The Olympics are one of the most popular sporting events in the world. So how is it possible that tons of seats are empty for even popular events?
Some tickets went to athletes' family members or VIPs. For most everyone else, the British Government demanded that fans go through a complex 13 step process, where they state which events they wanted to attend. Most (arbitrarily?) were turned down. Some were given tickets to other events, but many weren't interested in those.
No one, even those who got tickets to rhythmic gymnastics but didn't want to go...was allowed to make money reselling tickets. If they tried, they could be fined up to $7,800.
The result: empty seats. Because government didn't allow seats to be resold or purchased in an open market, there was inefficient allocation of seats. Tickets didn't get to those who really wanted to attend.
Only a government could take a popular sporting event, set up a "fair" system for tickets, and then disappoint fans, and leave embarrassing scenes like these.
Thank goodness the government doesn't dole out food.
Milton Friedman once said, "Put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
quarta-feira, agosto 15, 2012
socialismo olímpico
Gold Medal Central Planning por John Stossel:
Veterinária Privadas vs. "Saúde" Estatal
Human Medicine Could Learn a Few Tricks From Veterinarians
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Yesterday, as staff at two different Arizona veterinary practices in cities many miles apart patiently explained to me the options for treating my snake-bit dog and the likely menu of costs for doing so, it occurred to me that I've rarely been treated with so much respect for my decision-making abilities or my wallet in any medical office geared toward two-legged customers. The reason is simple: At the vet's office, I'm the ultimate decision-maker and the payer-of-all-bills. At my doctor's office, I've allowed myself to be pushed to a secondary position as a responsible party. And the difference shows.
The idea of removing patients as responsible parties was to remove money from the decision-making process — to give us the illusion that care is free, and that treatment will be provided with no need for us to fret over the bills. It's not free of course. We've just bought the illusion, and transferred the cost-benefit analyses to somebody else. We still get some choices, but unless we're among the few who pay out of pocket, they've been winnowed and pre-approved ahead of time.
Actually, there is one place where people make real choices: The dentist. After a day of not discussing costs with her patients, my wife has been known to decide among a few tough alternatives at our dentist's office for treatment of her inherited slow-moving train wreck of a set of choppers. But, like veterinarians, dentists expect most of their patients to pay their own bills.
Yes, there are some costs that are beyond the means of many people, and there are resulting tradeoffs to be made. But if we want to get the same adult choices in a doctor's office as we do at an animal hospital, we have to take back more of the responsibility for, at least, the predictable costs of our own care.
Debate on Climate Change
Why We Need Debate, Not Consensus, on Climate Change:
Let’s restart the discussion by agreeing on these basic propositions:
First, people and organizations that break the law or use hate language such as “denier” should be barred from the global warming debate.
Second, recent weather and temperature anomalies have not been unusual and are not evidence of a human effect on climate.
Third, given the rapid and unstoppable increase in greenhouse gas emissions by Third World countries, it is pointless for the U.S. and other developed countries to invest very much in reducing their own emissions.
Fourth, tax breaks and direct subsidies to solar and wind power and impossible-to-meet renewable power mandates and regulatory burdens on coal-powered electricity generation plants have been disastrous for taxpayers, businesses, and consumers of electricity, and ought to be repealed.
Fifth, the world is entering an era of fossil fuel abundance that could lift billions of people out of poverty and help restart the U.S. economy. We have the technology to use that energy safely and with minimal impact on the environment and human health. Basic human compassion and common sense dictate that fear of global warming ought not be used to block access to this new energy.
Agree to these five simple propositions, Fred, and we can begin to work together to address some of the real environmental problems facing the U.S. and the world.
La crisis de la socialdemocracia
La crisis de la socialdemocracia por José Carlos Herrán:
La socialdemocracia fue una alternativa durante el periodo en que el "socialismo real" le opuso resistencia, pero nunca lo fue a nivel interno, ni una vez caído el bloque soviético, dado que su dominio en el seno de las sociedades occidentales es y ha sido absoluto desde al menos el final de la segunda guerra mundial.
¿Qué papel político ha tenido el liberalismo durante este tiempo? Fundamentalmente, ninguno ..
La cuestión es si esta crisis va o no a suponer un antes y un después en la breve historia de la socialdemocracia. Por fin nos encontramos en una situación en la que el Estado aparece noqueado e incapaz de enfrentarse a la vorágine que él mismo ha creado. La socialdemocracia ha dejado de proporcionar respuestas completas, no concede esperanza a un pueblo cada vez más pesimista y desencantado.
La crisis de la socialdemocracia deja paso a tres mundos posibles:
1.- Una socialdemocracia agónica que arrastre consigo a toda la civilización occidental hasta su ocaso definitivo.
2.- Una socialdemocracia reformista, que sorprenda como siempre lo hace haciendo propios instrumentos liberales que logren asegurarla durante, digamos, los próximos veinte años.
3.- Un horizonte de sensatez y auténtica indignación donde se vea en el liberalismo la única baza nunca utilizada, la alternativa real al sistema que tanto desagrado e indignación, por uno u otro motivo, nos provoca a todos.
terça-feira, agosto 14, 2012
Calm
Manvotional: The Majesty of Calmness por William George Jordan:
The man who is calm has his course in life clearly marked on his chart. His hand is ever on the helm. Storm, fog, night, tempest, danger, hidden reefs – he is ever prepared and ready for them. He is made calm and serene by the realization that in these crises of his voyage he needs a clear mind and a cool head; that he has naught to do but to do each day the best he can by the light he has; that he will never flinch nor falter for a moment; that, though he may have to tack and leave his course for a time, he will never drift, he will get back into the true channel, he will keep ever headed toward his harbor. When he will reach it, how he will reach it matters not to him. He rests in calmness, knowing he has done his best. If his best seem to be overthrown or over-ruled, then he must still bow his head – in calmness. To no man is permitted to know the future of his life, the finality. God commits to man ever only new beginnings, new wisdom, and new days to use to the best of his knowledge.
When the worries and cares of the day fret you, and begin to wear upon you, and you chafe under the friction – be calm. Stop, rest for a moment, and let calmness and peace assert themselves. If you let these irritating outside influences get the better of you, you are confessing your inferiority to them, by permitting them to dominate you. Study the disturbing elements, each by itself, bring all the will-power of your nature to bear upon them, and you will find that they will, one by one, melt into nothingness, like vapors fading before the sun. The glow of calmness that will then pervade your mind, the tingling sensation of an inflow of new strength, may be to you the beginning of the revelation of the supreme calmness that is possible for you. Then, in some great hour of your life, when you stand face to face with some awful trial, when the structure of your ambition and life-work crumbles in a moment, you will be brave. You can then fold your arms calmly, look out undismayed and undaunted upon the ashes of your hope, upon the wreck of what you have faithfully built, and with brave heart and unfaltering voice you may say: “So let it be – I will build again.”
Reason Saves Cleveland
Reason Saves Cleveland With Drew Carey
The Decline of a Once-Great City, Ep.1 | Fix the Schools, Ep.2
Privatize It, Ep.3 | Take Care of Business, Ep.4
Encourage Bottom-Up Redevelopment, Ep.5 | Bring Back the People, Ep.6
People kill people
Why Do They Pretend To Care? por Butler Shaffer:
The idea that material objects have the capacity to direct and control our behavior is so childish that you can see how nicely it fits into the state’s interests in keeping us as obedient children. But if the proposition be true, none of us has "free will" (i.e., we are but billiard balls reacting – without intention – to forces outside us). Vector analysis, employing laws of physics, would be sufficient to explain human behavior. If this is so, what moral justification would the state have to punish anyone for anything that they do? If guns were responsible for the mass-killings in Colorado as well as in Wisconsin, why should those who pulled the triggers be held responsible? Perhaps we could revert to the practice in early England when, for example, if a gate collapsed and killed a man, the gate was put on trial and, if found guilty, punished for its "wrongdoing."
But if guns have the power to cause us to do things we would not be inclined to do in their absence, wouldn’t the same logic apply to weaponry in the hands of the state? Perhaps it is the guns, bombs, rockets, aircraft carriers, missiles, bombers, and other inanimate tools of death and destruction that cause wars. Those who desire peace in the world should organize themselves on behalf of disarming the state; of taking from the military and police officers the tools with which they are driven by unseen forces to inflict violence upon others. Perhaps the power of inanimate "things" explains why the United States leads the world in the percentage of its population in penitentiaries: in the language of chaos theory, prisons may serve as "attractors" that draw men and women to be incarcerated therein!
Given the pervasiveness of the thinking that sees war and violence as the nature of human beings in society, should we be shocked to find occasional individuals emulating the behavior of those who engage in such activity at political levels? When soldiers who kill innocent people in foreign lands are rewarded with medals and accorded the status of "heroes," why do we not extend the same approval to the man who kills his neighbor? .. Why are serial-killers rightly condemned for their mass slaughters, while those who play central roles in conducting wars that kill hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children receive the Nobel Peace Prize?
Cresçam
Cresçam:
Pela Helena Matos fico ciente que o PS espera que o "crescimento" brote amanhã, em Quarteira, num jantar do PSD. O PS nunca faz nada por menos.
Entre 1995 e 2011, com uma leve intermitência da "direita" que não durou três anos, o PS teve a possibilidade de fazer brotar "crescimento" onde lhe aprouvesse.
Aí pelos idos de Março, Abril de 2011, percebeu-se, sem necessidade de consultar os mapas de Medina Carreira, que o "crescimento" tinha sofrido, por assim dizer, um incremento negativo nos anos de ouro da governação socialista. Isso, junto com outras maleitas, obrigou à intervenção da Europa e do FMI, por sinal duas coisas que ainda não acertaram o passo relativamente ao dito "crescimento".
Álvaro Santos Pereira - uma pessoa serena e pouco espalhafatosa o que contradiz a "tradição" do frenesim mediático do "faz de conta" e do "photoshop" - tem estado, com discrição, a fazer um trabalho que acompanha o controlo das finanças públicas. Tem apenas o crédito de um ano de trabalho na economia, apesar da vasta "brigada de sapadores", enquanto o PS pode sempre exibir um passivo com mais de uma década de "saber de experiência feito". Cresçam.
Citação Liberal do Dia
Liberalism is no religion, no worldview, no party of special interests. It is no religion, because it demands neither faith nor devotion, because there is nothing mystical about it and because it has no dogmas. It is no worldview because it does not try to explain the cosmos, and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence. It is no party of special interests, because it does not provide or seek to provide any special advantage whatsoever to any individual or any group. It is something entirely different. It is an ideology, a doctrine of the mutual relationship among the members of society and, at the same time, the application of this doctrine to the conduct of men in actual society. It promises nothing that exceeds what can be accomplished in society and through society. It seeks to give men only one thing: the peaceful, undisturbed development of material well-being for all, in order thereby to shield them from the external causes of pain and suffering as far as it lies within the power of social institutions to do so at all. To diminish suffering, to increase happiness: That is its aim.
Ludwig von Mises
segunda-feira, agosto 13, 2012
is it proper to take a tax funded job?
The Third Rail of Libertarianism por Wendy McElroy:
.. is it proper to take a tax funded job?
The answer may seem obvious. If you agree taxation is theft, then it is never correct to seek out and accept stolen money.
Why does the tax funding issue matter? After all, accepting tax money is so common that it has lost much of its stigma. To rephrase the question…Why does it matter if someone who praises monogamy flaunts an affair? Or if a purported animal lover kicks every dog he sees? And an advocate of non-violence beats up his wife? There is the issue of personal ethics, of course, but I leave that to the people involved. I am concerned with the broader issue of movement leaders invalidating their words through their actions.
Mind the Theory
Mind the Theory de Thorsten Polleit:
The saying that things may work nicely in theory, but do not necessarily work in practice is well known.[1] It is typically meant to disparage the importance of theory, suggesting it would be too far removed from practical matters to help in solving the issue at hand.
.. Kant made the point that theory provides "principles of a fairly general nature," or general rules. However, theory does not tell man how to apply it, says Kant. For this, the act of judgment is required:No one can pretend to be practically versed in a branch of knowledge and yet treat theory with scorn, without exposing the fact that he is an ignoramus in his subject.
In this methodological work Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) emphasized the importance of theory for acting man at the most fundamental level, noting that theory and human action are in fact inseparable. Mises writes,Action is preceded by thinking. Thinking is to deliberate beforehand over future action and to reflect afterwards upon past action. Thinking and acting are inseparable. Every action is always based on a definite idea about causal relations. He who thinks a causal relation thinks a theorem. Action without thinking, practice without theory are unimaginable. The reasoning may be faulty and the theory incorrect; but thinking and theorizing are not lacking in any action. On the other hand thinking is always thinking of a potential action. Even he who thinks of a pure theory assumes that the theory is correct, i.e., that action complying with its content would result in an effect to be expected from its teachings. It is of no relevance for logic whether such action is feasible or not.
capitalism is sine qua non of prosperity
“You Didn’t Build That . . .” por Sandy Ikeda:
I need only refer, as I’ve often done before, to Leonard Read’s short and wise essay “I, Pencil,” which explains how no one could possibly marshal the resources, skills, and know-how to make an ordinary lead pencil because those things are spread across countless people around the planet. The same could be said, even more emphatically, of someone like the late Steve Jobs, whose Apple, Inc. created one of the first home computers. Even Jobs could not have made a pencil, let alone something like an iPad, himself ..
This is not to discount in any way Steve Jobs’s achievement. Again, Obama is wrong when he says, “You didn’t build that.” It’s true that without the Apple designers, manufacturers, marketers, and millions of others, the iPad could not be built. But that’s true in the same sense that without air, water, and land, the iPad also couldn’t be built. Yet Steve Jobs was the indispensible element, the sine qua non, of the iPad.
So who created the underlying order that politicians and bureaucrats want to control? The answer is–nobody. A free society is one in which people respect private property, freely associate, and do not tolerate legal privilege or persecution. Under those conditions, the free market is what happens when you just leave people alone.
Private property gives people a sphere of autonomy that lets them use their knowledge and skills as they see fit. The philosophy of individualism–that the individual is more important than society or the state–is the key because it enables and encourages free association, free trade, and an astonishingly complex division of labor and knowledge to spontaneously emerge out of individual choices. Nobody planned that degree of social cooperation, nobody could have planned it–any more than Steve Jobs could himself make a pencil.
Exílio e morte
Reconheçam: é difícil viver com gente capaz de vos mandar para o exílio e para a morte, é difícil torná-los nossos íntimos, é difícil amá-los.
Milan Kundera, A Brincadeira
Exílio e morte:A despersonalização é o primeiro golpe infligido pelo comunismo a uma população imprevidente. Começa aí, na identidade individual, nos laços sociais e naturais, na solidariedade voluntária e na própria condição humana ..
.. E é quando os homens se metamorfoseiam em animais perigosos, quando vivem num clima de guerra permanente, seja surdo ou aberto, seja literalmente sangrento ou apenas psicologicamente devastador, é nessa altura, dizia, que o comunismo e outras doutrinas totalitárias atingem o seu esplendor, o acme ilusório que anuncia já o estertor e as ruínas ..
Dark Knight Politics
No seguimento de Batman, Dark Knight Rises: Its Politics and Ours por Jeffrey Tucker:
The problem is that the film gives Gotham (and us) a choice between two forms of despotism, one “left wing” and one “right wing,” and asks us to choose the lesser of two evils. We can have one of two systems: bureaucratic/authoritarian or revolutionary/dictatorial. The idea of a self-managing society is just out of the question. The film biases that choice by showing one as offered by the evil villain and the other by a corrupt, yet stable status quo.
Do you see now? Dark Knight Rises replicates the choice that the present political system presents to us. We look at the choices and throw up our hands, knowing full well that neither really offers answers to the problem ..
It’s the two sides of the street fights between the Occupy protesters and the cops. It’s the left versus the right. It’s Republicans versus Democrats. It’s “law and order” versus revolutionary dictatorship. It’s Italian fascism versus Soviet communism. It’s the two sides of the Spanish Civil War. It is also the choice faced by old Rome in its late stage: rule by a corrupt oligarchy of the Senate or a cruel imperial dictatorship of Caesar.
It is the choice given to every nation in its late stages .. Dark Knight Rises doesn’t show us another way. It never shows us the option of a self-managing society where people are permitted to shape their own destinies apart from the will of two gangs of political elites. Whoever wins the great struggle over Gotham’s future, the results will be imposed from the top down.
The result is that viewers are left with a sense of hopelessness in the same way that the current political climate denies people authentic hope. Whatever happens will come from the center and top, leaving the rest of us unfree to manage our own lives, keep and use our own property, mind our own business and cobble together our own human associations. In The Dark Knight Rises, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not even distant memories.
Rant do Dia
Proprietários de zonas ribeirinhas obrigados a reivindicar imóveis em tribunal
A ovelha vermelha deste Governo - a minista Assunção Cristas - já com provas dadas em várias modalidades olímpicas socialistas (ex. impostos indirectos, subsídios, planificação, oratória colectivista), agora insiste na expropriação despótica de propriedade privada, ao abrigo de uma lei com 150 anos, ou seja várias gerações e três regimes políticos atrás. Há quem lhe chame fascismo, mas esta é uma classificação redutora, uma vez que estes abusos tirânicos existem desde sempre -- pois sempre houve tribalismo de governantes iluminados sem escrúpulos em usar a força (e farsa) da legislação para subjugar a sociedade civil. (Tragicamente) foi graças a eles que se forjou uma cultura de liberdade e de dignidade humana, que inclui a tradição democrata-cristã, que a nossa Chávez de saias tão airosamente envergonha.
A ovelha vermelha deste Governo - a minista Assunção Cristas - já com provas dadas em várias modalidades olímpicas socialistas (ex. impostos indirectos, subsídios, planificação, oratória colectivista), agora insiste na expropriação despótica de propriedade privada, ao abrigo de uma lei com 150 anos, ou seja várias gerações e três regimes políticos atrás. Há quem lhe chame fascismo, mas esta é uma classificação redutora, uma vez que estes abusos tirânicos existem desde sempre -- pois sempre houve tribalismo de governantes iluminados sem escrúpulos em usar a força (e farsa) da legislação para subjugar a sociedade civil. (Tragicamente) foi graças a eles que se forjou uma cultura de liberdade e de dignidade humana, que inclui a tradição democrata-cristã, que a nossa Chávez de saias tão airosamente envergonha.
domingo, agosto 12, 2012
Don’t eat the rich
The Rich Don’t Make Us Poor por Charles Kaupke:
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the need for the wealthy to “pay their fair share” so that the federal government can pay down its debts and continue to fund programs to provide basic human necessities for the poor, such as food, shelter, and prophylactics ..
.. There are a number of errors embedded in the above explanation .. but let’s cut to the central one: the fallacy that there always has been and always will be a fixed amount of wealth in the world, and that wealth is merely shifted back and forth among people, but it is never really increased. Economists call this the “fixed pie” fallacy.
Historical reality bears out the fact that in capitalism, people become rich by putting what capital they have to good, productive use, and that anyone, no matter how poor they start out, can become wealthy ..
Sadly, it seems that many Americans, including the Occupy crowd and even our own President, are not aware of the unique and amazing power of entrepreneurship: the ability to use our resources and God-given talent to better the lives of those we work with and those we serve. Only when we as a nation remember that the phenomenon of money can be used in a dynamic way to participate as co-creators with God, will we begin to work our way out of the economic mess we are in.
segunda-feira, agosto 06, 2012
Private Hangovers
Hangover Heaven: The Vegas Hangover Cure on Wheels
This is really innovative, individualized healthcare that meets a very direct need," says ReasonTV's Kennedy. Kennedy subjected herself to excessive amounts of alcohol in order to properly assess the IV treatment.
Corporações
Corporações por André Abrantes Amaral:
O mau funcionamento dos tribunais é uma das explicações para a fraca prestação da economia portuguesa. Evidencia as vantagens do não pagamento de uma factura, do incumprimento de um contrato e do desrespeito da lei.
Há anos que discutimos este problema e ele permanece sem solução à vista. Talvez porque a procuramos onde ela não está: na mera alteração de regras processuais, quando o drama vive na visão corporativista que ainda temos da sociedade e, neste caso concreto, do funcionamento da justiça. É esta visão que explica por que motivo, apesar de ouvirmos os representantes das diversas classes profissionais falarem no consenso como indispensável para que o sistema judicial funcione, as divergências se vão amontoando. Quem olha de fora vê um grupo de pessoas que, apesar de trabalharem na mesma área, não se entendem.
Nem sempre foi assim. Quem troque impressões com juristas mais velhos verá as diferentes experiências que tiveram: notários que outrora foram magistrados ou advogados; juízes que fizeram alegações e advogados que já foram juízes. Uma realidade rica e diversificada que a divisão do mundo em corporações matou. Uma dinâmica que não impedia apenas o pleitear desnecessário de inúmeras matérias em tribunal, como permitiria uma melhor adaptação da Justiça ao mundo de hoje. A desjudicialização implica entendimento, e este passa pela confiança que só nasce da partilha. Daí que, quanto mais barreiras pusermos no acesso ao mundo da justiça, pior.
Methodological Collectivism
Em The Statist Propositions of Protectionism:
The difference between the statist and the libertarian has to do with methodology. The statist begins his discussion of the economy from the perspective of the collective enterprise known as civil government. He equates the state (the monopoly of coercion) and society (voluntary institutions). He also identifies the state and the nation. He sees the state as the agency which alone legally represents the nation. In some cases, he actually believes that the state is the same as the nation. Rousseau is the best case. He argued for the existence of the General Will — collective humanity, but stripped of intermediate loyalties and bonds — which is represented by the state.
There is no doubt that there is a legal entity called the United States government. It is a judicial construct. It is marked by its proponents' assertion that it has final jurisdiction over the use of badges and guns inside its borders. It has a monopoly of violence that cannot legally be challenged by any other entity. It has the final say over who gets to point a gun at whose belly.
If we do not think of the state in this way, we will not understand what the state really is: legalized coercion. The state is the agency that asserts and enforces its right to stick guns in people's bellies. There is a great debate over the legal and moral foundations that undergird this judicial assertion, but the right of lawfully holding a gun and sticking it in somebody else's belly is the essence of the state.
Laissez-Faire Learning
Laissez-Faire Learning por David Greenwald:
As a teacher in a public high school, I am daily confronted with the lamentable realities of state-monopoly education. Student apathy, methodological stagnation, bureaucratic inefficiency, textbook-publishing cartels, obsessive preoccupation with grades, coercive relationships, and rigid, sanitized curricula are just a few of the more obvious problems, attended by the cold-shower disillusionment and gradual burnout among teachers to which they almost invariably lead.
.. it is largely the refrain of embittered progressives for whom "free" universal education has long been the desideratum of social justice, and who cannot understand how the behemoth they so vigorously midwifed into existence and then wet-nursed for a century could have so thoroughly betrayed their loftiest and most cherished ideal.
Yet ironically, it is the unassailable faith in the achievability of precisely this ideal of universal equality that immunizes public education against every reasonable argument advanced in opposition to it. Notwithstanding its manifest shortcomings, none of which has found a remedy despite decades of legislative reform, hardly anyone is prepared to see this system replaced by anything resembling a real market in education ..
.. no two individuals would or could possibly educate themselves in exactly the same way. The self-directed intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual explorations of millions of people simultaneously thus result in an unfathomable diversification of interests and activities that amounts to an educational "division of labor" – one that supports and enhances the division of labor of the market economy, and is in fact its logical precursor.
It must surely be obvious that such a philosophy is in every way wholly incompatible with systems of compulsory or universalized schooling aimed at "equalizing opportunity," ..
Education, if it is to be worthy of the name, demands a method opposite to that of bureaucratic management and entirely irreconcilable with it. It requires flexibility, parsimony, innovation, and above all, a means of daily subjecting the producers of educational services to the competition of their peers and the approval or disapproval of their clients.
It requires, in other words, the free market.
Crimes of the Communist Regimes
Via O Insurgente, DECLARATION ON CRIMES OF COMMUNISM:
We, the participants of the international conference “Crimes of the Communist Regimes“ held in Prague on 24-26 February 2010, declare the following:
1.Communist regimes have committed, and are in some cases still committing, crimes against humanity in all countries of Central and Eastern Europe and in other countries where communism is still alive.
7.As democracy must learn to be capable of defending itself, Communism needs to be condemned in a similar way as Nazism was. We are not equating the respective crimes of Nazism and Communism, including the Gulag, the Laogai and the Nazi concentration camps. They should each be studied and judged on their own terrible merits .. Just as we are not willing to relativise crimes of Nazism, we must not accept a relativisation of crimes of Communism.
11.As an act of recognition of the victims and respect for the immense suffering inflicted upon half of the continent, Europe must erect a memorial to the victims of world Communism, following the example of the memorial in the USA in Washington, D.C.
the miracle of capitalist operations
The Miracle at Mon Ami Gabi:
.. there is no way to know in advance what people will be ordering from the gigantic menu. The kitchen food inventory must be vast and adaptable to sudden changes of taste and interest. There must be perfect coordination between the prep chefs and the cooks, between the cooks and the wait staff, between the bartenders and hosts and hostesses and everyone else.
As I said, there were hundreds of people either dining or waiting to dine .. Every single person had an issue: Meat must be cooked this way not that, the wine must be dry not sweet, the potatoes must be replaced with broccoli, the water must come from a bottle and not the tap and so on through thousands of possibilities.
.. it could have been madness, riotous. Yet the situation was orderly in every way, not like the mechanical workings of a clock, but even more impressively the coordination of volitional human beings each exercising free will. It was like a market economy in miniature. No police. The “thin blue line” was profitability.
Every person there was a king, a paying customer who wanted everything exactly right. The staff worked tirelessly to oblige. As soon as one party left a table, it was cleaned and moved and reset to accommodate a new party with new demands, new tastes, new preferences.
The structure of production of this amazing place extends beyond what exists in its four walls. The food comes from all over the world. The coordination extends to transportation, agriculture and ranching, herbs and spices from remote places, liquors and beers from all corners of the earth. And the coordination extends back in time, even decades and even centuries from the first seeds planted in the vineyards that make the wines and liquors. And the technology to make it happen is all relatively new, from refrigeration all the way through digital communication between the kitchen and the maitre d’.
This stunningly complex operation — far more complicated than any operation attempted by any government bureaucracy ..
If you were to propose such a system to a person who had never seen it in operation, that person would never believe such a thing as this could happen .. The market has made it so ..
.. We repay this system by teaching our students that capitalism is evil, by protesting the market in mass demonstrations, by taxing the entrepreneurs, by spitting on the accumulators of capital who fund the system and take the risk.
Then we elect politicians, even presidents, who are sworn enemies of our great benefactor, the free market, which we — through crazy logic and deep historical ignorance — blame for all our troubles. Then, these same people praise government as the source of all good things.
Lies, lies, lies
The Trillion Dollar Lies
I feel bad. I feel like a sucker. Like one by one I fell for every lie. I talk about “don’t do this”, “don’t do that”, and yet I fell for all of them. I’ve been in everything from a cult to the cult of homeownership, the cult of college, the cult of sex, the cult of drugs, every cult imaginable, the cult of corporate safety, the cult of money. Why couldn’t I just be smart from the beginning? Why does it take stupidity to become smart? Or maybe I’m still stupid. Who knows?
Let’s do one of those psychology tests where I ask you something and you say the first word that comes to mind. Here’s the usual responses I get after years of doing this:
Me: Home ownership. Other: “Roots”
Me: College: Other: “Good job”
Me: Good war. Other: “World War II”
Me: Success. Other: “Fame and money”
Me: Iran. Other: “They want to kill all the jews”.
Me: Voting. Other: “Doing something for your country”.
the world to be destroyed tomorrow
97 per cent of the world to be destroyed tomorrow!:
.. the broader point to be made is this: don't believe what the BBC (or NASA or the Royal Society or the Guardian or the Independent or the National Academy of Sciences or the Prince of Wales or Al Gore or any US TV broadcaster that isn't Fox) tells you about global warming, the environment, climate change, polar bears, sustainability, ocean acidification, glacier melt or Greenland, EVER.
Catastrophic Man Made Global Warming is a hoax. There is no real-world evidence whatsoever to suggest that the modest warming of around 0.8 degrees C which the planet has experienced since 1850 is in any way dangerous or unprecedented. Even the suggestion that it is mostly man-made is at best moot, at worst long since falsified by real world data and superseded by more plausible theories
So next time you hear the BBC (or similar) spouting some unutterable crap about some amazingly shocking new event/piece of research/paper showing that the glaciers or Greenland are melting faster than before, that polar bears or coral reefs are becoming more endangered, or that there's anything remotely worrying about the possibility that the planet has warmed by 1.5 degrees C since the Industrial Revolution, don't just take it with a huge pinch of salt. Treat it with about as much respect as you would a report from North Korea radio telling you that this year's bumper grain harvest has been more gloriously plentiful than ever before and that workers are now at severe risk of expiring due to an excess of nourishment, plenitude and joy.
Friedman @ 100 (3)
No seguimento de VID Friedman @ 100 (2), Stephen Moore: The Man Who Saved Capitalism:
In the 1960s, Friedman famously explained that "there's no such thing as a free lunch." If the government spends a dollar, that dollar has to come from producers and workers in the private economy. There is no magical "multiplier effect" by taking from productive Peter and giving to unproductive Paul. As obvious as that insight seems, it keeps being put to the test. Obamanomics may be the most expensive failed experiment in free-lunch economics in American history.
Equally illogical is the superstition that government can create prosperity by having Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke print more dollars. In the very short term, Friedman proved, excess money fools people with an illusion of prosperity. But the market quickly catches on, and there is no boost in output, just higher prices.
Friedman stood unfailingly and heroically with the little guy against the state. He used to marvel that the intellectual left, which claims to espouse "power to the people," so often cheers as states suppress individual rights.
He loved turning the intellectual tables on liberals by making the case that regulation often does more harm than good. His favorite example was the Food and Drug Administration, whose regulations routinely delay the introduction of lifesaving drugs. "When the FDA boasts a new drug will save 10,000 lives a year," he would ask, "how many lives were lost because it didn't let the drug on the market last year?"
He supported drug legalization (much to the dismay of supporters on the right) and was particularly proud to be an influential voice in ending the military draft in the 1970s. When his critics argued that he favored a military of mercenaries, he would retort: "If you insist on calling our volunteer soldiers 'mercenaries,' I will call those who you want drafted into service involuntarily 'slaves.'"
Well over 200 million were liberated from poverty thanks to the rediscovery of the free market. And now as the world teeters close to another recession, leaders need to urgently rediscover Friedman's ideas.
domingo, agosto 05, 2012
Baby Boomers Vs. the Young
The Real Class Warfare is Baby Boomers Vs. Younger Americans por Nick Gillespie:
You're not getting screwed by billionaires and plutocrats. You're getting screwed by Mom and Dad. Systematically and in all sorts of ways. Old people are doing everything possible to rob you of your money, your future, your dignity, and your freedom.
.. right now, old people are not going gentle into that good night. They know they're going to need younger people to change their diapers and pay their bills for them, literally and figuratively ..
As a point of fact, retirees aren't particularly "independent" if they rely on tax dollars for income, are they? But here's the real rub, kids: You're getting screwed by Social Security, a program that is now more sacrosanct to aging boomers than Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. You're paying more into the system than you're ever going to get out. No wonder it's mandatory ..
.. Those of us either too young or too unborn to remember the '60s aren't being selfish if we call attention to a system that loots the relatively young and relatively poor to give money to the relatively old and relatively rich. We're being fair.
It should go without saying that it doesn't have to be this way. And don't buy into the idea that the way things are is just part of the circle of life ..
sábado, agosto 04, 2012
Friedman @ 100 (2)
No seguimento de Friedman @ 100
Friedman as a hero:
Friedman as a hero:
.. perhaps this is one of the most important driving forces behind Friedman’s wide impact: he wrote brilliantly. Whereas Law Legislation and Liberty requires an investment of weeks of spare time, Free to Choose requires an investment of a few days (at most). His academic writing was as fluent as his popular writing. He is one of the few writers who could produce technical papers that could be read by an under-graduate in one go. And the breadth of his work was astonishing.
Friedman’s empirical work, his use of theory and his brilliant use of analogy led him to be able to communicate a completely convincing case for a policy proposal and demolish the opposing case. He patiently, and kindly, tore the opposing case to shreds, using a mix of theory and empirical evidence in a manner that is not replicated in any free-market economist today. He was also kind and courteous. Disingenuous people on the left often point to the advice he gave (one trip, one meeting) to Pinochet. The simple fact is that Friedman would argue with anybody because he believed they could come to understand the arguments for freedom. The left are comfortable with Mo Mowlam talking to Gerry Adams about peace but are not comfortable with Friedman talking to Pinochet about freedom. That says more about the left than it does about Friedman.
We desperately need a Friedman today - as a communicator and as an academic. He would make his current opponents of free markets look distinctly second division.
estágios profissionais
Why Are Politicians Killing Off "First Jobs"? por John Stossel:
.. I’m appalled watching politicians kill off “first” jobs. (They say it’s to protect us.)
Unpaid internships are great. They are win-win. They let young people experiment with careers, and figure out what they’d like and what they’re good at. They help employers produce better things and recruit new employees.
I’ve used interns all my career. They have done some of my best research. Some became journalists themselves. Many told me: “Thank you! I learned more working for you than I learned in college, and I didn’t have to pay tuition!
I could have paid them, but then I would have used fewer interns. When I worked at ABC, the network decided to pay them—$10 an hour—but it also cut the number of internships by half. Politicians don’t get it. Neither do most people ..
Low-wage first jobs are indispensable for both personal advancement and social progress. Our best hope for prosperity is the free market. Government must get out of our way and allow consenting adults to create as many “first” jobs as possible.
Ice and Capitalism
Ice and Economics — Prices, property rights, and profit (and loss) por David J. Hebert:
What can ice teach us about economics? We’ll see, but let’s begin with some fundamentals.
Prices, property rights, and profit (and loss) lead to information, incentives, and innovation. This simple statement contains nearly every lesson necessary for a free and prosperous society.
This lesson is exemplified in early nineteenth-century Boston with the rise of the American natural ice trade ..
Meanwhile, as the price of the ice on the ponds rose, the people of Boston gained the information that the ice would bring a higher return in the Bahamas, thus they used less themselves and sold the ice to the Bahamians. In 1840 the ponds in the Boston area were explicitly divided, giving each person on the lake the right to exclude everyone else from harvesting any ice that wasn’t theirs. This allowed Tudor, for example, to invest in his ice and let it freeze longer so that it could better survive the long journey from Boston to India, which entailed crossing the equator twice and sailing around the tip of Africa. As Tudor earned profit from his venture, more people were attracted to the ice.
To continue to earn a profit, therefore, he had to find a way to outcompete everyone else ..
Tudor and Wyeth also experimented with new means of insulating the ice from the heat, discovering that sawdust was not only a fantastic insulator but was also cheaply available from the sawmills around Boston. They also taught their customers new ways to use the ice, including making ice cream and storing the ice in iceboxes to preserve foods longer.
In short the three Ps lead to the three Is: Prices, property rights, and profit (and loss) lead to information, incentives, and innovation. With these firmly in place, a free and prosperous society will follow.
Two Attitudes toward the State
Two Attitudes toward the State:
The first attitude toward the state that I want to examine was best expressed in a talk by David Friedman in which he assured the audience there was an Italian saying that translated into something like “It is raining again…PIG OF A GOVERNMENT!”
I remember wincing in my seat because I had a sudden vision of myself, standing in an open street, with my fist raised in fury at the political injustice of the drizzle hitting my face. The meaning of the saying, of course, is that many people blame everything on government. This hit too close to home. I was spending so much time railing against the State that I was running the risk of defining myself by what I oppose. I was taking the state inside myself and allowing it to filter my approach to life and determine many of my emotional reactions.
On the other hand, I aggressively try to expand the areas of my life about which I can say “Here there is no state.” These are areas like my home, family, friends, my community, writing, working…these are areas where the government does not define or in most cases even affect what I do or how I feel.
The attitude “here, there is no State” is who I am in relationship to Society as I go about the business of living. It involves a commitment. As much as possible I don’t use the services or so-called ‘benefits’ the government offers but seek private means instead. I explore alternative currencies and means of exchange like barter. I join networks of individuals who cooperate together for mutual benefits. In short, I am taking my life back from the state and privatizing it.
The Grand Shi Strategy of Ron Paul
The Grand Shi Strategy of Ron Paul por Mark Spitznagel:
The strategy of the Paul campaign, explicit or not, is the archetypal shi (pronounced “sure”) strategy expounded and employed by Chinese philosophers and military strategists for thousands of years.
Throughout history, perhaps the clearest and most pedagogical example of shi at work has been in the Chinese board game weiqi (pronounced “way-chee” ..
.. It requires a profound understanding of the Daoist concept of how current loss leads to eventual gain—or, as Laozi said, the soft overcoming the hard.
We see the shi strategy of Ron Paul in the great patience and nonaggression that favors the slow buildup of influence and strategic advantage over the decisive all-or-nothing clash.
In this society of immediate gratification and winning right now at all cost we need to ask ourselves: why should future elections and platforms matter so much less than the current ones? There are powerful cognitive biases at work—among them the temporal myopia of hyperbolic discounting, or excessively undervaluing the future, while focusing on the nearer term—which make fuzzy in our minds the importance of victories in the years ahead (a view that is promulgated by the media).
Romney wins the current decisive battle for delegates, and his fight with Obama will be critical, but a protracted campaign will continue to be waged. The ultimate war is against intrusive, burgeoning government, in the ongoing insurgencies of the battles yet to come—Ron Paul’s grand shi strategy.
Tariffs War & Welfare
Tariffs as Welfare-State Economics por Gary North:
Why is it that an argument that sounds utterly logical and utterly ethical from the point of view of an American who defends American tariffs on imported goods should not feel equally logical and equally ethical from the point of view of the Mexican or Canadian on the other side of the border?
There is a reason for this. His argument is ludicrous. When he applies it to people across the border, the argument becomes far more obviously ludicrous. So, he prefers not to consider what happens on the other side of the border.
.. the argument for tariffs is economically irrational. It is easier to see this when you are the victim of a tariff. Your self-interest clarifies the argument. It makes clear that a pro-tariff argument is a defense of special-interest laws that favor inefficient producers who cannot compete effectively with imports. Customers prefer imports. Customers must therefore be thwarted through state coercion, domestic
producers assert. "The customer is always right, except when he buys imports!"
.. an ethical defense of liberty, as well as an economic defense of liberty, applies equally to both sides of any national border. Anyone who claims to defend market liberty for his own people should be equally prepared to defend market liberty for the people on the other side of the national border. This is the doctrine of the rule of law. This widespread acceptance of this principle has made the West rich.
The case against tariffs is the case against undeclared warfare. It is as simple as that. The case against tariffs is the case against special-interest politics based on a completely false economic analysis that is ultimately welfare state economics.
Every tariff that is imposed deliberately to restrict the import of goods and services from abroad is a mini-act of war. Tariffs should be seen as acts of war. They should be analyzed economically and ethically as acts of war. During wartime, they are clearly seen as acts of war. They are accepted by the voters in the name of the life-and-death struggle of military conflict. The problem is, the logic of peace is not extended to imported goods after hostilities have ceased.
Friedman @ 100
Boudreaux: Milton Friedman, a centennial appreciation por Don Boudreaux:
.. Friedman's stupendous scholarly achievements alone justify commemoration of the centenary of his birth.
But at least as important as Friedman's scholarship was his lucid and energetic public advocacy of limited government and free markets. He explained with unmatched clarity how a modern economy's complexities, nuances, and dynamism almost always thwart even the best-intentioned efforts by government officials to intervene into markets.
No one equaled Friedman's skill at explaining how free markets succeed at coordinating the activities of legions of individuals to produce the goods and services that we today take for granted. Likewise, no one equaled his skill at explaining how government regulators are typically oblivious to the complexity of the coordination achieved by markets. Being oblivious, regulators' interventions too often obstruct this market coordination.
.. Calling the military's seizure of years of labor from young men "slavery" reveals the fact that draftees - like plantation slaves of old - are forced against their will to work for others and on terms dictated by others.
.. He was, he always insisted, not a conservative but, rather, a liberal - a true liberal, in the original meaning of that term.
Being a classical liberal, Friedman vigorously championed not only economic freedoms but also freedoms emphasized by many folks on the political left, such as freedom of speech and of assembly. It speaks volumes of Friedman's principles that he, the owlish and dedicated scholar so beloved by many establishment conservatives for his support of free enterprise, was among the most vocal and unwavering opponents of the "war on drugs." He insisted, with characteristic wit, that "the government has no more right to tell me what goes into my mouth than it has to tell me what comes out of my mouth."
Truly great men and women are rare. What they all share is the courage of their convictions, the wisdom to distinguish cant from reality, and enormous energy and ability in working to make the world a better place. Milton Friedman was one such genuinely great man.
drug dealer integrity
Brazilian Drug Lords Show More Integrity Than Central Bankers:
.. in an unprecedented move, some drug traffickers have unilaterally decided to stop selling crack in the favelas they control. In both Mandela and Jacarezinho favelas - combined home to more than 100,000 residents - crack can no longer be purchased. Two drug bosses, who control each favela, gave the orders to halt sales.
"I am not going to lie to you, there is a lot of profit to be made on crack," said Rodrigo, a top trafficker in Mandela who used to manage all the crack operations, told Al Jazeera. He asked that his real name not be used. "But crack also brought destruction in our community as well, so we're not selling it anymore. Addicts were robbing homes, killing each other for nothing inside the community. We wanted to avoid all that, so we stopped selling it."
The traffickers in Mandela, like Rodrigo, readily admit they still sell marijuana and powder cocaine and were happy to show it to Al Jazeera. Business was good for those drugs; bags of money sat out on tables at sales points in the slum. But those other drugs, they said, don't seem to cause the same social problems in the favelas they control.
Crack sales have been halted in just two of Rio's favelas, but Flavia Pinheiro Froes, a lawyer who represents many drug traffickers, said she expects more drug bosses to join in soon.
Little Red Hen '12
“Who will help me plant my wheat?” asked the little red hen.
“Not I,” said the cow.
“Not I,” said the duck.
“Not I,” said the pig.
“Not I,” said the goose.
“Then I will do it by myself.” She planted her crop and the wheat grew and ripened.
“Who will help me reap my wheat?” asked the little red hen.
“I’m on disability,” said the duck.
“Out of my classification,” said the pig.
“I’d lose my seniority,” said the cow.
“I’d lose my unemployment compensation,” said the goose.
“Then I will do it by myself,” said the little red hen, and so she did.
“Who will help me bake the bread?” asked the little red hen.
“That would be overtime for me,” said the cow.
“I’d lose my welfare benefits,” said the duck.
“I’m a dropout and never learned how,” said the pig.
“If I’m to be the only helper, that’s discrimination,” said the goose.
“Then I will do it by myself,” said the little red hen, and so she did.
The smell of fresh-baked bread attracted all her neighbors. They saw the bread and wanted some. In fact, they demanded a share.
But the little red hen said, “No, I shall eat all the loaves.”
“Excess profits!” cried the cow.
“Capitalist leech!” screamed the duck.
“I demand equal rights!” yelled the goose.
“Share with the 99 percent,” grunted the pig.
And they all painted ‘Unfair!’ picket signs and marched around and around the little red hen, shouting obscenities.
Then the farmer came He said to the little red hen, “You must not be so greedy.”
“But I earned the bread,” said the little red hen.
“Exactly,” said the farmer. “That is what makes our free enterprise system so wonderful. Anyone in the barnyard can earn as much as he wants. But under our modern government regulations, the productive workers must divide the fruits of their labor with those who are idle.”
And they all lived happily ever after.
sexta-feira, agosto 03, 2012
Abortion Rights are Logically Required by Libertarianism
No seguimento de Abortion, Left and Right, Abortion Rights are Logically Required by Libertarianism por Wendy McElroy:
Denying the right of a woman to abort involves denying the basis of libertarianism itself. Libertarianism is often expressed as “the non-initiation of force” but the question is why – why is it wrong to initiate force? The answer lies in a more fundamental principle. The Levellers in seventeenth-century England called it ‘self-proprietorship’; the first American anarchist Josiah Warren referred to ‘the sovereignty of the individual.” 19th century American abolitionists defined the concept of ‘self-ownership’ as the jurisdiction that every human being has over his or her own body simply by virtue of being human. The answer to why it is wrong to initiate force is because force violates that person’s self- ownership. The jurisdiction of each peaceful person over his or her body is what constitutes individual rights.
To express this in less theoretical terms: everything beneath my skin is me. It is mine in the most basic and existential sense possible. If my body is not mine, then nothing else on earth can belong to me. If I cannot claim the blood coursing through my arteries, then I can have no property rights in a chair I fashion or a tomato I grow with my own labor. Why would I? Why would the extended products of my labor belong to me when the breath in my own lungs does not?
As a self-owner, I am the only one with jurisdiction over my own body. If a fetus is sustained by the food I eat and the pulsing of my blood, then I have a right to deny it sustenance and shelter. I have a right to abort that fetus. To give the fetus a ‘right’ to consume another person’s bodily functions is to establish two rights claims over one body. The word that describes a system in which one man has property rights in another is slavery, and it is the antithesis of libertarianism.
The anti-abortion position is weak, riddled with internal contradictions, and dangerously wrong. It uses the word “rights” in a self-contradictory manner that denies the framework from which the concept derives meaning. Self-ownership begins with your skin. If you cannot clearly state, “Everything beneath my skin is me; this is the line past that no one crosses without my permission,” then there is no foundation for individual rights or for libertarianism.Leitura integral recomendada. Adicionalmente: Sobre o direito à vida sobre Judith Thomson
Obama the Socialist
Obama the Socialist? Not Even Close por Milos Forman:
The critics cry, “Obamacare is socialism!” They falsely equate Western European-style socialism, and its government provision of social insurance and health care, with Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. It offends me, and cheapens the experience of millions who lived, and continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism.
I’m not sure Americans today appreciate quite how predatory socialism was. It was not — as Mr. Obama’s detractors suggest — merely a government so centralized and bloated that it hobbled private enterprise: it was a spoils system that killed off everything, all in the name of “social justice.”
What we need is not to strive for a perfect social justice — which never existed and never will — but for social harmony. Harmony in music is, by its nature, exhilarating and soothing. In an orchestra, the different players and instruments perform together, in support of an overall melody.
I am not asking Mr. Obama and the Republican leaders to stop playing instruments of their choosing. All I am asking is that every player keep in mind the noble melody of our country. Otherwise the noisy dissonance might become loud enough to wake another Marx, or even worse.
Politicians as Psychopaths
The Startling Accuracy of Referring to Politicians as 'Psychopaths':
Psychopathy is a psychological condition based on well-established diagnostic criteria, which include lack of remorse and empathy, a sense of grandiosity, superficial charm, conning and manipulative behavior, and refusal to take responsibility for one's actions, among others. Psychopaths are not all the same; particular aspects may predominate in different people. And, although some psychopaths are violent men (and women) with long criminal histories, not all are. It's important to understand that psychopathic behavior and affect exist on a continuum; there are those who fall into the grey area between "normal" people and true psychopaths.
The question, then, is whether it is reasonable to believe that people with serious abnormalities in the way they interact with the world can be found running for (and winning) office. However unsettling as this may be, the answer seems to be yes. It's possible for psychopaths to be found anywhere -- including city hall or Washington, D.C. Remember, psychopaths are not delusional or psychotic; in fact, two of the hallmarks of psychopathy are a calculating mind and a seemingly easy charm.
Estado omnipresente
Estado omnipresente:
Son muchos los muros mentales que los individuos derriban cuando cambian su concepción del mundo (cosmovisión). Algo parecido recuerdo que me sucedió a mí cuando allá por 1996, en un curso de verano de la entonces Cánovas del Castillo, apareció Jesús Huerta de Soto blandiendo loas al anarcocapitalismo. Aquello no me convirtió políticamente en nada, pero fue tal el shock que recibí que tuvo la grandeza de hacerme ver que el "sistema" en que vivimos es un marco político, o sea, humano, que normalmente asumimos por defecto, pero que, por el contrario, debemos saber poner en cuestión y observar con el máximo recelo. Ya llegaba con la idea de que el liberalismo era un buen camino, máxime para una persona solitaria, poco gregaria y nada "igualitarista" –en tanto observadora de la variedad de personalidades y fines en los seres humanos–, pero el problema, descubrí allí, es el Estado: el Estado omnipresente.
Ese Estado que recibimos por defecto penetra por todos los poros de nuestra piel y no somos conscientes de ello hasta que algún shock derriba nuestro muro mental.
Así que, como norma "particular", reflexiono sobre esto como cuando los hijos, al alcanzar su pubertad, se rebelan contra los padres (o los mayores), a quienes precisamente increpan por educarles en el uso de unas instituciones que ellos no han creado. Este espíritu de derrumbar muros es ideal, en especial, si se trata de "instituciones" perversas que contribuyen a la desintegración de los lazos pacíficos que estrecharían los seres humanos caso de serles permitido. Hablamos de enfrentarse al poder: a aquellos que ejerzan coacción sistemática, institucional.
Economics in One Lesson
Avaliação e Liberdade
Avaliação e Liberdade por André Azevedo Alves:
Nenhuma fórmula de avaliação administrativa pode funcionar num sistema monolítico e onde a concorrência e a liberdade estão limitadas ao mínimo. Daí que, mais do que discutir qual o melhor procedimento de avaliação que deve ser imposto ao sistema de ensino como um todo, importa colocar em causa o actual modelo centralizado e ultra-burocratizado e contrastá-lo com alternativas mais descentralizadas.
Neste domínio, os sinais dados pelo Governo até agora não são animadores. As tentativas de conter custos e racionalizar a utilização dos recursos são louváveis mas, lamentavelmente, não parece haver forma de se abandonar a via do planeamento centralizado. Uma via que, como recentemente alertou o Fórum para a Liberdade de Educação, é geradora de gigantescas injustiças ao criar a ilusão de que existe equidade à entrada, quando na verdade estamos perante um "sistema único e centralizado que vai promovendo a exclusão dos que nele não encontram espaço nem oportunidades para se revelarem". Só com real diversidade de ofertas educativas e um modelo de avaliação centrado na liberdade de escolha será possível introduzir melhorias estruturais na qualidade do ensino. É todo esse trabalho que continua por fazer.
quinta-feira, agosto 02, 2012
Rant do Dia
Reminder porque não vejo televisão - está a estatista da Teresa Caeiro a choramingar que a economia "paralela" não é taxada - quando obviamente existe porque tudo o resto está esmagado por impostos - e diz que é uma questão de "equidade" perseguir essa gente horrível que faz pela vida. E que tal baixar os impostos para quem não pode fugir ao Estado ladrão, senhora doutora? Sobretudo porque NUNCA na história funcionou o aumento da opressão fiscal "se todos pagarem, todos pagarão menos".
Sheriff nullification
No Such Thing as Constitutional Rights por Frank Szabo:
“Constitutional Rights” is a fiction and misleading. Our Rights are Natural Rights and are unalienable. The Constitution is a document which defines the government. It is a document of creation and it is a strict limit on the powers and authority of government. It does not limit Citizens. The Rights of Citizens specifically enumerated for protection in the Constitution were those deemed most important for the continuance of Libertyand Freedom. It was not a complete list, nor could it be.
The Office of the County Sheriff dates back to at least 900 AD inEngland. The Sheriff had always been charged with protecting the rights and property of the sovereign. After the American Revolution, the Office of County Sheriff remained. At that point, it became the duty and authority of the Sheriff to protect the Rights and property of the Sovereign Citizens – from any unlawful action.
Historical documents and court cases confirm that the Sheriff is the Chief Law Enforcement Officer in the county and has no superior. The Sheriff is elected by the people and is answerable to them alone. No federal or state agency has authority in the county unless the Sheriff permits it. If, in the Sheriff’s opinion, a proposed action is unconstitutional, the Sheriff is duty-bound, and fully authorized, to block it.
Why Bad Economics Won’t Go Away
Why Bad Economics Won't Go Away
In this talk, delivered on December 1, 2011, at Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago, Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, identifies the reasons people find the free-market idea so difficult to accept and why statist policies seem to make so much sense to them. He identifies why we have been losing this intellectual battle, and provides real solutions on how to make significant headway toward ending these bad economic policies, allowing us to achieve more freedom and prosperity.
a doentia Saúde Estatal
Saúde Doente por Miguel Botelho Moniz:
Diz o ditado que a saúde não tem preço. Mas tem um custo sempre crescente. Em 1990, o estado gastava 3,2% do PIB em saúde; em 2011, foram 5,4%.
Se esta escalada de custos já seria um problema numa situação corrente, no contexto de um estado endividado e praticamente falido, ganha contornos verdadeiramente alarmantes. São duas as tendências que explicam este crescimento, sendo previsível que ambas se prolonguem no futuro.
O crescente recurso da população a serviços privados de saúde advém, assim, não de qualquer ideologia mas do racionamento que ocorre quando se utiliza um recurso escasso, neste caso serviços de saúde, por um preço abaixo do seu custo. É mais uma questão de disponibilidade do que de qualidade. Assim sendo, veremos quanto tempo a população está disposta a aceitar pagar elevados impostos, que supostamente cobrem o SNS, ao mesmo tempo que tem que pagar directamente pelos seus cuidados de saúde, no privado ou num SNS remodelado.
Krugman takedown
Paul Krugman schooled by Austrian School Economist Pedro Schwartz
Via Zero Hedge,
During a debate on Europe's crisis, Pedro Schwartz (a mild-mannered Spanish 'Austrian' economics professor) took on the heavyweight Paul 'I coulda been a Fed Chair contender' Krugman, and - in our humble opinion - wiped the floor with his Keynesian philosophy. From the medicinal use of more debt to fix too much debt, to the Japanization of world economies and the demand-side bias of every- and any-thing - interested only in the short-term economic growth; the gentlemanly Spaniard notes, with regard to the European crisis, the fact that "Keynesians got us into this mess and now we have to sacrifice our principals so that they can get us out of this mess". Humble and generous in his praise - though definitively serious with his criticism - Schwartz opines: "Often Nobel prize winners are tempted to pontificate on matters that are outside the specialty in which they have excelled," noting "the mantle of authority whereby what ever they say - whether sensible or not - is accepted with resignation from some and enthusiasm by others." Krugman's red-faced anger is evident at the conclusion as he even refused to shake Schwartz's hand after the debate.
e sobre a manipulação e chantagem emocional dos estatista
Ensaio sobre a tolerância, e sobre as qualidades morais de quem não a pratica por Rodrigo Adão da Fonseca n'O Insurgente:
It is easy to be conspicuously compassionate if others are being forced to pay the costEsta é a falácia moral, bem revelada por Rothbard, Rand, Peikoff, e outros, que muitos ignoram (ou fazem por ignorar): a redistribuição efectuada pelos mecanismos estatais (vulgarmente designada de “solidariedade”) não radica na genuína bondade humana, é de uma bondade forçada, imposta, paga com o dinheiro dos outros. A solidariedade é, no limite, e no plano moral, um acto de egoísmo, porque fundamentalmente não se aspira a um acto de solidariedade do sujeito para com os outros, mas dos outros para com o próprio. A solidariedade tem o seu suporte na lei, e não no coração dos homens, nem no exercício da liberdade. É fácil ser solidário; difícil, é ser generoso.
Murray Rothbard
quarta-feira, agosto 01, 2012
Climate Change (2)
No seguimento de Climate Change, Germany’s ‘Godfather of Green’ Turns Skeptic:
This month's shock new bestseller in Germany is a climate skeptical book called Die Kalte Sonne ("The Cold Sun."). It's shocking not just because Germany has, up till now, been one of Europe's most ecologically correct economies, but also because its co-author Professor Fritz Vahrenholt is one of the country's best known environmentalists.
If Al Gore or David Suzuki or NASA's Jim Hansen were suddenly to renounce man-made global warming, it could hardly be more surprising. Up until two years ago, Vahrenholt was Germany's Godfather of Green: a green activist and former environment minister for the State of Hamburg. In his new book, however, published by one of Germany's most respected, mainstream publishers Hoffman und Campe, Vahrenholt pours cold water on the notion of catastrophic man-made global warming.
Then again, in Europe as in the US, the drive for renewables was never really about practical economic considerations. It always had much more to do with the quasi-religious, anti-capitalist zeal of campaigners like Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and chairman of the Scientific Advisory Council on Global Environmental Change (WBGU), an influential advisory committee for the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.In April 2011, the WBGU presented a report entitled "World in Transition - Social Contract for a Great Transformation". The main theses of the WBGU are as follows: The current economic model ("fossil industrial metabolism") is normatively untenable. "The transformation to a climate friendly economy... is morally as necessary as the abolition of slavery and the outlawing of child labor." The reorganization of the world economy has to happen quickly; nuclear energy and coal have to be given up at the same time and very soon.As Vahrenholt noted in Die Welt, this is akin to the sweeping totalitarian measures undertaken in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s or in China under Mao's Great Leap Forward. Germany, warned Vahrenholt, is in danger of "Sliding head over heels into eco dictatorship."
PPPs diferentes
No seguimento de:
- Avoiding becoming Greece
- Infrastructure Renaissance
Public-Private Partnerships in Puerto Rico
- Avoiding becoming Greece
- Infrastructure Renaissance
Public-Private Partnerships in Puerto Rico
Although vital public projects such as schools, roads, and airports have traditionally been the domain of the government, Alvarez tells ReasonTV "it's important that we incorporate private investment into the infrastructure." He add that PPP projects add nothing to the public debt and are completed faster and more efficiently than traditional government-administered ventures.
Political Arguments Don’t Matter
Why Political Arguments Don’t Matter:
The political system is always about forcing people to buy something that they don’t want. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be politics, it would be private enterprise. For example, I’ll wager there’s not a lot of single childless people, who don’t plan on having kids, that appreciate having to pay for everyone else’s kids education. You can argue whether public education is good or bad, but there’s no getting around the fact that a lot of people don’t want to pay for it. There’s not a single thing government does which does not follow this pattern.
Batman
No seguimento de Ludwig von Mises and Batman,
Occupy Gotham?:
Occupy Gotham?:
Another thing about Bruce Wayne/Batman is that he's a shining example of what can be accomplished by the private sector. None of Wayne's state-of-the-art technology is sponsored by government grants, though there would be little doubt Wayne Enterprises sells to the government. Nonetheless, Wayne's research is fueled by his own profits, not government grants or subsidies, and with the help of his top man, Lucius Fox, he develops the technology that enables him to be an effective one-man army and fight organized crime that borders on terrorism, while responsibly avoiding the corruption of the military-industrial complex.
The image I saw during the segment where the mercenaries and convicts take over Gotham City reminded me of the Russian Revolution but combined with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Vanguarded by Bane's mercenaries and the released prison convicts, common people allow themselves to become ravenous mobs. They seize and detain all wealthy people, confiscating (wildly and destructively looting) their property and then subjecting them to show trials in which the defendants' guilt "has already been established." ..Andrew Klavan: Batman Battles The Politics Of Resentment:
Throughout all of this the looters arrest some, shoot others, and loot the property of them all in the name of "the people of Gotham City," even though the self-appointed warlord Bane never intends to share real power (much like Lenin and Stalin). The heroes, on the other hand, are the industrialists — the Hank Reardens, Dagny Taggarts, and Midas Mulligans — who use their minds, their superior technology, and their unbreakable spirits to defeat the looters and save the lives of the innocent (though many don't deserve it).
The movie is a bold apologia for free-market capitalism; a graphic depiction of the tyranny and violence inherent in every radical leftist movement from the French Revolution to Occupy Wall Street; and a tribute to those who find redemption in the harsh circumstances of their lives rather than allow those circumstances to mire them in resentment.
But the heart of the film is not money. It's people and what they choose to make of the injustices of their lives. Catwoman is the linchpin of that theme. She is the link between those like the heroic capitalist Wayne, who allow hardship to temper their souls, and those like Bane, who cling to their hurts and demand to be repaid in societal destruction ..
Free markets lift us all. People's "revolutions" inevitably result in tyranny. Forgiveness and self-betterment redeem society while embittered extortions in the name of "social justice" poison it. None of these simple truths is hidden in the film. That is why left-leaning critics on both coasts have reacted to the movie with the same willful blindness with which they view history.
Dependency
The food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever.
Meanwhile, the Park Service, part of the same government, asks us to “Please Do Not Feed the Animals” because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves.
Desamparados
Desamparados por Bruno Alves:
Com cada vez menos recursos à sua disposição, o "Estado Social" oferece cada vez menos protecção às pessoas que precisam dele, sendo na realidade pouco mais que uma máquina burocrática cuja dimensão é inversamente proporcional à sua capacidade para cumprir o propósito para que foi construída. O "Estado Social", que trazia consigo a promessa de amparar os cidadãos "do berço até à sepultura", não só deixou de o fazer, como ficou ele próprio desamparado, condenado a uma "sepultura" que ele próprio cavou (os impostos elevados que implica são um sério obstáculo ao "crescimento" que precisa para sobreviver). Das louváveis boas intenções de uma ou duas gerações, pouco mais restou que um lamentável futuro negro para muitas mais.
Citação Liberal do Dia
I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.
Grover Norquist
Libertarian support for Israel
Ron Paul Tells Newsmax: I Support Israel:
Newsmax: What should our relationship be with Israel?
Ron Paul: We should be their friend and their trading partner. They are a democracy and we share many values with them. But we should not be their master. We should not dictate where their borders will be nor should we have veto power over their foreign policy.
This is not just about Israel, by the way, this is about how we should conduct ourselves with other countries around the world.
Newsmax: Some object to your policy of cutting foreign aid to Israel.
Ron Paul: I have objected to all foreign aid. I define foreign aid as taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries. We just can’t keep doing this. We don’t have the money anymore.
Stop and consider America’s policy: We give $3 billion a year to Israel in loans; and we give $12 billion or more in assistance to Israel’s self-declared enemies. Some of these are countries that say they will drive Israel into the sea.
But we should stop interfering with them. We should not announce bargaining positions even before she begins her negotiations. We should not dictate what she can and cannot do. We should stop trying to buy her allegiance. And Israel should stop sacrificing their sovereignty as an independent state to us or anybody else, no matter how well-intentioned.
Os funcionários públicos não deviam pagar impostos
Government Employees Should Not Be Taxed:
One of the things I find to be humorous about mainstream economics is the inclusion of government spending in the GDP metric. When government spending is included in this metric, it makes the assumption that government spending adds to the real wealth of the nation. Since “real” wealth translates into actual material goods and services that benefit humanity, which have been produced under the guidance of a profit and loss test by consumers, there is hardly anything the government does which meets the criteria of new “real” wealth creation. In the same vein, the taxation of income that comes from government jobs hides the destruction of wealth that is occurring when government spends money ..
Would it be possible for the state to only tax publicly funded jobs in order to pay for the creation of publicly funded jobs? .. Clearly this would be impossible .. resources must first be confiscated from private productive jobs.
Clearly it is ridiculous to tax a salary that is entirely funded from taxes, especially when one considers the administrative overhead costs that a payroll tax creates. The state could potentially shave billions from its budgets if it simply stopped taxing state employees and paid them a tax free wage. Obviously this begs the question of why does the state bother to jump through all the accounting hoops of taxing its own employees?
.. It does so to hide the fact that it is destroying resources. When the state taxes its own employees, it creates the illusion that state funded jobs are actually productive jobs. It hides the flow of money and resources streaming out of the private sector from the public eye and obfuscates the value of the jobs the state creates. If the state did not tax its own employees, it would be much more clear to the public just how destructive each new public job is to the overall economy.
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