Archive for March, 2009
Safety regulations screw the little guy
Monday, March 30th, 2009...and help the rich and powerful. Kevin Carson wrote an excellent article with lots of good details about food-safety regulations (proposed and existing) and children's toy and clothing regulations, which I blagged about previously. The system is designed to screw the little guy and help the rich and well-connected.
Rothbard on inflationary booms
Monday, March 30th, 2009From Chapter 3 of What Has Government Done To Our Money?, originally published in 1964. (This is from the 1980 version, so I'm not 100% positive this passage appeared verbatim in the 1964 edition—either way, it provides yet another example of the ability of free-market economists to predict and explain ...
How are Mondragón co-ops handling the recession?
Sunday, March 29th, 2009An interesting and far too short article in The Economist. Hat tip: David Z.
The eternal truth of market principles
Saturday, March 28th, 2009As I understand it, one of the great philosophical contributions that Ludwig von Mises made to the world was not simply to explain why governmental perturbation of market forces doesn't work, but to explain that it can't work—he explained how the things that the State can achieve are limited by ...
Refutation is simple
Monday, March 23rd, 2009All you have to do is just state something as a fact! Don't believe me? Watch how simple it is! When I saw his list of questions that he would supposedly refute, I was very interested in number 3: "Isn't having to work for a boss in capitalism the same as having ...
John’s thought of the day
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009Maybe if Americans weren't so stupid and/or willfully ignorant of important political and economic issues, they wouldn't be as outraged at AIG executive bonuses as they were at the government taking all that money from people who earned it and giving it to people who didn't in the first place.
Libertarian lyrics 4
Sunday, March 8th, 2009"My Prerogative" by Bobby Brown. Yeah, I went there. Everybody's talking all this stuff about me Why don't they just let me live? I don't need permission Make my own decisions That's my prerogative They say I'm crazy I really don't care That's my prerogative They say I'm nasty But I don't give a damn Gettin girls is how I live Some ...
My bank gives bailout money back
Saturday, March 7th, 2009Well, it's trying to. The bank I put my non-shiny currency in, TCF Bank, has filed paperwork to give its $361 million of bailout money back to the Imperial Federal Government. It's hard to imagine a libertarian advocating giving money to the government, but the executives at TCF know it ...
Taxes shouldn’t pay for stem cell research
Saturday, March 7th, 2009To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. —Thomas Jefferson Because they shouldn't pay for anything. Associated Press reports: Eight years of frustration are close to an end for scientists seeking ways to use embryonic stem cells to combat illness and ...
Keynesianism in The Fifth Element
Saturday, March 7th, 2009Zorg: "Life, which you so nobly serve, comes from destruction, disorder, and chaos. Now, take this empty glass. Here it is, peaceful, serene, boring. But if it is [knocks glass off table] destroyed... [robots come to clean it up] Look at all these little things! So busy now! Notice how ...
Right for the wrong reasons
Friday, March 6th, 2009Have you heard about the proposals from, for instance, California and Illinois legislators who want to legalize marijuana to increase their states' tax revenue? God, the predatory and self-serving nature of these thugs knows no bounds! They have no conception of or concern for individual rights—they don't want to decriminalize ...
Misconceptions about credit and borrowing
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009Democratic politicians and bureaucrats, supporters of Obama's stimulus spending and potential financial-sector interventions, and believers in Keynesian socialism in general are quite adamant about "getting credit flowing again" and easing the pain of businesses by getting people to buy more stuff. I'm starting to think a lot of their misconceptions ...
Buy gold!
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009I bought $505 worth of gold yesterday at a local coin and antiques shop. It was almost half an ounce contained in three old British and Swiss coins. That wasn't quite the optimal gold-coin purchase I had in mind when I looked up local coin shops, but I guess gold ...
Market anarchist blag carnival, last edition
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009I am still really bummed out that February's edition of the market anarchist blag carnival will probably be the last. It is being discontinued due to lack of interest. I can tell from my very passive browsing of other people's blagrolls, from seeing all the people who post at this ...