Kurds Vote Overwhelmingly For Independence From Iraq, at cnn.com. Brexit started the independence dominoes tumbling. The world is changing. Upsetting the tyranny of the status quo is a good thing in the long-term, even though there is short-term pain.
GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION CREATES ECONOMIC PROBLEMS
You can’t solve economic problems through the political process. You can only make them worse. Unless you get rid of the government regulations that caused the problem in the first place. Of course we know Government can never get rid of any regulations. They can only pass new regulations to solve the problems created by their previous interventions.
Default Looms: Hartford Downgraded Further Into Junk Status, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Politicians can’t figure out that you can’t spend more than you have for very long. They have no incentive to stop spending, unless they go bankrupt.
Uber To Cease Operations In Quebec, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Competition lowers prices. Quebec is getting rid of competition. The taxi monopoly is back in business. Will prices rise?
California Mulls Combustion-Engine Car Ban: “You Could Stop All sales By 2030”, at zerohedge.com. Excerpt from the article: “The end result of this effort to ‘save the environment’ will be more expensive vehicles, landfills full of lithium-ion batteries and more coal-fired generation plants…but, somehow we suspect those ‘inconvenient facts’ are lost on our politicians and enviros who seem determined to subsidize Elon’s trip to Mars.” Politicians think they can create their utopian world at no cost.
In Florida, You Can’t Use Your Own Solar Panels In A Crisis, at zerohedge.com. I guess you don’t own the power produced from your solar panels. Excerpt from the article: “Florida Power and Light’s lobbying wing has fought hard against letting Floridians power their own homes with solar panels. Thanks to power-company rules, it’s impossible across Florida to simply buy solar panel and power your individual home with it. You are instead legally mandated to connect your panels to your local electric grid. More egregious, FPL mandates the if the power goes out, your solar-power system must power down along with the rest of the grid, robbing potentially needy people of power during major outages.“
The Obamacare “Death Spiral”: Health Plans Now Cost Employers More Than A New Car, at zerohedge.com. The results of the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare are obvious. Nothing has been made affordable (whatever your definition of affordable is). This was predicted by people who were against the government take over of healthcare. You would logically think that it would be easy to get rid of the policy that caused the problem. But Obamacare was an increase in the power of government. And once government increases its power it is almost impossible to make them give it up. That is why the Republicans are only talking about fake repeal right now. They want to pass a bill that can be spun as keeping their promise to repeal Obamacare, even though it doesn’t.
Pension Storm Coming: “This Will Become One Of The Most Heated Battles Of My Lifetime”, at zerohedge.com. What happens when there is not enough in the funds to pay the increasing number of retirees on public pension plans? At some point someone is going to have to give something up. Unfortunately it is usually the tax payer. Which is really starting to get old.
Illinois Unpaid Vendor Backlog Hits A New Record At Over $16 Billion, at zerohedge.com. Here is another example of what happens when year after year Government spends far above what it takes in taxes. Who is going to pay for this? You and me! Until we don’t produce enough to pay for it anymore and then these States will have to go bankrupt.
Price controls Lead To Predictable Shortages, at reason.com. Socialist policies can’t stop the laws of economics. In fact economic laws eventually reveal the folly of socialist policies. Venezuela is a disaster and it isn’t getting the media coverage it deserves. I wonder why?
The Much-Deserved End Of Obama’s Operation Choke Point, at freedomandprosperity.org. This is the kind of government abuse of power that most people don’t know about. Good riddance. If you haven’t heard of Operation Choke Point, check out the article.
Climate Models Run Too Hot: Settled Science Again, at reason.com. Global warming is based on ‘scientific’ models. What do you do when the models don’t match reality? Well that depends on if you’re conducting your scientific modeling because of politics or if it is a real scientific discovery process. Remember two things. Science is never settled and everything is political.
Bay Area Sues Big Oil For Billions, at zerohedge.com. San Fran and Oakland are suing oil companies for their effect on climate change. When I told my brother about this article, he asked; Can everyone who uses products made with oil also be sued? People use these products with full knowledge of what global warming scientists are saying. Even the people suing the oil companies have to use products made from oil just to survive everyday.
Obamacare Repeal Is Dead. Here Come The Bailouts, at reason.com, by Peter Suderman, at reason.com. Outside of the freedom caucus, Republicans never really wanted to get rid of Obamacare. Excerpt from the article: “Even if congressional Republicans wanted to take another shot at rewriting the health law, they have little time left, thanks to Senate rules: The reconciliation instructions that would have allowed the bill to pass in the upper chamber with a simple majority expire at the end of the month.” Socialists of both parties want Obamacare.
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em ….Ban Em’, at ericpetersautos.com. If you can’t sell enough electric cars even with tax payer subsidies, what is your next move? Get bureaucrats to use government power to ban the sale of cars with internal combustion engines. Why would you mandate a more expensive way to travel and ban a less expensive way to travel? The only way for an economy to become and remain wealthy is increases in productivity. Banning more productive methode is how an economy becomes poorer.
Elon Musk Magically Extends Battery Life Of Teslas Fleeing Irma, at zerohedge.com. Excerpt from the article: “Tesla CEO Elon Musk has magically unlocked the batteries of every Tesla in Florida to maximize the distance that people fleeing from Hurricane Irma can travel before stopping to refuel at one of the company’s “superstation” charging centers….this is either a generous act of charity or an unnerving example of the control Tesla exercises over the vehicles it producers, or perhaps both.”
FDA: To Keep Your Kid From Peanut Allergy, Introduce Peanuts Early, by Joy Pullman, at thefederalist.com. Try to protect kids from germs and allergens when they are young makes them more susceptible as they grow older. Don’t try to be smarter than the human immune system. It has a purpose. Let it work.
Hey Advertisers: The Data-Mining Emperor Has No Clothes, by Charles Hugh Smith, at oftwominds.com. Excerpt from the article: “The data-mining advertisement industry as it stands can’t identify which clicks are fraudulent or accidental, which ads actually trigger a sale, or which ads actually alienate potential customers. When a big advertiser pulls its online adverts and its sales remain unchanged, that tells everyone who’s paying attention something important: the industry isn’t doing a very good job for the billions it’s being paid.” As for me. I don’t pay any attention to any advertisements. The reliance on data and algorithms to predict outcomes can’t overcome the most important fundamental in economics; Human Action. Human action guarantees one thing; predicting is unpredictable.
ECONOMIC STUFF
3 Good Things About “Price Gouging“, Robert P. Murphy, at mises.org. Prices convey knowledge to producers and consumers about the supply of and demand for scarce resources. Resources are scarce under normal market conditions and have to be rationed some how. Prices are the most efficient and “fair” (I can’t believe I just used the dreaded four letter “F’ word) way to accomplish the rationing of these scarce resources. How much more are free-flowing prices needed when a disaster hits and resources become more scarce?
How The Feds Blocked Effective Flood Insurance, by Dale Steinreich, at mises.org. When bureaucrats intervene in the market, knowledge about real world circumstances are distorted. Risk can’t be assessed properly and the cost of paying for the risk is usually shifted to the tax payer and away from the parties making the risky decision.
Does Government Spending Create More Economic Growth? by Frank Shostak, at mises.org. Government produces nothing. In order for Government to spend anything it must first take resources from producers in the real economy. So whatever amount government bureaucrats and politicians spend, is the same amount not spent by the people in the real economy because it was taken from them. Government spending produce no more economic growth than if the resources were used by the people who produced them in the real economy. In fact we can make the argument that economic growth is negative when government spends the confiscated resources. Why? Because resources are taken from wealth producers in the market and transferred to wealth consumers in the government.
When a video like the one below surfaces the tendency is to say all cops are like this. Even though this video blows my mind at how stupid this cop is, I will not paint all cops with the broad brush this bad cop has placed in my hand. Not all cops are like this.
When you watch this video you will notice the other police officers, not the security guards, seem a little uncomfortable with the action this cop has taken. I think the cop whose body camera filmed this video is trying to figure out how to get out of the mess that the out of control cop has created. So why do regular cops seem to stick up for bad cops? Don’t they know that their silence about the bad cop is seen as support by default? Their inaction is in fact an action.
If you drag this video to 11:00 you will see an officer, who I think is of higher rank than the arresting officer, try to smooth over the situation. The higher ranking officer is using verbal gymnastics and a calm voice to try to confuse the nurse. He is trying to convince her that his fellow officer is in the right and the nurse is wrong. But the Nurse is right. The cops need a warrant or the person’s consent to draw blood.
When you watch the video. Try to put yourself in the nurses shoes. Try to put yourself in the arresting officers shoes, if you can. But try to put yourself in the shoes of the cop who is filming this. What would you have done if a colleague of yours acted like this?
GROUP IDENTITY
I don’t understand the mentality of sticking up for a person in your “identity group” who is not just being an ass, but is not following the rule of law. I am a white male but I have no problem saying that another white male is dead wrong. The difference is I don’t think of myself as a member of a group consisting of white males. I think of myself as an individual. For some reason people find their identity from being a member of a particular group. When you identify yourself as a member of a group and not as an individual, you have to look at criticism of another member of the group as being an attack on the whole group, and therefore an attack on you.
Each of us is a member of many groups at once. We are members of the particular family we were born into. We are male or female. We are a particular race. We have a particular religion or no religion. We work in a particular profession. We have particular hobbies. We are American or from another country. We are a Democrat, a Republican or neither. There are many groups we can choose to identify with. And that’s when the problem starts. We paint ourselves into corners that are hard to escape if our identity comes from a group. You can identify as an individual even though you are a member of many different groups. You don’t have to defend the bad people in ‘the’ group if you think of yourself as an individual first.
Watch the video. Put yourself in the nurses shoes. Put yourself in the arresting cops shoes, if that’s possible. But try to put yourself in the shoes of the cop who is filming this. What would you have done if a colleague acted like this?
Sheriff Forced To Pay After Ordering Raid On Blogger Who Criticized Him, at reason.com. This Sheriff should have been fired. Because of his position as sheriff, he had to know he was breaking the law. Since he is in a position of power, he should only get one strike and he’s out. It is not about him as much as it is about constraining other’s in positions of power who want to wield it against citizens.
Police Serve Warrant To Wrong Address, Kill Man Who Lives There, at reason.com. I know that men are not perfect. We all make mistakes. But can you be sure you are at the right address! Put yourself in the shoes of the person whose door was broken down. Should the cops rules of engagement be like the military’s rules of engagement? Don’t fire until fired upon. Would a different type of person be attracted to the job if this was the rule of engagement?
What Can Happen When You Try To File A Complaint Against Police Officers
There are millions of contacts between citizens and police each day. The vast majority turn out just fine. The bad situations are not the norm. But just because the bad situations are not the norm doesn’t mean they should to be swept under the rug by the people who are supposed to investigate them.
The video below shows cops attempting to stop complaints against their fellow officers from even being filed. These cops use straw man arguments, intimidation, lying, verbal sleight of hand, and force to stop people from filing complaints. By letting the bad cops go unpunished the bad behaviour is incentivized.
This video shows how people act when they identify themselves as members of a group and not as an individual.
If cops want to identify themselves as a group, people are going to gladly give them their wish. People will begin to identify all cops by the lowest common denominator of the group.
Cops have to purge themselves of their bad apples. Or their credibility will continue to erode.
Venezuelan Crisis ‘Truly Desperate,’ Bishops Tell Pope, at voanews.com. Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino says; “The country was mired in a truly desperate situation. There are people who eat garbage and there are people who die because there is no medicine….We want to remind the Pope of this again….because the government is doing everything possible to establish a state system, totalitarian and Marxist.” I find this humorous. Why? Because the Pope is a Marxist. Venezuela is a laboratory for Marxist socialism, and the experiment is failing. The Pope probably thinks the reason for the failure is because the Marxist socialism in Venezuela isn’t being implemented by the right people. He doesn’t understand that central planning leads to “serfdom and poverty”.
Kentucky Firefighters, Police Pensions Under Contention, at wlwt.com. These ‘public servants’ can retire after working 25 years. Question: Is it possible to save enough production in 25 years to fund your next 30 years of consumption during which you are not producing anything? I don’t have much respect for these people when they complain about the sweet gig they have. Excerpt from the article: “They’re seeing a direct attack on their retirement security,” Professional Fire Fighters Local A-16 President Joe Baer said. For Covington firefighter and father of four Tyler Cherry, it could set his retirement back nine years. “So when you look at planning out your life, for your wife, your children, for your wife, your retirement, all of a sudden you’re looking at eight years to 17 years is a huge difference,” Cherry, a captain in the Covington department, said. Some say the toll the job takes on the men and women who serve would make additional years of service difficult. “That can be a huge emotional drain on an individual by the time they reach that,” Alexandria Fire District Lt. Glenn Kilby said. “My family’s grown and had their own families. It’s just me and my wife. I still want to be assured that I have that income to sustain our life,” Kilby said.”
People who aren’t ‘public servants’ can’t relate to any of the comments by these ‘public servants’. Our taxes pay for your salary. Our taxes pay for your benefits. Our taxes pay for your pension. And yes our taxes pay your taxes. Shouldn’t public servants be more appreciative of what they receive? They don’t understand that the people who fund them don’t have the salaries, benefits, and pensions these ingrates have. ‘Public servants’ have no idea how their whining about salaries and benefits pisses people off.
Sacramento City council Approves ‘Advance Peace’ Program, at fox40.com. City council approves program that offers cash payments to gang members in the hope they will remain peaceful. No this is not from the ‘Onion’. Thecity council calls it an ‘Advanced Peace’ program. It is more like preemptive surrender to the criminals. What’s worse is it passed on a 9-0 vote. I know it reveals the intelligence of the council members, but does this also reveal the intelligence of the voters?
The Four Wheeled Patriot Act, at theburningplatform.com. I’ve never liked the idea of self driving cars. They are supposed to reduce the risk of human error. Since the self driving cars are made by human beings, they are prone to human error. Excerpt from the article: “…the SELF DRIVE Act will exempt automated cars from the necessity – under laws that apply to autonomous cars – of having things like steering wheels and brake pedals and other controls by which a human might intervene to save himself in the event the automated car makes a mistake. It is presumed automated cars will never make a mistake, that their systems and technology are immune to defects, wear and tear and so forth……It’s worth noting that no one is suggesting commercial airliners – which already have the ability to fly themselves, including take-off and landing – do so without human pilots standing by to step in just in case. Much less have cockpit controls removed and the now ex-pilots told to go watch a movie back in Coach….Why is it acceptable to do exactly that with machines that are more dangerous, en masse, than airliners simply by dint of numbers? There are only a few thousand airliners flying on any given day. How many millions of cars are out there?”
European Court Orders EU Countries To Take Migrants, at zerohedge.com. This is why Brexit happened. The EU has become the central planning of the sovereign European countries. Looking at the EU is like looking into the mirror and seeing what our Federal government is doing to our 50 sovereign States. The power consolidated in big government always leads to the usurpation (illegal seizure) of the rights and freedoms of individuals in the sovereign States.
In an unrelated story. Coming To A Town Near You: Expert Warns That No-Go Zones Are Growing In America, at zerohedge.com. I wish Bill Belichick was in charge of immigration policy. Any player who wants to be a part of the New England Patriots has to conform to the teams culture or he will be cut. Players know this before they become a member of the Patriots. So they do have a choice.
Fearful Cop Mistakes Reporter’s Camera For A Gun – Opens Fire, Shoots The Innocent Man, at thefreethoughtprogect.com. Or try this headline. Ohio Police Officer Accused Of Shooting News Photographer, at huffingtonpost.com. Should you be trusted with a gun after you make a decision that is this bad? A concealed carry holder knows not to do this. Is this an example of a person who can’t perform the job properly? Or is this an example of how some police are trained? What are the ‘rules of engagement’? If you can claim after the fact that you ‘feared for your life’, isn’t that literally a get out of jail free card?
Did Imran Awan Turn On Wasserman Schultz? New Report Suggests He Led Police To Her Laptop, at zerohedge.com. In the words of Andy Griffith; “Oh what a twisted web we weave when first we practice to deceive”. Unfortunately nothing will happen to her. The rule of law doesn’t exist in our country. The ruling elites have a different set of rules than you or I do. Ask Hillary Clinton.
How Welfare States Encourage Bad Economic Thinking, at mises.org. I have gone back and forth over the years as to whether the free market can stay ahead of the growth of government regulations. I am optimistic it can. This writer is not. Excerpt from the article: “Thus, it becomes clear that the welfare stateis not something that can be grudgingly tolerated as merely a parasitic nuisance. It is overoptimistic to assume that the remaining vestiges of free-market entrepreneurialism will always be able to outpace its insatiable drive toward capital consumption. Nor is it prudent to believe that the hard institutions of private property rights and market prices will be able to survive, let alone do their job effectively, with their underlying cultural foundations eroded to the core. And it is evident that welfare statism strikes at the latter at least as hard, if not more so, than it does at the former.”
“Price Gouging” = Political Rhetoric and/or Economic Ignorance!
Every time a disaster happens the term ‘price gouging’ is used to describe what happens to the pricing system when normal supply and demand is disrupted. The first rule of economics is scarcity. Man’s desires are unlimited while resources needed to satisfy these desires are scarce. This constraint of scarcity exists for any economic system, be it free market or any of the other centrally planned economic systems (socialist, communist, fascist, democratic socialist). The question we must ask is; which system best deals with this inherent constraint? In a free market, prices ration scarce resources to their most valued uses according to the subjective valuations of consumers. In a centrally planned economy, bureaucrats make the decisions on what is valuable and how scarce resources are to be rationed .
A natural disaster quickly shows how a free flow of prices conveys knowledge about where resources are needed most. Prices rising in the affected area constrains consumer demand for these scarce resources on the one hand and incentivize suppliers to bring scarce resources to the affected area on thee other. Prices coordinate supply and demand, and at the same time the coordination of supply and demand is revealed through changing prices. Price rise or fall incrementally during normal market conditions. But during disasters there are wide swings in prices.
The wild swing in prices allows political demagogues to prey on the economically ignorant. This free flow of market prices is called “Price Gouging”. Politicians win when they demagogue rising prices, and the people affected most by the disaster are hurt. Even though the people hurt most don’t realize it.
Here are some videos that explain the role of prices in a market economy.
Walter E. Williams.
John Stossel
Stossel vs. O’Reilly
This video proves Bill O’Reilly’s ignorance about economics. When he is losing the argument he cuts Stossel off and tries to play on emotion instead of logic. He then resorts to calling Stossel a ‘fascist’. These are the tactics of leftists.
People who are being charitable with their own time and money don’t need to be incentivized to “do the right thing” (supplying goods and services to the affected area). Rising prices incentivize, non charitable people (if that’s what you want to call them ), to supply much-needed goods and services to the affected area.
Gas Prices To Rise Even Faster As Tropical Storm Harvey Floods Texas, at usa.com. I heard a gentleman call into a talk show complaining about the rise in gas prices in his part of the country. He didn’t think the prices should go up since his area wasn’t affected by Harvey. This shows the economic ignorance of a vast majority of people in the country. At least 12% of the countries refining capacity is being disrupted by Harvey. Gasoline distribution infrastructure is also being disrupted. Economic law states when supply decreases against a fixed demand the price will increase. This increased price works to coordinate demand to the new reality of the decreased supply. This works to ration the scarce resource to its most valued use until supply can be brought back on-line. Allowing prices to rise allows the coordination of supply and demand to happen much faster than if prices were fixed by government.
Private Sector vs. Public Sector
Private Sector To The Rescue In Texas: Never Underestimate The Power Of The Private Sector To Rise Up To An Challenge, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediamblog. First responders are individuals on the scene at the moment something happens. Second responders are police, firemen or FEMA. In New Orleans people relied on Government to help them. In Texas people are relying on themselves to help each other. Big difference! Many people think order can only come from central planning from Government. They can’t conceive of order happening spontaneously by individuals voluntarily cooperating.
EPA Approves Emergency Fuel Waiver For Texas, at epa.gov. The best way government can help is to get out of the way. Since refineries are down, Texas will now be allowed to purchase gasoline that is banned for use in Texas by EPA regulations. But don’t worry the lifting of the ban will expire on September 15th. Why do we need such regulations in the first place?
Thanks To Markets, Houston’s Disaster Isn’t As Bad As It Might Have Been, by Christopher Westley, at mises.org. Excerpt from the article: “At the time of this writing, 26 Harvey-related deaths have been confirmed in the United States….. imagine what the death toll would have been if a similar storm slammed into comparable population centers in the Pacific Rim, Venezuela, or other outposts of the Third World. No doubt: They would be in the thousands…… What makes Houston different has to do with property rights institutions taking root and developing there over decades, making it a center for capital investment, because capital always flows to those areas where it is most secure. The continued increase in the quantity and quality of capital over time increases wealth, allowing its owners to afford better infrastructure and safety, relative to more benighted areas that attract less capital over time. To get an idea about the effects of decades of capital formation on Houston in 2017, consider the devastation that befell Galveston in 1900, when another Category 4 hurricane swept the Texas coast and claimed about 8,000 lives.”
Why Houston Doesn’t Need Federal Flood Relief, – In Four Charts, by Ryan McMaken, at mises.org. Let’s not promise federal tax dollars to be assigned for rebuilding Texas. The funds will be subject to crony political distribution. And where ever there is a pile of Federal dollars there will be no shortage of people, who don’t need the money, trying to appropriate it. Excerpt from the article: “This isn’t to say real sharing and kindness are a bad thing. It’s excellent that private charities have already been hard at work helping with the cleanup in Houston. If one wants to insist that governments be involved, there’s nothing stopping other states from handing over funds to Texas directly. The federal government need not be involved at all”
The Broken Window Fallacy Hasn’t Been Brought Up…. Yet!
Maybe we have won the war against ‘The Broken Window Fallacy‘. Usually after disasters like this we start to hear ‘experts’ talk about how the disaster will help the economy because of all the jobs created to replace and rebuild the things that were destroyed. I guess that sounds logical on its face, but if we remember our lessons from Frederic Bastiat we should look at what is seen, we should look at what is not seen. You will see the people employed in the rebuilding process. What you don’t see is what could have been done with all the resources, capital, time and labor used for the rebuild. The economy as a whole has less wealth because of a disaster. Everything that was destroyed has to be replaced just to get back to even par. If your car is destroyed. Not only do you not have a car, you won’t have what you could have purchased with the money used to replace your car. The economy as a whole, and you, are poorer by 1 car. The car was a useful good and was destroyed long before its normal replacement time. The broken window fallacy is simply the idea that consumption creates wealth. Production creates wealth. Consumption is the destruction of wealth.
Trump To Donate $1 Million To Texas Recovery, at cnn.com. I’m not a fan of people being public about their giving. Here is an excerpt from article: “President Donald Trump will donate $1 million of his fortune to recovery efforts in Texas……”
"THE COORDINATION OF MENS ACTIVITIES THROUGH CENTRAL PLANNING OR THROUGH VOLUNTARY COOPERATION ARE ROADS GOING IN VERY DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS, THE FIRST TO SERFDOM AND POVERTY THE SECOND TO FREEDOM AND PLENTY."
"THERE IS NO SUBTLER, NO SURER MEANS OF OVERTURNING THE EXISTING BASIS OF SOCIETY THAN TO DEBAUCH THE CURRENCY. THE PROCESS ENGAGES ALL THE HIDDEN FORCES OF ECONOMIC LAW ON THE SIDE OF DESTRUCTION, AND DOES IT IN A MANNER WHICH NOT ONE MAN IN A MILLION IS ABLE TO DIAGNOSE."
Most Recent Quote
F.A. Hayek - "Since the value of freedom rests on the opportunity it provides for unforseen and unpredictable actions, we will rarely know what we lose through a particular restriction of freedom."
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Matthew McCaffrey - "Building a freer society means winning the battle of ideas, not the empty contests put on by the central Government every four years. Freedom is never obtained by endorsing the least offensive applicant for the position of chief villain."
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Ludwig von Mises - "The middle system of property that is hampered, guided, and regulated by government is in itself contradictory and illogical. Any attempt to introduce it in earnest must lead to a crisis from which either Socialism or Capitalism alone can emerge."
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F. A. Hayek - "While it may not be difficult to destroy the spontaneous formations which are the indispensable bases of a free civilization. It may be beyond our power deliberately to reconstruct such a civilization once these foundations are destroyed."
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Murray Rothbard - "The market promotes and rewards the skills of production and voluntary cooperation. The Government enterprise promotes the skills of mass coercion and bureaucratic submission...and those who get to the top will be those with the most skill in that particular task."
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John Adams - "Government is instituted for the common good: for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people. And not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men..."
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Milton Friedman - "Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."
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Chris Rossini - "The state is a monster that destroys. Those who gain control of the levers, choose the targets."
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Murray Rothbard -"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics...but it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."
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Murray Rothbard -"Democracy can be only a possible route toward a free society rather than an attribute of it. In a purely free society there would be nothing for democratic electors to vote about."
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Robert Bradley Jr. - "When Government tries to pick winners and losers, it typically picks losers. Why? Because the Free market consumers pick winners to leave the losers for Government."
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Benito Mussolini - "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Men must choose between the market economy and socialism....some agency must determine what should be produced. If it is not the consumer by means of demand and supply on the market, it must be the Government by compulsion."
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F. A. Hayek - "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know, about what they imagine they can design."
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Detlev Schlichter - "Any intervention in the market (by the state) must direct resources away from how private owners would have employed them and toward how state officials and their economic advisers would like to see them employed."
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Henry Hazlitt - "The question is not whether we wish to see everybody as well off as possible....the real question concerns the proper means of achieving it. And in trying to answer this we must never lose sight of a few elementary truisms. We cannot distribute more wealth than is created. We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces."
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Murray Rothbard - "Whether or not man lives at the level of poverty or abundance depends upon the success that he and his ancestors have had in grappling with nature and in transforming naturally given resources into capital goods and consumers goods.... Free markets tend to lead to abundance for all of its participants.... violent intervention in the market and a hegemonic society tend to lead to general poverty."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Inflation and credit expansion are the means to obfuscate the fact that there prevails a nature-given scarcity of the material things on which the satisfaction of human wants depends. The main concern of capitalists private enterprise it to remove this scarcity as much as possible and to provide a continuously improving standard of living for an increasing population.....but however remarkable these improvements may be, there will always be a strict limit to the amount that can be consumed without reducing the capital available for the continuation and, even more, the expansion of production."
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Ludwig von Mises - " It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of Governments. Ideologically, it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights."
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Murray Rothbard - "To reduce the working population while the consuming population remains undiminished is to lower the standard of living."
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Murray Rothbard - "Increasing the money supply confers no social benefit. It relieves no economic scarcity. It simply benefits some at the expense of others."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments, they must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe."
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Milton Friedman - "A society that puts equality- in the sense of equality of outcome- ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests."
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F. A. Hayek - "It has already been suggested that it is not necessary, for the working of this free market capitalist system, that anybody should understand it. But people are not likely to let it work if they do not understand it."
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C. S. Lewis - "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; But those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
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Ludwig von Mises - "For the naive mind there is something miraculous in the issuance of fiat money. A magic word spoken by the Government creates out of nothing a thing which can be exchanged against any merchandize a man would like to get."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Many think that governments are free to achieve all they aim at without being restrained by an inexorable regularity in the sequence of economic phenomena....they maintain that the state is God."
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George Gilder - "Under capitalism, economic power flows not to the intellectual, who manipulates ideas and basks in their light, but to men who gives himself to his ideas and tests them with his own wealth and work."
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Thomas Sowell - "Perhaps the greatest achievement of market economies is in economizing on the amount of knowledge needed to produce a given economic result. That is also their greatest political vulnerability."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Anti capitalistic policies sabotage the operation of the capitalist system of the market economy. The failure of interventionism does not demonstrate the necessity of adopting socialism. It merely exposes the futility of interventionism. All those evils which the self-styled "progressives" interpret as evidence of the failure off capitalism are the outcome of their allegedly beneficial interference with the market."
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F.A. Hayek - "The battle for freedom must be won over and over again, the socialists of all parties must be persuaded or defeated if they and we are to remain free men."
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F. A. Hayek - "Planning, or central direction of economic activity, presupposes the existence of common ideals and common values; and the degree to which planning can be carried is limited to the extent to which agreement on such a common scale of values can be obtained or enforced."
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Thomas Sowell - "In political competition accurate knowledge has no decisive competitive advantage, because what is being sold is not an end result but a plausible belief about a complex process"
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Thomas Sowell - " Taxing away what other people have earned, in order to finance one's own moral adventures via social programs, is often depicted as a humanitarian endeavor, while allowing others the same freedom and dignity as oneself, so that they can make their own choices with their own earnings is considered pandering to greed. Greed for power is no less dangerous than greed for money, and has historically shed far more blood in the process."
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Peter Earle - "In a world of infinate desires and limited means, choices must be made; a study of history and economics reveals that, while markets make no promises, they never lie. The only choice is whether distribution, or redistribution as the case may be, is to be accomplished by the organic, apportioning hand of the price system, or by the corrupt, spoilative claw of states."
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Thomas Jefferson - "....To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with public debt....we must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude....if we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements.... if we can prevent the Government from wasting the labor of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy."
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F. A. Hayek - "The democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans."
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Jean Baptiste Say - "...The encouragement of mere consumption is no benefit to commerce, for the difficulty lies in supplying the means, not in stimulating the desire of consumption; and we have seen that production alone, furnishes those means. Thus, it is the aim of Good Government to stimulate production, of bad Government to encourage consumption."
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Ludwig von Mises - "The middle-of-the-road policy is not an economic system that can last. It is a method for the realization of socialism by installments."
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Thomas Sowell - "What is politically defined as economic planning is the forcible superseding of other people's plans by Government officials."
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Thomas Sowell - "The market is simply the freedom to choose among many existing or still to be created possibilities. The Government establishes an army or a post office as the answer to a given problem.... The diversity of personal tastes insures that no given institution will become the answer to a human problem in the market."
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Thomas Sowell - "Just as a poetic discussion of the weather is not meteorology, so an issuance of moral pronouncements or political creeds about the economy is not economics."
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Paul Craig Roberts - "We should all be thankful to the Soviets, because they have proved conclusively that socialism doesn't work. No one can say they didn't have enough power or enough bureaucracy or enough planners or they didn't go far enough."
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Alexis de Tocqueville - "Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man, socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality, but notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."
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George Gilder - "The Real Issue is between the rule of law and the rule of leveler egalitarianism, between creative excellence and covetous "fairness", between admiration of achievement versus envy and resentment of it'.
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Thomas Jefferson - "The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."
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Judge Leonard Hand - "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; if it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Modern civilization is a product of the philosophy of laissez faire, it cannot be preserved under the ideology of Government omnipotence."
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Ludwig von Mises - "The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution."
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H.L. Menken - "Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is an advance auction on the sale of stolen goods"
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F.A. Hayek - "Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's Government is not necessarily to secure freedom."
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Detlev Schlichter - "Economics is the science of how we use social institutions such as private property and voluntary exchange on free markets to make the best use of scarce resources. The printing press tries to do away with scarcity."
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Thomas Sowell - "The God like approach to social policy ignores the diversity of values and the cost of agreement among human beings."
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Henry Hazlitt - "Whenever men are allowed liberty, and freedom of choice, they will make mistakes. Liberty is not a guarantee of omniscience. But neither are the mistakes of free men a valid excuse to take away their liberty, and impose Government controls in its stead, on the ground that all wisdom and disinterestedness resides in the people who are going to do the controlling."
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Thomas Sowell - "Nothing is easier than to confuse broader powers with deeper insight. But almost by definition, those with the broadest powers are the most remote from the specific knowledge needed for either deciding, or for knowing, the actual consequences of their decisions."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Credit expansion is the Government's foremost tool in their struggle against the market economy. In their hands it is the magic wand designed to conjure away the scarcity of capital goods, to lower the rate of interest or to abolish it altogether to finance lavish Government spending."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Economic history is a long record of Government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics."
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Chaderov - "Since the State thrives on what it expropriates, the general decline in production that it induces by it's avarice foretells its own doom. Its source of income dries up. Thus in pulling society down it pulls itself down."
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Thomas Sowell - "If an informed citizenry is the foundation of democratic Government, than an uninformed citizenry is a danger."
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Thomas Sowell - "The free market works best when there is a level playing field but politicians win more votes by tilting the playing field to favor particular groups."
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Thomas Sowell - "However dramatic or attractive a particular vision may be, ultimately everyone must live in the world of reality. To the extent that reality has been filtered to fit a vision, this filtered information is a misleading guide to making decisions in an unforgiving reality, to which we must all adjust because it is not going to adjust to us."
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Thomas Sowell - "Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name "Social Justice"."
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Murray Rothbard - "Bureaucracy incompetent enough to plan a stationary system, is vastly more incompetent at planning a progressing one."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Freedom is incompatible with equality of wealth and income. Men are born unequal and it is precisely their inequality that generates social cooperation and civilization."
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Murray Rothbard - "Government subsidy systems promote inefficiency in production and efficiency in coercion and subservience, while penalizing efficiency in production and inefficiency in predation (plundering)."
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Francisco Capella - "The right of property is a negative right of noninterference. Humans do not have natural positive rights that imply that others must do something for them, and there is no natural duties towards others (present and future). Positive rights and duties arise by means of contracts."
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Victor Davis Hanson - "Social justice sees the Government's proper moral obligation not as ensuring equality out of the starting gate, but as guaranteeing that we will all reach the finish line at the same exact moment."
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F.A. Hayek - "A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a Government with totalitarian powers."
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Thomas Sowell - "People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge."
"Credentialed ignorance is still ignorance."
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Thomas Sowell - "People have to be aware of the dangers in letting economic decisions be made through political processes."
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Winston Churchill - "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
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George Gilder - "Socialist and totalitarian Governments are doomed to support the past, because creativity is unpredictable, it is also uncontrollable. If the politicians want to have central planning and command, they can not have dynamism and life. A managed economy is almost by definition a barren one.
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George Gilder - "The ambitious agenda of contemporary liberalism simply ensures that Government will do nothing well, except to expand itself as an obstacle of growth and innovation. Government best supports the future by refraining as much as possible from trying unduly to shape it."
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Francisco Capella - "Markets are never perfect because human beings are limited in their abilities; proposing state fixes to alleged problems that individuals cannot solve freely seems to forget that the state is also made up of humans; and perhaps not the best ones. ( Bureaucrats are not disinterested angels, and the worst might get to the top.)"
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George Washington - "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force, like fire it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master."
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Thomas Jefferson -- "I think we have more machinery of Government than is necessary, to many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
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Thomas Jefferson -- "I sincerely believe with you that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, it's but swindling futurity on a large scale."
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Thomas Jefferson -- "The two enemies of the people are criminals and Government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."
AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT 