Peter Drucker, Joseph M. Juran, and W. Edwards Deming warned the US that that would happen. It within the realm of posibility that China will do to Japan, Korea, and Taiwan what they did to the US.
If they manage to accomplish it though, it will likely destroy what's left of communism in their country. Henry Kissinger has found that in communist countries, hardliners tend to follow reformers. If this rule holds true for China, it would mean that the next leader of the PRC will turn the country back. I personally think that China will be the exception to the rule and will continue down the road to a free market, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
The US does not opperate on #2. Here is what really is happening:
The US imports more goods then it exports. As a result foreigners have lots of dollars. One of two things will happen, either the value of the dollar will fall relative to the foreign currency and the trade will balance OR the foreigners will decide to invest the money in the US economy. In reality some combination of both will happen.
Normally this doesn't affect the country involved very much, but the US has some screwed up domestic economic policy that left alone would cause consumption to outstrip the ability to grow and maintain the capital base needed to support it. As long as foreigners reinvest the money into the US economy things will be fine, the massive consumption expenditures made by the American public will not be impared. If OTOH, the foreigners find somewhere better to put their wealth, they will stop investing, the dollar will fall, and because of bass-ackwards government policy, the economy will not be able to support the existing level of consuption expenditure.
As for China, they are growing at a rapid rate but are desperate for capital investment to keep the rapid growth up. If they do not entice enough people to invest in China (or produce enough exports to bring enough foreign currency into china to buy the capital goods they need), the rapid progress of their economy will grind to a halt and their country would likely be destabilized.
Their thoughts probably are working along these lines: If China has a special incompatable DVD format, entertainment companies that want to do business here will need to produce special versions of their content. In order to save costs they will most likely build the factory in China, investing in our economy.
Obviously they are counting on the large potential market to draw the media companies in and offset the artificial barrier.
You could google this, but I'll save you the effort.
The difference between interventionism and socialism on the german model (where people nominally own the property but the government makes all decisions reguarding its disposition) is that, in interventionism the market process still exists, while in socialism and communism the market process is destroyed. You are very astute to realize that interventionism is ultimatly just a slow path to socialism.
Under interventionism the market gets distorted and tends to behave perversly. That's why Mises says the US policy is insane -- it deliberatly frustrates itself.
Perl is like C: It works fine for large project if you use it correctly, but if you don't know what you are doing, you get crap. For example, the OpenBSD pkg_* tools are written in perl.
Much of that explaination regaurding contract law is not correct, and several parts of that contract process could probably have a contract thrown out in court.
If you are going to sign a contract, you should hire a lawyer to represent you. You WILL get your money's worth.
Until reaching Utopia, a communist country is one which is completely controlled by the government. Very similar to the US today with the government regulating everything and anything under the sun. You're very confused.
The US is interventionist. In a communist country private ownership of the means of production is non-existant. In the US, it is just very impared. Here the market still ultimately decides.
I asked for you to practice what you preach.
I always have. The lawsuits are bogus and fraudulent, and the RIAA is a corrupting pressure group. I don't need Marxist exploitation theory to prove it. My views have been clearly expressed here and here.
If people don't like what the RIAA is doing, they should put up or shut up. Stop buying from them, or admit that you don't really care.
You keep using rhetorical quips, but what you say has no substance. You ignore every point I make. What is your point? To troll? To promote some dead marist theory?
If what you claim is correct, all of modern economics would be wrong, Karl Marx would be right, and we should overthrow the government and extablish a Communist country. That's an extraodinary claim; extraodinary claims require extraodinary proof. Where is it?
You and everyone else just bitch because you got EXACTLY what you asked for. If you don't like the results produced by the market, use your power as a consume and abstain from buying from the compaines that don't satisfy you. I havn't bought any product from an RIAA company in over two years. What have YOU done to solve this problem? Or are you too "exploited" and "powerless" to stand for you claim to believe?
I fully understand. That's your decision, and you have a right to make it.
My point is that it is disengenous to claim on the one hand that you buy music and other products supporting the RIAA and on the other that you are powerless to change anything because they are "exploiting" you. The vast majority of consumers have spoken, they prefer having music and supporting the RIAA in the process to the alternative. To complain about results you helped produced and feign helplessness is just silly.
As for me I havn't had a problem thus far, I've been reading a bunch and playing my Gamecube. At some point I'm going to have to learn an instrument and make my own music to satisfy that want, but I'm not there yet.
What are you doing about it? Last time I asked this question, no one said that they would stop buying from them. Ultimatly the consumers who buy the products decide. They only get away with this crap because we tollerate it.
I stopped supporting the companies that participate in the RIAA. I don't buy anything or do anything that will generate revenue for any company that's a member. This means I don't buy anymore PS2 games, didn't buy a PSP, and won't be buying a PS3 because Sony would get the money. Will most/.'ers do this to support their convictions? Last time it came up there was a resounding NO. People here talk the talk but when it comes down to it, they care more about the enjoyment they get from the products then they do about the crap that goes on.
P.S. If you can point to specific laws that the government uses to prop them up, I'd love to hear about it, but I havn't been able to find any cases of obvoius special treatment.
I don't like the RIAA anymore then the next/. reader. You read read my view here. If we want to win the fight we need to use logic and facts, not worn out maxist rhetoric about labor being exploited. This:
Individuals have no bargaining power against a company and companies are fleecing individuals blind. At least admit that.
is irrational lunacy. There is no evidence to back it up. There are plenty legitimate reasons to hate the RIAA, the "evil companies exploiting the masses" scape-goat isn't one of them.
If the RIAA is getting special government protection that would be a legitimate arguement against them, but how are they protected by the government? The DMCA is a stupid, bad law. It clearly hurts consumers, but it doesn't pass the bar of government protection. Even if they are protected it doesn't lead to the conclusion that all companies are fleecing the consumer.
All of modern economics is false?!? The marxist exploitation theory is correct?!? If you think your twisted view of reality is the truth, prove it.
Here in the real world, if everyone stopped buying from Sony (a member of the RIAA) they wouldn't enjoy a superior economic position; they would be out of business. Using cheap rhetoric, hegelian didactic, and other tricks isn't going to change the truth, only bury it.
Do you have evidence to refute my point or are you going to resort to cheap rhetoric? If you know something that over 350 years of economic science doesn't please enlighten the rest of us.
Apparently you really don't know anything about economics, because the "superior economic position" of a company has nothing to do with it. Companies only enjoy a "superior economic position" by satisfying consumers --- by making products better, cheeper, or both. To say that companies should offer employees better terms, is to say that consumers, who are largely the same employees, should recieve worse terms. Barring government protection, all companies ultimately serve the consumer. This means that the terms of employment you are offered are related to how consumers value the product you help produce relative to other products they can purchase. There is nothing unjust about an employer offering you a job. You arn't "too good" to work. Get over yourself.
In the past copyright violoation involved reproduction for comercial purposes. I don't think anyone would seriously maintain that letting other people profit from a work is appropriate.
The question, which no one has the answer to, is what should the copyright law be? How should non-commerical duplication, modification, and distribution be handled? This is a new legal problem. In the past these new problems were slowly worked out by the courts over a period of many years. This way the country didn't back itself into a hole and end up with bad laws.
This time however, pressure groups went straight to congress and had the laws changed to benefit them. The laws now restrict non-commercial duplication (like what can take place on a computer) and does so in an invasive manner that has negative impacts for perfectly honest people. The law in this case is clearly broken. This would have been much less likely to happen if we had let the judcial process play out.
I have a problem with this situation for two reasons:
The RIAA is a (mostly foreign) pressure group. I don't like pressure groups changing the laws in the my country.
The RIAA is abusing the American legal system. These cases don't stand up to judicial scrutiney and the methods they use to find defendants are questionable. I don't like a**holes who file junk lawsuits.
I think most people on slashdot can agree with me.
You have plenty of CHOICE. What you don't have is POWER. You have the choice to walk away; you don't have the power to to make someone do what they don't want to do. If you had the choice of not accepting the offer and still accepted it, it must have made you better off then you otherwise would have been. The employer can't set terms arbitrarily. The terms they offer are whatever is sufficient to entice enough people to work for them. If you don't like the terms, you can quit and do something else; there are plenty of people in the world who would love to have your job.
The standard political arguement you cite, works on no level. It is total bull; just an excuse to pass legislation.
First, these arguements deal with more then the earned income tax "credit", the program that does just what the arguement proposes. I find it hard to justify education, farm subsidies, and corporate welfare by that standard. I doubt that the supporters of that arguement seriously suggest that we follow that logic, because aside from said program, no government intervention would be justified. Do they seriously propose getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, HUD, etc.?
Second, there is no such thing as true poverty in the US. The poorest American is still one of the wealthiest people in the world. There wasn't poverty when the modern welfare state was created either; America had wiped it out. Go to a third world country if you want to see poverty.
Third, the "poverty" in the US is localized. The odds of a WASP born into the middle class ending up "poor" are practically nil, but if you are born in a "poor" urban family, the system fucks you. All of this is the direct result of government programs. Everything we know about standard economics predicts this result. If people honestly gave a damn, they could fix it. The truth is that most Americans don't care and are fine abusing others. We only talk about helping people, but when it comes down to taking action, we never do.
Fourth, redistribution provably doesn't work, instead it makes the situation WORSE. Why would people deliberatly frustrate their desires? I suppose "people are stupid" is a valid explaination, but then all one would have to do is show why such a system cannot work. Since there is so much writting to that effect and we still have the system, you end concluding that people are insane and deliberately trying to frustrate their desires. That conclusion doesn't make any sense.
If we wanted, we could eliminate inflation, unemployment, and "poverty". All of the economic science needed exists, but it is ignored because the political leaders and the intellectuals supporting them prefer to play pressure group warfare instead of promoting the best interest of everyone.
F.A. Hayek claims it is a "Fatal Conceit". People think they are smarter then everyone else and end up under the illusion that they can and should "help" the less intellegent by controlling them. Therefore, anyone who doesn't want to "help" becomes "self-centered".
I'm more pessimistic. People are natuarally selfish, but have been taught that they should not be. Some feel particularly guilty and want to make themselves feel better by "helping" others. Since they don't want to spend their money, they just take someone else's. Deep down they know that this is theft. So, in order to not lose sleep at night, they rationalize the behavior by saying that the people they took it from were "selfish".
there is a problem with vouchers I've never been able to get over. Maybe you can help me understand:
The goal is to privatize the education system so that parents can do their own thing, but how do you determine where the vouchers can be used? Most of the proponents say that the government will have "oversight" to determine which schools are "appropriate". How is this any different then what we have now? If you let parent's spend the money on any school they want, isn't that just about the same as a check or a tax credit? If my thinking is correct it would be MUCH simpler just to issue a tax credit for educational expenses.
I linked to them because they have a free copy of the book, not because I agree with what some of their members have to say. As for the above quote, it's out of context and taken literally where a metaphore was intended, see my comment below.
When someone starts claiming that not only animals have an inborn impulse to destroy human life (they don't; they have an inborn impulse to eat and protect themselves, their territory and their offspring
I think you missed the point. The passage is concerned with the Romantic movement's view of nature -- that it is benevolent and exists in a natural state of plenty.
In reality, nature has nasty things like destructive weather and animals whose instincts run counter to human life. Man left alone in nature, with no tools is very much a victim. What wealth we have must be extracted from nature and often men make tools to assist them.
As to the specific quote, he isn't claiming that that grizzly bears literally have an instinct to kill humans, but that their insticts often impell them to do so. i.e. nature is not benevolent, but in many cases will act against human life. This is just a restatment of the old adage: "Nature, red in tooth and claw".
Economic systems are tools for achieving goals (usually success and prosperity for all)
Mises would be the first to agree. That's the central point to his writting. He does presuppose that your ultimate goals are human life and happiness, but I don't think that is particularly unreasonable.
Mises spend most of his life in Austria. The Austrian Empire used the public education system to promote government propaganda and pseudoscience. They also used it as a means of erasing the local cultural herritage of the conquered peoples. After examining the situation he concluded that the rights of minorities and the integrety of science could only be protected by eliminating such subjects from the schools paid for out of taxes.
As to the Institute, several of it's members are anarchists (e.g. Hans Hoppe). So, take their spin on Mises's writtings with a grain of salt. That said, SOME of their associates are very good economists and have raised important questions.
As to the Lorax incedent, I'm not familiar with it and so I really can't comment. It is, however, important to keep in mind that MOST children's books are promoting an agenda. He may have had a valid case, I really don't have enough information to make a judgement.
I don't quite understand why you are so hell-bent on emphasizing the undemocratic ways of influencing the society.
By the same point, why should a majority have the authority to do as it pleases? Because it controls the guns? What if I have a nuclear weapon? Does that give me the authority to do what I want? If a majority can do anything it pleases, why are there such things as laws and rights?
The reason you see me as undemocratic is because I believe in limited government, something required by my ethics, eudaemonism (which I guess you could consider a peculiar from of Utilitarianism). I follow Hume and Locke over Descartes and Rousseau.
Within the correct sphere of government, democracy in the only acceptable process, because it will prevent revolution. It does not follow that because the government is democratically controlled, it is capable of undertaking any task.
So science, reson and logic should not overrule the democratic process, if the majority decides to declare itselfthe master race and to kill everyone else living in the country? Absolute democracy is nothing but a tyranny of the masses. The purpose of democratic government allow a majority to dispose of an unpopular government peacfully, not to allow the majority to do as it pleases. Under such an arrangement there can be no freedom.
Lugwig von Mises was an economist and social philosopher. He was pro-capitalist. He was very critical of the Nazis, the Soviets, AND the Americans. I fail to see why any of this is precludes understanding or evaluation his theories.
Mises taught that left alone, people would and could take care of themselves and that they would naturally seek their own happiness, but that powerful interests used the power of government to gain special privilages causing the masses to suffer. His life's work was dedicated to demolishing the excuses that were made for promoting special interests at the expense of general welfare.
You should evaluate his theories and attack the logic if you disagree, not try to attack him personally. It is very strange that people often ignore the parts of his work where he attacks corporate welfare and other "capitalist" programs. People seem to do this though. F.A. Hayek is promoted by conservatives as a brilliant theorist but he went so far as to claim that the American system of government could not work. John Rawls's theories, often cited by liberals, preclude most of their programs.
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If they manage to accomplish it though, it will likely destroy what's left of communism in their country. Henry Kissinger has found that in communist countries, hardliners tend to follow reformers. If this rule holds true for China, it would mean that the next leader of the PRC will turn the country back. I personally think that China will be the exception to the rule and will continue down the road to a free market, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
The US does not opperate on #2. Here is what really is happening:
The US imports more goods then it exports. As a result foreigners have lots of dollars. One of two things will happen, either the value of the dollar will fall relative to the foreign currency and the trade will balance OR the foreigners will decide to invest the money in the US economy. In reality some combination of both will happen.
Normally this doesn't affect the country involved very much, but the US has some screwed up domestic economic policy that left alone would cause consumption to outstrip the ability to grow and maintain the capital base needed to support it. As long as foreigners reinvest the money into the US economy things will be fine, the massive consumption expenditures made by the American public will not be impared. If OTOH, the foreigners find somewhere better to put their wealth, they will stop investing, the dollar will fall, and because of bass-ackwards government policy, the economy will not be able to support the existing level of consuption expenditure.
As for China, they are growing at a rapid rate but are desperate for capital investment to keep the rapid growth up. If they do not entice enough people to invest in China (or produce enough exports to bring enough foreign currency into china to buy the capital goods they need), the rapid progress of their economy will grind to a halt and their country would likely be destabilized.
Their thoughts probably are working along these lines: If China has a special incompatable DVD format, entertainment companies that want to do business here will need to produce special versions of their content. In order to save costs they will most likely build the factory in China, investing in our economy.
Obviously they are counting on the large potential market to draw the media companies in and offset the artificial barrier.
The difference between interventionism and socialism on the german model (where people nominally own the property but the government makes all decisions reguarding its disposition) is that, in interventionism the market process still exists, while in socialism and communism the market process is destroyed. You are very astute to realize that interventionism is ultimatly just a slow path to socialism.
Under interventionism the market gets distorted and tends to behave perversly. That's why Mises says the US policy is insane -- it deliberatly frustrates itself.
Perl is like C: It works fine for large project if you use it correctly, but if you don't know what you are doing, you get crap. For example, the OpenBSD pkg_* tools are written in perl.
If you are going to sign a contract, you should hire a lawyer to represent you. You WILL get your money's worth.
The US is interventionist. In a communist country private ownership of the means of production is non-existant. In the US, it is just very impared. Here the market still ultimately decides.
I asked for you to practice what you preach.
I always have. The lawsuits are bogus and fraudulent, and the RIAA is a corrupting pressure group. I don't need Marxist exploitation theory to prove it. My views have been clearly expressed here and here.
If people don't like what the RIAA is doing, they should put up or shut up. Stop buying from them, or admit that you don't really care.
Only in the mind of it's advocates.
Additionally there is absolutely no way to implement Libertarian socialism.
That is entirely correct. They havn't added anything to the debate that wasn't already covered. See this for detailed criticism.
If what you claim is correct, all of modern economics would be wrong, Karl Marx would be right, and we should overthrow the government and extablish a Communist country. That's an extraodinary claim; extraodinary claims require extraodinary proof. Where is it?
You and everyone else just bitch because you got EXACTLY what you asked for. If you don't like the results produced by the market, use your power as a consume and abstain from buying from the compaines that don't satisfy you. I havn't bought any product from an RIAA company in over two years. What have YOU done to solve this problem? Or are you too "exploited" and "powerless" to stand for you claim to believe?
My point is that it is disengenous to claim on the one hand that you buy music and other products supporting the RIAA and on the other that you are powerless to change anything because they are "exploiting" you. The vast majority of consumers have spoken, they prefer having music and supporting the RIAA in the process to the alternative. To complain about results you helped produced and feign helplessness is just silly.
As for me I havn't had a problem thus far, I've been reading a bunch and playing my Gamecube. At some point I'm going to have to learn an instrument and make my own music to satisfy that want, but I'm not there yet.
I stopped supporting the companies that participate in the RIAA. I don't buy anything or do anything that will generate revenue for any company that's a member. This means I don't buy anymore PS2 games, didn't buy a PSP, and won't be buying a PS3 because Sony would get the money. Will most /.'ers do this to support their convictions? Last time it came up there was a resounding NO. People here talk the talk but when it comes down to it, they care more about the enjoyment they get from the products then they do about the crap that goes on.
P.S. If you can point to specific laws that the government uses to prop them up, I'd love to hear about it, but I havn't been able to find any cases of obvoius special treatment.
Individuals have no bargaining power against a company and companies are fleecing individuals blind. At least admit that.
is irrational lunacy. There is no evidence to back it up. There are plenty legitimate reasons to hate the RIAA, the "evil companies exploiting the masses" scape-goat isn't one of them.
If the RIAA is getting special government protection that would be a legitimate arguement against them, but how are they protected by the government? The DMCA is a stupid, bad law. It clearly hurts consumers, but it doesn't pass the bar of government protection. Even if they are protected it doesn't lead to the conclusion that all companies are fleecing the consumer.
All of modern economics is false?!? The marxist exploitation theory is correct?!? If you think your twisted view of reality is the truth, prove it.
Here in the real world, if everyone stopped buying from Sony (a member of the RIAA) they wouldn't enjoy a superior economic position; they would be out of business. Using cheap rhetoric, hegelian didactic, and other tricks isn't going to change the truth, only bury it.
Do you have evidence to refute my point or are you going to resort to cheap rhetoric? If you know something that over 350 years of economic science doesn't please enlighten the rest of us.
Apparently you really don't know anything about economics, because the "superior economic position" of a company has nothing to do with it. Companies only enjoy a "superior economic position" by satisfying consumers --- by making products better, cheeper, or both. To say that companies should offer employees better terms, is to say that consumers, who are largely the same employees, should recieve worse terms. Barring government protection, all companies ultimately serve the consumer. This means that the terms of employment you are offered are related to how consumers value the product you help produce relative to other products they can purchase. There is nothing unjust about an employer offering you a job. You arn't "too good" to work. Get over yourself.
In the past copyright violoation involved reproduction for comercial purposes. I don't think anyone would seriously maintain that letting other people profit from a work is appropriate.
The question, which no one has the answer to, is what should the copyright law be? How should non-commerical duplication, modification, and distribution be handled? This is a new legal problem. In the past these new problems were slowly worked out by the courts over a period of many years. This way the country didn't back itself into a hole and end up with bad laws.
This time however, pressure groups went straight to congress and had the laws changed to benefit them. The laws now restrict non-commercial duplication (like what can take place on a computer) and does so in an invasive manner that has negative impacts for perfectly honest people. The law in this case is clearly broken. This would have been much less likely to happen if we had let the judcial process play out.
I have a problem with this situation for two reasons:
- The RIAA is a (mostly foreign) pressure group. I don't like pressure groups changing the laws in the my country.
- The RIAA is abusing the American legal system. These cases don't stand up to judicial scrutiney and the methods they use to find defendants are questionable. I don't like a**holes who file junk lawsuits.
I think most people on slashdot can agree with me.You have plenty of CHOICE. What you don't have is POWER. You have the choice to walk away; you don't have the power to to make someone do what they don't want to do. If you had the choice of not accepting the offer and still accepted it, it must have made you better off then you otherwise would have been. The employer can't set terms arbitrarily. The terms they offer are whatever is sufficient to entice enough people to work for them. If you don't like the terms, you can quit and do something else; there are plenty of people in the world who would love to have your job.
First, these arguements deal with more then the earned income tax "credit", the program that does just what the arguement proposes. I find it hard to justify education, farm subsidies, and corporate welfare by that standard. I doubt that the supporters of that arguement seriously suggest that we follow that logic, because aside from said program, no government intervention would be justified. Do they seriously propose getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, HUD, etc.?
Second, there is no such thing as true poverty in the US. The poorest American is still one of the wealthiest people in the world. There wasn't poverty when the modern welfare state was created either; America had wiped it out. Go to a third world country if you want to see poverty.
Third, the "poverty" in the US is localized. The odds of a WASP born into the middle class ending up "poor" are practically nil, but if you are born in a "poor" urban family, the system fucks you. All of this is the direct result of government programs. Everything we know about standard economics predicts this result. If people honestly gave a damn, they could fix it. The truth is that most Americans don't care and are fine abusing others. We only talk about helping people, but when it comes down to taking action, we never do.
Fourth, redistribution provably doesn't work, instead it makes the situation WORSE. Why would people deliberatly frustrate their desires? I suppose "people are stupid" is a valid explaination, but then all one would have to do is show why such a system cannot work. Since there is so much writting to that effect and we still have the system, you end concluding that people are insane and deliberately trying to frustrate their desires. That conclusion doesn't make any sense.
If we wanted, we could eliminate inflation, unemployment, and "poverty". All of the economic science needed exists, but it is ignored because the political leaders and the intellectuals supporting them prefer to play pressure group warfare instead of promoting the best interest of everyone.
F.A. Hayek claims it is a "Fatal Conceit". People think they are smarter then everyone else and end up under the illusion that they can and should "help" the less intellegent by controlling them. Therefore, anyone who doesn't want to "help" becomes "self-centered".
I'm more pessimistic. People are natuarally selfish, but have been taught that they should not be. Some feel particularly guilty and want to make themselves feel better by "helping" others. Since they don't want to spend their money, they just take someone else's. Deep down they know that this is theft. So, in order to not lose sleep at night, they rationalize the behavior by saying that the people they took it from were "selfish".
The goal is to privatize the education system so that parents can do their own thing, but how do you determine where the vouchers can be used? Most of the proponents say that the government will have "oversight" to determine which schools are "appropriate". How is this any different then what we have now? If you let parent's spend the money on any school they want, isn't that just about the same as a check or a tax credit? If my thinking is correct it would be MUCH simpler just to issue a tax credit for educational expenses.
I linked to them because they have a free copy of the book, not because I agree with what some of their members have to say. As for the above quote, it's out of context and taken literally where a metaphore was intended, see my comment below.
I think you missed the point. The passage is concerned with the Romantic movement's view of nature -- that it is benevolent and exists in a natural state of plenty.
In reality, nature has nasty things like destructive weather and animals whose instincts run counter to human life. Man left alone in nature, with no tools is very much a victim. What wealth we have must be extracted from nature and often men make tools to assist them.
As to the specific quote, he isn't claiming that that grizzly bears literally have an instinct to kill humans, but that their insticts often impell them to do so. i.e. nature is not benevolent, but in many cases will act against human life. This is just a restatment of the old adage: "Nature, red in tooth and claw".
Economic systems are tools for achieving goals (usually success and prosperity for all)
Mises would be the first to agree. That's the central point to his writting. He does presuppose that your ultimate goals are human life and happiness, but I don't think that is particularly unreasonable.
As to the Institute, several of it's members are anarchists (e.g. Hans Hoppe). So, take their spin on Mises's writtings with a grain of salt. That said, SOME of their associates are very good economists and have raised important questions.
As to the Lorax incedent, I'm not familiar with it and so I really can't comment. It is, however, important to keep in mind that MOST children's books are promoting an agenda. He may have had a valid case, I really don't have enough information to make a judgement.
By the same point, why should a majority have the authority to do as it pleases? Because it controls the guns? What if I have a nuclear weapon? Does that give me the authority to do what I want? If a majority can do anything it pleases, why are there such things as laws and rights?
The reason you see me as undemocratic is because I believe in limited government, something required by my ethics, eudaemonism (which I guess you could consider a peculiar from of Utilitarianism). I follow Hume and Locke over Descartes and Rousseau.
Within the correct sphere of government, democracy in the only acceptable process, because it will prevent revolution. It does not follow that because the government is democratically controlled, it is capable of undertaking any task.
So science, reson and logic should not overrule the democratic process, if the majority decides to declare itselfthe master race and to kill everyone else living in the country? Absolute democracy is nothing but a tyranny of the masses. The purpose of democratic government allow a majority to dispose of an unpopular government peacfully, not to allow the majority to do as it pleases. Under such an arrangement there can be no freedom.
Mises taught that left alone, people would and could take care of themselves and that they would naturally seek their own happiness, but that powerful interests used the power of government to gain special privilages causing the masses to suffer. His life's work was dedicated to demolishing the excuses that were made for promoting special interests at the expense of general welfare.
You should evaluate his theories and attack the logic if you disagree, not try to attack him personally. It is very strange that people often ignore the parts of his work where he attacks corporate welfare and other "capitalist" programs. People seem to do this though. F.A. Hayek is promoted by conservatives as a brilliant theorist but he went so far as to claim that the American system of government could not work. John Rawls's theories, often cited by liberals, preclude most of their programs.