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Welcome to America, home of The Bureaucrat in Your Shower.

It's amazing how the lefty /. crowd, afraid of the slightest inconvenience or intrusion in the War on Terror, gladly allow the government to come into their homes when it is a cause they approve of. Please stay out of my home, bureaucrats.

Horseshit. Inflation has exactly one root cause - the use of fiat ("non-specie") currency. It has exactly one cure, too - stop using shitty fiat currency, and start using something that is both scarce and immune to counterfeit (i.e. "gold"). ("Counterfeit" == "duplication", the primary agency of which is the Federal Reserve. It is instructive to think about what a "dollar bill" is meant to be redeemed for.)

Long-term, productivity increases force prices down, not up. Your money should be worth more now ("exchangeable for more goods of same quality, or same number of goods of greater quality"), not less. Why is it worth less? Because the man behind the curtain has printed a few trillion copies of the dollars in your pocket, and handed them out to his best friends, making yours worth less/worthless. Wasn't that nice of him?

The use of fiat currency means two things: that its value will only ever decrease with time, and that the rate and beneficiaries of that decrease are always politically-motivated. Neither of these things are natural, necessary, or good, yet we believe that they are all three. The dangers of fiat currency are legion and well-known of old; we were warned, well in advance, that the establishment of a fiat currency provides limitless, subtle, and inevitably abused powers to its wielders. We're still being warned, today. Few listen, even as the signs of such abuse are evident.

Ferchrissakes, people, wake the fuck up. When we live in times when shit like this can be discussed with a straight face, something is fundamentally wrong with the Way Things Work. If we pick up "penny" and put down "hundred-dollar bill", we could be talking about Zimbabwe, Light among Nations. I don't feel like starring in the new remake of that hit Harare gameshow, "Meal, or No Meal?" You shouldn't, either.

The definitive treatise on this subject is "What has government done to our money?", by Murray Rothbard. Read it here:

http://www.mises.org/money.asp

Read and understand; get well-informed, get angry, and get free.

So yes, it's possible for dollars to have value, [...] as long as people expect the central bank to do what's necessary to keep its value up.

Actually, it's quite possible for dollars to have value, even in the complete absence of a central bank. See this article: http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=1595

a free market approach would be to allow anyone who wanted to provide cable or television without requiring government approval; since that would result in chaos...

Wrong. *sigh* I'll let Rothbard explain:

"Another common objection to private property in the broadcast media is that private stations would interfere with each other's broadcasts, and that such widespread interference would virtually prevent any programs from being heard or seen. But this is as absurd an argument for nationalizing the airwaves as claiming that since people can drive their cars over other people's land this means that all cars-or land- must be nationalized. The problem, in either case, is for the courts to demarcate property titles carefully enough so that any invasion of another s property will be clear-cut and subject to prosecution. In the case of land titles, this process is clear enough. But the point is that the courts can apply a similar process of staking out property rights in other areas-;whether it be in airwaves, in water, or in oil pools. In the case of airwaves, the task is to find the technological unit-i.e., the place of transmission, the distance of the wave, and the technological width of a clear channel-and then to allocate property rights to this particular technological unit. If radio station WXYZ, for example, is assigned a property right in broadcasting on 1500 kilocycles, plus or minus a certain width of kilocycles, for 200 miles around Detroit, then any station which subsequently beams a program into the Detroit area on this wavelength would be subject to prosecution for interference with property rights. If the courts pursue their task of demarking and defending property rights, then there is no more reason to expect continual invasions of such rights in this area than anywhere else."

"Most people believe that this is precisely the reason the airwaves were nationalized; that before the Radio Act of 1927, stations interfered with each other's signals and chaos ensued, and the federal government was finally forced to step in to bring order and make a radio industry feasible at last. But this is historical legend, not fact. The actual history is precisely the opposite. For when interference on the same channel began to occur, the injured party took the airwave aggressors into court, and the courts were beginning to bring order out of the chaos by very successfully applying the common law theory of property rights-in very many ways similar to the libertarian theory-to this new technological area. In short, the courts were beginning to assign property rights in the airwaves to their "homesteading" users. It was after the federal government saw the likelihood of this new extension of private property that it rushed in to nationalize the airwaves, using alleged chaos as the excuse."

-- Murray Rothbard

And Standard Oil fiasco was a farce anyway. It only maintained a monopoly because it could bring customer what they wanted, cheapest. It was actually slowly loosing market share by the time the law was past. The Truth About the "Robber Barons"

It seems utterly stupid to trust government to regulate something when it is actively giving corporations monopoly rights!! I guess this is because a previous special privilege deal has affected another group of people negatively so they lobby for government polices that help them. And the cycle continues.

Income inequality drives crime. When everyone is poor, no one steals from each other....

Bullshit, there are billions of poor people in this whold who live perfectly honest lives and your assertion is a slap in the face to all of them. Inequality of wealth does not drive crime, inequality of freedom does. In this case it is the freedom taken away from all of us by the way the US Federal Reserve bank controls our money. It amazes me how many fools believe in this system, but then wine about all the inequality it creates by it's very nature. May I sugest that you educate yourself about nature of honest money vs banking by fiat.

This is precisely why I hand write all my checks with a sharpe marker, here's an Example.

Because your little Department of Attack mindless left crybaby nonsense is who brought major advances in all of those areas.

While arguably true, that's really nothing but the broken window fallacy.

Here's a good pdf on the subject. When you add up the costs of the military to the economy, and consider how much else never got invented then your point is shown to be completely ridiculous.

Nice try. Think it through next time though, ok?

The problem is that you don't have any kids. I can't find the original article from 6-9 months ago, so the quickest example I could come up with from google is here. From the article:

Sam and Barbara are married and raising four children under age 17. They earned $25,000 in 2004 and owe no income tax. Their maximum CTC is $4,000 (4 children x $1,000). Fifteen percent (15%) of their earnings over $10,750 is $2,138 ($25,000 - $10,750 = $14,250; 15 percent of $14,250 is $2,138). Since the couple has no income tax liability, none of their CTC is used--the full $4,000 remains. Since this is more than 15 percent of their earnings above $10,750, Sam and Barbara receive a CTC refund of $2,138. They also qualify for an EIC of $2,209, bringing their total refund to $4,347!

You'll notice this is just on their federal taxes and doesn't include Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, SSI, housing allowances, state refunds, etc... That same family above, if they lived in Texas would also receive $8664/year in food stamps. So now we're nearing 40k and we've only done federal tax returns and food stamps.

Now I'm not saying it's going to be easy to raise a family on this amount of money, but by setting things up this way we as a society are giving the wrong message (have more kids, we'll give you more assistance). I also don't want kids starving in the streets, but at some point we are going to have to make people responsible when they bring new lives into this world.

Let us see who is redefining words here :

monopoly: Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service.

I'm typing this on an Ubuntu system. If Microsoft is a monopoly, then I should not be able to obtain any other desktop system. So how is Microsoft a monopoly again?

The legal system is redefining words to suit their political ideals.

And yes, Standard Oil was not a monopoly because people were still free to buy oil from others and start their own oil company if they wanted to. People who could not compete with Std Oil in the market ran to the govt to get protection.

Here is a link you might find interesting:

The Gates-Rockefeller Myth

>> So, basically, you want the economy to tank...

>> Deflation was the hallmark of the Great Depression.

Wrong. The Federal Reserve caused the great depression. Ask Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, or Joseph Stiglitz.

The way it works is the flood they economy with cheap credit and then engineer a financial collapse, then dramatically tighten credit and seize everyone's property (real wealth). It's the dramatic tightening of credit that caused the depression:

http://blog.mises.org/archives/006018.asp

Milton Friedman:

'The Federal Reserve definitely caused the Great Depression by contracting the amount of money in circulation by one-third from 1929 to 1933'

>> And this anti-fed sentiment is equally distrubing. I suppose you would like to have an economic depression every 8 years like we had in the late 19th and early 20th century. There is a reason the Fed was created.

Wrong again. That's just the bullshit that they sell you in the public education system and in the cattle farms that pass for American universities. The banking problems were engineered by people like J.P. Morgan in order to create the federal reserve which solidified their monopoly on currency and completely enslaved the people of the United States. The federal Reserve act was written by J.P. Morgan (among others). See: the creature from Jekyll Island.

America is being setup for a major financial collapse in order to usher in the Amero and the North American Union. They've been planning it for over 30 years (see: Trilateral commission).

While your defending your bank, you might want to know that most americans could have probably retired by the age of 25 had it not been for our corrupt economic system.

Get a clue and stop regurgitating your mindless propaganda.

Ask yourself.
Who needs all these fucking lies?

1. Peak Oil
2. Electric Shortage
3. Water Shortage

1. http://www.prisonplanet.com/archives/peak_oil/inde x.htm
2. http://www.mises.org/story/1053
3. http://waterpoweredcar.com/stanmeyer.html

Slaves didn't build the pyramids. That would explain the no pictograph part.

First a story about a baby, then a suggested book and some links.

"Sally" knew there was something wrong with her second child soon after he was born. Every so often he'd stop breathing, but never when the Medical Doctor was around. The kid was always cranky. One day while Grandma was watching him, he stopped breathing and turned blue, and Grandma called the ambulance. Sally was like, "thank goodness, maybe they'll FINALLY believe me!" The doctor prescribed a "slant board". Every night for about six months she strapped baby to the slant board. Eventually he "grew out" of the respiratory distress, and the slantboard too.

As the years started to go by, the ear infections started to add up. I guess they were almost constant. Eventually they sent him to a specialist, who decided to chop out the tonsils and adenoids. I guess he was 3 years old or so at the time, and the surgery mostly ended the ear infection cycle. The timetable's not mine, so I don't remember when the hole in the eardrum occurred - perhaps it was pre-surgery, perhaps it was post.

Fast forward to 2005. Sally was dating my father. The son had recently been hauled out of school on a stretcher, because one of his friends had introduced him to Tequila. I suggested a course of action a couple times, but they just ignored me. I begged, I pleaded, but as the year went by, nothing was done. I think his weight started to balloon upwards at this time - he's 5'10" or so, and over 300lbs.

At the marriage I told my "stepbrother" that I thought he'd benefit from some CranioSacral Therapy. A month or two later I set him up with a guy whom I'd had some experience with. Took him over, introduced them, left, came back, paid the guy myself. He liked the experience, and has been back several times. As we were driving away, he noted how he hadn't realized how tight he was on the drive over, but what a difference it was now that those layers of tension were gone.

Ear Infections and Respiratory Distress are red-flags indicating that Osteopathic Manipulation would be beneficial. I knew this because my ear infections have cleared up since I started getting worked on a year and a half ago.

In chapter 2 of Andrew Weil's Spontaneous Healing, Dr. Weil talks about meeting Robert Fulford, D.O., and how Dr. Fulford had remarkable success with children's chronic health complaints. Ear infections usually resolved after two or three visits. Hyperactivity and other "behavioral disorders" frequently resolve themselves when abnormal pressures in the brain are taken care of.

My doctor was good friends with Fulford (took over his practice in Ohio, before following him to Arizona), and told me the rest of the story of how Dr. Fulford got dragged out of his Tucson retirement. Dr. Fulford had a pediatrician friend, and one day the friend was losing a baby to respiratory distress. Nothing the pediatrician did made a damn bit of difference. Dr. Fulford was called in. He put his hands on the baby; five minutes later: *poof*, all better.

Dr. Weil witnessed Fulford's remarkable healing touch, and even experienced it himself when his jaw was knocked out of alignment. He tried - begged and pleaded - to get his fellow M.D.s to witness for themselves the Osteopathic difference, but they mostly weren't interested.

See Lew Rockwell's Medical Control, Medical Corruption for a good take on how "medicine" got so fucked up. Summary: Doctors wanted a monopolly to raise their incomes, Rockefellers wanted more business for their pharmaceuticals. AMA lobbied to shut down the private medical schools, Carnegie and Rockefeller "endowed" the remaining medical schools to indoctrinate teh doktors in pharamceutical-based medicine.

100 Years of Medical Robbery and Real Medical Freedom are also good, and get into how insuran

First a story about a baby, then a suggested book and some links.

"Sally" knew there was something wrong with her second child soon after he was born. Every so often he'd stop breathing, but never when the Medical Doctor was around. The kid was always cranky. One day while Grandma was watching him, he stopped breathing and turned blue, and Grandma called the ambulance. Sally was like, "thank goodness, maybe they'll FINALLY believe me!" The doctor prescribed a "slant board". Every night for about six months she strapped baby to the slant board. Eventually he "grew out" of the respiratory distress, and the slantboard too.

As the years started to go by, the ear infections started to add up. I guess they were almost constant. Eventually they sent him to a specialist, who decided to chop out the tonsils and adenoids. I guess he was 3 years old or so at the time, and the surgery mostly ended the ear infection cycle. The timetable's not mine, so I don't remember when the hole in the eardrum occurred - perhaps it was pre-surgery, perhaps it was post.

Fast forward to 2005. Sally was dating my father. The son had recently been hauled out of school on a stretcher, because one of his friends had introduced him to Tequila. I suggested a course of action a couple times, but they just ignored me. I begged, I pleaded, but as the year went by, nothing was done. I think his weight started to balloon upwards at this time - he's 5'10" or so, and over 300lbs.

At the marriage I told my "stepbrother" that I thought he'd benefit from some CranioSacral Therapy. A month or two later I set him up with a guy whom I'd had some experience with. Took him over, introduced them, left, came back, paid the guy myself. He liked the experience, and has been back several times. As we were driving away, he noted how he hadn't realized how tight he was on the drive over, but what a difference it was now that those layers of tension were gone.

Ear Infections and Respiratory Distress are red-flags indicating that Osteopathic Manipulation would be beneficial. I knew this because my ear infections have cleared up since I started getting worked on a year and a half ago.

In chapter 2 of Andrew Weil's Spontaneous Healing, Dr. Weil talks about meeting Robert Fulford, D.O., and how Dr. Fulford had remarkable success with children's chronic health complaints. Ear infections usually resolved after two or three visits. Hyperactivity and other "behavioral disorders" frequently resolve themselves when abnormal pressures in the brain are taken care of.

My doctor was good friends with Fulford (took over his practice in Ohio, before following him to Arizona), and told me the rest of the story of how Dr. Fulford got dragged out of his Tucson retirement. Dr. Fulford had a pediatrician friend, and one day the friend was losing a baby to respiratory distress. Nothing the pediatrician did made a damn bit of difference. Dr. Fulford was called in. He put his hands on the baby; five minutes later: *poof*, all better.

Dr. Weil witnessed Fulford's remarkable healing touch, and even experienced it himself when his jaw was knocked out of alignment. He tried - begged and pleaded - to get his fellow M.D.s to witness for themselves the Osteopathic difference, but they mostly weren't interested.

See Lew Rockwell's Medical Control, Medical Corruption for a good take on how "medicine" got so fucked up. Summary: Doctors wanted a monopolly to raise their incomes, Rockefellers wanted more business for their pharmaceuticals. AMA lobbied to shut down the private medical schools, Carnegie and Rockefeller "endowed" the remaining medical schools to indoctrinate teh doktors in pharamceutical-based medicine.

100 Years of Medical Robbery and Real Medical Freedom are also good, and get into how insuran

I appreciate your interest in the point I have advanced. I have argued it back and forth on the mises.org blog with the "authority" on refuting IP, Stephan Kinsella, who wrote this case against IP. The following may interest you:

Here is a typical thread from about a month ago, that got pretty long, and here is a more recent one. In those places I try to present the same argument, but it's excruciatingly difficult to get the point across there. I also from time to time question their claims about non-IP related ways to profit from intellectual works.

I post under the name "Person" because Stephan Kinsella is a sociopathic admin who has revealed his willingness to release users' personal information to get back at those who back him into a corner in an argument. Your posts there would be much appreciated. Not because you agree with me (since I'll admit it's hard to form an opinion on this), but because you seem to actually listen to the point I tried to make.

I appreciate your interest in the point I have advanced. I have argued it back and forth on the mises.org blog with the "authority" on refuting IP, Stephan Kinsella, who wrote this case against IP. The following may interest you:

Here is a typical thread from about a month ago, that got pretty long, and here is a more recent one. In those places I try to present the same argument, but it's excruciatingly difficult to get the point across there. I also from time to time question their claims about non-IP related ways to profit from intellectual works.

I post under the name "Person" because Stephan Kinsella is a sociopathic admin who has revealed his willingness to release users' personal information to get back at those who back him into a corner in an argument. Your posts there would be much appreciated. Not because you agree with me (since I'll admit it's hard to form an opinion on this), but because you seem to actually listen to the point I tried to make.

I appreciate your interest in the point I have advanced. I have argued it back and forth on the mises.org blog with the "authority" on refuting IP, Stephan Kinsella, who wrote this case against IP. The following may interest you:

Here is a typical thread from about a month ago, that got pretty long, and here is a more recent one. In those places I try to present the same argument, but it's excruciatingly difficult to get the point across there. I also from time to time question their claims about non-IP related ways to profit from intellectual works.

I post under the name "Person" because Stephan Kinsella is a sociopathic admin who has revealed his willingness to release users' personal information to get back at those who back him into a corner in an argument. Your posts there would be much appreciated. Not because you agree with me (since I'll admit it's hard to form an opinion on this), but because you seem to actually listen to the point I tried to make.

No, actually, the problem is that the state(s) dont have enough .. coljones .. to break-up big guys like microsoft anymore, the way they did with standard oil "back in the day".

You must be new here :) I've been over the Standard Oil debate for years. The State didn't break up Standard Oil, competition did. Standard Oil was no monopoly, they provided cheaper and cheaper and cheaper prices for consumers for their entire history. The competitors were unhappy because they couldn't compete at the price level. The competitors who did compete, Standard Oil bought out in order to acquire their technology -- which led to more oil and lower prices. See this article.

The media that wrote about the Standard Oil "problem" were people who were related to the competitors who wanted paternalistic laws to be written on their behalf. Also, those against the "robber barrons" were just friendly with the State, not good competitors. See this article.

Standard Oil lowered prices for their entire history. Today's State-priviledged oil companies do the opposite. Which is worse?

No, actually, the problem is that the state(s) dont have enough .. coljones .. to break-up big guys like microsoft anymore, the way they did with standard oil "back in the day".

You must be new here :) I've been over the Standard Oil debate for years. The State didn't break up Standard Oil, competition did. Standard Oil was no monopoly, they provided cheaper and cheaper and cheaper prices for consumers for their entire history. The competitors were unhappy because they couldn't compete at the price level. The competitors who did compete, Standard Oil bought out in order to acquire their technology -- which led to more oil and lower prices. See this article.

The media that wrote about the Standard Oil "problem" were people who were related to the competitors who wanted paternalistic laws to be written on their behalf. Also, those against the "robber barrons" were just friendly with the State, not good competitors. See this article.

Standard Oil lowered prices for their entire history. Today's State-priviledged oil companies do the opposite. Which is worse?

Pardon me, but I don't think you answered my question. All you did was explain the implications of your position on property rights, when I was looking for the justification for your distinction between physical and intellectual property. The closest you came was in alleging that IP is mind control, which appeared to be more of a scare tactic than an actual distinction.

I discuss this distinction frequently on the mises blog where I post as "Person". Here is the most recent thread.

I applaud you for your support of that free market provision in WebMD, MH. We don't see eye to eye very often, but in this case, I'm happy we can.

Enron was never a free markat fiasco -- it was a government disaster. Enron was repeatedly given loopholes in the law to use (which were closed AFTER the fact). The more you read about Enron and the other companies that ripped off the investors, the more you see that the State was the biggest predator in the situation. A free market in energy works, except when it is a "free market" as defined by government -- never really free, never really deregulated, and never really opened to competition. Look at government-set-monopoly broadband providers versus dial-up ISPs in terms of price over their history. Look at government-set-monopoly insurance versus free market insurance prices over their history (for example: flood insurance). We can see time and again that any time the State espouses "free market!!!" it is never free, never unregulated, never unfunded. Cronyism, paternalism, preferentialism = uncompetitive.

Imagine how much better off these homeless guys would be if, instead of spending $2000 on a PS3, you waited until March--that's three and a half months--and gave $1000 to charity. You'd have saved $400 over rough eBay price. And you'd be a whopping three months behind on the latest games.

You've completely forgotten about time preference. e.g. "I want it, and I want it NOW!"
ACTION IN THE PASSING OF TIME: Time Preference as an Essential Requisite of Action

This, like all economics is a simple matter of supply and demand (across the dimension of time). Right now PS3 supplies are scarce, demand is high, so prices are high.

Remember the Dreamcast? In 1998 it fetched nearly $500 through parallel trading from Japan to the USA. By 2001, you could get one at any big box store for $50 -- only 3 years later. So, asking people to simply wait 1/3 of a year because of a vague social cause is ridiculous.

Homeless people gained temporary employment. The people who want a PS3 the most got one. Entrepreneurs who figured out how to make the two previous statements occur earn a tidy profit. WHERE IS THE HARM???

The "alarmist gale" mantra is totally and completely unsubstantiated. McIntyre and McKitrick were not taken as seriously as they should have been, and in particular Mann's reputed use of the background of McIntyre (whichover one is the oil exploration guy) to disqualify his work was truly out of line. That's a black mark on Mann himself and on climate science overall, but that's a far cry from a "gale". Yet somehow the fact that the best the skeptic "community" can muster is about 25-40 scientists, many of whom are not practicing climate scientists, is not evidence for the emergence of consensus but rather is an opportunity for skeptics to play the victim.

The Wikipedia article does appear very critical in tone of Lindzen, and while many of its points are legimate discussion, overall it needs to be pulled back to drier tone. But that's Wikipedia and not a refereed publication, and in any case, you can hardly call it a character attack. Scientists are supposed to have thick skin - their work should stand for itself. In Lindzen's case, he has a very distinguished career, but his iris theory is scientifically controversial and deserves every bit of scrutiny that the hockey stick did. That's not a "gale", it's the scientific process. Then you get fabricated paeans like this love letter to Lindzen from conservative think tank hacks which are supposed to buttress this "gale" claim. The guy doesn't know anything about climate science, he studies economics and writes columns. The skeptic "community" wants it both ways - they're happy to cite reputably published sources whose findings they like, but the paucity of other sources whose findings they agree with are evidence of a "gale".

I have one request: show me hard evidence for an "alarmist gale" that doesn't involve either legitimate scientific scrutiny (e.g. Mann/McIntyre, Lindzen) or substandard work (e.g. Soon/Baliunas). Who was fired for presenting a finding that thermohaline circulation has NOT slowed down? Who was denied grant funding for work showing that Antartic ice mass is growing? If anyone was suppressed, it was the "consensus view" folks at NOAA, who had that 24-year-old dropout try to suppress their findings. Is that a "gale" of denial?

I'm not saying that the current scientific consensus on the anthropogenic nature of warming is writ in stone and can never be revised, but it is a consensus of mosts scientists, and the basic tactic deployed against that consensus is profoundly anti-science. That tactic is to whisper and imply that the multitudes of scientists supporting the consensus are woolly-headed or bullied into submission, while the skeptics (many of whom just happen to publish substandard papers or not be climate scientists) are hard-nosed and brave. That tactic is what really gets me steamed. My studies were at a top-notch oceanography school, and there's plenty I didn't like and even that I didn't agree with, but I was a skeptic at the time and I was never marginalized for it. So I take offense at the whispers and suggestions, since that "gale" bullshit is just a self-pitying version of that, I have no patience for it either.

They're probably calling it Burma in protest of the military government there, one of whose changes was the name. It's not uncommon. For example, this non-crank author does it.

And I seriously doubt "human rights groups" put "profiteering" on the same level as e.g. torture and racism. Where are the human rights protests over Microsoft?

i am basically for stronger enforcement of copyright laws.. does this make me 'anti-tech' or 'pro-tech' in this survey view?

anti-tech, you douche.

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1763
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market
http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=01 97

http://jorge.cortell.net/
http://www.benkler.org/
http://www.dklevine.com/
http://www.stephankinsella.com/ip/
http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm

http://swpat.ffii.org/
http://creativecommons.org/
http://www.piratbyran.org/
http://www.stealthisfilm.com/
http://www.cambia.org/
http://www.plos.org/
http://www.fsf.org/

It's amazing how the Socialists, in their doublespeak, have hijacked "liberal" and made it into something entirely contrary to what it means:

http://www.mises.org/liberal/isec1.asp

http://www.mises.org/liberal/preface1.asp

It's amazing how the Socialists, in their doublespeak, have hijacked "liberal" and made it into something entirely contrary to what it means:

http://www.mises.org/liberal/isec1.asp

http://www.mises.org/liberal/preface1.asp

That's right, he wants to tie our currency's value to an international commodity's price. He complains about how 1-2% annual inflation has been devaluing our savings, failing to note that, had we been on a gold standard, the money supply would have experienced 50% deflation in five years, matching the 1929-1933 10% annual deflation that caused the Great Depression. Wouldn't that be a great way to stabilize the currency?

Where do people get this stuff? Neither deflation nor the gold standard caused the Great Depression. The primary cause of the intensity and length of the Great Depression was the goverment's idiotic monetary policies following the inflationary boom from 1921-1929 and the inevitable corrective depression starting late in 1929. The Austrian economists of the time (including Ludwig von Mises) accurately forecasted the depression during the inflationary period, and when the boom ended the government did exactly the opposite of what the Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT) recommended. All the boom-depression cycles up to that point had been sharp but quickly over, a result of predominately laisse-fair government policies. In 1929 the government took a different, disasterous approach: instead of leaving things well enough alone they tried to stave off the depression (the cure for the economy, though they failed to realize it) by pumping even more money into the economy (inflation), raising taxes to institute make-work projects and subsidies (with similar effects), and instituting mandatory price controls on commodities and labor. As a result, unlike the previous depressions, the Great Depression lingered on until the beginning of the next World War.

It is interesting to note that during the Depression real wage rates generally increased due to the fact that prices of goods fell more quickly than monetary wages; this seems to be a general trend for deflationary economies. The widespread unemployment of the era was due to attempts by the government and government-supported unions to prohibit any decrease in monetary wage-rages. It should be obvious that if real wage rates (the price of labor) are increasing due to fixed monetary wages and falling prices the result will be a decrease in the demand for labor, and thus unemployment. If the real wage rates had remained at market levels (with roughly the same "purchasing power" as before the Depression) unemployment would not have been nearly so much of an issue; it would have been limited to "frictional" unemployment as people transitioned from the industries swollen by the inflationary malinvestments of the boom period into more productive lines of work.

All this ignores the fact that the inflationary period from 1921-1929 was itself due in large part to the policies of the Federal Reserve since its creation in 1913, in particular the absurdly low 3% reserve ratio on time-deposit accounts.

This is just the summary; for the full analysis of the events leading up to and contributing to the Great Depression see America's Great Depression by Murray N. Rothbard.

With respect to doctors, a similar situation has been put in place. We have basically outlawed all Chevy doctors who focus on the less expensive minor health problems (which is, in fact, all that most people have) and are forced instead to use Mercedes doctors who charge Mercedes prices even for ailments that can be fixed by people with significantly less training.

-Uncertainty and Its Exigencies: The Critical Role of Insurance in the Free Market

Public education is underfunded.

Public schools do not educate, according to reformed schoolteachers like John Gatto and John Holt. If they did, the populace wouldn't take the crap that 'we' do - teh masses would know how to recognize tyranny when it happened, and find a way to circumvent it.

The government is in debt because of the tax "cuts" Bush pushed through.

The government has been in debt for a very long time - Johnson started printing money to pay for Vietnam, and there was no turning back. Clinton only balanced the budget by borrowing money from social security. If the government had to abide by the same accounting standards as corporations, there would have never been a 'surplus', and the current deficits would be much, much worse than the numbers they currently put out.

Our medical and college education costs are out of reach because ... because the government subsidizes college, and has sent all the low-skill jobs (that used to pay well) to Mexico and Asia, and has looked the other way while corporations imported Mexicans for the jobs that couldn't be moved. College has, therefore, become the new highschool diploma, not that the original ever meant anything in the first place...

we're spending our money on things like the War on Drugs(which just makes illegal drugs more expensive)

If not for the war on drugs driving up prices, how could the various black-op agencies finance their nefarious operations? Read something about Clinton being in on cocaine smuggling through Arkansas - seems like a possibility to me...

and the War on Terror(abject failure due to our inability to concentrate on the nation that actually caused the terror).

You are refering to the traitors in the whitehouse, right?

The United States has the lowest tax levels of the Western world. We also have the highest debt and the worst healthcare. There is a connection.

'Highest debt' is because our Feral Government has had free reign to "print" money for its various programs for 35+ years, and no one's had the ability to call them on it. See Ron Paul's The End of Dollar Hegemony.

'Worst healthcare' is because a certain kind of doctor lobbied themselves a monopoly, and the government set the rules such that employers paid their employees' healthcare bills (wage ceilings during WWII led companies to pick up their workers' doctor bills). Medicare was created to pay for retired workers who'd gotten accustomed to the 'health insurance' paradigm, and that program's costs have been spiraling out of control ever since. See 100 Years of Medical Robbery and Real Medical Freedom.

Public education is underfunded.

Public schools do not educate, according to reformed schoolteachers like John Gatto and John Holt. If they did, the populace wouldn't take the crap that 'we' do - teh masses would know how to recognize tyranny when it happened, and find a way to circumvent it.

The government is in debt because of the tax "cuts" Bush pushed through.

The government has been in debt for a very long time - Johnson started printing money to pay for Vietnam, and there was no turning back. Clinton only balanced the budget by borrowing money from social security. If the government had to abide by the same accounting standards as corporations, there would have never been a 'surplus', and the current deficits would be much, much worse than the numbers they currently put out.

Our medical and college education costs are out of reach because ... because the government subsidizes college, and has sent all the low-skill jobs (that used to pay well) to Mexico and Asia, and has looked the other way while corporations imported Mexicans for the jobs that couldn't be moved. College has, therefore, become the new highschool diploma, not that the original ever meant anything in the first place...

we're spending our money on things like the War on Drugs(which just makes illegal drugs more expensive)

If not for the war on drugs driving up prices, how could the various black-op agencies finance their nefarious operations? Read something about Clinton being in on cocaine smuggling through Arkansas - seems like a possibility to me...

and the War on Terror(abject failure due to our inability to concentrate on the nation that actually caused the terror).

You are refering to the traitors in the whitehouse, right?

The United States has the lowest tax levels of the Western world. We also have the highest debt and the worst healthcare. There is a connection.

'Highest debt' is because our Feral Government has had free reign to "print" money for its various programs for 35+ years, and no one's had the ability to call them on it. See Ron Paul's The End of Dollar Hegemony.

'Worst healthcare' is because a certain kind of doctor lobbied themselves a monopoly, and the government set the rules such that employers paid their employees' healthcare bills (wage ceilings during WWII led companies to pick up their workers' doctor bills). Medicare was created to pay for retired workers who'd gotten accustomed to the 'health insurance' paradigm, and that program's costs have been spiraling out of control ever since. See 100 Years of Medical Robbery and Real Medical Freedom.

"US politics has mostly been dominated by rabid right-wing capitalists"

Capitalism has largely been the object of blame that mercantilism takes to the woodshed. It's not capitalism, its corporatism, nationalism, or modern mercantilism.

Capitalism is simply freely trading goods for services and vice versa. It has nothing to do with coercion, as companies cannot force you to buy a product except via government granted monopoly. I would invite anyone to visit http://www.mises.org/ to discover the true nature of capitalism and the detriment of government influence.

But that's only the beginning of why pennies ought to be eliminated.

Oh, how I long for the day that a penny could buy something meaningful...

Rather than focusing on waging war against the poor humble penny, why not focus your attention on the federal policies that have made it nearly worthless? I'm talking about perpetual deficits and the federal reserve printing 'dollars' like there's no tomorrow.

If we had a rational monetary system in the U.S., there couldn't have been a housing bubble, nor a tech bubble... Take a look at this graph of the (m3) money supply - there is an inflection point is right around 1/1995, when the federal reserve started 'printing' money. The tech bubble followed soon thereafter. After that bubble popped, all that money started flowing into housing. Now a lot of people are getting screwed because they can't afford their two investment houses and the condo in the mountains, and can't sell because they're now upside down. Sure, it's their own fault for overextending themselves, but it's mainly the bank's fault for lending them the money to make it possible.

The more people talk about "the stock market bubble" and upcoming crash, the more people start expecting it and theb selling their stocks, which makes it more likely to happen.

People selling their stocks is not what causes crashes. People lowering their asking prices is what causes crashes. People value stocks primarily on expected future earnings, and therefore, if expectations remain the same, prices will tend to remain the same. Buying and selling is simply money changing hands; it has little to do with the supply and demand factors that actually determine price. Also, the wisest investors, who naturally tend to have the most money, do not base their expectations on media gossip, slashdot messages, etc. Why base their decisions on emotion when they can rely on the objective measurements of profit and loss?

Stock market crashes happen when many companies begin to report lower profits than expected. Why do profits come in lower than expected? Well, it is the job of entpreneurs and investors to forecast the future and invest accordingly. Therefore, something must have caused the vast majority of investors to miscalculate. What causes this cluster of errors? The answer is in the very first chapter of this pdf...

did you see that 50% of Mexico's stock market is controlled by one family? Sweden's too? http://blog.mises.org/archives/005755.asp That's socialism for you

That sounds more like capitalism to me. The people who have money buy things, the people that don't have money don't buy things, whether it's old beef thats been bleached so it doesn't stink so bad, or stocks. Consider the US, where the vast majority of publically traded stocks are actually held by other companies, relegating human beings to bit players who basically gamble on the popularity of a company in all but the rare cases of a dividend. Why should I buy stocks, if I have no actual voice in the company (and hell, with corporate charters as they are now, even if I had a voting share, that gives me the right to vote as long as I vote "Yes")

Maybe someone should explain to the mexicans and swedes why they should be gambling their money on the stock market so that they too can have the pleasure of owning a piece of paper that says they own a chunk of a company, but that they can't actually redeem for any piece of that company, and can only hope that they can sucker some other loser into paying more for this piece of paper than they did, then people might actually participate in the market.

The FDA trying to protect itself through bogus articles? Who would have believed that!

http://www.lewrockwell.com/grichar/grichar17.html
Talks about the failure of the FDA

http://www.mises.org/story/1805
Playing God at the FDA

http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=56& sortorder=articledate
Dangers of Food Safety

The FDA trying to protect itself through bogus articles? Who would have believed that!

http://www.lewrockwell.com/grichar/grichar17.html
Talks about the failure of the FDA

http://www.mises.org/story/1805
Playing God at the FDA

http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=56& sortorder=articledate
Dangers of Food Safety

Liberty Magazine had a GREAT article on him a few months back, I'll scan the article and stick it on a PDF somewhere for you.

Mises is down, but they had a good article on him here: http://www.mises.org/story/2202

From memory, I don't think they were 100% positive about him, but neither am I.

Oh, here's the cache:
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:UKkC6lJU8HIJ:w ww.mises.org/story/2202+john+mackey,+libertarian&h l=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=8

Doesn't matter if you're rich or poor -- the overall numbers is what matters. One rich person spending $600 on a pound of kobe beef doesn't create a market demand in any huge way. 600 poor people spending $1 on low quality beef DOES create demand, and the beef supplier who sells $2/pound beef will try hard to reduce the price to attract those 600 new customers.

Voting with your dollars works every day -- look at items that have fallen in price even though your voted government destroys the value of the dollar every day with inflationary policies (designed to make the poor more poor and the rich wealthier). Your voted government is the largest cause of poverty in the world -- did you see that 50% of Mexico's stock market is controlled by one family? Sweden's too? http://blog.mises.org/archives/005755.asp That's socialism for you -- as if the poor are helped by it.

I was a little unsure what exactly you were advocating in the original post, and now I know. While your arguments highlight the theoretical positive effects of deflation, the empirical evidence of the negative effects of deflation on an economy tends to sway me towards the side of inflationary policies. Most notably, Japan's ~15 years of deflation, during which their economy has not done terribly well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Examples_of _deflation

How about the United States? The second example on your source links to "The Great Deflation":

The Great Deflation refers to the period from 1870 until 1890 in which world prices of goods, materials and labor decreased. This had a negative effect on established industrial economies such as Great Britain while simultaneously allowing incredible growth in the United States which was just beginning to industrialize.

I'd say that counts as "deflation working to boost a country's economy." The "negative effect" in Great Britain was probably the result of a less downwardly-flexible price structure, resulting from merchantilist policies and stubborn labor unions.[1] Also, as it's described in the linked Wikipedia page, I'd say that the falling price levels in Japan were the result of (prior) inflationary policies (leading to the equity and real-estate bubbles) and centralized fractional-reserve banking. In fact, this case sounds a lot like the Great Depression: it followed an inflationary boom, which the government and central bank attempted (and failed) to prolong by further inflating the money supply and cutting interest rates. There were two opposing forces active simultaneously: the deflationary correction to the prior inflationary boom economy, and the attempts if their government and central bank to counter the deflation through further inflation. You are blaming the former influence for their economic troubles; I would blame the latter.

Hong Kong appears to have been very similar, with deflation following extensive prior inflationary policies: "In October 1997, the Hong Kong dollar, which was pegged at 7.8 to the US dollar, came under speculative pressure since Hong Kong's inflation rate was significantly higher than that of the US for years" (emphasis added). Whenever any commodity or currency becomes overvalued (through inflation, for example) the eventual result is a downward correction in its price (i.e. deflation). The downward price correction is the cure, not the disease. Furthermore, the effects of falling prices in an undistorted economy, in which there is no overvaluation, cannot be directly compared with the effects of corrective deflation. The former need not have any ill effect, real or perceived, whereas the latter inevitably exposes the malinvestments made during the inflationary boom.

Further reading:

• America's Great Depression, by Murray N. Rothbard
• A History of Money and Banking in the United States, by Rothbard
• Deflation, Free or Compulsory, by Rothbard
• A Theory of Socialism & Capitalism, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

[1] Downwardly-inflexible wage rates were also the reason given to justify later inflation in the United States. It was thought that inflation would fool the labor union into accepting falling real wages as long as monetary wages did not decrease. It didn't take long, however, for the unions to notice the discrepency and institute inflation-indexed wages, thus nullifying any advantage this approach may have offered.

I was a little unsure what exactly you were advocating in the original post, and now I know. While your arguments highlight the theoretical positive effects of deflation, the empirical evidence of the negative effects of deflation on an economy tends to sway me towards the side of inflationary policies. Most notably, Japan's ~15 years of deflation, during which their economy has not done terribly well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Examples_of _deflation

How about the United States? The second example on your source links to "The Great Deflation":

The Great Deflation refers to the period from 1870 until 1890 in which world prices of goods, materials and labor decreased. This had a negative effect on established industrial economies such as Great Britain while simultaneously allowing incredible growth in the United States which was just beginning to industrialize.

I'd say that counts as "deflation working to boost a country's economy." The "negative effect" in Great Britain was probably the result of a less downwardly-flexible price structure, resulting from merchantilist policies and stubborn labor unions.[1] Also, as it's described in the linked Wikipedia page, I'd say that the falling price levels in Japan were the result of (prior) inflationary policies (leading to the equity and real-estate bubbles) and centralized fractional-reserve banking. In fact, this case sounds a lot like the Great Depression: it followed an inflationary boom, which the government and central bank attempted (and failed) to prolong by further inflating the money supply and cutting interest rates. There were two opposing forces active simultaneously: the deflationary correction to the prior inflationary boom economy, and the attempts if their government and central bank to counter the deflation through further inflation. You are blaming the former influence for their economic troubles; I would blame the latter.

Hong Kong appears to have been very similar, with deflation following extensive prior inflationary policies: "In October 1997, the Hong Kong dollar, which was pegged at 7.8 to the US dollar, came under speculative pressure since Hong Kong's inflation rate was significantly higher than that of the US for years" (emphasis added). Whenever any commodity or currency becomes overvalued (through inflation, for example) the eventual result is a downward correction in its price (i.e. deflation). The downward price correction is the cure, not the disease. Furthermore, the effects of falling prices in an undistorted economy, in which there is no overvaluation, cannot be directly compared with the effects of corrective deflation. The former need not have any ill effect, real or perceived, whereas the latter inevitably exposes the malinvestments made during the inflationary boom.

Further reading:

• America's Great Depression, by Murray N. Rothbard
• A History of Money and Banking in the United States, by Rothbard
• Deflation, Free or Compulsory, by Rothbard
• A Theory of Socialism & Capitalism, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

[1] Downwardly-inflexible wage rates were also the reason given to justify later inflation in the United States. It was thought that inflation would fool the labor union into accepting falling real wages as long as monetary wages did not decrease. It didn't take long, however, for the unions to notice the discrepency and institute inflation-indexed wages, thus nullifying any advantage this approach may have offered.

I was a little unsure what exactly you were advocating in the original post, and now I know. While your arguments highlight the theoretical positive effects of deflation, the empirical evidence of the negative effects of deflation on an economy tends to sway me towards the side of inflationary policies. Most notably, Japan's ~15 years of deflation, during which their economy has not done terribly well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Examples_of _deflation

How about the United States? The second example on your source links to "The Great Deflation":

The Great Deflation refers to the period from 1870 until 1890 in which world prices of goods, materials and labor decreased. This had a negative effect on established industrial economies such as Great Britain while simultaneously allowing incredible growth in the United States which was just beginning to industrialize.

I'd say that counts as "deflation working to boost a country's economy." The "negative effect" in Great Britain was probably the result of a less downwardly-flexible price structure, resulting from merchantilist policies and stubborn labor unions.[1] Also, as it's described in the linked Wikipedia page, I'd say that the falling price levels in Japan were the result of (prior) inflationary policies (leading to the equity and real-estate bubbles) and centralized fractional-reserve banking. In fact, this case sounds a lot like the Great Depression: it followed an inflationary boom, which the government and central bank attempted (and failed) to prolong by further inflating the money supply and cutting interest rates. There were two opposing forces active simultaneously: the deflationary correction to the prior inflationary boom economy, and the attempts if their government and central bank to counter the deflation through further inflation. You are blaming the former influence for their economic troubles; I would blame the latter.

Hong Kong appears to have been very similar, with deflation following extensive prior inflationary policies: "In October 1997, the Hong Kong dollar, which was pegged at 7.8 to the US dollar, came under speculative pressure since Hong Kong's inflation rate was significantly higher than that of the US for years" (emphasis added). Whenever any commodity or currency becomes overvalued (through inflation, for example) the eventual result is a downward correction in its price (i.e. deflation). The downward price correction is the cure, not the disease. Furthermore, the effects of falling prices in an undistorted economy, in which there is no overvaluation, cannot be directly compared with the effects of corrective deflation. The former need not have any ill effect, real or perceived, whereas the latter inevitably exposes the malinvestments made during the inflationary boom.

Further reading:

• America's Great Depression, by Murray N. Rothbard
• A History of Money and Banking in the United States, by Rothbard
• Deflation, Free or Compulsory, by Rothbard
• A Theory of Socialism & Capitalism, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

[1] Downwardly-inflexible wage rates were also the reason given to justify later inflation in the United States. It was thought that inflation would fool the labor union into accepting falling real wages as long as monetary wages did not decrease. It didn't take long, however, for the unions to notice the discrepency and institute inflation-indexed wages, thus nullifying any advantage this approach may have offered.

"Myself, I think the only reasonable answer is that you have to abandon anonymity. Every user account needs to be tied to an actual person in meatspace.

(All of which means that I think both slashdot and wikipedia are essentially toy sites that are on their way down the tubes.)"

Nothing like obvious hypocrisy to discredit stupidity. If it's not worth posting on sites that thrive on anonymous posting, then why did you post here?

You are stupid, and your own behaviour is the only required evidence of this. You are wasting your time doing things that you yourself say are pointless. How then could anyone take any comment from you seriously?

Aside from the obvious problem that elaborate login procedures very greatly discourage participation and are proven to arbitrarily cut your group of posters to near zero;

Others have posted reasonable analyses of the dangers of trying to attach every post or opinion to a killable human body. No doubt those who love to be able to track down and intimidate their opponents with violence wholly approve of an all-outed, everyone-exposed forum. People who believe in truth however know that it's often stated by the most powerless, those least likely to attach their name. Or be most harmed if their name is revealed by unethical types like yourself, who would probably consider it their "right" to "protect their forum" from "anonymous trolls" and so on.

"Censor anything that deviates from logical discourse. Discover a contradiction, belittle the poster for their failure to argue critically and objectively, attempt to correct their pseudo-syllogism, and applaud yourself for making the world a better place." This suggestion is laughably stupid. While you can point out seeming logical fallacy without taking power-grabbing action, you must offer at least the chance to rephrase and/or reply so that malformed arguments with differing assumptions can be restated.

This is not an opinion of mine, it's a basic epistemic error well known to all philosophers: There is no objective way to define objectivity, nor frame an issue so some "logical" method can neutrally apply to it. Framing choices reliably invert causality and make logic useless: this is called Simpson's Paradox. In any situation with incomplete or changing information, i.e. any real world social or political situation, the rules of logic simply do not apply. You can build machines with logic, but you cannot argue political debates with it alone. Rhetoric and imagery play the central role in bodily decision. Of all political philosophers probably only Hobbes thought logic could be actually objective and bodies reduced thus to axioms. Aristotle did NOT believe this, contrary to Ayn Rand's nonsensical over-interpretation of the law of excluded middle. In fact he considered rhetoric the highest art: the wise choice of metaphor/imagery/framing. Descartes considered the imagination to be the link between the body and mind, he saw no "duality".

"An easy way would be to also allow the community to modify words by adding hyperlinks to support or deride premises." This is by far the better way, it's been strongly advised in all serious literature about this since 1960s.

It's astonishing that anyone who would offer something so stupidly colonial as the first suggestion would also offer this perfectly good correct answer. But politics is by nature astonishing, so don't be surprised when you get astonished.

Also read this, it helps explain why sysop and business types make very very poor political leaders and rulers: they come from domains where planning seems to work, as opposed to the domains where it's known not to work very well, and where dissent always has the truth wrapped up within it.

(...) they claim that the purchasing power of money cannot be established. In a series of three transactions, one dollar is exchanged for a loaf of bread, half a kg of potatoes, and a kg of sugar. Then the claim is that an average value of a dollar cannot be established because the three goods aren't commensurable. But my take is that the acts of the transactions does make them commensurable. Ie, the amounts of the three goods in the amounts above are to the best of our knowledg worth one dollar each. The transactions are measurements in an economic sense.

(...) they claim that the purchasing power of money cannot be established. In a series of three transactions, one dollar is exchanged for a loaf of bread, half a kg of potatoes, and a kg of sugar. Then the claim is that an average value of a dollar cannot be established because the three goods aren't commensurable. But my take is that the acts of the transactions does make them commensurable. Ie, the amounts of the three goods in the amounts above are to the best of our knowledg worth one dollar each. The transactions are measurements in an economic sense.

Inflation isn't just a function of money supply, its a funciton of velocity - how quickly that money changes hands.

You really should read what Murray Rothbard says about "velocity" in "Man, economy, and State". He basically shows that the famous economic equation, "MV = PT", is a steaming pile of BS. Here's an excerpt:

"Let us consider the other side of the equation, E = MV, the average quantity of money in circulation in the period, multiplied by the average velocity of circulation. V is an absurd concept. ...in the case of V, what is the velocity of an individual transaction? Velocity is not an independently defined variable. Fisher, in fact, can derive V only as being equal in every instance and every period to E/M. If I spend in a certain hour $10 for a hat, and I had an average cash balance (or M) for that hour of $200, then, by definition, my V equals 1/20. I had an average quantity of money in my cash balance of $200, each dollar turned over on the average of 1/20 of a time, and consequently I spent $10 in this period. But it is absurd to dignify any quantity with a place in an equation unless it can be defined independently of the other terms in the equation. Fisher compounds the absurdity by setting up M and V as independent determinants of E, which permits him to go to his desired conclusion that if M doubles, and V and T remain constant, P--the price level--will also double. But since V is defined as equal to E/M, what we actually have is: M x (E/M) = PT or simply, E = PT, our original equation. Thus, Fisher's attempt to arrive at a quantity equation with the price level approximately proportionate to the quantity of money is proved vain by yet another route."

-- The Fallacy of the Equation of Exchange, from "Man, Economy, and State" by Murray Rothbard

I don't know if I agree or disagree with your reasoning. But I noticed you mentioning the concept of "velocity of money", and I thought you might be interested in this Mises Institute article which tries to show it's a bogus concept: Is Velocity Like Magic?. A pretty interesting reading.

Ronald Reagan: Protectionist

As for GW Bush, we can look back at the impact he's had with his steel duties(something that Clinton refused to implement). Such examples have resulted in raising costs to companies who use those resources, while at the same time protecting the existing producers from competition and taking the market pressure off of them to increase productivity and efficiency of operation.

Most people think that the first explanation they hear is the truth, and don't spend much time analyzing the facts and trying to understand the complexities. As such you've been told that Republicans are free-traders and free market capitalists and that's what you believe.

The truth is far more complicated that that.

Consider this take on Jimmy Carter for instance, who was responsible for deregulating the airline, trucking, railroad, oil and breaking up AT&T. It even notes that Reagan made a deal with the Teamsters to get their votes, promising to halt deregulation of trucking.

The only thing Republicans are good at is taking credit for stuff that goes well, and placing blame when it goes poorly.