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Um... actually, until the social programs of the 30's (e.g. the New Deal) kicked in, yes, the Great Depression did have the highest crime rate (using murders as a proxy, which I recall is the most reliable one since the definition has remained fairly constant).

I found one quick link Murder in America at an apparently Libertarian web site. Obviously there were other factors, including the 1920's "War on Drugs" (prohibition).

Remeber, you don't have a right to complain if you don't participate in the democratic process. :P

Remeber, you don't have a right to complain if you don't participate in the democratic process. :P

The Austrians believe that the business cycle is caused primarily by fractional reserve banking, period. Until this is refuted, by neoclassical economists or anyone else, there isn't much theory to discuss. More importantly, the Austrian School is the only branch of economic study that admits that human action makes economies inherently unpredictable. People as individuals or in groups simply are not consistently rational in their economic thinking or actions. Therefore models will only ever be useful in explaining what has happened in the past, and will always be insufficient to explain what will happen in the future. Austrian School Economics Articles and Discussion; http://www.mises.org/ Austrian and Libertarian Political and Economic Articles: http://www.lewrockwell.com/

bobobobo's post would have been a bit more humorous to me if I hadn't known that he plagiarized it from Bob Wallace's 2002 article "Inner Gilligans and Original Sin."

..has suggested some reading material:

The canon
The canon, continued

and has also written much about 4th generation warfare.

..has suggested some reading material:

The canon
The canon, continued

and has also written much about 4th generation warfare.

..has suggested some reading material:

The canon
The canon, continued

and has also written much about 4th generation warfare.

Brings to mind this apocryphal story linked to from Snopes.

Conservatives are your friends.

"Then again, by your logic, attempted murder is not a crime, because it didn't actually do any damage."

No, moral theories it is usually not acts that are wrong but rather act types. Act types include intent. For example, firing a gun is neither right nor wrong in itself. Firing a gun and blowing someone's head off isn't even right nor wrong in itself. What is wrong is the act type 'murder', or unjustified killing. A jury's task is to identify both the act (the facts of the case) and the act type. Note that even if I try to murder you and I miss, I have still committed the exact same act type: I've committed my will to unjustly killing another human being. It doesn't matter how I do it or whether I'm successfull, I'm a murder at that instant. All that's left to do is build a case.

"So the ideal world allows monopolies to exist?"

Not the ideal world, the ideal government. Libertarians don't believe that an ideal government would attempt to create an ideal world: that is society's job. Government's job is simply to ensure that citizens are safe from force and fraud.

"They often do a lot of damage to the consumer, and a lot to restrict the free market."

Be careful with the word 'damage', though. Do you mean that they violates the consumer's fundamental rights? Or just that they act selfishly with many adverse effects on the quality of life of consumers? If a monopoly is committing murder or fraud, the government has a right to stop it. If it's just mean-spirited and has a lot of money to jerk you around with, then life may suck but nobody is violating your rights.

"They in effect become a government/law unto themselves, except they are answerable to nobody."

How are they a government or law unto themselves? They are still answerable to the government for acts of force and fraud. In fact, they have no freedoms that you do not have yourself. They just have much more money and influence. Society might be more pleasant if everyone has equal amounts of power, but it is not government's place to make it so.

"Are you implying that this [vigilante justice] is a good thing?"

No, this is purely an argument against the notion that we would suddenly be overrun by blackmail or whatnot if laws were repealed. If an argument based on how things would be is used against me, I at least want it to be accurate. And the fact is that blackmail would remain a very dangerous crime, in no small part because people often have strong urges to harm blackmailers. In fact, I believe this is the basis of the law. Most people respond to a threat of blackmail with this sentiment: "Oh yeah, how about if I don't kick your ass and you give me that evidence!" They may not follow through with it, but that is most people's internal gut reaction. I believe that our laws today are simply a codified version of that. "Oh yeah, well how about if you drop this so society and I don't have to kick your ass."

"First of all, get over the faith in humanity doing the right thing."

I have none. People often think that libertarians have a mistaken notion of human nature -- that we think people are basically good. But this misperception just arises from the fact that libertarians are not consequentialists. We don't make law based on what we think the outcome will be, we base it on our principles of rights. If it violates a right, it's illegal. If it doesn't violate a right, it's not. End of story. There is not 'society shaping' or attempt to improve you quality of life. A libertarian society would NOT be a utopian society. A utopian society would probably be a benevolent dictatorship or an uncorrupted communism, or something like that.

Libertarians are content to look after government, and let society look after itself. Albert Nock has a great article pointing out that government is actually the antithesis of society, and that as government grows and gains power, society shrinks and becomes powerless. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/nock1.html

"Sorry, Tom, don't know how that new Federal Highway got routed through your house...."

By the way, how do you know your not a neo-con. Have you tested yourself?

Here take the test. Post the results if you dare. By the way, I'm relying on your "honesty".

Are You a Neocon?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dmccarthy/dmccarthy14.h tml

Just for the record, my test result was "Left-libertarian" but in my own view, I consider myself to be a Rational Anarchist in the R. A. Heinlein style

SI rules. Of course it makes sense to have water freeze at 32 degrees instead of 0, and boil at 212 instead of 100... And why the hell would you want to mess with turning 1 kilometer into 1,000 meters, when you can turn 1 mile into 5,280 feet! And to realize that 1 liter is 1,000 milliliters is stupid, since we can instead make 1 gallon (US, liquid - or 0.86 gallon US dry - or 0.83 gallon UK) into 128 fl.oz. I rest my case.

And while Bobby was just playing a chess match, the Feds were shipping huge amounts of arms to their favorite players in the region, the separatist Bosnian Muslims. As the Guardian newspaper in England documented :

...the Pentagon had incurred debts to Islamist groups and their Middle Eastern sponsors. By 1993 these groups, many supported by Iran and Saudi Arabia, were anxious to help Bosnian Muslims fighting in the former Yugoslavia and called in their debts with the Americans. Bill Clinton and the Pentagon were keen to be seen as creditworthy and repaid in the form of an Iran-Contra style operation - in flagrant violation of the UN security council arms embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia.

The result was a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling though Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US, Turkey and Iran... Initially aircraft from Iran Air were used, but as the volume increased they were joined by a mysterious fleet of black C-130 Hercules aircraft.

Just as the trial of Slobodan Milosevic is exposing the fact that most of the claims used to justify the US's Kosovo war were bogus, maybe poor Fischer's inevitable trial will expose the lies told to justify the Bosnian war.

Now that it's been revealed that al-Qaeda members were fighting for the Bosnian Muslims, maybe the USA will acknowledge their mistaken policy, apologize to poor Bobby, and let him go.

Yeah, right. Being an Empire means never having to say you're sorry.

Anywhere else, you just get shot. At least here, you get a fair chance. *shrug*

Research by Jeff Miron at Boston University, examining homicide rates across 44 countries, found that countries with the strictest gun-control laws also tended to have the highest homicide rates. News reports in Britain showed how crimes with guns have risen 40 percent in the four years after handguns were banned in 1997. Police are extremely important in stopping crime, but almost always arrive on the scene after the crime occurs. What would the U.N. recommend that victims do when they face criminals by themselves? Passive behavior is much more likely to result in serious injury or death than using a gun to defend oneself.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lott/lott9.html

So what, exactly, makes the Christian standpoint the right one?

You can't define what's right and wrong for everyone based on your personal beliefs, since so many different belief structures exist in this world.

More:

Study Finds Home Schooled Children Better at Social Skills
Children Educated at Home Don't Become Social Misfits
Developmental Phases of Social Development
A Game of Socialization
Homeschooling and the Myth of Socialization
Marvin Minsky Comment on Schooling
THE MYTH OF SOCIALIZATION AND THE VALUE OF PLAY
Questioning Socialization
Sociability of Students in a Home-based Charter School
Social Development or Socialization?
Social Skills and Homeschooling: Myths and Facts
SOCIALIZATION ISSUES
That Dreaded "S" Word

Actually, that's just what they're selling it as... No Child Left Behind is really all about extending federal control (article by Ron Paul - a *Republican* congressman), even into the private schools. Think about it... the main reason you have so little say in the public education system is because they get all their funding from the State and, increasingly, Federal level (this varies depending on where you're located). If the private schools start getting more cash from the government than from you... why should they care what you think, anymore? Following the money trail is a good rule of thumb to finding out who's really in charge of anything.

Depending on the definition, I've met many:

the term "domestic terrorism" means activities that appear to be intended to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.
(quote from PATRIOT, source)

The reason we had such an explosion in illegals coming over from central america was because of NAFTA, we put millions of poor campesinos out of work on their small farms when our corporate farms dumped on them. whoops. The amount of blue collar manufacturing jobs cshipped to mexico was not any where near enough to compensate for the other millions put out of work. It was nuts, way too fast, lopsided, no thought to social stability or where people were going to work, here OR there. And a LOT of people back then warned that this would happen, heck, I was one of them, exactly what I said and wrote back then happened. Sucks, because I know what's coming next, a really BORKED middle class inside the US, inevitable now.

All that will happen with this scheme is the dilution of the US's middle class's average worth, it will go down. And, well, it has, you can see it now, looking at *all* the stats. Just look at the real obvious biggee, since all this globalization started we have gone from being the worlds largest creditor nation-we had enough extra and surplus money handy to be able to loan and invest and just give it away around the world, to now we are the worlds largest debtor nation, only staying afloat from foreigners buying up our mortgages and government paper, and their phony buck has dropped in value severely. It's cuckoo,and happened within the last 20 years,exactly corresponding to their mass globalization efforts and transference of our economy, and they got the nads to call that a "success". Phooie. When I was a kid, one just normal mid level blue collar job could support a large family, home ownership, a nice car, vacation, a pension, benefits,put the kids through school, etc, now that is almost entirely gone, it take two such jobs to accomplish the same thing, and the prices are getting worse, so....it will destroy families. After two jobs you've run out of adults to work in a household. It causes a ton of stress, economics are a prime reason for family problems, divorce, etc. sucks. Kids suffer from this bad.

I think the really large powers-that-be are doing it on purpose,from a LOT of other references and research, again, way to long for a single post, they really don't like power sharing with a large successful middle class, they much pre

For all you youngsters out there, enjoy: Mises on Money

Try this counter argument by a paleo-libertarian.

99% of these lawsuits that people file against doctors that supposedly caused 'brain damage' to children when they were born are completly bogus.

The really sad part is the doctor lost the lawsuit and is now repsonsible for paying millions of dollars of damages to the family.

Insurance costs and lawsuits have gotten totaly out of hand in this country. it has driven medical costs through the roof and something has to give.

Nuff said.

Problems like these aren't resolved by preventing payoffs by "big business" or even by "a rich individual." Problems such as these are resolved by limiting the power of the elected official.

The UN has too much power. When you offer a person or a group of people, aka "elected officials" too much power, they'll be corrupted easily.

In the US, we used to have a really limited federal/central government. You could throw all the money you wanted at a Congressman or a President, but the Constitution limited them from doing anything to help you. Our great tyrant, Abe Lincoln, changed all that.

Just as the power of the US federals has spiraled out of control, so has the power of the UN. The more power we offer them, the more money will pay for the whims of the wealthy.

Greens, Democrats, Republicans, they all love the UN. They may say they don't, but while the UN swallows up more and more responsibility, do you really ever see even one of our elected officials tell us to get out of the UN?

There is one. Ron Paul.

This isn't helping capitalism any... Open Source is part of capitalism, government is not. When government tries to protect any entity, be it a corporation or a sector, its no longer capitalism, its the American System of Mercantilism has established by Henry Clay (and furthered into the US by Abraham Lincoln).

Remember, Open Source is free market driven as well. The customer may pay nothing, but they also may want to pay for closed software so they receive some sort of guaranteed support or whatever it is they want. Just because software is free doesn't mean that there is no cost to run it.

Government picking closed source over open source really doesn't help capitalism any. In a truly capitalist society (The US is NOT capitalist in any way), open source can compete freely with closed source. Indian programmers can compete with American ones.

This isn't helping capitalism any... Open Source is part of capitalism, government is not. When government tries to protect any entity, be it a corporation or a sector, its no longer capitalism, its the American System of Mercantilism has established by Henry Clay (and furthered into the US by Abraham Lincoln).

Remember, Open Source is free market driven as well. The customer may pay nothing, but they also may want to pay for closed software so they receive some sort of guaranteed support or whatever it is they want. Just because software is free doesn't mean that there is no cost to run it.

Government picking closed source over open source really doesn't help capitalism any. In a truly capitalist society (The US is NOT capitalist in any way), open source can compete freely with closed source. Indian programmers can compete with American ones.

Obligatory Pulp Fiction quote:

More apt Brazil quote:

nabbed from here...

When the internal security policy arrive to
arrest terrorist suspect Mr. Buttle - himself
an innocent citizen wrongly fingered due to a
mechanical problem in a computer system - the
Department of Works who come in after them to
clean up the mess have brought along the wrong
size repair kit to fix the hole in the floor
that they drilled to facilitate a surprise
entrance.

JILL: There must be some mistake ... Mr. Buttle's harmless...

BILL: We don't make mistakes.

(So saying, he drops the manhole cover, which is
faced with same material as the floor, over the
hole in the floor. To his surprise it drops
neatly through the floor into the flat below.)

CHARLIE: Bloody typical, they've gone back to
metric without telling us.

It's Time to Abolish NASA. A $16 billion dollar agency costs the average American $72 a year. $300 a year for a family of four. Forget it. How much if it is bureaucratic waste?

Maybe Bush wants to go to the moon and set up a base as there is no more freedom on this planet.

Lets stop wasting money on Mars and return the money to the taxpayers so we can use it for things we want as individuals.

It's Time to Abolish NASA. A $16 billion dollar agency costs the average American $72 a year. $300 a year for a family of four. Forget it. How much if it is bureaucratic waste?

Maybe Bush wants to go to the moon and set up a base as there is no more freedom on this planet.

Lets stop wasting money on Mars and return the money to the taxpayers so we can use it for things we want as individuals.

With the ability to get cheaper labor off short in the tech world, the prices for certain tech consumer goods (from software to DVDs to car computer brains) will fall, allowing prices to fall as well.

This will allow the average consumer to spend more of their money on other items, including entertainment, debt reduction, maybe even more money towards a mortgage or a new car. Jobs moving to other countries is only good news -- I can only hope we see more of it as it will allow people here in the States to find new things to do with their overpriced labor.

Maybe we'll even see that we don't deserve as much as we earn, and that we're not so special.

Tibor Machan has a great article on Job Security and why this phrase is false. If you can not produce a desired product at a price that the buyers are willing to pay, you are not really producing anything but waste. American techs are paid way too much for what really has become a blue collar job in many cases.

Just like tariffs on imported steel and imported sugar have destroyed jobs in this country (by making cars here too expensive, and even Fannie Mae chocolates has closed down today because sugar is too expensive), putting tariffs on imported tech software will do the same. Allow consumers of technology to decide what they are willing to pay. U.S. firms can even promote a "Buy American" program if people really care.

I know I don't. I want to see prices fall on technology so I can focus my spending on other areas -- more dinners are local restaurants, maybe more concerts or theatre.

Remember, the Living Wage is a MYTH.

When are we going to learn that these tax dollars are not being spent wisely? The private market, if left uninhibited by tariffs, regulations, and restrictions, could do a better job of getting us to the moon. NASA is just a government stamping agency that shovels money to the protected few -- mercantilism at its "finest."

I'd like to see other reasons to get into space. Scientific altruism is not in my pocketbook, so I'm sick of my dollars being forced from me through coercion and wasted on NASA.

The UN Security Council's "Report of the Group of Governmental Experts on Small Arms" calls for a comprehensive program of worldwide gun control and praises the restrictive gun polices of Red China and France! The UN wants helpless citizens under the thumb of UN stormtroopers and Black Helicopters.

"Reject UN Gun Control" by by Rep. Ron Paul, MD

I believe this article is yet another nail in the coffin of the patent system. It is time to rethink the patent system. Economist Fritz Machlup has proven that patents do not entice corporations to develop new products; in fact, the "short-term advantage a company derives from developing a new product and being the first to put it on the market may be incentive enough."

Patents offer a authoritarian power to destroy competition, increase prices, and skew the relationship between research and creation by scaring off new ideas developed on old ones.

Being antiwar doesn't equate with being liberal. There are plenty of conservatives and libertarians that don't agree with the Bush administration's foreign "policy".

after seeing a bbc horizon television report on shuttle design flaws ... spam in a can.

Consider this article. Spam can be largely solved via technical means. If none of it gets through, then the incentive to spam in the first place is removed. Laws don't stop crime, they won't stop spam either.

Here's the reality of what your little boycotts could ruin.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/spectator/spec79.html

Well this so-called "Do Not Call" list doesn't execatly do what it says it will.

Since the "Neo-Conservatives" (read: Bushite big military-indusrial complex goons) have co-opted true conservativism, it does get confusing. Nowadays, the old conservative view you are talking about is called "paleo-conservative."

You may find useful this article that offers nicely simplified definitions of the various political belief systems:

And even better, if you are curious about where you stand, try this Ideology Selector that gives you feedback about how well your views "fit" with each of the wide range of political beliefs discussed:

It is a very well done test. I've taken it and recommended it to many of my friends, and it has been very accurate with its picks.

The test asks you "Yes/No/Not Sure" questions like:
Do you support NAFTA? Should immigration into the US be greatly reduced? Do you support state lotteries as a means of raising revenue? ETC...
And then asks: "What priority do you place on your selection?" (High/Medium/Low) to balance the test even better.

I was surprised to see that I had a strong paleo-conservative leaning, even though it ranked me most likely to be paleo-libertarian. (Which I believe is very accurate. I am signed up for the Free State Project if that gives you a hint about my views.)

Give it a try. It can be a real eye-opener... (Especially to find out what your friends and family think!)

Aside from Federalist 68, there's The Electoral College For Europeans by Michael Gilson De Lemos and A Dissertation on the Electoral College by John Reilly. There may be other sources I got this from that I can't remember right now.

The idea was that the electors met in their respective states (as opposed to having them all get together in one place) to debate who to vote for. Meeting separately was supposed to prevent them from organizing themselves into voting blocs along party lines. They'd usually pick somebody that was popular in the region (so long as one of the two people they voted for wasn't from that particular state), and unless there was somebody with national appeal (ie. Washington), nobody was expected to always get the majority of votes in 13 different groups of people. The House would then decide between the people that got electoral votes.

Political parties got around this by nominating electors who had already decided on who to vote for. Instead of trying to figure out how to win through thirteen (now fifty) separate debates, they eliminated the debates entirely.

This,

This,

This,

This,

This,

This

For the solution, wait for the Second American Revolution.

Great article about the economic fallacies many so called "economic theorists" like to dictate -- especially talking heads such as the ones you find on the major news networks.

Economic Fallacies link

In the Austrian school of economics you find out that a company can never get big enough to fully crush all competition. Ludwig von Mises proved, for example, in the 1930's that Socialism couldn't work because in a planned economy, you just don't know how much stuff is supposed to cost. Socialism

Small companies form, take those monopoly rents away, and the big company loses market share. Open source software is doing this now. Yes, Microsoft has a big market share, but linux is severly impinging on the server market, and threatens the desktop market.

Cell phones are doing this now, both in the US and overseas. It's a great way to solve the old last mile problem. Who knows, maybe without the huge, inefficient power monopolies we'd have a lot of nuclear power plants, or smaller, more numerous plants without the cost of the extremely long transmission lines with the booster stations, or wind power, or even more solar! But it's the government restrictions on who could enter the market that causes market irregularities.

Read more about the exiciting world of Austrian Economics at the Mises institute and LewRockwell.com

Heh...and don't forget breast-grabbing, pregnant-woman-exposing airport security workers. This story about Portland International Airport has been spreading like wildfire; another blow to my already beleaguered state.

"Nick Monahan works in the film industry. He writes out of Los Angeles where he lives with his wife and as of December 18th, his beautiful new son."

Above comment stolen from http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/monahan1.html.

Here's the original appearance of this article

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/monahan1.html

The least you could do was cite your source.

You pussies retreat into government jobs or into defense contracting positions and then cheer for big government without any regard as to who the hell has foot the bill for the welfare-warfare state.

Socialism, communism, fascism, it's all the same collectivist, statist bullshit.

So oooh and aaah all you like about the kewl new military toys. Fact is it's a drain on society and those of you involved in defense contracting--no matter how neat you think it is or how many toys you get to play with--are part of the problem.

And now for a few shameless plugs for sites where you can learn more:

LewRockwell.com

Antiwar.com

The New American

The columns of Joseph Sobran