Domain: mises.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to mises.org.
Comments · 1,424
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Re:Great article, but beware the majority.
Mod duffbeer703 up. I speak about the loss of our Senate to the majority all the time, but many people look at me like I'm kidding or wrong. Many citizens have no idea that Senators should not be majority elected, but instead should be elected directly by those who are more concerned for the individual State.
I believe this is one of the worst alternation ever, but I believe the income tax and the loss of the gold standard are worse. -
Re:Great article, but beware the majority.
Mod duffbeer703 up. I speak about the loss of our Senate to the majority all the time, but many people look at me like I'm kidding or wrong. Many citizens have no idea that Senators should not be majority elected, but instead should be elected directly by those who are more concerned for the individual State.
I believe this is one of the worst alternation ever, but I believe the income tax and the loss of the gold standard are worse. -
Re:sorry, I rant.Actually, you can separate the monetary system from the authorities. As a matter of fact, gold and silver became accepted standards for currency on the free market, because people chose them. If we want money to be as sound as possible, then we need to eliminate the government's monopoly on money. Please read the articles I referred to, which make note of this.
As for "necessary and sufficient government", no government is necessary. Absent a State, the free market takes care of justice (see Ancient Ireland, Ancient Iceland, and the Wild West). All The State is is a robber who steals from you and then has the audacity to follow you around proclaiming to be your protector, while continually robbing you (which he calls a tax, for his "services"). -
Re:sorry, I rant.Actually, you can separate the monetary system from the authorities. As a matter of fact, gold and silver became accepted standards for currency on the free market, because people chose them. If we want money to be as sound as possible, then we need to eliminate the government's monopoly on money. Please read the articles I referred to, which make note of this.
As for "necessary and sufficient government", no government is necessary. Absent a State, the free market takes care of justice (see Ancient Ireland, Ancient Iceland, and the Wild West). All The State is is a robber who steals from you and then has the audacity to follow you around proclaiming to be your protector, while continually robbing you (which he calls a tax, for his "services"). -
Re:sorry, I rant.Actually, you can separate the monetary system from the authorities. As a matter of fact, gold and silver became accepted standards for currency on the free market, because people chose them. If we want money to be as sound as possible, then we need to eliminate the government's monopoly on money. Please read the articles I referred to, which make note of this.
As for "necessary and sufficient government", no government is necessary. Absent a State, the free market takes care of justice (see Ancient Ireland, Ancient Iceland, and the Wild West). All The State is is a robber who steals from you and then has the audacity to follow you around proclaiming to be your protector, while continually robbing you (which he calls a tax, for his "services"). -
nope, not really
There will always be booms and busts until The State stops inflating the monetary supply. In other words, until we get The State out of money, and go back to allowing the free market to choose money. This would almost certainly result in a gold and silver standard, with banks issuing bank-notes redeemable in certain weights in gold or silver. Fraudulent note-issuing would be checked by bank-runs (banks would no-longer be protected) triggered by customers and other banks. Also, fractional reserve banking is a fraud in which banks loan out assets they don't have title to, while still claiming to be able to redeem at any time (in other words, there is no way they could possibly meet all of their obligations, thus are insolvent at all times). See this article.
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How outsourcing helps
Perils of Outsourcing The article is short and lucid....just read it! The effect on U.S. living standards is the same as what would happen if a cost-reducing technology in software production occurred. Living standards rise either way.
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Good for more than this is bad for
Most of us are only looking at some musicians who will be losing this particular job. When you have a career or an ability, you have to gauge your chances of marketing said ability. If I was a horse-shoer or a gaslamp-lighter, I'd probably not find many job opportunities.
It is said that these individuals have lost these particular jobs, but what about what others have gained? The producers of this show will save money, which means they'll have more disposable income to spend on other things they want (meaning new jobs in other areas). Maybe they'll eat out more, or go on more vacations. Or maybe they'll lower the prices of their tickets, which means the customers who buy tickets will have more disposable income to spend money elsewhere.
Like Bastiat's "Broken Window" myth dismissal, this job dismisall is also a bogeyman. So is "offshore job outsourcing." When some people can't do the job at a price the rest of us are willing to pay, then it is time to find new skills or promote other skills they may have.
All tariffs harm the economy, and fighting for jobs for musicians instead of using synthesizers is ludicrous. If the customer doesn't mind the lower quality inhuman music, why should we care? -
Re:science from HubbleWhat you've gotten to here is the problem of minarchism: who decides what the minimal level of government activity should be? The arbitrariness of that decision is one of the many reason's why I am not a minarchist, but an anarcho-capitalist. The anarcho-capitalist view is best described by Murray N. Rothbard (economist, philosopher, libertarian, historian) in For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto.
Speaking generally, the first, and most important, argument is that The State is inherently immoral. It necessitates violating the non-aggression axiom (that no-one should initiate violence against anyone else). The reason it necessitates this is that it must be funded by taxes or inflation, and even if not, to be a State, by definition, it must violently exclude anyone else from law-enforcement.
The second -- and far less important -- argment is that The State (socialism/interventionalism) is inherently wasteful, inefficient, and anti-productive, in all areas from the making of shoes to the realization of justice.
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Re:science from Hubble
You mis-understand my point. My point is that *any* "investment" made by the government is wasteful, and relies on THEFT FROM THE TAXPAYER via taxes or inflation. Thus, it is immoral no matter what. See Who Should Pay for Science? by Michael Levin and State Science, State Truth by Wendy McElroy (also author of XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography).
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Re:science from Hubble
You mis-understand my point. My point is that *any* "investment" made by the government is wasteful, and relies on THEFT FROM THE TAXPAYER via taxes or inflation. Thus, it is immoral no matter what. See Who Should Pay for Science? by Michael Levin and State Science, State Truth by Wendy McElroy (also author of XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography).
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um, yes, your job should be your lifeWell, not really. But your job is what you do 8 hours every day, so it should be something that you really enjoy and are enthusiastic about. It should be something where your excited to get up and go to "work" (I'm sick of these anarcho-socialist nut-cases babbling about how "unfair" work is -- grow the fuck up).
My personal dream jobs:
1. Anything at or affiliated with the Mises Institute. Supporting personal and economic freedom, along with economic sanity.
2. Mutual fund manager. I don't care what they say about mutual fund managers being over-paid. Who make that arbitrary decision? Anyways, finding really great companies is a fun challenge.
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some suggested papers and articles
Patent Wrongs, Illana Mercer
Rethinking Patent Law, Gene Callahan
Against Intellectual Property, Stephen Kinsella -
some suggested papers and articles
Patent Wrongs, Illana Mercer
Rethinking Patent Law, Gene Callahan
Against Intellectual Property, Stephen Kinsella -
some suggested papers and articles
Patent Wrongs, Illana Mercer
Rethinking Patent Law, Gene Callahan
Against Intellectual Property, Stephen Kinsella -
NO PROPERTY RIGHTS IN NON-SCARCE RESOURCESThere are no natural property rights in resources that aren't scarce, and this qualifies as one of those resources. Google's lawyers trying to get Booble to change and turn over their website constites a violation of *real* property rights that the people at Booble have (namely, the right to alter their physical property in any way they see fit). Sorry, but Google has no inherent right to have a certain domain point to their IP address, nor to have all domain-names that are similar to theirs. All that trademark is is an artificially created monopoly, a State intervention which hinders the free market.
What's obvious to me is that Google is, in fact, trying to capitalize on an innovation that they did not think up, to name a website "Booble" and make it a search engine. However, if they're really worried about the public's good will to them, they can put out a statement on their website saying that they have no affiliation with Booble. Oh, and sorry, but they have NO RIGHT to have the public at large have "good will" towards them either.
Note to Google: You have no property right in your reputation. In other words, you do not have the right to have others think well of you. Get over it. -
Very interesting
This may seem like offtopic but this article is a very interesting read. Please read the link to NY Times article that's in the first para as well. Well here's the article (read it in full if you will)
Who really benefits from outsourcing
Another thing which most of us miss out when looking at cheaper cost of programmers in foreign lands is the currency exchange rate. Those programmers are actually very very expensive compared to other labor (look at their national per capita income) in their locale. It is their currency exchange rate that makes them look cheap when we look in dollar terms. Now if you were to become president and say hey, 1 US dollar is equal to 1 Indian rupee from now on, there will be zero outsourcing. Okay, the last sentence was hypothetical but China does have artificially pegged currency exchange rate...
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Re:Damn RepublicansFirst, Microsoft holds no actual power (the ability to initiate force as a means to an end). Only government holds actual power. What Microsoft holds is market presence. Government may initiate force on behalf of Microsoft, but if Microsoft initiates force without the "blessing" of government, they are criminals.
Second, Microsoft (like many corporations) acquired their market presence largely by exploiting the law. But the law is only exploitable because it is overly complex, ambiguous, and catered towards special interests -- a direct result of big government. A libertarian government, being strictly limited in power, wouldn't be able to "assist" corporations in this way -- corporations would have to compete soley on the grounds of voluntary association.
I suggest you do a search on mises.org for a much better analysis than I can provide.
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Similar example from history
This sort of stuipid protectionism has been around for a while.
Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) wrote a similar (satirical) one, "The Candlemaker's Petition" www.mises.org
Bastiat was a genius at explaining all these economic principles and outcomes by the use of satire and parables, the most famous of which is "The Candlemaker's Petition," which "requested" a law to mandate "the covering of all windows and skylights and other openings, holes, and cracks through which the light of the sun is able to enter houses. This free sunlight is hurting the business of us deserving manufacturers of candles." -
Re:The famine was due to the British, not potatoes
Just to provide a reference to the famine originating in British hands, the Von Mieses institute have a good article on the protectionist corn laws. I don't agree with much of the spin, but in essence it's correct.
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Yes, it's the broken window falacy.Or as Dave Barry puts it:
"See, when the government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs."
It's nuts to assume that throwing money at some new boondoggle will help the economy. Yeah, throwing money into space might employ people. Or alternately, you could employ a lot of people in the hole-digging industry if the government simply funded a giant industry to dig holes and fill them up again. Why not do that? See the parent poster's link.
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Broken Window Fallacy
This is the good old broken window fallacy resurfacing (again). Read all about or from many other sites.
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Re:Mercantilism at its finest
The true meaning of mercantilism is well exampled in the downfall of England. Our founding fathers ran from mercantilist England to America to avoid the horrible effects of mercantilism.
Here is a great article about mercantilism, written by the author of my favorite book, The Real Lincoln. Here is another.
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Re:Mercantilism at its finest
The true meaning of mercantilism is well exampled in the downfall of England. Our founding fathers ran from mercantilist England to America to avoid the horrible effects of mercantilism.
Here is a great article about mercantilism, written by the author of my favorite book, The Real Lincoln. Here is another.
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Re:Great news for the economy
Why is the average Joe not working harder? If they are average, they should expect the average pay as the average people in other countries do. Why is average Joe American worth more than average Joe Indian?
Here's a simple explanation of it all:
Gene Callahan, author of Economics for Real People has written a great story explaining the realities of how government is at fault for job losses, not foreign competition. It is a really easy read, and puts in simple terms why we shouldn't shun job losses to other nations, but support them. -
Re:Great news for the economy
Why is the average Joe not working harder? If they are average, they should expect the average pay as the average people in other countries do. Why is average Joe American worth more than average Joe Indian?
Here's a simple explanation of it all:
Gene Callahan, author of Economics for Real People has written a great story explaining the realities of how government is at fault for job losses, not foreign competition. It is a really easy read, and puts in simple terms why we shouldn't shun job losses to other nations, but support them. -
Great news for the economy
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. -
Thurow circa 1985 : Japan will own the world
Lester Thurow is the guy who said Japan and their government directed industries will own the world in the 21st century and that the US needed to have the government organize and direct all the industries. " A number of American economists, including Lester Thurow of MIT, insisted that we also needed Japan-style "industrial policy" to guide U.S. manufacturers. "
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Re:My experiences with tech business trendsI figured it out, after reading McBride's biography here:
I'll quote:
A technology industry veteran, McBride has 19 years of executive management and leadership experience. Before joining SCO, McBride was the president of Franklin Covey's online planning business. Prior to that, McBride has been the CEO of PointServe, a workforce optimization software company; and the founder, chairman, and CEO of SBI and Company, a professional services company. While at the helm of these companies, McBride was responsible for raising more than $100 million in venture capital.
In other words, he is good at talking people into giving him money to fund his projects. People who read Slashdot probably don't believe this, but I will bet that he is slick to the "right" people.
So, the reason why he is considered an industry leader is because people believe him when he says, "I'm an industry leader." Confidence men work the same way. Did you ever read the life story of Carlo Ponzi? Here it is The Life of Carlo Ponzi. A lot of people have heard of Ponzi shcemes, but most people don't realize that at one time Carlo Ponzi was considered, you guessed it, a business leader:
With the success he experienced with Tony and Guiseppe, Carlo started Securities Exchange Company at 27 School Street in Boston the day after Christmas 1919. Advertising a 50-percent return in ninety days, money from investors large and small poured in.
Who knows, in the future we may call something, "A McBride scheme."With all this money pouring in, Carlo had to figure out a plausible explanation for how he could pay 50-percent interest in ninety days when no place in the world paid that much. But Carlo's ingenuity for scams came through again. He told investors that he had a network of agents in Europe that purchased depreciated European currencies, converting the currencies into international postal coupons, which were then redeemed at face value in the United States in U.S. dollars. Carlo claimed all the high rollers were doing it--the Rockefellers, J.P. Morgan, Jr., everybody. But Saint Carlo instead was sharing the wealth and helping the common man (while helping himself of course). Redistributing their money was more like it.
Every day, tens of thousands of dollars were deposited with Carlo's tellers. Outside the building, crowds lined up, waiting to invest. And every day, Carlo would arrive at work in his chauffeur-driven limousine. The key to the entire scheme continued to work its magic, as the deposit counters were usually a swarm of activity, and the withdrawal counters were practically deserted. As the deposits grew and grew, Carlo even opened branch offices, eventually totaling thirty-five. He also used some of the deposits to purchase two actual businesses, Hanover Trust Co. and J.P. Poole Co. Carlo even found time in his busy schedule to buy Rose a mansion.
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Re:Government has been involved from the beginning
Sorry, had an extra 's'
mises.org -
I disagree
because most user's don't actually look at the source. The reason people trust GNU/Linux more than Windows is because it has a record of better security than Windows. So-long as there is real competition between various companies and products -- and I argue GNU/Linux is a competing product put forth by capitalists for non-monetary profit -- individuals can make choices so as to protect their data. The problem is that The State has created an artificial scarcity of resources, by creating property rights in information. The solution is to eliminate this artificially created scarcity (which violates real property rights). You may be interested in Against Intellectual Property by Stephen Kinsella.
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Re:debt burdenLet me get this straight. You are seriously suggesting that the dot-com crash was due to Bush saying he would "steeply" cut taxes and increase military spendnig and not touching entitlements? Event though at the time there was a HUGE projected surplus that belonged to the tax payers who OVERPAID and at the time there was no real fear of any significant or actual deficit spending?
Further are you are suggesting that the stock market crashed because they "feared" republican economics and completely unrelated to the poor business models of the dot-com era which could essentially be summed up with the following points:
Their business plan. While often "inspiring" or "revolutionary", they were never profitable.
They spent other people's money unchecked in an effort to gain market share as soon as possible
They had inexperienced teams whose only goal was the fastest possible growth of their company, not long term success.
Their company may have made it in the end, but because of the failure of so many others their investor capital was pulled.
(note: the above was taken verbatum from a left leaning source).
My God. Are you being deliberatly obtuse? Since when is news of a lower tax burden BAD news for the stock market?
The seeds of this recession were planted LONG before Bush came in to office -- predicted before Bush won the election, appears to be ending, as predicted, ON SCHEDULE dispite HUGE unforeseen and EXPENSIVE catastophies (9/11, Federal take over of airport security, Afganistan, Iraq, Corporate corruption etc.) which ALL took HUGE bites out of our economy. Is Enron Bush's fault, too? Did he somehow set up their ability to hide HUGE amounts of debt while running the Texas Rangers?
You really need to sit down and take stock of your argument. Face it, the stock market was DESTINED to crash when VC decided back in the 90's it was "OK" for to finance companies with expenses in the 10s to 100s of millions/year while bringing in only a few hundred thousand a year. THAT is what caused the crash. Not a news flash "BUSH TAKES LEAD IN THE POLLS! PROMISES TO LOWER TAXES! NEWS AT 11!".
To blame the recession on Clinton or Bush is asenine. It was caused by greedy/stupid VC and criminal accounting. You can only fool the market for so long... it will ALWAYS correct itself in the end.
I will once again STRONGLY suggest you THANK this administration for following program (cut taxes, cut interest rates, provide incentives to businesses) so as to shorted the duration and severity of the recession.
You again attempt to take the discussion away from the CAUSE of the recession to something completely unrelated to the CAUSE -- and argueably related to the RESULT. First the deficit, and now the decline in the dollar.
In closing, I will once again point out yet another left-leaning source:
The Falling Dollar - 12/15/2003
I'm not even going to bother quoting anything from it -- read it yourself. I'm done with you. Good day sir (or madam). -
We have a choice!
Several members of the jury approached this boys' mother after the trial and apologized. The remainder could not look her in the face. [...] This would have never gone anywhere...
...if the average American knew about the concept of "jury nullification." No matter what "evidence of a crime" is presented, and no matter how a judge intstructs a jury, a jury can find a defendent not guilty and that's the end of that.The reason we have juries and the reason their not guilty verdict is final is to undermine such ridiculous laws and abuses of over-zealous government through the veto of common sense.
Here's a decent article on the subject.
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The *real* stealth theft ...
... is by Government:Economic Freedom and Interventionism - Ludwig von Mises
...What makes it possible for a government to increase its funds by inflation is the ignorance of the public. The people must ignore the fact that the government has chosen inflation as a fiscal system and plans to go on with inflation endlessly. It must ascribe the general rise in prices to other causes than to the policy of the government and must assume that prices will drop again in a not-too-distant future. If this opinion fades away, inflation comes to a catastrophic breakdown.
...
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Another Perspective on Jobs Lost OverseasHere.
An interesting comment: 'What about workers who lack the job skills to fit into the higher and higher levels of sophisticated production in which the US is specializing? Because of the existence of scarcity, there will never be a shortage of jobs to do, so long as we live in time and not eternal bliss. The phrase "shortage of jobs" can only be colloquial; there is never a shortage of things to do. It is only a question of price, and the best way to raise the wages is to make sure that people do what they are most suited to do--which can only be known by letting markets work.'
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wow, you've really been brainwashedby that, I can only presume that you've been brainwashed into thinking that Lincoln was a great supporter of the abolitionist movement and a supporter of African-American rights. In reality, nothing could possibly be further from the truth. You would be hard-pressed to find a bigger bigot than Lincoln. Lincoln was such a racist that he didn't like slavery because it meant that we'd have to live with African Americans...he wanted to ship them all back to Africa.
The following links may prove informative on the real Abraham Lincoln:
Confronting the Lincoln Cult
The truth spitter
Rethinking Lincoln [mp3]
The Real Lincoln [mp3] -
wow, you've really been brainwashedby that, I can only presume that you've been brainwashed into thinking that Lincoln was a great supporter of the abolitionist movement and a supporter of African-American rights. In reality, nothing could possibly be further from the truth. You would be hard-pressed to find a bigger bigot than Lincoln. Lincoln was such a racist that he didn't like slavery because it meant that we'd have to live with African Americans...he wanted to ship them all back to Africa.
The following links may prove informative on the real Abraham Lincoln:
Confronting the Lincoln Cult
The truth spitter
Rethinking Lincoln [mp3]
The Real Lincoln [mp3] -
wow, you've really been brainwashedby that, I can only presume that you've been brainwashed into thinking that Lincoln was a great supporter of the abolitionist movement and a supporter of African-American rights. In reality, nothing could possibly be further from the truth. You would be hard-pressed to find a bigger bigot than Lincoln. Lincoln was such a racist that he didn't like slavery because it meant that we'd have to live with African Americans...he wanted to ship them all back to Africa.
The following links may prove informative on the real Abraham Lincoln:
Confronting the Lincoln Cult
The truth spitter
Rethinking Lincoln [mp3]
The Real Lincoln [mp3] -
wow, you've really been brainwashedby that, I can only presume that you've been brainwashed into thinking that Lincoln was a great supporter of the abolitionist movement and a supporter of African-American rights. In reality, nothing could possibly be further from the truth. You would be hard-pressed to find a bigger bigot than Lincoln. Lincoln was such a racist that he didn't like slavery because it meant that we'd have to live with African Americans...he wanted to ship them all back to Africa.
The following links may prove informative on the real Abraham Lincoln:
Confronting the Lincoln Cult
The truth spitter
Rethinking Lincoln [mp3]
The Real Lincoln [mp3] -
Re:red herrinbWho would be responsible to only thier investors.
Which would be almost all property owners, and all those who own apartment complexes. Since many of the lower and middle class live in apartments, they're covered by their landlord's private law-enforcement, even if they don't have their own private insurance. Furthermore, you continue to ignore the fact that law-enforcement is provided by the hard work and labor of law-enforcement agencies. No-one is entitled to their labor without compensating them for it, nor are those who can't afford to do so entitled to steal from other's to compensate law-enforcement. Rothbard addresses your questions:
But how could a poor person afford private protection he would have to pay for instead of getting free protection, as he does now?" There are several answers to this question, one of the most common criticisms of the idea of totally private police protection. One is: that this problem of course applies to any commodity or service in the libertarian society, not just the police. But isn't protection necessary? Perhaps, but then so is food of many different kinds, clothing, shelter, etc. Surely these are at least as vital if not more so than police protection, and yet almost nobody says that therefore the government must nationalize food, clothing, shelter, etc., and supply these free as a compulsory monopoly. Very poor people would be supplied, in general, by private charity, as we saw in our chapter on welfare. Furthermore, in the specific case of police there would undoubtedly be ways of voluntarily supplying free police protection to the indigent--either by the police companies themselves for goodwill (as hospitals and doctors do now) or by special "police aid" societies that would do work similar to "legal aid" societies today. (Legal aid societies voluntarily supply free legal counsel to the indigent in trouble with the authorities.)
There are important supplementary considerations. As we have seen, police service is not "free"; it is paid for by the taxpayer, and the taxpayer is very often the poor person himself. He may very well be paying more in taxes for police now than he would in fees to private, and far more efficient, police companies. Furthermore, the police companies would be tapping a mass market; with the economies of such a large-scale market, police protection would undoubtedly be much cheaper. No police company would wish to price itself out of a large chunk of its market, and the cost of protection would be no more prohibitively expensive than, say, the cost of insurance today. (In fact, it would tend to be much cheaper than current insurance, because the insurance industry today is heavily regulated by government to keep out low-cost competition.
there was a time that Libertarianism was about liberty (which was then defined as "freedom of action").
Property rights are required for liberty. Anyone who doubts that can only look at the "freedom of speech" we see on government-owned and regulated airwaves. See Rothbard's Personal Liberty. For a relevant quote:
THE LIBERTARIAN CREED rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the "nonaggression axiom." "Aggression" is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else. Aggression is therefore synonymous with invasion.
If no man may aggress against another; if, in short, everyone has the absolute right to be "free" from aggression, then this at once implies that the libertarian stands foursquare for what are generally known as "civil liberties": the freedom to speak, publish, assemble, and to engage in such "victimless crimes" as pornography, sexual deviation, and prostitution (which the libertarian does not regard as "crimes" at all, since he defines a "crime" as violent
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Evidence that the system is a failure
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.
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Evidence that the system is a failure
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.
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One more step to complete money disaster
As money has progressed over the centuries, we have seen over and over again the same situation: money initially is a hard tangible rare asset (such as gold or silver, wood or even wheat). Private organizations take this rare tangible asset, store it, and issue a paper certificate for easier trade between two people. Any one person can bring that paper certificate for immediate withdrawal of the hard asset.
Over time, a government comes along and mandates that their populace use the government's own paper certificate. The government usually regulates all banks. Eventually, the banks are then controlled by a central bank (Federal Reserve Bank). And soon enough, government realizes it can make itself "free" money by printing more certificates than there is tangible assets to redeem.
Down the road, the government says that their money no longer needs to be burdened by the redepemption factor, and the new certificates become actual money, even though they are worthless. The said government prints more and more worthless "money," and by having conned the majority of the population, people believe that the paper certificates have value. In the short run, the paper does have value with other people, but in the long run, the paper "money" always ends up being worthless.
The American dollar may be the world standard today, but at the rate that the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Board has been printing money in the past 60 years, our dollar is worthless. It has devalued over 98% since 1914 when the FRB was created. Before that, our dollar held its value very well since the 1700's. Before 1914, our dollars were privately created and held by real individual banks. Today, our banks are all controlled by central banking. It's a monopoly cartel, not a competitive market.
Usually, when a government starts printing more and more fake money, the currency gets inflated, causing prices to go up. Luckily for the U.S., foreign governments have been taking our fake dollars out of circulation and storing them in their banks -- hiding the true inflationary rate (sometimes as high as 10% a year).
The scare for gold bugs such as myself is that China and other foreign banks may try to redeem those dollars in the near future for gold or euros or another "money" or hard money. Should that happen, nay, when that happens, our dollar will become worthless.
Gold has sky rocketed in recent years. If you actually take the value of gold from 1700 to 1914 versus how many dollars were in circulation, and the same value today, the true price of gold should be around $8000 an ounce, not $400 an ounce!
Electronic currency will be easier to manipulate, inflate, and destroy. I am a firm believer that we should return to a true money system -- a free market system where two persons trade items or services of value.
The most amazing book of all time about money is now available free on the internet. Please go here to read it. It is worth your time, and every last one of you will probably be scared out of your mind. I am, every time I read this "bible of money" by Murray Rothbard. -
appeal to authorityappealing to what you think a Zen-monk would accept hardly verifies the validity of your arguments. The simple fact of the matter is that it is Statists who are naive (or simply evil and corrupt). To hand over large amounts of centralized power to individuals and then ask them not to abuse that power -- using some worthless piece of paper, such as the Constitution, which is interpretted by those same individuals -- is laughable.
A true fundamental axiom is indisputeable. The non-aggression axiom fits that category (and from the non-aggression axiom can be derived the homesteading principle, and all the other facets of libertarianism:
It is illegal to initiate violence against anyone else.
This axiom is indisputeable by argumentation. Simply by arguing, you verify this argument. For if you didn't accept it, you wouldn't bother arguing, but would simply assault or murder all those who disagreed with you.
Fundamental aspects of libertarian economics (Austrian Economics) are also indisputeable, such as the axiom that man acts to replace a less satisfactory situation with a more satisfactory one, or the axiom that all individuals have a certain degree of time preference (a preference for goods now, as opposed to in the future).
I suggest you take a look at For a New Liberty, by Murray N. Rothbard. Libertarianism is very much oriented towards reality. Anyone who reads Mises.org could easily see that. Articles discussing an important problem with any State (the need to tax, which always distorts the free market and reduces wealth by redirecting investment from fruitful free-market entreprise to wasteful government operations like the export of murder on a mass scale):
Taxes and Distortion
Hidden Taxes
The Myth of Neutral Taxation -
appeal to authorityappealing to what you think a Zen-monk would accept hardly verifies the validity of your arguments. The simple fact of the matter is that it is Statists who are naive (or simply evil and corrupt). To hand over large amounts of centralized power to individuals and then ask them not to abuse that power -- using some worthless piece of paper, such as the Constitution, which is interpretted by those same individuals -- is laughable.
A true fundamental axiom is indisputeable. The non-aggression axiom fits that category (and from the non-aggression axiom can be derived the homesteading principle, and all the other facets of libertarianism:
It is illegal to initiate violence against anyone else.
This axiom is indisputeable by argumentation. Simply by arguing, you verify this argument. For if you didn't accept it, you wouldn't bother arguing, but would simply assault or murder all those who disagreed with you.
Fundamental aspects of libertarian economics (Austrian Economics) are also indisputeable, such as the axiom that man acts to replace a less satisfactory situation with a more satisfactory one, or the axiom that all individuals have a certain degree of time preference (a preference for goods now, as opposed to in the future).
I suggest you take a look at For a New Liberty, by Murray N. Rothbard. Libertarianism is very much oriented towards reality. Anyone who reads Mises.org could easily see that. Articles discussing an important problem with any State (the need to tax, which always distorts the free market and reduces wealth by redirecting investment from fruitful free-market entreprise to wasteful government operations like the export of murder on a mass scale):
Taxes and Distortion
Hidden Taxes
The Myth of Neutral Taxation -
appeal to authorityappealing to what you think a Zen-monk would accept hardly verifies the validity of your arguments. The simple fact of the matter is that it is Statists who are naive (or simply evil and corrupt). To hand over large amounts of centralized power to individuals and then ask them not to abuse that power -- using some worthless piece of paper, such as the Constitution, which is interpretted by those same individuals -- is laughable.
A true fundamental axiom is indisputeable. The non-aggression axiom fits that category (and from the non-aggression axiom can be derived the homesteading principle, and all the other facets of libertarianism:
It is illegal to initiate violence against anyone else.
This axiom is indisputeable by argumentation. Simply by arguing, you verify this argument. For if you didn't accept it, you wouldn't bother arguing, but would simply assault or murder all those who disagreed with you.
Fundamental aspects of libertarian economics (Austrian Economics) are also indisputeable, such as the axiom that man acts to replace a less satisfactory situation with a more satisfactory one, or the axiom that all individuals have a certain degree of time preference (a preference for goods now, as opposed to in the future).
I suggest you take a look at For a New Liberty, by Murray N. Rothbard. Libertarianism is very much oriented towards reality. Anyone who reads Mises.org could easily see that. Articles discussing an important problem with any State (the need to tax, which always distorts the free market and reduces wealth by redirecting investment from fruitful free-market entreprise to wasteful government operations like the export of murder on a mass scale):
Taxes and Distortion
Hidden Taxes
The Myth of Neutral Taxation -
appeal to authorityappealing to what you think a Zen-monk would accept hardly verifies the validity of your arguments. The simple fact of the matter is that it is Statists who are naive (or simply evil and corrupt). To hand over large amounts of centralized power to individuals and then ask them not to abuse that power -- using some worthless piece of paper, such as the Constitution, which is interpretted by those same individuals -- is laughable.
A true fundamental axiom is indisputeable. The non-aggression axiom fits that category (and from the non-aggression axiom can be derived the homesteading principle, and all the other facets of libertarianism:
It is illegal to initiate violence against anyone else.
This axiom is indisputeable by argumentation. Simply by arguing, you verify this argument. For if you didn't accept it, you wouldn't bother arguing, but would simply assault or murder all those who disagreed with you.
Fundamental aspects of libertarian economics (Austrian Economics) are also indisputeable, such as the axiom that man acts to replace a less satisfactory situation with a more satisfactory one, or the axiom that all individuals have a certain degree of time preference (a preference for goods now, as opposed to in the future).
I suggest you take a look at For a New Liberty, by Murray N. Rothbard. Libertarianism is very much oriented towards reality. Anyone who reads Mises.org could easily see that. Articles discussing an important problem with any State (the need to tax, which always distorts the free market and reduces wealth by redirecting investment from fruitful free-market entreprise to wasteful government operations like the export of murder on a mass scale):
Taxes and Distortion
Hidden Taxes
The Myth of Neutral Taxation -
appeal to authorityappealing to what you think a Zen-monk would accept hardly verifies the validity of your arguments. The simple fact of the matter is that it is Statists who are naive (or simply evil and corrupt). To hand over large amounts of centralized power to individuals and then ask them not to abuse that power -- using some worthless piece of paper, such as the Constitution, which is interpretted by those same individuals -- is laughable.
A true fundamental axiom is indisputeable. The non-aggression axiom fits that category (and from the non-aggression axiom can be derived the homesteading principle, and all the other facets of libertarianism:
It is illegal to initiate violence against anyone else.
This axiom is indisputeable by argumentation. Simply by arguing, you verify this argument. For if you didn't accept it, you wouldn't bother arguing, but would simply assault or murder all those who disagreed with you.
Fundamental aspects of libertarian economics (Austrian Economics) are also indisputeable, such as the axiom that man acts to replace a less satisfactory situation with a more satisfactory one, or the axiom that all individuals have a certain degree of time preference (a preference for goods now, as opposed to in the future).
I suggest you take a look at For a New Liberty, by Murray N. Rothbard. Libertarianism is very much oriented towards reality. Anyone who reads Mises.org could easily see that. Articles discussing an important problem with any State (the need to tax, which always distorts the free market and reduces wealth by redirecting investment from fruitful free-market entreprise to wasteful government operations like the export of murder on a mass scale):
Taxes and Distortion
Hidden Taxes
The Myth of Neutral Taxation -
Re:defensive means exactly thatPractical concerns do not negate moral reality. If a 6' black man living in a certain area rapes my daughter, it would be expedient and 'practical' for me to just go about and kill every 6' tall black man in the area who met that description. However, that does not justify it morally. Likewise, neither do your claimed practical concerns justify murder on a mass scale.
Any country with nuclear weapons that felt like attacking a "morally right" country could just give their leader a cell-phone and let him call in a nuclear attack
You present that as if it is a certainty to occur. There is no reason why any nation would want to launch a nuclear attack against a libertarian "area" (you could not call it a State) that did not nose into everyone else' affairs. Furthermore, there is little use for nuclear weapons during the invasion of a non-aggressive area. The only reason to invade a non-aggressive block of land would be to control it's resources and benefit from them, including the people, who you would enslave. You cannot do that if you level everything to the ground, destroying all resources.
Since the "US" would not be a nation -- would have no centralized power structure -- any occupying force would have to occupy all territory to effectively exert control, and then set up a central power-structure. This would be made exceedingly difficult by a population which would oppose with guerilla warfare (the only justified form of war). The meaningful way to invade such a nation would be with ground forces (soldiers). Aerial attacks would serve no function, as there would be no military targets to take out.
The only fear they'd have is that we might shoot the 15 or 20 people directly responsible for the missile launch, if we could find them.
And, of course, themselves. The assasination of leaders who order mass-murder is justified. However, murdering civilians who they also happen to oppress is not justified.
I am starting to suspect that you are (1) still in junior high, (2) not too bright, or (3) IHBT. HAND.
A lame ad hominem attempt to discredit me by presuming that your position is right, and anyone who disagrees with you is either young and naive or stupid. Btw, whatever IHBT/HAND means, I don't know.
I would suggest that you read National Defense (search for National Defense).
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mis-characterization and mis-understanding of (A)c