enforcement officials to assist captured fugitive slaves. This law rendered the federal Fugitive Slave Act effectively unenforceable in Vermont and caused a storm of controversy nationally because it was a "nullification" of federal law .. Virginia governor John B. Floyd warned that nullification could push the South toward secession, while President Millard Fillmore threatened to use the army to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act in Vermont. No actual events followed in Vermont ..

Ron Paul Highlights

Ron Paul Highlights - Bloomberg/Washington Post GOP Debate

Marcus Tullius Cicero (3)

No seguimento de Marcus Tullius Cicero (2), Marcus Tullius Cicero, Who Gave Natural Law to the Modern World:

Cicero transmitted the Greek Stoic idea of a moral higher law to the modern world. In his dialogue De Legibus (On the Laws, 52 B.C.), he talked about the supreme law which existed through the ages, before the mention of any written law or established state

He also referred to it as the law of nature for the source of right. In De Republica (The Republic, 51 B.C.) he says True law is right reason in agreement with nature ..

Cicero further distinguished the higher law from the laws of governments. He declared it was quite absurd to call just every article in the decrees and laws of nations. What if those laws were enacted by tyrants? ..

.. Greek philosophers had conceived of society and government as virtually the same .. Cicero declared that .. society is something larger and separate. Appreciation for the myriad wonders of civil society, where private individuals develop languages, markets, legal customs, and other institutions, didn’t come until the eighteenth century, but it was Cicero who began to see the light.

Cicero was the first to say that government was justified primarily as a means of protecting private property. Both Plato and Aristotle had imagined that government could improve morals. Neither had conceived of private property—an absolute claim to something over everyone else.

Cicero’s De Officiis (On Duties, 44 B.C.): the chief purpose in the establishment of states and constitutional orders was that individual property rights might be secured . . . it is the peculiar function of state and city to guarantee to every man the free and undisturbed control of his own property. Again: The men who administer public affairs must first of all see that everyone holds onto what is his, and that private men are never deprived of their goods by public men.

###

Caesar proceeded to twist the Roman constitution beyond recognition. He packed the Senate with some 400 of his partisans. He rigged the election of a new consul. He became the first living Roman to have his portrait appear on coins. He had himself named dictator perpetuus—dictator for life.

.. Caesar indulged in a lifetime of double talk, professing slogans of democracy, while debasing and destroying the powers of the electorate, and insisting on constitutional technicalities, while persistently undermining the constitution. In the end, his prescription for government turned out to be a surprisingly simple one: to reduce its mechanism to the simplest and most primitive of all institutional forms, personal absolutism, and to employ it for one of the simplest and most primitive of all purposes, foreign conquest.

Cicero urged people to reason together. He championed decency and peace. He gave the modern world some of the most fundamental ideas of liberty. Back when speaking freely meant risking death, he denounced tyranny. He has helped keep the torch of liberty burning bright for more than 2,000 years.

Abandoned in Guatemala

Relembrando The Ethics of Adoption,


Abandoned in Guatemala: The Failure of International Adoption Policies

A mentalidade dos colaboracionistas do regime socialista

Bureaucrat: “The most logical thing to do is to ban that which we cannot regulate and permit.”:

Because freedom is bad.

It is very telling when bureaucrats claim that ALL COMMERCE WITHIN SOCIETY must be regulated, permitted, and controlled. Bureaucra