Your enemy is the State

An Open Letter to Baltimore Rioters:

I’m not going to give you the cliche “violence is not the answer” line, because that’s a lie. There is a predatory gang of criminals at large who rob, assault, kidnap, and murder with impunity. The police, and the institution they stand for are your enemy, and they will not stop victimizing you until doing so becomes so dangerous that they find more productive ways of sustaining themselves.

Not only is violence the answer, it is the only answer, and the answer is so obvious that I am perpetually baffled by the fact that people don’t see it and act on it every day. The dumbed down docile nature of the public at large is so frighteningly destructive that it makes the looting look civilized by comparison.

So by all means Baltimore, burn buildings to the ground. Go ahead, kill your oppressors. Throw rocks, bottles, firebombs, and whatever weaponry you can muster at your enemy.

But perhaps you might want to figure out who your enemy is before you begin.

The State is your enemy, kill him before he kills you. He is not difficult to identify. He is so brazen in his aggressions that he brags about them on television. He claims his authority to brutalize you, by winning a popularity contest that you call an election. He wears uniforms, displays his emblems proudly, threatens you with sirens and strobe lights. He is not hiding.

Your enemy is the State. Kill him! Gun him down! Set him on fire! Break his spinal cord! Strangle him! Take his property! Make his family live in fear until they disassociate from him!

But if you instead loot businesses owned by your fellow victims, if you set fire to buildings that are not the property of your enemy, if you harm the innocent, then you have become the enemy yourself.

Income Inequality + Globalization

Trading Away Income Inequality: the Effects of Globalization | Learn Liberty

O País dos Fachos

O País dos Fachos por Ricardo Lima:

O português é aquele tipo que questiona o porquê de determinado fulano – ou entidade – não pagar taxas ou licenças e nunca o porquê dessas mesmas taxas ou licenças existirem. Vivemos numa luta de classes distópica em que grupos de interesses se tentam, diariamente, enterrar uns aos outros. Os fumadores que não bebem estão-se marimbando para as taxas sobre o álcool, quem bebe e não fuma aplaude as taxas sobre o fumo. Os taxistas querem ver a Uber pelas costas mas ai de quem taxe os turistas que a clientela voa – e não é para cá. Não nos entendemos. Com o mal do outro convivemos nós bem ..

Vivemos num país maioritariamente católico mas não nos amamos uns aos outros, longe disso, quanto mais respeitar a vontade do próximo. Somos chicos-espertos socorrendo-nos do nosso chico-espertismo para entalar o próximo, que tomamos sempre como um chico-esperto a tentar entalar-nos com o seu chico espertismo.

O que presentemente ocorre com a Uber em relação aos Táxis é o que se vem passando com as bancas de cerveja e as garrafeiras em relação aos bares, com os hostels em relação aos hotéis, com as tascas típicas em relação a alguns restaurantes, com as low-cost em relação à TAP, com os produtos da China e com outros infindáveis casos. É a treta da certificação e dos padrões de qualidade. É a história do cumprimento exímio da lei, da protecção do consumidor, da monitorização e do raio que nos parta. Somos um país de pequenos fascistas. A concorrência é uma coisa chata.

Se para pagar impostos um tipo quase precisa de uma pós-graduação em contabilidade, a burocracia é uma coisa aborrecida, medonha, quase kafkiana. Mas se o vizinho do lado precisa de meia dúzia de requerimentos para pintar as paredes ou mudar o portão do quintal acha-se muito bem. Era o que mais faltava o indivíduo fazer o que lhe apetece com a própria casa .. há sempre um energúmeno a bater palmas ..

.. Enquanto nos acharmos no direito de intervir no espaço do próximo, através do Estado – de outra forma seria uma agressão – estamos a legitimar que este mesmo Estado intervenha no nosso. A história provou que os precedentes que abrimos são perigosos e a última década vem mostrando que cada vez menos existem limites para a esfera interventiva dos governos .. de facto, em Portugal, a burrice tem um passado glorioso e um futuro promissor.”

Keynes was wrong

Jeffrey Tucker Explains Keynes' Backwards Thinking

Just say no

Saxo Bank CEO: "The Election Outcome In Britain Is Our One Chance To Say Stop To Brussels":

Last year, we celebrated the 25 year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Back then, in 1989, who could have imagined that just 25 years later, we would have forgotten about capitalism’s victory, about the dangers and failure of supranational government and control, forgotten socialism's absolute bankruptcy and the importance of competition, efficient capital allocation and specialisation. Yet, here we are, with the EU repeating the failed experiments of the past.

Enough is enough.

Condemn Inflation

Ten Reasons to Condemn Inflation:

1. Inflation Causes Booms and Busts
2. Inflation Redistributes Wealth and Purchasing Power
3. Inflation Prevents the Price of Goods From Falling
4. Inflation Causes the Welfare State to Grow
5. Inflation Destroys Families
6. Inflation Corrupts People
7. Inflation Expands the State Bureaucracy
8. Inflation Makes People Materialistic, Envious, and Egotistical
9. Inflation Depresses People
10. Inflation Leads to Waste and (Natural) Resources Becoming More Expensive

PIB Keynesiano

How GDP Metrics Distort Our View of the Economy:

GDP’s faulty theoretical underpinnings and politically motivated acceptance distort the performance and nature of an economy while failing to satisfactorily estimate a society’s standard of living. In fact, Kuznets partially understood this. In his very first report to the US Congress in 1934, Kuznets said “the welfare of a nation [can] scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income.” Yet the blind usage of GDP persists. That its permanence and persistence only serves the Keynesian policies of greater consumer spending, increased government expenditures, and larger exports through currency debasement should not be considered coincidental. Unfortunately, the resulting economic stagnation, debt accumulation, and price inflation are as inevitable as they are predictable.

From Marxism to Capitalism

Thomas Sowell - From Marxism to Capitalism

tia Ayn Rand

AYN RAND, WORST AUNT EVER: READ HER LETTER TO HER 17-YEAR-OLD NIECE:

If you really want to borrow $25 from me, I will take a chance on finding out what kind of person you are.

I want you to understand right now that I will not accept any excuse—except a serious illness. If you become ill, then I will give you an extension of time—but for no other reason. If, when the debt becomes due, you tell me that you can’t pay me because you needed a new pair of shoes or a new coat or you gave the money to somebody in the family who needed it more than I do—then I will consider you as an embezzler. No, I won’t send a policeman after you, but I will write you off as a rotten person and I will never speak or write to you again.

I will tell you the reasons for the conditions I make: I think that the person who asks and expects other people to give him money, instead of earning it, is the most rotten person on earth. I would like to teach you, if I can, very early in life, the idea of a self-respecting, self-supporting, responsible, capitalistic person. If you borrow money and repay it, it is the best training in responsibility that you can ever have.

Sindicatos

Do Big Unions Buy Politicians?

Socialismo, burocracia, incompetência

Coisas que me tiram do sério (1) por Helder Ferreira:

.. não existe qualquer possibilidade de, em média, a qualidade da gestão pública ter sequer uma fracção da qualidade da gestão privada, pura e simplesmente porque não é possível alinhar os incentivos correctamente e porque a gestão pública é muitas vezes submetida a interesses políticos. As pessoas são o que são e reagem a incentivos. Ponto.

BÓNUS: Governo pergunta aos interessados na TAP se por mais 2€ não querem levar também a Carris, a CP e o Metro

Wealth Disparity

Thomas Sowell - Wealth Disparity

bad people

Robert Higgs:

The array of ad hominems flung in the face of libertarian anarchists is astonishing. We are called utopian, simplistic, unrealistic, impractical, and unconstructive, at best, and quite commonly called idiotic, arrogant, ill-informed, stupid, malevolent, and even destructive. A man from Mars listening to these calumnies might be forgiven for supposing that libertarian anarchists are very bad people, indeed.

Yet we are not the ones who willingly support and justify the rapacious state under which everyone except the privileged few is now plundered economically and debauched morally. We are not the ones who've approved the slaughter of millions of human beings in unnecessary foreign wars, the imprisonment of millions in the USA for victimless crimes, the ruin of entire subgroups of the population by means of welfare dependency, the miseducation of generation after generation in government schools, where the children are fed propaganda and political correctness with delicate concern for their self-esteem but no concern for their ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers. We are not the ones who have voted into office corrupt politicians in one election after another, expressing shock when one of them is episodically revealed to be the kind of scumbag that, in reality, nearly all of them are. We are not the ones who've supported the unjust redistribution of income in a thousand different programs and projects and the destruction of wealth through political machinations that create regime uncertainty, placing private property rights at incalculable risk and paralyzing investors and entrepreneurs who might otherwise drive rapid economic growth. We are not the ones . . . well, the litany might be extended indefinitely.

Surveying this sordid vista, well might one ask, Who are the truly foolish, destructive, and malevolent people in the USA?

Everything Has Its Price

Everything Has Its Price (And That's A Good Thing) | Learn Liberty

The libertarian case against vouchers

The libertarian case against vouchers por Jacob G. Hornberger:

Would that be morally justified? We all know it wouldn’t be. It is ingrained in all of us that stealing is wrong, even when the money provides “choice” to the robber.

That’s one of the fundamental moral objections that libertarians have always raised with respect to not only public schooling but to the entire welfare-state way of life. We have always held that forcibly taking money from a person to whom it belongs and giving it to someone else can never be morally justified, not even when it’s the government (or the majority) doing the taking and the giving. If it’s morally wrong for a robber to take your money to fund a child’s education, it’s just as morally wrong for the state to take your money to fund a child’s education.

Voucher schemes are based on the same immoral principle on which public schooling is based. Public schooling involves the government’s taking of money from people to whom it belongs in order to use it to fund the state’s schooling of people who have children. By the same token, vouchers are based on the government’s taking of money from people in order to fund the costs of private schooling for a select number of people’s children.

Immorality is immorality. Wrongdoing is wrongdoing.

Por que você é pobre?

Por que você é pobre? | Fernando Holiday

No compromise with thieves

Larken Rose:

Carjacker: "Hand over the keys, or die!" [aims gun at victim]
Victim: "Screw you, you thieving bastard!" [aims gun at car-jacker]
Carjacker: "Come on now, I was only expressing myself! No need to get all violent and divisive! Can't we all just get along?"
Victim: "Not while you're trying to rob me."
Carjacker: "Let's just agree to disagree."
Victim: "You mean you'll stop robbing me?"
Carjacker: "No, I mean we should agree to disagree about whether I should steal your car. I think I should. You think I shouldn't. But does that mean we can't be polite and civil, and appreciate opposing views?"
Victim: "You stupid shit. No, we can't get along or be civilized as long as you're trying to rob me!"
Carjacker: "Hey, no need for name-calling! You're so judgmental and intolerant! I'm offended!"
Victim: "Piss off, thief."
Carjacker: "My viewpoint is just as valid as yours!"
Victim: "No, it isn't."
Carjacker: "So you think you're BETTER than me? You think your opinion is more valid than mine?"
Victim: "YES, you jackass! Because I'm not trying to rob you!"
That's pretty much how debates between statists and voluntaryists usually go.

War

WAR | What They Won't Tell You!Texto - War, Profit, and the State

Aristo-sindicalismo

Labor Unions Create Unemployment: It’s a Feature, Not a Bug:

.. the labor movement, from the very beginning, meant to protect organized white male labor from competition against black labor, immigrant labor, female labor, and nonunion labor.

Rule of Law or Emergence by Anarchy?

Embora com uma opinião pouco sofisticada relativamente ao voluntarismo...


Hayek and Hazlett: Rule of Law or Emergence by Anarchy?

O Papa anticapitalista

Pope Francis Condemns Legalization of Marijuana

John Galt Speech

Atlas Shrugged: John Galt Speech (raw footage)

O Papa anticapitalista

Coisas que não entram na cabecinha imoral do Papa: Stanford research finds climate change regulation burden heaviest on poor

The Ideas of Friedrich Hayek

Episode 85: The Ideas of Friedrich Hayek (with Steven Horwitz)

O Papa anticapitalista

The Vatican’s global warming blunder
:

Amazingly, the Vatican’s refusal to consider the mountains of scientific data that challenge the UN’s dogma on climate makes the comparison with Galileo’s trial remarkably apt. Books were burned and consideration of the heliocentric theory of the solar system banned. Today, for global warming pressure groups, censorship is a first resort.

Frustrated by the Churcgalileoh’s deliberate blindness to the facts revealed by telescopes about astronomy, Galileo wrote to Johannes Kepler, “what do you have to say about the principal philosophers of this academy who are filled with the stubbornness of an asp and do not want to look at either the planets, the moon or the telescope, even though I have freely and deliberately offered them the opportunity a thousand times? Truly, just as the asp stops its ears, so do these philosophers shut their eyes to the light of truth.”

Is it modern-day heresy to point out that the UN’s climate computer models project a warmer world than satellite observations record? That these satellites can find no meaningful global warming since the 1990’s? That the weather is historically normal and the incredibly painful and expensive “solutions” the UN prescribes would have very little impact on the climate, even if the UN’s models were correct?